Set 3 of My Favorite Pictures
Taken From Inside Our Cottage in the White Mountains
www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Cottage\Inside\Set03\Set03InteriorCottage.htm
Tidbits on November 28, 2013
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
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/
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Mystery of the Elephant Whisperer ---
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/elephantwhisperer.asp
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
Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Cantos,” Some of the Great
Poetic Works of the 20th Century ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/hear-ezra-pound-read-from-his-epic-cantos.html
Useful Dog Tricks ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/PztO-OvzRyg
Christopher Hitchens, Who Mixed Drinking & Writing, Names the
“Best Scotch in the History of the World” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/christopher-hitchens-names-the-best-scotch-in-the-history-of-the-world.html
Watch Houdini Escape From a Strait Jacket, Then See How He Did
It (Circa 1917) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/watch-houdini-escape-from-a-straight-jacket.html
Big Bear Surprise ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/eryxAcsTcOA?rel=0
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
What is the piano sound of E. Pluribus Unum? ---
http://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=103843
Holland's Got Talent ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VBMfgLvRZJs
You have to patiently wait for the best parts of the video.
Carrie Underwood and Vince Gill ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pLLMzr3PFgk&feature=player_embedded
Greatest impromptu piano duet by a 90-year-old
couple in the Mayo Clinic lobby you'll hear today. Cool tag because there is no
AWESOME tag ---
http://www.fark.com/cgi/vidplayer.pl?IDLink=4365716
A Place in the Choir ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=-iP27eatYxE&feature=share
Listen To A Crazy Piano Invented By Leonardo Da Vinci ---
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/listen-crazy-piano-invented-leonardo-da-vinci
WGHB Open Vault: Rock and Roll ---
http://openvault.wgbh.org/collections/roll-rock-and-roll
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
‘The Taliban Were Ready For Us, But I Don’t Think They Were
Ready For What We Were Going To Do To Them' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/gunfight-with-taliban-in-mama-karez-2013-11
The Trenches of World War I (in color) ---
http://lightbox.time.com/2013/11/11/rare-color-photographs-from-the-trenches-of-world-war-i/?iid=lf|around#15
National Geographic: Photography ---
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/
America the Beautiful (Foliage) ---
http://www.lovethesepics.com/2013/10/american-the-beautiful-in-autumn-peak-fall-foliage-dates-for-48-states-50-pics/
Google Glass Will Change Photography Forever ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-photos-by-trey-ratcliff-2013-11
Incredible Panoramas Of The World's Most Beautiful Places
http://www.businessinsider.com/airpanos-incredible-panoramas-from-all-over-the-world-2013-11
Take a Virtual Tour of Venice (Its Streets,
Plazas & Canals) with Google Street View ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/google-street-view-presents-a-virtual-tour-of-venice.html
10 Places You Must See Before They Disappear ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-places-to-see-before-they-disappear-2013-11
NYC's Central Park ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-central-park-is-the-best-in-the-world-2013-11
10 Shots In The Running For National Geographic's Photography
Contest ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/national-geographic-photography-contest-2013-11
36 Realistically Colorized Historical Photos Make
the Past Seem Incredibly Real --- z
http://indulgd.com/realistically-colorized-historical-photos/
Alfred Stieglitz Autochromes (art history
photograph) ---
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/alfred-stieglitz-autochromes
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
The 100 Best Novels: A Literary Critic Creates a List in 1898
---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/the-100-best-novels-1898.html
George Orwell’s Five Greatest Essays (as Selected by
Pulitzer-Prize Winning Columnist Michael Hiltzik) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/george-orwells-five-greatest-essays.html
Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Reading ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/hear-all-of-finnegans-wake-read-aloud.html
Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Cantos,” Some of the Great
Poetic Works of the 20th Century ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/hear-ezra-pound-read-from-his-epic-cantos.html
"The History of the English Language, Animated," by Maria
Popova, Brain Pickings, November 13, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/13/open-university-history-of-the-english-language-animated/
"The Geography of Great Literature, in Hand-Lettered
Typography," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, November 15, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/13/open-university-history-of-the-english-language-animated/
Free eBooks: Read All of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past
on the Centennial of Swann’s Way ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/free-ebooks-read-all-of-prousts-remembrance-of-things-past-on-the-centennial-of-swanns-way.html
16-Year-Old Marcel Proust Tells His Grandfather About His
Misguided Adventures at the Local Brothel ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/16-year-old-marcel-proust-at-a-brothel.html
Read Rejection Letters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia
Plath, Kurt Vonnegut & Andy Warhol ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/rejection-letters-sent-to-three-famous-artists.html
The Existentialism Files: How the FBI Targeted Camus, and Then
Sartre After the JFK Assassination ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/the-existentialism-files-how-the-fbi-targeted-camus-and-sartre.html
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on November 28, 2013
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2013/TidbitsQuotations112813.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
Teaching Resources: University of New England ---
http://www.une.edu/cas/core/teaching.cfm
How does Stanford's undergraduate admissions staff decide who gets
accepted? Short answer: It's complicated ---
http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=66225
THE GOAL OF THIS PIECE is to demystify college
admissions at Stanford, because explaining nuclear physics is just too
simple. Clarifying Middle East politics, solving the Riemann hypothesis,
defining love—anyone can do that. Let's tackle a subject with some heft to
it.
As my late grandmother would say, "Oy."
Few topics invite more analysis, envy,
code-breaking, speculation and hope than college admissions. Across the
United States, applications to elite universities have mushroomed. More than
35,000 students applied to Harvard last academic year, vying for 1,664
spots. Princeton handled 26,498 applications to fill a class of 1,291. At
Stanford, applicants totaled 38,828, an all-time high; 2,210 were accepted,
or slightly less than 1 in 17. In the coming years, the odds, like afternoon
shadows on the Quad, will only lengthen.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I got even with Stanford for rejecting me when I was an 18-year old
applicant to be admitted to Stanford in my first year of college. I got even at
ages 23-28 by taking Stanford's money for five years in the new accounting Ph.D.
program, including free tuition, room, and board. The accounting doctoral
program was new and started with three students --- Jay Smith, Les Livingstone
and me. Jay was a faculty member on leave from BYU and already had a family of
eight kids; Les from South Africa had two children, and I chased the coeds in my
aging (used) 1955 Oldsmobile ragtop.
I also taught in the Economics Department, but that was gravy money.
My point is that when rejected for your first year of college by one of the
elite universities don't give up hope. Later on you can get that university to
pay you to become a graduate student on campus. Accounting is still a nice
choice because virtually all accounting doctoral programs in North America are
still free including money for room and board. But accountancy is still not
a popular major since only slightly over 140 North American students will get
accounting doctorates this year. Accountants avoid these doctoral programs
because they don't teach accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Stanford University still only graduates about one accounting Ph.D. per year
on average, sometimes two. Unlike Cornell, there never has been an undergraduate
accounting program at Stanford. MIT and most of the Ivy League universities have
small accountancy doctoral programs except for Brown and Princeton. You can see
the history of the numbers graduating from all accounting doctoral programs at
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoctInfo.html
There are no online accounting doctoral programs from AACSB-accredited
universities.
Maybe The Invisible Man idea was not so far fetched after all.
"How Metamaterials Could Hold the Key to High Temperature Superconductivity,"
MIT's Technology Review, November 20, 2013 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/521876/how-metamaterials-could-hold-the-key-to-high-temperature-superconductivity/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20131121
Jensen Comment
Riders who wear metamaterial helmets and goggles may look like headless horsemen
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_Horseman
We may never see an obese person in public unless we literally stumble onto
one.
Robbers in metamaterial hoodies and gloves may never be seen.
After checking into a hotel room you better listen carefully and poke around
a bit to be certain you're alone.
Dumb and Dumber Business Policies (were talking billions of dollars in
losses here)
From the Harvard Business Review Newsletter on November 22, 2013
Department-store chain JC Penney, already hurting
financially from a misguided plan to end price promotions, was so plagued by
shoplifters in the third quarter of this year that it lost a full percentage
point of profit margin to theft, says the Wall Street Journal. When thieves
learned that Penney had removed sensor security tags as part of the
transition to a new type of inventory tracking, they targeted the company’s
stores. At the same time, Penney stopped requiring customers to provide
receipts with returned merchandise, so shoppers grabbed merchandise and
“returned” it at cash registers without leaving the stores, the Journal
says.
Jensen Comment
JC Penney was on the edge of survival before this happened. The billions of
added shoplifting losses are not going to help. The rule of fraud prevention is
to have effective internal controls. JC Penney did not implement good internal
controls.
Disability ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disabled
Jensen Comment
Let me begin by bragging that I've been a long-time advocate of going beyond
equal opportunity by advocating college investments in technology designed to
improve learning opportunities for the disabled ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
At the same time I recall a lawyer speaking on campus warning that the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 would in many ways become the worst
nightmare of USA colleges and universities.
There are many solvable problems of such as wheel chair access to classrooms
and signing professionals in front of classrooms for aid to hearing-impaired
students in the classroom. Severely dyslexic students might be given twice as
much time to take final examinations. The blind present more challenges, but
there are newer technologies for helping sight-impaired people. A much bigger
challenge lies in providing equalizers for the severely learning impaired.
Certainly we must draw the line when parents are simply taking advantage of
colleges to warehouse their severely learning-impaired children after those
children have used up all there special education benefits of K-12.
There are things in particular that I think go too far.
- I think it goes too far when investments to significantly aid 99% of the
students are denied effective learning technology by the law because
of the disabled 1% or fewer cannot benefit from this technology without
paying prohibitive costs for equivalent education. An extreme example would
be an investment in a $10 million flight simulator for training pilots. What
equivalent alternative can be provided to a student paralyzed from the waist
up so that he too can become a commercial pilot? Perhaps a better example is
where Wharton now serves up its core cores free as online MOOCs. Suppose
that over 20,000 students around the globe sign up for these core courses.
Should Wharton be banned from serving up these free MOOC courses because one
blind and deaf student in Egypt wants equivalent rights that might cost
upwards of a million dollars to serve this one disabled student.
- Sometimes the costs of providing equivalent learning for the disabled
are just too expensive. For example, must the college provide iron lungs and
physicians/nurses required to be in attendance at all times for a single
disabled learner? Should the college have to invest in mobile science labs
to take to disabled people confined to medical facilities?
- I think it goes too far when academic standards are lowered for the 1%
relative to the 99%. In K-12 schools many special education students who
cannot possibly even learn to read are given diplomas at graduation time.
But this becomes much more problematic if Princeton University must give
scholarships and diplomas to students who will never be able to read or
speak or otherwise meet the bare minimums of academic standards. My cousin's
severely autistic grandchild is one such "graduate" from high school who
will never master any of the fundamental skills that are required by
virtually all colleges. It would be a mockery of higher education if our
traditional colleges had to accept him. Instead he's in a special home
funded by the State of Iowa.
"Bill Would Require Instructional Technology to Be Accessible to All,"
by Megan O'Neil, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15. 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/bill-would-require-instructional-technology-to-be-accessible-to-all/48383?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Legislation introduced on Friday in the U.S. House
of Representatives would require colleges either to make instructional
technology accessible to disabled students or to provide them with
equivalent, alternative resources.
Rep. Tom Petri, a Wisconsin Republican and senior
member of the House education committee, said his bill would ensure that
disabled students were given equal treatment as technology plays a larger
and larger role in instruction. The bill is called the Technology, Equality,
and Accessibility in College and Higher Education (Teach) Act.
The legislation also calls on the government to
develop guidelines for electronic instructional materials used in higher
education.
The National Federation of the Blind and the
Association of American Publishers released a joint statement calling the
legislation long overdue.
“Every day, blind college students face devastating
setbacks to their education because of inaccessible technology,” Marc
Maurer, president of the federation, said in the statement. “The use of
e-readers, web content, mobile applications, and learning-management systems
by educators is more prevalent than ever, and disabled students are being
needlessly left behind.”
"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
Jensen Comment
Sometimes the road to Hell really is paved with good intentions.
Starving Artist ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starving_Artist
Jensen Comment
For many centuries "artists," typically picture painters, writers,
mathematicians, and musicians, have endured extreme poverty due to dedication to
their art/mathematics. In the 21st Century the controversy in colleges,
especially humanities divisions of colleges, is encourage specializations in the
"arts" for graduates in far greater numbers than can be absorbed in teaching
careers.
The following article focuses on what Hope College is doing to give these
majors hope. I think other colleges are doing the same thing without calling
them special programs. For example, one of my top graduates in accounting is a
concert pianist. Early on she discovered that life would be tough as a concert
pianist. So she also majored in accounting, worked about five years for E&Y,
earned her accounting Ph.D. from South Carolina, and is now on the accounting
faculty at Case Western University beside Gary Previts and Tim Fogarty and the
other accounting professors.
She's also Exhibit A for how "artists" who want alternate higher paying
careers will probably have to sacrifice their art. I don't think you can aspire
for tenure in accounting at Case Western university and still become a noted
concert pianist. Exhibit B is mathematician interested in some obscure specialty
in theory, chances are she cannot devote 12 hours a day to this specialty while
being employed by Cisco to work on math problems of interest to her employer.
Some of this boils down to the Marx Labor Theory of Value ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
In pure Communism painters could spend their lives painting pictures that
everybody in the world hated. Musicians could devote their lives to their craft
without ever being invited to perform. Mathematicians could devote there lives
to failures to advance obscure theory.
But there is no pure Communism, and it's likely that there will never been an
enduring implementation of pure Communism. The reality is that the best we can
do is probably support our artists by requiring that they produce some outputs
of greater value in society. A few may be like extreme religious fundamentalists
who are totally and somewhat reluctantly supported by taxpayers in Israel. But
this will never apply to hundreds of millions of "artists" in the world who will
never be fully supported just for their art that won't sell.
"No More Digitally Challenged Liberal-Arts Majors: How to give
B.A.'s in arts and humanities more career options without abandoning the life of
the mind," by William Pannapacker, Chronicle of Higher Education,
November 18, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/No-More-Digitally-Challenged/143079/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
The Philadelphia Center at Hope College may well produce employable humanities
majors. But some of the most devoted to their crafts like Vincent Van Gogh and
Mozart wannabes will perhaps either have to starve or compromise their art by
singing for their supper (how's that for mixing metaphors?).
The closest thing we have to truly free adult artists are those who are
totally supported by their life partners. One time I tried to hire a woman
accounting Ph.D. who elected to instead go to the University of South Carolina.
She was the bread winner of the family. A few years later I read in Time
Magazine where her husband, who was free to do almost anything he chose, had
written a best-selling non-fiction book about a particular battle in the Civil
War. Even if his book was never published and never sold a copy, the good news
for him is that he could write whatever he liked for the rest of his life as
long as his wife's income paid all the bills.
"JFK's Legacy: Proving the Laffer Curve," by Kevin Glass, Townhall,
November 22, 2013 ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2013/59/22/jfks-legacy-proving-the-laffer-curve-n1751869?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
While the mainstream media's hagiography of John F.
Kennedy continues on the 50th anniversary of his tragic death, it's
important to remember his full legacy - not just the parts that the
mainstream media likes to promote.
President Kennedy proved the existence of the
Laffer curve. When he came into office, Americans at the top end of the
income ladder faced marginal tax rates in excess of 90%. Kennedy proposed
tax cuts across the board - including marginal income tax rates, corporate
rates, capital gains rates. And after JFK's tax cuts passed, tax revenue
increased. As Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of Economics21, writes:
Kennedy was one of the first presidents to
articulate a supply-side theory. On Nov. 20, 1962, at a news conference,
he said “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax
revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the
long run is to cut the rates now ... Cutting taxes now is not to incur a
budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy
which can bring a budget surplus.”
Kennedy’s tax cuts were not passed by Congress
until after his death on Feb. 26, 1964, in the Revenue Act of 1964. The
bill reduced the top marginal rate from over 90% to 70%. Tax revenues
increased from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, and the new
rates led to a greater percentage of tax revenue coming from those
making over $50,000 a year. Tax receipts from those making over $50,000
rose 57%, whereas receipts from those making under $50,000 rose 11%.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
One instance of most anything does not prove much in economics. Even two
instances hardly constitutes proof even though President Clinton managed to
balance the budget largely due to lagged effects of the Reagan tax cuts. The
problem with tax cuts, stimulus spending, Quantitative Easing, or most any other
factor intended to increase the GDP and employment is that circumstances change
greatly over time. Economies have too many complex and interacting variables to
attribute much of anything to a single factor.
Certainly the Laffer Curve has not convinced all economists that it's a Swiss
Army Knife for a faltering economy ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_Curve
However, nearly all nations (including the Scandinavian countries, Canada,
all of Europe, and Iran) significantly decreased the top tax rates between 1979
and 2002 largely in belief of the Laffer Curve.
Table 1 Maximum Marginal Tax Rates on
Individual Income
*. Hong Kong’s maximum tax (the “standard rate”) has
normally been 15 percent, effectively capping the marginal rate
at high income levels (in exchange for no personal exemptions). |
**. The highest U.S. tax rate of 39.6 percent after 1993 was
reduced to 38.6 percent in 2002 and to 35 percent in 2003. |
|
|
1979 |
1990 |
2002 |
Argentina |
45 |
30 |
35 |
Australia |
62 |
48 |
47 |
Austria |
62 |
50 |
50 |
Belgium |
76 |
55 |
52 |
Bolivia |
48 |
10 |
13 |
Botswana |
75 |
50 |
25 |
Brazil |
55 |
25 |
28 |
Canada (Ontario) |
58 |
47 |
46 |
Chile |
60 |
50 |
43 |
Colombia |
56 |
30 |
35 |
Denmark |
73 |
68 |
59 |
Egypt |
80 |
65 |
40 |
Finland |
71 |
43 |
37 |
France |
60 |
52 |
50 |
Germany |
56 |
53 |
49 |
Greece |
60 |
50 |
40 |
Guatemala |
40 |
34 |
31 |
Hong Kong |
25* |
25 |
16 |
Hungary |
60 |
50 |
40 |
India |
60 |
50 |
30 |
Indonesia |
50 |
35 |
35 |
Iran |
90 |
75 |
35 |
Ireland |
65 |
56 |
42 |
Israel |
66 |
48 |
50 |
Italy |
72 |
50 |
52 |
Jamaica |
58 |
33 |
25 |
Japan |
75 |
50 |
50 |
South Korea |
89 |
50 |
36 |
Malaysia |
60 |
45 |
28 |
Mauritius |
50 |
35 |
25 |
Mexico |
55 |
35 |
40 |
Netherlands |
72 |
60 |
52 |
New Zealand |
60 |
33 |
39 |
Norway |
75 |
54 |
48 |
Pakistan |
55 |
45 |
35 |
Philippines |
70 |
35 |
32 |
Portugal |
84 |
40 |
40 |
Puerto Rico |
79 |
43 |
33 |
Russia |
NA |
60 |
13 |
Singapore |
55 |
33 |
26 |
Spain |
66 |
56 |
48 |
Sweden |
87 |
65 |
56 |
Thailand |
60 |
55 |
37 |
Trinidad and Tobago |
70 |
35 |
35 |
Turkey |
75 |
50 |
45 |
United Kingdom |
83 |
40 |
40 |
United States |
70 |
33 |
39** |
|
Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers;
International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation. |
Amazon and Wal-Mart are going to take over the
market for people who want stuff cheap and fast. Who will win is up for grabs.
Leonard Lodish
Jensen Comment
People do not yet fully appreciate how online shopping reduces tens of billions
in shoplifting losses relative to onsite big box stores ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoplifting
Of course not all frauds are eliminated such as returning fraudulent versions of
purchased items. However, successful shoplifters are not identified. Online
shoppers are identified except where there's been ID theft which is an enormous
problem for onsite and online vendors.
"In Amazon and Wal-Mart’s Battle for Dominance, Who Loses Out?"
Knowledge@Wharton, November 13, 2013 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/amazon-Wal-Marts-battle-dominance-future-retail-stake/
In the retail realm, it’s a clash of the titans:
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, versus Amazon, the online giant that
aspires to be “the everything store.” Both are slashing prices and
increasing free, same-day and other enticing delivery-and-return services in
pursuit of market domination. Amazon’s online savvy and forbearance of
profit-taking are well known. Wal-Mart, with its vast bricks-and-mortar
network, is finally getting serious about e-commerce.
But with two, not just one, behemoths now cutting
into profit margins in a race for market share, what are the consequences
for the rest of retail? “If those two keep getting better, it’s going to be
rough news for other people,” says Wharton marketing professor Stephen J.
Hoch.
Retail futurist Doug Stephens also sees “huge”
potential for collateral damage to other retailers. “I think we are already
seeing it,” he notes. “Target issued a letter, though it was more of a
directive, to its vendors a year and a half ago that said if you sell us
anything we later find on Amazon, you run the risk of being delisted as a
vendor. This is very serious for every retailer — be careful of the shrapnel
flying around as Amazon expands into other categories.”
According to Wharton emeritus marketing professor
Leonard Lodish, “Amazon and Wal-Mart are going to take over the market for
people who want stuff cheap and fast. Who will win is up for grabs.”
And what Wal-Mart and Amazon do has a way of
trickling down: “There is definitely pressure on all retailers to increase
speed and lower the cost,” notes Matthew Nemer, a managing director at Wells
Fargo Securities covering the retail and e-commerce sectors.
The race to provide instant gratification has
intensified in recent weeks, with eBay’s acquisition of Shutl, a same-day —
and same-hour — delivery service based in the U.K. with service in New York,
San Francisco and Chicago. The purchase will help eBay expand the service
into 25 markets by the end of 2014. Last year, Google bought BufferBox, a
shipping kiosk service that places boxes inside of stores like 7-Eleven to
accept delivery of merchandise, enabling customers to pick them up at their
convenience.
Amazon, which has a similar pick-up service called
Locker, is operated from Procter & Gamble warehouses in an effort to cut
delivery times for household goods, The Wall Street Journal reported
recently. Even the venerable U.S. Postal Service is getting in on the
e-action, having just signed a deal to deliver Amazon’s packages on Sundays
in some cities. The post office says it expects to make similar deals with
other retailers.
Amazon’s business practices have produced a spark
of protectionism in France, where, in a regulatory fit of pique, the
Assemblée nationale approved a law aimed at defending independent bookshops.
If passed by the senate, the law would prohibit retailers from offering free
delivery on discounted books.
New Bricks and Mortar — for E-commerce
The Wal-Mart-Amazon clash, many observers say, is
part of a much larger battle compelling retailers to spend billions of
dollars in new warehouses to facilitate quick delivery as the shift toward
online shopping accelerates. Rather than luring the customer to the
merchandise, the merchandise is going to the customer, and the industry is
transforming itself. Amazon has funneled $13.9 billion into warehouses since
2010. Soon it will have nearly 100 warehouses to support what the company
aims to make the new norm: orders shipped the same day the purchase is made.
Many of the warehouses being built by retailers are
located close to urban centers — especially to the East Coast, where they
will be within a few hours drive to as much as 40% of the U.S. population.
Urban Outfitters is building a $110 million fulfillment center in Gap, Pa.,
the Philadelphia Inquirer reported recently. Macy’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, Bed
Bath & Beyond and others have built, or are planning to build, similarly
sized facilities.
“There’s a massive ecosystem being built around
online sales — shipping, payments, mobile applications, electronic notebooks
for store employees, lockers. I get an email every day highlighting all the
venture capital investments going after some part of it,” says Nemer, adding
that all of these developments point to a quickly evolving consumer mindset
that expects same- or next-day delivery every time.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The big losers in the clash between Amazon versus Wal-Mart are big box stores
who in some cases have great new online Websites that just are not keeping up
with the leads taken by Amazon and Wal-Mart. Amazon is particularly
competitive because of vastly superior online software and network of online
vendors selling used items that carry the Amazon guarantee of satisfaction and
return privileges.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on November 21, 2013
Sears is expected to report a wider loss in its fiscal third
quarter. The retailer underscored how grim the situation is on Oct. 29,
saying sales during the previous 12 weeks were off 3.7% from a year earlier,
on a comparable basis.
Ahead of the Tape’s Spencer Jakab
says that hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert has proved
hopeless as a retailer since taking control of Sears in 2005. And a recent
stock rally represents a bet that he will be a far better liquidator.
Jensen Comment on Net Earnings
Note how the first index analysts look to judge the financial performance trend
of a company is the bottom line net earnings. It's so sad that both the IASB and
the FASB gave the balance sheet numbers "primacy" and threw income statement
item definitions and measurement under the bus.
"The Asset-Liability Approach: Primacy does not mean
Priority," by Robert Bloomfield, FASRI Financial Accounting Standards
Research Initiative, October 6, 2009 ---
http://www.fasri.net/index.php/2009/10/the-asset-liability-approach-primacy-does-not-mean-priority/
Jensen Comment on Sears At-Home Service
When I go to the Sears mall stores in St. Johnsbury, Concord, and Manchester
it's like walking into empty tombs. Where are the customers? The cashiers are
reading novels. Amazon and Wal-Mart are killing Sears.
My closest Sears store in Littleton (10 miles away) is almost always empty,
but it's just a tiny little thing that mostly takes orders and arranges for
delivery and installation.
Yet I always buy my heavy appliances, TV sets, lawn equipment (leaf blowers,
trimmers, chain saws, lawn mowers), and snow throwers from Sears. This is
because up here Sears is the only vendor with a decent at-home extended warranty
so that I don't have to pack up these items an take them 100 miles to Manchester
for repairs. When my snow thrower gave out more times than I can count on both
hands a Sears technician fixed it "for free" each time in my garage. Sears
finally solved an engineering flaw in that machine so it has not frozen up since
the chute cables were shortened. When my basement dehumidifier quit this
summer, a Sears technician showed up and replaced the circuit board --- free
parts and labor and no fee for a service call. Thus far my Sears treadmill has
had two motor replacements and three belt replacements --- all at no extra
charge to me. My warranties on 18 items (including stove, three refrigerators,
dishwasher, microwave, garbage disposal, washing machine, etc.) are all
renewable in 2017.
Try finding a TV repair technician in the State of New Hampshire. except for
the Sears guy that will come to your house. My point is that if you live
in the boon docks where the closest repair technicians are 100 or more miles
away, the Sears extended at-home warranties (usually 2-5 years for about $150)
are the only way to go. These warranties are less of a good deal if you live in
the big cities where there are more service technicians nearby. TV sets are so
reliable and relatively inexpensive these days that maybe they should just be
throw-aways like toasters when they give out. But that's not so with your snow
throwers, washing machines, dish washers, etc. That's also not the case for
gasoline leaf blowers, trimmers, and chain saws that are relatively unreliable.
Anything with a small gasoline engine needs a good extended warranty up in these
mountains. I'm just not adept at repairing small engines myself.
The bottom line is that I worry a lot about the income statement bottom line
of Sears. Sears, like JC Penney, sacrificed its mail-order business for Mall
tombs. Mall big-box stores are just too costly in the exploding world of more
convenient and often cheaper online shopping alternatives, especially online
alternatives from Wal-Mart and Amazon. Also Wal-Mart online and onsite pricing
must be driving the mall stores crazy. Compare the lawn mower prices at your
local Sears store with the prices at your local Wal-Mart. If it weren't for the
warranty services Sears would probably be already dead in New Hampshire and
Vermont. Wal-Mart warranty services suck up here! Also Sears has better
installation services for things like washing machines and dishwashers that
require heavy lifting and plumbing. And the Sears technicians who come to your
house know that Sears is a tiger about written evaluations of their services.
I do hope Sears survives. Sustainability is not very promising at the moment,
especially the mall tombs where Sears might eventually be buried.
Jensen Speculation
Online shopping will lead to a throw-away era where it's cheaper to replace
products under warranty rather than repair them.
I envision a new profession of defective product compliance testers for
expensive online products. If your big-screen TV or expensive video camera fails
a nearby professional compliance tester will come to your home and make some
simple tests of compliance of the products with its specifications.
If the product still under warranty is defective it's probably cheaper for
Amazon or Wal-Mart to simply send you a replacement product and instruct you on
where to ship the defective product (at vendor's cost). Dealers may spring up
who fix up and sell defective items if they can be fixed. Television sets these
days can be incredibly hard to fix..
Because of moral hazards, compliance testers should not also be defective
product dealers.
Amazon could then bill the TV or camera manufacturers, but chances are that
the initial wholesale prices to Amazon will be discounted in anticipation of
best-estimates of the costs of warranty replacement.
November 21, 2013 message from Stieg Larrson
“The Stock Exchange is something very different.
There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only
fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that
company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn’t have a thing to
do with reality or with the [Swedish] economy.”
Stieg Larsson
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Jensen Comment
Bob Jensen wrote a reply to Stieg that, I think, justifies stock market trading
in equity shares of companies. However, in retrospect I'm more concerned that he
may be correct about investments in stock indices such as the S&P 500 index. So
here's my revised reply to Stieg.
Hi Stieg,
Thanks so much for joining in our AECM fun.
S&P 500 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500
Question
Does investing in a financial index such as investing in movements S&P 500
price movements differ fundamentally from investing in the price movements
of Microsoft common shares?
Answer
Investing in common shares like those of Microsoft has a tremendous
advantages in a capitalist economy. There would be no venture capital if
investors in those ventures could not eventually liquidate their purchase of
shares in a risky venture. Thus common share trading is the way to motivate
investors to fund new companies and new projects in existing companies such
as when Microsoft issues new pre-emptive shares in the market place to fund
new products.
In theory there is a huge difference in that each Microsoft share of stock
provides rights to the value of General Motors that is left over after all
debt and preferred stock obligations have been paid, including those
obligations to workers, suppliers, and lenders. Investment in a fund that
replicates the movements of a collective stock index like the S&P 500
provides only rights to the liquidation value of the fund itself, not any of
the net assets of corporations whose stock price movements affect the
valuation of the index fund.
There is not a noteworthy difference in fraud risks. For example, did it
really matter if Bernie Madoff dealt in common shares or S&P index fund
shares. If the fund's shares disappeared before the FBI moved in there's
nothing left for recovery except to go after the non-fund assets that the
court might impound such as the Madoff homes and the assets of investors who
may have illegally benefited from fraudulent distributions of the fund.
In reality there may be less difference than theory suggests since
commonly there is no net value to equity investors such as investors in
General Motors stock were wiped out in the bankruptcy reorganization of
General Motors in July 2009 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors#Chapter_11_reorganization
This begs the question of what value to society flows in from trading
common shares or their index fund trading that is any different from
investing in other indices through bookmakers such as bets on the weather,
football scores, election outcomes, or online poker strategies? In other
words are investors in a financial index any different that investors
betting with a football score bookmaker?
One difference is that the index fund maintains an ongoing balance on the
excess between what has been collected from investors minus what has been
distributed to investors. Bookmakers typically distribute all funds (less
commissions) to the winners after an event transpires such as a Super Bowl
game. A respectable index fund distributes funds to investors that choose to
liquidate their shares and retains the funds of investors who choose to
continue to hold their shares in the fund.
Thus there may be economic benefit to society arising from what index
fund managers do with the excess between what is collected from buyers of
shares in the fund versus what is paid out to investors who choose to
liquidate their funds. If that money sits idle in a bank vault there is
zero benefit to society from stacks of unspent cash. If the money is
spent illegally such as in a Ponzi scheme there may be some benefit derived
from illegal recipients spend their distributions such as investing in new
ventures or new yachts. In a Ponzi scheme, however, there is inevitably an
illegal transfer of funds from investors to whomever benefitted illegally.
Legitimate index funds are not Ponzi frauds. Similarly society may
benefit if the excess reserves are invested legitimately beyond what is
needed for liquidity of the fund. In a sense, index fund reserves become
like insurance reserves that are invested in the economy at the same time
they serve to meet contractual obligations of the fund. Insurance reserves
do not sit uselessly as stacks of cash in bank vaults. These reserves are
usually invested in projects that benefit society in some way such as in
skyscrapers and housing developments. If necessary, insurance companies can
use these investments as collateral for loans needed to pay off in disasters
like tornado disasters.
My point is that legitimate index fund reserves
can be a lot like insurance fund reserves that benefit society.
Index Fund ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_investing#Economic_theory
Economic theory
Economist Eugene Fama said, "I take the market
efficiency hypothesis to be the simple statement that security prices
fully reflect all available information." A precondition for this strong
version of the hypothesis is that information and trading costs, the
costs of getting prices to reflect information, are always 0 (Grossman
and Stiglitz (1980))." A weaker and economically more sensible version
of the efficiency hypothesis says that prices reflect information to the
point where the marginal benefits of acting on information (the profits
to be made) do not exceed marginal costs (Jensen (1978)). Economists
cite the efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) as the fundamental premise
that justifies the creation of the index funds. The hypothesis implies
that fund managers and stock analysts are constantly looking for
securities that may out-perform the market; and that this competition is
so effective that any new information about the fortune of a company
will rapidly be incorporated into stock prices. It is postulated
therefore that it is very difficult to tell ahead of time which stocks
will out-perform the market.[7] By creating an index fund that mirrors
the whole market the inefficiencies of stock selection are avoided.
In particular the EMH says that economic
profits cannot be wrung from stock picking. This is not to say that a
stock picker cannot achieve a superior return, just that the excess
return will on average not exceed the costs of winning it (including
salaries, information costs, and trading costs). The conclusion is that
most investors would be better off buying a cheap index fund. Note that
return refers to the ex-ante expectation; ex-post realisation of payoffs
may make some stock-pickers appear successful. In addition there have
been many criticisms of the EMH.
. . .
Diversification
Diversification refers to the number of different securities in a fund.
A fund with more securities is said to be better diversified than a fund
with smaller number of securities. Owning many securities reduces
volatility by decreasing the impact of large price swings above or below
the average return in a single security. A Wilshire 5000 index would be
considered diversified, but a bio-tech ETF would not.[17]
Since some indices, such as the S&P 500 and
FTSE 100, are dominated by large company stocks, an index fund may have
a high percentage of the fund concentrated in a few large companies.
This position represents a reduction of diversity and can lead to
increased volatility and investment risk for an investor who seeks a
diversified fund.
Some advocate adopting a strategy of investing
in every security in the world in proportion to its market
capitalization, generally by investing in a collection of ETFs in
proportion to their home country market capitalization.[18] A global
indexing strategy may outperform one based only on home market indexes
because there may be less correlation between the returns of companies
operating in different markets than between companies operating in the
same market.
Asset allocation and achieving balance
Asset allocation is the process of determining the mix of stocks, bonds
and other classes of investable assets to match the investor's risk
capacity, which includes attitude towards risk, net income, net worth,
knowledge about investing concepts, and time horizon. Index funds
capture asset classes in a low cost and tax efficient manner and are
used to design balanced portfolios.
A combination of various index mutual funds or
ETFs could be used to implement a full range of investment policies from
low risk to high risk.
Comparison of index funds with index ETFs
In the United States, mutual funds price their assets by their current
value every business day, usually at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time, when the
New York Stock Exchange closes for the day.[19] Index ETFs, in contrast,
are priced during normal trading hours, usually 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Eastern time. Index ETFs are also sometimes weighted by revenue rather
than market capitalization.[20]
U.S. capital gains tax considerations
U.S. mutual funds are required by law to distribute realized capital
gains to their shareholders. If a mutual fund sells a security for a
gain, the capital gain is taxable for that year; similarly a realized
capital loss can offset any other realized capital gains.
Scenario: An investor entered a mutual fund
during the middle of the year and experienced an overall loss for the
next 6 months. The mutual fund itself sold securities for a gain for the
year, therefore must declare a capital gains distribution. The IRS would
require the investor to pay tax on the capital gains distribution,
regardless of the overall loss.
A small investor selling an ETF to another
investor does not cause a redemption on ETF itself; therefore, ETFs are
more immune to the effect of forced redemptions causing realized capital
gains.
"The Economic Consequences Of Index-Linked Investing," by Jeffrey
Wurgler, Journal of Indexes Europe, April 26, 2012 ---
http://www.indexuniverse.eu/europe/publications/journal-of-indexes/articles/8274-the-economic-consequences-of-index-linked-investing.html?fullart=1&start=9
The Best and Worst Run States in America: A Survey of All 50 ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/11/21/the-best-and-worst-run-states-in-america-a-survey-of-all-50-2/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NOV222013A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
"Professor Kahneman: A Simple Logic Question That Most Harvard
Students Get Wrong," by Gus Lubin, Business Insider, December
November 11, 2012 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/question-that-harvard-students-get-wrong-2012-12
DON'T MISS: 61 Behavioral Biases That Screw Up How You Think,
Jensen Comment
Business and other students are advised to learn the complexities of markup and
markdown pricing before they take the GMAT examination.
Prospect Theory ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_theory
"Prospect Theory: A Framework for Understanding Cognitive Biases,"
Less Wrong, July 10, 2010 ---
http://lesswrong.com/lw/6kf/prospect_theory_a_framework_for_understanding/
Also note the many comments
Thank you Simoleon Sense for the heads up.
. . .
And now, the twist: prospect theory
probably isn't exactly true. Although it holds
up well in experiments where subjects are asked to make hypothetical
choices, it may fare less well in the rare experiments where researchers
can afford to offer subjects choices for real money (this isn't the best
paper out there, but it's one I could find freely available).
Nevertheless, prospect theory seems fundamentally closer to the mark
than simple expected utility theory, and if any model is ever created
that can explain both hypothetical and real choices, I would be very
surprised if at least part of it did not involve something looking a lot
like Kahneman and Tversky's model.
"Video: Daniel Kahneman - The Psychology of Large Mistakes and Important
Decisions" Simoleon Sense, July 27, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/daniel-kahneman-psychology-of-large-mistakes-and-decisions/
Speaker Background (Via Wikipedia)
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli psychologist and
Nobel laureate, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and
decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.With Amos
Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human
errors using heuristics and biases , and developed Prospect theory . He was
awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect
theory. Currently, he is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs
at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
Watch the video ---
Click Here
Video 1: "Nobelist Daniel Kahneman On Behavioral Economics (Awesome)!"
Simoleon Sense, June 5, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-nobelist-daniel-kahneman-on-behavioral-economics-awesome/
Introduction (Via Fora.Tv)
Nobel
Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman addresses the
Georgetown class of 2009 about the merits of behavioral
economics.
He deconstructs the assumption that people always act
rationally, and explains how to promote rational
decisions in an irrational world.
Topics Covered:
1. The
Economic Definition Of Rationality
2.
Emphasis on Rationality in Modern Economic Theory
3. Examples of Irrational Behavior (watch this part)
4. How
to encourage rational decisions
Speaker Background (Via Fora.Tv)
Daniel
Kahneman - Daniel Kahneman is Eugene Higgins Professor
of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus
at Princeton University. He was educated at The Hebrew
University in Jerusalem and obtained his PhD in
Berkeley. He taught at The Hebrew University, at the
University of British Columbia and at Berkeley, and
joined the Princeton faculty in 1994, retiring in 2007.
He is best known for his contributions, with his late
colleague Amos Tversky, to the psychology of judgment
and decision making, which inspired the development of
behavioral economics in general, and of behavioral
finance in particular. This work earned Kahneman the
Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 and many other honors
Video 2: Nancy Etcoff is part of a new vanguard of cognitive
researchers asking: What makes us happy? Why do we like beautiful things? And
how on earth did we evolve that way?
Simoleon Sense, June 10, 2009
http://www.simoleonsense.com/science-of-happiness/
Video 3: Yale's Robert Shiller (slightly over one hour of video
lecture)
Behavioral Finance: The Role of Psychology ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLNbxWH8Lc
"Countries and Culture in Behavioral Finance," by Meir Statman ---
http://www.scu.edu/business/finance/research/upload/Countries-and-cultures-in-BF.pdf
Behavioral finance has made important contributions
to the field of investing by focusing on the cognitive and emotional aspects
of the investment decision-making process. Although it is tempting to say
that people are the same everywhere, the collective set of common
experiences that people of the same culture share will influence their
cognitive and emotional approach to investing. In this article, the author
discusses the many cultural differences that may influence investor behavior
and how these differences may influence the recommendations of a financial
advisor.
"Must Read: Why People Fall Victim To Scams," Simoleon Sense,
March 18, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/must-read-why-people-fall-victim-to-scams/
The paper is at
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft1070.pdf
"Behavioral Finance: Theories and Evidence," by Alistair Byrne,
CFA University of Edinburgh Mike Brooks Baillie Gifford & Co. The Research
Foundation of the CFA Literature Review Institute ---
http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2470/rflr.v3.n1.1?cookieSet=1
That behavioral finance has revolutionized the
way we think about investments cannot be denied. But its intellectual
appeal may lie in its cross-disciplinary nature, marrying the field of
investments with biology and psychology. This literature review
discusses the relevant research in each component of what is known
collectively as behavioral finance.
This review of behavioral finance
aims to focus on articles with direct relevance to practitioners of
investment management, corporate finance, or personal financial
planning. Given the size of the growing field of behavioral finance, the
review is necessarily selective. As Shefrin (2000, p. 3) points out,
practitioners studying behavioral finance should learn to recognize
their own mistakes and those of others, understand those mistakes, and
take steps to avoid making them. The articles discussed in this review
should allow the practitioner to begin this journey.
Traditional finance uses models in
which the economic agents are assumed to be rational, which means they
are efficient and unbiased processors of relevant information and that
their decisions are consistent with utility maximization. Barberis and
Thaler (2003, p. 1055) note that the benefit of this framework is that
it is “appealingly simple.” They also note that “unfortunately, after
years of effort, it has become clear that basic facts about the
aggregate stock market, the cross-section of average returns, and
individual trading behavior are not easily understood in this
framework.”
Behavioral finance is based on the
alternative notion that investors, or at least a significant minority of
them, are subject to behavioral biases that mean their financial
decisions can be less than fully rational. Evidence of these biases has
typically come from cognitive psychology literature and has then been
applied in a financial context.
Examples of biases include
•
Overconfidence and overoptimism—investors overestimate their ability
and the accuracy of the information they have.
•
Representativeness—investors assess situations based on superficial
characteristics rather than underlying probabilities.
•
Conservatism—forecasters cling to prior beliefs in the face of new
information.
•
Availability bias—investors overstate the probabilities of recently
observed or experienced events because the memory is fresh.
•
Frame
dependence and anchoring—the form of presentation of information can
affect the decision made.
•
Mental
accounting—individuals allocate wealth to separate mental
compartments and ignore fungibility and correlation effects.
•
Regret
aversion—individuals make decisions in a way that allows them to
avoid feeling emotional pain in the event of an adverse outcome.
Behavioral finance also challenges
the use of conventional utility functions based on the idea of risk
aversion.
For example, Kahneman and Tversky
(1979) propose prospect theory as a descriptive theory of decision
making in risky situations. Outcomes are evaluated against a subjective
reference point (e.g., the purchase price of a stock) and investors are
loss averse, exhibiting risk-seeking behavior in the face of losses and
risk-averse behavior in the face of gains.
Continued in article
Jim Mahar (a huge fan of Ayn Rand) uses some interesting behavioral
finance videos in his finance class ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-videos-we-will-be-using-in.html
We are covering the idea of charity or
altruism as rational or irrational. Now
clearly this idea of helping others is irrational is well established in
some circles. To start what is altruism? Let's
ask Google.
Now many economists have argued for years that it
is bad. For instance,
Ayn Rand in her writings and more recently
from the
Ayn Rand Institute.
Last week we ended class talking about
this video where the monkeys shared their
gains and acted in a manner that would be seen as uneconomic (giving
away nuts, caring about "fairness" etc). If you have not seen that
video, I highly recommend it. (oh and
please give me a juicy grape
:) ) So
cooperation
may be useful for the species.
Here is an
example not in an artificial setting.
The videos can be seen at
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-videos-we-will-be-using-in.html
From Jim Mahar's Blog
Behavioral Economics Reading List ---
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2010/04/behavioral-economics-reading-list/
"Professor Kahneman: A Simple Logic Question That Most Harvard
Students Get Wrong," by Gus Lubin, Business Insider, December
November 11, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/question-that-harvard-students-get-wrong-2012-12
DON'T MISS: 61 Behavioral Biases That Screw Up How You Think,
Jensen Comment
Business and other students are advised to learn the complexities of markup and
markdown pricing before they take the GMAT examination.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on November 15, 2013
Should CEO pay be capped?
Switzerland will vote next week on a proposal limiting executive pay to 12
times that of a company’s lowest paid worker, the second time this year the
country will use the ballot box in an attempt to rein in corporate
compensation,
writes the WSJ’s Neil MacLucas.
The Swiss have grown more concerned about wealth
disparity as the gap between a wealthy executive class and everyday workers
grows. But critics say the initiative, if passed, will make Switzerland a
less attractive place to do business. And executives at some companies,
including Glencore Xstrata
and Kuehne + Nagel,
have said they would consider leaving Switzerland if the initiative passes.
Google Glass Will Change Photography Forever ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-photos-by-trey-ratcliff-2013-11
"Google Glass Prompts Experiments in Journalism Schools," by Tanya
Roscorla, Center for Digital Education, September 6, 2013 ---
http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Google-Glass-Prompts-Experiments-in-Journalism-Schools.html
"Professors Envision Using
Google Glass in the Classroom," by Sara Grossman, Chronicle of Higher
Education, June 20, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professors-envision-using-google-glass-in-the-classroom/44401?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"The Porn Industry Has Already Dreamed Up Awesome Ideas For Google Glass,"
by Dylan Love, Business Insider, May 25, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-porn-2013-5
"Google Glass and the Future of Technology," by David A. Pogue, The
New York Times, September 13, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/google-glass-and-the-future-of-technology/
New gadgets — I mean whole new gadget categories —
don’t come along very often. The iPhone was one recent example. You could
argue that the iPad was another. But if there’s anything at all as different
and bold on the horizon, surely it’s Google Glass.
That, of course, is Google’s prototype of a device
you wear on your face. Google doesn’t like the term “glasses,” because there
aren’t any lenses. (The Glass team, part of Google’s experimental labs, also
doesn’t like terms like “augmented reality” or “wearable computer,” which
both have certain baggage.)
¶Instead, Glass looks like only the headband of a
pair of glasses — the part that hooks on your ears and lies along your
eyebrow line — with a small, transparent block positioned above and to the
right of your right eye. That, of course, is a screen, and the Google Glass
is actually a fairly full-blown computer. Or maybe like a smartphone that
you never have to take out of your pocket.
¶This idea got a lot of people excited when Nick
Bilton of The New York Times broke the story of the glasses in February.
Google first demonstrated it April in a video. In May, at Google’s I/O
conference, Glass got some more play as attendees watched a live video feed
from the Glass as a sky diver leapt from a plane and parachuted onto the
roof of the conference building. But so far, very few non-Googlers have been
allowed to try them on.
¶Last week, I got a chance to put one on. I’m
hosting a PBS series called “Nova ScienceNow” (it premieres Oct. 10), and
one of the episodes is about the future of tech. Of course, projecting
what’s yet to come in consumer tech is nearly impossible, but Google Glass
seemed like a perfect example of a breakthrough on the verge. So last week
the Nova crew and I met with Babak Parviz, head of the Glass project, to
discuss and try out the prototypes.
¶Now, Google emphasized — and so do I — that Google
Glass is still at a very, very early stage. Lots of factors still haven’t
been finalized, including what Glass will do, what the interface will look
like, how it will work, and so on. Google doesn’t want to get the public
excited about some feature that may not materialize in the final version.
(At the moment, Google is planning to offer the prototypes to developers
next year — for $1,500 — in anticipation of selling Glass to the public in,
perhaps, 2014.)
¶When you actually handle these things, you can’t
believe how little they weigh. Less than a pair of sunglasses, in my
estimation. Glass is an absolutely astonishing feat of miniaturization and
integration.
¶Inside the right earpiece — that is, the
horizontal support that goes over your ear — Google has packed memory, a
processor, a camera, speaker and microphone, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas,
accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and a battery. All inside the earpiece.
¶Google has said that eventually, Glass will have a
cellular radio, so it can get online; at this point, it hooks up wirelessly
with your phone for an online connection. And the mind-blowing thing is,
this slim thing is the prototype. It’s only going to get smaller in future
generations. “This is the bulkiest version of Glass we’ll ever make,” Babak
told me.
¶The biggest triumph — and to me, the biggest
surprise — is that the tiny screen is completely invisible when you’re
talking or driving or reading. You just forget about it completely. There’s
nothing at all between your eyes and whatever, or whomever, you’re looking
at.
¶And yet when you do focus on the screen, shifting
your gaze up and to the right, that tiny half-inch display is surprisingly
immersive. It’s as though you’re looking at a big laptop screen or
something.
¶(Even though I usually need reading glasses for
close-up material, this very close-up display seemed to float far enough
away that I didn’t need them. Because, yeah — wearing glasses under Glass
might look weird.)
¶The hardware breakthrough, in other words, is
there. Google is proceeding carefully to make sure it gets the rest of it as
right as possible on the first try.
¶But the potential is already amazing. Mr. Pariz
stressed that Glass is designed for two primary purposes — sharing and
instant access to information — hands-free, without having to pull anything
out of your pocket.
¶You can control the software by swiping a finger
on that right earpiece in different directions; it’s a touchpad. Your swipes
could guide you through simple menus. In various presentations, Google has
proposed icons for things like taking a picture, recording video, making a
phone call, navigating on Google Maps, checking your calendar and so on. A
tap selects the option you want.
¶In recent demonstrations, Google has also shown
that you can use speech recognition to control Glass. You say “O.K., Glass”
to call up the menu.
¶To illustrate how Glass might change the game for
sharing your life with others, I tried a demo in which a photo appeared — a
jungly scene with a wooden footbridge just in front of me. The theme from
“Jurassic Park” played crisply in my right ear. (Cute, real cute.)
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
2013 Happiest Nations of the World ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/11/07/the-happiest-countries-in-the-world-4/2/
Jensen Comment
I've been though this before in a debate with Jim Peters and won't repeat myself
again except to say that all the Top 10 other than Canada hare not at all
diverse and have relatively small populations with strict barriers to
immigration. This is not a good testimonial that diversity leads to national
happiness. The Ethnic Fractionalization Index is as follows for selected nations
shown below with the least fractionalized nations having the highest numbers
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level
002 Tanzania (high ethnic diversity)
060 Canada
(Happiness Rank 08)
063 Switzerland (Happiness Rank 01)
071 Mexico
(Happiness Rank 10)
085 USA
087 Iceland
(Happiness Rank 03)
128 Sweden (Happiness Rank 04)
142 Finland (Happiness Rank 09)
144 Denmark (Happiness Rank 05)
145 Austria (Happiness Rank 07)
146 Norway (Happiness Rank 02)
148 Germany
151 Netherlands
(Happiness Rank 06)
157 Japan
158 South Korea
159 North Korea (lowest ethnic diversity)
Canada enjoys an enormous land mass relative to its population and is a
nation that sells immigration to highest bidders in many instances. Canada also
is the largest exporter of oil, timber, and maple syrup to the USA and lives
under the umbrella of the USA military and advanced medical research.
Switzerland and Iceland ethic diversity surprises to me, although neither
Switzerland nor Iceland is noted to have ethic diversity based upon skin color.
The same can be said for Mexico.
The odd thing is that Mexico is among the Top 10 happiest nations in the
world. Under these circumstances I would think that people trying to wade south
in the Rio Grande would obstruct all those trying to wade north. Why isn't
Mexico building a high wall on its northern border?
My guess is that if you randomly offered an immigration lottery ro 10,000
randomly chosen people in Africa, India, and other parts of Asia that the USA
would have the highest probability of being chosen by those lottery winners. Why
don't they want to go to happier countries?
My threads on happiness and The American Dream (with a special section on
Denmark) are at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/SunsetHillHouse/SunsetHillHouse.htm
Ten Companies Paying Americans the Least ---
Click Here
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/11/15/ten-companies-paying-americans-the-least/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NOV152013A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Not included are companies employing the highest number of undocumented workers
even less
01. Wal-Mart
02. McDonald’s
03. Target
04. Kroger
05. Yum! Brands
06. Sears Holdings
07. Darden Restaurants
08. Macy's
09. TJX Companies
10. Starbucks
Jensen Comment
The numbers are a little misleading. For example, Wal-Mart hires at low wages
without many benefits but promotes over 400 employees each day such that people
serious about staying with Wal-Mart get higher wages, more benefits (including
health care), and education and training benefits. New workers at Starbucks and
McDonalds, for example, have fewer opportunities for promotions and better
benefits.
Kroger surprises me since it is unionized.
I think Macy's is also unionized although I did not verify this. Most big
department store chains are unionized by the retail unions.
How come the top ten listed above are not all fast food restaurants like
McDonald's? Is McDonald's stingier than Burger King and Taco Bell?
Is support for a higher minimum wage self-serving?
Some like Starbucks support legislation for large increases in the minimum wage.
This is self-serving. Firstly, most of the companies listed above pay more than
minimum wage, and increases in the minimum wage clobber Starbucks' competition
more than Starbucks itself. More than 50% of the companies that pay bare minimum
wage, often with part-time workers receiving no fringe benefits,
are small mom and pop businesses.
For example, a doubling of the minimum wage might put some of the downtown
urban coffee shops out of business thereby making Starbucks much more
profitable. And many those former part-time workers in those destroyed coffee shops won't
get unemployment compensation and will have to become welfare cases for more than
just food stamps.
November 15, 2013 reply from Jim Peters
I agree that this is complicated. I had a very good
student a while back who quit Wal-Mart to come back and get his BA in
accounting. He was making $250,000 per year as a regional manager for
Wal-Mart without a BA degree. When I asked him how he learned the skills to
oversee a region, he said he got his education from "the University of
Wal-Mart." They have very good training programs and 75% of their execs came
up through the ranks.
Jim Peters
"The Complex Economics of America’s Minimum Wage," Knowledge@wharton,
November 11, 2013 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/complex-economics-americas-minimum-wage/
Jensen Comment
This is a long article that covers most of the main points. The main conclusion
is that we need to comprehensively study the types of people who receive the
minimum wage and to invent better solutions to their problems that a higher
minimum wage alone will never solve. For example, young people should probably
be paid much less than the minimum wage provided they are provided alternatives
to acquire skills, experience at teamwork, and better hope for a rewarding
career. I'm not certain what to recommend for older folks beyond retirement age.
In many instances it's the work, no matter how mundane, that keeps them young
and needed. For others working for minimum wage is a bitch brought on by
inadequate savings, zero interest on what savings they have, and a painful chore
with their arthritis. For workers caught in the middle its the economy of high
unemployment, especially those who lost their higher paying jobs. Minimum wage
type of work was never meant to provide careers for the underemployed.
The knee jerk reaction is hope that Wal-Mart becomes unionized.
Wal-Mart is not your minimum-wage employer. Wal-Mart provides higher wages and
many benefits including good deals for health care and education and training.
Unionized companies like Kroger are not doing any better than Wal-Mart.
Well over half of the truly minimum wage workers in the USA work for small
businesses, and doubling the minimum wage will merely cost many of them the jobs
that they are clinging to in an effort to not have to totally disrupt their
lives with divorce, welfare dependency, moving to another town, and uprooting their children in
school.
"Five Tips for First Year Accounting PhD Candidates," by Dr. Emelee
(who is still working on his Ph.D., Going Concern, November 12, 2013 ---
http://goingconcern.com/post/five-tips-first-year-accounting-phd-candidates
Jensen Comment
Some of these tips are out of the hands of the doctoral candidate --- like
beating the competition to be sent to a doctoral consortium. I would recommend
some other things such as those shown below:
- Study as many Khan Academy modules in math and statistics that appear to
be relevant to your current and future studies. Especially go for the
modules in statistics and probability ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability
- From Day 1 in the program study (not just read) the more recent doctoral
dissertations from you program as well as some of those that look relevant
from other universities. American Doctoral Dissertations from ProQuest ---
http://www.umi.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/add.shtml
- Watch the free videos and other tutorials on how to use the statistical
packages and databases in your doctoral program. For example, go to YouTube
and look up SAS. For example search for "sas statistical analysis program"
at
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sas+statistical+analysis+system&sm=1
- Follow the AECM for ideas on term papers ---
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
Note that you can scan the message titles without having to receive each
message in your email box.
- Carefully psych out your doctoral program --- probably by getting advice
from recent graduates and students well along in the program. Every program
unique in important ways even though all of them are social science programs
with very little accounting content ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
- Late in the program begin to study about how to game for tenure as an
accounting professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)
Other tips from my AECM friends, many of whom advise doctoral students in
accountancy:
"Judge Hands Google a Big Victory in Lengthy Book-Scanning Case," by
Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 14, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Judge-Hands-Google-a-Big/143059/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Google has won a major victory in the long legal
fight over its scanning and searching of millions of books. A federal judge,
Denny Chin, ruled on Thursday that Google's use of copyrighted works in its
Google Books program counts as fair use, and he dismissed a lawsuit
originally brought by authors and publishers groups in 2005.
The
publishers settled with Google in 2012, but the
Authors Guild plaintiffs pressed ahead with their claims of copyright
infringement.
Judge Chin's opinion, delivered in the U.S.
District Court in Manhattan, resoundingly supported Google on the question
of fair use. While the company did not seek permission to scan copyrighted
works, the judge wrote, the uses made of those scans are "highly
transformative"—a key element in fair-use determinations.
A Google representative said the company was
"absolutely delighted" by the ruling. The decision will also thrill fair-use
advocates and many academic librarians and researchers, especially those who
want to mine the vast Google Books corpus for research. But the Authors
Guild said it would appeal.
Judge Chin's ruling detailed what he called the
"many benefits" of Google Books and the several ways in which it can be seen
as transformative. The program "has become an essential research tool" for
librarians, scholars, and students, the judge wrote. It "greatly promotes"
text mining, he noted, citing friend-of-the-court briefs filed by digital
humanists and legal scholars. It gives "traditionally underserved
populations," including those who have trouble reading printed material,
much broader access to books.
Google Books also "helps to preserve books and give
them new life" by scanning and saving them. And it aids authors and
publishers "by helping readers and researchers identify books," Judge Chin
wrote. "Google Books will generate new audiences and create new sources of
income."
All of those factors had led him to conclude that
"Google Books provides significant public benefits" and does so "without
adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders," he wrote. "Indeed, all
society benefits."
A 'Challenge to
Copyright'
Google says it has scanned more than 20 million
books so far, in partnership with a number of academic libraries. Many of
those books are under copyright. The Google Books program allows users to
search the scanned books and see snippets of them but not their full
texts—security measures that Judge Chin noted in his ruling.
"This has been a long road," Google said in a short
written statement reacting to the decision. "As we have long said, Google
Books is in compliance with copyright law and acts like a card catalog for
the digital age, giving users the ability to find books to buy or borrow."
Although the latest ruling is good news for Google,
the Authors Guild's decision to appeal means the case may have more life
left in it.
"We disagree with and are disappointed by the
court's decision," Paul Aiken, the guild's executive director, said in a
written statement. "This case presents a fundamental challenge to copyright
that merits review by a higher court. Google made unauthorized digital
editions of nearly all of the world's valuable copyright-protected
literature and profits from displaying those works. In our view, such mass
digitization and exploitation far exceeds the bounds of the fair-use
defense."
The case has been through many twists and turns.
Judge Chin
rejected a proposed settlement in 2011, saying it
went too far and gave Google too great an advantage over its competitors.
Paul N. Courant, a former university librarian and
dean of libraries at the University of Michigan, has been closely involved
in Google's library-partnership program from the beginning. A professor of
economics and public policy on the university's Ann Arbor campus, he is also
acting director of the University of Michigan Press.
Continued in article
Google Book Finder ---
http://books.google.com/
Bob Jensen's free electronic books finders ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Questions
Do you really want to put your savings in Tesla?
Are those ugly power poles in front of your yard destined to become firewood?
"How Toyota Will Be First With a Fuel-Cell Car," by Kevin Bullis,
MIT's Technology Review, November 15, 2013 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/521616/how-toyota-will-be-first-with-a-fuel-cell-car/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20131115
National Labor College's Demise: USA's Largest Labor Unions Could Not
Save Their College
"A Small College's Demise," by Rivard, Inside Higher Ed,
November 14, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/14/labor-college-backed-afl-cio-decades-closes-because-finances
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"The crumbling Kremlin?" The Economist, November 13, 2013 ---
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/11/russias-economy
IN THIS week’s print edition, we look at Russia’s
stagnating economy. Our article focuses on current problems—including low
business confidence and a strong rouble. But an NBER paper*, published on
Monday, looks at Russia’s long-term economic future—and promises yet more
pain.
The research focuses on Russia’s “fiscal gap”—the
difference between the present value of a government's future expenditures
and its future receipts. The paper makes predictions out to 2100, and
calculates total government expenditure and revenue. If the latter is lower
than the former, a fiscal gap exists. To close the gap, higher taxes or
lower spending are needed.
Most people think that Russia’s fiscal position is
pretty solid. The country has over 16.5 trillion rubles ($500 billion) of
foreign-exchange reserves—nearly three times the size of its national debt.
(Britain’s reserves are less than a tenth of its national debt).
So what is the problem? According to the paper, it
all depends on how the government defines “debt”, “spending” and “taxes”.
Economics nerds will be unsurprised to hear that Larry Kotlikoff, a
professor at Boston College, is a co-author of this paper. In a famous
article, “Deficit delusion”, Mr Kotlikoff discusses the arbitrariness of the
labels that are given to different types of government spending, taxation
and debt. He looks at the example of “Mr X”, a man who pays $1,000 to the
government when he is forty and receives $1,500 from the government when he
is fifty. The government:
might label the $1,000 receipt “taxes”…and the
$1,500 repayment “transfer payments”…it could label the $1,000 receipt
“borrowing” and call $500 of the $1,500 payment “interest payments” and the
rest “repayment of principal”…[another] possibility is to label $500 of the
initial $1,000 “taxes” and the other $500 “borrowing”…
...and so on. Mr Kotlikoff’s point is that the
whole thing is rather arbitrary. And that has allowed governments to
underestimate massively their total liabilities—for example, by excluding
pensions from official government debt figures.
So the paper focuses purely on future government
payments versus future government receipts—an approach that gets around
government accounting gimmicks. It paints a worrying picture of Russia's
fiscal position.
A few examples illustrate the problems facing the
Russian economy. Government revenues are likely to be squeezed in the coming
years. Most people know that Russia is pretty dependent on natural
resources. About half of government revenues come from oil and gas. That
could well collapse:
That all adds up to an alarming figure. Under
certain assumptions the authors reckon that Russia’s fiscal gap, in 2013
money, is 1,670 trillion rubles—or 10.5% of the present value of all future
Russian output.
Economic projections of this nature cannot be
accurate. (Quite a lot may change between now and 2100.) And the numbers in
this paper are pretty crazy. The paper claims that a 37% “immediate and
permanent” tax hike or a 27% spending cut might be needed if Russia is to
avoid future fiscal meltdown. But even in the best-case scenario, Russia's
fiscal gap will be 280 trillion roubles.
Continued in article
"Jolla: Finland's Answer To The iPhone And Android, Will Start Selling Its
First Phone This Month" by Megan Rose Dickey, Business Insider,
November 14, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/jolla-will-start-selling-its-first-phone-this-month-2013-11
Jolla, the new Finnish-based smartphone company that
spun out of Nokia, just announced at Slush that its first phone will go on
sale in Helsinki on November 27.Back in
June,
Jolla secured its first mobile phone carrier. Finland's
third largest smartphone carrier, DNA, will be the first to sell Jolla's
(pronounced Yo-Lah) flagship phone.
Jolla runs the company's own Sailfish OS, which is
based on the MeeGo OS that Nokia smartphones ran before switching to
Microsoft's Windows Phone 8. Even though Jolla runs Sailfish, the phone will
be compatible with Android apps, which means users could potentially have
hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from, assuming the developers submit
their apps to the Sailfish app store.
The phone features a 4.5-inch display, dual-core
processor, microSD expansion with 16GB of storage pre-installed, a 4G modem,
and a replaceable battery. Jolla has previously said the device would cost
about €399.
Jensen Comment
My Scandinavian relatives would pronounce that "Yalla" by yimminie. Finland is
the high tech manufacturing nation of the EU --- from market dominance of the
old Nokia mobile phones to television sets. Ole and Lena claim that the Finns
have an impossible language and no sense of humor. The Finns do spend a lot of
time hating Russians --- somewhat justified given the history of their wars.
Finland almost always comes out on top when global K-12 learning is compared.
This is heavily due to the intensity of learning at home after school hours. A
lot of time is spent learning how to spell and pronounce long Finnish words and
three or four other languages of the world.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on November 14, 2013
Investors are swarming around Internet companies that don’t make money
Snapchat, a two-year-old company with no sales and no business model,
recently rejected a $3 billion buyout offer from
Facebook,
Evelyn M. Rusli and Douglas MacMillan report in this
WSJ scoop. Co-founder Evan Spiegel is
holding out because he hopes his company can get an even higher valuation.
Facebook had earlier offered to buy the company for more than $1 billion.
And in recent weeks, Facebook representatives contacted Snapchat again to
discuss an all-cash offer triple that amount, which would have been
Facebook’s largest acquisition to date.
The
Snapchat offer is the latest example of investor exuberance for social-media
and mobile-messaging upstarts. Twitter, which has yet to turn a profit, has
a market value of roughly $25 billion after its IPO last week. And Pinterest
last month raised $225 million from investors who valued the company, which
like Snapchat has no revenue, at $3.8 billion.
Snapchat’s smartphone app delivers hundreds of millions of messages, mostly
from teenagers and young adults. And Mr. Spiegel thinks Snapchat’s user
numbers will keep on growing. Still, it isn’t clear how Snapchat might make
money, Rusli and MacMIllan write. One path to revenue might be helping
marketers craft messages that speak to the service’s young users. Instead of
banner ads, the personal nature of Snapchat makes it more suited to stories
and characters who interact directly with users, says Julie Ask, principal
analyst at Forrester Research. “If you can create content, whether it is a
photo or a video or a story, and get it onto one of these instant-messaging
apps, it has the potential to go viral so fast because the community of
users is so big,” says Ms. Ask.
Jensen Comment
The things we teach about business valuation are no longer relevant in the tech
industry since Amazon was invented. Forget the ratios ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
In high stakes gambling I think it's called betting the farm on the come? ---
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_Betting_on_the_come_mean#slide1
There are a lot of country songs about busted up bronc riders and other losers
in lonely bars who bet on the come.
At the same time there are a lot of pensioners like Erika and me who place an
order almost daily on the money-losing Amazon. Sure beats icy roads and wasting
an hour hunting for some obscure thing at Wal-Mart. And all day long I'm
listening to the money-losing Pandora. But I don't really need an iPhone,
Android, or Jolla as long as my seven-year old cell phone still dials home and
911 and a AAA towing (if I should ever need a tow) for less than $100 per year.
"The Complex Economics of America’s Minimum Wage," Knowledge@wharton,
November 11, 2013 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/complex-economics-americas-minimum-wage/
Jensen Comment
This is a long article that covers most of the main points. The main conclusion
is that we need to comprehensively study the types of people who receive the
minimum wage and to invent better solutions to their problems that a higher
minimum wage alone will never solve. For example, young people should probably
be paid much less than the minimum wage provided they are provided alternatives
to acquire skills, experience at teamwork, and better hope for a rewarding
career. I'm not certain what to recommend for older folks beyond retirement age.
In many instances it's the work, no matter how mundane, that keeps them young
and needed. For others working for minimum wage is a bitch brought on by
inadequate savings, zero interest on what savings they have, and a painful chore
with their arthritis. For workers caught in the middle its the economy of high
unemployment, especially those who lost their higher paying jobs. Minimum wage
type of work was never meant to provide careers for the underemployed.
The knee jerk reaction is hope that Wal-Mart becomes unionized.
Wal-Mart is not your minimum-wage employer. Wal-Mart provides higher wages and
many benefits including good deals for health care and education and training.
Well over half of the truly minimum wage workers in the USA work for small
businesses, and doubling the minimum wage will merely cost many of them the jobs
that they are clinging to in an effort to not have to totally disrupt their
lives with divorce, moving to another town, and uprooting their children in
school.
Teaching Case on Careers and Education
From The Wall Street Journal Weekly Accounting Review on November 15,
2013
Why Focusing Too Narrowly in College Could Backfire
by:
Peter Cappelli
Nov 11, 2013
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: Accounting
SUMMARY: The article begins with a focus on choosing colleges, such
as private versus public and university versus liberal arts college but
offers many tips as students are choosing their majors. Students can discuss
the benefits of a focused, technical major such as accounting versus the
liberal arts majors. The issues discussed in the article focus on
variability of job opportunities upon students' graduation. Instructors
using the article can emphasize the relative consistency of accounting job
markets and the benefits of the skills learned in students' liberal arts
related courses.
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article may be used in an introductory
accounting class during a semester that students are choosing majors, or at
any time to discuss the benefits of skills learned in liberal arts classes
in addition to technical subjects studied for the accounting major. Several
questions ask students to state what they know about their own college or
university. Instructors can use this to assess students' knowledge and
contribute to class discussion about steps to take to ensure students
develop the best chances for employment after graduation.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory) What are the current concerns in the job market
following students' graduation? How do those concerns form the basis for
this article?
2. (Introductory) According to the article, what are some majors
that have posed challenging job markets for students upon graduation?
3. (Advanced) What is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act? How did it "ramp up
demand for accountants"?
4. (Advanced) What do you know about the job opportunities for
accounting majors upon graduation? Think especially about the consistency of
job opportunities for accounting majors over different economies. State in
your answer how you can find out this information for accounting majors
graduating from your college or university.
5. (Introductory) What portion of your coursework is devoted to
liberal arts courses? Based on the discussion in the article, what is the
importance of the skills you learn in these courses?
6. (Advanced) View the related graphic entitled "Employer
Priorities." Are you surprised by or curious about any facet of this list?
List one item and explain your answer.
7. (Advanced) What steps in your remaining academic career can you
take to be sure that you meet employers' priorities when you graduate? Will
you need help in taking those steps? State where you think you can find that
assistance at your college or university.
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
"Why Focusing Too Narrowly in College Could Backfire," by Peter Cappelli,
The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324139404579016662718868576?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid
A job after graduation. It's what all parents want
for their kids.
So, what's the smartest way to invest tuition
dollars to make that happen?
The question is more complicated, and more
pressing, than ever. The economy is still shaky, and many graduating
students are unable to find jobs that pay well, if they can find jobs at
all.
The result is that parents guiding their children
through the college-application process—and college itself—have to be
something like venture capitalists. They have to think through the potential
returns from different paths, and pick the one that has the best chance of
paying off.
For many parents and students, the most-lucrative
path seems obvious: be practical. The public and private sectors are urging
kids to abandon the liberal arts, and study fields where the job market is
hot right now.
Schools, in turn, are responding with new,
specialized courses that promise to teach skills that students will need on
the job. A degree in hospital financing? Casino management? Pharmaceutical
marketing?
Little wonder that business majors outnumber
liberal-arts majors in the U.S. by two-to-one, and the trend is for even
more focused programs targeted to niches in the labor market.
It all makes sense. Except for one thing: It
probably won't work. The trouble is that nobody can predict where the jobs
will be—not the employers, not the schools, not the government officials who
are making such loud calls for vocational training. The economy is simply
too fickle to guess way ahead of time, and any number of other changes could
roil things as well. Choosing the wrong path could make things worse, not
better.
So, how should the venture-capitalist parents
proceed? What should they weigh as they decide where to put their limited
capital to get the biggest bang? Here are some things to consider. Does the
Product Get Out the Door?
You can pick the perfect school in terms of courses
and location and price and ambience. But none of it does a student any good
if he or she doesn't end up with a degree. After all, college improves job
prospects only if a student graduates. That is why it is crucial to
scrutinize the graduation rates at various schools.
What's more, it is also important to look at how
long it takes students to graduate. Only about 60% of Division 1 university
students graduate in six years, for example.
Many parents and students don't realize that even
top schools differ greatly in their ability to get students out the door to
graduation on time. Consider the difference between an elite private
university like Stanford University and an elite public university like the
University of California, Berkeley. My colleague Robert Zemsky found that
the private school has a much wider array of support services—counseling,
tutoring and so forth—that vastly improve the odds that a student will
actually graduate, and will do so in four years. An expensive, private
school may end up being cheaper if a student doesn't have to be there as
long.
Probably the most important statistics to
scrutinize are job-placement rates for graduates, but they are often hard to
get and easy to fudge. Are we measuring jobs at graduation, or within a year
after? Do internships count as a "job"?
Statistics about starting salaries, to judge the
quality of those jobs, can be even more elusive. In the absence of good
data, visit the school's career center and see which employers are actually
interviewing students and for what jobs.
Parents and students should push to require schools
to post graduation rates, job-placement rates and other information on the
outcomes for their graduates—especially considering how many students are
now using government-backed loans to pay for their education. It is not in
the public interest for students to use public funds for vocational degrees
that don't have a good chance of paying off. Today's Jobs Aren't Necessarily
Tomorrow's
The trend toward specialized, vocational degrees is
understandable, with an increasing number of companies grumbling that
graduates aren't coming out of school qualified to work.
But guessing about what will be hot tomorrow based
on what's hot today is often a fool's errand.
The problem is that the job market can change
rapidly for unforeseeable reasons. Today, we frequently hear that computers
and information technology are and will be the hot fields, but both have
gone from boom to bust over time. Students poured into IT programs in the
late 1990s, responding to the Silicon Valley boom, only to graduate after
2001 into the tech bust.
Changes in regulations, meanwhile, can rapidly
create and kill fields. For instance, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act amped up the
demand for accountants. Emerging technologies can be just as
disruptive—applicant-tracking software eliminates jobs in recruiting, while
cellphones create programming jobs in mobile technology. Developments like
these are almost impossible to anticipate.
It gets even more complicated than that. Let's say
governments and colleges could tell what the demand would be for a
particular occupation years out. The problem for someone making an
investment in that occupation is that everyone else has the same
information. That means students will rush to train in that field, the
supply of potential workers goes up, and the jobs are no longer so
attractive.
Consider an email that Texas A&M University sent to
this year's class of incoming petroleum engineers, the hottest job in the
U.S. in terms of starting wages.
The message reminded students that the job market
for engineers has always been competitive and cyclical, and warned, "Recent
data suggests that some concern about the sustainability of the entry-level
job market during a time of explosive growth in the number of students
studying petroleum engineering in U.S. universities may be prudent."
Unfortunately, that kind of caution isn't common.
Schools want to get as many applicants as possible, and to get the best ones
to attend. Showing parents and students all the caveats that go with the
impressions they create about future jobs may conflict with those interests.
The Danger of Specialization
Another important caveat that doesn't get discussed
much: It may be worse to have the wrong career focus in college than having
no career focus—because skills for one career often can't be used elsewhere.
Let's say a student spends four years learning to
market pharmaceuticals. But what can he or she do with that degree if the
drug companies aren't hiring? The skills don't transfer easily anyplace
else.
That may even be true within a field. Anthony
Carnevale, of Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce, calculates
that the unemployment rate among recent IT graduates at the moment is
actually twice that of theater majors. Despite the constant complaints from
IT employers about skill shortages, only certain skills within IT are hot at
the moment, such as those associated with mobile communications.
Focusing on a very specific field also means that
you miss out on courses that might broaden your abilities. Courses that
teach, say, hospitality management or sports medicine may crowd out a logic
class that can help students learn to improve their reasoning or an English
class that sharpens their writing. Both of those skills can help in any
field, unlike the narrowly focused ones.
Beyond those concerns, a narrow educational focus
forces students to pick a career at age 17, before they know much of
anything about their interests and abilities. And if they choose
incorrectly, it can be very difficult for them to start over once they're
older.
Researchers Eric A. Hanushek, Ludger Woessmann and
Lei Zhang find that more vocationally focused education in high school
appears to limit adaptability to changing labor markets later in life. The
same thing may be true in college.
All that said, practical degrees do have value. But
they're not nearly as valuable as boosters say.
Yes, in some fields, like engineering, the only way
in is with a specialized degree. Other things being equal, students with one
of these degrees will have an easier time getting their first job in the
field than students with liberal-arts degrees. After the first job, though,
it is not clear how much advantage that practical degree has.
Certainly, some matter in part because they are
prestigious—such as a Wharton M.B.A.—but for those that aren't prestigious,
and where the degree isn't required or common, a degree may not matter at
all.
Also consider that what companies really want hires
to have is actual work experience. If they have a choice between hiring
someone fresh out of a hospitality-degree program or someone who doesn't
have that degree but who has run a restaurant, they will choose the latter.
The Way Forward
So, what are the practical lessons for the
venture-investor parent and their child?
Students that go the practical route should delay
choosing majors and specialized courses as long as possible, so that there
is likely to be a better match between course work and employer interests.
Students can rely on real-time information from the career office to gauge
demand. Because of the need to adjust, it also helps to be at a school where
switching majors is easy. Small programs with limited resources mean that
students may have to stay more than four years to get all the courses that
are required for a new major.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Whereas students planning ahead for medical school, accounting careers
engineering careers, etc. facing licensing examinations, it's not efficient to
avoid the requisite specializations in undergraduate studies.
Law used to be a wonderful career because you could major in virtually
anything and still go to law school. Now the opportunities for law graduates
have shrunk more than raw wool in a boiling cauldron.
MBA programs prefer that students were not undergraduate business majors.
However, opportunities for MBA graduates increase with certain undergraduate
specializations such as computer science, engineering, and accounting
(especially for wannabe tax lawyers).
Fortunately, it is possible to specialize in some programs like accountancy
and still take humanities minors or dual majors. Increasingly, accounting majors
become somewhat proficient in another language such as Mandarin.
A Whitehouse Website That Does Work (almost entirely)
College Scorecard ---
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-score-card
Jensen Comment
The President's scoring system may place too much pressure on colleges to make
students too specialized for career purposes.
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
This seemed to be such an exceptional edition of Businessweek Insider
I decided to forward all the links on November 15, 2013.
Some of the articles surprised me, especially how the U.S. Postal Service is
forming new partnerships with outfits like Amazon and EBay. These may well be
life-saving partnerships, although I don't think we can expect UPS and FedEx to
roll over an play dead. My prediction is that there may be a future partnership
between the Postal Service and UPS. Up here in the boondocks the postal service
is already delivering some of the smaller UPS packages.
There are also some interesting articles about what lies ahead in our lives,
including medical services and medications.
Also note the top link to the 2014 Users Guide.
Bob Jensen
Inflation and interest rates are low, oil prices are expected to
fall, companies are sitting on cash, and there's plenty of consumer
demand. Here, Bloomberg Businessweek sets the economic and
geopolitical stage for 55 global industries |
|
More Top Stories
|
|
Regulators and insurers are cool to the idea, and there may not
be enough time to make it work |
|
Although a workaround would embarrass the White House, bypassing
that balky federal health-insurance exchange might be the least-bad
solution |
|
To much astonishment, a survey shows that 13 percent of Americans
think the website a success |
|
The former Tennessee senator talks about health-care
breakthroughs such as personalized medicine |
|
Obama's nominee to run the Federal Reserve parries questions from
the left and right with equal dispatch |
|
Men's Wearhouse shares have surged since Jos. A. Bank's initial
offer in September |
|
National Rural Letter Carriers' Association President Jeanette
Dwyer discusses the importance of saving the USPS |
|
In October, Wal-Mart U.S. head Bill Simon expected food-stamp
cutbacks to focus recipients on the giant chain's discounts. Now he
sounds worried |
|
The government of Zhejiang province plans to help fund local
factories' automation |
|
Digital Entertainment
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin went so far as to enumerate what
those benefits are; still, the Authors Guild will appeal |
|
Smaller companies are coming along and poking holes at Facebook's
weak points |
|
Embarrassments and legal probes don't seem to stop coming for the
biggest U.S. bank |
|
Liquidators of two defunct Bear Stearns hedge funds accuse the
Big Three of issuing ratings they knew were bogus |
|
After long downplaying services such as Amazon's as insecure,
low-margin businesses, IBM now boasts of its dominance in the cloud
rental market |
|
Internet
The cloud storage service is moving to make itself as popular
with corporate IT administrators as Dropbox has been with consumers |
|
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
rejects the plane maker's offer to keep 777X production near Seattle |
|
The so-called third arrow of Abenomics hits a wall as the
government backs away from structural reform, infuriating Rakuten
Chairman Hiroshi Mikitani |
|
With domestic oil output rising at its fastest pace in decades,
U.S. oil exports surpassed imports in October for the first time
since February 1995 |
|
Ford Motor has attached the Town Car name to its new Lincoln MKC
to keep its traditional livery clients |
|
All told, the regulators' demands weren't particularly onerous |
|
Yahoo inflames employee sentiment by making managers rate workers
on a forced ranking system that follows a bell curve, and then fire
some of them |
|
Employees generally aren't thrilled about having to play Game
of Thrones at the office |
|
In a merger with the U.S., Canada would overcontribute about $17
trillion on a per capita basis, or roughly $500,000 per Canadian |
|
The flagship of the world's No. 1 clothing retailer manages a
network of factories that allows it to get styles into stores faster
than rivals. Is this retail's future? |
|
Social Media
Action in put warrants in Europe precedes option trading in the
U.S. |
|
Will tobacco be exempted from the Trans-Pacific Partnership? |
|
These five medicines are predicted to be big moneymakers |
|
Faster processors will give digital-currency miners an edge |
|
Gulfstream's jet is very fast, very popular, and back-ordered
until 2017 |
|
Attorney David Nevin represents the best of America's legal
system by defending some of the worst humans—such as Khalid Sheik
Mohammed |
|
Can Rocket Raccoon and Ant-Man sustain the genre's winning
streak? |
|
The GOCE satellite fell harmlessly into the ocean, and, according
to NASA, there are millions of pieces of debris in earth's orbit |
Forthcoming in The American Sociological Review
Title: Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages
http://mypage.iu.edu/~cha5/Youngjoo_Cha_files/Cha_weeden.pdf
Authors: Youngjoo Cha, Department of Sociology Indiana University
cha5@indiana.edu
Kim A. Weeden , Department of Sociology, Cornell University kw74@cornell.e
September 24, 2013
Despite rapid changes in women’s educational
attainment and continuous labor force experience, convergence in the gender
gap in wages slowed in the 1990s and stalled in the 2000s. Using CPS data
from 1979 to 2009, we show that convergence in the gender gap in hourly pay
over these three decades was attenuated by the in creasing prevalence of
“overwork” (defined as working 50 or more hours per week) and the ri sing
hourly wage returns to overwork. Because a greater proportion of men engage
in overwork, these changes raised men’s wages relative to women’s and
exacerbated the gender wage gap by an estimated 10% of the total wage gap.
This overwork effect was also sufficiently large to offset the
wage-equalizing effects of the narrowing gender gap in educational
attainment and other forms of human capital. The overwork effect on trends
in the gender gap in wages was most pronounced in professional and
managerial occupations, where long work hour s are especially common and nor
ms of overwork are deeply embedded in organizational practices and occupati
onal cultures. These results illustrate how new ways of organizing work can
perpetuate old forms of gender inequality.
Bob Jensen Threads on the History of Women ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
MOOCs Are Largely Reaching Privileged Learners, Survey Finds
More than 80 percent of respondents had a two- or four-year degree, and 44
percent had some graduate education, according to a poll of 35,000 students
taking the online courses ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/moocs-are-reaching-only-privileged-learners-survey-finds/48567?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
This is to be expected since most MOOC courses to date are highly specialized
(e.g., readings of obscure poets or C++ software coding) in relatively advanced
courses. The first MOOC course, a course from computer scientists at Stanford,
was a technical course in artificial intelligence. The MOOC model is not
really a good model for introductory learners who typically need more hand
holding. This does not mean that distance education is not suitable for hand
holding --- in many ways online learning is more suited to hand holding since
instructors may be instantly available 10 hours a day via instant messaging in
distance education courses having less than 25 students. But MOOC courses with
24,615 students are not conducive to hand holding of any one of those 24,615
students enrolled in the course.
The problem for students needing hand holding is
that class sizes must be small onsite or online for hand holding. Small classes
generally mean fees. MOOCs are free to date because prestigious universities are
willing to tap endowment funds to pay for the relatively low cost for each of
24,615 students per course. If students want transcript credits for taking MOOC
courses, fees kick in for the competency-based examination and grading services.
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and other free
course videos and materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
This includes links if you want to sign up for one of the hundreds of free MOOCs
or the wonderful Khan Academy videos.
I hate calling this Open-Access
"Wellcome Trust, Palgrave Macmillan Publish Their First Open-Access Monograph,"
by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 19, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/wellcome-trust-palgrave-macmillan-publish-their-first-open-access-monograph/48415?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Because of these initiatives I now have to write free open-access and free
open-source since the terms open access and open source no longer mean that
downloading is free. The MOOCs are also polluting these concepts if the only
access to a "free" course entails paying for transcript credits.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're
talking real money.
Attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen on the Johnny Carson
Show ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Dirksen
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on
November 14, 2013
Starbucks beats the taxman through Kraft charge.
Starbucks’s
latest income-tax bill has been cut to zero by a $2.7 billion compensation
charge it was ordered to pay
Kraft over a
contract dispute,
the FT reports. In
restated accounts, Starbucks said a global tax bill of $832 million that it
had expected for the year to Sept. 29, 2013 would instead become a tax
credit of $239 million. The company said: “Starbucks does not have any
pre-tax income as a result of the arbitration award, therefore we do not
have a tax obligation this year. For tax purposes, the payment is
deductible. We are still evaluating the ruling to determine the time period
for deductibility.”
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on
November 13, 2013
Starbucks fined nearly $2.8 billion
Starbucks was
ordered to pay nearly $2.8 billion for backing out of a partnership with
Kraft to
distribute packaged coffee to grocery stores,
the WSJ reports.
Starbucks, complaining that Kraft wasn’t doing enough to stock and promote
its coffee, tried to terminate the agreement in 2010, offering to pay Kraft
$750 million. Kraft rejected the offer, but in 2011 Starbucks withdrew
anyway, prompting Kraft to begin arbitration proceedings. Starbucks CFO Troy
Alstead said the company strongly disagrees with the arbitrator’s
conclusion. “We believe Kraft did not deliver on its responsibilities to our
brand under the agreement; the performance of the business suffered as a
result.”
Jensen Comment
Gulp! The progressive (liberal) Starbucks, unlike me, is no longer doing a thing
to help fund Obamacare subsidies. Instead it is helping to pay for its court
settlement with a tax refund.
Links forwarded by the T.H.E Journal,
November 2013
Spotlight
Teachers Paul Werner and
Geoffrey Clarion offer seven techniques you can use to
enhance your approach to flipped learning.
More
Google is launching Google Play
for Education, a package that combines Android-based tablets
with management tools and software designed specifically for
K-12 schools.
More
|
Today's networks enable technology-driven learning
Blended learning, mobile devices, online
assessments and video collaboration are
revolutionizing the classroom. Learn how to build
the modern networks that are making it all possible
at The Modern Network.
Learn more. |
Ed Tech News & New Products
Samsung has teamed up with
Advanced Education to bring its Samsung School solution to
Canada.
More
MasteryConnect has created a new
education service that takes a pinboard-based approach to
social sharing, with a focus on tools and tips for teaching
Common Core State Standards.
More
The J. Paul Getty Museum is
extending its open educational content program to Khan
Academy. Through a partnership with Khan, the museum is
providing a variety of art history and art resources with
the aim of "developing a rich personalized learning
environment across a broad variety of topics, from the
making of a medieval manuscript to the conservation of Old
Master paintings."
More
Echo360 has released a minor
update to its flagship lecture capture platform, EchoSystem.
The new release, EchoSystem version 5.3 Service Pack 2,
includes a number of tweaks designed to improve performance
and compatibility with third-party learning management
systems.
More
STEM Central, as website housing
more than 3,000 links to STEM-related resources, has
upgraded its site to include tools that allow teachers to
evaluate and rank resources and add their own links.
More
New platform includes tools and
curricula designed to personalize the learning experience.
More
Two education entities in
Florida have teamed up with a technology company to develop
a new teaching and learning platform over the next year.
More
Being Mobile
One hand washes the other; time
for us to help each other in using mobile devices
effectively in the classroom. Teachers, please, send us a
curricular tip on how you use mobile devices in your
classroom. We will publish your tips in our blog; thank you!
More
Upcoming Events
Jan. 28th - 31st
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"In Data-Speed Race, Who Is the Fastest in LTE? Walt Mossberg Puts Four
LTE Services to the Test," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal,
November 13, 2013 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304644104579193941307362348
As smartphone usage has surged, so has the demand
for reliable, fast cellular data. Sure, your smartphone can use Wi-Fi to
surf the Web, watch video, stream music and download documents. But Wi-Fi
isn't always available or costs extra in some public places.
In the U.S., the fast cellular technology of choice
is called 4G LTE. The 4G just means we're on the fourth generation of
cellular data systems and LTE stands for Long Term Evolution, which is the
fastest and most consistent form of 4G cellular data. It's the one that U.S.
wireless carriers are competing to offer in as many cities as possible, as
quickly as possible.
Verizon Wireless got the jump on deploying LTE and
I reported my first tests of its nascent service in January 2011. But now
AT&T T +0.26% claims it has almost caught up, and Sprint S +0.71% and
T-Mobile TMUS -1.57% are racing to build out their LTE networks.
So I decided to test the availability and speed of
the four major U.S. carriers' LTE coverage in three metro areas where I
happened to be in the past month or so. I focused on download speeds because
the average consumer is still downloading much more than uploading.
Please note that this wasn't a scientific test. I
didn't drive the nation in a van jammed with technical gear. I toted around
four versions of a major LTE smartphone that supports all four carriers—the
iPhone 5S—and ran the same speed test in the same places, 20 times per phone
per location. Then I averaged the readings and ranked the results. And I
didn't go into pricing because the companies tend to have pricing plans that
are too confusing to lay out in detail here.
Note that, while LTE connections can peak at rates
of well over 40 megabits per second, a good average LTE speed is somewhere
between 10 and 20 mbps, though the carriers typically promise lower speeds,
if they make promises at all. The average speed of a landline Internet
connection in the U.S. in the second quarter of this year was 8.7 mbps,
according to Internet provider Akamai.
I did the tests in three places. One was my home in
the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. The second was a hotel in midtown
Manhattan, near Times Square. The third was a hotel in the heart of Silicon
Valley.
The winner, for the first time in any test I've
run, was AT&T, with an average speed of about 19.7 megabits per second. But
AT&T's victory was secured mainly because of a stupendous performance in New
York City, where it dominated its rivals with a stunning average speed of
34.8 mbps.
It was the slowest in my Silicon Valley test and
ranked third in the D.C. suburbs. AT&T says it doesn't promise any range of
speeds to its customers.
Verizon Wireless came in second, averaging 16.7
mbps, well above its promised range of 5 to 12 mbps. Verizon wasn't No. 1 in
any of the test locations, but it was the most consistent performer,
clustering between 15 and 18.6 mbps.
In each city, my T-Mobile iPhone took longer to
find an LTE network than the others, but it did quite respectably, with an
average score of about 13.5 mbps, well within its wide promised range of
between 6 and 20 mbps. T-Mobile won my test in the D.C. suburbs, with a
speed of around 19.5 mbps.
Sprint proved the most problematic. Its overall
average was the lowest, at about 10.4 mbps and that was only because it won
my Silicon Valley test with a speed of 20.7 mbps. In the other two cities, I
had to leave my main testing location to search within a small radius to get
a Sprint LTE signal, and the results were by far the worst in those places.
Sprint says its network is still wanting in some
places because it is trying to replace technology while customers are still
using the network.
Sprint has a new variation on LTE called Sprint
Spark that it claims could "surpass the entire U.S. industry in speed
capability in 2016." But the company says in the near future Sprint Spark
will only be available on a few phones and in limited portions of five
cities, so it wasn't part of this test.
You may get different outcomes with your phones and
services. Locations, times of day, levels of network congestion, phone
models and other factors all can affect speeds. Even in my limited tests, I
saw big swings. Some of you may not even get LTE at all where you live,
typically in rural America.
Continued in article
From the Scout Report on November 22, 2013
Crowdhoster ---
http://www.crowdhoster.com/
Interested in creating your own crowdfunding
project but, alas, you may not know how to code or how to create a website
for such an initiative? The Crowdhoster application is just for you. This
app can be used to create a campaign page complete with a funding progress
bar, links, and customizable content areas. Visitors can look over the
features area, check out examples, or read over their setup guide. This
version is compatible with all operating systems.
Cupcloud ---
http://cupcloud.com/
Cupcloud is a free application that allows users to
save, open, and share multiple documents and web pages simply. The program
assists interested parties with accessing these materials from any computer
or device, and it's great for collaborating on group projects and the like.
There's a helpful How to Cup section here, along with a primer and a blog.
This version is compatible with all operating systems, including Linux.
Concerns grow over the financing of a new baseball stadium outside of
Atlanta
Stadium financing: Pay and play and pay some more
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/11/stadium-financing
Braves New World? Taypayer Funding Remains A Concern As Atlanta Rushes
Towards New Stadium
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/11/13/braves-new-world-taxpayer-funding-remains-a-concern-as-atlanta-rushes-towards-new-stadium/
Here's How Cobb County Will Pay For The Braves' Ballpark
http://deadspin.com/heres-how-cobb-county-will-pay-for-the-braves-ballpar-1464404976
Atlanta Braves New Stadium Renderings
http://www.sportsgrid.com/mlb/new-braves-stadium/
Remembering the Wigwam
http://www.bu.edu/today/2012/braves-field-remembering-the-wigwam/
Boston Braves Historical Association
http://boston-braves.com/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Teaching Resources: University of New England ---
http://www.une.edu/cas/core/teaching.cfm
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
National Geographic: Photography ---
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Unlocking the Secrets of Science ---
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13079/nsf13079.pdf
Issues in Science and Technology ---
http://www.issues.org/index.html
USGS: A Plan for a Comprehensive National Coastal Program ---
http://marine.usgs.gov/coastal-plan/usgs-ntl-coastal-plan.pdf
Risk and Resilience in Coastal Regions
http://www.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/ULI-Documents/CoastalRegions.pdf
Teaching Videos: University of Exeter (science and medicine)
---
http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/medical-imaging/videos/
Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Educational Materials ---
http://www.hhmi.org/educational-materials
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin ---
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hhmi-bulletin/id411540287?mt=8
Case Studies in Primary Health Care ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/casestudiesinphc/coursePage/index/coursePage/index/
Health on the Net Foundation ---
http://www.hon.ch/home.html
Nutrition and healthy eating ---
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/MY00431
USDA: Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion ---
http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/
Team Nutrition: Educator Resources ---
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/educators.html
Foundations of Nutrition Science ---
http://ocw.tufts.edu/Course/76
Team Nutrition: Educator Resources ---
http://teamnutrition.usda.gov/educators.html
Healthy Lifestyle ---
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/HealthyLivingIndex/HealthyLivingIndex
USDA: Educators and Students ---
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=EDUCATOR_STUDENT&navtype=AU
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
Case Studies in Primary Health Care ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/casestudiesinphc/coursePage/index/coursePage/index/
National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention ---
http://actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/
Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/18/stay-suicide-hecht/
USGS: A Plan for a Comprehensive National Coastal Program ---
http://marine.usgs.gov/coastal-plan/usgs-ntl-coastal-plan.pdf
Risk and Resilience in Coastal Regions
http://www.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/ULI-Documents/CoastalRegions.pdf
California Digital Newspaper Collection ---
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc
Los Angeles Examiner Collection, 1920-1961 ---
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15799coll44
Boston Public Library: Business ---
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/sets/72157628017141829/
Understanding Boston ---
http://www.tbf.org/understanding-boston
City of Boston Archives: Online Collections ---
http://www.cityofboston.gov/archivesandrecords/collections/onlinecollections.asp
People, Places and Planning in Boston ---
http://planningboston.org/
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
With Liberty & Justice For All ---
http://www.thehenryford.org/museum/liberty/
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
How Benoit Mandelbrot Discovered Fractals: A Short Film by Errol Morris ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/how-benoit-mandelbrot-discovered-fractals-a-short-film-by-errol-morris.html
Who's That Mathematician? Images from the Paul R. Halmos Photograph
Collection ---
http://www.maa.org/publications/periodicals/convergence/whos-that-mathematician-images-from-the-paul-r-halmos-photograph-collection
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Free eBooks: Read All of Proust’s Remembrance of
Things Past on the Centennial of Swann’s Way
---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/free-ebooks-read-all-of-prousts-remembrance-of-things-past-on-the-centennial-of-swanns-way.html
The 100 Best Novels: A Literary Critic Creates a List in 1898 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/the-100-best-novels-1898.html
16-Year-Old Marcel Proust Tells His Grandfather About His Misguided
Adventures at the Local Brothel ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/16-year-old-marcel-proust-at-a-brothel.html
"The History of the English Language, Animated," by Maria Popova, Brain
Pickings, November 13, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/13/open-university-history-of-the-english-language-animated/
"The Geography of Great Literature, in Hand-Lettered Typography," by Maria
Popova, Brain Pickings, November 15, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/13/open-university-history-of-the-english-language-animated/
Take a Virtual Tour of Venice (Its Streets, Plazas & Canals) with Google
Street View ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/google-street-view-presents-a-virtual-tour-of-venice.html
Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Cantos,” Some of the Great Poetic Works of the
20th Century ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/hear-ezra-pound-read-from-his-epic-cantos.html
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
36 Realistically Colorized Historical Photos Make the Past Seem Incredibly
Real --- z
http://indulgd.com/realistically-colorized-historical-photos/
Read Rejection Letters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt
Vonnegut & Andy Warhol ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/rejection-letters-sent-to-three-famous-artists.html
The Existentialism Files: How the FBI Targeted Camus, and Then Sartre After
the JFK Assassination ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/the-existentialism-files-how-the-fbi-targeted-camus-and-sartre.html
Alfred Stieglitz Autochromes (art history photograph) ---
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/alfred-stieglitz-autochromes
WGHB Open Vault: Rock and Roll ---
http://openvault.wgbh.org/collections/roll-rock-and-roll
California Digital Newspaper Collection ---
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc
National Geographic: Photography ---
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/
Los Angeles Examiner Collection, 1920-1961 ---
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15799coll44
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Listen To A Crazy Piano Invented By Leonardo Da Vinci ---
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/listen-crazy-piano-invented-leonardo-da-vinci
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
WGHB Open Vault: Rock and Roll ---
http://openvault.wgbh.org/collections/roll-rock-and-roll
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
"The History of the English Language, Animated," by Maria Popova, Brain
Pickings, November 13, 2013 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/13/open-university-history-of-the-english-language-animated/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
November 18, 2013
November 19, 2013
November 20, 2013
November 21, 2013
November 23, 2013
National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention ---
http://actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/
Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/18/stay-suicide-hecht/
Case Studies in Primary Health Care ---
http://ocw.jhsph.edu/index.cfm/go/viewCourse/course/casestudiesinphc/coursePage/index/coursePage/index/
Researchers Solve Longtime Mystery Of How Marijuana Causes Memory Loss
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-memory-problems-prevented-with-otc-painkillers-2013-11
Kris Kristofferson is uffering memory loss which he blames on his years of
football and boxing. Wonder if weed was also a factor, although Kris
doesn't blame the grass ---
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005268/news (November 15, 2013)
Also see
http://www.artistfacts.com/detail.php?id=2774
Mystery of the Elephant Whisperer ---
http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/elephantwhisperer.asp
A Bit of Humor
Big Bear Surprise ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/eryxAcsTcOA?rel=0
Useful Dog Tricks ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/PztO-OvzRyg
Die Maiers- Comedy Trapeze ---
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=717211468307619&set=vb.234538950336&type=2&theater
Forwarded by Paula
They say that during sex you burn off as many calories as running 8 miles.
Who the hell runs 8 miles in 2 minutes?
Dumb and Dumber Criminals Department
Conducting a Series of Robberies While Wearing a Functioning Ankle GPS Tracking
Device
"Much Dumber than This Bumbling Burglary," by Justin Peters, Slate, November 21,
2013 ---
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/11/21/dumb_criminal_of_the_week_brandon_campbell_dumb_criminals_don_t_get_much.html
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu