This Week I Feature Set 3 of Our Favorite Summertime Flowers
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set03/2013Set03.htm
 

Tidbits on August 29, 2013
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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

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

Tree Tunnels --- http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/magnificent-tree-tunnels

Historic New England --- http://www.historicnewengland.org/

Black Locust ---
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/rops1.htm

Trees in New England --- Click Here
http://www.google.ca/search?q="Trees+in+New+England"&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=BS_HUYmzOtKs4AOGmICYBw&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1152&bih=700

The New England Forest ---
http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/resource_bulletins/pdfs/scanned/OCR/ne_rb124.pdf

An Animated History of the Tulip ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/an_animated_history_of_the_tulip.html

USDA: The People's Garden --- http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=PEOPLES_GARDEN

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

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

Tree Tunnels --- http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/magnificent-tree-tunnels

Gudvangen, Norway --- Click Here
http://www.google.ca/search?q="Gudvangen"&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=6izdUZndCZK54APA9IDoAw&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=497

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

Tidbits on June 29, 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 

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

Watch Family Planning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Production, Starring Donald Duck ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/family-planning-walt-disneys-1967-sex-ed-production.html

An Animated History of Physics Introduces the Discoveries of Galileo, Newton, Maxwell & Einstein --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/an-animated-history-of-physics-introduces-the-discoveries-of-galileo-newton-maxwell-einstein.html

Birds of Paradise Project --- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=REP4S0uqEOc

a. this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTR21os8gTA
 

b. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYkpwyKEhY
 

c. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgSpqOFj1Ta4xHFM4kKR4VTW8CJmPNNNA

Romancing the Wind (Kites) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=nr9KrqN_lIg

Explore: Exploratorium --- http://www.exploratorium.edu/explore 

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

Eric Clapton’s Favorite Guitar Solo: Duane Allman on Wilson Pickett’s 1968 Cover of the Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/eric-claptons-favorite-guitar-solo.html

Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock: Historic Concert Captured on Film --- Click Here
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenCulture/~3/yFWeLrrx2Wc/jimi-hendrix-live-at-woodstock-historic-concert-captured-on-film.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Anna Netrebko, 'Verdi' --- http://www.npr.org/2013/08/11/209887638/first-listen-anna-netrebko-verdi

The Singing Nuns Of Ann Arbor --- http://www.npr.org/2013/08/13/211639502/life-as-prayer-the-singing-nuns-of-ann-arbor

ALSACE Danse traditionnelle --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtzT7xDXPJY

British Library: Sound Maps --- http://sounds.bl.uk/sound-maps/

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

Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Re-Created by Astronomer with 100 Hubble Space Telescope Images --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/van-goghs-starry-night-re-created-by-astronomer-with-100-hubble-space-telescope-images.html

City of Chicago: Public Art Collection ---
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/public_art_collection.html

The Art Institute of Chicago: Education: Online Resources [Quick Time] ---
http://www.artic.edu/aic/visitor_info/podcasts/video/education_videos/

Louise Nevelson Papers (art photography) --- http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/louise-nevelson-papers-9093

Very, very interesting maps of things I did not know (or veryify) ---
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/

The Top 50 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2013 ---
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/07/top-50-pictures-of-the-day-for-2013/

The Amazing Typewriter Art of Paul Smith ---
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/amazing-typewriter-art.shtml

A Democracy of Images --- http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/photographs/

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

Virginia Tech: Digitized Rare Books --- http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/digital_books/index.html

From the Smithsonian
Wonder Books: Rare Books on Early Museums http://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/wonderbound/ 

Vladimir Nabokov Creates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/vladimir-nabokov-creates-a-hand-drawn-map-of-james-joyces-ulysses.html

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladislas Starevich’s Animation of Goethe’s Great German Folktale (1937) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/the-tale-of-the-fox.html

Virginia Woolf’s Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/virginia-woolfs-handwritten-suicide-note.html

"Virginia Woolf: Her Voice Recaptured --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2010/02/virginia_woolf_her_voice_recaptured.html

Where to Find Elmore Leonard Walk into any library and ask for directions to the fiction section," by Bob Greene, The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579026530814061404.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

As soon as I heard that Elmore Leonard had died this week, I went to visit him.

I knew right where to go.

I was in a small Midwestern town, and I walked to the public library on Main Street.

I asked for directions to the fiction stacks. There he was—a shelf-and-a-half of him. All the novels, some dust jackets bright, most faded and worn from years of being checked out. Titles: "The Big Bounce," "Bandits," "Freaky Deaky," "Escape from Five Shadows," "Get Shorty," "Touch," "Cuba Libre" and more. This is where he lives.

Leonard was 87 when he died Tuesday in Michigan. The obituaries noted that he wrote 45 novels, that he started out writing Westerns, and that the movies based on his work—including "Hombre," "Get Shorty," "Jackie Brown," "Be Cool" and "3:10 to Yuma"—had made him financially secure.

But what mattered to him was the craft.

"I write in longhand. I work from 9:30 in the morning until 6 o'clock at night," he told me the first time we talked, more than 25 years ago. "What I'll do is write the stuff out in longhand, and then cross out, and then write some more. I'll cross out more than I keep. It gets pretty messy—I can barely read the pages when I'm done.

"I try to begin a chapter with something going on. I very rarely start a chapter with description, or with what the weather's doing, or something like that. I jump right in," he said.

In the quiet of the public library, I pulled one of his books from the shelf. It was called "The Hot Kid." It began:

"Carlos Webster was fifteen the day he witnessed the robbery and killing at Deering's drugstore. This was in the fall of 1921 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma."

Leonard had told me: "When I get into the writing, I have a pretty good idea of who the main characters will be. But I still don't know exactly how the story will work. And something happens to me in almost every book: A character that, in my mind, may have been fairly minor turns into a major character. I hear him talking, and I realize: This guy is interesting."

Because he was 59 years old before he became really famous—he had written more than 20 books before "Glitz," in 1985, became his first No. 1 best seller—he seemed to understand that the words, the sound and precision of them, were all that was worth worrying about.

He was protective of them. Once I was in the Fisher Building in Detroit with him, and someone came up and asked him what his next book was going to be called.

"Killshot one word," Leonard told the man, just like that, no pause.

The book was not going to be called "Killshot One Word," of course. It was going to be called "Killshot." But he wanted to be absolutely clear. It was impossible for Leonard not to be meticulous, even in casual conversation with a stranger.

In the library there was one book on the shelf that was a little fatter than the others. It had a red jacket. I knew what it was.

In 1986, Leonard's publisher planned to put three novels he had written into a single edition to be titled "Double Dutch Treat," a play on Leonard's nickname, Dutch. I received a call: Mr. Leonard, the voice on the phone was saying, wondered if I would be willing to write the introduction. It was like somehow hearing that Frank Sinatra wondered if you would consider writing the liner notes for his next album.

Now, on the day Dutch Leonard died, I pulled "Double Dutch Treat" from the shelf to see what I had said:

"Let me put it this way: given the chance to see the most popular movie of the season, watch the most popular television show of the season, or read an Elmore Leonard novel that I know absolutely nothing about in advance, I'll go with the Leonard novel every time. He's just that much fun."

Continued in article

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 August 29, 2013
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2013/TidbitsQuotations082913.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

The Almanac of Higher Education 2013-14 from the Chronicle of Higher Education ---
https://www.chronicle-store.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ID=80261&WG=350

Digital Edition $6.95

Print Edition

$19.00

How to Mislead With Statistics

The Fastest Growing Jobs in the USA --- Click Here
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/08/27/the-10-fastest-growing-jobs-in-america/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AUG272013A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Jensen Comment
Students should not flock to some of those careers just because the made to Top 10 in growth rates. One has to simply look at the total employed in a given career. For example, there are only 25,000 people employed as "Music Directors and Composers" and the variance in income is quite high. This is not really a very viable career choice in terms of opportunity except for students with exceptional talent.. Similarly, there are only 32,000 employed as "Skin Care Specialists"  with median annual pay of $28,640. I don't think I would recommend this as  career.

On the other hand there are nearly a million Personal Care Aides. Now we're talking about opportunity for a job but the median annual salary is only $19,910 plus food stamps. And I think the work is often vary difficult and frustrating when dealing with people who need a lot of help and don't really much appreciate their helpers.

Some of the fastest growing jobs are also dead end jobs with nowhere to advance without starting over.

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

ACT Test --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_%28test%29

...
The ACT is generally regarded as being composed of somewhat easier questions (versus the SAT), but the time allotted to complete each section increases the overall difficulty (equalizing it to the SAT).

What is the best way to put this for ACT admissions testing outcomes?
26% of students who took the ACT are fully "college ready."
74% of students who took the ACT are not fully "college ready."

"A Quarter of High-School Grads Who Took ACT Are Found College-Ready," by Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 21, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/a-quarter-of-high-school-graduates-who-took-the-act-met-its-college-readiness-standards/36157

"U.S. Department of Education Wants to Eliminate '2% Rule'," by Leila Meyer,  T.H.E. Journal, August 26, 2013 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/08/26/u.s.-department-of-education-wants-to-eliminate-2-rule.aspx?=THENU

The United States Department of Education (ED) has proposed new regulations that would eliminate the "2 percent rule," which allows some students with disabilities to be assessed using alternate assessments aligned to modified academic achievement standards (AA-MAAS).

The current regulations allows states to develop alternate assessments for up to 2 percent of students in the grades assessed using AA-MAAS. However, according to ED, students with disabilities can make academic progress when they receive appropriate support and instruction, and that by making general assessments accessible to those students, with support, they can achieve a higher level of success.

"We have to expect the very best from our students and tell the truth about student performance, to prepare them for college and career," said Arne Duncan United States secretary of education, in a prepared statement. "That means no longer allowing the achievement of students with disabilities to be measured by these alternate assessments aligned to modified achievement standards. This prevents these students from reaching their full potential, and prevents our country from benefitting from that potential."

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on innovations for teaching disabled students ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

"5 Ways Business School Can Ruin Your Life," by Exeter Jones, Business Insider, July 1, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/5-ways-business-school-ruins-your-life-2013-7

Jensen Comment
I always remember one of Bob Anthony's Harvard Cases (in his famous managerial accounting textbook) where a newly-minted MBA proposes a naive application of CVP analysis to increase operating margins. He failed to comprehend the basic assumptions of the linear model that he superficially learned in an accounting course. His older and wiser boss clued him in on how so much of what in learned in college courses more often than not do not fit realities of the world of business.

Always challenge underlying assumptions.

"'Zombies in the Academy'," by Serena Golden, Inside Higher Ed, August 12, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/12/new-book-examines-higher-education-through-lens-zombie-apocalypse

"Early Retirement Incentives and Student Achievement," published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
"An Exit Strategy for Bad Teachers," The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323608504579025122140081690.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

Age and experience have much to recommend them over youth and enthusiasm but the advantages don't always show up in teaching. That's the finding of a new study, "Early Retirement Incentives and Student Achievement," published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

According to Cornell University economists Maria Fitzpatrick and Michael Lovenheim, when young, inexperienced teachers replaced older, more experienced faculty in Illinois, the newcomers did as well or better at getting students to learn.

The study doesn't discount the value of seasoned, motivated teachers. It does indicate that teachers going through the motions to qualify for a pension can be a drag on student achievement. The study is more evidence that students do better when teachers are graded on performance, not seniority.

Illinois uses a combination of age and years on the job to calculate when a teacher may retire with full benefits. In the 1992-93 school year and again in 1993-94, the state offered teachers over age 50 the option of "buying" additional years of age and service. By paying a one-time fee, experienced teachers could boost their numbers and retire early. The offer was generous, the authors report, and Illinois public schools lost 10% of their teachers over two years "with experienced teachers making up the vast majority of the exits."

Reducing the experienced-teacher roster generated salary savings to local school districts, but pension costs rose so Illinois taxpayers didn't save money. Yet the politicians seem to have accidentally helped the students by clearing out the deadwood. The authors report that "the median retiring teacher had 27 years of experience and was replaced by a teacher with less than 3 years of experience."

That shift to less experienced teachers "did not reduce test scores and instead led to increased student achievement in most cases," the authors find. Even better, there is "suggestive evidence that [the early retirement program] had larger positive effects in more disadvantaged schools." In reading, for example, students in poor schools had better gains in test scores after the program relative to their wealthier counterparts.

The authors say that in poor schools it is possible that fewer productive teachers retired and that replacements may have had "more previous experience, rather than being novices." But the key finding concerns those who leave: "Teachers who remain in poorer schools at the end of their careers are lower-performing than the teachers who replace them." The authors also estimate that to achieve similar improvements in test scores by reducing class size would cost, on average, $96 more per student than the net cost of $51 per student of the early retirement initiative.

Experienced teachers who kept teaching, as the authors delicately put it, "are those with stronger labor force attachment." In other words, they care more about educating the next generation than about their pension.

 

"Early Retirement Incentives and Student Achievement"
by Maria D. Fitzpatrick, Michael F. Lovenheim
NBER Working Paper No. 19281 Issued in August 2013
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19281

Early retirement incentives (ERIs) are increasingly prevalent in education as districts seek to close budget gaps by replacing expensive experienced teachers with lower-cost newer teachers. Combined with the aging of the teacher workforce, these ERIs are likely to change the composition of teachers dramatically in the coming years. We use exogenous variation from an ERI program in Illinois in the mid-1990s to provide the first evidence in the literature of the effects of large-scale teacher retirements on student achievement. We find the program did not reduce test scores; likely, it increased them, with positive effects most pronounced in lower-SES schools.

Posted by out-in-the-pasture former accounting professor Bob Jensen
 

Giving Research Findings Away for Free When Submitting Journal Articles and then Having to Buy It Back from the Publishers
The university is forced to give away information for free and then to buy it back at a huge markup," he said. "The whole thing is just completely screwed up. The only alternative the university has is to strike back at what Nature (the journal) really values.
Publish or perish? Not at these prices, UC says," by Matt Krupnick, Contra Costa Times, June 10, 2010 ---
http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_15270766?nclick_check=1

The Open Access to Research Articles Act of Illinois
"Open Access Could Come to Illinois Universities," Center for Digital Education, August 15, 2013 ---
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Open-Access-Could-Come-to-Illinois-Universities.html

A new state law will give open access to the research conducted at public universities in Illinois.

The Open Access to Research Articles Act requires each public university to set up a task force by Jan. 1, 2014, that will consider how to meet open access goals. Traditionally, faculty research is not available publically, but is published in scholarly academic journals that charge subscription fees.

But Illinois universities will now consider making their research available at no charge online. They'll also look at how other universities and the federal government are handling open access. The news comes on the heels of the University of California's recent announcement that its faculty adopted an open access policy.

The Illinois legislation went through significant changes since it was introduced in February. Initially, the language required universities to develop an open access policy within 12 months. But it later scratched the mandatory policy and left it up to university task forces to come up with their own ideas.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This law could adversely affect such accounting research journals as JAR, JAE, AOS, and many others. I say "adversely" in the sense that if those journals refuse open access, accounting researchers in Illinois may no longer submit articles to those journals. Of course those journals are incresingly providing some open access on a limited basis. Perhaps open access will also be extended to articles having one or more authors from Illinois.

This law could eventually restrain campus libraries from subscribing to closed-access research journals.

Bob Jensen's threads on how Commercial Scholarly Journals and Oligopoly Publishers Are Ripping Off Libraries, and Scholars, Authors, and Students ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals

"Law School Applicants From Top Colleges Plunge 26%," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, August 20, 2013 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2013/08/law-school-applicants.html

The Law School Bubble Bursts
"Pop Goes the Law," by Steven J. Harper, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, March 11, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Pop-Goes-the-Law/137717/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on the woes of law schools and law employment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools

I recall that Tony Catanach was at a loss when he was considering a new blogging platform for The Grumpy Old Accountants blog. Our AECM advice was sort of ad hoc. The following article may have been of more help.

The 15 best blogging and publishing platforms on the Internet today. Which one is for you?
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/08/16/best-blogging-services/

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

LinkedIn Rolls Out Pages for Universities ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/linkedin-rolls-out-pages-for-universities.html

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

Welcome to the Beloit College Mindset List for the entering class of 2017 ---
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/

Darwin Awards and Fem Fatales ---
http://www.darwinawards.com/

"The Second Digital Generation," Shannon Bohle, Scilogs, August 15, 2013 ---
http://www.scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries/the-second-digital-generation/

Jensen Comment
The second digital generation may also change the world of accounting and finance. Instead of just becoming experts on the use of software available in the market they may be more active in in writing their own apps and invented ways of dealing with financial data. The "Second Digital Generation" will be writing software as well as using software.

Tech News and Updates --- http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/tech/tech-news/tech-news-and-updates

An Anecdote:  Once Upon a Time When Live Lectures Were Wasted Time on the Stanford University Campus

Live synchronous lectures are often wastes of time for students, especially when the subject matter is very technical with precise right and wrong answers. Fast-learning students who prepared before class daydream because they already know the lecture material. Slow-learners who are not prepared for class daydream because the lecture is over their heads. They learn asynchronously after class by memorizing the textbook and course handouts. Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Sometimes, however, synchronous live classes are not wastes of time for students, especially Socratic-method classes on rhetorical issues having no precise right and wrong answers such as Socratic questions concerning President Obama's plan for the future of higher education in the USA. Of course some might argue that Socratic-method classes are not really lectures, but I will ignore this issue for the moment because even synchronous Socratic-method courses captured on video can be studied asynchronously over and over after class.

The Purpose of This Tidbit
The purpose of this tidbit is to review an anecdote embedded in a plenary session by Jeffry Selingo at the August 2013 Annual Meetings of the American Accounting Association (AAA) in Anaheim.  I did not attend those meetings, but I was able to view Selingo's presentation on the wonderful and very professional video at
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/36ef3fc3f3
Only AAA members may view this video. However, I suspect the anecdote in question is probably reported in Mr. Selingo's new book:
College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students 
Jeffrey Salingo is a full-time Editor with the Chronicle of Higher Education

An Anecdote Embedded in the Presentation of Jeffrey Selingo

1. Once upon a time two gifted professors in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University dreamed up the idea that they would video each lecture in the course they normally deliver live to about 300 students each year on campus. The idea was then to provide these videos freely to the world as a Web course. The subject matter in the course was Artificial Intelligence.
    
2. When Stanford administrators got wind of this idea they had some serious discussions with these two professors concerning presenting an entire course free to the world, a course that Stanford students pay a high price for to attend live on campus. The two professors were eventually given the green light to offer this Web course provided there were no certificates of completion, no examinations or grading, and no transcript credit given to students who completed the Web course. The most that students who completed the course could get was a letter of congratulations for completing the Web course.
    
3. The Birth of the MOOC
   Given some publicity about the course, especially in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, the two professors anticipated about 1,000 students (mostly curiosity seekers) would sign up for the Web course. They received a shock when over 160,000 students from over 100 nations signed up for the Web course. This was the birth of MOOC courses that now are available free on over 1,000 specialized topics from mostly highly prestigious universities around the world.
   
   MOOC stands for a "Massive Open Online Course." By definition a MOOC course must be free of charge without any restrictions on who can take the Web course. Some MOOC providers now charge a small amount for students who additionally want an official certificate of attendance. Students may sometimes, but not always, elect to pay considerably more to take written or oral competency examinations of the subject matter for transcript credit. However, institutions vary as to what if any MOOC credits they will accept for degree programs. MOOC credits have a long way to go before being accepted by universities other than universities who are delivering the MOOC credits. They are gaining ground since some highly respected universiteis like the University of Wisconsin and the University of Akron are now giving competency-based examinations and course credits to students who have not taken any particular courses.
    
4. Only about 35,000 students completed Stanford's  MOOC course which is a miserable completion rate that is common in nearly all MOOC courses. Virtually all MOOC courses to date have been intense and difficult to master. Curiosity seekers soon discover that to really focus on a MOOC course it will take a lot of time and concentrated self-study. Richard Campbell reported that he signed up for a MOOC and soon thereafter dropped out. He reported that learning from that MOOC was like drinking from a high-pressure fire hose. Others, even professors, who finished taking the courses reported being totally exhausted.
    
5. For examples of hundreds of MOOC courses now available on the Web from prestigious universities and instructions on how to sign up, go to
   http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
    
6. Most MOOC courses are not typical of smaller-sized online education courses that are seldom free (i.e., online but not open-shared) and have much more frequent and often intense communications between an instructor and each of the students in the online class. Really dedicated and highly professional distance education teachers like tax professor Amy Dunbar at the University of Connecticut make themselves available to their online students ten hours a day via instant messaging ---
   http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm  
   Secondly, most distance education courses these days have student-to-student communications, chat rooms, and even team projects. There have been some experimental MOOC courses where teams of students have been formed to monitor the progress of each team member, but these are still very experimental at this point in time in the evolution of MOOCs.
    
7. The first really interesting part of this anecdote about the first MOOC course is that about 300 students taking the course live for credit on Stanford's campus were given the option of attending all live classes or viewing the MOOC videos of those classes or both. Eventually, about 90% of those 300 students stopped attending the live classes. Of course they still had to take the examinations and do whatever else was required for transcript grades.
    
8. The second really interesting part of this anecdote is that all 300 students that term taking the course for grades did significantly better when the MOOC choice was available to them --- better relative to prior semesters when the course was taught without having a MOOC option.
    
9. It is not clear that the course videos of live classes would have been as good if there were no live students in the classroom. Although 90% of the students eventually stopped attending class, it's important to note that the instructors still faced live students face-to-face in every class. They could ask questions and have some interactive feedback. The videos may not have been as good if the professors faced totally empty classrooms. The same thing happens with live television performers like Johnny Carson who performed better with live audiences

Jensen Comment
This Stanford anecdote performance outcome is consistent with the much more formalized SCALE experiments that were conducted years ago for 30 undergraduate courses across five years at the University of Illinois. In that experiment resident full-time students were divided between those that took only live sections versus those that took online sections from the same instructors using the same assignments and examinations in those sections of each course. In the SCALE experiments there was a higher proportion of A-grade outcomes in the online sections. More C students tended to become B students in the online sections. Unmotivated D and F students tended to be poor students whether onsite or online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

One has to be very cautious when making extrapolations from either the Stanford MOOC anecdote or the SCALE experiments. The improvements in learning due to online teaching in the SCALE experiments varied by course. Also the professors teaching those courses tended to be very enthused about the potential of online learning at a time when there was very little online learning in the world. It may well be that these professors had more intense communications with their online students than is normally the case these days for distance education courses in general. Instant messaging had not yet been invented for the SCALE experiments such that most of the online communication was via regular email. Course instructors had to spend a lot of time adapting onsite learning materials for online learning.

The improvements in learning in the above Stanford anecdote are harder to explain.
Stanford's first Artificial Intelligence online MOOC was not a distance education course with communications between the professors and their online students. In general, MOOC courses are no tests of what we think of as good distance education courses because MOOC courses have so many more students making such communications impractical. Remember the first letter in the MOOC acronym stands for "Massive."

One thing about a MOOC video is that it can be repeated over and over and over until slower learning students master the technical explanations in the video. This appears to be the main comparative advantage in the 2,000+ technical video modules available from the Khan Academy. This is also a comparative advantage in MOOC courses since the quality videos can be repeated over and over and over 24/7.

We may also question how well the 35,000 students who completed Stanford's MOOC Artificial Intelligence course would've performed on competency-based examinations. In doing so we should probably factor out those online "students" who were also themselves artificial intelligence experts (e.g., computer science professors) who were taking the MOOC simply out of curiosity on how this subject matter is taught at Stanford. We would expect those experts to pass a competency-based examination before they took this MOOC course.

Among the remaining students who completed the course, I surmise that over 90% would've failed the course if they took the same competency-based examinations as the 300 on-campus students who received grades for the course on their transcripts. For most students the grade on a transcript is the primary motivator for time and sweat devoted to a course. We would expect passage rates to increase if students intended to take competency-based examinations (oral or written) and understood what was to be required in terms of learning in the MOOC course.

The Unsolved Mystery of the Stanford MOOC Anecdote
The unsolved mystery of this anecdote is why the 300 students on campus who were taking this Artificial Intelligence course for a grade on a transcript tended to do better when the MOOC option was available versus when the only option was to attend live lectures. Those that dropped out of live classes and viewed the MOOC classes could have done worse --- which many educators would've expected when students can no longer ask their questions in a live class..

Keep in mind that this is only the outcome for one course in one semester. My hunch, however, is that it would be the same for virtually all live courses where a MOOC option is also made available on a voluntary basis. I assume that the synchronous in-class experience in each MOOC course can be viewed over and over and over asynchronously on video.

By the way, individual top students in a course tend to rank the same under order under various pedagogy alternatives for that course. This became known as the famous "No-Significant-Differences Hypothesis" in the literature of teaching and learning for motivated students ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#AssessmentIssues
I think pedagogy matters more to students with low motivation and/or learning disorders.

Sometimes traditionalist educators who have not studied the "No-Significant-Differences Hypothesis" research tend to make statements inconsistent with that research --- especially when putting down online education. Nobody argues that onsite education, especially among students who live and learn on campus, is not usually better than online education, especially in some performance courses like music, speech, and theater. But much of the advantages of onsite education comes from the learning and maturing that takes place on campus outside the classrooms.

In his plenary address, Jeffry Selingo points out that less than 20% of USA higher education students live and learn on campus. For them the costs of this on-campus living and learning keeps outpacing inflation. And the living in learning experience varies greatly. Living and learning at Trinity University where nearly all students live on campus and never have a course with more than 40 students is entirely different than living and learning at the University of Texas where one dormitory complex (Jestor Hall) is so huge it has two zip codes and students frequently sit in classrooms holding more than 500 students.

I don't think President Obama is focusing on the 20% nearly as much as he's focusing on the 80% who need lower cost and higher quality education alternatives. He wants that 80% to have access to the best teachers in the world when possible. His main problem lies in how to motivate that 80% to want to learn (even from the world's best subject matter experts) and to bring those least prepared for college up to speed. The present model for the 80% in higher education is pretty much a failure. Our K-12 schools vary more, but for most of the urban K-12 schools and it's pretty much a gangland horror story.

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

The University of Texas Gives Birth to the SMOC Based Upon Online Extensions Enormous Lecture Sections in Basic Psychology
Unlike a MOOC this is not a free non-credit course --- currently costing $550 online for three credits and
Enrollment is capped at 10,000 students per course

Anyone can enroll in the course -- as long as they can foot the $550 registration fee and can make themselves available at 6 p.m. central standard time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Registration is handled online at a separate site, and students who finish the course earn three transferable credit hours. In comparison, full-time resident students (taking the course live on campus) pay $2,059 (out-of-state students pay $7,137) for three credit hours in the College of Liberal Arts, but there is no out-of-state premium charged for the SMOC.

"Don't Call It a MOOC," by Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed, August 27, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/27/ut-austin-psychology-professors-prepare-worlds-first-synchronous-massive-online 

Two University of Texas at Austin psychology professors will Thursday night take the stage for the fall semester’s first session of Introduction to Psychology. Their audience will consist of a production crew and their equipment. In their years of working together, the professors’ research has shown their students benefit from computer-based learning to the point where they don’t even need to be physically present in the classroom.

Just don’t call it a MOOC. The university styles the class as the world’s first synchronous massive online course, or SMOC (pronounced “smock”), where the professors broadcast their lectures live to the about 1,500 students enrolled.

“I think we were influenced predominantly by this mix of Jon Stewart and 'The View' or Jay Leno,” said James W. Pennebaker, chair of the department of psychology at UT-Austin.

The course is the result of almost a decade of research into how students learn. After teaching separate 500-student sections of the introductory course, Pennebaker and fellow psychology professor Samuel Gosling decided to schedule the sections back-to-back. The professors then began experimenting with adaptive learning, requiring students bring a laptop to class so they could take multiple-choice tests and receive instant feedback. Gosling and Pennebaker then built group chats that randomly paired five or six students together for in-class discussions. Last year, they moved one of the two sections of the course online. And with this change, the class will be taught exclusively online.

"More and more, we have been integrating a sort of research element,” Gosling said. “Everything the students do, we learn about, and we learn about it so we can find out what works. They’re guinea pigs and we’re guinea pigs.”

As more and more of the coursework continued to shift toward digital, the data showed a clear trend: Not only were students in the online section performing the equivalent of half a letter grade better than those physically in attendance, but taking the class online also slashed the achievement gap between upper, middle and lower-middle class students in half, from about one letter grade to less than half of a letter grade.

“We are changing the way students are approaching the class and the way they study,” Pennebaker said.

Anyone can enroll in the course -- as long as they can foot the $550 registration fee and can make themselves available at 6 p.m. central standard time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Registration is handled online at a separate site, and students who finish the course earn three transferable credit hours. In comparison, full-time resident students pay $2,059 (out-of-state students pay $7,137) for three credit hours in the College of Liberal Arts, but there is no out-of-state premium charged for the SMOC.

Goslin and Pennebaker said they have set an upper limit of 10,000 students, but managing a course of this size “shakes a big bureaucracy to its knees,” Pennebaker said. Between lecturers, audiovisual professionals, teacher’s assistants, online mentors and programmers, the number of people associated with teaching one class has ballooned to more than 125.

“No human can do more than one of these a year,” Pennebaker said. “It has been the hardest I’ve ever worked in my entire life.”

In that sense, running the course as a traditional MOOC would be more efficient, but Gosling said, “I think it wouldn’t be this class.” As the two professors prepared for what Gosling called “the largest leap we’ve taken,” they agreed to sacrifice some of that efficiency to maintain some elements of a classroom setting.

“The cons of a MOOC is that you take away a sense of intimacy, a sense of community, a sense of a simultaneous, synchronous experience,” Gosling said.

To ensure that students don’t treat the class as a static broadcast, the class will be split into smaller pods monitored by former students, who essentially work as online TAs. The pods will remain static throughout the semester, giving students a core group of classmates to chat with during the lectures. And should a student be confused about the content of a lecture, Pennebaker said, “a blue light comes on and we’ll say, ‘We have a question out there in T.V. land.’ ”

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
It is not yet clear how SMOCs will be viewed by President Obama, but given their cheap price for credits from a prestigious university it appears that he will lavish praise on universities that offer SMOCs for credit in comparison with universities that offer only MOOCs for non-credit or MOOCs for credit from for-profit corporations that offer competency-based examinations to accompany MOOC courses.

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

Purportedly, President Obama favors a Jewish heritage college/university that does not even have an accounting courses, although it does have some business and finance (Israeli universities in general do not offer accounting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touro_College
"These 11 Colleges Just Hit The Jackpot In Obama's New Education Plan," by Walter Hickey, Business Insider, August 23, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/colleges-that-will-benefit-form-obamas-education-plan-2013-8

Jensen Caution
Don't treat distance education courses and MOOC courses as synonyms. President Obama is suggesting priority for distance education courses and online degree programs that are neither free nor "massive" in size. Smaller distance education courses can have intense communications between students and an instructor plus intense communications between students in a course (including team projects). Grading in these distance education courses is very similar to onsite course grading.

MOOCs present an entire new dimension to student communications and grading. I don't think President Obama was thinking in terms of MOOCs in his latest proposal. However, MOOCs are on the horizon, especially for very specialized courses that colleges cannot afford to teach on campus. Credit in such courses may be given on the basis of competency testing.

"Obama Proposals for Colleges Highlight Online Courses," by Megan O'Neil, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 22, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/obama-proposals-for-colleges-highlight-online-courses/45595?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Developing online classes and other nontraditional teaching approaches could earn colleges money under new federal financing priorities proposed on Thursday by President Obama.

More colleges should be encouraged “to embrace innovative new ways to prepare our students for a 21st-century economy and maintain a high level of quality without breaking the bank,” the president said in a speech at the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York.

The financial rewards for such innovation would be part of a larger retooling of financing priorities, Mr. Obama said. Under his proposal, the Department of Education would have two years to create a college-rating system to help students and their parents determine the value of an institution. Criteria would include graduation rates, graduates’ competitiveness in the work force, and their debt load upon graduation, among others.

As one example of innovation in online learning that meets students’ needs, Mr. Obama cited an online master’s program in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The program will make its debut in January and cost a fraction of a traditional on-campus degree.

Continued in article

A Ranking of Online MBA  Programs from AACSB-accredited universities (there are no such online accounting doctoral programs) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm#MBA

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

"Obama Vows Action on College Costs, but Will It Work?" by Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 21, 2013 --- |
http://chronicle.com/article/Obama-Vows-Action-on-College/141203/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en 

In a speech at Knox College last month, President Obama said he would "shake up higher education" with an "aggressive strategy" aimed at making college more affordable.

On Thursday, the president embarks on a two-state, three-campus tour where he'll lay out what he has in mind. In a letter sent to his supporters this week, he promises "real reforms that would bring lasting change."

"Just tinkering around the edges won't be enough," he says in the letter. "To create a better bargain for the middle class, we have to fundamentally rethink about how higher education is paid for in this country."

The plan, he continues, "won't be popular with everyone—including some who've made higher education their business—but it's past time that more of our colleges work better for the students they exist to serve."

But it's hard to see how the president will tackle two of the root causes of tuition growth: labor costs and state budget cuts. Despite productivity gains, and a move toward self-guided, "competency-based" learning, higher-education remains an industry that's highly dependent on skilled labor. At the same time, many states have slashed their spending on higher-education, forcing public colleges to raise tuition to cover costs.

Taking Colleges to Task

Over the past year-and-a-half, Mr. Obama has become a frequent critic of colleges, taking them to task over rising tuition and warning that the government won't continue to pour money into an "undisciplined system." He has threatened to withhold some federal aid from colleges that fail to hold down tuition growth, and has proposed grants for states and colleges that adopt cost-saving measures.

So far, those ideas have fallen flat, largely because of federal budget constraints. The president has had better luck increasing aid to students and making debt more manageable, through expanded income-based repayment options and lower interest rates on student loans.

His administration has also made information about college costs and student debt more transparent, through the use of an online College Scorecard and a standardized financial-aid award letter, or "shopping sheet."

This week's college tour is the latest in a string of campaign-style events the White House is using to promote its economic policies in the run-up to debates in Congress over the federal budget and the debt ceiling. It includes stops on Thursday and Friday at two State University of New York campuses—the University at Buffalo and Binghamton University—and at Lackawanna College, in Scranton, Pa.

Details of the president's proposals aren't yet available, but some observers expect Mr. Obama to recycle a plan that would tie some money from the campus-based aid programs to efforts to rein in tuition growth, and to repeat his call for a "Race to the Top"-style grant program for colleges and states that take steps to control costs.

He might also propose an expansion of his signature Pay-as-You-Earn student-loan repayment plan, or declare use of the financial-aid shopping sheet mandatory for all colleges.

To address state budget cuts, he might propose requiring states to sustain their spending on higher education to receive certain federal funds. But past maintenance-of-effort provisions haven't proven particularly effective, and some members of Congress oppose their expansion. Tackling labor costs would be even trickier.

"When it comes down to it, there's not all that much the president can do, besides using the bully pulpit" to exhort states and colleges to do more, said Daniel T. Madzelan, a longtime Education Department official who retired last year. "It just comes down to the price of labor."

From Benefactor to Critic

During his first years in office, President Obama focused on expanding student aid, pushing for increases in the maximum Pell Grant and the creation of a more generous tuition tax credit. Those changes helped make college more affordable for current students, but they didn't do anything to slow tuition growth, and skeptics say they may have even fueled it.

In 2010, the administration turned its attention to for-profit colleges, proposing to cut off federal student aid to institutions where borrowers struggle to repay their debt. The resulting "gainful employment" regulation was overturned by the courts, and the Education Department is opening negotiations to rewrite the rule this fall.

But it was not until 2012, in his State of the Union address, that the president began to apply pressure to all of higher education, putting colleges "on notice" that his administration would not continue to subsidize "skyrocketing tuition."

"If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down," he said.

Three days later, in a speech at the University of Michigan, he issued a "blueprint for keeping college affordable," repeating proposals to shift more money from the campus-based student-aid programs to colleges that "do their fair share to keep tuition affordable," and create new incentive programs for colleges and states. The plan also included a call for the College Scorecard that would provide families with "essential information" for choosing a college, including data on institutions' costs, graduation rates, and the potential earnings of graduates.

He returned to those themes in his 2013 State of the Union address, calling on colleges to "do their part to keep costs down," and urging Congress to consider "affordability and value" when awarding federal aid. In a policy plan that accompanied the speech, he suggested incorporating measures of value and affordability into the existing accreditation system or establishing a new, alternative system of accreditation "based on performance and results."

Sidestepping Congress

Getting Congress to agree to any of those ideas will be difficult, given budget realities and competing priorities—not to mention the partisan gridlock currently gripping Washington. Recognizing this, Mr. Obama has vowed to use the powers of his office to get things done.

Continued in article

It's troubling enough to study one university's financial reports. It's a nightmare to compare universities.
"So You Want to Examine Your University's Financial Reports?"  by Charles Schwartz, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 7, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/So-You-Want-to-Examine-Your/130672/

Issues in Computing a College's Cost of Degrees Awarded and "Worth" of Professors ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#CostAccounting

"Treating Higher Ed's 'Cost Disease' With Supersize Online Courses," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Treating-Higher-Eds-Cost/130934/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"A Policy Wonk Brings Data on College Costs to the Table," by Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-College-Cost-Policy-Wonk/130662/

"KRUGMAN: Apple Might Be More Screwed Than Microsoft," by Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider, August 24, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/krugman-apple-might-be-more-screwed-than-microsoft-2013-8 

Also see
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/on-the-symmetry-between-microsoft-and-apple/?_r=1&

Limits of Human Knowledge (and calculating power)
The traveling salesman problem provides the mathematical basis for modern transportation systems ---
"Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems: Transportation optimization starts with math, but ends in understanding human behavior," by Tom Vanderbilt, Nautilus, August 2013 ---
http://nautil.us/issue/3/in-transit/unhappy-truckers-and-other-algorithmic-problems

 "Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal," by Bill Barrett, AccountingWeb, August 19, 2013 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/article/inside-mind-white-collar-criminal/222228

Jensen Comment
Bill has written a nice summary of what motivates white collar crime, although the article could use a few more footnotes and references to both case studies and empirical research that investigated white collar criminals.

The really hard part of predicting who will commit white collar crime arises when some of of the major factors leading to such crime are in place (e.g., personal debt, addictions, infidelity, feelings of resentment, etc.) are in place for those who commit white collar crime versus those who do not commit white collar crime on the job. The problem is the phrase "on the job." For some, fear of loss of a job just seems to outweigh all the other temptations to steal. For example, for every employee who wants a bigger house or better horses enough to steal from employers, there are more employees who really want bigger houses and better horses who will not steal for such things. There are some who steal millions for such things, especially a particular woman accountant from Dixon, Illinois who stole $30 million for faster horses and more money.

Whereas it's pretty easy to understand why an unemployed drug addict in dire need of a fix robs a convenience store, it's far more complicated to understand multimillionaires like CFO like Andy Fastow or hedge fund manager Bernie Madoff want to stack millions more to their piles of loot. In some instances it's more than the money, but I think more often than not its still primarily the money. But what stops a really greedy CFO or hedge fund manager from committing a crime while others become criminals like Andy and Bernie? I don't think we know enough to fine tune our predictions about who will and who won't steal.

White collar crime is often very complicated. For example, some shoplifters really want the merchandise they steal. But the wife of one of my low-income coaches in school was known in my small Iowa home town to be a shoplifter who really didn't much want the high-end clothing and fancies she stole. I lived in town during high school, and the coach and his wife also happened to be our neighbors. They were good neighbors, although unlike most of our other neighbors in this small town they had no children. Perhaps this shoplifter was a bit more bored without having a job and children to occupy her time. But certainly most spouses who have no jobs and children do not become shoplifters.

My coach visited each of retail merchants on Main Street and explained beforehand that his wife had a mental problem that nobody seemed to understand. He asked them to report to him rather than the police when they detected her shoplifting. He promised to return the merchandise and pay for any damages and inconvenience. Of course this is not an ideal solution since there could be and probably were instances where her shoplifting was not detected. It also presented a moral hazard in that an unscrupulous merchant might have taken advantage by extorting extra money from the coach as an incentive not to report her crime.

I suspect that in private my coach pleaded over and over with his wife to stop shoplifting. This couple eventually moved to Arizona, and I don't know how her "addiction to shoplifting" was eventually resolved.

What bothers me most about white collar crime is that more often than not it pays even when you know you are most likely going to get caught ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays
It can be very lucrative since sentences are relatively light for such crimes. Bernie Madoff's life sentence is an exceptionally rare, very rare event. But then he stole more than anybody else.

"CEO in fraud case needs more than seven days prison: court," by Jonathan Stempel, Reuters, February 15, 2013 ---
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-ceo-sentencing-decision-idUSBRE91E0W320130215

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.
Clarence Darrow --- Click Here  

Why white collar crime pays for Chief Financial Officer: 
Andy Fastow's fine for filing false Enron financial statements:  $30,000,000
Andy Fastow's stock sales benefiting from the false reports:     $33,675,004
Andy Fastow's estimated looting of Enron cash:                          $60,000,000
That averages out to winnings, after his court fines, of $10,612,500 per year for each of the six years he spent in prison.
You can read what others got at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#StockSales 
Nice work if you can get it:  Club Fed's not so bad if you earn $29,075 per day plus all the accrued interest over the past 15 years (includes years where he got away with it).

"Philosopher's Downfall, From Star to 'Ruin,' Divides a Discipline," by Seth Zweifler, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 1, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Prominent-Philosophers/140071/

Colin McGinn is towering above Miami Beach.

The prominent British philosopher, who was considered a star hire by the University of Miami several years ago, is sitting on the deck of his penthouse condo as waves crash onto the shore 43 floors below.

To an outsider, it looks like paradise. Mr. McGinn's home is in one of the most sought-after high-rises on Miami Beach's "Millionaire's Row"; his cabana, where he stores paddleboards and surfing gear, is larger than some city apartments.

But on the inside, he says, he's living in a state of "total ruin."

It has been six months since Mr. McGinn informed the university that he would resign at the end of the calendar year. His decision followed allegations that he had engaged in an inappropriate relationship (not sexual intercourse) with a graduate student. The student told the university that she felt uncomfortable after receiving a number of sexually explicit e-mail and text messages from Mr. McGinn. He denies any wrongdoing.

The ignominious conclusion to Mr. McGinn's career at Miami has fueled a continuing conversation about sexual harassment in philosophy departments. Stories of harassment of women have long plagued the discipline, in which fewer than one in five full-time professors are female. That imbalance, many say, has created a sense of isolation for women who have struggled to combat the sometimes clubby culture they say they have encountered.

. . .

The polarization of perceptions about whether the field of philosophy has a problem, and if so how big, are one reason an individual case like Mr. McGinn's may not lead to much change, some philosophers say.

Shay Welch, an assistant professor of philosophy at Spelman College, says the gap between Mr. McGinn's supporters and those who have spoken out against him is representative of a broader divide in philosophy.

Ultimately, Ms. Welch says, that divide—along with the current climate in philosophy—will not change until the numbers do. More than 80 percent of full-time faculty members in philosophy are male, according to 2003 data from the U.S. Education Department, the latest available. That compares with 60 percent for the professoriate as a whole. The 16.6 percent of full-time faculty in philosophy who are female constitutes the lowest proportion of women in any of the humanities.

Others, however, remain optimistic about the potentially precedent-setting effects of Mr. McGinn's resignation. Jennifer M. Saul, head of the philosophy department at the University of Sheffield, in England, says she has already heard from women in the field who, after learning of Mr. McGinn's case, are considering coming forward to report incidents of sexual harassment. She hopes that trend will continue. Ms. Saul started a blog in 2010 called What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy?, which has become a place where women in the field have gone to submit anonymous accounts of sexual harassment.

Mr. McGinn's high-profile status in the discipline, some believe, is part of what gives his case broader implications. "It goes to show that even a very powerful philosopher like Colin McGinn is not exempt from adverse professional effects," says Linda Martín Alcoff, a professor of philosophy at Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is president of the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division.

Ned Markosian, a professor of philosophy at Western Washington University, says he would not be surprised if Mr. McGinn's resignation emboldened administrators across the country to take a harder line on sexual-harassment allegations, even when those allegations involve prominent faculty members.

"This has the potential to be a real turning point for the profession," he says, "and already I think it's a sign that things are changing for the better."

Mr. McGinn though, is worried that his own future in philosophy may be changing for the worse. "I don't know if I'll get another job offer," he says. "I think the answer may be no."

For the self-proclaimed most enlightened person in the world, that much appears clear.

Jensen Comment
I'm really outside the loop when it comes to knowledge of "scandals" in college accounting departments these days. But younger people are probably outside the loop when it comes to "scandals" that arose decades ago where accounting professors divorced their spouses to marry graduate students, including at least four widely-known instances that I recall although I was not a faculty member in those universities. I later worked with some of those professors on AAA assignments and became friends with them.

There are other instances where unmarried accounting faculty eventually married graduate students. I don't know that any of these fell under what most of us considered "scandals" at the time. I also don't know there there were always pressures brought by the universities to force terminations, although I think in most instances that I'm aware of the faculty member voluntarily left the university with a new spouse. There were probably instances where faculty members remained in the same university, although I know of only one such case. We have a daughter who, after taking a graduate class from her microbiology professor, was eventually courted by that professor. Neither of them had been married previously, and they're still happily married after nearly 20 years. Her husband remains in the same university after all those years.

Unlike Colin McGinn's fears mentioned above, I don't think any professor departing accounting with a new graduate student spouse had troubles finding new faculty positions in top universities. Times may have changed these days in this regard. In Professor McGinn's recent ase the problem may have be that the graduate student did not consent to some of his somewhat unusual advances.

My point is that I think times have changed over the past few decades regarding what constitutes "sexual harassment." One constant in all of this is that grades for sexual favors and thesis supervision under similar circumstances were then and still are unethical violation of the policies in virtually all colleges. One variable that perhaps changed over time is greater administrative obsession these days with romance between faculty and consensual adult students. Non-adult students of course were and still are out of bounds in all instances.

The Cult of the Dead
"Philosophy's Loss," by John Kaag, Cronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, August 19. 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Philosophys-Loss/141119/?cid=cr

If you walk through Harvard Yard toward the library, you will notice a boxy building to your left, which houses the philosophy department. This is Emerson Hall, named after that bard of Concord whom no one in philosophy really cares about any more. If you tramp up to the second floor, you will find the department office and Robbins Library. Reginald Robbins was a student of the American philosophers William James and Josiah Royce. For the most part, today's mainstream philosophy (the type that is done at institutions like Harvard) has left those characters behind as well.

At the back of Robbins Library is a broom closet, which doubles as a little-used storage space.

Five years ago, on an evening spent avoiding the serious archival research that I was supposed to find fascinating, I decided to explore that closet. There I discovered a piece of research I actually cared about. At one point, someone had decided to frame it, but in subsequent years someone else had wedged the frame between the waste bin and the file cabinet. I pried it out far enough to see the words written on the bottom of the now-yellowing piece of paper inside the frame:

"Last written words of Josiah Royce ... "

If you don't know who Josiah Royce is, don't feel too bad. Many serious philosophers don't either. Cornel West is one of the few who care about him. Twenty years ago, West wrote a very good book called Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times, and in the chapter, "Pragmatism and the Tragic," he argues for the enduring importance of Royce's thought. Too often, American philosophy, and particularly pragmatism, glosses the strife and pain of everyday life, concentrating instead on the productive optimism that is supposed to define the American ethos. West suggests that Royce went against that grain, standing out in his adamant refusal to sugarcoat human existence.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This highlights the reason we should dig among campus broom closets and other obscure storage places where professors may intentionally or unintentionally leave words of wisdom for future generations.

Technology changes this somewhat. I was scanning through some digital files on by Website and discovered obscure words of wisdom that I'd stored that were inputs in a 1992 Trinity Faculty Seminar that I had proposed concerning trends in education technology at the time. The ideas of my colleagues about education technology at the time will be forever lost if my Website is taken down when I'm no longer able to maintain this monster I created.

One of the sad things about the Web is that broken links do not lead to broom closets where original works in hard copy are stored. Broken links become a stone wall to history researchers in the digital age.

1992 Free Scholarly Downloads from Harvard University --- http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp 

Recollections of Trinity's Faculty Summer Seminar of 1992
Multimedia Music Instruction:  Robert Winter Versus Thomas Kelly

Thomas Kelly's Harvard University Lectures  --- http://athome.harvard.edu/dh/Kelly.html 
I don't think that you can download these without a broadband connection.
 

This part of a wonderful Harvard University site that Bob Blystone pointed out to us --- http://athome.harvard.edu/ 

Kelly's lectures take me back to when Bob Blystone, Glenn Kroeger, Suzanne Williams-Rautiola, and Bob Jensen organized a 1992 faculty summer seminar.  Among our outstanding visitors was a music professor from UCLA named Robert Winter.  Professor Winter's specialty is putting multimedia music education modules on CD-ROM disks, including Multimedia Beethoven, Multimedia Stravinsky, Multimedia Bach, and Multimedia Mozart.  Note the following links:

http://scolar.vsc.edu:8005/VSCCAT/ACY-6130 

http://snurl.com/AmazonBooks (Search for "Robert Winter")

http://alpha.ddm.uci.edu/zotmail/archive/1997/19971008001.html 

http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/reserves/old/summer97/cd-rommlo.html 

http://alpha.ddm.uci.edu/zotmail/archive/1997/19971008001.html

I have to admit that I liked Professor Winter's productions better that the above production by Professor Kelly, but Professor Winter's productions cannot be downloaded free and are a bit difficult to find these days.  Robert Winter puts full orchestra and chorus presentations on his CDs.  His multimedia education designs are fabulous.  

Does anybody know where Robert Winter has a Web homepage today?  I could not find his current home page (which is no longer at UCLA).

There are various "books" on each of Robert Winter's CDs such as a book on the life and times of the featured composer.  You can then hit selected hot words such as scherzo to pop up definitions, music clips, etc.  There is a book on the art of listening to the music selection on the CD (with full orchestra and music).  There is a book on how to critically listen to the piece.  There is also a "book" in which you can play the piece completely through and/or interrupt it at any time for detailed explanations.  The detailed explanations are divided into a side for casual listeners and a side for music experts.  And best of all there is a Jeopardy-like game at the end where teams of students can compete to test their knowledge of the history and music contained on the CD.  I especially like Multimedia Beethoven because this was not only one of the first but it is absolutely the best application of Multimedia ToolBook using OpenScript that I have ever seen.  I sunk years of my life into programming with OpenScript and cried real tears when Asymetrix abandoned OpenScript.

I think all Trinity University faculty who participated in the two week 1992 Faculty Summer Seminar will recall Robert Winter's visit as being a highlight.  A videotape of his Trinity University presentation and suggestions for educational designs is on file in Instructional Media Services in the Trinity University Library.  I also have a copy in my office.  There are also video tapes of the other excellent and one rather lousy presentation of other featured speakers at our summer seminar.

"Ex-Sports Writer Kills Himself And Leaves Massive Website Explaining Why," by Tony Manfred, Business Insider, August 18, 2013 ---
 http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-sports-writer-kills-himself-and-leaves-massive-website-explaining-why-2013-8

Jensen Comment
I maintain two massive Websites, but these only explain why I want to live.
Site 1 (main site) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Site 2 (for some of the technical education files) --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/

The Very Concise Suicide Note by Kodak Founder George Eastman: “My Work is Done. Why Wait?” (1932) --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/the-very-concise-suicide-note-by-kodak-founder-george-eastman-my-work-is-done-why-wait-1932.html

Balanced Scorecard --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_scorecard

Mark Cuban (billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks) Discovers the Balanced Scorecard

"Mark Cuban's Philosophy About The Mavericks Should Be An Inspiration For Every Great Business Leader And Owner ," by Henry Blodget, Business Insider, August 16, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cubans-business-philosophy-2013-8

Jensen Comment
Perhaps profits mean less after you're already multibillionaire. I wouldn't know from firsthand experience. If you're the owner of a losing startup who is stuck with paying off $160,000 in student loans, profit growth and cash flows take on greater importance. I don't need an empirical study or first-hand experience to prove this.

Asbestos and the Law --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos_and_the_law

"Exposing Asbestos Fraud:  A federal judge helps the trial bar keep its claims evidence secret," The Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323608504579023184181111614.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

The good news about asbestos legal fraud is that there's a straightforward way to expose it. The bad news is that the judiciary too often remains the roadblock to transparency.

That's what has been happening in federal bankruptcy court in North Carolina in the case of Garlock Sealing Technologies. The gasket manufacturer never had more than peripheral involvement in the asbestos business, yet it was forced into bankruptcy in 2010 by a flood of frivolous claims.

Plaintiffs attorneys are now pushing federal Judge George Hodges to force Garlock to put some $1.3 billion into a bankruptcy trust for future asbestos claims. Garlock estimates its liability is closer to $125 million, but the trust gambit is a plaintiffs bar favorite to guarantee a perpetual payday. Garlock also says it has evidence that plaintiffs are "double-dipping"—filing claims with multiple bankruptcy trusts that blame non-Garlock products for their diseases, even as they pursue Garlock in court.

The tort bar is desperate to continue this scam by keeping trust claims hidden from the public. The plaintiffs attorneys argued to Judge Hodges that the information Garlock rooted out about their claims ought to remain "confidential." Judge Hodges agreed, dismissing Garlock's information as not "particularly sexy" or of "interest" to the public. He has repeatedly closed his courtroom when Garlock presented evidence and expert testimony.

The judge's airy dismissal of a public interest is astonishing. A handful of other judges have in recent years exposed egregious cases of double-dipping, inspiring states like Ohio and Oklahoma to pass laws to force trust disclosure. The House Judiciary Committee in May passed the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act, which would require the nation's 60 asbestos trust funds—yes, there are 60—to file quarterly reports that detail claimant names and the basis for their payouts.

Garlock's evidence could be especially revealing given that lawyers from the firms suing it are on public record denying any double-dipping even as they have led the campaign against transparency. Elihu Inselbuch of Caplin & Drysdale testified in Congress in March against the FACT Act: "The bill also ignores the fact that despite trying to find instances of widespread fraud and abuse, there is none. Defendants have no evidence to support their assertion of fraud by plaintiffs." If Mr. Inselbuch is so confident there's no fraud, why does he object to transparency?

Continued in article

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

"UK Banks To Pay Out 1.3 Billion In Massive Credit Card Compensation (for fraudulent ID theft insurance policies)," by Rupert Jones, Business Insider, August 22, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/uk-banks-to-pay-out-13-billion-in-massive-credit-card-compensation-2013-8

Jensen Comment
The pay outs are coming from the usual U.K. organized crime banks --- Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland. These are the same banks paying out billions because of LIBOR fraud conspiracies.

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

"5 Top Business Schools Just As Great As Harvard and Wharton," by Akil Holmes, Policymic, August 14, 2013 ---
http://www.policymic.com/articles/59441/5-top-business-schools-just-as-great-as-harvard-and-wharton

Jensen Comment
I do not agree with the author on what constitutes being "just as great." The five business schools mentioned in the above article are very good business schools and serve their constituencies admirably with outstanding faculty. But we must be honest about what Harvard, Wharton, Yale, Dartmouth, Chicago, and Stanford business schools have that sets them apart. Firstly is the historic prestige of the entire university that opens doors apart from the business schools themselves. Secondly is the close networking between influential business school alumni and current graduates where alumni open doors to their own kind. Thirdly, there's a difference in both average and often top GMAT scores that arises from the academic quality of applicants to the U.S. News Top 10 business schools. Fourthly, and somewhat related to alumni power is the fact that corporations and elite consulting firms expect the very best students to be graduating from the Top 10 MBA programs in the U.S. News Top 10. Even if some other business school has a higher placement rate in a given year, the compensation opportunities and professional growth opportunities are going to be higher for the top placements of the U.S. News Top 10.

What can be misleading in the U.S. News Top 10 are the criteria used by business school deans in choosing the U.S. News Top 10. These deans are heavily influenced by reputations of faculty in terms of research. Top researchers are often top teachers, but this is not always the case. For example, some polls  rank Indiana's and Maryland's business schools as having the top business school teachers but not the very top researchers on average.

"B-Schools With Five-Star Teachers," by Louis Lavelle, Bloomberg Business Week, November 12, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-12/b-schools-with-five-star-teachers#r=hpt-ls   

One problem sometimes overlooked is that top business schools like the Harvard Business School have enormous class sizes relative to small and prestigious business schools such as the smaller business school at Rice University. Students might learn more in smaller classes than students in enormous classes taught by more well-known researchers.

And we expect certain qualities in some graduates that on average may not be as great in the U.S. News Top 10. For example, we expect the highest ethical standards to exist on average in BYU's business school. Although this school probably focuses more on teaching ethics than most other business schools, the high ethical standards of its graduates going out after their last term at BYU are primarily due to the higher ethical standards of its students coming into the school for their first term.

Lastly, almost no graduates of the U.S. News Top 10 MBA programs are going to become auditors and tax accountants for CPA firms, business firms, and the U.S. Government. Some of U.S. News Top 10 MBA graduates may be headed for higher-paying positions in the consulting divisions of large international accounting firms, but their careers are probably in IT, finance, and executive management rather than accounting., auditing, and tax. 

Most MBA graduates have very little technical knowledge of accounting, auditing, and tax unless they were undergraduate accounting majors. The "5 Top Business Schools Just As Great As Harvard and Wharton" listed by Akil Holmes are going to place many more accounting, auditing, and tax specialists than the U.S. News Top 10 MBA programs. In this context of technical accounting programs, those five schools have accounting degrees beat out Harvard and Wharton and Stanford, and the other U.S. News Top 10 "business" schools.

"Volvo Reveals The Powerful And Efficient Engines It's Going To Put In All Its Cars," by Viknesh Vijayenthiran, Business Insider, August 16, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/volvo-reveals-a-powerful-new-engine-2013-8
Unique turbodiesel and gasoline engine choices

"Chasing Coincidences Statistics: Why it’s hard to recognize the unlikely," by Amir D. Aczel, Nautilus, September 2013 (Issue 4) ---
http://nautil.us/issue/4/the-unlikely/chasing-coincidences

Whenever I fly, I like to talk to the person sitting next to me. Once in a while, I find that we know at least one person in common. If you are like me, perhaps coincidences such as this happen in your life as well.

The most unusual coincidence in my life took place when I flew from Boston, my home, to Chicago to meet Scott Isenberg, the new editor assigned to revise a statistics textbook I had authored a few years earlier. We were having dinner at a restaurant overlooking Lake Michigan, and Scott began to talk nostalgically about the orange groves that graced his neighborhood in a small town in California, where he grew up. I recalled that my wife, Debra, who is also from California, used to talk about orange groves as well. We both smiled and continued our conversation—after all, the state has 38 million people. But every remark he made about his childhood abode reminded me of something that my wife had told me. As we continued to notice more of these coincidences, I told him Debra’s name and he literally jumped out of his chair. It turned out that they had been friends in high school. You might think, what is the probability of such a rare event? It may be one in many millions.

The simple question might be “why do such unlikely coincidences occur in our lives?” But the real question is how to define the unlikely. You know that a situation is uncommon just from experience. But even the concept of “uncommon” assumes that like events in the category are common. How do we identify the other events to which we can compare this coincidence? If you can identify other events as likely, then you can calculate the mathematical probability of this particular event as exceptional.

The simple question might be “why do such unlikely coincidences occur in our lives?” But the real question is how to define the unlikely.

Probabilities are defined as relative measures in something called the “sample space,” which is the set of all possible outcomes of an experiment—such as drawing a card out of a well-shuffled deck, rolling a fair die, or spinning a roulette wheel. We generally assume that every elementary outcome of the experiment (any given card or any of the possible numbers, in the case of dice or roulette) has an equal likelihood, although the theory can handle sample spaces with varying likelihoods as well. If we can define a sample space in a real-world situation that may not involve a game of chance, then we can measure probabilities through this sample space.

In its essence, the idea of coincidences could be explained (somewhat simplistically) using a deck of cards. Drawing the ace of spades out of a well-shuffled deck of 52 cards is a relatively rare event: Its probability is only 1 in 52. We compute it using the mathematical rule that divides the size of the event, one card (if we’re talking about drawing any ace, this would be a size of four), by the size of the sample space for drawing a card out of a deck, which is 52, the total number of cards.

But if every day of your life you draw a card out of a deck, you can be sure to see the ace of spades sometimes. In fact, you expect this to happen roughly once in 52 draws. It is the fact that cards can be drawn repeatedly out of a deck (with reshuffling after every draw) that makes rare events show up.

This is essentially what happens in our lives. We are exposed to possible events all the time: some of them probable, but many of them highly improbable. Each rare event—by itself—is unlikely. But by the mere act of living, we constantly draw cards out of decks. Because something must happen when a card is drawn, so to speak, the highly improbable does appear from time to time.

If every day of your life you draw a card out of a deck, you can be sure to see the ace of spades sometimes.

It is the repetitiveness of the experiment that makes the improbable take place. The catch is that you can’t tell beforehand which of a very large set of improbable events will transpire. The fact that one out of many possible rare outcomes does happen should not surprise us because of the number of possibilities for extraordinary events to occur. The probabilities of these singly unlikely happenings compound statistically, so that the chance of at least one of many highly improbable events occurring becomes quite high.

So if Scott and Debra had not been friends in high school, I could have found out at some point in my life that my father—rather than my wife—was the friend of the father of the person sitting next to me on a transatlantic flight. Or that my sister took piano lessons from the mother of my new neighbor who’d just moved here from another state. All of these are rare events, but we are exposed to so many possibilities for them to occur that, even though they are rare, some of them have to happen.

Such an event has a tiny probability of occurring only if we specify beforehand that this is what will happen. If I went to Chicago expecting Scott to know my wife, its occurrence would be an event of fantastically small probability. Within the possible occurrence of millions of other coincidences in my life, it shouldn’t shock me that I did once observe a very unlikely coincidence.

Coincidences and their analysis have led to important academic research in all areas where probability plays a role. Persi Diaconis, professor of statistics at Stanford University, describes extremely unlikely coincidences as embodying the “blade of grass paradox.” If you were to stand in a meadow and reach down to touch a blade of grass, there are millions of grass blades that you might touch. But you will, in fact, touch one of them. The a priori fact that the blade you touch will be any particular one has an extremely tiny probability, but such an occurrence must take place if you are going to touch a blade of grass.

Mathematically, the sample space (in this case, a field of grass) is made up of many elementary outcomes, which are the particulars of a sample space—a single card, in the card-drawing example, or a blade of grass in Diaconis’ paradox. Elementary outcomes can then be classed into larger events. Drawing an ace is the event made up of the four aces, so the event has four possibilities out of the sample space of 52. While the relative size of each event determines its probability, philosophically we may look at an experiment as being made up of many elementary outcomes, all of them equally likely.

If you were to stand in a meadow and reach down to touch a blade of grass, there are millions of grass blades that you might touch. But you will, in fact, touch one of them.

This means that we assume that any card has just as good a chance of being picked as any other, and so does every blade of grass in a meadow. Thus the knowledge that one elementary outcome must happen, should make us realize that the unlikely and the likely both can take place. It’s a matter of frequency. Events that contain many elementary outcomes are more likely than those with few of them: Drawing any ace is four times as likely as drawing the ace of clubs.

Continued in article

Jensen Question
Is their a difference between Telib's black swan event and a rare coincidence?

Black Swan Theory --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

Jensen Comment
There's probably not a substantive difference except that Black Swan Theory usually assumes that the rare even was predictable even if it was not predicted. I suspect that some coincidences are totally unpredictable, although Einstein would probably contend that all events are predictable and events surprise us only due to our ignorance of the underlying processes. Real scientists are never content until they discover causes. Psuedo scientists pat themselves on the back for finding statistically significant correlations and don't bother with granulation to discover causes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#Pseudo-Science

Black Swan Theory suggests that we tend to underestimate fatness of tails in probability distributions. However, this doesn't help a great deal if the probability distributions themselves are totally unknown due to unknown priors.

In biology, one of the hardest things to predict is the exact points in time genetic mutations happen. Then can be anticipated, but pinpointing an exact point in time is really troublesome even when rounding off to the closest Century.

DNA evidence is somewhat bothersome in the context of Aczel's article above. Scientists might say that the chances that a specimen collected at the crime scene was not Bad Guy's semen is one in 98.37641383 billion. But Guardhouse Lawyer will remind us that the probability that this is not Bad Guy's semen is not zero. The legal system would be paralyzed if it required zero probabilities for convictions.

"Trump University Made False Claims, Lawsuit Says." by Alan Feuer, The New York Times, August 24, 2013 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/nyregion/trump-university-made-false-claims-lawsuit-says.html?_r=1&

The New York State attorney general’s office filed a civil lawsuit on Saturday accusing Trump University, Donald J. Trump’s for-profit investment school, of engaging in illegal business practices.

The lawsuit, which seeks restitution of at least $40 million, accused Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization and others involved with the school of running it as an unlicensed educational institution from 2005 to 2011 and making false claims about its classes in what was described as “an elaborate bait-and-switch.”

In a statement, Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general, said Mr. Trump appeared in advertisements for the school making “false promises” to persuade more than 5,000 people around the country — including 600 New Yorkers — “to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got.”

The advertisements claimed, for instance, that Mr. Trump had handpicked instructors to teach students “a systematic method for investing in real estate.” But according to the lawsuit, Mr. Trump had not chosen even a single instructor at the school and had not created the curriculums for any of its courses.

“No one, no matter how rich or famous they are, has a right to scam hardworking New Yorkers,” Mr. Schneiderman said in the statement. “Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.”

The inquiry into Trump University came to light in May 2011 after dozens of people had complained to the authorities in New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois about the institution, which attracted prospective students with the promise of a free 90-minute seminar about real estate investing that, according to the lawsuit, “served as a sales pitch for a three-day seminar costing $1,495.” This three-day seminar was itself “an upsell,” the lawsuit said, for increasingly costly “Trump Elite” packages that included so-called personal mentorship programs at $35,000 a course.

On Saturday evening, Michael Cohen, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, denied the accusations in the lawsuit and said the school had received 11,000 evaluations, 98 percent of which rated students as “extremely satisfied.”

George Sorial, another lawyer for Mr. Trump, called the lawsuit politically motivated. He said that Mr. Schneiderman had asked Mr. Trump and his family for campaign contributions and grew angry when denied.

Continued in articoe

Interestingly, the word “accounting” does not appear in the course catalog --- not even the traditional first course in accounting ---
http://www.trumpuniversity.com/learn/index.cfm

The “courses” appear to be mostly sales pitch seminars like con men/women put on in hotel conference rooms.

Bob Jensen's threads on more legitimate distance education training and education alternatives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on for-profit "schools" operating in the gray zone of fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

"Black Hole Analogue Discovered in South Atlantic Ocean," MIT's Technology Review, August 19, 2013 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/518416/black-hole-analogue-discovered-in-south-atlantic-ocean/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20130819

Jensen Comment
Doesn't matter sucked up in a black hole disappear forever? Most garbage like empty beer cans that get sucked down in an ocean vortex just gets moved around.

I think we should offer some free South Atlantic cruises to some of our politicians.

"How Einstein Thought: Fostering Combinatorial Creativity and Unconscious Connections," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, August 14, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/14/how-einstein-thought-combinatorial-creativity/

"Psychology’s Treacherous Trio: Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, and Motivated Reasoning," by sammcnerney, Why We Reason, September 7, 2011 --- Click Here
http://whywereason.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/psychologys-treacherous-trio-confirmation-bias-cognitive-dissonance-and-motivated-reasoning/

"The Art of Looking: What 11 Experts Teach Us about Seeing Our Familiar City Block with New Eyes," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, August 12, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/12/on-looking-eleven-walks-with-expert-eyes/

"IRS Agent Faked Pastor's Letter To Claim Charity Deduction," Forbes, August 16, 2013 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2013/08/16/tax-court-irs-agent-faked-pastors-letter-to-claim-charity-deduction/

. . .

It’s unclear what discipline Payne might face. In its 1997 reform of the IRS, Congress specified “willful” understatement of tax liability as one of 10 offenses for which IRS employees must be fired. (Eight of the nine relate to abuse of taxpayer rights or official position, while the 10th is willful failure to file a return.)

Jensen Comment
She even pleaded ignorance of the law which, if true, is worse than deliberate cheating.

It's almost certain she won't get the same deal as Lois Lerner who continues to draw her $16,000 per month full salary from the IRS for keeping her mouth shut about taxpayer abuses of the IRS and no longer comes to work at her IRS office ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_Scandal

"The Many Internet-Video Options for TVs Guide to Watching Online Video on a Big Screen," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323585604579010722909527660.html

Watching TV shows, movies and other video via the Internet on your big-screen television has become all the rage. But the proliferation of devices and methods for doing so has made the whole thing mighty confusing.

Should you buy a "smart TV" to watch, say, Netflix NFLX +2.15% ? Or should you make an older TV "smart" by attaching a box that includes Netflix? Or should you buy an adapter and just beam Netflix wirelessly from your smartphone or tablet? And then, should you stream a movie or download it? Do you have to pay to get TV shows and movies from the Internet, or can you get them for free?

There's no one right answer for everyone, or every situation. To help sort out the choices, here's a primer for watching Internet video on a TV, legally. This isn't a review of any one product and it's aimed at average, non-techie consumers. Techies reading this won't find some of the more obscure products and methods. I've also chosen to omit the oldest, but most complex, method—hooking up a PC to a TV using cables. That's so 2008.

Streaming vs. Beaming vs. Downloading

First, let's sort out some confusing terms. Downloading, the method used by Apple's AAPL +0.89% iTunes, usually means you are buying or renting a show or movie individually and typically storing it on your device. Streaming, used by services like YouTube or Netflix, generally means you aren't buying a program or film, but are watching it as it flows from the company's servers. Beaming simply means you're streaming the video from a smartphone, tablet or PC to the TV, usually via an adapter device plugged into the TV.

But when watching Internet video on a TV, it isn't that simple. If you're using iTunes on an Apple TV, you're downloading the movie or show to your Apple cloud-based storage, not to the device itself. And after a short amount of downloading, the device allows you to start watching, which is essentially the same as streaming.

Another example: Beaming a show to your TV from Netflix on an iPad via an Apple TV means you are wirelessly sending it from the iPad to the Apple TV, which projects it on the television screen. But beaming the same show from the same iPad via the Google GOOG -0.32% Chromecast actually triggers a streaming session directly from the cloud to the Chromecast, which projects it on the big screen.

To you, the viewer, the experience on the TV screen is pretty much the same. So don't be put off by the terminology.

What's Free and What's Not

Some services, like YouTube, are free. YouTube is on most of the popular smart TVs and add-on boxes, with the notable exception of the Roku line. Others, like Netflix and Hulu Plus (not to be confused with the free Hulu website) charge a monthly fee for watching as much as you like. These two leaders charge $8 a month. Netflix is commercial-free. Hulu Plus has ads.

Some services, like HBO Go or WatchESPN are technically free, but can only be viewed if you are a paying customer of a participating cable service, which is much costlier than something like Netflix.

Apple's iTunes, as noted, charges for shows and movies individually. Amazon's AMZN -0.58% Instant Video offers many free streaming shows and movies to members of its $79-a-year Prime service but also sells shows and movies individually.

Smart TVs

Leading television makers, such as Samsung, 005930.SE -0.38% Sony 6758.TO -0.25% and LG, 066570.SE -1.85% offer high-end models that include apps like Netflix and other Internet-video sources built in.

Pros: You don't need an add-on device and you don't need to change inputs on your TV to watch Internet video. LG offers Google TV, which includes lots of Android apps.

Cons: They cost more than add-on boxes, often have confusing interfaces and tend to be updated less often.

Game Consoles

Many people don't know that Microsoft's MSFT +0.03% Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation also have many entertainment offerings for users who belong to their online gaming networks.

Pros: Lots of homes already have them for gaming.

Cons: They are larger than add-on boxes and with Xbox, you have to pay $60 a year for the gaming network in addition to fees the Internet-entertainment services charge.

TiVo

Best known for pioneering digital recording of standard TV shows, TiVo TIVO -1.01% is mainly a cable box that's a premium alternative to the boxes provided by cable providers. But many users don't know it also offers Internet TV services like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon and Hulu Plus.

Pros: It has a slick interface and combines a cable box and Internet TV, so you don't have to change TV inputs.

Cons: It costs more than an add-on box, charges a $15 monthly fee, has only a handful of Internet video services and can require tricky setup.

Apple TV

This $99 hockey-puck-sized gadget is the most popular pure Internet video add-on box.

 

Apple

Apple TV: It's the only option with iTunes and the company's cloud services.

Pros: It is the only contender with iTunes, integrates with Apple's photo and music cloud services, features all three methods of getting Internet video on your TV—downloading, streaming and beaming from Apple devices.

Cons: It has a limited selection of Internet services, beams to TVs only from Apple devices and lacks Amazon.

Roku

Similar in size to Apple TV, it offers many more Internet sources.

 

Roku

Roku: It comes in four models and has 750 Internet services.

Pros: It has 750 Internet services, comes in four models starting at $50, and the top model, at $100, has a headphone jack in the remote.

Cons: It lacks YouTube, and can't yet beam video from a mobile device.

Chromecast

This new Google offering is a tiny fob, the size of a USB flash drive, that plugs into the back of a TV.

Pros: The fob is small and costs only $35. It works with Android, Apple devices and Windows PCs.

Cons: It only gets beamed content from other devices and has no built-in services. It only works with four services on Android, two on iPhones and iPads, and the Chrome browser on PCs. There's no remote so you must have a mobile device to use it.

WD TV Play

A bit larger than Apple TV and Roku, this $70 device from Western Digital WDC -2.15% is much less well known, but similar.

Continued in article

 

"If You Want To Spend $600 On A Cable Box, Apparently This Is The One To Spend It On," by Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider, August 20, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-spend-600-on-a-cable-box-apparently-this-is-the-one-to-spend-it-on-2013-8

The Verge's Nilay Patel reviewed the Roamio, and he loves it. He calls it "the ultimate cable box."

Here's the "good stuff" he likes about it…

• "Integrates cable TV and internet services like nothing else"
• "Fast, simple interface"
• "TV streaming to iOS devices"
• "Support for casting YouTube and Netflix from phones and tablets"

He concludes: "Installing it can be a huge pain, and it’s outrageously expensive — on top of the box, TiVo service costs either $14.99 / month or a ridiculous $499 flat fee per unit — but if you’re spending loads of money on cable service with premium channels, it’s worth it. You will record more shows and movies and watch them in more places with a TiVo than with your cable company’s DVR, hands-down."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-spend-600-on-a-cable-box-apparently-this-is-the-one-to-spend-it-on-2013-8#ixzz2cVzZy9Rp
 

"Movies Of The Past That Correctly Predicted The Technology We Have Today," by Daniel Goodman, Business Insider, August 19, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/movies-tech-prediction-real-2013-8

From the Scout Report on August 16, 2013

Slides --- http://slid.es/ 

If you're looking for a new way to present your work, you might do well to look at Slides. The application stores users' presentations in the cloud and it's quite intuitive in terms of adding audio, video, images, and text. The site contains a helpful tutorial and this particular version is compatible with all operating systems.

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Air Call-Accept --- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.necta.aircall_accept.free 

We've all had our hands in the dishwater when an important call comes in. The Air Call-Accept application gives users the ability to just wave their hand across the proximity sensor, and voila: the call is accepted. It's quite useful for people who are driving around quite a bit, though others will certainly find it efficacious. This version is compatible with devices running Android 1.6 and newer

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Up in the air, business class options continue to improve, but at what
cost to the coach traveler?
The Future of Business Class
http://www.thestreet.com/story/12005198/1/luxury-brands-are-the-latest-way-to-coddle-first-class-fliers.html

The race to build better business-class seats on airplanes
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021570578_airlineseatsxml.html

As Airlines Focus on Business Class, Will Coach Decline?
http://www.petergreenberg.com/2013/08/12/as-airlines-focus-on-business-class-will-coach-decline/

A Hard Landing for the Middle Class
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-a-hard-landing-for-the-middle-class/2013/08/06/e8948e4c-fec4-11e2-bd97-676ec24f1f3f_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Long-haul Business Class Comparison Chart
http://www.seatguru.com/charts/longhaul_business_class.php

Transportation Library Menu Collection
http://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/catalog/inu-ead-trans-001

From the Scout Report on August 23, 2013

Fidus Writer --- http://fiduswriter.org/ 

The Fidus Writer is an application that academics will be most excited to learn about. This version functions as an online collaborative editor made specifically for academics who need to use citations and formulas. The program is focused on the content rather than the layout, which means users can publish it later in a variety of formats. The site also contains an FAQ and information about updates. This version is compatible with all operating systems running Google Chrome.

Jensen Note
The Wolfram Alfa site is fantastic for computing answers from formulas, generating graphs, and formatting formulas for documents ---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

For illustrations see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm

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DebateGraph --- http://debategraph.org/Stream.aspx?nid=61932&vt=bubble&dc=focus 

DebateGraph states, "to change the world you need to look at it in a different way." Many would agree; this platform gives multiple partners the ability to visualize and share different ideas. It's a neat concept and it's one that has been used by the United Kingdom's Foreign Office and CNN. A helpful "how-to" area can get users started and the application allows visitors to link ideas visually via a very easy-to-use interface. This version of debate graph is compatible with all operating systems

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Deep fried Mars bars? Oh no, state fairs must try harder than that.
State Fair Vendors Innovate to Survive
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323455104579013233026497554.html

The Hunger Games: State Fair Food Gets More Outrageous
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/hunger-games-state-fair-food-gets-more-outrageous/68536/

The Minnesota State Fair: Origins and Traditions
http://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2013/08/minnesota-state-fair-origins-and-traditions

Iowa Digital Library: Iowa State Fair
http://pinterest.com/iowadiglib/idl-iowa-state-fair/

A Brief History of State Fairs
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1916488,00.html

State Fair Recipes
http://statefairrecipes.com/

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

Education Tutorials

University of Virginia Teaching Resource Center --- http://trc.virginia.edu

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

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

Private Universe Project in Science --- http://www.learner.org/resources/series29.html

The Calculator Pad (for solving physics word problems) --- http://www.physicsclassroom.com/calcpad/

Online Helpers for Physics Educators and Students
The Physics Front --- http://www.compadre.org/precollege/

City of Chicago: Public Art Collection ---
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/public_art_collection.html

The Art Institute of Chicago: Education: Online Resources [Quick Time] ---
http://www.artic.edu/aic/visitor_info/podcasts/video/education_videos/

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

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

Private Universe Project in Science --- http://www.learner.org/resources/series29.html

An Animated History of Physics Introduces the Discoveries of Galileo, Newton, Maxwell & Einstein --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/an-animated-history-of-physics-introduces-the-discoveries-of-galileo-newton-maxwell-einstein.html

Online Helpers for Physics Educators and Students
The Physics Front --- http://www.compadre.org/precollege/

Physics Teacher Education Coalition  --- http://www.ptec.org/

The Calculator Pad (for solving physics word problems) --- http://www.physicsclassroom.com/calcpad/

Explore: Exploratorium --- http://www.exploratorium.edu/explore

ChemCollective --- http://www.chemcollective.org/

American Biology Teacher --- http://www.nabt.org/websites/institution/index.php?p=26

Geology of Britain Viewer --- http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/geologyOfBritain/viewer.html ical-sciences-image-library

Open Learning Initiative: Anatomy & Physiology
http://oli.cmu.edu/courses/free-open/anatomy-physiology/

Anatomical Sciences Image Library --- http://www.anatomy.org/content/anatom

American Society for Engineering Education: PRISM --- http://www.prism-magazine.org

Natural History of the Berkshires --- http://cdm.williams.edu/nhb/

Geologic Heritage in the National Parks --- http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/geoheritage/index.cfm

Geology of National Parks --- http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/ 

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

Accounting for Non-Accountants
"How can finance professionals help their non-financial colleagues understand corporate financial statements that land on their desks?" by Manuel Sicre, Business Finance, August 12, 2013 ---
http://businessfinancemag.com/tax-amp-accounting/accounting-non-accountants 

Bob Jensen's threads on financial literacy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#FinancialLiteracy

Watch Family Planning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Production, Starring Donald Duck ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/family-planning-walt-disneys-1967-sex-ed-production.html

Everyday Sociology Blog --- http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/

National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Education Programs --- http://www.nrel.gov/education/

The National Security Archive: The Limited Test Ban Treaty --- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb433/

The Test Ban Challenge: Nuclear Nonproliferation and the Quest for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ---
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb323/index.htm

Anthropology Ethics: Online Resources --- http://ethics.unl.edu/ethics_resources/online/anthropology.shtml

The Wikipedia page on ethics --- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

California Department of Transportation --- http://www.dot.ca.gov/

University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute --- http://www.umtri.umich.edu/news.ph

Northwestern University Transportation Center --- http://www.transportation.northwestern.edu/

University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute --- http://www.umtri.umich.edu/news.ph

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute --- http://www.vtti.vt.edu/ 

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Infographics --- 
http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Data-Tools/Get-the-Latest-Statistics/Infographics.aspx

From the Scout Report on August 16, 2013

Up in the air, business class options continue to improve, but at what
cost to the coach traveler?
The Future of Business Class
http://www.thestreet.com/story/12005198/1/luxury-brands-are-the-latest-way-to-coddle-first-class-fliers.html

The race to build better business-class seats on airplanes
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021570578_airlineseatsxml.html

As Airlines Focus on Business Class, Will Coach Decline?
http://www.petergreenberg.com/2013/08/12/as-airlines-focus-on-business-class-will-coach-decline/

A Hard Landing for the Middle Class
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-a-hard-landing-for-the-middle-class/2013/08/06/e8948e4c-fec4-11e2-bd97-676ec24f1f3f_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Long-haul Business Class Comparison Chart
http://www.seatguru.com/charts/longhaul_business_class.php

Transportation Library Menu Collection
http://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/catalog/inu-ead-trans-001

From the Scout Report on July 26, 2013

With a flurry of new projects, interest continues to grow in
transit-oriented development
All aboard: Rail Centric Construction Gets Back on Track
http://urbanland.uli.org/Articles/2013/Jul/SpivakAllAboard?utm_source=uli&utm_medium=eblast&utm_campaign=072213

Citi grant supports transit-oriented development
http://www.stamfordplus.com/stm/information/nws1/publish/realestate/Citi-grant-supports-transit-oriented-development-in-Fairfield-County20557.shtml

What is TOD?
http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/what-we-do/what-is-tod/

Center for Transit-Oriented Development
http://www.cnt.org/tcd/projects/ctod/

Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions
Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality
http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/pdf/b-and-n/b-and-n-EPA-231K13001.pdf

Regional Transportation Authority: Transit-Oriented Development
http://rtachicago.com/initiatives/land-use-transit-oriented-development.html

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

Law and Legal Studies

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

Math Tutorials

Card Colm (bimonthly column on card tricks and strategies by mathematician Colm Mulcahy) ---
  http://cardcolm-maa.blogspot.com/

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

History Tutorials

2011 Language Mapper Tool (Geography of Language Speaking) --- \
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/language_map.html

Louise Nevelson Papers (art photography) --- http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/louise-nevelson-papers-9093

City of Chicago: Public Art Collection ---
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/public_art_collection.html

The Art Institute of Chicago: Education: Online Resources [Quick Time] ---
http://www.artic.edu/aic/visitor_info/podcasts/video/education_videos/

Virginia Tech: Digitized Rare Books --- http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/digital_books/index.html

From the Smithsonian
Wonder Books: Rare Books on Early Museums http://www.sil.si.edu/Exhibitions/wonderbound/ 

Vladimir Nabokov Creates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/vladimir-nabokov-creates-a-hand-drawn-map-of-james-joyces-ulysses.html

City of Boston Archives: Online Collections ---
http://www.cityofboston.gov/archivesandrecords/collections/onlinecollections.asp

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Florida --- http://ufdcweb1.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?n=palmm&c=sanborn&m=hhh

Historic American Buildings Survey --- http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/

National Building Museum --- http://www.nbm.org/

Forgotten Detroit (buildings) --- http://www.forgottendetroit.com/

Historic GM Automobiles --- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=endscreen&=R=1&v=RvVmDsWnMOk

London’s Historic Buildings Hit: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament
Houses Struck
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=lFNQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HA4EAAAAIBAJ&dq=big%20ben&pg=6773%2C2000920

Encyclopedia of Indianapolis --- http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/search/collection/EOI

The National Security Archive: The Limited Test Ban Treaty --- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb433/

The Test Ban Challenge: Nuclear Nonproliferation and the Quest for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ---
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb323/index.htm

Natural History of the Berkshires --- http://cdm.williams.edu/nhb/

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Infographics --- 
http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Data-Tools/Get-the-Latest-Statistics/Infographics.aspx

A Democracy of Images --- http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/photographs/

"Fruit-Full" Arkansas: Apples --- http://digitalcollections.uark.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/apples

Arkansas Heritage --- http://www.arkansasheritage.com/

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture --- http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/

Los Angeles Public Library-Travel Posters --- http://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/visual-collections/travel-posters

Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection --- http://photos.lapl.org/carlweb/jsp/photosearch_pageADV.jsp

A One-Hour Video (for many of you boring) on the History of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business ---
http://alumni.gsb.stanford.edu/throughtheages
Among other things you get to see a clip of my friend Bob Jaeicke, former Dean of the GSB and cowboy (literally) who became the Chairman of Enron's last Audit Committee during the period in which Enron imploded. My interview with the media regarding Bob at the time are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

For the GSB grants from the Ford Foundation were essential to the formation and growth of the GSB. The speakers pay to the rold of the Gordon and Howell Report in getting those seed grants from the Ford Foundation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm

A great deal of this money went to hiring of top faculty in the major GSB disciplines. A great deal of money was also used to attract students.

For me personally, the Ford Foundation grants for Stanford's accounting and business doctoral students were essential to my decision to leave Ernst & Ernst in Denver to enroll in the new accounting doctoral program at Stanford. Without this generous fellowship I could not have afforded to spend five full time years at Stanford. During my time as a doctoral student Ernie Arbuckle was a dynamic dean drawn from industry to run the GSB during this paradigm shift.

Bob Jensen

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

2011 Language Mapper Tool (Geography of Language Speaking) --- http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/language_map.html

British Library: Sound Maps --- http://sounds.bl.uk/sound-maps/

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

Music Tutorials

British Library: Sound Maps --- http://sounds.bl.uk/sound-maps/

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

From Grammar Girl on August 21, 2013

"Further" Versus "Farther"

"Farther" is for physical distances, and "further" is for metaphorical distances.

How much farther do we have to walk? He won't take the case further.

From Grammar Girl on August 27, 2013

"Lay" Versus "Lie"

In the present tense, "to lie" is something you do, and "to lay" is something you do to an object.

I want to lie on the couch. Lay the book on the table.

The past tense is trickier because "lay" is the past tense of "lie."

Yesterday, I lay on the couch. Yesterday, I laid the book on the table.

 

The Magic of Metaphor: What Children's Minds Teach Us about the Evolution of the Imagination ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/19/james-geary-i-is-an-other-children-metaphor/

Vladimir Nabokov Creates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/vladimir-nabokov-creates-a-hand-drawn-map-of-james-joyces-ulysses.html

Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, and Anne Enright Give Ten Candid Pieces of Writing Advice Each --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/richard-ford-jonathan-franzen-and-anne-enright-give-ten-candid-pieces-of-writing-advice-each.html

From the Scout Report on August 23, 2013

Fidus Writer --- http://fiduswriter.org/ 

The Fidus Writer is an application that academics will be most excited to learn about. This version functions as an online collaborative editor made specifically for academics who need to use citations and formulas. The program is focused on the content rather than the layout, which means users can publish it later in a variety of formats. The site also contains an FAQ and information about updates. This version is compatible with all operating systems running Google Chrome.

Jensen Note
The Wolfram Alfa site is fantastic for computing answers from formulas, generating graphs, and formatting formulas for documents ---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

For illustrations see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm

"Where to Find Elmore Leonard Walk into any library and ask for directions to the fiction section," by Bob Greene, The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579026530814061404.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

As soon as I heard that Elmore Leonard had died this week, I went to visit him.

I knew right where to go.

I was in a small Midwestern town, and I walked to the public library on Main Street.

I asked for directions to the fiction stacks. There he was—a shelf-and-a-half of him. All the novels, some dust jackets bright, most faded and worn from years of being checked out. Titles: "The Big Bounce," "Bandits," "Freaky Deaky," "Escape from Five Shadows," "Get Shorty," "Touch," "Cuba Libre" and more. This is where he lives.

Leonard was 87 when he died Tuesday in Michigan. The obituaries noted that he wrote 45 novels, that he started out writing Westerns, and that the movies based on his work—including "Hombre," "Get Shorty," "Jackie Brown," "Be Cool" and "3:10 to Yuma"—had made him financially secure.

But what mattered to him was the craft.

"I write in longhand. I work from 9:30 in the morning until 6 o'clock at night," he told me the first time we talked, more than 25 years ago. "What I'll do is write the stuff out in longhand, and then cross out, and then write some more. I'll cross out more than I keep. It gets pretty messy—I can barely read the pages when I'm done.

"I try to begin a chapter with something going on. I very rarely start a chapter with description, or with what the weather's doing, or something like that. I jump right in," he said.

In the quiet of the public library, I pulled one of his books from the shelf. It was called "The Hot Kid." It began:

"Carlos Webster was fifteen the day he witnessed the robbery and killing at Deering's drugstore. This was in the fall of 1921 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma."

Leonard had told me: "When I get into the writing, I have a pretty good idea of who the main characters will be. But I still don't know exactly how the story will work. And something happens to me in almost every book: A character that, in my mind, may have been fairly minor turns into a major character. I hear him talking, and I realize: This guy is interesting."

Because he was 59 years old before he became really famous—he had written more than 20 books before "Glitz," in 1985, became his first No. 1 best seller—he seemed to understand that the words, the sound and precision of them, were all that was worth worrying about.

He was protective of them. Once I was in the Fisher Building in Detroit with him, and someone came up and asked him what his next book was going to be called.

"Killshot one word," Leonard told the man, just like that, no pause.

The book was not going to be called "Killshot One Word," of course. It was going to be called "Killshot." But he wanted to be absolutely clear. It was impossible for Leonard not to be meticulous, even in casual conversation with a stranger.

In the library there was one book on the shelf that was a little fatter than the others. It had a red jacket. I knew what it was.

In 1986, Leonard's publisher planned to put three novels he had written into a single edition to be titled "Double Dutch Treat," a play on Leonard's nickname, Dutch. I received a call: Mr. Leonard, the voice on the phone was saying, wondered if I would be willing to write the introduction. It was like somehow hearing that Frank Sinatra wondered if you would consider writing the liner notes for his next album.

Now, on the day Dutch Leonard died, I pulled "Double Dutch Treat" from the shelf to see what I had said:

"Let me put it this way: given the chance to see the most popular movie of the season, watch the most popular television show of the season, or read an Elmore Leonard novel that I know absolutely nothing about in advance, I'll go with the Leonard novel every time. He's just that much fun."

Continued in article

RIP, Elmore Leonard: The Beloved Author's 10 Rules of Writing ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/21/elmore-leonard-10-rules-of-writing/

Eight Common Grammar Mistakes ---
https://www.openforum.com/articles/8-common-grammar-mistakes-you-should-never-make-again/?extlink=of-syndication-sb-p

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

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

Especially note the first and last links below:

From Web MD on August 17, 2013

August 17, 2013

• Kids With Autism Outperformed Others on Math Test
  http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20130816/kids-with-autism-outperformed-others-on-math-test-study-found
• BP Cuff Before Heart Surgery Cuts Heart Damage: Study
• High-Tech Prostate Scan May Boost Cancer Detection
• Health Insurance Navigator Groups Announced
• Kindergartners' Soda Intake Linked to Aggression in Study
• Eye Study Results May Offer New Therapy for Some Vision Loss
• Baby Boomers Need Hepatitis C Test: CDC Study
• 1 Exercise Session Won't Bring Good Night's Sleep
• Healthy Eating Might Ward Off Pancreatic Cancer
• Study Challenges Theory About Brain Behavior
  http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20130815/study-challenges-theory-about-left-brainright-brain-behavior

August 19, 2013

• Epilepsy Drug Warnings May Slip Through Cracks
• Kids With Type 1 Diabetes: Insulin Pumps Better?
• Plastics Chemicals May Boost Kids' Obesity Risk
• Amid Expansion, Some States Trim Medicaid Rolls
• BlueCross Exits Utah's Small Business Exchange
• Kids With Autism Outperformed Others on Math Test
• BP Cuff Before Heart Surgery Cuts Heart Damage: Study
• High-Tech Prostate Scan May Boost Cancer Detection
• Health Insurance Navigator Groups Announced
• Kindergartners' Soda Intake Linked to Aggression in Study

August 20, 2013

• Kids With Type 1 Diabetes: Insulin Pumps Better?
• Fruit-Rich Diet Might Lower Aneurysm Risk
• Epilepsy Drug Warnings May Slip Through Cracks
• Child's Risk When Older Sibling Has Autism
• Copper in Environment May Be Tied to Alzheimer's
• Plastics Chemicals May Boost Kids' Obesity Risk
• BlueCross Exits Utah's Small Business Exchange
• Kindergartners' Soda Intake Linked to Aggression in Study
• BP Cuff Before Heart Surgery Cuts Heart Damage: Study
• Health Insurance Navigator Groups Announced

August 21, 2013

• Branding Obamacare: 'New York State of Health'
• Family Insurance Premiums Up For 2nd Year In Row
• Obamacare Foe, Idaho Gov. Praises Marketplace 'by Idahoans'
• Shoe Inserts Don't Help Arthritic Knee Pain: Study
• Program Boosts Blood-Pressure Control for Patients
• Could Blood Test One Day Predict Suicide Risk?
• Childhood Bullying Scars Can Last Into Adulthood
• Kids With Type 1 Diabetes: Insulin Pumps Better?
• Plastics Chemicals May Boost Kids' Obesity Risk
• Fruit-Rich Diet Might Lower Aneurysm Risk

August 22, 2013

• Colorado Announces Health Insurance Rates
• Nicotine Addiction Level May Predict Weight Gain in Ex-Smokers
• Drug for Colitis, Crohn's Disease Shows Promise
• Poor Oral Hygiene Tied to Cancer-Linked Virus
• 'Fat Letters' and the Childhood Obesity Debate
• Antipsychotic Drugs May Triple Kids' Diabetes Risk, Study Suggests
• Brain-Damaged Athletes May Show Mood or Thinking Impairments First
• Obamacare Foe, Idaho Gov. Praises Marketplace 'by Idahoans'
• Program Boosts Blood-Pressure Control for Patients
• Shoe Inserts Don't Help Arthritic Knee Pain: Study

August 23, 2013

• Damaged Heart Cells Made Healthy Again in Lab Tests
• Early Treatment May Reduce Disability After Stroke
• U.S. Circumcision Rates Drop by 10 Percent: CDC
• Getting to Root of Redheads' Higher Melanoma Risk
• Family History of Diabetes and Prediabetes Risk
• Women Smokers and Risk of Lethal Stroke
• Drug for Colitis, Crohn's Disease Shows Promise
• Poor Oral Hygiene Tied to Cancer-Linked Virus
• Nicotine Addiction Level May Predict Weight Gain in Ex-Smokers
• Colorado Announces Health Insurance Rates

August 24, 2013

• Calcium Plus Vitamin D Won't Cure Joint Pain: Study
• Move More to Control Weight Gain During Pregnancy: Study
• Volunteering May Make People Happier, Study Finds
• Some Video Games May Boost Brain's Flexibility
• Who Will Care for Adults With Autism?
• Damaged Heart Cells Made Healthy Again in Lab Tests
• Getting to Root of Redheads' Higher Melanoma Risk
• Women Smokers and Risk of Lethal Stroke
• U.S. Circumcision Rates Drop by 10 Percent: CDC
• Early Treatment May Reduce Disability After Stroke

August 26, 2013

• Most Medications OK During Breast-Feeding
• Stuttering May Not Cause Emotional Woes in Kids
• New Hope for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer
• Bare Bones Plans Expected To Survive Health Law
• No Shopping Zone: Medicare Is Not Part Of New Insurance Marketplaces
• Calcium Plus Vitamin D Won't Cure Joint Pain: Study
• Move More to Control Weight Gain During Pregnancy: Study
• Volunteering May Make People Happier, Study Finds
• Some Video Games May Boost Brain's Flexibility
• Who Will Care for Adults With Autism?

August 27, 2013

August 28, 2013

• Stomach Bug Vaccine for Infants Protects Community
• Simple Strategies Not Always Enough for Bedwetting
• New Drug Combo Helps Hard-to-Treat Hepatitis C
• Colorado’s Insurance Commissioner Braces For Bumps
• Some Antibiotics Linked to Serious Nerve Damage
• Most Medications OK During Breast-Feeding
• Babies May Remember Words Heard Before Birth
• New Defibrillator Works Without Wires Touching Heart
• New Hope for Early Detection of Ovarian Cancer
• Stuttering May Not Cause Emotional Woes in Kids

A new wrinkle in Parkinson's disease research ---
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-08-wrinkle-parkinson-disease.html

Inducing and augmenting labor may be associated with increased risk of autism ---
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-08-augmenting-labor-autism.html

"The Ethics of Student use of Adderall," by Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, August 19, 2013 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2013/08/the-ethics-of-student-use-of-adderall-.html

Last Saturday Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that Kansas City infielder, Miguel Tejada, received a 105-game suspension for using a banned substance – Adderall. Tejada claims he had a valid prescription to use the drug but let the approval expire. That may be the case and it is important to note that MLB allows a player to use Adderall with a valid prescription from a doctor.

In this blog I focus on what I know first-hand to be a growing trend in college students, which is to use Adderall to gain an edge in the classroom: to help retain more material; to focus better in the classroom; to improve study habits; and to help cram for tests.

The drug Adderall, which is most commonly prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), has been popping up on campuses across North America. I have read estimates that one-of-three students use it at some time during their college careers.

However, many of the students don’t have prescriptions and turn to the Internet to get the drug, or reach out to a friend or family member with a prescription. Some students turn to online sales sites such as Craigslist, where a quick scan of Adderall listings shows a price tag of $1 to $10 per pill.

The ethics of using Adderall are relatively clear cut. It provides a competitive advantage, which in and of itself is not a crime. However, the edge is gained in an illegal manner. When I try to make this point to students, I am met with the explanation that gaining a competitive advantage is a long-used technique to get ahead in college.

Continued in article

A Bit of Humor

Let's Stop and Frisk the Big Time Criminals ---
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-13-2013/frisky-business---jessica-williams

Watch Family Planning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Production, Starring Donald Duck ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/family-planning-walt-disneys-1967-sex-ed-production.html

The State of Michigan threatened a family of beavers with a fine of $10,000 per day if they did not remove their new damn ---
http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/dammed.asp

Legend About a New Orleans Land Grab --- http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/landgrab.asp

“Why did God invent economists?”
“To make weathermen feel good about themselves.”
David Rosenberg, former chief economist at Merrill Lynch

Forwarded by Paula

Another Government study provides outstanding results . . .

CSIRO officials recently found about 200 dead crows on the highway between Noonamah and Palmerston  in the Northern Territory,

There was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu.

The Northern Territory Government therefore directed that the CSIRO should contract a bird pathologist to examine the remains of all the crows.

The bird pathologist subsequently confirmed that the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu.

However, he did determine that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, and that only 2% had been killed  by impact with cars.

The Territory Government then hired an Ornithological Behaviourist to determine the disproportionate percentages for the truck versus car kills.

After 18 months of research costing $2.7 million, the Ornithological Behaviourist determined the cause of the deaths.

When crows eat road kill, they always set-up a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.

His conclusion was that the lookout crow could only say “Cah”, he could not say “Truck”.

Just wanted to make sure you Aussies knew where your tax money was being spent . . .

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

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.

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