Tidbits on July 30, 2013
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Featured This Week Are
Photographs of New Hampshire's Covered Bridges
Plus a Special Covered Bridge in Frankenmuth, Michigan
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Bridges/CoveredBridges01/CoveredBridges01.htm
Tidbits on July 30, 2013
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/
Facebook is perhaps the
ultimate example of the old, wise saying: If you aren’t paying for a product,
then you ARE the product
Comparisons of Antivirus Software ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software#Microsoft_Windows
Based upon this analysis I chose F-Secure
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/
Find Real Estate for Sale ---
http://www.trulia.com/
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Neil deGrasse Tyson Unveils a Dazzling Preview of the New
Cosmos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/neil-degrasse-tyson-unveils-a-dazzling-preview-of-the-new-cosmos.html
Flying Over America ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=KcuDdPo0WZk
Old Time Radio ---
http://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio
Moving Art: Beautiful and Inspiring Video ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=player_embedded&v=nj2ofrX7jAk
Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/troosevelt_film/
September 11 Television Archive ---
http://archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive
Make History: National September 11 Memorial & Museum ---
http://makehistory.national911memorial.org/
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Andre Rieu's rendition of "My Way" ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/e-y581HdWfY?rel=0
A Humorous (very short) Horny Performance by the
London Philharmonic Orchestra ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/ik9AtJQXaHQ?rel=0
Minnesota nurse-anesthetists (waking up is hard
to do) ---
http://nottotallyrad.blogspot.com/2009/11/waking-up-is-hard-to-do.html
A unique Experience at the Rijksmuseum museum in
Holland ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/a6W2ZMpsxhg?feature=player_embedded
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's threads on nearly all types of free
music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
82nd & Fifth ---
http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/
100 Works of Art That Changed the World
NASA: Comet Lemmon and the Deep Sky ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3045236/posts
These Photos Of Detroit's Golden Age Show How Far The City Has
Fallen ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/detroits-golden-age-in-photos-2013-7
New Robert Rauschenberg Digital Collection Lets
You Download Free High-Res Images of the Artist’s Work ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/new-robert-rauschenberg-digital-collection-lets-you-download-free-high-res-images-of-the-artists-work.html
Chicago History Museum: Flickr ---
http://www.flickr.com/groups/chicagohistory/pool/with/7938537088/
The Richard H. Driehaus Museum (Chicago History) ---
http://www.driehausmuseum.org/
Images from University of Illinois at Chicago Library Collections
(photograph archive) ---
http://library.uic.edu/home/collections/images/images-from-uic-library-collections
Julia Morgan: An Online Exhibition (architecture
history) ---
http://lib.calpoly.edu/specialcollections/architecture/juliamorgan/
11 Of The Most Badass Hikes In The World ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/11-of-the-most-badass-hikes-in-the-world-2013-7
Read more:
http://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/from-active-volcanoes-to-devils-paths-11-of-the-worlds-most-badass-hikes?utm_medium=syn&utm_source=businessinsidert&utm_term=web#ixzz2Zrd9qC6d
Victoria and Albert Museum Teachers' Resource: Architecture ---
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/t/teachers-resource-architecture/
Take A Tour Of China's New Donut-Shaped Hotel ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/sheraton-huzhou-hot-spring-resort-2013-7
Chicago, 1900-1914 ---
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/chi1900/
Post (art and literature) ---
http://post.at.moma.org/
The Field Museum: Insects, Arachnids and
Myriapods Collections ---
http://fieldmuseum.org/explore/department/zoology/insects/collections
Living Rainbow: Rainbow Eucalyptus, Most
Beautiful Tree Bark on Earth ---
http://www.lovethesepics.com/2013/01/living-rainbow-rainbow-eucalyptus-most-beautiful-tree-bark-on-earth-36-pics/
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
Charlotte Mew had size-2 shoes and a thing for older women.
Thomas Hardy called her “the best living woman poet.” Why have we forgotten her?
---
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/05/heart-hidden-things
Folger Shakespeare Library Online Resources for Teachers ---
http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=618
Gertrude Stein Sends a “Review” of The Great Gatsby to F.
Scott Fitzgerald (1925) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/gertrude-stein-sends-a-review-of-the-great-gatsby-to-f-scott-fitzgerald-1925.html
The Writing Life of Joyce Carol Oates ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/the-writing-life-of-joyce-carol-oates.html
Post (art and literature) ---
http://post.at.moma.org/
24 Books People Mostly Pretend to Have Read ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/books-people-pretend-to-read-and-now-your-confessions.html
74 Free Banned Books People Pretend Not to Have Read---
http://www.openculture.com/2010/10/74_free_banned_books_for_banned_books_week.html
Read Fanny Hill, the 18th-Century Erotic Novel That Went to
the Supreme Court in the 20th Century ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/read-fanny-hill-the-18th-century-erotic-novel-that-went-to-the-supreme-court.html
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 July 30, 2013
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2013/TidbitsQuotations073013.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
Wolfram Alpha ---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
"23 Ways To Make Money Using The Nerdiest Site (Wolfram Alpha) On The
Internet," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, July 9, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-wolfram-alpha-for-finance-2013-7
Developed by the "Smartest Guy on the Planet"
"32 Tricks You Can Do With Wolfram Alpha, The Most Useful Site In The History
Of The Internet," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, July 9, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/awesome-things-you-can-do-with-wolfram-alpha-2013-7
Bob Jensen's application of Wolfram Alpha to a learning curve controversy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Wolfram Alpha ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#WolframAlpha
MOOC Massively Open Online Course ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOCs
"Who Is Driving the Online Locomotive?" by Rob Jenkins, Chronicle
of Higher Education, July 25, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Is-Driving-the-Online/140505/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
No single factor is driving the explosion in MOOC and other distance education
courses.
But I think the major driver is concern by the world's most
prestigious universities to that education opportunity is too skewed toward
students from higher income families leaving the students from low income
families with virtually no higher education opportunity or highly inferior
education opportunities.
The rails of the online "locomotive" commenced at the MIT University Open
Knowledge Initiative (OKI) station.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
MIT formed a consortium of some (not all) of the most prestigious universities
in the USA and some outside the USA. Initially OKI was not a distance education
initiative. Rather is was a educational materials sharing initiative.
Prestigious universities, especially MIT, commenced to share the learning
materials of their own courses, including readings, lecture notes, assignments,
examinations, etc. Eventually this led to sharing of lecture videos. Of
course these were only free open-shared study materials. Users could not get
transcript credit for mastering these study materials.
MIT Open Courseware ---
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/
The OKI Consortium of MIT, Yale, Stanford, etc. shook the academic world like
an academic earthquake after Columbia University's Fathom Project folded its
tent! Why would prestigious universities, especially private universities with
very high tuition, commence sharing most of their intellectual property? I
think the main reason was to commence to overcome elitism where low income
students from everywhere on earth to catch the learning train.
The second shock also commenced at the MIT Station.
MIT and other prestigious universities commenced to attach entire MOOC courses
behind the online locomotive! Users could now enroll in courses (often in search
of attendance certificates) from the best specialist teachers in the Academy.
The third shock commenced with prestigious universities contracting with MOOC
corporations to administer competency-based examinations and issue transcript
credits.
"What You Need to Know About MOOC's," Chronicle of Higher Education,
August 20, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/133475/
. . .
Who are the major players?
Several start-up companies are working with
universities and professors to offer MOOC's. Meanwhile, some colleges are
starting their own efforts, and some individual professors are offering
their courses to the world. Right now four names are the ones to know:
edX
A nonprofit effort run jointly by
MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley.
Leaders of the group say they intend to slowly add
other university partners over time. edX plans to freely give away the
software platform it is building to offer the free courses, so that anyone
can use it to run MOOC’s.
Coursera
A for-profit company founded by two computer-science
professors from Stanford.
The company’s model is to sign contracts with colleges that agree to use
the platform to offer free courses and to get a percentage of any revenue.
More than a dozen high-profile institutions, including Princeton and the U.
of Virginia, have joined.
Udacity
Another for-profit company founded
by a Stanford computer-science professor.
The company, which works with individual professors
rather than institutions, has attracted a range of well-known scholars.
Unlike other providers of MOOC’s, it has said it will focus all of its
courses on computer science and related fields.
Udemy
A for-profit platform that lets
anyone set up a course.
The company encourages its instructors to charge a
small fee, with the revenue split between instructor and company. Authors
themselves, more than a few of them with no academic affiliation, teach many
of the courses.
The fourth shock was when less prestigious state universities and community
colleges to provide education opportunity for low income statements commenced to
emulate MIT and other prestigious universities in providing both non-credit
courses and courses for credit as MOOCs.
The fifth shock was when the University of Wisconsin, Southern New Hampshire
University, and the University of Akron commenced to offer competency-based
transcript credit without requiring students to take courses.
"College Degree, No Class Time Required
University of Wisconsin to Offer a Bachelor's to Students Who Take Online
Competency Tests About What They Know," by Caroline Porter, The Wall Street
Journal, January 24, 2013 --- "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578255992379228564.html
Underlying all of are the thousands of free learning module videos of the
Khan Academy where students can pick and choose topics that they want to learn
---
Khan Academy ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
How to sign up for a MOOC ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Ruth Bender, Ph.D. is an accounting professor in
the United Kingdom
June 17, 2013 message from Ruth Bender
I did the MOOC ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior’ from Dan Ariely
at Duke (it uses Coursera). I registered just to see what it was like, with
no expectation of doing the work. I ended up doing all of the video
lectures, all of the required readings, many of the optional readings, some
of the optional videos, all of the tests, the written assignment,
peer-reviews of others’ assignments… I even spent time swotting for the
final exam! And when I got my certificate, even though it is covered in
disclaimers (they can’t know that I really am the one who did the work) I
felt a real sense of achievement.
On the other hand, I also started a Strategy course, and lasted only one
lecture.
And I have just started a Finance course, but am struggling with it as it’s
a bit tedious. (Not sure how much of that relates to the fact that I
understand the time value of money, and how much of it is due to style, with
a presenter speaking to camera for long periods.)
I wrote down, for Cranfield colleagues, some features of the Ariely course.
Here they are.
1.
A lot of time had been spent getting this right. They reckoned,
about 3000 hours. The videos are very professional. The cartoon
drawings that accompany them every so often are quite nice as a
(relevant) distraction.
2.
As well as Dan Ariely, they had two teaching assistants on the
course to answer queries.
3.
I didn’t use the discussion for a or the live hangouts. I don’t
know about the hangouts, but I did occasionally browse the discussion
for a to see how they were being used. They seemed quite active.
Likewise, I didn’t participate in the course Wiki but it did seem
active.
4.
There was a survey done before at the start of the course and at
the start of every single week. The surveys covered attitudes, to the
course and the subjects covered. (This is a psychology course, after
all.)
5.
A final exercise, voluntary that I am not joining, is to write a
group essay on the course.
6.
The videos ranged from 5 minutes to over 20. The readings ranged
from 1-2 pages through to academic working papers of about 40 pages.
7.
There are two tests each week – on the videos, and on the
readings. You can re-sit the tests up to 15 times
8.
The closing exam was closed-book. People were selling revision
notes, and also providing them for free. Some very complex mind maps
here – this was unexpected and very interesting.
9.
A lot of interaction with Dan, including the weekly Q&A video.
Overall, I think it was a success because the material was interesting, and
because it was presented really well. They kept my interest with short-ish
videos, and with quizzes. Ariely is an entertaining presenter. In order to
get a grade you had to peer-review at least 3 other people’s written
assignments. I ended up reading 11, just because I wanted to see the
standard. A couple were dire, but most were high.
Hope this helps. Happy to give more information if you like.
Ruth
---------------
Dr Ruth Bender
Cranfield School of Management
UK
"Why We Fear MOOCs," by Mary
Manjikian, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 14, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/06/14/why-we-fear-moocs/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Traditionalists, especially faculty on campus, in higher education, many of them
feeling threatened by the online locomotive, think of every possible negative
that might derail the online locomotive. But I think it's too late.
The best thing we can do is be totally honest about the advantages and
disadvantages of hitching a ride behind the online locomotive.
The underlying purpose of this online locomotive is too important to the
entire world to derail.
Professors who
responded to The Chronicle survey reported a variety of motivations for
diving into MOOCs. The most frequently cited reason was altruism—a
desire to increase access to higher education worldwide. But there were
often professional motivations at play as well.
The Professors Who Make the MOOCs
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905/#id=overview
What is it like to
teach 10,000 or more students at once, and does it really work? The
largest-ever survey of professors who have taught MOOCs, or massive
open online courses, shows that the process is time-consuming, but,
according to the instructors, often successful. Nearly half of the
professors felt their online courses were as rigorous academically
as the versions they taught in the classroom.
The survey,
conducted by The Chronicle, attempted to reach every professor who
has taught a MOOC. The online questionnaire was sent to 184
professors in late February, and 103 of them responded.
Hype around these
new free online courses has grown louder and louder since a few
professors at Stanford University drew hundreds of thousands of
students to online computer-science courses in 2011. Since then
MOOCs, which charge no tuition and are open to anybody with Internet
access, have been touted by reformers as a way to transform higher
education and expand college access. Many professors teaching MOOCs
had a similarly positive outlook: Asked whether they believe MOOCs
"are worth the hype," 79 percent said yes.
Princeton
University's Robert Sedgewick is one of them. He had never
taught online before he decided to co-lead a massive open online
course titled "Algorithms: Part I."
Like many professors
at top-ranked institutions, Mr. Sedgewick was very skeptical about
online education. But he was intrigued by the notion of bringing his
small Princeton course on algorithms, which he had taught for 40
years, to a global audience. So after Princeton signed a deal with
an upstart company called Coursera to offer MOOCs, he volunteered
for the front lines.
His online course
drew 80,000 students when it opened last summer, but Sedgewick was
not daunted. He had spent hundreds of hours readying the material,
devoting as much as two weeks each to recording and fine-tuning
videotaped lectures. The preparation itself, he said, was "a
full-time job."
It paid off. By the
time his six-week course was over, the Princeton professor had
changed his mind about what online education could do. Mr. Sedgewick
now classifies himself as "very enthusiastic" about virtual
teaching, and believes that soon "every person's education will have
a significant online component."
The Chronicle survey
considered courses open to anyone, enrolling hundreds or even
thousands of users (the median number of students per class was
33,000). About half of the professors who responded were still in
the process of teaching their first MOOC, while the rest had led an
open online course that had completed at least one full term.
Many of those
surveyed felt that these free online courses should be integrated
into the traditional system of credit and degrees. Two-thirds
believe MOOCs will drive down the cost of earning a degree from
their home institutions, and an overwhelming majority believe that
the free online courses will make college less expensive in general.
The findings are not
scientific, and perhaps the most enthusiastic of the MOOC professors
were the likeliest complete the survey. These early adopters of
MOOCs have overwhelmingly volunteered to try them—only 15 percent of
respondents said they taught a MOOC at the behest of a superior—so
the deck was somewhat stacked with true believers. A few professors
whose MOOCs have gone publicly awry did not respond to the survey.
But the participants
were primarily longtime professors with no prior experience with
online instruction. More than two-thirds were tenured, and most had
taught college for well over a decade. The respondents were
overwhelmingly white and male. In other words, these were not
fringe-dwelling technophiles with a stake in upending the status
quo.
Therefore the
positive response may come as a surprise to some observers. Every
year the Babson Survey Research Group asks chief academic
administrators to estimate what percentage of their faculty members
"accept the value and legitimacy of online education"; the average
estimate in recent years has stalled at 30 percent, even as online
programs have become mainstream.
Professors at
top-ranked colleges are seen as having especially entrenched views.
For years, "elite" institutions appeared to view online courses as
higher education's redheaded stepchild—good enough for for-profit
institutions and state universities, maybe, but hardly equivalent to
the classes held on their own campuses. Now these high-profile
professors, who make up most of the survey participants, are
signaling a change of heart that could indicate a bigger shake-up in
the higher-education landscape. Why They MOOC
Professors who
responded to The Chronicle survey reported a variety of
motivations for diving into MOOCs. The most frequently cited
reason was altruism—a desire to increase access to higher education
worldwide. But there were often professional motivations at play as
well.
John Owens was drawn
to MOOCs because of their reach. He also did not want to be left
behind.
Mr. Owens, an
associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the
University of California at Davis, liked the idea of teaching
parallel computing, a method that allows computers to execute many
tasks at once, to a global audience. Putting his course on Udacity's
platform would be good for the 15,000 students who registered at no
cost, he figured.
But it might also be
good for him. It does not take a programming expert to decrypt the
writing on the wall: No matter where you teach, online education is
coming. "I would rather understand this at the front end," said Mr.
Owens, "than be forced into it on the back end."
A number of the
professors in the survey said they hoped to use MOOCs to increase
their visibility, both among colleagues within their discipline (39
percent) and with the media and the general public (34 percent).
This opportunity was
not lost on Mr. Sedgewick, the Princeton professor. "Every single
faculty member has the opportunity to extend their reach by one or
two or three orders of magnitude," he said.
For heavyweights
like Mr. Sedgewick, who co-wrote a popular textbook on algorithms,
allowing somebody else to beat him to the punch on that opportunity
would be risky. By volunteering for duty, he was, in part, defending
his roost. "I wouldn't want anybody else's algorithms course to be
out there," said Mr. Sedgewick. He was one of the few professors in
the survey who recommended that students buy a textbook—his own.
Nevertheless, most
professors did not seem to think that a MOOC-related boost to their
professional profile would equate to a payday. Just 6 percent were
looking to increase their earning power, and only one hoped that his
MOOC work would help him get tenure. Learning From Online
In May 2012, when
the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology announced that they would enter the MOOC fray with
$60-million to start edX, they were emphatic that their agenda was
to improve, not supplant, classroom education.
"Online education is
not an enemy of residential education," said Susan Hockfield,
president of MIT at the time, from a dais at a hotel in Cambridge,
"but an inspiring and liberating ally."
This has become a
refrain for traditional universities that have been early adopters
of MOOCs, and many of the professors in The Chronicle survey seem to
have taken the message to heart. Thirty-eight percent of those
surveyed said one motivation was to pick up tips to help improve
their classroom teaching.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Whatever the reasons, altruism versus evil intentions, the fact of the
matter is that the MOOC locomotive becoming too important to low income
people around the world who have very few alternatives to learn other than
from open-sharing of course materials (MIT's OKI), the unbelievable Khan
Academy, and the MOOCs who give them access, albeit very limited access, to
the best teaching professors in our Academy.
If we think of providing the poor around the
world with buffets, knowledge has a unique advantage. Each morsel eaten by
each person in a food buffet has a marginal cost. Each vaccination in a
vaccination buffet has a marginal cost. Each vial of medicine in a a
pharmacy buffet has a marginal cost. Each teacher in a remote village school
has a marginal cost. Each hard copy book in a school library has a marginal
cost. But knowledge per se can be delivered at almost no marginal cost to
students who have access to the Internet. A module in Wikipedia can be
consumed by each person in a Wikipedia buffet at almost no marginal cost
beyond the cost of access to the Internet. There's zero incremental cost
whether one student reads the module on the "Phillips Curve" or 10 million
people read this "Phillips Curve" module in Wikipedia.
MOOC buffets are a bit more complicated than
Wikipedia but far less costly than bringing a food buffet to poor people
around the world. There's virtually no marginal cost to adding a million
learners to the 10,000 learners who are already signed up for a MOOC course.
But there is a serious marginal cost to provide transcript credit for
mastering a MOOC course. But the cost is not in the learning. The cost is in
providing opportunity (e.g., jobs or graduate school) based upon assessment
of that learning for each and every MOOC student who wants transcript
credit. This is the main stumbling block of MOOC efficiency, but it is a
stumbling block that the world will one day overcome with innovations.
MOOCs will be failures by traditional measures of success.
There will be very high dropout rates. There will be very high failure rates
if MOOCs maintain academic standards (which is the major reason we want
prestigious universities to put their reputations on the line). There will
be many hopeful students who just are not prepared to tackle the material in
courses they sign up for with naive optimism. There will be many hopefuls,
particularly parents will small children they must tend, who just cannot
find the time to study.
But MOOCs must survive if low income students from every part of the
world are to have any hope at all for learning, especially those who are
only being held back by their poverty.
I truly believe that MOOCs are a lot like Wikipedia. Traditionalists in
our faculty find every reason under the sun why Wikipedia and MOOCs will
never be sustained. But free services are currently growing and getting
better in spite of all the negativism.
MOOCs will fail if MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Rice, Oxford,
Cambridge, and the other top universities throw in the towel like Columbia
University threw in the towel on Fathom. But I think Hell will freeze over
before these these other universities give up on MOOCs or invent another way
of reaching learning-starved poor people around the world.
MOOCs will fail if they become a sham much like so many for-profit
universities have become diploma mills. But MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton,
Rice, Oxford, Cambridge, and the other top universities will not become MOOC
diploma mills. I think Hell will freeze over before these universities give
up on MOOCs or invent another way of reaching learning-starved poor people
around the world.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
Harmful Hacks to Legitimate Websites
I live in fear that one day a deceptive and/or malicious module/tidbit will be
placed in my huge Website by a hacker. The worst such module would be one that
is totally consistent with my writing style (usually without pictures) that
makes a false claim that I recommend a product or service. Until a reader gets
harmed and notifies me I may never be aware of this hack.
Such hacking happens to the best of the Website providers, including MIT's
Technology Review
"Fake Ad For Apparent Credit-Card Scam Was On Our Site," MIT's
Technology Review, July 2013 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517576/fake-ad-for-apparent-credit-card-scam-was-on-our-site/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130729
Tesla Motors ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors
"Tesla Versus the Luxury Automakers: Does the introduction of luxury EVs
from BMW, Cadillac, and Mercedes spell doom for Tesla?" by Kevin Bullis,
MIT's Technology Review, July 25, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/517531/tesla-versus-the-luxury-automakers/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130726
Jensen Comment
There won't be much competition from Japan since Japanese manufacturers have
given up on battery-powered cars. The Japanese shifted their attention to the
future of fuel cells, probably hydrogen fuel cells.
But competition from luxury car manufacturers in Michigan and Germany will be
intense. Much depends upon the competitive advantage of Tesla's new patents.
What seems to me as a stupid business model is to not have Tesla
dealers (or at least repair shops) across the entire geographic market where you
sell vehicles. If I by a Tesla in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where do
I take it in for repairs and warranty service? Forget Tesla.
What seems to me as a stupid business model is to manufacture automobiles for
a mass market in the Freemont, California where Toyota and General Moters fled.
Tesla built its California factory using $365 million in low-interest loans from
the federal government. Firstly, housing costs are higher that most
manufacturing workers can afford. Secondly, Californians of fleeing their state
in droves due to high taxes on virtually everything. It should be noted that
choosing the Freemont abandoned plants helped Tesla land the $365 million. But
that was before Tesla seriously was a contender for the mass automobile market
across North America, Europe, and Asia.
When Tesla was building experimental cars for a niche market, Freemont made
some sense because of talented tech workers in Silicon Valley. Tesla is now
aiming for a mass market. How about new manufacturing plants in downtown
Detroit and Beijing?
Tesla will probably have to partner with automobile companies having
dealerships across North America, Europe, and Asia. To date, Tesla has made a
big deal about selling cars with having dealerships. This policy is
unsustainable unless Tesla builds cars that never need service and repairs.
Alan Turing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
Alan Turing, Brilliant Mathematician and Code Breaker, Will Be Finally
Pardoned by British Government ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/alan-turing-brilliant-mathematician-and-code-breaker-will-be-finally-pardoned-by-british-government.html
15 Gadgets That Will Make You Feel Old ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-gadgets-that-will-make-you-feel-old-2013-7
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets that will make you feel
even older ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
"Do Scientists Pray? Einstein Answers a Little Girl's Question about
Science vs. Religion," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, July 11, 2013
---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/11/do-scientists-pray-einstein-letter-science-religion/
"Isaac Asimov's Fan Mail to Young Carl Sagan," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, July
22, 2013
---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/22/isaac-asimov-carl-sagan-letters/
"The Future Is Now: 15 Innovations to Watch For," by Steven Mintz,
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Future-Is-Now-15/140479/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
This is a different Steven Mintz than the accounting professor Steven Mintz
that maintains the Ethics Sage Blog ---
http://www.ethicssage.typepad.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
The Worst Companies to Work For (allegedly) ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/07/19/americas-worst-companies-to-work-for-2/2/
Jensen Comment
There are hundreds of thousands of small companies that are probably worse
employers to a point where employees are praying to work for Wal-Mart where low
wages are higher and there are benefits such as health care and free online
degrees. Many small businesses are dropping benefits or opportunities to earn
benefits like health care. They never had education benefits. Job security is
becoming nill in strip malls that are now half empty.
Somewhat telling is the comment that “Radioshack constantly changes their focus
because they are a struggling company.” Companies struggling to survive are not
likely to be good places to work --- for a number of reasons. One of these
reasons that those co-workers and supervisors who have not already abandoned
ship are like to be the bottom of the barrel of remaining employees who have
fewer choices to relocate. Such a working environment is probably not pleasant.
Struggling companies operating at or near a loss each year are resource
challenged to make life pleasant for employees. Remaining employees may be asked
to take pay cuts and/or be forced to work fewer hours each week. Travel budgets
may make it possible to only stay in roach motels.
The only hope when working for a struggling company is that possible light at
the end of the tunnel. For many struggling companies like the USA Postal Service
there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Our Franconia Post Office has been
reduced to 1.5 employees sorting mail and manning the long-lined counter 5.5
days per week. Return to the good days when there were 3.5 employees probably
will never happen. What used to be one of the most secure careers in the USA is
now one of the worst careers in the USA.
"14 Things High Schoolers Should Know Before They Go To College," by
Vivian Giang, Business Insider, July 16, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-young-people-should-know-before-going-to-college-2013-7
Baidu ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu
Baidu Is a Better Version of Google (maybe) ---
Click Here
http://247wallst.com/media/2013/07/25/baidu-is-a-better-version-of-google/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=JUL252013A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's threads on search engines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
"Abrupt For-Profit Closures Surprise Regulators," by Kelly Field,
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 29, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Abrupt-For-Profit-Closures/140571/?cid=wb
Tracy DeLorey was only three months away from
graduation in January when she learned, via Facebook, that her college,
American Career Institute, had closed. The news, she said, "was a kick in
the face."
"I wasted a year and a half," said Ms. DeLorey, a
single mother of three who works at the commissary at Hanscom Air Force
Base, in Massachusetts. More than 2,200 students and 200 employees in
Massachusetts and Maryland were displaced by ACI's closure.
Seven months later, many former students are still
awaiting refunds on loans they took out to pay for their programs. Others
have transferred to nearby colleges but find themselves spending more, or
taking longer to complete their programs.
The abrupt closure of ACI, a for-profit institution
that offered certificate programs in medical and dental fields, information
technology, and digital media, came just over a week after Academic
Enterprises Inc., the parent company of Sawyer Schools and Butler Business
School, announced that it was shutting down campuses in Connecticut and
Rhode Island that served more than 650 students.
In both cases, regulators and accreditors were as
surprised as the students. They said they hadn't received any complaints
from students about the colleges, and saw no red flags in their annual
audits.
"This just dropped on us like a bomb," said Michael
F. Trainor, special assistant to the commissioner for Rhode Island's Office
of Higher Education, who learned of the Sawyer and Butler closings when a
television reporter called him at home.
Maryland regulators said that ACI, which blamed its
closure on a loss of credit, had just upgraded the equipment on one of its
Maryland campuses and was operating at a profit.
The closures have gotten the attention of that
state's senators, who wrote to the U.S. Department of Education to ask why
oversight agencies missed the problems that led to the colleges' closures
and how the "triad" of state and federal regulators and accrediting agencies
could be improved to prevent future closures.
"One would expect that information indicating
imminent closure would be easily identifiable, and we believe that
situations like ACI's are absolutely preventable," wrote Sens. Barbara A.
Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, both Democrats.
In a response, James W. Runcie, chief operating
officer of the department's Office of Federal Student Aid, argued that the
triad "routinely" uncovers problems, but said the department would work to
"improve the results of the triad's monitoring and oversight activities."
So why didn't anyone see these closures coming? In
large part, it has to do with what the oversight bodies are looking at, and
when. A Lagging Indicator
State regulators and accreditors monitor colleges'
financial stability largely through annual financial audits. If a college
shows signs of financial distress, its regulator or accreditor may require
it to post a larger bond, file more frequent financial statements, or
provide an improvement plan. If the situation looks dire, an accreditor may
place the institution on "show cause" status, compelling it to submit a plan
for students to continue their education at other institutions.
The U.S. Education Department uses audits to assign
colleges "financial responsibility scores." Colleges that score poorly are
subject to tighter monitoring for their federal student-aid funds and can be
required to post costly letters of credit to remain eligible for
financial-aid programs. Colleges that consistently fail the test can lose
the right to issue federal aid to their students, though that rarely
happens.
Yet colleges typically have several months after
the close of their fiscal year to submit their audits, and some colleges
conduct their audits before the end of the year. By the time regulators and
accreditors receive an audit, it is often several months out of date. The
Education Department just released the fiscal-responsibility scores for
2011, more than two years after the end of that fiscal year.
Both ACI and the Academic Enterprises schools
received clean audits and passing financial-responsibility scores in their
most recent reviews.
In the case of the Butler and Sawyer schools,
enrollment abruptly fell by more than 50 percent, according to the states'
regulators and senators. While the company's owners haven't explained their
reasons for closing (and didn't respond to a request for comment),
regulators say the college relied heavily on students without high-school
diplomas or GEDs. Until recently, such students could qualify for federal
aid by passing a test demonstrating their "ability to benefit" from higher
education. Congress withdrew their eligibility as of July 1, 2012.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on for-profit "schools" operating in the gray zone of
fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
New Accounting History Books Worth Noting
Steve Zeff at Rice University is one of the best-known accounting historians
alive today. He's also the current Book Review Editor of The Accounting
Review. This explains, in part, why the July 2013 listing of book reviews
four scholarly reference books on accounting history. I say reference books,
because none of the four history books is light reading to pass the time on
airplanes.
The books reviewed in the July 2013 issue of TAR include the following ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/accr-10338
SEBASTIAN BOTZEM, The Politics of Accounting Regulation:
Organizing Transnational Standard Setting in Financial Reporting
(Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84980-177-5,
pp. x, 223).
Reviewer Scholar: STUART McLEAY
WOLFGANG BURR and ALFRED WAGENHOFER (coordinating editors), Der
Verband der Hoschschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft: Geschichte des VHB und
Geschichten zum VHB (History of the VHB and Tales of the VHB)
(Wiesbaden, Germany: Gabler Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8349-2939-6, pp. xxi,
338).
Reviewer Scholar: LISA EVANS
MAHMOUD EZZAMEL, Accounting and Order (New York, NY: Routledge,
2012, ISBN 978-0-415-48261-5, pp. xx, 482).
Reviewer Scholar: SUDIPTA BASU
GARY PREVITS, PETER WALTON, and PETER WOLNIZER (editors), A Global
History of Accounting, Financial Reporting and Public Policy: Eurasia, the
Middle East and Africa (Bingley, U.K.: Emerald Group Publishing Limited,
2012, ISBN 978-0-85724-815-2, pp. xi, 249).
Reviewer Scholar: TIMOTHY S. DOUPNIK
Capsule Commentary on The Future of IFRS (London, U.K.:
Financial Reporting Faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in
England and Wales, 2012, ISBN 978-0-85760-652-5, pp. 25). Downloadable at
www.icaew.com.
Reviewer Commentator: STEPHEN A. ZEFF
The accounting history classic in the set is A Global History of
Accounting, Financial Reporting and Public Policy in four volumes, the
fourth volume of which is reviewed in the above listing. The entire set is
devoted to global development of accounting, financial reporting, and public
policy in several key sovereign states. I don't think any scholarly library on
accounting history would be complete without the entire set, although accounting
professors may not invest in this set unless they are doing research in
accounting history. This is not light reading. The reviewer, Tim Doupnik notes,
that is not a book aimed at teh textbook market. Rather is "intended to be a
historical source book."
The Accounting for Order (in ancient Egypt) book by Mahmoud Ezzamel
provides more than you probably ever wanted to know about "Egyptian inscriptions
to document the role that accounting played in numerous spheres and theorizing
about how accounting helps to create and sustain order within these spheres." It
is a book that should be in every accounting history library, although
professors who buy the book are probably historians interested in ancient Egypt
society, culture, and economics. Sadipta Basu nearly always does scholarly work,
and his review of this book is well worth the read.
Most of us cannot read the Wolfgang Burr and Alfred Wagenhofer book since it
is written in German. Lisa Evans is obviously a scholar in accounting as
well as the German language and writes the following in her review:
This book is written in German and, it seems, for
an audience primarily comprising VHB members, or at least those familiar
with the discipline of Betriebswirtschaft (BWL) and with the organization of
German academe. Therefore, an explicit account of what distinguishes BWL
from related disciplines in other cultures may not have been felt necessary.
However, one of the difficulties in reviewing this book for an
English-speaking readership is the need to translate German concepts for
which there are no English language equivalents. The very terms
Betriebswirtschaft and Betriebswirtschaftslehre (the science of
Betriebswirtschaft) can be translated as, inter alia, business
administration, business management, business economics, or business
studies.
The lack of an equivalent translation is an
indication of the different histories of related disciplines in different
academic and business traditions. The different possible translations are
also a clue to the breadth of the subject matter and to difficulties in its
demarcation from related disciplines during its history. This relationship
with other disciplines is explored throughout this book.
In essence, the VHB represents interests
considerably wider than accounting and finance, and many of the famous names
(Schmalenbach, Schmidt, Mahlberg, etc.) associated with the history of BWL
were not, or not only, professors of accounting in a narrow sense. The VHB's
membership represents 16 subject areas or sub-disciplines: banking and
finance; business taxation; academic management; international management;
logistics; marketing; sustainability management; public business
administration; operations research; organization; human resources
management; production management; accounting; technology, innovation and
entrepreneurship; business information systems; and economic science (VHB
website; see also Chapter 1). The subject group for accounting was formally
constituted in 1977 and includes financial reporting, managerial accounting,
controlling, and auditing (VHB website).
Continued in the book review
The author of The Politics of Accounting Regulation: Organizing
Transnational Standard Setting in Financial Reporting, Sebastian Botzem,
is a political scientist who focuses his particular research skills to the
study of the politics of the International Accounting Standards Board. The
reviewer, stuart Mcleay, writes as follows:
. . .
n its attempt to understand the contested and
political nature of accounting standard setting, this interdisciplinary book
focuses on the structures and the procedures that enable transnational
rule-setting. The author starts with an outline of the social theory that
may explain transnational accounting standardization, noting that the shared
beliefs of professions have long been able to facilitate the social closure
that is important to self-regulation, but that professional bodies no longer
form the main loci of expertise in accounting standard setting. This is
followed by a condensed account of the IASB's emergence as the pre-eminent
international accounting standard setter. Botzem claims that, in getting to
this position, the IASB has out-competed a number of other endeavors to draw
up international accounting rules. This is a questionable interpretation, as
the two supposed competitors to the IASB (the European Community and the
United Nations) have not been greatly concerned with financial reporting
standards per se, but, respectively, with the harmonization of company law
across the member states of the European Union and the wider accountability
of multinational companies. Rather than rival initiatives, these are
components of a complex nexus of overlapping demands by social actors aimed
at constraining the behavior of firms.
The book also attempts to set the scene by drawing
links between global capitalism and the content of international accounting
standards, emphasizing the capital-market orientation embodied in fair value
accounting. This too is overly simplistic, in my view—we do not have to look
far for a counter-example in the potential usefulness of pension accounting
of employee superannuation funds.
The book continues with a reconstruction of the
organizational development of the IASB, arguing that, while the privately
run standard setter has established the necessary procedures to consult with
interested parties, it has done so without handing over too much influence.
In this respect, the author claims that the IASB has subordinated democratic
accountability to the effectiveness of expertise-based standardization. This
is a well-worn debate among accounting researchers, practitioners, and
standard setters, not only the IASB. It is particularly instructive that the
revised conceptual framework issued jointly by the IASB and FASB now limits
the range of addressees of general purpose financial reporting to investors,
lenders and other creditors, explicitly to assist them in making decisions
about providing resources to the entity. Needless to say, political
scientists should be aware that various social actors have sought to foist
their own public policy objectives onto the regulation of financial
statements, in an attempt to extend the remit of standard setting beyond
that of financial reporting. Our understanding of the IASB requires in turn
a greater appreciation of international consensus over the public policy
objectives financial statements.
Finally, the book reports on the author's own
empirical research on organizational structures and processes, by providing
an analysis of the dominant individuals and the most influential
organizations within the IASB's wider network.
Throughout the book, the IASB is portrayed as “a
successful, private, transnational, regulatory body,” whose efforts to be
outside of politics are nevertheless fundamentally political in nature.
While the IASB is often referred to as a “regulator” in this way (both in
this book and elsewhere), the broader perspective is that law-makers,
together with the financial regulators and delegated agencies that produce
“soft law,” contribute jointly to the complex framework of requirements that
are placed on the regulated. At the same time, the multinational operations
of regulated firms readily introduce legal and regulatory
extraterritorialities that muddle institutional boundaries. While Botzem
grapples with some of these complexities, and introduces the reader to
useful universal notions such as “boundary spanning” when generalizing the
diffusion of transnational standards over different social domains, a fuller
understanding of the particularities of the IASB as a regulatory body
requires a more developed appreciation of the way in which the various
institutions of corporate regulation interact in influencing financial
reporting. For instance, not only is the black letter of corporate law
transposed readily from one jurisdiction to another, so too are the formal
and informal rules and processes of accounting (as they have been since the
Middle Ages). The level of statist interaction, or emulation, was already
high before the advent of the IASB. I suspect that cultural specificity in
accounting is marginal, and that other factors, such as differences in
industrial structure, may explain not only international accounting practice
differentiation (Jaafar and McLeay 2007) but also the within-country
alliances that influence statist regulatory differentiation.
In the latter part of the book, the analysis of the
Board membership is based to a great extent on the CVs of the individuals
involved. In contrast, the analysis of the other IASB bodies that are
investigated (the Standards Advisory Council, SAC; the International
Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee, IFRIC; and the trustees)
depends greatly on the assumption that each member of these bodies is a
“representative” of their employer. While the modeling is detailed, it
builds on shaky ground in this respect. For example, a small number of
universities are listed as employing organizations (Genoa, Northwestern, Săo
Paulo, Tama, Unitec NZ, Waseda, and Wellington). It is difficult to believe
that these organizations are “represented” in any way on IASB committees,
and there is no obvious reason to expect that the individuals involved
necessarily act as representatives of the wider academic community.
Likewise, it is not necessarily the case that an employee of the General
Electric Company is a “representative” of GE, who is just as likely to have
been voted in by dint of other alliances or even on the basis of individual
competences. Although it may be reasonable to infer that an employee of the
Korean Accounting Standards Board is a “representative” of the KASB, or even
of standard setters in general, it is still plausible that individual
factors are as important as institutional representation in motivating
involvement with the IASB, including membership of other networks. We
require a deeper understanding of these interacting alliances formed by
individual members. Moreover, the analysis would benefit from including the
membership of the IASB's Monitoring Board, which consists of capital market
regulators.
Other aspects of the analysis in this book are
similarly underdeveloped. Speaking of one current Board member, who has
worked in India, Europe, and the United States, it is noted that “[h]e is a
member of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the
American Institute of CPAs and therefore can be considered to be the ninth
‘Anglo-American' representative on the Board” (pp. 132–133). It does seem,
here, as though an awkward fact is not allowed to get in the way of a good
story. Unfortunately, the research places too much weight on the cliché of
“Anglo-American domination.” It would be equally valid to interpret previous
employment and early training with large audit firms as direct experience of
international accounting, in transnational firms that command a global
market in accounting and audit services. For instance, at the time of
writing, just one of these firms has offices in 771 cities across 158
countries, with its employees distributed throughout Europe (34%), North
America (25%), Asia (21%) and elsewhere (20%)—see PwC's Global Annual Review
2012.
The author stretches the same point in other ways:
“in their daily work the Board members draw on a foundation of experience
rooted in an Anglo-American philosophy marked by an appreciation for private
sector self-regulation and skepticism toward state intervention” (p. 133).
Yet the 18 extracts from author interviews with IASB members (Tweedie is
quoted nine times and Whittington four times) and others (Cairns is quoted
twice, Mackintosh twice, and Mau once) provide little evidence of such
attitudes, and the hypothesis therefore remains untested. Indeed, given that
one of the main conclusions is that the IASB mode of expert-based
self-regulation is under-representative of the users of accounting
information, one might conclude that this is a very limited set of
interviewees.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I might add that accounting history is monumentally neglected in our North
American accountancy doctoral programs and in our academic accountancy
departments and in our top accounting research journals. Academic researchers
prefer to take the easy way out by beating purchased database pinatas with
sticks until findings, mostly uninteresting findings, fall into research
journals that are largely ignored by the profession and accounting teachers ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#Essays
The Sebastian Botzem book should probably be required reading in a course
(probably an economics course) on the history and politics of regulation. Such a
course would not be common in accounting departments. Great credit should be
given to the great success that the IASB has had to date in bringing over 100
nations into the subset of nations that require IFRS totally or almost totally
as the main set of financial reporting standards for auditors and investors.
Although I'm doubtful that IFRS should replace current U.S. GAAP in the USA, my
hat is off to the great success of relentless efforts by dedicated global
accountants to succeed in the politics of IFRS. The USA is a special case, and
nobody ever thought it would be easy to bring convergence of USA and IASB
accounting standards.
The USA is a special case because of its long history of raising business
funding from equity markets that are almost non-existent in most of the 100+
nations who raise a greater share of capital from central banks and government
taxation.
The USA is a special case because of boots-on-the ground wars it has
participated in since World War II. It's not possible to enter into so many
fighting wars without polarizing the rest of the world into nations that respect
the USA's effort to bring world peace versus those that despise the USA's
political alignments and economic dominance, particularly alignments with Israel
that inflame other parts of the world.
The USA will carry a lot of political baggage to the IASB if the IASB
standards are to be deployed in the USA. Our enemies rise up against us with
both terror and with every political tool at their disposal, including the
politics of the UN that will probably be carried over into the future politics
of the IASB. This of course is Bob Jensen speaking and not repeating the more
optimistic views of Sebastian Botzem. However, it's probably inevitable that
the USA will join the IASB fold one day down the road.
Steve Zeff in this edition of TAR has a capsule commentary with a scholarly
forecast of The Future of IFRS that is much more optimistic
Capsule Commentary on The Future of IFRS (London, U.K.: Financial
Reporting Faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and
Wales, 2012, ISBN 978-0-85760-652-5, pp. 25). Downloadable at
www.icaew.com.
Reviewer Commentator: STEPHEN A. ZEFF
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Bob Jensen's threads on controversies of accounting standard setting are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#MethodsForSetting
Question
Have we overblown the importance of social media to business?
Only 36% of the surveyed professionals view
social business as important. It’s double the percentage from 2011, but it’s
still much too low.
Based on MIT Sloan Management Review, in collaboration with Deloitte,
survey of 2,545 business professionals in 99 countries on the subject of social
business ---
http://blog.hootsuite.com/importance-of-social-business/
Jensen Comment
The term "important" might not have been consistently interpreted by
respondents, especially respondents from different industries.
The term "important" might mean a small but necessary factor in performance.
For example, having Internet access is a necessary condition to downloading a
new eBook, but it is only a small part of understanding that book.
The term "important" might mean an unnecessary condition that in some
circumstances might be a convenience or improve performance. For example, having
a cell phone is not a necessary condition for most of us, but it can certainly
be a convenience and probably improves efficiency when trying to make personal
contacts with customers such as when a Sears service driver needs instructions
on how to find my home in the boondocks. Also having an annual car towing
service (such has carrying an AAA Tow Service Card with an 800 phone number) is
not a necessary condition to getting a tow when needed. But along with a cell
phone it is a convenience relative to having to search for towing services when
you have two flat tires away from home in downtown Detroit.
Also subscribing to LinkedIn is not a necessary condition to finding a new
job, but for many subscribers to this social media service it has been a God
send.
Companies are just beginning to suspect that releasing financial information
to the social media may lower the cost of capital.
The term "important" by be connected with the lower end of a learning curve
where the respondent views social media as not being so important at this point
in time but having potential of becoming vital to performance in future years.
In our Academy publishing articles in refereed journals is currently the most
popular way of communicating research discoveries. But each year the the
advantages of communicating research discoveries in the social media are
becoming increasingly evident. These advantages include timeliness (journal
publishing will one day be viewed as horse and buggy) and size of the "audience"
such as having audiences of thousands or millions of people, some of which will
more critically review the research far better than two burdened journal
referees, and the spirit of open-source in general. Knowledge wants to be set
free!
Also the respondents in this MIT Sloan Management Review survey
probably are unaware of the degree to which social media has been a blessing and
a curse at all times and in all circumstances of their companies. The CEO of
General Electric really does not know all the instances the R&D staff discovered
innovative ideas because of their social media subscriptions. The CEO of
General Electric really does not know of all instances where employees are
wasting time in personal conversations in the social media during working hours.
"The Sociology of Academic Networks," by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle
of Higher Education, July 13, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-sociology-of-academic-networks/34691?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
I’m a historian who is spending a month in the
company of sociologists,
studying religious congregations and social change.
In crossing these disciplinary boundaries, I’ve been fortunate to read a
great deal of sociological works that I would otherwise not encounter. Among
these is Randall Collins’s theoretical work,
Interaction Ritual Chains (2004).
Collins’s describes his work as a “radical
microsociology,” meaning that he theorizes about the rituals by which people
interact with others, from large groups, to person-to-person relationships,
to the imaginary conversations that a person engages in his or her mind. I’m
ambivalent about parts of the theory, but I’m intrigued by his central
claims: “occasions that combine a high degree of mutual focus of attention …
together with a high degree of emotional entrainment … result in feelings of
membership that are attached to cognitive symbols; and result also in the
emotional energy of individual participants, giving them feelings of
confidence, enthusiasm, and desire for action in what they consider a
morally proper path” (42). In other words, when people interact their shared
attention trains each other to be in a group with a shared purpose.
Though that theory is dense, I find it powerful for
explaining many things, not least of which is the way parts of the academy
work. If part of the mission of ProfHacker is to make plain the hidden (even
unconscious)
rules of the
academy, then Collins’s explanations of the
sociology of academic networks and of academic writing can be helpful.
I’ll take up Collins’s ideas of academic writing in
a later post, but first let’s look at his ideas about academic networks.
Collins says that thinking is a social process.
(Hint: sociologists think that everything is social.) He observes
that important thinkers tend to be the students of important thinkers and to
have important thinkers as students themselves. He also notes that the best
scholars have personal contacts with the other best thinkers, whether allies
or enemies. These groups are “not merely the clubbing together of the
already famous, but groups of would-be thinkers who have not yet done the
work that will make them famous.” This is not to say that only “important”
scholars move on the work of scholarship, but that the social structure
focuses on such eminent individuals, who “work extremely long hours,
seemingly obsessed with their work.” Perhaps most important, Collins insists
on the importance of direct interaction between scholars, especially
face-to-face interaction. He writes, “What one picks up from an eminent
teacher … is a demonstration of how to operate in the intellectual field of
oppositions. Star intellectuals are role models … but in a fashion that
cannot be picked up at a distance, and only by seeing them in action.”
Collins’s sociology goes a long way towards
explaining the unpleasant side of the academy, such as the emphasis on
academic celebrities and the plight of scholars who are never embedded in
the academic social network. But it also offers ways of thinking about the
academy that can help you hack your own career:
-
Get a mentor. This is hardly a unique
observation, but it bears repeating. Good mentors don’t just teach you
what you need to know to be a scholar, they teach you how to be a
scholar.
- Participate in
small groups—meeting face to face—to refine
your work. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debating clubs might be
out of style, but writing groups aren’t. Small, frequent gatherings can
provide the kinds of social thinking that produces great scholarship. If
possible, reach outside your own institution when forming your group.
And participating in an intensive, collaborative group, such as the
month-long seminar that I’m engaged in now, will help you generate ideas
that a month of reading and writing alone never could.
- Making a place for yourself at
academic conferences. As universities become
increasingly budget-conscious, there is more and more skepticism that
face-to-face conferences are worth the money. But it is at conferences
where you can discern the social shape of your discipline.
-
Reach out to scholars whose work you admire.
On the whole, senior scholars have been overwhelmingly generous whenever
I’ve contacted them or introduced myself to them. (Forget the few
exceptions.)
- Be the
collegial colleague yourself. This point might
not be as susceptible to
empirical proof as the others. But if
scholarship is essentially social, then you owe it to your fellow
scholars to behave with courtesy and generosity, which will help your
work as it helps others.
Jensen Comment
The AECM listserve is my main Academic network.
My threads on listservs, social networks, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook (See the
Table of Contents above)
Academic networks do not replace refereed journals for communication of
research. Rather they enhance refereed journals in many ways, especially in
expanding those journals like The Accounting Review that for all
practical purposes do not publish replications or even commentaries on research
articles they publish.
Academic networks are also important sources of research ideas where a
networked message can inspire professors and even students to undertake research
projects as well has deepen their scholarship.
"The Sociology of Academic Networks," by Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle
of Higher Education, July 13, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-sociology-of-academic-networks/34691?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
I’m a historian who is spending a month in the
company of sociologists,
studying religious congregations and social change.
In crossing these disciplinary boundaries, I’ve been fortunate to read a
great deal of sociological works that I would otherwise not encounter. Among
these is Randall Collins’s theoretical work,
Interaction Ritual Chains (2004).
Collins’s describes his work as a “radical
microsociology,” meaning that he theorizes about the rituals by which people
interact with others, from large groups, to person-to-person relationships,
to the imaginary conversations that a person engages in his or her mind. I’m
ambivalent about parts of the theory, but I’m intrigued by his central
claims: “occasions that combine a high degree of mutual focus of attention …
together with a high degree of emotional entrainment … result in feelings of
membership that are attached to cognitive symbols; and result also in the
emotional energy of individual participants, giving them feelings of
confidence, enthusiasm, and desire for action in what they consider a
morally proper path” (42). In other words, when people interact their shared
attention trains each other to be in a group with a shared purpose.
Though that theory is dense, I find it powerful for
explaining many things, not least of which is the way parts of the academy
work. If part of the mission of ProfHacker is to make plain the hidden (even
unconscious)
rules of the
academy, then Collins’s explanations of the
sociology of academic networks and of academic writing can be helpful.
I’ll take up Collins’s ideas of academic writing in
a later post, but first let’s look at his ideas about academic networks.
Collins says that thinking is a social process.
(Hint: sociologists think that everything is social.) He observes
that important thinkers tend to be the students of important thinkers and to
have important thinkers as students themselves. He also notes that the best
scholars have personal contacts with the other best thinkers, whether allies
or enemies. These groups are “not merely the clubbing together of the
already famous, but groups of would-be thinkers who have not yet done the
work that will make them famous.” This is not to say that only “important”
scholars move on the work of scholarship, but that the social structure
focuses on such eminent individuals, who “work extremely long hours,
seemingly obsessed with their work.” Perhaps most important, Collins insists
on the importance of direct interaction between scholars, especially
face-to-face interaction. He writes, “What one picks up from an eminent
teacher … is a demonstration of how to operate in the intellectual field of
oppositions. Star intellectuals are role models … but in a fashion that
cannot be picked up at a distance, and only by seeing them in action.”
Collins’s sociology goes a long way towards
explaining the unpleasant side of the academy, such as the emphasis on
academic celebrities and the plight of scholars who are never embedded in
the academic social network. But it also offers ways of thinking about the
academy that can help you hack your own career:
-
Get a mentor. This is hardly a unique
observation, but it bears repeating. Good mentors don’t just teach you
what you need to know to be a scholar, they teach you how to be a
scholar.
- Participate in
small groups—meeting face to face—to refine
your work. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debating clubs might be
out of style, but writing groups aren’t. Small, frequent gatherings can
provide the kinds of social thinking that produces great scholarship. If
possible, reach outside your own institution when forming your group.
And participating in an intensive, collaborative group, such as the
month-long seminar that I’m engaged in now, will help you generate ideas
that a month of reading and writing alone never could.
- Making a place for yourself at
academic conferences. As universities become
increasingly budget-conscious, there is more and more skepticism that
face-to-face conferences are worth the money. But it is at conferences
where you can discern the social shape of your discipline.
-
Reach out to scholars whose work you admire.
On the whole, senior scholars have been overwhelmingly generous whenever
I’ve contacted them or introduced myself to them. (Forget the few
exceptions.)
- Be the
collegial colleague yourself. This point might
not be as susceptible to
empirical proof as the others. But if
scholarship is essentially social, then you owe it to your fellow
scholars to behave with courtesy and generosity, which will help your
work as it helps others.
Jensen Comment
The AECM listserve is my main Academic network.
My threads on listservs, social networks, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook (See the
Table of Contents above)
Academic networks do not replace refereed journals for communication of
research. Rather they enhance refereed journals in many ways, especially in
expanding those journals like The Accounting Review that for all
practical purposes do not publish replications or even commentaries on research
articles they publish.
Academic networks are also important sources of research ideas where a
networked message can inspire professors and even students to undertake research
projects as well has deepen their scholarship.
Bob Jensen's threads on the social media ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
"The Paradox of Wearable Technologies: Can wearable devices augment our
activities without distracting us from the real world?" by Don Norman, MIT's
Technology Review, July 24, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517346/the-paradox-of-wearable-technologies/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130725
"Wearable Devices' Next Design Challenge: The Human Brain," by Sarah
Rotman Epps, ReadWriteWeb, February 4, 2013 ---
http://readwrite.com/2013/02/04/wearable-devices-next-design-challenge-the-human-brain
Wearable devices like the
Nike+ FuelBand,
Jawbone UP,
larklife,
and future products like the
Misfit Shine
and
Google Glass have been the subject of much
discussion, for good reason: They give us access to information about our
physical bodies and the physical environment we inhabit, a phenomenon we
call
Smart Body, Smart World. (Other people have
referred to it as "the
quantified self.")
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ubiquit.htm
"Scholarly Group Seeks Up to 6-Year Embargoes on Digital Dissertations,"
by Stacey Patton, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Scholarly-Group-Seeks-Up-to/140515/
The American Historical Association has published a
new policy statement that "strongly encourages"
graduate programs and university libraries to allow new Ph.D.'s to extend
embargoes on their dissertations in digital form for as many as six years.
The association says its stance seeks to balance
the competing ideals of the profession: timely dissemination of new
historical knowledge and the ability of young historians to choose when to
release their research without jeopardizing a future publishing contract or
tenure.
The statement, which was released last week, says
that because many university libraries no longer store hard copies of
dissertations, more and more institutions are requiring graduate students to
file their theses and dissertations electronically. The institutions then
often post those documents online so that they are free and accessible to
anyone who wants to read them.
History-association officials say they drafted the
statement in response to complaints by new Ph.D.'s and assertions by
university-press editors who say they are reluctant to offer publishing
contracts to young scholars whose dissertations are already widely available
online.
Graduate students who've successfully defended
their dissertations are commonly allowed to embargo them from one to three
years. Once that initial term is up, scholars can request to extend the
embargo for a limited amount of time.
"History has been and remains a book-based
discipline," the statement says, "and the requirement that dissertations be
published online poses a tangible threat to the interests and careers of
junior scholars in particular."
Squeamish
Publishers
Association officials say they are acting to
protect the interests of new Ph.D.'s and to make sure that book publishers
still have a stake in historical scholarship.
"Our concern is that students have choices," says
James R. Grossman, executive director of the association and a senior
research associate in the history department at the University of Chicago.
"We are aware that some university presses are getting squeamish about
publishing dissertations that are available widely and freely across the
Internet and even if they are substantially revised."
Jacqueline Jones, vice president of the
association's professional division and a professor of history at the
University of Texas at Austin, says that extending an embargo can be
beneficial because it gives new Ph.D.'s more time to revise a dissertation
into a publishable monograph. Students can fine-tune their work by excising
some material, incorporating new archival findings, and further developing
their arguments in a style and tone that can resonate with a wider audience.
Supporters of the association's statement say that
new Ph.D.'s are operating in a world where the market for scholarly books,
which are often specialized and expensive, is shrinking and so, too, are
library budgets. The option for extra embargo time, the supporters say, will
help young scholars protect their work from predatory publishers and from
being scooped by other researchers as they navigate a tough job market for
tenure-track positions.
Critics of the statement note that the movement for
open access to scholarly material has picked up steam in the past few years,
and they suggest that the association's new policy reflects how it feels
threatened by that movement. The bid to extend the embargo length, the
critics say, is a maneuver to delay a movement that is not going away.
The critics also argue that, by putting the printed
book on a pedestal at a time when research is taking many other forms, the
association is marginalizing historical research. Meanwhile, there's a
standoff between the competing priorities of university presses, libraries,
and hiring, tenure, and promotion committees. Graduate students are caught
in the middle or are being used as proxies in debates over scholarly
publishing, they say.
'Anecdotes,
Ghost Stories, and Fear'
The association's statement has sparked much debate
on social media and academic blogs.
"Surprise, surprise, open-access advocates
everywhere have started sniveling," Adam Crymble, a doctoral student in
history at King's College London, wrote in a
blog post titled "Students Should Be Empowered,
Not Bullied Into Open Access."
"No! they cry," Mr. Crymble continued: "We
shouldn't support a resolution passed in good faith to protect the career
progression of new scholars against scholarly presses that are allegedly
refusing to accept manuscripts based on openly available dissertations. We
should be burning books and the organizations that publish them. Down with
books, up with free information on the Internet! Lovely, but you can't eat
free information."
But some critics of the association's suggested
policy, including Dorothea R. Salo, a faculty associate at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison's School of Library and Information Studies, say the
statement is couched in paternalistic language.
Continued in article
Jensen Question
How many accounting doctoral dissertations have been published as commercial
books?
John Canning's 1929 Princeton thesis (published by Ronald Press) does not
count as an accounting dissertation even though it became one of the most cited
works in the history of accountancy in the 20th Century. Canning was an
economics doctoral student at Princeton. Canning is one of Tom Selling's heroes.
For a number of years in the 1960s Prentice-Hall published its
"award-winning" doctoral theses in accounting and other business administration
fields. However, these were never intended to commercial books in the same sense
as other Prentice-Hall Books. This was more of a public relations service by
Prentice-Hall. I still have most of these books on my shelves. Many were
Carnegie-Mellon doctoral dissertations. Carnegie was unique in those days by
forcing doctoral students to commence a dissertation in the first year of their
doctoral studies. In subsequent years doctoral students conducted the thesis
research and added chapters as they took courses related to their research
topic. Many of the chapters were term papers in those courses. An example is the
water-bottle budgeting research conducted by Andy Stedry at Carnegie.
For decades USA doctoral dissertations in virtually all disciplines have have
been available from a service commenced by the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor. This is not a free service, but getting copies of dissertations in this
manner discourages publishing houses from publishing dissertations at prices
higher than the Ann Arbor service.
"Larry Summers's Billion-Dollar Bad Bet at Harvard," by Matthew C.
Klein, Bloomberg, July 18, 2013 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-18/larry-summers-s-billion-dollar-bad-bet-at-harvard.html
President Obama has only a few months to pick a
candidate to replace Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve, and
while the betting website
Paddy Power has Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen
leading the pack at 1:4 odds, Larry Summers remains a strong contender at
11:2.
Despite an impressive resume that includes stints
as Treasury Secretary and chief economist of the World Bank, there is a very
good reason Summers shouldn't be in charge of monetary policy: He seems to
have trouble with interest rates.
During the financial crisis, Harvard lost nearly $1
billion because of some unusual and ill-judged interest rate swaps that
Summers implemented in the early 2000s during his troubled tenure as the
university's president.
Interest rate swaps
allow borrowers to lock in a fixed interest rate
on floating-rate debt, which can be good to hedge against short-term
uncertainty. The problem with Harvard was that Summers wanted to lock in
interest rates for money that the university
hadn't actually borrowed and wasn't planning on
borrowing for a very long time.
There aren't a lot of ways to interpret this exotic
instrument except as a bet that the future level of interest rates would be
higher than the market pricing implied at the time. That bet was wrong, and
Harvard lost a billion dollars. Anonymous finance blogger Epicurean
Dealmaker
puts it well:
"I have rarely encountered a corporate client who
feels confident enough about both their absolute funding needs and
current and impending market conditions to enter into a forward swap
starting more than nine months into the future. Entering into a forward
start swap for debt you do not intend to issue up to 20 years in the
future sounds like either rank hubris or free money for Wall Street swap
desks."
Why, back in 2004, did Summers feel so confident
that interest rates were going to be much higher than they actually were?
Reuters blogger Felix Salmon
found one clue in a
speech Summers gave in October of that year. Among
other he things, Summers warned of the dangers created by the U.S. current
account deficit and highlighted the seemingly absurd fact that short-term
borrowing costs were lower than the rate of inflation. Perhaps Summers's
experience with foreign-exchange crises in Asia
and Latin America convinced him that something similar could happen in a
country that borrowed in its own currency.
Not only was Summers wrong in 2004 about where
interest rates would be -- he was willing to bet a lot of other people's
money that he knew better than everyone else. The damage at Harvard was bad
enough. Imagine what that sort of thing could do to the U.S. economy.
Bob Jensen's threads on how to value interest rate swaps and account for
them under FASB rules are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133swapvalue.htm
For virtually every product available for sale on Amazon.com, former buyers
are asked to review the product. Most reviews are published on the same page as
the product description. I seldom find glowing reviews helpful, because I'm
suspicious that vendors plant such reviews. However, the negative reviews are
often very informative and occasionally even humorous ---
http://www.amazon.com/
"Modern Masterpieces of Comedic Genius: The Art of the Humorous Amazon
Review," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, May 20, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/20/arthur-koestler-creativity-bisociation/
"America's REAL Most Expensive Colleges," by Peter Jacobs, Business Insider,
July 10, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-colleges-in-america-2013-7
Followed by a listing of the 25 most underrated colleges that may prove to be
better buys ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-underrated-colleges-in-america-2013-6
Followed by The 50 Best Colleges in America ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-best-colleges-in-america-2012-11
While some law schools deans are facing possible jail time for fabricating
rankings data, some business school deans may also be on the docket
"Yet Another Rankings Fabrication," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
January 2, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/02/tulane-sent-incorrect-information-us-news-rankings
Tulane University has admitted that it sent
U.S. News & World Report incorrect information about the test
scores and total number of applicants for its M.B.A. program.
The admission -- as 2012 closed -- made the
university the fourth college or university in that year to admit false
reporting of some admissions data used for rankings. In 2011, two law
schools and one undergraduate institution were found to have engaged in
false reporting of some admissions data.
A statement issued
by Tulane said that it discovered the problem when
preparing a new set business school data for U.S. News and found
that numbers, "including GMAT scores and the number of applications, skewed
significantly lower than the previous two years. Since the school’s
standards and admissions criteria have not changed, this raised a concern
that our data from previous years had been misreported."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Years ago when I was invited to speak at Tulane, the Associate Dean of the
Business School showed me a very colorful booklet of the Top Ten MBA Programs in
the USA. It showed Tulane's MBA Program as being in the Top 10, whereas US
News did not even include Tulane in the Top 50. I asked this dean about who
did the rankings for the Tulane booklet. Without even batting an eye he admitted
that Tulane did the ranking.
Yawn
2013 US News College Rankings ---
Click Here
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/02/28/which-universities-are-ranked-highest-by-college-officials?s_cid=rss:college-rankings-blog:which-universities-are-ranked-highest-by-college-officials
US News: Colleges Falsifying Reported Data to Obtain Higher
Media Rankings: Who, How, and Why
"FAQs on Recent Data Misreporting by Colleges," by Robert Morse, US
News, January 10, 2013
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/01/10/faqs-on-recent-data-misreporting-by-colleges
Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
And the Winners Are Harvard, Yale, and Stanford in That Order
The World's Best Business Schools According to Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-business-schools-in-the-world-2013-7?op=1
Jensen Comment
There's a lot of historic prestige-effect of the overall universities relative
to business schools per se in this ranking. For example, Oxford University in
the U.K. is ranked Number 9 globally in terms of its one-year MBA program. I
question whether the same business school would come out with such a high
ranking if it were part of The Open University with the same faculty, staff,
students, and facilities.
Book Review in The New York Times
Why Men Need Women
July 21, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/why-men-need-women.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Jensen Comment
There are some surprising correlations backed by interesting speculation and
conjecture in this study. The study probably attributes more power to a CEO than
that CEO actually has in terms of circumstances and serendipity in a company.
Some of the correlations may be spurious. For example, I think compensation of
employees is more heavily influenced by business operations relative to the
gender of the CEO's babies at home.
"E-Textbooks Report Questions Cost Savings," by Tanya Roscorla,
Center for Digital Education, July 18, 2013 ---
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/E-Textbooks-Report-Questions-Cost-Savings.html
Digital texbooks are gaining ground in education,
as shown by a
study released by the Book Industry Study Group
earlier this year: Students' preference for print text over digital dropped
from 72 percent in November 2011 to 60 percent in late 2012.
And a recent EDUCAUSE study finds that students and
faculty value lower-cost textbooks -- though they aren't sure that the
current digital textbook model will drive prices down.
Last fall, more than 5,000 students and faculty at
23 colleges and universities participated in an e-textbook pilot with
EDUCAUSE, Internet2, McGraw-Hill Education and Courseload, and the EDUCAUSE
Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) published the findings in
Understanding What Higher Education Needs from E-Textbooks: An EDUCAUSE/Internet2
Pilot.
Both students and faculty cited cost as the No. 1
factor they considered when looking at digital textbooks, followed by
availability and portability. Some of the biggest barriers to adoption
included the funding model and fee structure.
While the students in this pilot didn't have to pay
for their e-textbooks, they would pay a mandatory fee per class for
e-textbooks outside of the pilot. The mandatory fee guarantees that all the
students at a university would purchase a digital textbook and thus give the
publisher a larger number of customers. In turn, the publisher would charge
the university less for buying in volume.
But in written comments, students said they wanted
to be able to opt out of fees and find other ways to get the content. And
it's up in the air whether they would take classes with a fee: one-third
responding that yes they would, nearly a quarter said no, and 43 percent
chose maybe.
Faculty also supported students' desire for less
expensive options and choices. And traditional publishing models -- even
revised for digital publishing -- may not cut it.
They noted that students look for study materials
in many places, which is why it's important to consider other types of
course materials besides e-textbooks. And since this is an ever-changing
field, education leaders would be wise to consider many business models, as
well as the needs of different groups of students and faculty.
One of the keys in making decisions about digital
content is "to understand what students and faculty need from these course
materials and keep that front and center," said Susan Grajek, vice president
of data, research and analytics for EDUCAUSE.
In the
ECAR 2012 Study of Undergraduate Students and Technology,
57 percent of students said they wished their
instructors used open educational resources more, compared to 47 percent who
wanted more e-textbooks. In the previous year, nearly a third of students
wanted more e-textbooks, and 19 percent of students wanted open educational
resources.
In this pilot, some students and faculty really
liked the e-textbooks, and some hated them so much that they bought a print
textbook, Grajek said.
Faculty members can be change agents when it comes
to different technology, but they need support. In this pilot, faculty
members said one of their biggest barriers was limited access to the
e-textbooks.
They only had the e-textbooks during the course, so
more than half of them didn't make annotations and other notes because they
would disappear once the course was over. Interestingly enough, students in
96 percent of the courses used highlights, sticky notes, annotations or
bookmarks in their e-textbook.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
If e-Textbooks were available 50 years ago they would definitely be cheaper
because savings in terms of hard copy printing, inventory, and distribution
costs.
But the costs of hard copy printing, inventory, and distribution costs have
changed dramatically over those 50 years such that e-Textbooks are no longer
"definitely" cheaper.
Consider for example the way that Amazon saves on inventory costs of used
books. Amazon eliminated itself as a middleman in the buying, warehousing, and
redistributing used books. It is now simply provides a guarantee that the buyer
of a used book will receive that book directly from households who are willing
to ship the book directly to the used book buyers. In the grand scheme of things
inventory costs are cheaper in aggregate. The marginal cost of storing one book
in each of 100,000 households is virtually zero. But the marginal cost of
storing 100,000 books in a single warehouse is huge. Thus, Amazon has a way of
saving a lot of inventory cost by having each current owner store the book at
home.
And computers have greatly changed the production functions of printing
books. Five decades ago, the marginal cost of each book was reduced by having
enormous printing press runs due to economies of scale. This unfortunately led
to huge inventory costs. Distribution costs were also relatively high since the
printing houses were centrally located and had to ship to warehouses around the
world.
Today, computerized print runs can be much smaller and even reduced to a
point where a hard copy order is received before the book is printed. And the
book can be printed at computer sites all over the world.
Hard copy has less sharing risk than electronic versions. Students and other
book thieves have talents for staying a step ahead of electronic book
publishers, including sharing of passwords and downloading of electronic books
to criminal servers. Sometimes enemies of the United States make a business out
of selling purloined software and electronic literature.
Shipping costs still exist for hard copy books, but electronic book
distribution is not free given the costs of hardware and technician labor that
goes into keeping books available in the clouds.
In terms of textbooks, many of the huge costs do not go away with a shift
from hard copy to electronic versions. Authors must still be paid and sometimes
the authors demand more if they must put in more labor keeping books up to date
year-to-year rather than every five years. Frequent updating is probably the
major advantage of electronic books in the clouds relative to hard copy.
Textbook publishers must still pay representatives to work each college
campus trying to entice professors to adopt particular textbooks. Electronic
marketing has not yet taken the place of face-to-face communications between
sellers and instructors.
Textbook publishers must still pay to participate in expensive trade shows
such as when setting up booths at academic conferences. Sales personnel must now
be trained better to answer questions regarding such things as technology
supplements that accompany textbooks.
In the final analysis I think cost savings will not be the key competitive
advantage of electronic textbooks over hard copy. The key competitive advantages
will be such things as the following:
- Ease of continuously updating electronic textbooks, especially those
that are in the clouds.
- Multimedia features such as video clips and interactive spreadsheets
that can be included in electronic textbooks.
- Reader conveniences in electronic books such as word search and
cut-and-paste quotation conveniences.
- Possible cost savings by cutting out the publishing companies when
authors distribute their electronic books directly to customers or by
marketing their books via Amazon rather than McGraw Hill.
Bob Jensen's threads on hard copy versus electronic books ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm#Textbooks
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Make Your Own eBook with Blurb ---
http://www.blurb.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
"The First 8 Excel Tricks You Have To Learn On The Way To Becoming A
Master," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, July 10, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/excel-countif-sum-functions-if-sumproduct-dollar-sign-2013-7
"How To Use Index/Match, The One Microsoft Excel Trick That Separates The
Gurus From The Interns," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, July 11,
2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/excel-index-match-2013-7
We've been writing a lot about Microsoft Excel
formulas.
The program is the gold standard of programs. It's
elegant, ubiquitous, and outstandingly powerful.
American business lives and dies by the
spreadsheet, and everyone is always looking to hone their skills.
There's one trick, though, that separates the
quants from the interns.
That trick is Index/Match, a function that can find
any value in any spreadsheet.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/excel-index-match-2013-7?op=1#ixzz2Ypc1HDwB
Continued in article
"The Risk of Using Spreadsheets for Statistical Analysis,"
CFO.com Whitepaper, 2012 ---
http://www.cfo.com/whitepapers/index.cfm/displaywhitepaper/14668959?mid=107705&rid=107705.59400.30390
Abstract:
While spreadsheets are
widely used for statistical analysis, they are useful only to a certain
point. When used for a task they?re not designed to perform, or for a
task beyond the limit of their capabilities, using spreadsheets can be
risky. Read this paper to learn about more powerful yet easy-to-use
analytics alternatives that may be more suitable.
Bob Jensen's Excel helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
"Toward" Versus "Towards"
From the Grammar Girl Newsletter on July 16, 2013
"Toward" or "Towards"?
Jamie, Mia, Beverly, and Gen all wrote to me
wondering what the difference is between "toward" and "towards."
"Toward" and "towards" are both correct and
interchangeable: you can use either one because they mean the same thing.
Many sources say the "s" is more common in Britain
than in the United States. The safest choice is to consider your audience:
If your audience is primarily American, use
"toward." If your audience is primarily British, use "towards."
Bob Jensen's Helpers for Writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
"Sleep and the Teenage Brain," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings,
July 17, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/17/sleep-and-the-teenage-brain/
"Richard Feynman on Good, Evil, and the Zen of Science, Plus His Prose
Poem for the Glory of Evolution," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings,
July 19, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/19/richard-feynman-science-morality-poem/
"Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets
Warped on Vacation," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, July 15, 2013
---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/15/time-warped-claudia-hammond/
"Desktop printing at the nano level," Eureka Alert, July 17,
2013 ---
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/nu-dpa071713.php
"Ten Business School Professors Who Make $4.3 Million A Year," by John
A. Byrne, Linkedin, July 2013 ---
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130711161733-17970806-ten-business-school-professors-who-make-4-3-million-a-year
Thunderbird School of Global Management ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_School_of_Global_Management
A decade or so ago, Thunderbird shed (with negotiated buyouts) some of its
expensive tenured faculty, including senior accounting faculty members. But it
retained even more expensive faculty on the payroll that are problematic as
global MBA enrollments dropped from over 1,500 in the 1990s to 140 in Fall of
in 2012 and an operating deficit of $4 million in fiscal 2013. The placement
record in 2013 for MBA graduates is among the worst in the nation according to
the Forbes' article quoted below.
"Flailing Thunderbird Business School Was Asking For Trouble With These
Exorbitant Professor Salaries," John A. Byrne, Business Insider, July 12,
2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/highest-paid-professors-make-millions-2013-7
. . .
The highest paid professor at the Thunderbird
School of Global Management makes more than the dean of the Harvard Business
School. Or his boss. Or, for that matter, President Obama.
Yet, he is little known outside his Glendale,
Arizona-based school, not widely quoted in the media, nor broadly recognized
as an expert in his field. He doesn’t even make the list of the top 50
business thinkers in the world.
Still, global strategy professor Kannan Ramaswarmy
(photo above) was paid total compensation, with benefits, of $700,096 in
fiscal 2011, according to government records filed by Thunderbird. That’s
more than the $662,054 in total compensation made by Harvard Business School
Dean Nitin Nohria or then-Thunderbird President Angel Cabrera who pulled
down $584,749 in 2011. And it’s more than the estimated $550,000 in pay,
benefits and perks that President Obama makes.
How in the world can a struggling school which has
been in decline for many years afford to pay Ramaswamy so much? For one
thing, he teaches in several of the school’s executive education programs
which are among its more lucrative ventures. For another, he has tenure and
the school can’t cross him off its employment roster even if it wanted.
Yet, he’s hardly alone in getting big pay at
Thunderbird. In fact, the highest paid ten professors alone in fiscal 2011
were paid some $4.3 million, more than the $4 million deficit reported by
the school, red ink that forced it into a highly controversial partnership
with for-profit educational provider Laureate Education. Not surprisingly,
perhaps, all of the most highly paid profs are men.
Andrew Inkpen, another global strategy professor,
was paid $565,457 with benefits in the same year. Graeme Rankine, an
associate professor of accounting, was paid $492,908. The compensation for
three other faculty members—Robert Hisrich, a professor of global
entrepreneurship; William Youngdahl, associate professor of operations
management, and Mansour Javidan, dean of research—all easily topped $400,000
a year.
Among the other top ten most highly compensated
faculty at the school are John Mathis, a professor of global finance, who
made $302,191; David Bowen, a human resources professor, who made $307,582;
Dale Davison, a professor of accounting, who pulled down $261,789, and
Humberto Valencia, a professor of global marketing, who made $260,109.
For just about all of these professors, of course,
this is only the compensation paid to them by Thunderbird. Many faculty
members also have lucrative consulting contracts with clients that can equal
or vastly exceed their income from the school.
Nice work if you can get it.
"Inside Thunderbird B-school's chronic decline," by Taylor Ellis,
Forbes, July 11, 2013 ---
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/07/11/thunderbird-mba/
. . .
Some observers say the deal is evidence of waning
interest in the MBA degree. In fact, many of the institution's troubles have
been long lasting and self-inflicted, making it a quintessential case study
in organizational decline. The new partnership reflects years of
deterioration due to increased competition from rivals, lackluster
fundraising, insufficient resources devoted to getting jobs for students,
and overly generous compensation for some of its faculty.
The school's endowment, which in recent years has
been below $20 million, is meager compared to many of its business school
competitors. It didn't help that a $60 million naming gift, at the time in
2004 the largest pledge ever made to a business school, never fully
materialized.
Yet, even though the school lacks a significant
endowment, several of its professors have been paid extraordinarily well.
Kannan Ramaswamy, a global strategy professor who teaches in Thunderbird's
executive education programs, had a total compensation package with benefits
of $700,096 in fiscal 2011. That is munificent pay for an academic who is
not known as a superstar outside his school in Glendale, Arizona. It even
exceeded the total pay of then-Thunderbird President Angel Cabrera whose
compensation totaled $584,749.
While Ramaswany is the highest paid employee at
Thunderbird, according to the school's government filings, he is hardly
alone. Andrew Inkpen, another global strategy professor, was paid $565,457
with benefits the same year. Graeme Rankine, an associate professor of
accounting, was paid $492,908. The compensation for three other faculty
members -- Robert Hisrich, a professor of global entrepreneurship; William
Youngdahl, associate professor of operations management, and Mansour Javidan,
dean of research -- all topped $400,000 a year.
It's not unusual for world class faculty to be paid
so generously, but the highest paid business school professors tend to be
widely known and publicly visible figures at universities that can afford
them, not at a troubled school that has been in a long-term fight for
survival.
A B-school in perpetual decline
The school's full-time MBA enrollment has been
steadily declining for years, falling to just 380 from more than 1,500 in
1990. Last fall, its entering class totaled only 140 students.
The placement stats for last year's graduating class,
meantime, were among the worst reported by any business school in the U.S.
Some 76% of Thunderbird's class of 2012 were without jobs at commencement.
Indeed, Penley sees the agreement with Laureate as
a way to fix the school's lagging placement record. "One of the reasons for
the alliance has to do with their very successful employment record for
graduates," he said. "Laureate has an employment network that is global. It
gives us the opportunity to tap into that employee network and improve our
placement record."
Continued in article
Also see
http://wag-study-abroad.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/2020_vision.pdf
Jensen Questions
This begs two questions:
First Question
If Thunderbird is experiencing such a rapid decline in both enrollments and
placements of graduates, what is going to be the impact on admission
standards?
Second Question
If some of those faculty receiving outlier salaries leave Thunderbird what
kind of compensation deals can they negotiate from Harvard, Stanford,
Chicago, Wharton, UCLA, Berkeley, Northwestern, etc.? Would they be hired by
a top MBA program at any price? My guess is that they may not get any offers
of full professorships from the truly top MBA programs.
Associate Professor Graeme Rankine ---
http://www.thunderbird.edu/faculty/graeme-rankine-phd
There's a short bit about how some students wanted Professor Ranine
reinstated after his contract was not renewed at Rice University ---
http://www.rice.edu/projects/thresher/issues/82/950519/News/Story05.html
He's done very well since leaving Rice.
The Economist Magazine Ranks Global Executive MBA Programs ---
http://www.economist.com/whichmba/executive-mba-ranking
What happened to Thunderbird?
If I knew the answers to these I might become a very popular commencement
speaker.
"13 Brain-Melting Questions That Companies Ask During Interviews," by
Alexandra Mondalek, Business Insider, July 10, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/answers-to-interview-brainteasers-2013-7
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"Wikipedia’s Women Problem," by James Gleick, The New York Review
of Books, April 29, 2013 ---
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/apr/29/wikipedia-women-problem/
Wikipedia and women. Ninety percent of the editors
are men. And it shows. There are fewer articles on female poets than on
porno actresses.
Jensen Comment
Although I think there should be more women editors, keep in mind that most
editors are volunteers. Also keep in mind that Wikipedia entries are submitted
by scholars of the world. The Wikipedia editors do their best with limited
resources to correct errors and bias, but they are not the cause of the alleged
shortage of entries on female poets and male poets randomly submitted by
scholars of the world, especially those many obscure poets over the ages.
An Example
Every woman poet that I've considered has a module on Wikipedia. For example,
Charlotte Mew had size-2 shoes and a thing for older women. Thomas Hardy called
her “the best living woman poet.” Why have we forgotten her? ---
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/05/heart-hidden-things
Charlotte Mew ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Mew
Imploding Job Market: Two-Year MA Degree in Journalism Degree Program
Shrinks to Nine-Months
"J-School Makeovers," by Lauren Ingeno, Inside Higher Ed,
July 16, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/16/usc-announces-changes-its-journalism-masters-degree-program
So who
wants to major in journalism? Practically nobody!
Journalism school majors are now competing with philosophy graduates for
burger-flipping careers.
Am I happy about this? Absolutely and irrevocably --- NO!
The Carnegie
Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation on Monday
announced an $11 million expansion of their joint program to reform journalism
education by supporting new programs at selected institutions. The additional
funds will continue fellowships and curricular efforts at the eight journalism
schools in the program and add three more: those at Arizona State University,
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Nebraska
at Lincoln.
Inside Higher Ed, July 8, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/08/qt
Reviving Journalism Schools
For as long as doomsayers have predicted the decline of
civic-minded reportage as we know it, reformers have sought to draft a rewrite
of the institutions that train many undergraduate and graduate students pursuing
a career in journalism. Criticisms of journalism schools have ranged from
questioning whether the institutions are necessary in the first place (since
many journalists, and most senior ones, don’t have journalism degrees) to
debating the merits of teaching practical skills versus theory and whether
curriculums should emphasize broad knowledge or specialization in individual
fields . . . The sessions were part of an effort to evaluate the function of
journalism schools in an age of new media and the public’s declining faith in
the fourth estate: the
Carnegie-Knight
Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education,
which in 2005 enlisted top institutions in the country to bolster their
curriculums with interdisciplinary studies and expose students to different
areas of knowledge, including politics, economics, philosophy and the sciences.
The initiative, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S.
and James L. Knight Foundation, also works with journalism schools to incubate
selected students working on national reporting projects.
Andy Guess, "Reviving the J-School," Inside Higher Ed, January 10, 2008
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/10/jschools
"In India, Academics Defend Photocopying of Textbooks for Course Packs,"
by Mridu Khullar Relph," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 15, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/In-India-Academics-Cry-Foul/140329/
In early July, after the monsoon rains have washed
away the last of an oppressive heat, students and their parents arrive in
droves here at the University of Delhi to begin the academic year. It is a
busy time for the roadside markets and other businesses near the campus,
when they earn most of their annual income from sales of tea, snacks,
T-shirts, and, most important, course packs.
But this year, confusion and unease pervade the
dozens of photocopy shops that produce the packs, which include a semester's
worth of reading material from various textbooks and academic journals.
That's because one of their own, Rameshwari Photocopy Services, is at the
center of a legal fight that has gained international attention.
Three of the world's biggest academic
publishers—Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Taylor &
Francis—are suing Rameshwari and the university for producing thousands of
bound course packs a year. They claim that the course packs violate various
copyrights, hurt their bottom lines, and reduce residual payments to the
academics in India, the United States, and elsewhere whose work is being
copied.
But the publishers' move has drawn widespread
criticism among professors and students in India. They say this kind of
photocopying not only is entirely within the law, but also is essential for
education in a developing country where students can barely afford one
textbook, let alone dozens for each class.
Indeed, the opponents' portrayal of wealthy,
Western publishers trying to wring funds from poor Indian students has
helped trigger a global outcry. Last year Amartya Sen, the Harvard economist
and Nobel laureate, sent a letter asking the Oxford press, which publishes
his work, to abandon the lawsuit. In March a similar letter to all three
presses came from more than 300 academics and authors from around the
world—33 of whom the publishers name in the suit as victims of copyright
infringement.
"As authors and educators, we would like to place
on record our distress at this act of the publishers, as we recognize the
fact that in a country like India marked by sharp economic inequalities, it
is often not possible for every student to obtain a personal copy of a
book," the letter said.
Of course, legal battles over course packs and
copyrights are not new to academe. In the United States, for example, a
closely watched case brought by Cambridge, Oxford, and SAGE Publications
against Georgia State University is working its way through the U.S. court
system. The publishers assert that the university committed widespread
copyright violations when it allowed some of their content to be used,
unlicensed, in electronic reserves.
The Rameshwari Photocopy case touches on some of
the same issues but may have broader implications for the country's
universities, where photocopying has long been standard operating procedure.
It's been a student tradition in India for decades:
Look through a syllabus and head off to the copy shop to get a course pack.
Indian professors as well as students argue that the packets are integral to
university education.
"If I have to teach a subject, I design a very
elaborate teaching plan, the aim of that being that I need to expose my
students to and have them thinking critically about several key themes and
topics through a wide diversity of reading," says Shamnad Basheer, a
professor of intellectual-property law at Kolkata's National University of
Juridical Sciences. "These are not textbooks. These are short extracts of
books and several different books. They in no way affect the market of the
main books." 'It's the Law of the Land'
But the publishers claim that course packs are in
violation of India's Copyright Act of 1957, which gives copyright holders
exclusive rights over reproduction of the material. They do not intend to
deny Indian students the texts needed for their education, they insist,
arguing that universities can pay an annual licensing fee that would allow
for limited reproduction of the covered publications.
"It's the law of the land that photocopying for
commercial purposes is not desirable, because it's not fair to stakeholders
concerned," says Sudhir Malhotra, president of the Federation of Indian
Publishers, which represents the Indian branches of the three plaintiffs.
The photocopy shop, by selling course packs, is engaging in commercial
activity, he says.
"Yes, we recognize that students do need to
photocopy certain educational material, and they need to do it easily,
quickly, and as inexpensively as possible," Mr. Malhotra says. "All we are
saying is that [copy shops and universities] should take a license. It's a
question of legal compliance. If a radio station wants to broadcast music, a
song, it takes a license from the music society. That's it."
Last year the federation endorsed a plan by the
Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation, which grants literary copyright
licenses, to provide licenses to universities that want to be able to
reproduce the works of publishers that work with the rights group. This
year, some Indian universities signed up.
But many academics argue that the publishers are
overlooking the fact that Indian copyright law has a fair-use clause and an
education exemption.
Satish Deshpande, a sociology professor at Delhi,
says the publishers want the courts to essentially rewrite the law.
"I think this case is a very deliberate 'test' case
on the part of the publishers," he says. "They're not really interested in
the specifics of this particular case, but they want to use it as an
example, and, in a sense, they want to use it to reinterpret the copyright
law in a way that will suit their interests better than the letter of the
law now seems to."
Mr. Malhotra, of the publishers' federation, denies
that they have any motive other than to honor the letter of the law.
Other academics take issue with the licensing fees
that universities would have to pay if they signed an agreement with the
Indian Reprographic Rights Organization.
Mr. Basheer, the professor of intellectual-property
law, says that the fees, which vary depending on the university, may seem
low but would very likely increase over time, and that universities would
pass the expense on to students themselves.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Years ago I put copies of most readings in my courses, including my textbooks,
on reserve in the campus library. In those days it was more expensive for
students to photocopy a textbook than to buy it new or used. Putting the
textbook on reserve was mostly a convenience for students who wanted to study on
a particular day and had left their textbooks at home.
Technology has changed the situation today. Now textbooks are very expensive,
and students who take the trouble to use a scanner can get free electronic
copies. I don't think publishers have a copyright case against a professor
who simply puts several copies of the textbook on reserve at the library. The
professor has no control over a student's decision to scan a free copy (with a
huge amount of time and effort). The publisher could sue students for doing
this, but it would be hard to detect when a student scans in privacy.
I think a professor who puts an electronic copy on a server, such as a
Blackboard server, without permission from the copyright holder is in violation
of copyright law. The Fair Use Safe Harbor does not apply to this egregious act
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright
Also professors who give closed-book examinations and allow students to use
their computers (not connected to the Internet) must worry that those computers
contain electronic versions of textbooks.
Remember the "90-Day Wonders" Program in WW II when US Navy officers were
cranked out in 90 days ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Reserve_Midshipmen%27s_School
New University of MichiganProgram Lets Undergrads Get Graduate Management
Degrees in 10 Months ---
The new (10-Month for liberal arts graduates)
Master of Management program will fill a gap between Ross’s BBA program for
undergraduates and its MBA program for more experienced applicants.
"New Ross Program Lets Undergrads Get Business Cred,"---
by Elizabeth Rowe, Bloomberg Businessweek, July 10, 2013 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-10/new-ross-program-lets-undergrads-get-business-cred
Jensen Comment
The $41.000 price of the program for Michigan residents and $46.000 for
non-residents makes me wonder how much this program is deemed a cash cow program
for a questionable "quickie" Masters in Management degree. Northwestern
University has a similar program at a similar price for students who lack the
experience requirement for admission to Northwestern's much more intense and
longer MBA Program with higher admission hurdles.
Graduates of these quickie programs for students who could not even spell the
word "business" the first day of class will have much less education in
accounting, finance, economics, and information systems than either
undergraduate business majors, masters of accounting majors, or MBA majors.
Presumably they will pick up these other specialties on an as-needed basis once
they land their first jobs. They may become excellent managers who still cannot
read financial statements or comprehend investment and tax strategies.
Employers often look at MBA graduates as 90-Day Wonders. The new programs at
Michigan and Northwestern add a whole new meaning to "90-Day Wonders."
When it happens multiple times, plagiarism is "hardly an accident"
"(University of Virginia Graduate Business) Darden PhD Student Accused of
Plagiarism," by Louis Lavelle, Bloomberg Businessweek, July 18, 2013
---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-16/darden-phd-student-accused-of-plagiarism
Some years back there was a much more widespread cheating scandal by over 100
students at the University of Virginia ---
"Plagiarist Booted; Others Wait," by Katie
Dean ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#UVA
One student has
been expelled, and more than 100 cases of plagiarism remain to be resolved
at the University of Virginia after a physics professor used a computer
program to catch students who turned in duplicate papers, or portions of
papers that appeared to have been copied.
The school's
student-run Honor Committee spent the summer investigating a fraction of the
cases, and will continue to do so through the fall semester.
The committee's
work has been slow over the summer break since many students are away.
Thomas Hall, chairman of the committee, said he hopes to complete the
remaining investigations by the end of October, and finish the trials by the
end of the fall semester
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
"The Rise of Big Data: How It's Changing the Way We Think About the
World," by Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, Foreign
Affairs, May/June 2013 ---
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139104/kenneth-neil-cukier-and-viktor-mayer-schoenberger/the-rise-of-big-data
Big Data, we’re told, will change everything. So what will remain of
intuition and serendipity in our brave new hyperquantified world?...
"How Non-Scientific Granulation Can Improve Scientific Accountics"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsGranulationCurrentDraft.pdf
"Blackboard Announces New MOOC Platform," by Jeffrey R. Young,
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/blackboard-announces-new-mooc-platform/44687?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on the controversial history of Blackboard ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Blackboard.htm
July 19, 2013 message from Glen Gray
The follow is the lead to an article that appeared
in today’s L.A. Times…
“San Jose State University is suspending a
highly touted collaboration with online provider Udacity to offer
low-cost, for-credit online courses after finding that more than half of
the students failed to pass the classes, officials said Thursday.”
Udacity Experiment at San Jose State Suspended After 56% to 76% of Students
Fail Final Exams ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/udacity-experiment-at-san-jose-state-suspended.html
Are competency-based MOOCs tougher for students than traditional courses?
"Udacity Project on 'Pause'," by Ry Rivard. Chronicle of Higher
Education,
San Jose State's experiment with MOOC provider
attracted enormous attention when it was launched. But students didn't do as
well as they did in traditional classes.
"A University's Offer of Credit for a MOOC Gets No Takers," by Steve
Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 8, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Universitys-Offer-of-Credit/140131/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
With nationwide median grades being around A- in live classrooms, it may well be
that students just fear that the same loose grading standards will not be
applied to competency-based grading in a MOOC ---
http://www.gradeinflation.com/
Students cannot brown nose a MOOC for a higher grade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge
There may also be problems transferring these MOOC credits to other
universities. There are many universities who do not allow transfer credit for
distance education courses in general, although this is somewhat hard to enforce
when major universities do not distinguish (on transcripts) what sections of
courses were taken onsite versus online. In may instances students have a choice
as to whether to take onsite sections or online sections of the same course. But
when all sections are only available via distance education other universities
may deny transfer credits. In accountancy, some state societies of CPAs, such as
in Texas, limit the number of distance education courses allowed for permission
to take the CPA examination.
Also it could be that this MOOC alternative just was not publicized enough to
reach its potential market.
Bob Jensen's threads on the controversial history of the OKI and the MOOCs
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD TEACHING," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching
Blog, July 15, 2013 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2013/07/understanding-importance-of-good.html
Jensen Comment
A possibly very good case study might be to try to measure the importance of
teaching when most students in a particular course at San Jose State University
pass the course in a traditional classroom but not in a MOOC.
Udacity Experiment at San Jose State Suspended After 56% to 76% of
Students Fail Final Exams ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/udacity-experiment-at-san-jose-state-suspended.html
Of course differences in student performance cannot all be attributed to
teaching. Many of them may not have taken the MOOC alternative seriously
thinking that Udacity would have lower academic standards. In other words they
may not have put in the effort in the MOOC course that they would put into a
traditional classroom where, among other things, attendance might be mandatory.
In the MOOC alternative performance is based on competency-based
examinations. In a traditional course instructors generally give credit for
other things such as class attendance, class participation, evidence of effort
(e.g., in office hours), and let's face it --- brown nose credit for effort.
But almost certainly there is some causal impact of teaching differences
between the MOOC versus the traditional classroom.
"SLAVES TO THE ALGORITHM: More and more of modern life is steered by
algorithms. But what are they exactly, and who is behind them? Tom Whipple
follows the trail, Intelligent Life Magazine, May/June 2013 ---
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/features/anonymous/slaves-algorithm?page=full
There are many reasons to believe that film stars
earn too much. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie once hired an entire train to
travel from London to Glasgow. Tom Cruise’s daughter Suri is reputed to have
a wardrobe worth $400,000. Nicolas Cage once paid $276,000 for a dinosaur
head. He would have got it for less, but he was bidding against Leonardo
DiCaprio.
Nick Meaney has a better reason for believing that
the stars are overpaid: his algorithm tells him so. In fact, he says, with
all but one of the above actors, the studios are almost certainly wasting
their money. Because, according to his movie-analysis software, there are
only three actors who make money for a film. And there is at least one
A-list actress who is worth paying not to star in your next
picture.
The headquarters of Epagogix, Meaney’s company, do
not look like the sort of headquarters from which one would confidently
launch an attack on Hollywood royalty. A few attic rooms in a shared south
London office, they don’t even look as if they would trouble Dollywood. But
my meeting with Meaney will be cut short because of another he has, with two
film executives. And at the end, he will ask me not to print the full names
of his analysts, or his full address. He is worried that they could be
poached.
Worse though, far worse, would be if someone in
Hollywood filched his computer. It is here that the iconoclasm happens. When
Meaney is given a job by a studio, the first thing he does is quantify
thousands of factors, drawn from the script. Are there clear bad guys? How
much empathy is there with the protagonist? Is there a sidekick? The complex
interplay of these factors is then compared by the computer to their
interplay in previous films, with known box-office takings. The last
calculation is what it expects the film to make. In 83% of cases, this guess
turns out to be within $10m of the total. Meaney, to all intents and
purposes, has an algorithm that judges the value—or at least the earning
power—of art.
To explain how, he shows me a two-dimensional
representation: a grid in which each column is an input, each row a film.
"Curiously," Meaney says, "if we block this column…" With one hand, he
obliterates the input labelled "star", casually rendering everyone from
Clooney to Cruise, Damon to De Niro, an irrelevancy. "In almost every case,
it makes no difference to the money column."
"For me that’s interesting. The first time I saw
that I said to the mathematician, ‘You’ve got to change your program—this is
wrong.’ He said, ‘I couldn’t care less—it’s the numbers.’" There are four
exceptions to his rules. If you hire Will Smith, Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp,
you seem to make a return. The fourth? As far as Epagogix can tell, there is
an actress, one of the biggest names in the business, who is actually a
negative influence on a film. "It’s very sad for her," he says. But hers is
a name he cannot reveal.
F YOU TAKE the Underground north from Meaney’s
office, you will pass beneath the housing estates of south London. Thousands
of times every second, above your head, someone will search for something on
Google. It will be an algorithm that determines what they see; an algorithm
that is their gatekeeper to the internet. It will be another algorithm that
determines what adverts accompany the search—gatekeeping does not pay for
itself.
Algorithms decide what we are recommended on
Amazon, what films we are offered on Netflix. Sometimes, newspapers warn us
of their creeping, insidious influence; they are the mysterious sciencey bit
of the internet that makes us feel websites are stalking us—the software
that looks at the e-mail you receive and tells the Facebook page you look at
that, say, Pizza Hut should be the ad it shows you. Some of those newspaper
warnings themselves come from algorithms. Crude programs already trawl news
pages, summarise the results, and produce their own article, by-lined, in
the case of Forbes magazine, "By Narrative Science".
Others produce their own genuine news. On February
1st, the Los Angeles Times website ran an article that began "A shallow
magnitude 3.2 earthquake was reported Friday morning." The piece was written
at a time when quite possibly every reporter was asleep. But it was
grammatical, coherent, and did what any human reporter writing a formulaic
article about a small earthquake would do: it went to the US Geological
Survey website, put the relevant numbers in a boilerplate article, and hit
send. In this case, however, the donkey work was done by an algorithm.
But it is not all new. It is also an algorithm that
determines something as old-fashioned as the route a train takes through the
Underground network—even which train you yourself take. An algorithm, at its
most basic, is not a mysterious sciencey bit at all; it is simply a
decision-making process. It is a flow chart, a computer program that can
stretch to pages of code or is as simple as "If x is greater than y, then
choose z".
What has changed is what algorithms are doing. The
first algorithm was created in the ninth century by the Arabic scholar Al
Khwarizami—from whose name the word is a corruption. Ever since, they have
been mechanistic, rational procedures that interact with mechanistic,
rational systems. Today, though, they are beginning to interact with humans.
The advantage is obvious. Drawing in more data than any human ever could,
they spot correlations that no human would. The drawbacks are only slowly
becoming apparent.
Continue your journey into central London, and the
estates give way to terraced houses divided into flats. Every year these
streets inhale thousands of young professional singles. In the years to
come, they will be gently exhaled: gaining partners and babies and dogs,
they will migrate to the suburbs. But before that happens, they go to dinner
parties and browse dating websites in search of that spark—the indefinable
chemistry that tells them they have found The One.
And here again they run into an algorithm. The
leading dating sites use mathematical formulae and computations to sort
their users’ profiles into pairs, and let the magic take its
probabilistically predicted course.
Not long after crossing the river, your train will
pass the server farms of the Square Mile—banks of computers sited close to
the fibre-optic cables, giving tiny headstarts on trades. Within are stored
secret lines of code worth billions of pounds. A decade ago computer trading
was an oddity; today a third of all deals in the City of London are executed
automatically by algorithms, and in New York the figure is over half. Maybe,
these codes tell you, if fewer people buy bananas at the same time as more
buy gas, you should sell steel. No matter if you don’t know why; sell sell
sell. In nanoseconds a trade is made, in milliseconds the market moves. And,
when it all goes wrong, it goes wrong faster than it takes a human trader to
turn his or her head to look at the unexpectedly red numbers on the screen.
Finally, your train will reach Old Street—next door
to the City, but a very different place. This is a part of town where every
office seems to have a pool table, every corner a beanbag, every
receptionist an asymmetric haircut. In one of those offices is TechHub. With
its bare brick walls and website that insists on being your friend, this is
the epitome of what the British government insists on calling Silicon
Roundabout. After all, what America can do with valleys, surely Britain can
do with traffic-flow measures.
Inside are the headquarters of Simon Williams’s
company QuantumBlack. The world, Williams says, has changed in the past
decade—even if not everyone has noticed. “There’s a ton more data around.
There’s new ways of handling it, processing it, manipulating it,
interrogating it. The tooling has changed. The speed at which it happens has
changed. You’re shaping it, sculpting it, playing with it.”
QuantumBlack is, he says, a "data science" agency.
In the same way as, ten years ago, companies hired digital-media agencies to
make sense of e-commerce, today they need to understand data-commerce.
"There’s been an alignment of stars. We’ve hit a crossover point in terms of
the cost of storing and processing data versus ten years ago. Then,
capturing and storing data was expensive, now it is a lot less so. It’s
become economically viable to look at a shed load more data."
When he says "look at", he means analysing it with
algorithms. Some may be as simple as spotting basic correlations. Some apply
the same techniques used to spot patterns in the human genome, or to assign
behavioural patterns to individual hedge-fund managers. But there is no
doubt which of Williams’s clients is the most glamorous: Formula 1 teams.
This, it is clear, is the part of the job he loves the most.
"It’s a theatre, an opera," he says. "The fun isn’t
in the race, it’s in the strategy—the smallest margins win or lose races."
As crucial as the driver, is when that driver goes for a pit stop, and how
his car is set up. This is what QuantumBlack advises on: how much fuel you
put in, what tyres to use, how often to change those tyres. "Prior to the
race, we look at millions of scenarios. You’re constantly exploring."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on real science versus pseudo science ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#Pseudo-Science
"Econ 101 is killing America: Forget the dumbed-down garbage most
economists spew. Their myths are causing tragic results for everyday Americans,"
by Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind, Salon, July 8, 2013 ---
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/08/how_%E2%80%9Cecon_101%E2%80%9D_is_killing_america/
Atkinson and Lind assert Econ 101 teaches that "all profitable activities are
good for the economy." Balony! Virtually all Econ 101 teach about markets versus
externalities (like pollution) for which markets do not exist. In the face of
externalities government intervention is necessary --- as we teach in Econ 101
for which competition is inefficient. In the face of monopolies and oligopolies
government intervention is necessary --- as we teach in Econ 101
Atkinson and Lind assert Econ 101 teaches "monopolies and oligopolies are
always bad because they distort prices." Balony! Virtually all Econ 101 teach
about economies of scale.
Atkinson and Lind assert low wages are bad for the economy. Of course they
are bad for the economy in Vermont where people choose to go on welfare (the
highest among the 50 states) rather than work in low skill jobs. But wages for
high skilled labor are good for the economy when they are set by supply and
demand rather than having the government inefficiently tinker with the labor
markets.
Atkinson and Lind have no answer to the Miracle in Chile where free markets
eradicated poverty levels better than any socialist states in Latin and South
America, something we do teach in Econ 101.
Miricle of Chile ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile
Jensen Comment
Talk about dumbed-down garbage --- this article is a great example of
indoctrination rather than education. For example, is government banning
of advanced welding courses in Milwaukee a good thing because it limits the
supply of skilled welders available to the Catepillar factory, thereby making
Catepillar contemplate moving out of Milwaukee.
Video: Noam Chomsky Calls Postmodern Critiques of Science
Over-Inflated “Polysyllabic Truisms” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/noam-chomsky-calls-postmodern-critiques-of-science-over-inflated-polysyllabic-truisms.html
Video: Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chomsky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy
Who Was So Often Empirically Wrong’ ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-responds-to-noam-chomsky.html
Video: The Feud Continues: Noam Chomsky Responds to Žižek, Describes
Remarks as ‘Sheer Fantasy’ ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/noam-chomsky-responds-to-zizek-describes-remarks-as-sheer-fantasy.html
Slavoj Žižek Publishes a Very Clearly Written Essay-Length Response to
Chomsky’s “Brutal” Criticisms ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-publishes-a-very-clearly-written-essay-length-response-to-chomskys-brutal-criticisms.html
Science and Pseudo-Science ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#Pseudo-Science
Question
How much does it take to buy a fast-food franchise?
Answer
It depends on the brand (and probably location) ---
Click Here
http://247wallst.com/retail/2013/07/25/how-much-does-it-cost-to-own-a-mcdonalds-franchise/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=JUL262013A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
I think it also depends on operating costs. The
rent is a whole lot higher in the La Guardia Airport or a Dallas Galleria than
in some small town in Nowhere, Iowa.
"Do Commodities Speculators Make Things Cost
More?" by Justin Fox, Harvard Business Review Blog, July 22, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/fox/2013/07/do-commodities-speculators-mak.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&cm_ite=DailyAlert-072313+%281%29&cm_lm=sp%3Arjensen%40trinity.edu&cm_ven=Spop-Email
Commodities trading,
Adam Smith wrote in 1776, was a boon to
efficiency and a foe to famine. It was also extremely unpopular,
especially in years when harvests were poor (he was writing specifically
of trading in corn).
The popular odium ...
which attends it in years of scarcity, the only years in which it
can be very profitable, renders people of character and fortune
averse to enter into it; and millers, bakers, mealmen, and meal
factors, together with a number of wretched hucksters, are almost
the only middle people that ... come between the grower and the
consumer.
Since then,
trading in corn and other commodities has gained in respectability —
thanks in part to arguments and evidence mustered by economists
following in Smith's footsteps. But the suspicion that commodities
trading is dominated by wretched hucksters or worse (I don't know what "mealmen"
are, but they sure sound bad) has never gone away, with
David Kocieniewski's epic examination in Sunday's New York Times
of an aluminum storage business owned by Goldman
Sachs offering the latest bit of evidence. Kocieniewski describes
forklift drivers moving aluminum from warehouse to warehouse in Detroit
to profit from rules set by an overseas metals exchange, while delivery
times to actual users of aluminum have stretched to 16 months and
aluminum prices have been pushed up by the equivalent of a tenth of a
U.S. cent per aluminum can.
The article is less
clear about what brought this on. Is it bad rules set by the London
Metal Exchange? The involvement of banks such as Goldman and J.P. Morgan
in the metals trade? Or is the problem simply that speculators have
taken over the market for a crucial commodity?
It is certainly true
that investors, dismayed at the prospect of low returns for stocks and
bonds for years to come, have poured money into commodities over the
past decade. Markets that existed mainly for the convenience of industry
have become dominated by exchange-traded funds, hedge funds, and
investment banks.
By Adam Smith's
reasoning, this shouldn't be a bad thing — people of character, or at
least fortune, are getting into the trade. And the consensus among
economists has for decades been that commodity speculation clearly
serves a useful purpose — so more of it can't hurt, right?
The evidence on
this is, frustratingly, not nearly as conclusive as one might hope. The
most famous studies have had to do with trading in onion futures,
which the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched in
the 1940s and Congress banned in 1958 after a precipitous boom and bust.
Agricultural economist Holbrook Working proposed at the time that this
presented the opportunity for a natural experiment: if onion prices were
more volatile in the absence of futures trading, then the trading
probably served a useful economic purpose. If not, then maybe it didn't.
The
first post-ban study, published in 1963, did
indeed find such an effect, and has since been cited widely by
economists and
editorialists. A
1973 followup,
however, was inconclusive.
When economist
David S. Jacks of Simon Fraser University reviewed this evidence a few
years ago along with before-and-after data from when futures trading in
various commodities started, he
still concluded that "futures markets are
systematically associated with lower levels of commodity price
volatility." So, on balance, having a futures market appears better than
not having a futures market.
What this doesn't tell
us, however, is whether certain kinds of commodity futures and spot
markets are better than others, or certain kinds of traders are better
than others. There's at least some evidence from the great commodities
boom of the past decade that the new dominance of financial investors
has made a difference, and not necessarily for the better.
Three recent research findings:
- Marco J. Lombardi
of the European Central Bank and Ine van Robays of Ghent University
found that "financial investors did cause
oil prices to significantly diverge from the level justified by oil
supply and demand at specific points in time."
- Lucia Juvenal
and Ivan Petrella of the St. Louis Fed
found that speculative forces began to
drive oil prices in 2004, "which is when significant investment
started to flow into commodity markets."
- Ke Tang of
Renmin University of China and Wei Xiong of Princeton University
found that prices in non-energy
commodities have begun to move in tandem with oil prices, and have
become more volatile.
None of these
studies blamed speculation for causing all or even most of the price
movements. It seems pretty clear that the
big rise in oil prices
since 2003
has been driven by fundamental forces of supply and demand.
But the new commodities market participants may
have made things worse, as Kocieniewski's aluminum findings seem to
show.
So what's the
solution? I'm guessing it has something to do with adjusting the rules
of the game. Commodities-trading rules and customs that date back to the
pre-financial era may not fit the more aggressive tactics of hedge funds
and investment banks. The London Metals Exchange is
already in the midst of changing its warehousing rules,
with hard-to-foresee consequences. The Commodity
Futures Trading Commission has
started using new powers granted it under the Dodd-Frank Act to
go after traders whose behavior it deems abusive. And in general, we're
in the early stages of a long struggle to put the financial sector back
in the position of servant of the economy rather than its master.
Speculation is, on
balance, a good thing. But more of it isn't necessarily always better —
and it's too important to leave entirely in the hands of the wretched
hucksters.
"At Creighton U.’s Apple Store, Students (including accounting
students) Will Run the Show," by Cory Weinberg, Chronicle of Higher
Education, July 18, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/bottomline/at-creighton-u-s-apple-store-students-will-run-the-show/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Indiana University Kelley School of B usiness
Indianapolis invites applications for position s in Accounting beginning in
August 201 3 or January 1, 2014 . Applications are encouraged for clinical
and lecturer positions at all ranks. We anticipate filling at least one
position.
Kelly School of Business Indianapolis, Indiana University, July 2013 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/files/indiana-1.pdf
When Salaries Are Too Low to Fill Tenure Track Openings
"Empty Lecterns," by Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, July 10,
2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/10/wisconsin-stevens-point-struggles-high-faculty-turnover-due-low-salaries
Jensen Comment
The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point is featured in the article.
Hasselback's Accounting Faculty Directory lists three PhD faculty in
accounting, two of whom earned Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arkansas in
the early 1990s. It would seem that this university is not likely to be
competitive in terms of salary for newly graduated accounting Ph.D. students.
A problem faced by a egalitarian salary constraint that does not recognize
supply and demand differences between academic disciplines is that disciplines
like accounting and finance and computer science where demand for Ph.D. faculty
greatly exceeds supply is that those unionized universities find it difficult to
compete in highly competitive markets for Ph.D. faculty. This is one of the
reasons why large R1 research universities do not have unions for faculty. The
want competitive salaries in all disciplines, especially in the professions like
medicine, nursing, computer science, engineering, finance, and accountancy.
Garbage Study Report: A Questionable Beauty Contest
Greece and nearly every other nation on the planet have a "more attractive"
tax systems than the USA (Yeah right!) ---
http://econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/75220/1/749829451.pdf
Abstract : This paper develops a new tax measure –
the Tax Attractiveness Index – reflecting the attractiveness of a country’s
tax environment and the tax planning opportunities that are offered .
Specifically , the Tax Attractiveness Index covers 16 different components
of real - world tax systems , such as the statutory tax rate, the taxation
of dividends and capital gains, withholding taxes, the existence of a group
taxation regime, loss off set provision, the double tax treaty network, thin
capitalization rules, and controlled foreign company (CFC) rules. We develop
methods to quantify each tax factor . The Tax Attractiveness Index is
constructed for 100 countries over the 2005 to 2009 period. Regional
clusters in the index as well as in the application of certain tax rules can
be observed. The evaluation of individual countries based on the index
corresponds – but is not totally identical – with the OECD’s ‘black’
respectively ‘grey’ list . By comparing the Tax Attractiveness Index with
the statutory tax rate , we reveal that even high tax countries offer
favorable tax conditions. Hence, the statutory tax rate is not a suitable
proxy for a country’s tax climate in any case since countries may set other
incentives to attract firms and investment.
From the TaxProf Blog on July 11, 2013 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/
Lucy A. Marsh, a tenured law professor at Denver since 1982 who teaches
Civil Procedure, Property, and Trusts & Estates (CV
here), has filed an EEOC gender discimination complaint against the
school charging that her $109,000 is the lowest
at the school and well below the $149,000 median full professor salary.
From the EEOC complaint:
Professor Marsh believes that she and
other female professors at the law school were discriminated against
with respect to compensation because of their gender and were paid less
than men performing substantially equal work under similar conditions in
the same establishment.
From the Denver Post:
"What I hope comes out of this is not
just fair compensation to professor Marsh and to fix the system, but
hopefully there will be lessons learned that other universities, law
schools and employers can look at and say, 'This is something that we
can look at, to make sure the women are not paid less for equal work,'"
said Jennifer Reisch, one of Marsh’s lawyers and legal director of Equal
Rights Advocates, a national civil rights organization.
Jensen Comment
Students should be able to explain why Professor Marsh may have a better case
than a full professor of elementary education whose salary is $101,000
(hypothetically) but not the lowest for all full professors in elementary
education at DU ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GenderSalaryDifferences
Given that she obtained tenure in the DU Law School 31 years, Professor Marsh
may have more of an age discrimination lawsuit, especially if some of the higher
paid DU law faculty are women and/or minorities. She apparently thinks gender
discrimination exists in the DI Law School. Her case is weakened if newly hired
faculty women are given compensation packages comparable to those of males.
Students should understand the pervasive problem of salary compression and
inversion in the Academy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Salaries
My guess is that salary compression lawsuits are harder to win. Otherwise the
courts would be clogged with salary compression lawsuits for nearly every
college and university in the USA.
Good Thing Apple is Sitting on a Mountain of Cash
"Apple Found Guilty of E-Book Price Fixing," by Leila Meyer, T.H.E.
Journal, July 10, 2013 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/07/10/apple-found-guilty-of-e-book-price-fixing.aspx?=THE21
A federal judge at the
Southern District of New York court has found
Apple guilty of violating United States antitrust
laws and colluding with five book publishing companies to inflate e-book
prices. The three-week trial concluded June 20, and the judge issued the
ruling July 9. The tech giant plans to appeal.
In a civil antitrust lawsuit, the U.S. Department
of Justice claimed that in January 2010 Apple and five publishers entered an
agency-model agreement, in which publishers, not retailers, set the price of
e-books. The publishers agreed to set higher prices for bestsellers and new
releases, resulting in a price increase from $9.99 to $12.99 and $14.99. As
part of the agreement, which preceded Apple's entry into the e-book market
with the launch of the iPad in April 2010, Apple received a 30 percent
commission on each e-book sold and required publishers to match competitors'
prices if they were lower. Because market-dominating Amazon sold e-books for
$9.99, publishers began withholding some bestsellers from Amazon for a
period of time after the release date.
“Understanding that no one Publisher could risk
acting alone in an attempt to take pricing power away from Amazon, Apple
created a mechanism and environment that enabled them to act together in a
matter of weeks to eliminate all retail price competition for their
e-books,” wrote U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, in a
160-page ruling. "The evidence is overwhelming
that Apple knew of the unlawful aims of the conspiracy and joined that
conspiracy with the specific intent to help it succeed."
The Justice Department initially sued Apple and
five of the country's largest publishing companies:
Hachette,
HarperCollins,
Macmillan,
Penguin, and
Simon & Schuster. Only Apple proceeded to trial,
while the publishers settled with the Department of Justice and agreed to
pay more than $166 million combined.
The Department of Justice may now seek injunctive
relief, which could prevent Apple from using the agency business model to
sell e-books for a two-year period and impose other requirements to prevent
the company from skewing the e-book market in its favor.
Because Apple was found guilty of violating U.S.
antitrust laws, 33 state attorneys general will now take the company to
trial to recover money on behalf of consumers who paid higher prices for
e-books.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
JOBS Act Skepticism Grows
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on July 10, 2013
A key provision of the JOBS Act is set to move
forward today. The SEC is expected to lift a decades-old ban on soliciting
shares in hedge funds and other private placements—a move that could unleash
a wave of ads touting these investments, write the WSJ’s Andrew Ackerman and
Jessica Holzer. It also will mean big changes for companies selling
unregistered securities, which have had to tiptoe around the rules on
general-solicitation advertising.
Hedge funds and others have argued that the ad ban
makes it harder and more costly for business to raise private capital. But
the easing of the ban comes before the SEC has finalized most of the
protections that investor advocates say are critical to guarding against
fraud—like standards for advertising investment performance.
Meanwhile, there’s a growing belief among
investment bankers that the law has fallen flat. Only 14% of bankers polled
by BDO USA this week said they felt the JOBS Act is boosting the number of
IPOs, CFOJ’s Emily Chasan reports. That’s half the level who said last
winter that the law was having a positive impact, and down sharply from 55%
who said so last year. “There has clearly not been double or triple the
amount of IPOs,” said Wendy Hambleton, director of SEC services for BDO in
Chicago.
From the Global CPA Report on July 10, 2013
CFOs are optimistic overall but hesitant to hire
Optimism
about the economy is on the rise, but companies continue to project low
hiring and have reduced expectations for profit and sales, according to a
quarterly Deloitte survey. North American chief financial officers cite
public policy as a top impediment to growth.
CGMA Magazine (6/28)
"A Daviess County (Kentucky) accountant
is facing theft and forgery charges ," by Kara Mattingly,
Four News, July 10, 2013 ---
http://owensboro-daviesscounty.14news.com/news/news/133043-daviess-co-accountant-facing-theft-and-forgery-charges
Authorities say
51-year-old Dennis Keaton collected money from a client, and that money was
supposed to be forwarded to the Kentucky Department of Revenue and the IRS.
Keaton is accused of using the money for his own personal use. Investigators
seized computers, documents, and other evidence associated with his
accounting business. Keaton was taken to the Daviess County Detention Center
under a $10,000 cash bond.
Another Example of White Collar Crime Leniency
If she stole $100 from a convenience store she probably would be in jail
"Sioux City accountant gets probation," Souix City Journal,
July 1, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/sioux-city-accountant-gets-probation-for-taking-from-client-accounts/article_80e537d0-6b51-5d26-9991-726372155091.html
SIOUX CITY
The owner of a Sioux City accounting firm was placed on probation Monday for
taking more than $150,000 from a client who had dementia.
Terry Lockie, 65, pleaded guilty in Woodbury County
District Court to one count of dependent adult abuse. According to the terms
of her plea agreement, a five-year prison sentence was suspended, and she
was placed on probation for two years. A charge of first-degree theft was
dismissed.
Lockie, who lives in Homer, Neb., owns Terry Lockie
& Associates, 704 Jackson St. She likely faces the loss of her certified
public accountant license, her attorney, Keith Rigg, said during court
proceedings.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on why white collar crime pays ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending July 19, 2013)
Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the
previous week on MIT Technology Review
-
Edit Wars Reveal The 10 Most Controversial Topics on Wikipedia
An analysis of the most highly contested articles on Wikipedia reveals
the controversies that appear invariant across languages and cultures.
-
Forget Battery Swapping: Tesla Aims to Charge Electric Cars in Five
Minutes
Tesla Motors is pushing the limits of charging technology to make
electric vehicles as practical as gas-powered cars.
-
It’s Up to You, Entrepreneurs
Startup scenes are popping up in cities all over the world. Brad Feld is
part of the reason.
-
Bill Gates: Software Assistants Could Help Solve Global Problems
The founder of Microsoft says we have reached a “golden age” of computer
science enabling more powerful assistant software.
-
Finding Cancer Cells in the Blood
Technologies that can pull tumor cells from patients’ blood are giving
researchers an unprecedented look at cancer.
-
A Manufacturing Tool Builds 3-D Heart Tissue
A layer-by-layer fabrication tool lets researchers quickly form
complicated biological tissue in three-dimensional space.
-
Microsoft Has an Operating System for Your House
Microsoft aims to simplify home automation with software that connects
different Internet-enabled devices.
From the Stanford Graduate School of Business
Top 13 Business Books to Read This 2013 Summer ---
Click Here
http://stanfordbusiness.tumblr.com/post/54056392149/top-13-business-books-to-read-this-summer?utm_source=Stanford+Business+Re%3AThink&utm_campaign=dad79e1065-Re_Think_Issue_Eighteen7_17_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-dad79e1065-70265733&ct=t%28Re_Think_Issue_Eighteen7_17_2013%29
Prisoner's Dilemma (Game Theory) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
"They Finally Tested The 'Prisoner's Dilemma' On Actual Prisoners — And
The Results Were Not What You Would Expect ," by by Max Nissan, Business
Insider, July 21, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/prisoners-dilemma-in-real-life-2013-7
The "prisoner's dilemma" is a familiar concept to just
about everyone who took Econ 101.The basic
version goes like this: Two criminals are arrested, but police can't convict
either on the primary charge, so they plan to sentence them to a year in
jail on a lesser charge. Each of the prisoners, who can't communicate with
each other, are given the option of testifying against their partner. If
they testify, and their partner remains silent, the partner gets three years
and they go free. If they both testify, both get two. If both remain silent,
they each get one.
In game theory, betraying your partner, or
"defecting" is always the dominant strategy as it always has a slightly
higher payoff in a simultaneous game. It's what's known as a "Nash
Equilibrium," after Nobel Prize winning mathematician and "A
Beautiful Mind" subject John Nash.
In sequential
games, where players know each other's previous behavior and have the
opportunity to punish each other, defection is the dominant strategy as
well.
However, on an overall basis, the best outcome for
both players is mutual cooperation.
Yet no one's ever
actually run the experiment on real prisoners before, until
two University of Hamburg economists tried it out
in a recent study comparing the behavior of inmates and students.
Surprisingly, for
the classic version of the game, prisoners were far more cooperative than
expected.
Menusch Khadjavi and Andreas Lange put
the famous game to the test for the first time
ever, putting a group of prisoners in Lower Saxony's primary women's prison,
as well as students, through both simultaneous and sequential versions of
the game.
The payoffs
obviously weren't years off sentences, but euros for students, and the
equivalent value in coffee or cigarettes for prisoners.
They expected, building off of game theory and
behavioral economic research that show humans are more cooperative than the
purely rational model that economists traditionally use, that there would be
a fair amount of first-mover cooperation, even in the simultaneous
simulation where there's no way to react to the other player's decisions.
And even in the sequential game, where you get a
higher payoff for betraying a cooperative first mover, a fair amount will
still reciprocate.
As for the difference between student and prisoner
behavior, you'd expect that a prison population might be more jaded and
distrustful, and therefore more likely to defect.
The results went exactly the other way for the
simultaneous game, only 37% of students cooperate. Inmates cooperated 56% of
the time.
On a pair basis, only 13% of student pairs managed
to get the best mutual outcome and cooperate, whereas 30% of prisoners do.
In the sequential
game, far more students (63%) cooperate, so the mutual cooperation rate
skyrockets to 39%. For prisoners, it remains about the same.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
In real life there's a huge difference between a sentence of life without parole
and three or more years in prison where the prisoner will be set free soon
enough to extract revenge on a song bird. Thus in real life the revenge risk
must be factored into the payoff. The risk may come from the person serving the
longest sentence or from a gang waiting for song birds to be set free.
"Game Theory Versus Practice: More
companies are using game theory to aid decision-making. How well does it work in
the real world?" by Alan
Rappeport, CFO Magazine, July 15, 2008 ---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/11700044?f=search
When Microsoft
announced its intention to acquire Yahoo last February, the software giant
knew the struggling search firm would not come easily into the fold. But
Microsoft had anticipated the eventual minuet of offer and counteroffer five
months before its announcement, thanks to the powers of game theory.
A mathematical
method of analyzing game-playing strategies, game theory is catching on with
corporate planners, enabling them to test their moves against the possible
responses of their competitors. Its origins trace as far back as The Art of
War, the unlikely management best-seller penned 2,500 years ago by the
Chinese general Sun Tzu. Mathematicians John von Neumann and Oskar
Morgenstern adapted the method for economics in the 1940s, and game theory
entered the academic mainstream in the 1970s, when economists like Thomas
Schelling and Robert Aumann used it to study adverse selection and problems
of asymmetric information. (Schelling and Aumann won Nobel prizes in 2005
for their work.)
Game theory can
take many forms, but most companies use a simplified version that focuses
executives on the mind-set of the competition. "The formal stuff quickly
becomes very technical and less useful," says Louis Thomas, a professor at
the Wharton School of Business who teaches game theory. "It's a matter of
peeling it back to its bare essentials." One popular way to teach the theory
hinges on a situation called the "prisoner's dilemma," where the fate of two
detainees depends on whether each snitches or stays silent about an alleged
crime (see "To Squeal or Not to Squeal?" at the end of this article).
Many companies are
reluctant to talk about the specifics of how they use game theory, or even
to admit whether they use it at all. But oil giant Chevron makes no bones
about it. "Game theory is our secret strategic weapon," says Frank Koch, a
Chevron decision analyst. Koch has publicly discussed Chevron's use of game
theory to predict how foreign governments and competitors will react when
the company embarks on international projects. "It reveals the win-win and
gives you the ability to more easily play out where things might lead," he
says.
Enter the Matrix
Microsoft's interest in game theory was piqued by the disclosure that IBM
was using the method to better understand the motivations of its competitors
— including Microsoft — when Linux, the open-source computer operating
system, began to catch on. (Consultants note that companies often bone up on
game theory when they find out that competitors are already using it.)
For its Yahoo bid,
Microsoft hired Open Options, a consultancy, to model the merger and plot a
possible course for the transaction. Yahoo's trepidation became clear from
the outset. "We knew that they would not be particularly interested in the
acquisition," says Ken Headrick, product and marketing director of
Microsoft's Canadian online division, MSN. And, indeed, they weren't; the
bid ultimately failed and a subsequent partial acquisition offer was
abandoned in June.
Open Options
wouldn't disclose specifics of its work for Microsoft, but in client
workshops it asks attendees to answer detailed questions about their goals
for a project — for example, "Should we enter this market?" "Will we need to
eat costs to establish market share?" "Will a price war ensue?" Then,
assumptions about the motives of other players, such as competitors and
government regulators, are ranked and different scenarios developed. The
goals of all players are given numerical values and charted on a matrix. The
exercise is intended to show that there are more outcomes to a situation
than most minds can comprehend, and to get managers thinking about
competition and customers differently.
"If you have four
or five players, with four actions each might or might not take, that could
lead to a million outcomes," comments Tom Mitchell, CEO of Open Options.
"And that's a simple situation." To simplify complex playing fields, Open
Options uses algorithms to model what action a company should take —
considering the likely actions of others — to attain its goals. The result
replicates the so-called Nash equilibrium, first proposed by John Forbes
Nash, the Nobel prize–winning mathematician portrayed in the movie A
Beautiful Mind. In this optimal state, the theory goes, a player no longer
has an incentive to change his position.
As a tool, game
theory can be useful in many areas of finance, particularly when decisions
require both economic and strategic considerations. "CFOs welcome this
because it takes into account financial inputs and blends them with
nonfinancial inputs," says Mitchell.
Rational to a
Fault? Some experts, however, question game theory's usefulness in the real
world. They say the theory is at odds with human nature, because it assumes
that all participants in a game will behave rationally. But as research in
behavioral finance and economics has shown, common psychological biases can
easily produce irrational decisions.
Similarly, John
Horn, a consultant at McKinsey, argues that game theory gives people too
much credit. "Game theory assumes rationally maximizing competitors, who
understand everything that you're doing and what they can do," says Horn.
"That's not how people actually behave." (Activist investor Carl Icahn said
Yahoo's board "acted irrationally" in rejecting Microsoft's bid.) McKinsey's
latest survey on competitive behavior found that companies tend to neglect
upcoming moves by competitors, relying passively on sources such as the news
and annual reports. And when they learn of new threats, they tend to react
in the most obvious way, focusing on near-term metrics such as earnings and
market share.
Continued in article
"What use is game theory?" by Steve Hsu, Information Processing,
May 4, 2011 ---
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-use-is-game-theory.html
Fantastic
interview with game theorist Ariel Rubinstein on
Econtalk. I agree with Rubinstein that game theory has little predictive
power in the real world, despite the pretty mathematics. Experiments at RAND
(see, e.g., Mirowski's
Machine Dreams) showed early game theorists,
including Nash, that people don't conform to the idealizations in their
models. But this wasn't emphasized (Mirowski would claim it was deliberately
hushed up) until more and more experiments showed similar results. (Who
woulda thought -- people are "irrational"! :-)
Perhaps the most useful thing about game theory is that it requires you to
think carefully about decision problems. The discipline of this kind of
analysis is valuable, even if the models have limited applicability to real
situations.
Rubinstein discusses a number of topics, including raw intelligence vs
psychological insight and its importance in economics (see also
here). He has, in my opinion, a very developed and
mature view of what social scientists actually do, as opposed to what they
claim to do.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on analytics can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Analytics
Bob Jensen's threads on game theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory02.htm#EconomicTheory
Henry Rollins: Education is the Cure to “Disaster Capitalism” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/henry-rollins-education-is-the-cure-to-disaster-capitalism.html
Question
If there is an overabundance of physicians (e.g., three on every floor of every
apartment house as suggested by Rollins), what's the incentive for top students
to spend 20-25 years becoming physicians? Presumably society has to reward those
years of tension, sweat, and sleepless nights with some incentives. The Soviet
Union used to hand out lots of medals, but the physicians in practice that were
in short supply weren't very good.
And we can reward musicians the same as physicians even if they compose music
that nobody cares to hear.
There really are economic efficiencies of the "invisible hand" even if
progressives want to call capitalism a "disaster."
"Douglas Engelbart’s Unfinished Revolution: Computing pioneer Doug
Engelbart’s inventions transformed computing, but he intended them to transform
humans," By Howard Rheingold, MIT's Technology Review, July 23, 2013
---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517341/douglas-engelbarts-unfinished-revolution/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130724
"This German Woman Has Been Living Without Money For 16 Years," by
Mandi Woodruff, Business Insider, July 18, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/heidemarie-schwermer-has-lived-without-money-for-16-years-2012-6
"The Weird Story Of How The Tom Collins Cocktail Got Its Name," by
Megan Willett, Business Insider, July 17, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-tom-collins-got-its-name-2013-7
Free Comic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adventures of
Nikola Tesla ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/free-physics-comic-books.html
Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Sometimes it takes a long time to reach a breakeven point
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on July 10, 2013
GM CFO aims to break even in Europe by mid-decade.
General Motors CFO Daniel Ammann believes
his company can break even in Europe by mid-decade, which would end a losing
streak that dates back to the last century. “We have better momentum and
progress in the business there than at any time over the last couple of
years,” Mr. Ammann
told the Detroit Free Press’s Nathan Bomey.
But he acknowledged that the European auto sales outlook is “not recovering”
yet. “We haven’t seen any tangible signs of any meaningful improvement at
this point.
"From VHS To Google Glass, Porn Drives The Tech Market," by Michael
Moran, Business Insider, July 11, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/porn-sex-drives-the-tech-market-2013-7
Jensen Comment
It's back to school for you if you thought social media drives the tech/tack
market.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Anderson
Sherwood Anderson is one of my favorite authors. I've read and re-read almost
all his works.
"How to Quit Your Job Like Sherwood Anderson: The Best Resignation Letter
Ever Written." by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, July 25, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/25/sherwood-anderson-resignation-letter/
Jensen Comment
If you're tenured and want to quit, don't send such a letter unconditionally.
Agree to send a resignation letter only if tenure buyout terms are negotiated.
Of course, some tenured professors who desperately want out will sell out for a
dime.
Forwarded by Paula
I did not attempt to verify any of these alleged "facts"
Alaska
More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska .
Amazon
The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the world's oxygen supply.The
Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that, more than one
hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of
the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next
eight largest rivers in the world combined and three times the flow of all
rivers in the United States .
Antarctica
Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country.
Ninety percent of the world's ice covers Antarctica . This ice also represents
seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds,
however, Antarctica is essentially a desert; The average yearly total
precipitation is about two inches. Although covered with ice (all but 0.4% of
it, ice.), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet, With an absolute
humidity lower than the Gobi desert.
Brazil
Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
Canada
Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Canada is an
Indian word meaning ' Big Village '.
Chicago
Next to Warsaw , Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.
Detroit
Woodward Avenue in Detroit , Michigan , carries the designation M-1. So
named because it was the first paved road anywhere.
Damascus, Syria
Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome
was founded in 753 BC making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in
existence.
Istanbul, Turkey
| Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two continents. Los
Angeles The full name of Los Angeles is: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de
Los Angeles de Porciuncula -- and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size: L.A.
New York City
The term 'The Big Apple' was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s
who used the slang expression 'apple' for any town or city. Therefore, to play
New York City is to play the big time - The Big Apple.
There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin , Ireland ; more
Italians in New York City than in Rome , Italy ; And more Jews in New York City
than in Tel Aviv , Israel .
Ohio
There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio . . . every one is
man-made.
(Jensen comment: I heard this previously about Oklahoma but not Ohio)
Pitcairn Island
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia , at just
1.75 sq. miles/4,53 sq. Km.
Rome
The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome , Italy
(in 133 B.C.) There is a city called Rome on every continent.
Siberia
Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.
S.M.O.M.
The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military
Order of Malta (S.M.O.M). It is located in the city of Rome , Italy , and has an
area of two tennis courts. And, as of 2001, has a population of 80 -- 20 less
people than the Vatican . It is a sovereign entity under international law, just
as the Vatican is.
Sahara Desert
In the Sahara Desert , there is a town named Tidikelt , Algeria , that did
not receive a drop of rain for ten years. Technically, though, the driest place
on Earth is in the valleys of the Antarctic near Ross Island . There has been no
rainfall there for two million years.
Spain
Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits'.
St. Paul, Minnesota
St. Paul, Minnesota, was originally called Pig's Eye after a man named
Pierre 'Pig's Eye' Parrant who set up the first business there.
Roads Chances that a road is unpaved: in the U.S.A = 1%; in Canada = 75%
Russia
The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, in Russia .
It reached a depth of 12,261 meters (about 40,226 feet or 7.62 miles.) It was
drilled for scientific research and gave up some unexpected discoveries, one of
which was a huge deposit of hydrogen - so massive that the mud coming from the
hole was boiling with it.
United States
The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be
straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or
other emergencies.
Waterfalls
The water of Angel Falls (the world's highest) in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet
(979 meters.) They are 15 times higher than Niagara Falls .
I have always said, you should learn something new every day. Unfortunately,
many of us are at that age where what we learn today, we forget tomorrow. But,
give it a shot anyway
From the Scout Report on July 12, 2013
Padlet ---
http://padlet.com/
Are you looking for a blank wall? This online
application can give you that blank wall for your own personal
entertainment, edification, and general bemusement. Padlet offers visitors
the opportunity to drag and drop just about anything onto a virtual wall,
and share that wall with others while additions, deletions, or changes are
tracked in real-time. Additionally, users can embed their wall on a blog or
website and create their own background. This version is compatible with all
operating systems.
Electric Slide ---
http://www.electricslide.net/
To some the electric slide may just be a novelty
dance. Astute readers of technology blogs will know that this Electric Slide
happens to be a application that allows visitors to wirelessly present their
PowerPoint slides, documents, and videos using just their iPhone or iPad.
First-time visitors can watch an instructional video and then go ahead and
get started. The Features area contains details on the operations of the
program and the Help section offers up some useful suggestions. This version
is compatible with all operating systems running iOS 5.1.1 and newer.
After a major oil train explosion, Canada begins to ask tough questions
Fatal train wreck fuels debate over oil transport
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23833-fatal-train-wreck-fuels-debate-over-oil-transport.html#.UdzVaY7Wet8
After Quebec explosion, oil transport by rail leaves questions
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/After+Quebec+explosion+transport+rail+leaves+questions/8634170/story.html
Safety rules lag as oil transport by train rises
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/07/08/f-lac-megantic-oil-rail.html
Ten years of highs and lows for Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway
http://bangordailynews.com/2013/07/09/business/ten-years-of-highs-and-lows-for-montreal-maine-and-atlantic-railway/?ref=latest
Transportation Safety Board of Canada
http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rail/index.asp
The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway Railway, Inc.
http://www.mmarail.com/
From the Scout Report on July 19, 2013
Tweegram ---
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.natrobit.tweegram
Have you ever wanted to share text messages with
friends and others on social networks? Tweegram makes this possible and
visitors can customize their messages with images and other bells and
whistles. The site includes an FAQ area and visitors will need to be running
Android 2.2 and newer on their device.
Share My Screen Pro ---
http://www.share-my-screen-pro.com/
If you work with people all over the country or the
world, it can be hard to share information and visuals quickly. Share My
Screen Pro allows users to do just that, complete with two way audio and
instant messaging. Visitors can watch a short video here to get oriented and
after that, it's rather easy to get started with the program. This version
is compatible with all computers running Windows 2000 and newer as well as
iOS and Android phones.
London's sewers, symbol of Victorian engineering prowess, remain a key
part of the city's infrastructure
London's sewers: subterranean dreams
http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2013/07/londons-sewers
In London's Sewers: Less Pollution and A Smelly Form of Energy
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/28/in-londons-sewers-less-pollution-and-a-smelly-form-of-energy/
Below the waste line: Inside London's sewer system
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2010/dec/02/london-sewers-thames-water
History of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and London's Sewers
http://www.history.co.uk/explore-history/history-of-london/how-londoners-stopped-drinking-sewage.html
London Sewers & London's Main Drainage
http://www.sub-urban.com/
John Snow
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow.html
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Strategies for Effective Teaching: A Handbook for Teaching Assistants ---
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/services/elc/strategies.pdf
What Do I Do Now? Laboratory Tales From Teaching Assistants ---
http://www.udel.edu/chem/white/C601/TA-Tales.pdf
USGS Science Resources for Undergraduate Education
http://education.usgs.gov/undergraduate.html
Team Nutrition: Educator Resources ---
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/educators.html
Base-Sixteen: Resources for teaching and learning computer science ---
http://cse4k12.appspot.com/
Computer Science for Dummies
Computer Science Unplugged ---
http://www.youtube.com/csunplugged
Computer Science Teachers Association ---
http://csta.acm.org/Resources/sub/HighlightedResources.html
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension ---
http://extension.uga.edu/about/services/teachers.cfm
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Common Physics Misconceptions ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/07/common-physics-misconceptions/
Free Comic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adventures of Nikola
Tesla ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/free-physics-comic-books.html
Science 360 News Service ---
http://news.science360.gov/files/
Neil deGrasse Tyson Unveils a Dazzling Preview of the New Cosmos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/neil-degrasse-tyson-unveils-a-dazzling-preview-of-the-new-cosmos.html
Methods in Biostatistics I ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/MethodsInBiostatisticsI/coursePage/index/
Ohio Journal of Science ---
http://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/686
Gene You: Genetics and Inheritance ---
http://www.bioedonline.org/lessons-and-more/resource-collections/gene-you-genetics-and-inheritance/
Genetics Selection Evolution ---
http://www.gsejournal.org/
Learn Genetics: Variation, Selection & Time ---
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/variation/
The Field Museum: Insects, Arachnids and Myriapods Collections ---
http://fieldmuseum.org/explore/department/zoology/insects/collections
Singing Insects of North America ---
http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/buzz/
Insects ---
http://www.insects.org/
Video: The billion-insect highway
in the sky ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/03/the_billion-bug_highway_you_cant_see.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
NOVA: Journey of the Butterflies ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/journey-butterflies.html
From the Scout Report on August
17, 2012
New findings point to more interesting wrinkles in the story of
human
evolution
Human evolution: Ask the family ---
http://www.economist.com/node/21560237
Fossils complicate human ancestor search
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/08/fossils-complicate-human-ancestor-search/?hpt=hp_t3
Questions over human and Neanderthal interbreeding
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528784.700-questions-over-human-and-neanderthal-interbreeding.html
Neanderthal sex debate highlights benefits of pre-publication
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/08/neanderthal-sex-debate-highlights-benefits-of-pre-publication.html
Introduction to Human Evolution
--- http://humanorigins.si.edu/resources/intro-human-evolution
Becoming Human ---
http://www.becominghuman.org/
15 Evolutionary Gems ---
http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf
Cytogenetics Gallery ---
http://www.pathology.washington.edu/galleries/Cytogallery/
Learn Genetics: Variation, Selection & Time ---
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/variation/
Cell Biology Online Videos ---
http://ibioseminars.hhmi.org/lectures/cell-bio-a-med.html
Cell Biology Education Resources ---
http://www.ascb.org/ivl/design/education.html
USGS Science Resources for Undergraduate Education
http://education.usgs.gov/undergraduate.html
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension ---
http://extension.uga.edu/about/services/teachers.cfm
Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" animated ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM-wSKFBpo
The Periodic Table of Videos ---
http://www.periodicvideos.com/
Interactives: The Periodic Table ---
http://www.learner.org/interactives/periodic/index.html
Animated Periodic Table of the Elements ---
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/elearning/Periodic
Table/AnimatedPeriodicTable.swf
The Sourcebook for Teaching Science: Periodic Tables ---
http://www.csun.edu/science/chemistry/periodic_table/
Science Friday ---
http://www.sciencefriday.com/
American Geosciences Institute Education: Earth Sciences ---
http://www.agiweb.org/geoeducation.html
Earth Science World Image Bank ---
http://www.earthscienceworld.org/imagebank/index.html
Interactive Lectures (earth science_ ---
http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/interactive
AP Environmental Science Online Course
http://www.eoearth.org/article/AP_Environmental_Science_Online_Course
Down to Earth: Herblock and Photographers Observe the Environment ---
http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/herblock-down-to-earth
USGS: California Water Science Center ---
http://ca.water.usgs.gov/
Base-Sixteen: Resources for teaching and learning computer science ---
http://cse4k12.appspot.com/
Computer Science for Dummies
Computer Science Unplugged ---
http://www.youtube.com/csunplugged
Computer Science Teachers Association ---
http://csta.acm.org/Resources/sub/HighlightedResources.html
Team Nutrition: Educator Resources ---
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/educators.html
Circulating Now (history of medicine) ---
http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/
Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine ---
http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/pub/HIDDENTREASURE_NLM_BlastBooks.pdf
Julia Morgan: An Online Exhibition (architecture history) ---
http://lib.calpoly.edu/specialcollections/architecture/juliamorgan/
Victoria and Albert Museum Teachers' Resource: Architecture ---
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/t/teachers-resource-architecture/
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
Science 360 News Service ---
http://news.science360.gov/files/
Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Data and Indicators ---
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/data_indicators/
National Center for Education Statistics
---
http://nces.ed.gov/
Jane Addams Hull House (University of Illinois at Chicago) ---
http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/hull_house.html
Jane Addams, the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Atlas of Urban Expansion ---
http://www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/atlas-urban-expansion/
UrbanLand ---
http://urbanland.uli.org/
Transforming Cities With Transit ---
http://issuu.com/wburban/docs/transforming_cities_conf_edition?mode=window&viewMode=doublePage
Urban Intervention ---
http://thenextfifty.org/urbanintervention/
American Planning Association: Blogs ---
http://www.planning.org/multimedia/blogs/
September 11 Television Archive ---
http://archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive
The Chicago Reporter ---
http://www.chicagoreporter.com/
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 and Statistics Tutorials
Methods in Biostatistics I ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/MethodsInBiostatisticsI/coursePage/index/
Base-Sixteen: Resources for teaching and learning computer science ---
http://cse4k12.appspot.com/
Computer Science Teachers Association ---
http://csta.acm.org/Resources/sub/HighlightedResources.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
History of Paperless ---
http://www.wimp.com/theinternet/
Read Fanny Hill, the 18th-Century Erotic Novel That Went to the Supreme Court
in the 20th Century ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/read-fanny-hill-the-18th-century-erotic-novel-that-went-to-the-supreme-court.html
74 Free Banned Books ---
http://www.openculture.com/2010/10/74_free_banned_books_for_banned_books_week.html
Henry Rollins: Education is the Cure to “Disaster Capitalism” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/henry-rollins-education-is-the-cure-to-disaster-capitalism.html
Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/troosevelt_film/
Theodore Roosevelt Collection ---
http://www.bartleby.com/people/RsvltT.html
Chicago, 1900-1914 ---
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/chi1900/
Folger Shakespeare Library Online Resources for Teachers ---
http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=618
82nd & Fifth ---
http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/
100 Works of Art That Changed the World
United States Holocaust Museum: Some Were Neighbors ---
http://somewereneighbors.ushmm.org/#/exhibitions/friends/un2649
Chicago History Museum: Flickr ---
http://www.flickr.com/groups/chicagohistory/pool/with/7938537088/
The Richard H. Driehaus Museum (Chicago History) ---
http://www.driehausmuseum.org/
Images from University of Illinois at Chicago Library Collections
(photograph archive) ---
http://library.uic.edu/home/collections/images/images-from-uic-library-collections
Julia Morgan: An Online Exhibition (architecture history) ---
http://lib.calpoly.edu/specialcollections/architecture/juliamorgan/
Jane Addams Hull House (University of Illinois at Chicago) ---
http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/hull_house.html
Jane Addams, the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Circulating Now (history of medicine) ---
http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/
Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine ---
http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/pub/HIDDENTREASURE_NLM_BlastBooks.pdf
Gertrude Stein Sends a “Review” of The Great Gatsby to F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1925) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/gertrude-stein-sends-a-review-of-the-great-gatsby-to-f-scott-fitzgerald-1925.html
The Sacred Heart Review ---
http://newspapers.bc.edu/cgi-bin/bostonsh?a=cl&cl=CL1.BOSTONSH&e=-------en-20--1--txt-IN-----#.T4OEGlUqivI.bitly
The Wabash Center Guide to Internet
Resources for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/Internet/front.htm
Post (art and literature) ---
http://post.at.moma.org/
September 11 Television Archive ---
http://archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive
Make History: National September 11 Memorial & Museum ---
http://makehistory.national911memorial.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
The Making of a Steinway Grand Piano, From Start to Finish ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/the-making-of-a-steinway-grand-piano-from-start-to-finish.html
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
The Writing Life of Joyce Carol Oates ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/the-writing-life-of-joyce-carol-oates.html
Post (art and literature) ---
http://post.at.moma.org/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
July 10, 2013
July 11, 2013
July 12, 2013
July 13, 2013
July 18, 2013
July 19, 2013
July 20, 2013
July 24, 2013
July 26, 2013
July 25, 2013
July 26, 2013
July 27, 2013
July 29, 2013
Go Figure!
Cities Where the Most People Have Heart Attacks ---
Click Here
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/07/24/cities-where-the-most-people-are-having-heart-attacks/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=JUL242013A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Team Nutrition: Educator Resources ---
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/educators.html
"The Search for the Best Depression Treatment: Brain scans, blood
samples, and other diagnostic tests could one day direct doctors to the best
treatments for depression patients and uncover the biological basis of the
condition." by Susan Young, MIT's Technology Review, July 22, 2013
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516881/the-search-for-the-best-depression-treatment/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130722
Acid reflux drug may cause heart disease ---
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-acid-reflux-drug-heart-disease.html
Clinically used proton pump inhibitors:
-
Omeprazole (brand names: Gasec, Losec, Prilosec, Zegerid, ocid, Lomac,
Omepral, Omez,Omepep)
-
Lansoprazole (brand names: Prevacid, Zoton, Monolitum, Inhibitol,
Levant, Lupizole)
-
Dexlansoprazole (brand name: Kapidex, Dexilant)
-
Esomeprazole (brand names: Nexium, Esotrex, esso)
-
Pantoprazole (brand names: Protonix, Somac, Pantoloc, Pantozol, Zurcal,
Zentro, Pan, Controloc, Tecta)
-
Rabeprazole (brand names: AcipHex, Pariet, Erraz, Zechin, Rabecid, Nzole-D,
Rabeloc, Razo. Dorafem: combination with
domperidone[citation
needed]).
-
Ilaprazole (brand names: Noltec, Yili'an, Ilapro, Lupilla, Adiza)
"California Unveils Health Plans to Mixed Reactions," by Kathleen
Doheny, WebMD, July 10, 2013 ---
http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20130708/california-exchange-carriers-premiums-announced
Howard Dean, a physician, is the former Governor of Vermont and Chairman of
the Democratic Party who launched an unsuccessful campaign to become President
of the United States ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean
In the earlier parts of the article he chastises Republicans and some
Democrats who want to derail the Affordable Healthcare Act at this late stage.
Then he explains a part of the Affordable Healthcare Act that truly needs
amending.
"The Affordable Care Act's Rate-Setting Won't Work: Experience tells
me the Independent Payment Advisory Board will fail," by Howard Dean. The
Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578628542498014414.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
. . .
That said, the law still has its flaws, and
American lawmakers and citizens have both an opportunity and responsibility
to fix them.
One major problem is the so-called Independent
Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB is essentially a health-care rationing
body. By setting doctor reimbursement rates for Medicare and determining
which procedures and drugs will be covered and at what price, the IPAB will
be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply
setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them.
There does have to be control of costs in our
health-care system. However, rate setting—the essential mechanism of the
IPAB—has a 40-year track record of failure. What ends up happening in these
schemes (which many states including my home state of Vermont have
implemented with virtually no long-term effect on costs) is that patients
and physicians get aggravated because bureaucrats in either the private or
public sector are making medical decisions without knowing the patients.
Most important, once again, these kinds of schemes do not control costs. The
medical system simply becomes more bureaucratic.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has
indicated that the IPAB, in its current form, won't save a single dime
before 2021. As everyone in Washington knows, but less frequently admits,
CBO projections of any kind—past five years or so—are really just
speculation. I believe the IPAB will never control costs based on the long
record of previous attempts in many of the states, including my own state of
Vermont.
If Medicare is to have a secure future, we have to
move away from fee-for-service medicine, which is all about incentives to
spend more, and has no incentives in the system to keep patients healthy.
The IPAB has no possibility of helping to solve this major problem and will
almost certainly make the system more bureaucratic and therefore drive up
administrative costs.
To date, 22 Democrats have joined Republicans in
the House and Senate in support of legislation to do away with the IPAB. Yet
because of the extraordinary partisanship on Capitol Hill and Republican
threats to defund the law through the appropriations process, it is unlikely
that any change in the Affordable Care Act will take place soon.
The IPAB will cause frustration to providers and
patients alike, and it will fail to control costs. When, and if, the
atmosphere on Capitol Hill improves and leadership becomes interested again
in addressing real problems instead of posturing, getting rid of the IPAB is
something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on.
Mr. Dean, governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2002 and a former chairman
of the Democratic National Committee, is a strategic adviser to McKenna Long
& Aldridge LLP.
Bob Jensen's threads on health care ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
A Bit of Humor
"Bob Mankoff picks his 11 favorite New Yorker cartoons ever,"
by Helen Walters, TED, June 26, 2013 ---
http://blog.ted.com/2013/06/26/bob-mankoff-picks-his-11-favorite-new-yorker-cartoons-ever/
Jensen Comment
Mankoff missed my favorite cartoon. It shows the CEO standing in front of a
chart that shows profits crashing into negative territory. The CEO then turns to
a wimpy chief accountant and declares:
"Digbe, this company will not survive unless you
can come up with an accounting miracle."
Seems like Enron, Worldcom, and Lehman Brothers turned to their accountants
who suggest such "miracles" as SPE creative accounting (Enron accountants),
capitalizing expenses (Worldcom accountants) and repo sales gimmicks (Lehman
Bros. accountants). In these instances the miracles flopped.
Some Harvard Business Review Cartoons ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2013/06/strategic_humor_cartoons_from.html
Current New Yorker Cartoons ---
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons
For virtually every product available for sale on Amazon.com, former buyers
are asked to review the product. Most reviews are published on the same page as
the product description. I seldom find glowing reviews helpful, because I'm
suspicious that vendors plant such reviews. However, the negative reviews are
often very informative and occasionally even humorous ---
http://www.amazon.com/
"Modern Masterpieces of Comedic Genius: The Art of the Humorous Amazon
Review," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, May 20, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/20/arthur-koestler-creativity-bisociation/
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu