Tidbits on March 27 2014
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

This edition features photographs of Crawford Notch
History of The White Mountains --- Set 04 (Crawford Notch)

 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Mountains/HistoryWhiteMountains/04/WhiteMountains04-CrawfordNotch.htm 

 

Tidbits on March 27, 2014
Bob Jensen

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.


Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   


Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

 

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

 




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Computer Genius Builds Language That Lets Anyone Calculate Anything ---
http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/02/24/starting-to-demo-the-wolfram-language/

Watch the First Episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos Reboot on Hulu (US Viewers) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/watch-the-first-episode-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos-reboot-on-hulu-us-viewers.html
Episode 2 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/neil-degrasse-tyson-tells-fox-viewers-evolution-is-a-scientific-fact-on-cosmos.html

Video:  Fama on the history of Market Efficiency ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/fama-on-history-of-market-efficiency.html

Syria at War (five videos from PBS Frontline) ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/syria-at-war/?utm_campaign=syria-at-war&utm_source=newsletter&elq=760d40bba877469490ee0369e4ff0689&elqCampaignId=856

The Return of the Cicadas (after 17 years) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JJz36rSob0&feature=youtu.be

Hear William S. Burroughs’ Lectures on Creative Reading and Writing at Naropa University (1979) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/william-s-burroughs-lectures-on-creative-reading-and-writing.html

Check Out These Mesmerizing Computer Animations from the 1960s ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/check-out-these-mesmerizing-computer-animations-from-79478825200.html

The History of the Movie Camera in Four Minutes: From the Lumiere Brothers to Google Glass ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/the-history-of-the-movie-camera-in-four-minutes.html

Starlings --- https://www.youtube.com/embed/88UVJpQGi88

Inside the WGBH Open Vault (television video) --- http://www.wgbh.org/topics/Inside-the-WGBH-Open-Vault-353

Montana Country (Bears in a Dumpster) ---
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=464372510267787


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

Monty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Revealing the Drinking Habits of Great European Thinkers ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/monty-python-sings-the-philosophers-song.html

Les Beaux Frères - Serviette (brief nudity) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUr3XbROoA8
I had to wait a long time for a commercial for a new movie to end

Kevin Bacon Recreates Iconic 'Footloose' Dance For His Entrance On Jimmy Fallon's Show ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz2woZQnbJ3

Sid Vicious Sings Paul Anka’s “My Way” in His Own Spectacular Way ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/sid-vicious-sings-paul-ankas-my-way-in-his-own-spectacular-way.html

Web outfits like Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2

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 EY Exhibition: Paul Klee ---
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-paul-klee-making-visible

Colorized Rare Historical Photographs ---
http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=d6d9d5385aee

A Russian Mother's Great Photographs --- http://themetapicture.com/these-pictures-are-what-dreams-are-made-of/

Europe's Shiny New B-School Buildings ---
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2014-02-20/europes-shiny-new-b-school-buildings

31 Mesmerizing Pictures From A Remote Part Of Afghanistan That Is Still Untouched By War ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/eastern-afghanistans-wakhan-animal-herders-photos-2014-3

Why A US Aircraft Carrier Is A Dominant Force, In 41 Pictures ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/uss-eisenhower-persian-gulf-imcmex-2012-2014-2

31 Mesmerizing Pictures From A Remote Part Of Afghanistan Where People Live On The Edge Of Civilization ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz2wi0pLwhf

Declassified Photographs of an Atomic Bomb Loading ---
http://www.alternatewars.com/Bomb_Loading/Bomb_Guide.htm

18 Award-Winning Pictures From World Press Photo's 2014 Contest ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/world-press-photos-2014-contest-winners-2014-3

The Painted Churches of Texas --- http://www.klru.org/paintedchurches/

A Wild New Look at Birds, Thanks to Time-Bending Video Trickery --- http://www.wired.com/design/2014/03/birds-like-youve-never-seen/

Discover Soviet-Era Illustrations Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1976) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/discover-soviet-era-illustrations-of-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-hobbit-1976.html

National Historic Sites of Canada --- http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/lhn-nhs/index.aspx

Canadian Pacific Railway Collection (Photographs) --- http://www.vpl.ca/cpr/index.html

Parks Canada --- http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/np-pn/pr-sp/index_e.asp

The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project --- http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/searchmapframes.php

Irish in the American Civil War --- http://irishamericancivilwar.com/

Boston Abolitionists, 1831-1865 --- https://www.masshist.org/features/boston-abolitionists

The University of Iowa Libraries: 1923 African American Patrobas Cassius Robinson Collection  ---h
ttp://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/pcr/

The Goldfinch (Iowa History Magazine)  http://ir.uiowa.edu/goldfinch/

Two Friends Hiked For 10 Months And Captured This Breathtaking Footage Of Yosemite ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz2wcpvEQCX

University of Wisconsin Digital Collections: Marinette County Local History http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WI/subcollections/MarinetteLocHistAbout.html

Beloit College: Bartlett Collection (Asian Art Objects) --- http://www.beloit.edu/bcdc/logan/bartlett/

Freer and Sackler Galleries [iTunes, Smithsonian Asian Art] --- http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/default.htm 

Eastern Washington University Digital Collections --- http://econtent.library.ewu.edu/

Mountains and Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest ---
https://content.lib.washington.edu/portals/mountaineering/index.html

Washington State Department of Natural Resources --- http://www.dnr.wa.gov/Pages/default.aspx

Tacoma Community History Project --- http://content.lib.washington.edu/tacomacommweb/index.htm

University of Washington Digital Collections: Panorama Photographs Collection --- http://content.lib.washington.edu/panoramweb/index.html

Fenimore Art Museum: The Smith and Telfer Photographic Collection http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org/fenimore/collections/photography

James Wallace Black, 1825-1896  (photographs) ---
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/collections/72157625067549743/

Robert Adams: The Place We Live --- http://artgallery.yale.edu/adams/

The Huntington Archive (Buddhist and Asian Art) ---  http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu/database.php

Auburn University Theatre Collection --- http://diglib.auburn.edu/collections/theatre/

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

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/read-all-of-shakespeares-plays-free-online-courtesy-of-the-folger-shakespeare-library.html

Listen to Orson Welles’ Classic Radio Performance of 10 Shakespeare Plays ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/listen-to-orson-welles-classic-radio-performance-of-10-shakespeare-plays.html

In Search of Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Sonnets Lesson Plan ---
http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/language/lessonplan.html

The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/the-harvard-classics-download-all-51-volumes-as-free-ebooks.html

Orson Welles Reads From America’s Greatest Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/orson-welles-reads-from-whitmans-song-of-myself.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 March 27, 2014
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2014/TidbitsQuotations032714.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




Identity Theft Information and Tools from the AICPA and IRS ---
http://www.aicpa.org/interestareas/tax/resources/irspracticeprocedure/pages/idtheftinformationandtools.aspx

Tax practitioners and their clients are concerned about the growing epidemic of tax-related identity theft in America - both refund theft and employment theft. At the end of fiscal 2013, the IRS had almost 600,000 identity theft cases in its inventory, according tothe IRS National Taxpayer Advocate. 

The AICPA shares members' concerns about the impact of identity theft and offers the resources below to help them learn more about this issue and advise clients. We have provided recommendations to Congress and the IRS Oversight Board on ways to further protect taxpayers and preparers.

IRS Identity Protection Specialized Unit at 800-908-4490

Identity Theft Resource Center --- http://www.idtheftcenter.org/
Note the tab for State and Local Resources

The IRS has an Identity Theft Web Page at
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Identity-Protection

FTC Identity Theft Center --- http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/

"IRS is overwhelmed by identity theft fraud:   Billions wrongly paid out as scammers find agency an easy target," by Michael Kranish, Boston Globe, February 16, 2014 ---
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/02/16/identity-theft-taxpayer-information-major-problem-for-irs/7SC0BarZMDvy07bbhDXwvN/story.html


Advanced video production for your touch screen computer or mobile---
Http://www.touchcast.com
Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up on March 22, 2014.

So if you have an IPad, go to the above link to view their sample content.
Also you can download the free app to create content on your IPad.

Bob Jensen's threads on Video Capturing, Editing, Compression, and Playback ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Video


Video:  Fama on the history of Market Efficiency ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/fama-on-history-of-market-efficiency.html

Behavioral finance and investment from Berkeley ---  
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/behavioral-finance-and-investment-from.html

Bob Jensen's threads on the EMH ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#EMH


No California Vote on Lifting Ban on Affirmative Action ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/03/18/no-california-vote-lifting-ban-affirmative-action

Legislative leaders in California have shelved a proposal that would have set up a state vote to repeal a ban on the consideration of race and ethnicity in public college and university admissions, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Many black and Latino leaders have encouraged lawmakers to authorize a vote on repealing the ban. But legislative support lagged as many Asian Americans came out in favor of keeping the ban.

Bob Jensen's threads on affirmative action in higher education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AffirmativeAction


"The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of History," by Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, March 12, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/17-equations-that-changed-the-world-2014-3#ixzz2vqf4EeBR

Jensen Comment
I am the most familiar with the Black-Scholes Model that changed the financial world in controversial ways. The must complicated behavior to model is arguably human behavior, especially investment behavior. Among other things one of the inventors, Nobel Laureate Myron Scholes, of the BS (appropriate initials) led to one of the most spectacular busts on Wall Street --- the infamous "Trillion Dollar Bet" of a failed hedge fund known as Long-Term Capital Management --- LTCM ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#LTCM

Nova's "The Trillion Dollar Bet" transcripts are free --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stockmarket.html
However, you really have to watch the graphics in the video to appreciate this educational video --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stockmarket/

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


Wolfram Alpha --- http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Alpha

This is an amazing innovation from one of the all-time geniuses of mathematics and computing
"Computer Genius Builds Language That Lets Anyone Calculate Anything," by Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, March 10, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/wolfram-language-demo-2014-3 

Controversial mathematician Stephen Wolfram is about to release a programming language with the goal of being able to quickly do just about any calculation or visualization on just about any kind of data a person could want.

Wolfram, creator of the widely used mathematical software Mathematica and the "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram|Alpha, has announced the forthcoming release of the Wolfram Language, the underlying programming language powering those two pieces of software.

Wolfram describes and demos the language in a video posted late last month:---
http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/02/24/starting-to-demo-the-wolfram-language/

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's illustrations about how to use the traditional Wolfram Alpha for both computing and printing of equations ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theorylearningcurves.htm

"What Should Mathematics Majors Know About Computing, and When Should They Know It?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 18, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/03/18/what-should-mathematics-majors-know-about-computing-and-when-should-they-know-it/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Increasingly professors complain that Wolfram Alpha inhibits learning in mathematics unless assignments, quizzes, and examinations are administered in tightly controlled conditions where students cannot gain access to Wolfram Alpha.


Bayesian super hero Nate Silver is not standing by his original predictions of the Final Four. Nate is treating it more like predicting voting outcomes where predictions can be modified with each new poll. One time he learned a sad lesson by not adapting effectively to late polling when Scott Brown won the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy. I'm sure he does not want to make that non-adaptation mistake in the future.

March 21, 2014 from NATE SILVER: Florida Is No Longer A Favorite To Win The NCAA Tournament ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/florida-ncaa-tournament-odds-2014-3#ixzz2wcnZJI1u
Arizona seems to be on the rise in his predictions, although he's not completely pushed out Florida from the Final Four.

Question
What is  FiveThirtyEight?

Hint:  It has everything to do with Nate Silver.

Nate Silver (The Fox) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

Nate is famous for his Bayesian forecasts of baseball outcomes and his stint at election forecasting for The New York Times. and FiveThirtyEight. He parted ways with the NYT, but I think he still does sports predictions for ESPN and general forecasting as founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-fox-knows/

Nate's March Madness Predictions ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/march-madness-predictions/


"The Outlier Who Wasn’t," by Natalya Balnova, by Susan D’Agostino, Chronicle of Higher Education's The Chronicle Review, March 17, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Outlier-Who-Wasn-t/145297/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Kyle was an uncommon student in my advanced statistics class. An Army veteran who had served in Iraq, he was not only older than the other students but was also studying business, while most of the others were math majors. And his grades were well above average. Most uncommon of all, Kyle died before the semester ended.

My ambitious students have the opportunity to make strides that position them for bright futures, and Kyle was definitely ambitious. As might be expected from a soldier, he did not flinch when he failed the first exam. Rather, he told me, "I was too confident pressing buttons on the statistical software. Now I understand you want me to explain what I’m doing." After he sought my help, his performance on the second exam drastically improved. So I offered him a deal: Continue on the upward trajectory, and his first exam grade would disappear. He responded by becoming the most active participant in class.

"Aren’t you concerned about multicollinearity?" Kyle asked a classmate one day, undeterred by the prospect of looking foolish if he mispronounced "multicollinearity." When he did mispronounce it, he simply tried again, this time taking care with each syllable so that he got it right. Kyle was also the first student to utter "heteroscedasticity" aloud in class. He laughed at his first botched attempt but, as with "multicollinearity," succeeded the second time. No one would have accused him of showing off. Rather, the other students admired him, an ordinary guy who understood advanced statistics and was having fun to boot.

In short, Kyle was what is known in statistics as an outlier. Many statisticians disregard outliers, but I prefer to consider their impact. Occasionally they highlight a flaw in a statistical model. In class, I might explain the ambiguity of so-called outliers using a scatterplot concerning student success on an exam.

With "number of hours studied" on the horizontal axis and "grade earned on the exam" on the vertical axis, each dot on my scatterplot would represent individual student metrics. Because students who study zero, one, or two hours are likely to earn poor grades on the exam, while students who study eight, nine, or 10 hours are likely to perform significantly better, one might hypothesize a straight-line model for student performance based on hours studied.

In this model, a student who studied 16 hours but does not see a proportional increase in his grade compared with the student who studied 10 hours would be considered an outlier. Of course, this student might not be an outlier; the law of diminishing returns is probably at work here. The flaw is in the straight-line model. That is, a curved-line model might be more appropriate. In superimposing a curved line over the dots on our scatterplot, we observe that the so-called outlier student may not, in fact, be an outlier after all.

So maybe Kyle wasn’t an outlier. In many ways, he was exactly like my other students. Though 30 years old, he was still quite young. He was president of the campus chapter of the Student Veterans of America, loved the Boston Red Sox, was nurturing a relationship with a young woman, and eagerly anticipated his graduation. Maybe, as the government and universities work to ensure that veterans have access to emotional, practical, and financial support, individuals like Kyle eventually will fall in the center of our undergraduate student demographic. No doubt our classrooms, as well as our nation, would be better for it.

I was shocked when I learned that Kyle had died after a short illness. When we had exchanged emails the week before, he hadn’t told me that his condition was life-threatening. Rather, he apologized for having missed class and told me he would present his end-of-semester project in our last class, just days away. In a subsequent email, he revealed that he had been hospitalized, but added, "They’re saying I’m going to be out of here by Tuesday at the latest." Our last class was scheduled for Thursday, two days after he died. Had Kyle been worried for his life as he wrote me those emails?

If he was willing himself back to health and normalcy, I understood the inclination. Oddly enough, six months earlier, I had faced my own serious illness. At the time, I continued email correspondence while hospitalized, without revealing my situation. There was some question about my chances of survival before an experimental treatment saved me.

Had Kyle’s illness actually been as "short" as the university’s email to the community had indicated? And why had I survived while Kyle had not?

Though Kyle and I had never discussed mortality directly, we came close twice. The first time was on Veterans Day, one month before he died. He invited me to hear him read out the names of soldiers who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan. He once confided to me that he felt that his responsibilities as campus president of the student-veterans group outweighed his responsibilities as a student. He had achieved near-perfect grades; I was moved to realize that his bar for honoring fallen soldiers was set even higher.

The second occasion took place shortly after Veterans Day. The illness I endured had brought on an autoimmune condition that put me at an unpredictable risk for anaphylactic shock. One night I woke at 4 a.m. to discover that my eyes, face, and throat were swelling. With some intervention, the crisis passed by 9 a.m. I headed to class, opting to wear sunglasses until the eye swelling and pain subsided.

Continued in article

Jensen Question
Can you really test for multicollinearity?

Jensen Answer
Common Accountics Science and Econometric Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm

 


Anti-Social Media (hate speech, slurs, and lyrics) --- http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/antisocialmedia 

How to define the limits of free speech is a central debate in most modern democracies. This is particularly difficult in relation to hateful, abusive and racist speech. The pattern of hate speech is complex, but there is an increasing focus on the volume and nature of hateful or racist speech taking place online.

This study aims to inform the discussion over free speech and hate speech by examining specifically the way racial, religious and ethnic slurs are employed on Twitter.

The download link for the paper is at
http://www.demos.co.uk/files/DEMOS_Anti-social_Media.pdf?1391774638

Jensen Comment
Hate speech can be directed at any ethnic group (e.g., whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians) religions (e.g., e.g.g Christian, Islamic), and sexual orientations.

The social media is particularly troublesome in this regard because people on the Web will often say things that they would never say aloud in groups of people. Hate speech becomes even more exaggerated when its from anonymous sources such as anonymous comments following an article. Much depends upon the filters on hate speech that are in place such as having a blog writer filter the speech before posting a comment with hate speech.

I think there is also a maturity issue. Young teens will often say things in messages to get attention, things that embarrass them after they graduate form college or otherwise put on enough years to to realize how hateful they sounded back then. Unfortunately there are some offensive people who just never grow up!

Wikipedia makes a concerted effort to filter hate speech, but sites as massive as Wikipedia can be overwhelmed with massive volume of inputs each and every day.

One of the long-standing complications of hate speech arises when the source of a slur is in the same ethnic group being maligned such as the use of "nigga" being commonly used by African American rappers and commedians. Jews can say things or make jokes about Jews that others dare not whisper. Gays can make jokes about gays that sound hateful when coming from heterosexuals, etc.

Also there are changing standards over time. I'm sometimes startled when I hear something in an old movie that would be considered much more offensive in this era. Of course there are hateful things in 21st Century movies that would have appalled my parents. Hence, time can work both ways in this regard. For example the N-word, C-word, and the F-word seem much more common in movies today than they did in the 1950s. The language of Bill Mahar would've would've completely appalled my parents, such things as using the C-word to describe Sarah Palin pr other names we hear people say on television about Bill and Hillary Clinton. Late night standup "comedy" on television is appalling.

Erika and I prefer mysteries from BBC, because we're just plain tired of the car chases and repeated use of the F-word that seem to be a necessary condition for mysteries and thrillers produced in Hollywood. BBC seems to have better taste.

Bob Jensen's threads on the social media are a t
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


Leave it to the Lawyers to Invent This Scam

"Some Law Schools Are Paying Graduates' Salaries To Boost Rankings," The Economist via Business Insider, March 14, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/some-law-schools-are-paying-graduates-salaries-to-boost-rankings-2014-3 

. . .

Among the rankings most important components is the share of graduates who find jobs. The 2014 table, announced on March 11th, shows that the University of Virginia (UVA) and George Washington University (GW) do especially well on this.

Although UVA's law students are only in ninth place for their scores in standard admission tests, 97.5% of the class of 2012 had a job on graduating--the best mark in the country. At GW the discrepancy was even more striking: its 85% graduate-employment rate ranked ninth, whereas its admission-test scores were 21st.

However, the two schools' performance is not as stellar as it seems. A close look at the online employment database of the American Bar Association reveals that GW and UVA are among the leaders in a striking trend: law schools paying the salaries of their alumni when they go to work in legal firms, non-profits or the government. GW paid the starting salaries of a whopping 22% of its 2012 graduates; at 15%, UVA was not far behind.

Some law schools have long given aid to a few alumni who forsake high-paying corporate firms to pursue public-interest law. But since the 2008-09 recession, entry-level jobs at big firms have been scarce. This has led to a big expansion of "bridge to practice" schemes, in which the schools pay graduates a stipend to do a work placement.

In a recent survey by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), 45 of the 94 schools that responded now run such programmes. Half of them began in 2009 or 2010, but UVA's has run since 2007. It now pays $31,500 for graduates to work in public service for a year. Arizona State University plans to set up a non-profit law firm, modelled on teaching hospitals, that will hire 30 recent graduates to provide legal services to lower-income clients.

Continued in article

Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/some-law-schools-are-paying-graduates-salaries-to-boost-rankings-2014-3#ixzz2w2Tq0HGz

Bob Jensen's threads on law school controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools

Bob Jensen's threads on rankings controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings


This is worthwhile advice to graduating students in accounting and finance and probably in some other disciplines.
I do suggest that men wear dark suits to an interview with business recruiters --- and long dark socks, shined shoes, and white shirts.
Dress like you already have the job and are going to be meeting with a client!
I don't have anything against a black suit, but my male and female students generally preferred dark blue suits.
Their bosses generally prefer pin stripes and are most often seen in vests rather than suit coats.

"To My Fellow Job-Hunting College Seniors Never wear a black suit to an interview. Get a Gmail address. LinkedIn? Yes. And write thank-you notes," by David Pierce, The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303730804579435040049720068?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb_h&mg=reno64-wsj

"I have no idea what I'm doing." This is the thought that runs through the minds of college students most of the time. As we begin to look for jobs during our senior year, between bouts of temporary alcohol-induced amnesia, we start to suspect that our cluelessness is a real problem. When we find out that the guy who has worn the same Greek function T-shirt and sunglasses backward around his neck for four years has accepted a job offer, panic sets in.

At the University of Arkansas' Walton College of Business, I have diligently learned the CAPM model and inner workings of financial statements. I can DCF all D-A-Y. But when it came to my job search I discovered a disconnect between my education and the real world.

So to my fellow generation of entitled adult-adolescents who expect a $75,000 salary if they're going to get up before 10 a.m., here's my advice from the other side of the job search. You won't hear any of this from your college career center.

• Never wear a black suit to an interview. Black suits are for weddings and funerals. Go to a classy men's boutique and have them fix you up with a nice $500 suit, gray or navy blue. It'll last you five years. The key is to make sure it fits so you'll feel snappy in the job interview despite your stutters and flop sweat. If you can swing it, buy the gray and the blue suit. Wear the blue for the first-round interview, and the gray to the more formal second- or third-round interviews. (Women: Sorry, I'm not qualified to advise on pencil-skirts and heels.)

• If you get nervous in social situations, make an effort to go out to a bar—not with your buddies—a few months before interview season, have a couple of drinks, and strike up a conversation with an unfamiliar girl (or guy). Bars are low-pressure, and even if you do get shut down, you'll realize that the rejection isn't that bad. More important, you'll gain new confidence that will help in higher-pressure environments such as interviews and networking sessions.

• In networking sessions, don't talk about the fascinating people you've met or the exotic places you've been if that information hasn't been strongly solicited by the other person. Better to talk about your friend who deep-fried an entire bag of Doritos than the semester you spent at Oxford. You'll get laughs and seem down-to-earth.

• Don't use your university email on your resume. Schools often discontinue email addresses, and if an employer wants to get in touch after graduation you'll be out of luck. Get a Gmail account with some easy-to-understand form of your name. Note: It's safe to assume that job interviewers think people with Yahoo YHOO -0.03% or AOL email accounts are suspect.

• When you get a business card, write on the back where and when you met the person and any useful notes about him or her. Keep track of these cards. Personally, I use a spreadsheet for all the info. Email your contacts—even a few lines—every three or four months and make sure you have something to say.

• Trying to network with someone in a company but don't know their email? If you have someone else's email from the company, follow the format. If an analyst's email is John.Doe@bank.com, and you want to get in touch with Jane Smith, send the email to Jane.Smith@bank.com. I have used this trick a few times and it works.

• LinkedIn. Get one.

• Social Media. As you've noticed, parents now use Facebook FB -0.03% more than we do, and the people who are thinking about hiring you will probably be parents. Before you start your job or internship search, reset your privacy settings so that strangers can see only your profile picture. Choose a presentable photo—no random arm around you or red Solo cups. Make your Twitter TWTR +0.25% and Instagram private. Oh, and delete your Myspace if it still exists. Any potential employer will Google GOOG +1.65% you, so if there's anything floating around on the Web that you don't want them to see, take it down.

• Set up your voice mail like someone who has a real job or deserves one. Don't make people sit through even five seconds of your favorite song or your jokey explanation of why they need to leave a message. If they're calling to set up a job interview, they just want to be sure it's you.

• Write thank-you notes for job interviews. Emails don't cut it, so play it safe and do both. Write and mail the note the minute you get home.

• Once you accept a job offer, don't talk about your salary—you'll either sound like you're bragging or you'll discover that you should have held out for more. An exception: Friends may ask in earnest, especially juniors, so they can better grasp the job market. But tell them at your own risk.

• If you've accepted an offer, do everything in your power to help classmates find a job. Getting an offer means you're doing something right and probably have at least one valuable piece of advice to pass along. Share if others ask. You would want someone to do the same for you.

Don't worry, if you get one or more of these things wrong, it isn't going to totally kill your chances of landing an internship or job. And it was probably time to clean up your Facebook anyway.

Mr. Pierce is a senior finance student at the University of Arkansas' Sam M. Walton College of Business. After graduation, he'll be working as an investment-banking analyst.

Jensen Comment
Recruiters are hard to predict for interviews, because they often pride themselves in not being conventional. Most importantly be yourself and be totally honest especially if questions border on the fringes of politics. But also be prepared for trick questions. Often it's not the answers that are important. It's the way you handle yourself when you don't know the answers. This is a job interview, not a Ph.D. oral examination or an interview for a faculty job.

I suggest that men and women be prepared to make conversation. In the interviews keep your questions focused on career opportunities like training and clients you might be serving. My favorite male and female employees can also informally talk sports statistics with Nate Silver. It's not like you will be asked sports questions in a formal interview. But interviewers have been known to take recruits to lunch.

Like it or not, business firms are usually looking for team players even when trying to hire geeks. They are almost always looking for recruits who can make conversations. Learn how to keep conversations going by asking questions in various settings from cocktail parties to business luncheons. Sometimes learn from watching others who are really good at starting conversations and keeping them going. Avoid personal questions that might embarrass a recruiter who really does not want to admit that he or she has five kids by three former marriages and an extramarital affair.

Be prepared for a  recruiter that prefers stress testing. Hold your temper, be calm, and don't show the cracks in your confidence. Always remain polite and as self-assured as possible. This is not a cop giving you a traffic ticket. You don't have to keep your mouth shut or be timid. Timid people often have to look for another job.

If you don't feel like it do not be embarrassed by turning down alcohol when others around you are drinking the hard stuff.  If if you do imbibe always stay sober enough to drive safely home even if you are not the designated driver. Always know how your body handles alcohol. Whereas I get happy and talkative after two martinis, I know some folks who turn surly on booze. That's not good!

And lastly, never post anything in a social media site that you might be embarrassed to discuss in a job interview. The interviewer may see this site before or after the interview or hear about it from somebody you know. Taking political sides should not hurt you when seeking a business job --- unless you are applying for a faculty position in a college where conservative leanings can kill your chances until you're granted tenure.

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


The 15 Highest-Paying Companies in America (in terms of median salaries of professional employees) ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/03/18/the-15-highest-paying-companies-in-america/

Special note to Jagdish and Zafar,

Jensen Comment
Note that the Number One company listed above employs physicians. You can judge how well physicians do financially  in various ways, but one of the anecdotal ways in any town is to survey who lives in the most expensive neighborhoods in that town/city and who belongs to the most expensive country clubs and dining clubs. Stock brokers and real estate brokers salivate over getting a physician for a client.

The life of a physician is filled with good news and bad news items. Physicians are highly paid, usually among the most highly paid professionals in both small towns and big cities. Physicians are independent in the sense that they perform their jobs independently relative to many other types of professionals who are told what to do by their project managers and employers. Physicians as a rule have a lot less travel time --- time that is pretty much wasted getting to and from places of work and time wasted in hotels.

The life of a physician can be high tension when dealing with diagnostics and procedures that entail life and death. Physicians must often pay very high malpractice insurance and face risks of enormous lawsuits. For this reason, many of them work for organizations like the Veterans Administration and large medical clinics that pay the insurance premiums and put up shields of defense lawyers, protections not available to sole practitioners.

Physicians these days generally start out by owing a lot of money in terms of paying off years of student loans and debt incrured when going into business or buying out a practice.

Being a physician varies a lot by specialty, but many specialties must be very boring, e,g., taking out gall bladders, repairing heart valves, or clipping herniated disks each and every day of each and every year. The more specialized the physician becomes the more routine becomes the job. I recently had surgery from a terrific surgeon who does nothing by clip eyelids in his daily practice. He's the only surgeon in New Hampshire performing this surgery. He makes a truck load of money but must get very tired of clipping eyelids. And if he should make a mistake all sorts of bad things can happen to the patient including damaged tear ducts, damaged eyelid nerves and muscles, damaged corneas, etc. This is tough and tedious work that he performs several times each day except on days he examines patients before and after such surgeries.

By the way he lives in one of the most expensive homes in Concord, NH. I wonder if he would rather be a relatively low paid professor living in a cottage near campus?


Innovation District --- http://www.innovationdistrict.org/ 

The Innovation District is Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s initiative to transform 1,000 acres of the South Boston waterfront into an urban environment that fosters innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship. From a tech meetup at a coworking space to an art exhibition opening, to the launch of a new start-up or a special chef’s event at a local restaurant, the Innovation District is expanding quickly.

The Innovation District is nestled between Boston’s transportation gateways: abutting historic Boston Harbor, adjacent to Logan International Airport, and at the nexus of two major interstate highways.  It also contains the largest tract of underdeveloped land in the city of Boston, and is an area with opportunity for growth, a strong existing knowledge base, and the ideal location for producing new ideas, new services and new products.

In the three years since the initiative began, the area has grown rapidly. The growth is spread across a diverse range of companies in different sectors and at different scales. Here are selected highlights of all we’ve accomplished in just a few short years:

New Jobs
- Added over 5,000 new jobs in over 200 new companies
- Technology companies have contributed 30% of new job growth
- 21% of new jobs are in creative industries like design and advertising
- Greentech + life sciences are growing, with 16% of new jobs in these sectors

New Companies
- Of the new companies, 11% are in the education and non-profit sectors
- 40% of new companies are sharing space in co-working spaces and incubators
- 25% of new companies are small scale, with 10 employees or fewer

…And More on the Way!
Many other companies have announced plans to join the Innovation District community, and will add another 4000+ jobs to the neighborhood.

Jensen Comment
What works in Boston (or San Francisco) may be somewhat unique. If it works in Boston (or San Francisco) it may not work as well in Chicago, San Antonio, St. Louis, New Orleans, Albany, etc.. One of the things that makes Boston unique is the high concentration of world class universities where startups are seeking to locate in the first place for various reasons, including a high-tech labor force.

It can be taken further with temporary tax abatements such as those now being granted around universities in New York. Tax abatements work better for companies that are making taxable income. Most of the high tech startups aren't giving much thought to tax abatements when they are not yet making any profits. New York should have perhaps given more thought to rent subsidies and land purchase deals.

Having said this, I think innovation districts are worth considering for most any cities even though expectations may be different than expectations in Boston.


"Are Malls Over? " by Amy Merrick, The New Yorker, March 11, 2014 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/are-malls-over.html

Nine Retailers Closing the Most Stores (and thereby creating a lot of unemployment and empty mall stores) ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/03/12/retailers-closing-the-most-stores/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=MAR132014A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

  1. Abercrombie & Fitch

  2. Barnes & Noble

  3. Aeropostale

  4. J.C. Penney

  5. Office Depot

  6. Radio Shack

  7. Sears Holdings

  8. Staples

  9. Toys "R" Us


Whistle Blower Award
An Illinois judge on Tuesday increased to $3-million the amount of money that Chicago State University must pay to a former official who recently won his lawsuit against the institution ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/judge-increases-award-to-whistle-blower-who-sued-chicago-state-u?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
Although not related to the above lawsuit, the Chicago Tribune revealed a scandal about students who had 0.00 grade averages never being flunked out of the university --- supposedly because state support is based on number of students.


"Khan Academy to Offer Free SAT Prep," by Christopher Piehler , T.H.E. Journal, March 13, 2014 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/03/13/khan-academy-to-offer-free-sat-prep.aspx

Last week, the College Board announced not only that the SAT will be redesigned for 2016, but that it has formed a partnership with Khan Academy to offer free SAT prep materials.

According to the Khan Academy website, students taking the SAT in 2014–2015 can visit the site now to find hundreds of questions from unreleased SATs and more than 200 videos with step-by-step solutions.

As for students taking the new SAT starting in 2016, Khan Academy said it will create thousands of practice problems and instructional videos that will be available in the spring of 2015. Students will have a full year in which to practice at their own pace using Khan Academy’s personalized learning dashboard, which recommends exercises at each student’s level and shows progress, points and badges.

David Coleman, president and CEO of the College Board, said, "The SAT should reward merit and hard work, and success on the exam should be available to all. There is no better statement of our commitment to making the SAT a world-class, high-quality and fair test than partnering with Khan Academy to provide free SAT preparation for the world."

Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/03/13/khan-academy-to-offer-free-sat-prep.aspx#XOqXVHk6QedvIBhh.99

Jensen Comment
Although the SAT has just been significantly dumbed down, most students can improve performance with heavy sweat in studying for the exam. Former test questions may be harder than future test questions. Students no longer must write an essay, although the essay is optional. Unless you are a varsity athlete, learning how to read helps quite a lot, and learning how to read better helps even more.

A Romp Through the Philosophy of Mind: A Free Online Course from Oxford ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/a-romp-through-the-philosophy-of-mind-a-free-online-course-from-oxford.html

World Science U Starts to Offer Innovative, Free Courses in the Sciences ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/world-science-u-starts-to-offer-innovative-free-courses-in-the-sciences.html

A Big List of 875 Free Courses From Top Universities: 27,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/a-big-list-of-875-free-courses-from-top-universities-27000-hours-of-audiovideo-lectures.html

Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and open sharing learning materials in general ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

 


Department of Education in March 2014:  17,374 online higher education distance education and training programs altogether in rhw USA

Jensen Comment
Note that the hundreds of free MOOC courses from prestigious universities are not the same as fee-based distance education degree and certificate programs that are more like on-campus programs in terms in student-instructor interactions, graded assignments, and examinations. Some campuses like the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee even treat online programs as cash cows where the tuition is higher for online programs than identical on-campus programs.

The (Department of Education Report in March 2014) report says that American colleges now offer 17,374 online programs altogether, 29 percent of which are master’s-degree programs, with bachelor’s and certificate programs making up 23 percent each. Business and management programs are the most popular, at 29 percent of the total, followed by health and medicine programs (16 percent), education programs (14 percent), and information technology and computers (10 percent) ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-there-may-be-fewer-online-programs-than-you-think/51163?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

From US News in 2014
Best Online Degree Programs (ranked)
---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education

Best Online Undergraduate Bachelors Degrees --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/bachelors/rankings
Central Michigan is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Business MBA Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/mba/rankings
Indiana University is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Education Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/education/rankings
Northern Illinois is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/engineering/rankings
Columbia University is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/computer-information-technology/rankings
The University of Southern California is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Nursing Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/nursing/rankings
St. Xavier University is the big winner

US News Degree Finder --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/features/multistep-oe?s_cid=54089
This beats those self-serving for-profit university biased Degree Finders

US News has tried for years to rank for-profit universities, but they don't seem to want to provide the data.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on online programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm


The top flagship state universities in the USA are under increasing pressures from their legislators to offer more an more business degrees online, including undergraduate business degrees, masters of accounting degrees, and MBA degrees. The question is whether the most prestigious private universities like Stanford and Harvard will join in the competition.

The Top MBA Programs in the World according to the Financial Times ---
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2014

The Top MBA Programs in the USA according to US News
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools

"Half of U.S. Business Schools Might Be Gone by 2020," by Patrick Clark, Bloomberg Businessweek, March 14, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-14/online-programs-could-erase-half-of-u-dot-s-dot-business-schools-by-2020

Richard Lyons, the dean of University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, has a dire forecast for business education: “Half of the business schools in this country could be out of business in 10 years—or five,” he says.

The threat, says Lyons, is that more top MBA programs will start to offer degrees online. That will imperil the industry’s business model. For most business schools, students pursuing part-time and executive MBAs generate crucial revenue. Those programs, geared toward working professionals, will soon have to compete with elite online alternatives for the same population.

. . .

Online MBA programs aren’t siphoning choice students from campuses yet, says Ash Soni, executive associate dean at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Kelley ranks 15th on Bloomberg Businessweek’s list of full-time programs and was an early player in online MBAs. The school draws students from across the country, but it is more likely to compete with online MBA programs offered by the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and Arizona State’s Carey School of Business. Says Soni: “If you’re a dean from a regional school and you’re asking, ‘Are these online guys tapping into my space?’ The answer is: maybe in the future, but not yet.”

Michael Desiderio, the executive director of the Executive MBA Council, says change is coming, but his group isn’t panicking. “We’re not saying it’s a threat or this is the end of the EMBA space,” he says. “It’s stimulating a discussion: How do we adapt to continue to serve a population that has changing needs?”

Online education is sure to shift the ways schools compete for students. For-profit MBA programs such as DeVry’s Keller School of Management have been the early losers as more traditional universities go online, says Robert Lytle, a partner in the education practice at consultancy Parthenon Group. That trend could extend to lower-ranked schools as the big-name brands follow.

When Lytle talks to directors at schools who are debating the merits of online learning, he tells them to stop dallying and start building programs. “Once you get out of the top tier of schools, you’re either already online, on your way there, or dead in the water,” he says. It isn’t clear which online models will be most successful, but many schools are feeling pressure to get on board. When Villanova School of Business announced a new online MBA program earlier this year, Dean Patrick Maggitti said there has never been a more uncertain time in higher education. “I think it’s smart strategy to be looking at options in this market.”

 

Jensen Comment --- Where I Disagree
Firstly, this is not so much a threat to undergraduate business schools, because most of the prestigious and highly ranked universities with MBA programs do not even offer undergraduate business degrees. It's not likely that Harvard and Stanford and the London Business School will commence to offer undergraduate business degrees online.

Secondly, this is not so much a threat to masters of accounting programs, because most of the prestigious and highly ranked universities with MBA programs do not even offer masters of accounting degrees and do not have enough accounting courses to meet the minimal requirements to take the CPA examination in most states. . It's not likely that Harvard and Stanford and the London Business School will commence to offer masters of accounting degrees online.

Thirdly, this is not so much of a threat even at the MBA level to universities who admit graduate students with lower admissions credentials. The US News Top MBA programs currently pick off the cream of the crop in terms of GMAT and gpa credentials. The top flagship state universities like the the Haas School at UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois pick off the top students who cannot afford prestigious private universities. By the time all these universities skim the cream of the crop the second-tier public and private universities struggle with more marginal students applying for MBA programs.

It would be both dangerous and sad if the very top MBA programs introduced lower admissions standards for online programs vis-a-vis on-campus programs. In order to maintain the highest standards the most prestigious universities will have to cater to the highest quality foreign students and herein lies a huge problem. Some nations like China are notorious for fraud and cheating on admissions credentials like the GMAT. In Russia such credentials are for sale to the highest bidders.

The name of the game in business education is placement of graduates. Prestigious university MBA programs are at the top of the heap in terms of placement largely because of their successful alumni and strong alumni networks that actively seek MBA graduates from their alma maters. This will not work as well for online programs, especially since many of the online graduates of prestigious university online programs will live outside the USA.

However, top flagship state universities are under increasing pressures from their legislators to offer more an more business degrees online, including undergraduate business degrees, masters of accounting degrees, and MBA degrees. This is already happening as is reflected in the following rankings of online programs by US News:

From US News in 2014
Best Online Degree Programs (ranked)
---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education

Best Online Undergraduate Bachelors Degrees --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/bachelors/rankings
Central Michigan is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Business MBA Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/mba/rankings
Indiana University is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Education Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/education/rankings
Northern Illinois is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/engineering/rankings
Columbia University is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/computer-information-technology/rankings
The University of Southern California is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Nursing Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/nursing/rankings
St. Xavier University is the big winner

US News Degree Finder --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/features/multistep-oe?s_cid=54089
This beats those self-serving for-profit university biased Degree Finders

US News has tried for years to rank for-profit universities, but they don't seem to want to provide the data.

 

I don't anticipate that the highest-prestige MBA programs will have online degree programs anytime soon.
They may have more and more free MOOCs, but that is an entirely different ballgame if no credit is given for the MOOCs. The highly prestigious Wharton is now offering its first-year MBA courses as free MOOCs ---
http://www.topmba.com/blog/wharton-steps-experimentation-moocs-mba-news
Also see http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-13/wharton-puts-first-year-mba-courses-online-for-free

Who are these students taking free first-year MOOC courses from Wharton?
Some are college professors who adding what they learn in MOOCs to the courses they themselves teach. Most MOOCs, by the way, are advanced courses on highly specialized topics like the literature of both famous and obscure writers. Others are basic courses that contribute to career advancement.

  • For example, the business school at Penn, Wharton, now offers its core MBA courses as free MOOCs. Some students who intently take these courses are seeking to get into Wharton and other prestigious MBA programs.
     
  • Sometimes the purposes of taking free Wharton MOOCs are to raise GMAT scores to get into prestigious MBA programs and to do better in those programs once admitted so that they too can tap those six-figure starting salaries of graduates from prestigious MBA Programs.
     
  • Sometimes the purposes of taking free Wharton MOOCs are to raise GMAT scores to obtain better financial aid packages for further graduate study.
     
  • Sometimes the purposes of taking free Wharton MOOCs are to perform better on the job and thereby get better performance evaluations and raises.

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


"Law Students Sue Their Law Schools for Deceptive Employment Reporting Practices," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, March 11, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/03/law-students-.html


Jensen Question
If you could only afford one device to buy for each student and/or faculty member, would it be a laptop or a tablet?

Jensen Answer
Aside from a cell phone (maybe a cheap prepaid version), I don't think it's a contest between a laptop or a tablet. Tablets are only frosting on the cake.except in very unique circumstances such as iPads for autistic children. The decision between a Mac and a Windows laptop is a tougher decision since Mac's can now run so most MS Office apps. I still think it is very important for business graduates, especially in accountancy, to be skilled at using MS Office. In MS Office, Excel is very  important along with MS Access unless accounting majors became proficient in some other relational database software.

"Dell Rolls Out Education Series Laptops, Interactive Projector," by David Nagel, T.H.E. Journal,  March 6, 2014 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/03/06/dell-rolls-out-education-series-laptops-interactive-projector.aspx

Dell has launched a new line of laptops purpose-built for education called the Latitude 13 Education Series. The company also took the wraps off a multitouch-enabled interactive projector and a new mobile cart.

Interactive Projector
The new Dell Interactive Projector-S520 offers wireless display and multitouch interaction, allowing multiple users — up to 10 — to collaborate simultaneously. Using the included whiteboard, users can draw or annotate with their fingers, included styluses or old-time dry-erase pens. It supports Intel WiDi with Miracast for wireless display via Windows, Android and iOS devices. It also supports standard WiFi (802.11a/b/g/n).

Other features include:

Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/03/06/dell-rolls-out-education-series-laptops-interactive-projector.aspx#reqhT6ZGx4MfXS0Q.99


"George Lucas on the Meaning of Life," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, March 17, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/17/george-lucas-meaning-of-life/

When a frustrated young woman asked the most brilliant man in the world why we’re alive, Einstein responded in five poignant lines. This question — at the heart of which is a concern with the meaning of life — has since been answered by many other great minds: For David Foster Wallace, it was about going through life fully conscious; for Carl Sagan, about our significant insignificance in the cosmos; for Annie Dillard, about learning to live with impermanence; for Richard Feynman, about finding the open channel; for Anaïs Nin, about living and relating to others “as if they might not be there tomorrow”; for Henry Miller, about the mesmerism of the unknown; and for Leo Tolstoy, about finding knowledge to guide our lives.

But one of the most profound answers comes from legendary Star Wars director George Lucas. In The Meaning of Life: Reflections in Words and Pictures on Why We Are Here (public library) — that remarkable 1991 anthology that gave us timeless meditations on existence from a number of luminaries — Lucas uses an autobiographical anecdote as the springboard for a larger meditation on the meaning of life and our best chance for reaching its fullest potential:

When I was eighteen I was in an automobile accident and went through a near-death experience. I was actually taken away from the scene, presumed dead, and it wasn’t until I reached the hospital that the doctors revived my heartbeat and brought me back to life. This is the kind of experience that molds people’s beliefs. But I have found that most of my conclusions have evolved from observing life since that time. If I’ve come to know anything, it’s that these questions are as unknowable for us as they would be for a tree or for an ant.

Like John Updike, who argued that “the mystery of being is a permanent mystery”, and like John Cage, who believed that “the world, the real is not an object [but] a process,” Lucas considers the just-is nature of life:

Scholars who have studied myth and religion for many years and have connected all of the theories spawned over the ages about life and consciousness and who have taken away the superficial trappings, have come up with the same sensibility. They call it different things. They try to personify it and deal with it in different ways. But everybody seems to dress down the fact that life cannot be explained. The only reason for life is life. There is no why. We are. Life is beyond reason. One might think of life as a large organism, and we are but a small symbiotic part of it.

Lucas arrives at a conclusion rather similar to Alan Watts’s ideas about the interconnectedness of all life and writes:

It is possible that on a spiritual level we are all connected in a way that continues beyond the comings and goings of various life forms. My best guess is that we share a collective spirit or life force or consciousness that encompasses and goes beyond individual life forms. There’s a part of us that connects to other humans, connects to other animals, connects to plants, connects to the planet, connects to the universe. I don’t think we can understand it through any kind of verbal, written or intellectual means. But I do believe that we all know this, even if it is on a level beyond our normal conscious thoughts.

If we have a meaningful place in this process, it is to try to fit into a healthy, symbiotic relationship with other life force. Everybody, ultimately, is trying to reach a harmony with the other parts of the life force. And in trying to figure out what life is all about, we ultimately come down to expressions of compassion and love, helping the rest of the life force, caring about others without any conditions or expectations, without expecting to get anything in return. This is expressed in every religion, by every prophet.

Continued in article


"Is This Really Part of an Accounting Education -- Well, I Certainly Think So," by Joe Hoyle, Teaching Blog, March 12, 2014 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2014/03/is-this-really-part-of-accounting.html

Jensen Comment
I read where one of the authors of the Affordable Health Care Act complained that there was too much medical education in medical school. A major reason that we don't have enough doctors for the the ACA is that it takes too long to get through medical school, internships, and residencies in such specialties as psychiatry.

Johns Hopkins is now experimenting with the French Model. Don't take the medicine out of medical school. Just take the education out of medical school. The French model admits high school graduates to medical school, thereby eliminating 3-4 years out of the training of our surgeons, psychiatrists, pathologists, internists, etc.

Maybe we could follow the same training model for schools of accountancy by having them recruit top high school graduates.


Question
How do admissions gate controllers distinguish between tens of millions of applicants who all graduated from high school summa cum laude due to the epidemic of grade inflation?

Problem
Nearly all graduates in NYC have A or B grade averages mostly because teachers are paid on the basis of student academic performance. Are most of these graduates prepared for Harvard? Are many of these high performing graduates still in need of much remedial work in reading and arithmetic.

Double Problem
If they get into Harvard they will continue to get A or B grades since grade inflation at Harvard is worse than in NYC public schools ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#RateMyProfessor

Solution
For graduates who become varsity athletes at the University of North Carolina they will become great readers since, due to recent scandals, UNC will offer varsity athletes world-class resources on how to read better than Harvard graduates.

From the Director of Elite Education in San Frnacisco:  Dumbing Down the SAT
"Randolf Arguelles: The New SAT Will Widen the Education Gap Everyone who takes the test is measured against the same yardstick. That's not true of high school grades," by Randolf Arguelles, The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304704504579429493504786468?mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj

The College Board's March 5 announcement that the SAT college-admissions exam will undergo a significant overhaul in 2016 has generated no shortage of commentary, some of it praising the changes as a "democratization" of the test. The College Board says it is expanding its outreach to low-income students and shifting from testing abstract-reasoning skills to evidence-based reading, writing and mathematical skills acquired in high school. Ultimately, the exam will look a lot more like the ACT, which has been taking away the SAT's market share in recent years.

The goal, according to College Board President and CEO David Coleman, is to combat the advantages some students gain by costly test-preparation. His message for students was that "we hope you breathe a sigh of relief that this exam will be focused, useful, open, clear and aligned with the work you will do throughout high school."

Despite this intention, and the fact that low-income students will have the $51 test fee waived, I suspect the new SAT will widen, not narrow, the education gap in the United States.

As someone who has worked for the past eight years as a reader of freshman applications to the University of California at Berkeley, and as the director of an SAT-preparation center, I know that a score on the SAT or ACT is the only data point that is an apples-to-apples comparison. An A in AP Chemistry at one school can be easier or harder to attain than at another. Serving as president of the Speech and Debate Club might entail vastly different responsibilities from one school to the next. And what about the essays that students write for their college applications? How can college admissions officers fairly compare those, given the varying levels of parental or other editorial assistance?

While the question of what the SAT measures is still an open one—it almost certainly does not measure native intelligence, or the ability to do well in college classes—everyone who takes it is being measured against the same yardstick. That comparison is extremely useful in college admissions.

It's notable that those who wish to see the SAT drastically altered or disappear as a college-admissions requirement do not work for colleges or universities with a large number of applicants. Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College (5,760 applicants for the freshman class of 500 for fall 2013), wrote last week in Time magazine that the SAT "needs to be abandoned and replaced," calling it "part hoax and part fraud."

In lieu of standardized-test scores, Bard College promotes an innovative online essay exam. That's great for Bard College, but UCLA received 80,522 freshmen applications in fall 2013. Imagine if UCLA's admissions staff had to read 80,522 analytical essays in time to notify students of the school's admissions decision by March. It wouldn't be possible.

It should also concern us that the College Board says the new SAT will more accurately reflect how well students are learning in their high-school classrooms. Even the most sanguine education observers acknowledge the inherent inequality in curriculum and pedagogy among the nation's high schools. As a measure of academic skills derived from classroom curriculum and teachers, the new SAT will amplify, not bridge, the education gap between well-resourced suburban and poorly resourced inner-city public schools.

As a tool for making higher education accessible to all students regardless of incomes, the old format of the SAT was more effective. When SAT debuted in 1926, it was based largely on IQ tests from World War I. Until the College Board's announcement last week, the SAT had retained the puzzle-solving characteristic that is the hallmark of intelligence tests on which it was based.

In that respect the old SAT was a more equitable means of rating college applicants. To do well on the old SAT, it didn't matter so much if you had an excellent history teacher who taught you how to analyze primary source documents. All that mattered was that you had a strong vocabulary, could make valid inferences from a given text, and could utilize foundational math concepts to solve the logic games that typified the old SAT math section.

Defenders of the new SAT will point out that, in addition to the fee waiver for the test, Khan Academy, the free online tutoring service, has been contracted by the College Board to offer free prep for SAT test-takers. Khan Academy has done great work, but free online and in-person tutoring for underperforming students has been around for a long time, most notably as part of President Bush's No Child Left Behind program. I think it's safe to say that free tutoring has not managed to level the playing field between students from disadvantaged and affluent schools.

Democratizing access to higher education in the U.S. is a noble goal, but the new SAT will further highlight the disparities between the haves and have-nots.

Mr. Arguelles is the director of Elite Education of San Francisco.

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


The IRS will not be telephoning to demand immediate payment of overdue taxes
"IRS watchdog warns of ‘largest scam of its kind’ with agency impersonators," by Josh Hicks, The Washington Post, March 20, 2014 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/03/20/irs-watchdog-warns-of-largest-scam-of-its-kind/?hpid=z4

The Internal Revenue Service watchdog on Thursday warned taxpayers of a sophisticated nationwide phone scheme that has become “the largest scam of its kind that we have ever seen.”

The plot involves callers claiming to represent the IRS and demanding immediate payments with a pre-paid debit card or wire transfer.

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Russell George announced that “thousands of victims” have already paid more than $1 million to fraudsters and that his agency has received more than 20,000 reports of contact.

The callers have used roughly the same scripts to bilk money from taxpayers, suggesting they may be connected, TIGTA officials said in an interview with reporters.

Officials also said the perpetrators often know the last four digits of the victims’ Social Security numbers and threaten arrest, deportation and removal of driver’s licenses — something the IRS is not authorized to do.

“If someone unexpectedly calls claiming to be from the IRS and uses threatening language if you don’t pay immediately, that is a sign that it really isn’t the IRS calling,” George said in a statement.

The callers tend to use common names and fake IRS badge numbers, in addition to manipulating their caller ID to appear more legitimate, according to officials. Some also follow up with false IRS e-mails and phone calls in which they pretend to represent the police or department of motor vehicles officials, TIGTA said.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The IRS still uses snail mail to question you about your tax returns. Don't turst email notices or phone calls from the IRS. You may end up working with the IRS by telephone, but you must initiate calls to telephone numbers of IRS offices.

As always just say no to people you don't know seeking payments, credit card numbers, debit card numbers, or any other personal information on the telephone or via email. The more legitimate they seem the more fraudulent they are likely to be when contacting you out of the blue. Also beware of similar sounding names. The Cancer Society of America is not the same as the American Cancer Society, and even a phone call from somebody claiming to be from the American Cancer Society may not be legitimate unless you know that person personally.

A woman recently scammed a bunch of well-meaning people by sending out email pictures of her son's shaved head and claiming that he had cancer. He did not have cancer, and she was just trying to raise money for a trip to Disney World.

Bob Jensen's threads on consumer frauds and fraud reporting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm


Auto dealerships are flexing their muscles first by controlling Cars.com. Secondly, (not mentioned in the article below) by lobbying state legislators to ban  Tesla direct sales that bypass dealers. The first state to ban direct selling of automobiles was New Jersey, which comes as no surprise. Other states will follow.

The article below reveals how Cars.com caters to dealers.

"Is Cars.com Really a Great Place to Find a Vehicle?," by Kyle Stock, Bloomberg Businessweek, March 10, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-10/is-cars-dot-com-really-a-great-place-to-find-a-vehicle 

Jensen Comment
When buying a new or used car from a dealer always pretend initially to be paying the full price in cash. Negotiate the best possible cash price on the model you want to buy. Then if you want to check on the interest rate (called the APR annual percentage rate) that the dealer will offer on financing terms. Many dealers compute the APR on the list price rather than a negotiated cash price. The list price makes the financing APR appear to be artificially low.

It's easy to use the Rate Function in Excel or a financial calculator to find the APR the dealer is really charging based upon the negotiated cash price. In fact, the dealer is obligated to compute that rate for you if you request the APR on the cash price. But always remember that "figures don't lie but liars figure." It's best to check the numbers yourself or have an accounting student verify the numbers.

I illustrate the use of Excel when buying a car from Earl Bob's dealership ---
www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/Excel/FraudEarlBob.xls



This is a sensational tax crime by European standards --- not so sensational because there was a crime, but sensational because a wealthy German sports team owneris going to prison

Uli Hoeness, the president of the European champion soccer club Bayern Munich, was convicted Thursday of tax evasion and sentenced to three and a half years in prison after a four-day trial that had consumed the country.
"Bayern Munich’s Hoeness Sentenced to Prison for Tax Evasion," by Alison Smale, The New York Times, March  14, 2014 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/sports/soccer/bayern-munichs-hoeness-sentenced-to-prison-for-tax-evasion.html?_r=0

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


It's About Time!
Fraudster Author and Infomercial King Kevin Trudeau Gets 10 Years In Prison For Massive Deception ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-author-kevin-trudeau-gets-10-years-in-prison-for-massive-deception-2014-3

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


From David Giles Blog, Econometrics Beat, on March 16, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/03/research-on-interpretation-of.html
David often asks questions about underlying assumptions where accountics scientists seldom dare to venture.
In his and most other blogs it is worthwhile to also read the comments.

Research on the Interpretation of Confidence Intervals

Like a lot of others, I follow Andrew Gelman's blog with great interest, and today I was especially pleased to see this piece relating to a recent study on the extent to which researchers do or do not interpret confidence intervals correctly.

 
If you've ever taught an introductory curse on statistical inference (from a frequentist, rather than Bayesian perspective), then I don't need  to tell you how difficult it can be for students to really understand what a confidence interval is, and (perhaps more importantly) what it isn't!

 
It's not only students who have this problem. Statisticians acting as "expert witnesses" in court cases have no end of trouble getting judges to understand the correct interpretation of a confidence interval. And I'm sure we've all seen or heard empirical researchers misinterpret confidence results! For a specific example of the latter, involving a subsequent Nobel laureate, see my old post here!

 
The study that's mentioned by Andrew today was conducted by four psychologists (Hoekstra et al., 2014) and involved a survey of academic psychologists at three European Universities. The participants included 442 Bachelor students, 34 Master students, and 120 researchers (Ph.D. or faculty members).

 
Yes, the participants in this survey are psychologists, but we won't hold that against them, and my hunch is that if we changed "psychologist" to "economist" the results wouldn't alter that much!

 
Before summarizing the findings of this study, let's see what the authors have to say about the correct interpretation of a confidence interval (CI) constructed from a particular sample of data:

 
"Before proceeding, it is important to recall the correct definition of a CI. A CI is a numerical interval constructed around the estimate of a parameter. Such an interval does not, however, directly indicate a property of the parameter; instead, it indicates a property of the procedure, as is typical for a frequentist technique. Specifically, we may find that a particular procedure, when used repeatedly across a series of hypothetical data sets (i.e., the sample space), yields intervals that contain the true parameter value in 95 % of the cases. When such a procedure is applied to a particular data set, the resulting interval is said to be a 95 % CI. The key point is that the CIs do not provide for a statement about the parameter as it relates to the particular sample at hand; instead, they provide for a statement about the performance of the procedure of drawing such intervals in repeated use. Hence, it is incorrect to interpret a CI as the probability that the true value is within the interval (e.g., Berger & Wolpert, 1988). As is the case with p-values, CIs do not allow one to make probability statements about parameters or hypotheses."  (Hoekstra et al., 2014, 2nd. page of online pre-print.)
For what it's worth, I agree that this description and interpretation of a CI is correct. 

 
I'm not saying that we should be using CI's. Specifically, when I'm wearing my Bayesian hat, CI's make no sense at all, and the very term is banished from my vocabulary. But I digress.........

 
So, what are the findings of the study in question? Very briefly (because you should read the paper yourself):

 
  • Participants were given 5 6 incorrect statements about a confidence interval, and were asked which ones , if any were correct.
  • 8 undergraduate students (1.8%), 0 Masters students, and 3 (2.5%) Ph.D./faculty correctly said that all five six statements were incorrect.
  • The claimed level of experience of the respondents had a slight positive correlation with the extent to which misinterpretations of CIs were made.
  • Researchers (Ph.D. and faculty) scored about as well as first-year students without any training in statistics.

    Very much a case of "read it and weep"!

    However,....... check the survey questions in the Appendix of the Hoekstra et al. paper, and see how you score.


  • References

    Berger, J. O. and R. L. Wolpert, 1988. The Likelihood Principle (2nd. ed.), Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Hayward, CA.

    Hoekstra, R., R. D. Morey, J. N. Rouder, and E-J. Wagenmakers, 2014. Robust misinterpretation of confidence intervals. Psychonomic Bulletin Review, in press.

     

    Common Accountics Science and Econometric Science Statistical Mistakes ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm

    "A Scrapbook on What's Wrong with the Past, Present and Future of Accountics Science"
    Bob Jensen Jensen
    February 19, 2014
    SSRN Download:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2398296


    From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 17, 2014

    The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM), that scourge of the 2008 housing crisis, is back on The Street
    But the banks are adamant: it’s different this time.
    As the WSJ’s Annamaria Andriotis and Shayndi Raice write, the terms many of the sellers are offering are certainly attractive: compared with fixed-rate mortgages, some ARMs are cheaper than they have been in more than a decade.

    But the tactics are very much reminiscent of the period before the 2008 crisis, when ARMs exploded in popularity as banks and mortgage brokers touted their low initial rates to consumers. The difference being that financial executives insist they are now steering well and truly clear of ‘subprime’ borrowers, who used the loans to stretch their buying power to its absolute limits, and focusing squarely on borrowers with strong credit.

    According to data from Black Knight Financial Services, ARMs comprised one third of mortgages in the $417,001-to-$1 million range originating during the fourth quarter of 2013. That is a surge from 22% a year earlier and the largest proportion since the third quarter of 2008. On mortgages of more than $1 million, 61% were ARMs, up from 56% a year earlier. “We’re seeing a shift back to ARMs,” says Mike McPartland, head of investment finance for North America at Citi Private Bank, a unit of Citigroup Inc. “My opinion is, it’s going to continue.

    Jensen Comment
    During the real estate bubble that burst in 2007, ARMs were being extended to speculators who had no hope repaying the mortgages at zero interest rates let alone ARM rates. As long as real estate prices were going up, up, and away inside the bubble the strategy was to buy as much as you could with the intent to flip the property in a year or two at a huge capital gain. Real estate agents were eager to get their sales commissions. Mortgage brokers (usually Main Street banks)  were eager to get their lending commissions and sell the mortgages upstream to Wall Street chefs like Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Bros. who were cooking up collateralized soups called CDOs.

    Real estate appraisers played way too loose with value appraisals to get their commissions. And buyers just wanted to flip at even higher prices.

    When the real estate bubble burst in 2007 and real estate prices crashed, property owners defaulted, the ARM poisons kicked in, Wall Street investments bankers like Bear Stearns and Lehman declared bankruptcy because they could not make good on the CDO bond sales that they had guaranteed against default. To add pain to misery USA taxpayers footed the bailout bills for the biggest interconnecting banking swindles in the history of the world ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout

    There's only one major protection preventing these swindles happening once again in 2014. If the originators of the mortgages (e.g. Main Street banks) are forced to bear a serious portion of the default risk they will not be as free and easy giving loans to buyers who cannot pay when the higher ARM rates kick in down the road.

    Main Street banks will still sell the new mortgages that they float upstream, but any subsequent defaults will flow, at least in part, back downstream to the loan origination Main Street banks. Without default losses flowing back downstream there will otherwise be free and easy speculative lending to buyers who have no hope of repaying the mortgages unless they can flip the properties at prices higher than the collateral values.

    Underlying all of this is a forecasted recovery of the real estate market.
    Main Street bankers and property buyers are gambling that real estate values have bottomed out and are on the mend.

    But aside the usual GDP optimism and pessimism is an enormous two-ton gorilla --- the California drought that could send real estate values crashing in reverberations heard around the world. Pray for lots of rain in California and the rest of the USA's southwest. And while you are at it pray that there will be no record-setting earthquakes in California in the foreseeable future. A lot of us depend on a viable California economy more than we realize.

    Let's hope La La Land with its Moonbeam Governor does not turn to dust in the winds.


    From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 17, 2014

    Fannie, Freddie bill leaves status of private shareholders to courts
    A Senate draft bill to wind down government-run mortgage financiers
    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, released on Sunday, would leave a decision on how to treat their private shareholders to the courts, Reuters reports. The 442-page draft bill, written by Senate Banking Committee’s chairman Tim Johnson (D., S.D.) and Mike Crapo (R., Id.), would replace the companies with a new industry-financed agency. The bill would keep in place current terms of the government’s $187.5 billion bailout of the two companies in 2008 that require them to divert all profits into the U.S. Treasury. But is mute on whether or not private shareholders should partake in any proceeds when the companies are liquidated. They have since returned to profitability and by the end of March will have sent the Treasury $202.9 billion in dividends. Private investors, including Perry Capital and Fairholme Capital Management, have sued over the bailout terms. They argue they should stand to benefit from the profits given that the companies soon will have paid more in dividends to taxpayers than they received in aid.

    Jensen Comment
    Is this a good example of what the founding fathers of the USA intended by division of power in government?

    In my opinion its more like a shirking of responsibility of the legislative branch of the USA, but that branch has become notorious for shirking responsibility on just about everything except its own graft and corruption.

    This bill should be called the Tort Lawyers Relief Act. It will become much bigger than asbestos.

    There's hope yet for our sinking law schools.


    "Facebook Creates Software That Matches Faces Almost as Well as You Do:  Facebook’s new AI research group reports a major improvement in face-processing software," by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, March 17, 2014 ---
    http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525586/facebook-creates-software-that-matches-faces-almost-as-well-as-you-do/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140318

    Asked whether two unfamiliar photos of faces show the same person, a human being will get it right 97.53 percent of the time. New software developed by researchers at Facebook can score 97.25 percent on the same challenge, regardless of variations in lighting or whether the person in the picture is directly facing the camera.

    That’s a significant advance over previous face-matching software, and it demonstrates the power of a new approach to artificial intelligence known as deep learning, which Facebook and its competitors have bet heavily on in the past year (see Deep Learning”). This area of AI involves software that uses networks of simulated neurons to learn to recognize patterns in large amounts of data.

    “You normally don’t see that sort of improvement,” says Yaniv Taigman, a member of Facebook’s AI team, a research group created last year to explore how deep learning might help the company (see “Facebook Launches Advanced AI Effort”). “We closely approach human performance,” says Taigman of the new software. He notes that the error rate has been reduced by more than a quarter relative to earlier software that can take on the same task.

    Jensen Comment

    Jensen Comment
    It might be interesting to combine face recognition software with face generation software. Years ago I experimented with displaying multivariate data in faces.  However, in those days I was working with Chernoff Faces that were cartoon depictions of multivariate data. There were, however, some efforts in those days to depict multivariate data in the form of real faces constructed from FBI mug books.

    The purpose behind displaying multivariate data in the form of faces is so that human observers can then try to find faces that are the most similar or the most different. It would seem that for real faces that depict multivariate data, face recognition software could replace humans in matching up the faces.

    Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm 
     


    A Rare ACLU Victory Regarding Promotion Denial Due to Conservative Leanings
    Victory for Academic Freedom: Jury Rules UNC-Wilmington Retaliated Against Conservative Professor ---
    http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2014/03/20/victory-for-academic-freedom-jury-rules-uncwilmington-retaliated-against-conservative-professor-n1812321?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

    A jury in North Carolina on Thursday found that the University of North Carolina-Wilmington retaliated against criminology professor Dr. Mike Adams for his political and social views.

    Adams, a Townhall columnist, explained last year that despite his track record of success at the university in terms of teaching, research and service, he was denied a promotion to full professor because of the views he advanced in his opinion columns. He described the promotion process as being “replete with procedural irregularities and with direct criticism of [his] columns and [his] beliefs.”

    The ACLU, who represented Adams along with Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Travis Barham, explains further:

     

    When Dr. Adams submitted his application for full professor, university officials rejected it through the use of a completely-fabricated promotion standard, passed along false and misleading information about his academic record, explicitly considered the content of his protected speech in promotion documents, and – incredibly – allowed a professor who’d filed a false criminal complaint against Dr. Adams to cast a vote against his application.

    “[N]o individual loses his ability to speak as a private citizen by virtue of public employment,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit wrote in 2011. “Adams’ columns addressed topics such as academic freedom, civil rights, campus culture, sex, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, religion, and morality. Such topics plainly touched on issues of public, rather than private, concern.”

    The university hired Adams, a former atheist, in 1993 as an assistant professor, and promoted him to associate professor in 1998. The “campaign of academic persecution that culminated in his denial of promotion to full professor” began when he converted to Christianity in 2000, which greatly influenced his views on social and political issues.

    Continued in article

    Also see
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/professor-wins-suit-that-accused-university-of-bias-in-denying-his-promotion/74703?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

    Jensen Comment
    This is very surprising since the courts rarely intervene in promotion- and tenure-related decisions except when civil rights are violated.  Court awards for illegal bias in hiring is a bit more common. One such hiring discrimination regarding denial of appointment to a conservative law faculty applicant at the University is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.  When this adjunct was a tenure track employment the University of Iowa law school had 48 Democrats, one Republican, and one independent. Since this went to court, this program hired a new conservative.

    The amount of compensation for damages has not yet been decided as of March 21, 2014. Usually the awards are monetary since the courts are hesitant to force a college to hire, promote, or grant tenure to the damaged candidate.

    What is somewhat unique is for the notoriously-liberal ACLU to take on a conservatism case. But there is precedent such as a victory years ago when the ACLU defended the right of the Nazi Party in the USA to demonstrate.

    Bob Jensen's threads on significant liberal bias in higher education ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias


    "The Overprotected Kid," by Hanna Rosen, The Atlantic, March 19, 2014 ---
    http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/ 

    A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.

    Jensen Comment
    When I grew up it was the exact opposite. About all we feared were bulls in the cow pasture, horse kicks, and falling out of trees.

    These days parents are mostly paranoid over pedophilia, perhaps with good reason. When I grew up I don't know of any parents who worried about young children running all over the rural towns ranging from population 10 to 10,000 in Iowa. We used to play kick-the-can in the town park until nearly ten at night except on school nights. One of my childhood friends, Alvin, hit his head on a flag pole in the dark and died instantly. His father was the town plumber.

    Of course when I was still a kid on the farm we went to bed before dark, because we had to get up about 4:00 am every morning for milking and other chores to be done before breakfast. I really liked being around the horses on the farm, but I think I had more fun when my folks moved into town. Farm kids mostly did chores from morning to night except for the part of each day in school. Town kids mostly entertained themselves all over town.

    There was one case of a grimy father in a family living by the railroad tracks who molested his 10-year old daughter --- my friend named Shirley. She was afterwards put into a Catholic home in another town, but as far as I know her dad still remained home with his wife and the rest of the younger kids. What I remember most about their shack was how bad it smelled inside --- a gagging stench. I don't think the bedding was ever washed, and I strongly suspect that there was not a bathtub since the family still used an outhouse.

    My folks put off buying a television set until I went off to college even though some neighbors had TV sets with 40-foot antenna towers. Kids entertained themselves in those years. Now they rarely divert their eyes outward from their television sets, iPods, iPads, iPhones, etc.

    I would rather be playing kick-the-can before I kick-the-bucket!

     My hort story entitled My Glimpse of Heaven:  What I learned from Max and Gwen
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
     


    From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 21, 2014

    The myth of the science and engineering shortage
    This article in
    the Atlantic looks at the commonplace idea that the U.S. education system is short on cultivating mathematical and scientific ability, and is falling behind other nations. Then it goes all-out to dismantle it, claiming there is no credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages within the U.S. science and engineering workforce. The high-tech jobs that require such an education are a relatively small proportion of the U.S. employment pool anyway, and mostly require a postgraduate qualification to enter. The piece cites various respected research bodies that have failed to find any truth in the shortage assertion. If anything, they have shown the science and engineering workforce to be oversubscribed by qualified graduates – more applicants than there are jobs. “No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher, although some are forecasting high growth in occupations that require post-high school training but not a bachelors degree,” the author asserts.

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


    From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 21, 2014

    Bernie Madoff speaks: politics, remorse and Wall Street
    Politico pays Mr. Bernard Lawrence Madoff a visit: a million metaphorical miles away from his old seven-room duplex in Manhattan, at his eight by 10 shared cell at Butner Correctional Facility, North Carolina. In the ultimate form of sensory deprivation for a man used to handling millions of dollars in the past, there are notices stuck to vending machines around the premises warning: “inmates are not allowed to handle money.” Highlights of the three-hour interview with Politico’s MJ Lee include details Madoff gives of the constant fundraising solicitations received from politicians and criticism of President Obama – whom Madoff says he did vote for the year before he was convicted. He also warned that there are “bad players like myself” currently getting away with their own Ponzi schemes, as he spoke.

    Jensen Comment
    Bob Jensen's thread on the land of Ponzi frauds where Bernie Madoff was once a king ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Ponzi

     




    From the Scout Report on March 14, 2014

    TypoWeather --- http://www.typoweather.com 

    The TypoWeather application is a great way to stay on top of the latest weather conditions. This handy device presents users with a five day outlook and an hourly breakdown that is updated based on data from the National Meteorological Service. Visitors can customize their layout to include alerts about certain meteorological conditions, such as wind patterns, humidity, and more. This version is compatible with all operating systems.


    Spotliter --- http://spotliter.com 

    Are you looking to customize your photos and videos before sending them out to friends and family on various social networks? You can do just that with Spotliter using various features that give you the ability to add effects such as Horizon, Dots, Overlay, and twelve others. It's easy to learn with the provided FAQ and there's also an introductory video as well. This version is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch.


    A stellar start for the 2014 'Cosmos' series
    'Cosmos' dazzles in debut with Neil deGrasse Tyson
    http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/showbiz/tv/cosmos-show-reaction-tyson-fox/

    'Cosmos' Reboot Starts With a (Big) Bang
    http://www.universetoday.com/110187/cosmos-reboot-starts-with-a-big-bang/

    'Cosmos' review: making science cool again
    http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/9/5485162/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey-review

    Old 'Cosmos' vs. new 'Cosmos': Who's the king of the universe?
    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/entertainment2/57665057-223/cosmos-data-hide-true.html.csp

    Flickr: 'Cosmos' - NASA Images of a Space-Time Odyssey
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/sets/72157642013369213/#

    COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey
    http://www.cosmosontv.com

    From the Scout Report on March 21, 2014

    Dictation --- https://dictation.io/ 

    Dictation is a wonderful program that allows users to take advantage of "the magic of speech recognition to write emails, narrate essays and long documents in the browser without touching the keyboard.” Visitors just need to connect their microphone to their computer and get started. Additionally, users can use the Commands section to get more information about how to use the program. This version is compatible with all computers running Google Chrome.


    Tweet My Music --- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.atredroid.tweetmymusic 

    Have you ever wanted to just tweet out your music? Well, now you can with this handy application. Tweet My Music gives users the ability to add a music player from their device, log in to Twitter, and then send out playlists and more. Visitors will find this app most enjoyable and it's a nice way to share thematic music collections with a wide range of people. This version is compatible with all operating systems


    Oldest case of cancer discovered in 3,200 year old skeleton
    Oldest Case of Cancer Discovered in Ancient Skeleton
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/03/18/oldest-case-of-cancer-discovered-in-ancient-skeleton/#.Uyiewf1tdhE

    World's oldest example of metastatic cancer discovered on a human skeleton
    in Sudan
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/worlds-oldest-example-of-metastatic-cancer-discovered-on-a-human-skeleton-in-sudan-9197922.html

    New evidence of human cancer found at ancient Amara West
    http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/03/17/new-evidence-of-human-cancer-found-at-ancient-amara-west/

    Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old skeleton with metastatic cancer
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274181.php

    On the Antiquity of Cancer: Evidence for Metastatic Carcinoma in a Young
    Man from Ancient Nubia (c. 1200BC)
    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0090924

    What Is Cancer? What Causes Cancer?
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/cancer-oncology/

     


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


    Education Tutorials

    Computer Genius Builds Language That Lets Anyone Calculate Anything ---
    http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/02/24/starting-to-demo-the-wolfram-language/

    PBS Learning Media --- http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/

    Inside Science TV --- http://www.ams.org/news/discoveries/discoveries

    Hear William S. Burroughs’ Lectures on Creative Reading and Writing at Naropa University (1979) ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/william-s-burroughs-lectures-on-creative-reading-and-writing.html

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

    Alliance for Excellent Education: Publications (K-12 Magazines) --- http://all4ed.org/publications/

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


    Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

    Computer Genius Builds Language That Lets Anyone Calculate Anything ---
    http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/02/24/starting-to-demo-the-wolfram-language/

    Biodidac --- http://biodidac.bio.uottawa.ca/index.htm

    ATCC: The Global Bioresource Center (cell biology) --- http://www.atcc.org/

    Harvard Stem Cell Institute --- http://www.hsci.harvard.edu/

    Stem Cell Resources --- http://www.stemcellresources.org/

    ATCC: The Global Bioresource Center (cell biology) --- http://www.atcc.org/

    Mitosis --- http://www.mitosisapp.com/

    From the Scout Report on October 11, 2013

    A Trio of Scientists Awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine
    U.S.-Based Trio Wins Nobel Prize for Medicine
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303442004579120823331406810.html

    For 3 Nobel Winners, a Molecular Mystery Solved
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/health/3-win-joint-nobel-prize-in-medicine.html?_r=0

    Randy Shekman, molecular biologist and UCLA alumnus, wins 2013 Nobel Prize
    http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/randy-schekman-molecular-biologist-248784.aspx

    The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
    http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2013/press.html

    All Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine
    http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/

    How Cells Work
    http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/cell.htm

    Cell Biology Education Resources --- http://www.ascb.org/ivl/design/education.html

    Cell Biology Online Videos --- http://ibioseminars.hhmi.org/lectures/cell-bio-a-med.html

    Mitosis --- http://www.mitosisapp.com/

    Inside the Cell --- http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidethecell/

    The Return of the Cicadas (after 17 years) ---
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JJz36rSob0&feature=youtu.be

    Scientists Say Earth Could Have A Massive Secret Reservoir Of Water (maybe more than in the surface oceans) ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-earth-has-a-secret-reservoir-of-water-2014-3#ixzz2vqQFYQDs

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

    The Society of Women Engineers --- http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/

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

    Birmingham Public Library Cartography Collection --- http://bplonline.cdmhost.com/cdm/search/collection/p4017coll7

    Cartography 2.0 --- http://cartography2.org/

     

    Caught Mapping: A Cinematic Ride Through the Nitty Gritty World of Vintage Cartography ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/icaught_mappingia_cinematic_ride_through_the_nitty_gritty_world_of_vintage_cartography.html

     

    USGS: Education Resources for Paleontology --- http://geology.er.usgs.gov/paleo/eduinfo.shtml

     

    Finding Our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond ---
    http://www.loc.gov/collection/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/about-this-collection/

    Nova Video:  The Fabric of the Cosmos ---
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html#fabric-time

    Inside Science TV --- http://www.ams.org/news/discoveries/discoveries

    NOVA: scienceNOW: Explore Teacher's Guides ---
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/educators/subject-anth.html

    NOVA Online: Health Science Classroom Activities --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/resources/subj_05_03.html

    NOVA: Rise of the Drones --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-drones.html

    NOVA: Hunting the Elements
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/hunting-elements.html

    Nova Video:  The Fabric of the Cosmos ---
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html#fabric-time

    Watch the First Episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos Reboot on Hulu (US Viewers) ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/watch-the-first-episode-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos-reboot-on-hulu-us-viewers.html
    Episode 2 ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/neil-degrasse-tyson-tells-fox-viewers-evolution-is-a-scientific-fact-on-cosmos.html

    Center for Astronomy Education --- http://astronomy101.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

    Amazing Space: Visions of the Universe --- http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/visions/

    Impact: Earth! --- http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth

    EarthViewer (History of the Earth Created for the iPad) --- http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/earthviewer/index.html

    Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive --- http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p265101coll10

    From the Scout Report on March 14, 2014

    A stellar start for the 2014 'Cosmos' series
    'Cosmos' dazzles in debut with Neil deGrasse Tyson
    http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/10/showbiz/tv/cosmos-show-reaction-tyson-fox/

    'Cosmos' Reboot Starts With a (Big) Bang
    http://www.universetoday.com/110187/cosmos-reboot-starts-with-a-big-bang/

    'Cosmos' review: making science cool again
    http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/9/5485162/cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey-review

    Old 'Cosmos' vs. new 'Cosmos': Who's the king of the universe?
    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/entertainment2/57665057-223/cosmos-data-hide-true.html.csp

    Flickr: 'Cosmos' - NASA Images of a Space-Time Odyssey
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/sets/72157642013369213/#

    COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey
    http://www.cosmosontv.com

    From the Scout Report on March 21, 2014

    Oldest case of cancer discovered in 3,200 year old skeleton
    Oldest Case of Cancer Discovered in Ancient Skeleton
    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/03/18/oldest-case-of-cancer-discovered-in-ancient-skeleton/#.Uyiewf1tdhE

    World's oldest example of metastatic cancer discovered on a human skeleton
    in Sudan
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/worlds-oldest-example-of-metastatic-cancer-discovered-on-a-human-skeleton-in-sudan-9197922.html

    New evidence of human cancer found at ancient Amara West
    http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/03/17/new-evidence-of-human-cancer-found-at-ancient-amara-west/

    Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old skeleton with metastatic cancer
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274181.php

    On the Antiquity of Cancer: Evidence for Metastatic Carcinoma in a Young
    Man from Ancient Nubia (c. 1200BC)
    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0090924

    What Is Cancer? What Causes Cancer?
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/cancer-oncology/

    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

    Anti-Social Media http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/antisocialmedia

    Politically Correct Library Material on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Society
    University of South Florida Libraries: LGBT Collections --- University of South Florida Libraries: LGBT Collections
    http://www.lib.usf.edu/special-collections/lgbt-collections/ http://www.lib.usf.edu/special-collections/lgbt-collections/

    Dallas Voice (a LGBT voice for Dallas, Homosexual) --- http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/DALVO/

    Labor and Workplace Studies: University of Maryland Libraries --- http://digital.lib.umd.edu/labor?pid=umd:78013

    The Labor Trail --- http://www.labortrail.org/index.html

    Michigan Feminist Studies --- http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfsg/

    The Real Rosie the Riveter Project (labor, women, feminist, gender) --- http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/

    Crain's Chicago Business --- http://www.chicagobusiness.com/

    Curious City (Chicago) --- http://curiouscity.wbez.org

    Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archive --- http://www.library.georgetown.edu/krogh

    GAO: Fiscal Outlook & The Debt --- http://www.gao.gov/fiscal_outlook/overview

    Inside the WGBH Open Vault (television video) --- http://www.wgbh.org/topics/Inside-the-WGBH-Open-Vault-353

    Black History in Wisconsin --- http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/topics/blackhistory/

    The March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/march/index.cfm

    Milwaukee Neighborhoods: Photos and Maps, 1885-1992 http://www.uwm.edu/Library/digilib/Milwaukee/index.html

    University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
    African American Alumni Oral Histories --- http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/uwmalumni

    Mountains and Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest ---
    https://content.lib.washington.edu/portals/mountaineering/index.html

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


    Law and Legal Studies

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


    Math Tutorials

    "The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of History," by Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, March 12, 2014 --- ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/17-equations-that-changed-the-world-2014-3#ixzz2vqf4EeBR

    Whatcom Community College: Online Math Center
    http://math.whatcom.ctc.edu/student-services/campus-resources/math-center/learning-math/free-courses/

    Jensen Comment
    I am the most familiar with the Black-Scholes Model that changed the financial world in controversial ways. The must complicated behavior to model is arguably human behavior, especially investment behavior. Among other things one of the inventors, Myron Scholes, of the BS (appropriate initials) led to one of the most spectacular busts on Wall Street --- the infamous "Trillion Dollar Bet" of a failed hedge fund known as Long-Term Capital Managemetn --- LTCM ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#LTCM

    The Trillion Dollar Bet transcripts are free --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stockmarket.html
    However, you really have to watch the graphics in the video to appreciate this educational video --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stockmarket/

    Is pi infinite?  
    Answer --- Click Here
    https://www.khanacademy.org/math/recreational-math/vi-hart/pi-tau/v/anti-pi-rant-2014?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Stuff You Might Like Testing Send 95&utm_campaign=Highlighted Content 8 Ph2 03152014&utm_content=Final 

    Jensen Comment
    Unlike what she says in this video Pi is special for reasons you should be able to remember --- I hope!

    "The Beautifully Simple Method Archimedes Used To Find The First Digits Of Pi,"  by Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, March 14, 2014 --- ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/archimedes-pi-estimation-2014-3

    "Computer Genius Builds Language That Lets Anyone Calculate Anything," by Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, March 10, 2014 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/wolfram-language-demo-2014-3

    "What Should Mathematics Majors Know About Computing, and When Should They Know It?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 18, 2014 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/03/18/what-should-mathematics-majors-know-about-computing-and-when-should-they-know-it/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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


    History Tutorials

    A Romp Through the Philosophy of Mind: A Free Online Course from Oxford ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/a-romp-through-the-philosophy-of-mind-a-free-online-course-from-oxford.html

    ChronoAtlas (ancient world empires) --- http://www.chronoatlas.com/MapViewer.aspx

    Vandermaelen Atlas Universal (maps, data) ---
    http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/vandermaelen/home.htm

    Colorized Rare Historical Photographs ---
    http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=d6d9d5385aee

    Auburn University Theatre Collection --- http://diglib.auburn.edu/collections/theatre/

    Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/read-all-of-shakespeares-plays-free-online-courtesy-of-the-folger-shakespeare-library.html

    Listen to Orson Welles’ Classic Radio Performance of 10 Shakespeare Plays ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/listen-to-orson-welles-classic-radio-performance-of-10-shakespeare-plays.html

    In Search of Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Sonnets Lesson Plan ---
    http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/language/lessonplan.html

    The Harvard Classics: Download All 51 Volumes as Free eBooks ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/the-harvard-classics-download-all-51-volumes-as-free-ebooks.html

    Orson Welles Reads From America’s Greatest Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953) ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/orson-welles-reads-from-whitmans-song-of-myself.html

    Beloit College: Bartlett Collection (Asian Art Objects) --- http://www.beloit.edu/bcdc/logan/bartlett/

    The Huntington Archive (Buddhist and Asian Art) ---  http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu/database.php

    Freer and Sackler Galleries [iTunes, Smithsonian Asian Art] --- http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/default.htm 

    Mapping a New Nation: Abel Buell's Map of the United States, 1784 --- http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mapping-a-new-nation/

    The Labor Trail --- http://www.labortrail.org/index.html

    Michigan Feminist Studies --- http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfsg/

    The Real Rosie the Riveter Project (labor, women, feminist, gender) --- http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/

    Black History in Wisconsin --- http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/topics/blackhistory/

    The March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project --- http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/march/index.cfm

    Milwaukee Neighborhoods: Photos and Maps, 1885-1992 http://www.uwm.edu/Library/digilib/Milwaukee/index.html

    University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
    African American Alumni Oral Histories --- http://collections.lib.uwm.edu/cdm/search/collection/uwmalumni

    The EY Exhibition: Paul Klee ---
    http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-paul-klee-making-visible

    The History of the Movie Camera in Four Minutes: From the Lumiere Brothers to Google Glass ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/the-history-of-the-movie-camera-in-four-minutes.html

    Orson Welles Reads From America’s Greatest Poem, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1953) ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/orson-welles-reads-from-whitmans-song-of-myself.html

    National Historic Sites of Canada --- http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/lhn-nhs/index.aspx

    Canadian Pacific Railway Collection (Photographs) --- http://www.vpl.ca/cpr/index.html

    Parks Canada --- http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/np-pn/pr-sp/index_e.asp

    The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project --- http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/searchmapframes.php

    Irish in the American Civil War --- http://irishamericancivilwar.com/

    Boston Abolitionists, 1831-1865 --- https://www.masshist.org/features/boston-abolitionists

    The University of Iowa Libraries: 1923 African American Patrobas Cassius Robinson Collection  ---h
    ttp://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/pcr/

    The Goldfinch (Iowa History Magazine)  http://ir.uiowa.edu/goldfinch/

    Amherst College: Digital Collections (History of Amherst) --- http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/amherst/
    Digital Collections: Amherst College --- https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/electexts

    Amherst College: Emily Dickinson Collection --- https://acdc.amherst.edu/browse/collection/collection:ed

    Emily Dickenson --- http://www.emilydickinson.org/

    Mead Art Museum (Amherst College) --- https://www.amherst.edu/museums/mead/

    Inside the WGBH Open Vault (television video) --- http://www.wgbh.org/topics/Inside-the-WGBH-Open-Vault-353

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


    Language Tutorials

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


    Music Tutorials

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

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


    Writing Tutorials

    30 Ideas for Teaching Writing http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922

    Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/stephen-kings-top-20-rules-for-writers.html

    Stephen King Creates a List of 96 Books for Aspiring Writers to Read ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/stephen-king-creates-a-list-of-96-books-for-aspiring-writers-to-read.html

    Hear William S. Burroughs’ Lectures on Creative Reading and Writing at Naropa University (1979) ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/william-s-burroughs-lectures-on-creative-reading-and-writing.html

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


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

    March 14, 2014

    March 15, 2014

    March 18, 2014

    March 19, 2014

    March 20, 2014

    March 21, 2014

    March 22, 2014

    March 25, 2014

     


    "Professor Writes Startlingly Honest Account Of Her Own Dementia," vy Corey Adwar, Business Insider, March 21, 2014 ---
    http://www.businessinsider.com/gerda-saunders-writes-about-her-dementia-2014-3


    Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link ---
    http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/study-questions-fat-and-heart-disease-link/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0


    "The Overprotected Kid," by Hanna Rosen, The Atlantic, March 19, 2014 ---
    http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/ 

    A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.

    Jensen Comment
    When I grew up it was the exact opposite. About all we feared were bulls in the cow pasture, horse kicks, and falling out of trees.

      Short story entitled My Glimpse of Heaven:  What I learned from Max and Gwen
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
     


    Court Tosses Out $1.2 Billion Judgment Against Johnson & Johnson:   Arkansas Had Sued Over Janssen Pharmaceuticals Unit's Antipsychotic Drug Risperdal ---
    WSJ March 20, 2014
    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304256404579451162380919936?mod=djemCFO_h&mg=reno64-wsj


    A long-delayed correction of a lie
    "You Might (Really) Lose Your Doctor Under Obamacare," WebMd, March 14, 2014 ---
    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/03/14/great-news-80-of-employers-have-or-may-raise-deductibles-thanks-to-obamacare/

    Voters in November might be ready to show Democrats what they think about removing choice and hiking costs, as well as their arrogance in determining that a few politicians in Washington know better about their choices than they do. Unfortunately, Barack Obama doesn’t appear to have figured out this problem. In an interview with WebMD, Obama finally acknowledged that, contra his promise, people might not be able to keep the doctors they liked, but that they probably shouldn’t have liked those doctors in the first place.

    Jensen Comment
    Why won't he still admit the truth. Many of those doctors that "they liked" tend to be so good that they get more than enough business without working for medical clinics. Many of the hospitals that refuse to participate are the best hospitals in the USA like the Andersen Cancer Center in Houston.

    Here in New Hampshire 10 of the 26 hospitals and many of the best physicians in the state refuse to go on network. One of the main reasons is that patients in default on their health exchange premiums must be treated for 90 days with physicians and hospitals bearing the treatment costs for the last 60 of those 90 days. God forbid that the fat-cat insurance companies or the Federal government take the risks of paying for the free care during those 60-days.

     




    A Bit of Humor

    Watch David Brenner (RIP) Make the First of His 158 Appearances on The Tonight Show in 1971 ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/watch-david-brenner-rip-make-the-first-of-his-158-appearances-on-the-tonight-show-in-1971.html

    Happy St. Patrick's Day Pub Lunch ---
    http://www.jacquielawson.com/preview.asp?cont=1&hdn=0&pv=3153666&path=98301

    Les Beaux Frères - Serviette (brief nudity) ---
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUr3XbROoA8
    I had to wait a long time for a commercial for a new movie to end

    The Darwin Awards --- http://www.darwinawards.com/

    Yakov Smirnoff Remembers “The Soviet Department of Jokes” & Other Staples of Communist Comedy ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/yakov-smirnoff-remembers-the-soviet-department-of-jokes.html

    20 Jokes Only Intellectuals Understand ---
    http://thelookingspoon.com/conservative-lol/117-general-humor/5360-will-you-get-these-20-jokes-meant-for-really-brainy-people.html

    Bob Hope Entertaining the Troops --- http://biggeekdad.com/2011/02/bob-hope-christmas/


    Forwarded by Paula

    Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and is frequently humorous.

    1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

    2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you ... But it's still on my list.

    3. Since light travels faster than sound, Some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

    4. If I agreed with you, We'd both be wrong.

    5. We never really grow up -- We only learn how to act in public.

    6. War does not determine who is right, Only who is left.

    7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

    8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

    9. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

    10. In filling out an application, where it says, "In case of emergency, notify... " I answered "a doctor."

    11. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the Street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

    12. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

    13. I used to be indecisive, But now I'm not so sure.

    14. To be sure of hitting the target, Shoot first and call whatever you hit "the target."

    1 5 . You're never too old to learn something stupid.

    1 6 . I'm supposed to respect my elders, But it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

     


    Forwarded by James Don Edwards

    A father was approached by his small son who told him proudly, "I know what the Bible means!"
    His father smiled and replied, "What do you mean, you 'know' what the Bible means?
    The son replied, "I do know!"
    "Okay," said his father. "What does the Bible mean?"
    "That's easy, Daddy..." the young boy replied excitedly," It stands for 'Basic Information Before Leaving Earth..' (This one is my favourite)
    =======
    There was a very gracious lady who was mailing an old family Bible to her brother in another part of the country.
    "Is there anything breakable in here?" asked the postal clerk.
    "Only the Ten Commandments." answered the lady.
    ========
    "Somebody has said there are only two kinds of people in the world. There are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning, Lord," and there are those who wake up in the morning and say, "Good Lord, it's morning."
    ========
    A minister parked his car in a no-parking zone in a large city because he was short of time and couldn't find a space with a meter.
    Then he put a note under the windshield wiper that read: "I have circled the block 10 times. If I don't park here, I'll miss my appointment. Forgive us our trespasses."
    When he returned, he found a citation from a police officer along with this note "I've circled this block for 10 years. If I don't give you a ticket I'll lose my job. Lead us not into temptation."
    ========
    There is the story of a pastor who got up one Sunday and announced to his congregation: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is, we have enough money to pay for our new building program. The bad news is, it's still out there in your pockets."
    ========
    While driving in Pennsylvania , a family caught up to an Amish carriage. The owner of the carriage obviously had a sense of humour, because attached to the back of the carriage was a hand printed sign... "Energy efficient vehicle: Runs on oats and grass. Caution: Do not step in exhaust."
    ========
    A Sunday School teacher began her lesson with a question, "Boys and girls, what do we know about God?"
    A hand shot up in the air. "He is an artist!" said the kindergarten boy.
    "Really? How do you know?" the teacher asked.
    "You know - Our Father, who does art in Heaven... "
    ========
    A minister waited in line to have his car filled with gas just before a long holiday weekend. The attendant worked quickly, but there were many cars ahead of him. Finally, the attendant motioned him toward a vacant pump.
    "Reverend," said the young man, "I'm so sorry about the delay. It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip."
    The minister chuckled, "I know what you mean. It's the same in my business."
    ========
    People want the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the center of attention.
    ========
    Sunday after church, a Mom asked her very young daughter what the lesson was about.
    The daughter answered, "Don't be scared, you'll get your quilt."
    Needless to say, the Mom was perplexed. Later in the day, the pastor stopped by for tea and the Mom asked him what that morning's Sunday school lesson was about.
    He said "Be not afraid, thy comforter is coming."
    ========
    The minister was preoccupied with thoughts of how he was going to ask the congregation to come up with more money than they were expecting for repairs to the church building. Therefore, he was annoyed to find that the regular organist was sick and a substitute had been brought in at the last minute.. The substitute wanted to know what to play.
    "Here's a copy of the service," he said impatiently. "But, you'll have to think of something to play after I make the announcement about the finances."
    During the service, the minister paused and said, "Brothers and Sisters, we are in great difficulty; the roof repairs cost twice as much as we expected and we need $4,000 more. Any of you who can pledge $100 or more, please stand up."
    At that moment, the substitute organist played "The NATIONAL ANTHEM."
    And that is how the substitute became the regular organist!


    When you carry the Bible, Satan gets a headache..... When you open it, he collapses..... When he sees you reading it, he faints..... When he sees that you are living what you read, he flees...... And when you are about to forward this message.... He will try and discourage you.. I just defeated him!!! Any other takers?




    Humor Between March 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor033114

    Humor Between February 1-28, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor022814

    Humor Between January 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor013114

    Humor Between December 1-31, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q4.htm#Humor123113

    Humor Between November 1-30, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q4.htm#Humor113013

    Humor Between October 1-31, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q4.htm#Humor103113

    Humor Between September 1-30, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q3.htm#Humor093013

    Humor Between July 1 and August 31, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q3.htm#Humor083113

    Humor Between June 1-30, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor063013

    Humor Between May 1-31, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor053113

    Humor Between April 1-30, 2013 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor043013




    Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

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

    Update in 2014
    20-Year Sugar Hill Master Plan --- http://www.nccouncil.org/images/NCC/file/wrkgdraftfeb142014.pdf

    Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
    For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/

    Online Distance Education Training and Education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
    For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud  (College, Inc.) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

    Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

    The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm

    How Accountics Scientists Should Change: 
    "Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
    One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm 

    What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

    The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

    AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

    Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

    Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

     

    World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
    Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/

    Interesting Online Clock and Calendar --- http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
    Time by Time Zones --- http://timeticker.com/
    Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) --- http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
             Also see http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
            
    Facts about population growth (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
    Projected U.S. Population Growth --- http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
    Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 
    Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons --- http://zipskinny.com/
    Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.

    Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

    CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
    Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

    Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

    Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social Networking ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

    Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

    Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
    In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
    I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

    Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

    Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
    Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting educators.
    Any college may post a news item.

    Accounting  and Taxation News Sites ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

     

    For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to   http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
    AECM (Educators) http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
    AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.

    Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing, doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics) research, publication, replication, and validity testing.

     

    CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/  (Closed Down)
    CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
    Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
    This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
    AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
    This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
    Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
    This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM
    FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
    Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
    FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
    www.financialexecutives.org/blog

    Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board on this financial reporting blog from Financial Executives International. The site, updated daily, compiles regulatory news, rulings and statements, comment letters on standards, and hot topics from the Web’s largest business and accounting publications and organizations. Look for continuing coverage of SOX requirements, fair value reporting and the Alternative Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such as the subprime mortgage crisis, international convergence, and rules for tax return preparers.
    The CAlCPA Tax Listserv

    September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@bonackers.com]
    Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as well as a practicing CPA)

    I found another listserve that is exceptional -

    CalCPA maintains http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/  and they let almost anyone join it.
    Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.

    There are several highly capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and the answers are often in depth.

    Scott

    Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

    Yes you may mention info on your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not have access to the files and other items posted.

    Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I will get the request to join.

    Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.

    We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in California.... ]

    Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

    If any questions let me know.

    Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
    Hemet, CA
    Moderator TaxTalk

     

     

     

     

    Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm

     

    Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

    Some Accounting History Sites

    Bob Jensen's Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
     

    Accounting History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) --- http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
    The above libraries include international accounting history.
    The above libraries include film and video historical collections.

    MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting --- http://maaw.info/

    Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
    http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/

    Sage Accounting History --- http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269

    A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
    "The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
    Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm 

    A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

    From Texas A&M University
    Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html

    Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds

    History of Fraud in America --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
    Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

    Bob Jensen's Threads ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

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

    All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

     

    Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
    190 Sunset Hill Road
    Sugar Hill, NH 03586
    Phone:  603-823-8482 
    Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu