Tidbits on April 15 2014
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
My Favorite Old Barn
Pictures --- Set 01
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Barns\Set01\BarnsSet01.htm
Tidbits on April 15, 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 ---
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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
Beautiful Equations: Documentary Explores the Beauty of
Einstein & Newton’s Great Equations ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/beautiful-equations-documentary-explores-the-beauty-of-einstein-newtons-great-equations.html
Watch (free) Episode 1 of Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously, The New
Showtime Series on Climate Change ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14555d8811341893
Watch Episode #5 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Unlocking
the Mysteries of Light (US Viewers) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/watch-episode-5-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos.html
Watch Episode #4 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: The Big Bang, Black Holes &
More (US Viewers) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/watch-episode-4-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos.html
Carl Sagan’s Original Cosmos Series on YouTube: The 1980 Show That Inspired a
Generation of Scientists ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/carl-sagans-original-cosmos-series-on-youtube.html
Web Adventures: Explore Science ---
http://webadventures.rice.edu/
Watch a “Lost Interview” With Michel Foucault: Missing for 30
Years But Now Recovered ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/lost-interview-with-michel-foucault.html
Richard Feynman on Religion, Science, the Search for Truth &
Our Willingness to Live with Doubt ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/richard-feynman-on-religion-science.html
What happens when you open an outhouse door?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GGW6Rm437tE
Watch the Funky, Oscar-Winning Animated Film Featuring the
Music of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (1966) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/watch-the-funky-oscar-winning-animated-film-featuring-the-music-of-herb-alpert-the-tijuana-brass-1966.html
Watch High Maintenance: A Critically-Acclaimed Web Series
About Life & Cannabis ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/high-maintanence.html
Time Lapse Photos of Building a Good Year Blimp from Scratch
---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vve8hh9_xGI
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection (music history in
theater and the media) ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/kayefine/kayefine-home.html
A Segment on March 30, 2014 hour of CBS Sixty Minutes
Truth is Indeed Stranger Than Fiction: This blind man's music skills are
beyond belief
Free access to the video is very limited, so take advantage of the following
link now:
Jamming behind the scenes with jazz greats
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/jamming-behind-the-scenes-with-jazz-greats/
Shag Dancing ---
http://mostamazingplanet.com/30-years-of-shag-dancing/
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
Navy Christens Its Most Futuristic Ship Ever ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/uss-zumwalt-2014-4
The Massive Solar-Powered Airplane Can Fly Forever ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-impulse-2014-4
NASA Published The 'Clearest Panorama' Of The Milky Way Ever
Created ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz2wsbfH3Gw
Download 35,000 Works of Art from the National Gallery,
Including Masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rembrandt & Many More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/download-35000-works-of-art-from-the-national-gallery.html
Memories of the 50's and 60's ---
http://www.flickr.com/photos/blast_of_the_past/
New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps
Online & Makes Them Free to Download and Use ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/new-york-public-library-puts-20000-hi-res-maps-online.html
Tennie Toussaint Photographs (Barn Raisings in
Vermont in the Early 1900s) ---
http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=tennietoussaint&title=Tennie
Toussaint Photographs
Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New
York City, 1860-1942 ---
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=cities&col_id=243
Vermont Historical Society ---
http://www.vermonthistory.org/
Miami Expo Art ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm4Oh2SEVoE
37 Breathtaking Winners From Sony's World Photography Awards
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/sonys-world-photography-awards-2014-3?op=1#ixzz2xa9gIalI
Live Cams: Discovery Channel ---
http://www.discovery.com/live-cams
The 50 Most Beautiful Women ---
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q5XetQeFu-0?rel=0
10 Incredible Pictures From Smithsonian Magazine's Annual
Photo Contest ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz2yTtu3Oe6
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,”
Read by Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/edgar-allan-poes-the-raven-read-by-christopher.html
Gustave Doré’s Splendid Illustrations of Edgar
Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/gustave-dores-splendid-illustrations-of-edgar-allan-poes-the-raven-1884.html
Public Health Image Library ---
http://phil.cdc.gov/phil
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
Lists of the Best Sentences — Opening, Closing, and Otherwise — in
English-Language Novels ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/lists-of-the-best-sentences-opening-closing-and-otherwise-in-english-language-novels.html
The Elliston Project: Poetry Readings and Lectures at the
University of Cincinnati ---
http://digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/elliston/
Human, All Too Human: 3-Part Documentary Profiles Nietzsche,
Heidegger & Sartre ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/human-all-too-human.html
Debates in the Digital Humanities ---
http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/
Ernest Hemingway’s Very First Published Stories, Free as an
eBook ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/1455157e59c58335
Hear Charlton Heston Read
Ernest Hemingway’s Classic Story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/hear_charlton_heston_read_ernest_hemingways_classic_story_the_snows_of_kilimanjaro.html
Hispanic Reading Room: Online Collections ---
http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/onlinecol.html
Latino USA ---
http://latinousa.org/
Dime Novel and Popular Literature
http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Collection/vudl:24093
Gustave Doré’s Splendid Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Raven” (1884) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/gustave-dores-splendid-illustrations-of-edgar-allan-poes-the-raven-1884.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 April 15, 2014
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2014/TidbitsQuotations0141514.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
2013-14 AAUP Faculty Salary Survey ---
http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/2013-14salarysurvey
For accounting and business faculty in AACSB-accredited universities the
AACSB survey is probably more informative. The AAUP salaries are pulled downward
by lower-paying colleges and universities not accredited by the AACSB. The AACSB
survey is not free but chances are the Dean's Office in an AACSB school can
provide access to that data.
A Benchmark A- Essay of a University of North Carolina Athlete ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/unc-athlete-essay-on-rosa-parks-gets-a-minus-2014-3
Jensen Comment
This may well have been the lowest grade given in the class.
Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation across the USA ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
10 Countries Racing to by USA Homes ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/04/11/ten-countries-racing-to-buy-american-homes/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=APR112014A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Jensen Comment
I think there is even more interest in commercial properties like office
buildings that generate sufficient revenues to cover maintenance, insurance, and
tax expenses. Small scale houses and condos are are more troublesome to manage
annually.
Years ago we used to be worried that Asians would buy up our farmland.
However, I think that nearby farmers are so eager to increase the sizes of their
farms that farm land investments are not very profitable for remote landlords.
Also the costs of hiring farmers to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops are
quite high such that farm investments may be losers on a short term basis except
for farmers who tend their own land.
For the long term farmland investments in the "right parts" of the USA may be
good inflation hedges over a very long term. However, finding the "right parts"
is more risky in this era of global warming. For example, I suspect that farm
land in parched California is high risk these days even if prices are
plummeting.
How to Mislead With Statistics
From MIT: Living Wage Calculator ---
http://livingwage.mit.edu/
Jensen Comment
There are quite a few sources of error. For example, I live in Grafton County,
New Hampshire. Within Grafton County, the cost of housing has a wide variation
between Hanover (home of Dartmouth College) having very, very high housing
purchase and rental costs versus decadent mill towns in Grafton County like
Lisbon. But the Living Wage Calculator does not
distinguish between the living wage in Hanover versus the living wage in Lisbon
that has to much lower than that of Hanover.
Another source of error arises between larger towns and very small villages.
For example, larger towns in New Hampshire have free transportation services for
the poor and elderly. Small villages do not even have local taxi services. In
comparison large cities like Boston have various options for low cost public
transportation that do not exist for most of the rest of New England. Also a
city like Boston has wider ranging rental prices for housing that vary in
different parts of the city. The living wage calculator does not factor in the
fact that non-unionized big stores like Wal-Mart are not allowed in Boston,
thereby increasing the shopping costs of residents of Boston.
The living wage calculator factors in taxes when comparing living costs of a
New Hampshire county having no income or sales taxes versus an adjacent Vermont
county having the highest income, sales, and property taxes in New England. The
Living Wage Calculator will not, however, adjust for the fact that a Vermont
resident has a high probability of both working and shopping in New Hampshire if
the commuting distances are relatively short. Thus reported differences in
living wages for many counties in Vermont can be misleading.
Residents in northern New England have access to Canada's inexpensive
prescribed medications, where it is much more costly and inconvenient for
residents of southern New England to traverse back and forth to Canada.
Residents in San Antonio can and do live fairly well without air conditioning
(there's breeze almost every night caused by the
Balcones Fault). But residents of New England cannot live without heat. I'm
not certain how the Living Wage Calculator adjusts for this difference, but my
guess is that it factors in the costs of cooling and heating without accounting
for the fact that it's possible in many warm climates to live fairly well
without cooling. I should add, however, that I would not want to live in San
Antonio without air conditions, but many, many residents there do live without
air conditioning.
The list of variations in "living" expenses that are not factored into the
"Living Wage Calculator" is enormous.
No one variation may be significant but in aggregate I think they can add
significant error to the numbers pumped out of the "Living Wage Calculator."
"The Hidden Brain: How Ocean Currents Explain Our Unconscious Social
Biases," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, April 9, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/04/09/the-hidden-brain-shankar-vedantam/
"22-Year-Old Yale Grad's Hopeful Essays Published After Her Tragic Death,"
by Corey Adwar, Business Insider, April 7, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/opposite-of-loneliness-published-after-yale-grad-marina-keegans-death-2014-4#ixzz2ymV2TCGX
The US Population Explosion In One Cool (animated) GIF 1800-2010 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/overpopulation-in-the-us-2014-4#ixzz2yIjOjVdH
Jensen Comment
It almost seems like people most like to be near shorelines of oceans and the
Great Lakes. Of course there is much more to population migration than
shorelines. However, shipping may have a lot more to do with population
migration than we sometimes realize.
A Teachers Union Victory: NYC children need not be tested for
reading and arithmetic for passage to the next grade
"Bloomberg-era tests no longer top criteria for student promotion," by By
Aaron Short and Carl Campanile, New York Post, April 9, 2014 ---
http://nypost.com/2014/04/09/city-scraps-bloombergs-standardized-tests/
The rigorous tests imposed during Michael
Bloomberg's administration saw about 8,000 students repeat their grade.
Looks as if the bad old days of “social promotion”
are returning to New York City public schools.
The de Blasio administration Wednesday scrapped the
results of standardized exams as the chief measure for determining
promotions in grades 3 through 8.
“This is absolutely dumbing down the standards,”
said Mona Davids, head of the NYC Parents Union.
Undoing one of the major policies of the Bloomberg
administration, schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said teachers and
principals would now adopt a more “holistic” approach that relies on
everything, including classroom attendance, to determine which students move
ahead and which get left back.
Test scores would no longer be used as the
“primary” or “major factor” in making those decisions, Fariña said.
“This new way forward maintains accountability, but
mitigates the unintended consequences of relying solely on a single test,”
Fariña said.
Education reformers immediately questioned if the
city was returning to the days when kids were promoted as they aged,
regardless of their ability to make the grade.
It also raised red flags because teachers have a
stake in promoting students, since their evaluations are based, in part, on
how well those students perform.
Campbell Brown, of the Parents Transparency
Project, said promoting kids who aren’t prepared would be disastrous.
“No one benefits from the promotion of a student
who is not ready for the next grade level — particularly the student himself
or herself, who will be ill-prepared and at risk of never catching up with
his or her peers,” Brown said.
“If there is a set of metrics other than exams to
determine if a child is truly ready for the next step, we’re all ears, but
not if that criteria in any way waters down the standards for promotion.”
Fariña insisted Wednesday that standards would be
maintained.
“The test still counts because the test will give
us some idea of what strategies the kids need,” she said.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
California also dumbed down its achievement tests. Outstanding athletes who
cannot read or multiply fractions are encouraged to apply to the University of
North Carolina after graduating with honors from high schools.
How to Mislead With Statistics of Merit Scholars: "Mom, Please Get
Me Out of South Dakota!"
Probabilities of Being a Merit Scholar Vary Intentionally With Geography:
The Odds are Higher in East St. Louis or Cactus Gulch, Nevada
"Not-So-National Merit," by Ian Ayres, Freakonomics, April 4, 2014 ---
http://freakonomics.com/2014/04/04/not-so-national-merit/
Last December, thousands of high school sophomores
and juniors learned the results of the 2013 Preliminary SAT (PSAT) test.
The juniors’ test scores will be used to determine whether they qualify as
semifinalists for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship, which in turn
makes them eligible for a host of automatic
college scholarships. (Sophomores take the test
just as practice.)
The juniors will have to wait to find out for sure
if they qualify until September, just before they begin submitting
applications to colleges across the country. But it is fairly
straightforward to predict, based on their scores and last year’s cutoffs,
whether they will qualify as semifinalists.
Many students would be
surprised to learn that qualification depends not only
on how high they score, but also on where they go to school.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) sets different qualifying
cutoffs for each state to “ensure
that academically talented young people from all parts of the United States
are included in this talent pool.” They have not
disclosed any specific criteria for setting the state cutoffs.
A high school student’s chances of receiving the
award can depend crucially on his or her state of residence. Last year,
students in West Virginia needed only a 203 to qualify as a semifinalist
(scores range from 60-240), while students from Texas needed a 219 and
students from Washington, D.C. a 224. Nationally, the West Virginia score
was in the 97thpercentile of scores, while the Washington DC
score was at the 99.5th percentile based on a mean score of 143
and a standard deviation of 31.
I’ve crudely estimated that because of this state
cutoff discrimination, approximately 15% of students (about 2,400 students a
year) who are awarded semifinalist status have lower scores than
other students who were not semifinalists merely due to their geographic
location. Troublesomely, I also found that states with larger minority
populations tend to have higher cutoffs.
Instead of just complaining, I have partnered with
an extraordinary high-school sophomore from New Jersey named India
Unger-Harquail to try to do something about it.
We’ve just launched a new website, AcadiumScholar.org.
You can go to site, enter a score, and it will quickly
tell you the states where your score would have qualified you as an NMSC
semifinalist.
But wait, there’s more. The site also offers to
certify qualified students based on a national standard of merit. If you
represent and warrant to us that you received a PSAT score meeting the
minimum cutoff in at least one state (and you give us the opportunity to try
to verify the accuracy of your score with NMSC), we’ll give you the right to
describe yourself as an “Acadium Scholar.” We’ve separately applied to the
USPTO to registrar that phrase as a certification mark
(in parallel fashion to my earlier “fair
employment mark”).
Instead of the yes-or-no signal offered by the NMSC,
we’ll also certify students based on the number of states in which they
would have qualified as semifinalists. For example, a student who scored a
211 could be certified to describe herself as a “19-state Acadium Scholar.”
Our certification allows:
· A student from a strong cutoff-state,
like Texas, who scores a 218 (just missing the Lone Star qualifying
cutoff of 219) to say nonetheless that he’s a 41-state Acadium Scholar.
· A student from a weak cutoff state,
like North Dakota, who scores an extraordinary 235 on the exam to say
that she is a 50-state Acadium Scholar.
We’re even letting sophomores use their scores to
certify so that all the pressure isn’t on junior year. There are also some
sophomores who may have scored ten points better in their sophomore than
their junior year. Now those students can certify as Acadium Scholars based
on their higher scores.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Many elite colleges in search of diversity in geography as well as race and
religion admit to varying admission standards for geography. It's harder to get
into Harvard from Massachusetts than it is from Wyoming or Alaska.
Bob Jensen's threads on assessments ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm
"A Simple Theory for Why School and Health Costs Are So Much Higher in the
U.S.," by Andrew O’Connell, Harvard Business Review Blog, April 7,
2014 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/a-simple-theory-for-why-school-and-health-costs-are-so-much-higher-in-the-u-s/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&cm_ite=DailyAlert-040814+%281%29&cm_lm=sp%3Arjensen%40trinity.edu&cm_ven=Spop-Email
Jensen Comment
One reason higher education costs more in the USA is that more
attempts are made to bring college education to everybody with
nearby physical campuses such as community colleges and online
degree programs from major universities. In Europe and most other
parts of the world higher education is available only to a much
smaller portion of the population. In Germany, for example, less
than 25% of young graduates are admitted to college and
opportunities for adult college education are much more limited than
in the USA. Those other nations, however, often offer greater
opportunities for learning a trade that does not require a college
education.
There are many reasons health care costs more in the USA. One reason
is that the USA is the world leader in medical and medication
research. Another reason is that the USA imposes a costly private
sector insurance intermediary where other nations offer insurance
from a more efficient public sector.
Still another reason is that malpractice lawsuits are a legal
punitive damages lottery in most parts of the USA such that
hospitals and physicians must pay ten or more times as much for
malpractice insurance relative to nations like Canada that restrict
malpractice to actual damages only, leaving out the lottery for
lawyers.
Still another reason is that the USA keeps extremely premature
babies alive that other nations throw away. Even more expense if
what Medicare spends on keeping people hopelessly and artificially
alive, dying people that other nations let slip away without all the
very costly artificial life extensions.
On November 22, 2009 CBS Sixty Minutes aired a video featuring
experts (including physicians) explaining how the single largest
drain on the Medicare insurance fund is keeping dying people
hopelessly alive who could otherwise be allowed to die quicker and
painlessly without artificially prolonging life on ICU machines.
"The Cost of Dying," CBS Sixty Minutes Video, November
22, 2009 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-dying-end-of-life-care/
Most of the Fast Growing Jobs in this Decade Do Not Require a
College Education
"I Looked Up The Fastest-Growing Jobs In America, And Boy Was It
Depressing," by Rob Wile, Business Insider, April 7, 2014
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/fastest-growing-jobs-2014-4
Jensen Comment
This study is based upon changes in numbers of employees in each occupation.
Opportunities are much better in some careers having emerging skills and jobs
having high barriers to entry. Opportunities will abound for psychiatrists who
will get soaring increases in compensation due to continued shortages under the
ACA act. The big barrier to psychiatry is the talent and years of medical school
required combined with a reluctance of many medical school graduates to take on
some of the dangers of being a psychiatrist treating some unstable and
threatening patients.
The study also seems to leave out the shortages of high tech
specialists such as cybersecurity experts, big data analytics, and FBI computer
and white-collar crime experts.
My point is that the rate of growth barrier in many instances is on the
supply side rather than the demand side such that those who become educated
and trained for these unfilled demand jobs (such as shortages of cybersecurity
experts and high-tech weapons development experts) have great career
opportunities. Already many many such experts are being admitted to the USA on
green cards because the numbers of such experts in the USA are so small relative
to demand.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on April 8, 2014
Corporation cash finds its way into university curricula
State universities seeking new revenue are partnering with
companies that are trying to close a yawning skills gap in fast-changing
industries, the
WSJ reports. Students
at the University of Maryland, for instance, are enrolling in a
cybersecurity concentration funded in part by Northrop Grumman Corp., and
the company is helping to design the curriculum and pay for part of a new
dormitory. IBM last year deepened a partnership with Ohio State University
to train students in big-data analytics.
Jensen Comment
Prospects for auditing, systems, and tax accounting graduates are expected to
remain high. However, in most instances graduates must have five years of
full-time specialty study in college. It's much more difficult and costly to
become a CPA than to become an insulation worker or health care aid. It's also
much more costly and difficult to become a psychiatrist than a CPA.
"American Bar Association Releases 'Bleak' Jobs Data for 2013 Law School
Grads," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, April 10, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/04/aba-releases-.html
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"Proof of a Result About the "Adjusted" Coefficient of Determination,"
by David Giles, Econometrics Blog, April 16, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/04/proof-of-result-about-adjusted.html
. . .
Let's take a look at the proof.
The model we're going to look at is the standard, k-regressor, linear
multiple regression model:
y
= Xβ + ε .
(1)
We have n observations in our sample.
The result that follows is purely
algebraic, and not statistical, so in actual fact I don't
have to assume anything in particular about the errors in the model, and
the regressors can be random. So that the definition of the coefficient
of determination is unique, I will assume that the model includes
an intercept term.
The adjusted coefficient of determination
when model (1) is estimated by OLS is
RA2
= 1 - [e'e / (n - k)] / [(y*'y*) / (n - 1)] ,
(2)
where e is the OLS residual vector, and
y* is the y vector, but with each element expressed as a deviation from
the sample mean of the y data.
Now consider J independent exact linear
restrictions on the elements of β, namely Rβ = r, where R is a known
non-random (J x k) matrix of rank J; and r is a known non-random (J x 1)
vector. The F-statistic that we would use to test the validity of these
restrictions can be written as:
F = [(eR'eR
- e'e) / J] / [e'e / (n - k)] ,
(3)
where eR is the residual
vector when the restrictions on β are imposed, and the model is
estimated by RLS.
In the latter case, the adjusted
coefficient of determination is
RAR2 = 1
- [eR'eR / (n - k + J)] / [(y*'y*) / (n - 1)] .
(4)
From
equation (3), F ≥ 1 if and only if
(n - k) eR'eR ≥ (n - k + J) e'e .
(5)
From (2) and (4), RA2≥
RAR2 if and only if
(n - k) eR'eR
≥ (n - k + J) e'e.
But this is just the condition in (5).
So, we have the following result:
Imposing a set of exact linear
restrictions on the coefficients of a linear regression model will
decrease (increase) the adjusted coefficient of determination if the
F-statistic for testing the validity of those restrictions is greater
(less) than one in value. If this statistic is exactly equal to one, the
adjusted coefficient of determination will be unchanged.
Notice that the result quoted at
the beginning of this post is a special case of this result, where the
restrictions are all "zero" restrictions. Recalling that the square of a
t statistic with v degrees of freedom is just an F statistic with 1 and
v degrees of freedom, the other principal result given in the
earlier post is
also obviously a special case of this, with just one zero restriction:
Adding a regressor will increase (decrease) RA2 depending
on whether the absolute value of the t-statistic associated with
that regressor is greater (less) than one in value. RA2 is
unchanged if that absolute t-statistic is exactly equal to one.
Jensen Comment
My question is how robust these results are to the order in which regressors are
added or deleted from the model. The model is not very robust in there are
ordering effects. My experience years ago was that ordering effects are a
problem.
"A Scrapbook on What's Wrong with the Past, Present and Future of Accountics
Science"
Bob Jensen
February 19, 2014
SSRN Download:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2398296
"The Most Underrated College In Every State," by Peter Jacobs,
Business Insider, April 9, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/underrated-college-in-every-state-2014-4
Jensen Comment
What I found most interesting in this article is how acceptance rates vary
among state universities.
For example, the University of Delaware only accepts 45% of applicants whereas
Arizona State University accepts 89% of applicants. The University of Florida
only accepts 44% of applicants whereas Kansas State University accepts 99% of
applicants.
The University of North Carolina only accepts 33% if applicants whereas the
University of Wyoming accepts 96% of applicants. Much depends upon existence of
nearby other high quality competing state universities. For example, North
Carolina has quite a few good state universities whereas sparsely-populated
Wyoming has few choices other than the University of Wyoming. Acceptance rates
also vary for first year students versus transfer students from other colleges.
Some universities like the University of Florida are designed to have lower
first-year acceptance rates and higher and manditory acceptance rates of
graduates from the many community colleges within the state.
I did not do any formal analysis, on first blush it appears that state
universities tend to accept about 65%-85% of applicants in this survey. Keep in
mind that most state universities are not reported in this survey that seeks to
identify the "most underrated" college or university in each of the 50 states.
More details such as the admissions qualifications and other criteria of
high standards are reported in the US News rankings ---
http://www.usnews.com/rankings
Jensen Comment
You absolutely will not guess who wrote the technical essay cited below on
financial analysis ratios of "Noncontrolling Interest" as defined in FAS 160
FAS 160 (minority interest gives way to noncontrolling interest)
"Noncontrolling Interest: Much More Than a Name Change New consolidation
rules for partially owned affiliates: FASB 160," by Paul R. Bahnson, Brian
P. McAllister and Paul B.W. Miller, Journal of Accountancy, November 2008
---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2008/Nov/NoncontrollingInterestMuchMoreThanaNameChange.htm
Statement no. 141(R) and Statement no. 160 are
integrally linked to work together to apply the new acquisition method to
consolidated financial statements and reports and thus bring more useful
information to the capital markets. With its more extensive and consistent
fair value measurements, Statement no. 141(R) will help users assess the
future cash flows of the consolidated enterprise. And with its consistent
application of entity reporting concepts, Statement no. 160 will help them
comprehend the relationship between the controlling and noncontrolling
interests. As a result, users can perform more complete and reliable
assessments of the prospective future cash flows available to the parent and
its shareholders.
FASB's Summary of FAS 160 ---
http://www.fasb.org/st/summary/stsum160.shtml
Here's an Excerpt From an essay on financial analysis
ratios of Noncontrolling Interest as defined in FAS 160
Profit Analysis
Ch 8 :-
*Net profit margin (NPM)= Net income before non controlling
interest , equity income and nonrecurring items / net sales
= Income from continuing operations – equity in net income of
affiliates / net sales
= 12,427-734122,513 = 9.54 %
* Total asset turnover (TAT)=net sales / average total assets
= 122,513(265,245+268,312 )÷2 = 45.92 %
*Return on assets (ROA)= Net income before non controlling
interest and nonrecurring items / Average Total Assets
= Income from continuing operations / Average total assets
= 12,427(265,245+268,312 )÷2 = 4.66 %
*Dupont ROA = NPM × TAT
= 9.45 % × 45.92 % = 4.34%
*Operating income margin (OIM)= Operating income / net sales
= 21,000122,513 = 17.14%
*Operating asset turnover (OAT) = Net sale / Average operating
asset
=122,513(120,630+123,459 )÷2 = 1.0038 times
Operating assets = Total assets – Goodwill – Licenses - Customer
Lists and Relationships - Other Intangible Assets - Investments
in Equity Affiliates - Other Assets – Deferred income taxes
Operating assets 2009 = 268,312 – 72,782 – 48,741 – 7,393 –
5,494 – 2,921 – 6,275 – 1,247 = 123,459
Operating assets 2008 = 265,245 – 71,829 – 47,306 – 10,582 –
5,824 – 2,332 – 5,728 – 1,014 = 120,630
*Return on Operating assets (ROOA) = Operating income / Average
operating asset
= 21,000(120,630+123,459 )÷2 = 17.21 %
*Dupont ROOA = OIM × OAT
= 17.14 % × 1.0038 = 17.21 %
*Sales to Fixed Assets = Net Sales / Average net fixed asset
= 122,513(99,088+99,519 )÷2 = 1.23 times
*Return on Investment (ROI)= [Net income before non controlling
interest and nonrecurring items + interest expense ( 1- Tax rate
]/ Average LT liabilities and equities
LT Liabilities and equities 2008 = 60,872 + 65,333 + 96,750 =
222,955
LT Liabilities and equities 2009 = 64,720 + 64,652 + 101,989 =
231,361
Tax Rate = 35 %
= 12,427 + 2,994(1-.35)(222,955+231,361 )÷2 = 6.33 %
*Return on Total Equity (ROE)= [Net income before nonrecurring
items – Dividend on redeemable...
Continued in the full essay
Source of the Essay
I found the essay in one of those essay mills where students (needing grades)
and faculty (needing promotion and tenure) can purchase essays or sometimes
download such essays for free.
- Some of these term paper and essay mills guarantee that their essays are
not plagiarized. However the above essay may be plagiarized --- I'm
suspicious that it has been plagiarized, possible from a textbook given the
"Ch 8" quotation.
- The downloadable term papers and essays can be pre-written or customized
where a buyer sends in a topic to the essay mill and pays for an essay to be
written on that topic.
- The essay mill normally has a staff (mostly part time) to write essays,
although I think an essay mill will also buy essays and term papers written
by other students and faculty.
Normally we think of essays purchased by students or faculty to be in general
areas where there are lots of unemployed experts willing to prostitute their
writings. We would not expect to find essays available on very technical topics
like FAS 160. Previously I have scanned essay mills out of curiousity and found
virtually nothing on accounting topics. This is why an
essay on a very technical topic like FAS 160 caught my eye.
I did not purchase the full essay quoted above or download it for free from
the following site:
Term Paper Warehouse: The Research Paper Factory
http://www.termpaperwarehouse.com/essay-on/Profit-Analysis/76664
Apparently term papers and essays are free from the above Term Paper
Warehouse, but there may be a gimmick. I did not register to download this
or any other term paper or essay, because I just do not trust giving out
any privacy information to outfits like this. If you maintain a junk
computer for risky registrations you might give it a try at your own risk
although you could be inviting malware at your email service.
The following is an excerpt from my Website document on plagiarism ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Editors
It's About Time
"Settlement Reached in Essay-Mill Lawsuit." by Paige Chapman,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 25, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/settlement-reached-in-essay-mill-lawsuit/27852?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Where is the line of ethical responsibility of using online services
to improve writing?
June 23, 2006 message from Elliot Kamlet
[ekamlet@STNY.RR.COM]
Is it just me or is there a lack of, at least,
shame.
http://www.thepaperexperts.com/aboutus.shtml
Elliot Kamlet
Binghamton University
June 23, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Elliot,
I suspect that paying to have your writing edited, revised, and
translated is as old as writing itself. Networking technology has simply
made it faster, easier, and in many instances cheaper. What is a
problem is that a student who writes very badly may never be discovered
in college if writing is required only for assignments outside the
classroom. This speaks in favor of essay examinations along the way.
There is certainly nothing illegal about an
editing service, and it would be tough to say outside editing is
unethical except for assignments that require or request that the
author's work must be entirely in his/her own words.
Of course this particular service in Canada may entail both editing
and translating (from Canadian into English) --- just kidding.
If such a service also adds new content, then the ethical issues are
very clear since the author might take credit for the new content where
credit is not due. The author also takes a chance that the new content
might be plagiarized.
I had a student some years ago that submitted a term paper that was
plagiarized entirely from three separate sources (that I found with a
Google search). In dealing with the student and his parents, I
discovered that he was not aware that his AIS paper was plagiarized. He
was a young CEO of one of his father's AIS companies. He (my student)
hired one of his employees to write the paper. The employee actually
plagiarized the work to be submitted in the name of my student.
The question in this case is what is worse --- plagiarizing from
published sources or hiring the writing of the term paper? In either
case, the rule infraction would get the student an F from me and a
report of the incident to the Academic Vice President of the University.
Interestingly, the student approached me about five years later and
asked if the time limit on his F grade had expired. He wanted to submit
a new paper. I told him that F grades do not expire even after
graduation.
Bob Jensen
June 23, 2006 reply from Ruth Bender
[r.bender@CRANFIELD.AC.UK]
And for $62.65 you can buy "Plagiarism and
Academic Integrity"
"Plagiarism is a constant concern in the
academic world particularly in areas that involve a lot of research or
term paper writing, such as English Literature. The Internet seems to be
making plagiarism easier as are companies that specialize in academic
research writing for hire. However, several experts believe that most
plagiarism takes place because students do not fully understand how to
perform proper scholarly research and integrate it into their own
material. In the end, plagiarism seems to stem more from a lack of
knowledge rather than a plot to undermine education."
Pages: 7
Bibliography: Content-Di source(s) listed
Filename: 22017 plagiarism and Academic
Integrity.doc
Price: US$62.65
Ruth Bender
Cranfield School of Management
UK
June 23, 2006 reply from Joseph Brady
[bradyj@LERNER.UDEL.EDU]
Years ago I too thought that dishonesty was
caused by a lack of knowledge. The cure: tell students the general rule
(don't take credit for the work of others) and how that rule applies in
your course (give specific examples of how students could trip up). I
work hard at the cognitive factor, going so far as to give a *quiz* on
our honesty rules, in the first week of classes.
Experience can be a cruel teacher. I now think
that most students are dishonest because it's easy to be dishonest and
easy to get away with dishonesty. The problem is not a cognitive one.
It's an ethical one, having a grounding in what is culturally acceptable
at an institution.
It's not a problem in just English 101.
Plagiarism is a serious issue in any course that involves
computer-generated files. It's easy in any MIS or AIS course to copy
someone else's application program and make some simple modifications to
avoid detection. Students learn this right away. Actually, they have
know this since high school or even earlier.
My primary concern as an educator is: are
students learning? Surely this is obvious: those who are copying, are
not learning. If only the small minority of students were at fault, I
would not worry so much. But I think the problem is worsening rapidly.
It's now possible to reach a tipping point: most of the class copying
most of the time, so that not much is learned by the end of the
semester. I actually had a section that came pretty close to that status
last semester.
Students will not police themselves, at least
not here, so I do not have a solution for the problem. It would be nice
to have a utility (like turnitin.com) that would answer the question:
"Was the contents of this Excel/Access/VB/etc file copied or imported
from some other file?" You can no longer get the answer to that question
reliably using Windows time stamping. One of my summer To-Do's is to
write that program in VB, but I'll have to learn a lot about Windows
file structures to do that, and I'll probably not have time to get to
it.
Joe Brady
University of Delaware
June 25, 2006 reply from Robert Holmes Glendale College
[rcholmes@GLENDALE.CC.CA.US]
It is inconceivable to me that anyone who has
reached the college level would not know that copying a paper from any
source (Internet, friend or ?) is cheating. When I hear the "I didn't
think it was wrong" defense I assume I am talking to a liar as well as a
cheater.
June 25, 2006 reply from Henry Collier
[henrycollier@aapt.net.au]
I am more than a little vexed with this:
It is inconceivable to me that anyone who
has reached the college level would not know that copying a paper
from any source (Internet, friend or ?) is cheating. When I hear the
"I didn't think it was wrong" defense I assume I am talking to a
liar as well as a cheater.
There’s more than one cultural bias illustrated
in the quote. Not everyone, fortunately, is embedded in the narrow and
biased views of the writer.
Henry
June 26, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen
Throughout the world in modern times I think borrowing works without
proper citation is considered unethical. In some parts of the world such
as Germany there was (and possibly still is) an exception made for
students where the work of the student was viewed as the work of the
professor. I'm not certain about this exception in modern times, but
some professors in the past purportedly put their names on entire books
written by students without even acknowledging the students. Presumably
these professors also kept the book royalties with clear consciences. I
think this practice was more common in the physical sciences.
A exception which does still exist in modern times arises when a
noted professor, often a senior researcher from a highly prestigious
university, lends his/her name to a textbook to improve its marketing
potential. I know of one instance in an accounting textbook with four
authors where one of the authors wrote over 90% of the material and the
other authors mostly lent their names and affiliations. I know of other
instances where a senior professor from a huge program did very little
of the writing of the textbook but greatly increased the chances that
his university would provide sales of over 1,000 copies of the book each
year. Such marketing ploys might be viewed as deceptive, although can it
be called plagiarism when the principal author of possibly 100% of the
writing encourages someone else to share in the "authorship credit?"
Something similar happens for journal articles to improve their
chances for publication in a leading journal. There is also the even
more common happening where one author who writes poorly did the
research and wrote a very rough first draft. Then a highly skilled
writer who does little or no research anymore performs a great editing
service and receives full credit as a partner in the research. In this
case the paper's editor may be getting far more credit for the
"research" than is deserving.
See how complicated the question of authorship ethics becomes.
Bob Jensen
June 26, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
>June 26, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen
>Throughout the world in modern times I think
borrowing works without proper citation is considered unethical.
Bob, while this might hold true for academic
work, it certainly does not seem to apply to the journalistic world,
does it? (Think: WV Coal Mine Disaster; Think: Hurricane Katrina at the
New Orleans Stadium; Think: any one of hundreds of other media screwups
in the past few months where so-called "news" media reported a story as
though the reporter were reporting first-hand facts when in reality the
reporter was "copying" from an unreliable (and false) source, -- all
without proper citation.
And in some instances, a few journalists are so
unethical that they even go so far as to try to HIDE their sources and
keep them secret! Talk about lack of proper attribution! Some even claim
a constitutional right to do so! ;-)
And no, the citation of "a reliable source" is
not proper citation; if you think it is, just try getting one of those
past ANY reviewer for any decent journal! I can see it now: a
bibliography containing sixteen entries of "A reliable source", "ibid".
On another note, I have it "from a reliable
source" that in times past, (specifically the 16th century art world),
it was not considered wrong to borrow works from other people without
attribution. (My source here is the art curator at the Rubens House
museum in Antwerp, Belgium.) Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyke, and
most of the other great "masters" of the art world back then ran studios
to train young artists in the guild craft. The master would sketch a
scene, the young artist would paint it, the master might touch up a
little here and there, and ultimately would sign it, giving the student
no recognition or attribution whatsoever. With the master's signature,
the piece would sell handsomely, the master would pay the student a cut,
and keep the rest. This was a widely known, and perfectly acceptable,
practice of the day. There are dozens of Van Dykes, Rembrandts, Rubens,
and other great works which show very little evidence of ever being
touched by the person who signed the painting. Everyone of the day
actually knew it, but it was an acceptable practice as long as the
student was a student of the master. It was the master's name which sold
the painting. Marketing, marketing.
Of course, to be realistic, I tend to agree
with Robert Holmes. Most of the college students I encounter these days
do know perfectly well that what they are doing is wrong in most cases,
but plead ignorance and invoke the "cultural victim" mentality when
caught. And when I do have the occasional student from another culture,
I make an extra effort to clarify what is and is not acceptable. (I
don't know what the culture is in Ghana, for example, but when caught,
my Ghana student admitted knowing she had violated the honor code, in
addition to violating the instructions clearly printed on the
assignment.)
But as Carol pointed out, the chase, the hunt,
the hiding, is all part of the game which some students see as being
part of the "essence" of preparing for the real world: college.
signed,
---
(um, you were expecting a real signature here?)
---
The gadfly from JMU An unnamed source...
June 26, 2006 reply from Bernadine and Peter Raiskums
[berna@GCI.NET]
In the doctoral program I am now pursuing
on-line through Capella, the learners are provided with access to
mydropbox.com and encouraged to submit their draft papers "to help with
citation issues and improper source referencing. After submission,
mydropbox.com will generate a plagiarism report within 24 hours ... for
your personal use." I found the report to be very interesting in that it
picked up something that had been published in a rather obscure journal
which I had written myself last year!
Bernadine Raiskums, CPA, M.Ed. in Anchorage
The home page for mydropbox.com is at
http://www.mydropbox.com/
"High-Profile Plagiarism Prompts Soul-Searching in German Universities,"
by Paul Hockenos, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 25, 2013
---
http://chronicle.com/article/High-Profile-Plagiarism/137515/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
"Yet Another Plagiarism Scandal in Germany," by Ana Dinescu, Inside
Higher Ed, March 8, 2013 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/yet-another-plagiarism-scandal-germany
Jensen Comment
Centuries ago Oxford was a collection of colleges rather than a university.
When I lectured at Humboldt University in Berlin a few years ago, it was
claimed that the idea of a university as opposed to a collection of colleges
was conceived at Humboldt ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University
Prior to the 20th Century the works of students became the works of their
professors and were sometimes published without even giving credit to the
original authors. Of course times have changed, although they perhaps
changed a bit slower in Germany.
It was hard to sleep at night in my hotel because skyscrapers were being
built 24/7 with lots of noise, loud radios, and men yelling loudly in
Russian. Apparently Russian workers were imported to do a lot of the
construction work. I thought it was ironic that the Russians destroyed
Berlin and then were called back to rebuild it.
Market for Admissions Test Questions and Essay "Consulting"
This type of cheating raises all sorts of legal issues yet to be
resolved for students who might've thought what they did was perfectly legal
New Effort to Sell (successful) MBA Application Essays ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/10/02/new-effort-sell-mba-application-essays
More than 1,000 prospective MBA students who
paid $30 to use a now-defunct Web site to get a sneak peak at live questions
from the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) before taking the exam
may have their scores canceled in coming weeks. For many, their B-school
dreams may be effectively over. On June 20, the U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of Virginia granted the test's publisher, the Graduate
Management Admission Council (GMAC), a $2.3 million judgment against the
operator of the site, Scoretop.com. GMAC has seized the site's domain name
and shut down the site, and is analyzing a hard drive containing payment
information. GMAC said any students found to have used the Scoretop site
will have their test scores canceled, the schools that received them will be
notified, and the student will not be permitted to take the test again.
Since most top B-schools require the GMAT, the students will have little
chance of enrolling. "This is illegal," said Judy Phair, GMAC's
vice-president for communications. "We have a hard drive, and we're going to
be analyzing it. If you used the site and paid your $30 to cheat, your
scores will be canceled. They're in big trouble."
Louis Lavelle, "Shutting Down a GMAT Cheat Sheet: A court order against a
Web site that gave away test questions could land some B-school students in
hot water," Business Week, June 23, 2008 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2008/bs20080623_153722.htm
Jensen Comment
A university admissions office that refused to accept applications from the
"cheating" prospective MBA students would probably be sued by one or more
students. GMAC would probably be sued as well. But it's hard to sue a U.S.
District Court.
There are several moral issues here. From above, this is clearly
cheating. But in various parts of society exam questions and answers are
made available for study purposes. For example, preparation manuals for
drivers license tests usually contain all the questions that might be asked
on the written test. It is entirely possible that some MBA applicants fell
for a scam that they believed was entirely legitimate. Now their lives are
being messed up.
I guess this is a test of the old saying that "Ignorance is no defense"
in the eyes of the law. Clearly from any standpoint, they were taking
advantage of other students who did not have the cheat sheets. But the cheat
sheets were apparently available to anybody in the world for a rather modest
fee, albeit an illegal fee. Every buyer did not know it was illegal.
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
"Penn State Cracks Down on Plagiarism," by Allison Damast,
Business Week, February 3, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/feb2011/bs2011022_942724.htm?link_position=link1
"Turnitin Begins Crackdown on Plagiarism in Admissions Essays," by
Louis Lavelle, Business Week, January 20, 2010 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/blogs/mba_admissions/archives/2010/01/turnitin_begins.html?link_position=link5
Continued at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Editors
$100 Million Gift for Dartmouth ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/04/10/100-million-gift-dartmouth
New Huge Commodity Trading History Teaching Resource Reported in the
Chronicle of Higher Education
"Exploring Trading Consequences," by Konrad M. Lawson, Chronicle of
Higher Education, April 8, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/exploring-trading-consequences/56415?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
March, a fantastic new resource for studying the
history of commodity trade was announced:
Trading Consequences.
The project is the product of several years of
collaboration between York University,
Canada, the University
of Edinburgh, UK, the
University of St
Andrews, UK and the
University of Saskatchewan,
Canada.
The resource provides multiple interfaces to a rich
database of mentions of commodities and locations associated with
commodities from the 18th century and up to the mid-20th century. One
interface is a
Commodity Search tool, which allows you, for
example, to search for all documents that refer to
jute and display a world map that clusters
references by region until you zoom in for individually geolocated entries.
You may also search by location to show, for example, all commodities
associated in the documents with a location like
Hong Kong. In this interface, you can refine the
search by collection or by decades. Another powerful way to interact with
the material is through an
Interlinked Visualization (use the Chrome browser)
where, at a glance, you can view the distribution for mention of commodities
across the decades. Another
Location Cloud Visualization
lets you view relative frequency of mentions of a
commodity in various places over time.
There is so much that can be said for a monumental
effort of this kind, but in browsing through the resource, a few thoughts
come to mind:
- This project shows
what is possible with a broadly interdisciplinary and international
collaboration of a team
like this.
- One of the things
that impress me most about this project is the way that they have been
open about their progress. See for example some of their blog entries
(1,
2,
3) that contain a wealth of insight for others
who might want to take on a similar project. They also created a
detailed
white paper that tells you much more about how
the project was carried out. They have also made some of their code
available on a
repository at GitHub. While there is not much
in the way of scripts here, they include
CSV files with their lexicon of commodities,
and a gazetteer of 1710 ports and cities with ports.
- The project is not
just a collaboration among universities and across disciplines but
shows, like so many of these projects, how much we build upon the open
efforts of others. Their blog is on open source WordPress, they use
OpenStreetMap
for maps, the BSD free licensed
Leaflet
javascript library for plotting data on these maps and the
D3 javascript library
for their data visualizations. Their locations
link to the
Geonames geographical database of placenames
and their categories and commodities are tied with
Dbpedia
structured data which is extracted from Wikipedia.
- Just as this
project builds on powerful open tools and resources, it also shows how
much the world of digitized historical materials are in walled gardens
that are sometimes only accessible to institutions that can afford to
pay the subscriptions. As a historian or student digs into the Trading
Consequences site, they will see a single source may contain hundreds of
references that have appeared in the results. The next step will often
then be to go into the source in question and explore. Trading
Consequences conveniently provides links to the relevant page or source
in the various databases. Some sources are open, like this
letter in the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Archives collection or this
entry in an early Canadian periodical. But
many others are not, including entries in the
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers – one of
the most amazing cases of historic public documents being made
accessible through a commercial subscription service (in this case
Proquest).
Now that the project is launched, we can look
forward to learning more about how historians can use the resource, whether
it be as a heuristic tool for discovery or for analysis. One thing I would
love to see at Trading Consequences and all projects like it is the
development of an open–and well documented–API to the database that would
allow outside send queries to the database that returned structured data.
This would allow others to continue to build creative ways to interact with
this rich data source.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This is a great site for teaching both trading history in the 1800s as well as
being an introduction to commodities trading in general. It would be helpful if
the site added sections on how companies accounted for commodities trading in
those days. In modern days this accounting has changed to accounting rules in
IAS 39 (soon to be in IFRS 9) except in the USA where FAS 133 and its amendments
rule the day for accounting for derivative financial instruments and hedging
activities.
For example use of options contracts for speculation and hedging dates back
to Roman times. How did accounting for speculations versus hedging in
commodities trading differ in the 1800s relative to the 21st Century? This
accounting material would be a great addition to the
Trading
Consequences.history learning site.
Bob Jensen's threads on derivatives contracts history and scandals can be
found in the historical timeline at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudCongress.htm#DerivativesFrauds
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
How to Mislead With Statistics
"I'll Bet Robert Shiller $5,000 That He's Wrong About This Chart," by
Mike "Mish" Shedloc, Business Insider, April 10, 2014 ---
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/04/shiller-drinks-kool-aid.html#ixzz2yTm72lT3
. . .
Supposedly the current reading of 42 is all you
need to know to understand a recession isn't in the cards for "years to
come".
Note that in the mid-1940s a recession started with
weekly hours over 45, something Shiller conveniently chopped off in his
chart.
OK let's toss that out as a war ending event.
Is there anything sacrosanct about 42 vs. 41 where
many recessions started? I suggest no. And what about manufacturing
employment vs. hours worked?
Good question. Here's the chart.
. . .
Two Questions
- Is there anything about manufacturing
employment that remotely suggests no recession for years to come?
- Is there anything about manufacturing
employment that indicates hours worked in manufacturing has the
importance it may have had decades ago?
Reality
There is no single chart that is a sure fire
indicator of anything. An inverted yield curve is probably the closest bet,
but given QE and blatant Fed manipulation of interest rates, it's highly
likely the next recession starts with a positive curve.
Even if hours worked has high importance (and it
doesn't) there is absolutely nothing to suggest where manufacturing hours
will be six months from now!
Shiller should know better than to make such
statements.
I propose a $5,000 bet with Robert Shiller right
now, donated to our favorite charity that he is wrong.
"Reflections on 'How to Motivate Millennials' what Defines the Work
Character of the Millennial Generation?" by Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage,
April 9, 2014 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2014/04/reflections-on-how-to-motivate-millennials.html
25 Hottest Urban Legends According to Snopes on April 4, 2014 ---
http://www.snopes.com/info/top25uls.asp
"US Navy 'game-changer': converting seawater into fuel,"
Economic Times, April 7, 2014 ---
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/us-navy-game-changer-converting-seawater-into-fuel/articleshow/33402085.cms
Jensen Comment
This is a leap in the right direction for power from sea water. But it's still a
long way from desalinization of sea water for growing almonds and other crops in
parched California. Solar power may still be the best solution for
desalinization.
Cortana would not be my choice of a name. I prefer Marlin as in
"Socks Up Boss" or maybe Marlina
"Say Hello to Microsoft’s Answer to Siri," by Tom Simonite,
MIT's Technology Review, April 2, 2014 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/526101/say-hello-to-microsofts-answer-to-siri/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140403
. . .
Microsoft currently describes Cortana as “beta,”
saying that it will use data from beta testers to make improvements,
particularly to its speech recognition. The app is built into Windows Phone
8.1, which will roll out to some existing devices “in a few months,” said
Belfiore. Cortana will initially be available only in the U.S., but should
later appear in other countries, with the U.K and China first in line, he
said.
Casinos Know When to Fold 'Em
"Local Casinos Are a Losing Bet," by Christopher Palmeri, Bloomberg
Businessweek, April 3, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-03/casinos-close-as-revenue-falls-in-gambling-saturated-u-dot-s
The Harrah’s casino in Tunica, Miss., features a
spa, three pools, a golf course, and a shooting range. But there’s one thing
the 18-year-old facility, the largest of 10 casinos in the area, sorely
lacks: gamblers. The northern Mississippi casino industry saw gaming revenue
shrink to $738 million last year from $1.2 billion in 2006. So Harrah’s
parent,
Caesars Entertainment (CZR),
will shutter the resort on June 2, putting as many as 1,300 employees out of
work. “There’s just too much supply in that market,” says John Payne,
president of Caesars’s central markets division, which will concentrate on
two other casinos it owns in Tunica. “The Harrah’s has not been profitable
for a while.”
The closing could be a sign of things to come as
the $38 billion U.S. gambling industry bumps up against two unlucky trends,
a proliferation of casinos and still-skittish consumers in the wake of the
financial crisis. Some 39 states have casino gambling of some kind, up from
only two in 1988, and more Las Vegas-style resorts are on the way in New
York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland. “They have saturation
problems,” says William Thompson, a professor at the University of Nevada at
Las Vegas who studies the industry. “We have a wave of new casinos coming.”
In January, New Jersey’s Atlantic Club Casino
Hotel, formerly the Atlantic City Hilton, shut its doors, a victim of
increased competition in the mid-Atlantic region. Gambling revenue in the
Garden State has fallen 44 percent since its peak in 2006. Five of Atlantic
City’s 11 remaining casinos lost money on an operating basis in the nine
months through September, according to the state’s Division of Gaming
Enforcement.
Casino revenue fell in February for the sixth
consecutive month in the four largest Midwest gambling states, Indiana,
Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan. Even in Las Vegas sales are down 12
percent so far this year.
On March 25,
International Game Technology (IGT),
the world’s largest slot machine maker, said it would
reduce its global workforce by 7 percent, or 350 people, citing a decrease
in its North American gambling operations. “It’s been broad-based
jurisdictionally, and the declines have been greater than we had
anticipated,” IGT Chief Executive Officer Patti Hart said during a March 26
investors call. The company, which collects a share of money bet on some of
its leased machines, reported an 8 percent sales decline in that business in
the quarter ended in December.
Last year’s increase in payroll taxes appears to be
crimping the budgets of many gamblers. “Gaming can skew a little more
blue-collar and middle-income, and if you look at the national economic
statistics, that’s a subset that remains challenged,” says Joel Simkins, an
analyst with
Credit Suisse (CS).
“We need a much more robust economic climate for some
of these markets to do better.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Regionally casinos may be a zero sum game. The states that got into casinos very
early did fairly well, but as nearby states approve casinos the hard core
customers thin out for any given casino. Let's face it. Except for a few new
glitzy gambling destinations in Asia, nothing in the USA other than Las Vegas
competes for the tourist spending on top of the casino revenues. The casinos
outside Las Vegas are crappy tourist destinations in comparison. If there's
going to be any serious competition for Las Vegas it would have to come from
California tourist destinations like LA and San Francisco.
At this juncture Las Vegas has to worry more about running out of water than
running out of customers. Casinos may start charging more for the water than for
the booze.
How to Mislead With Statistics
"College Majors That Produce the Highest (and Lowest) LSATs and GPAs,"
by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, April 8, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/04/muller-.html
Jensen Comment
Some ways the above ranking can be misleading are the omitted variables. One
omitted variable is the ranking of the university. For example, many of the top
ranking universities such as nearly all Ivy League universities like Harvard,
the very top liberal arts schools like Swarthmore, and other top universities do
not have business schools. Hence, there is zero chance of nonexistent business
majors in these schools that had the top SAT admission scores to have top LSAT
scores. Many of the business majors taking the LSAT examination came from lower
ranked universities that also have the lower ranked SAT students in their
undergraduate programs.
Another way the above ranking can be misleading is that business majors
deciding to try for law school tend to be the ones who did not get great job
offers. For example, the best accounting majors tend to accept jobs with the
large CPA firms. The ones that did not get any of those job offers think about
law school as a consolation prize. I've seen this happen quite often during my
40 years of teaching accounting. This problem is exacerbated since accounting
majors must now go five years in order to take the CPA examination. They are
less inclined to spend the time and money going to law school after completing
five full-time years majoring in accounting.
Consider why classics majors are probably at the top of the list. Even the
very top classics majors probably had zero job offers. Hence, classics majors
taking the LSAT examination are probably the top classics graduates. Top
science, engineering, nursing, and other professional graduates, including
education majors, probably had good job offers or intend to go on to graduate
school in their chosen discipline. Those at the lower end of their graduating
class may be more inclined to consider law school. This is reflected somewhat in
the gpa data shown alongside the LSAT sccores. Classica majors who took the LSAT
had an average gpa of 3.477. For the business majors who took the LSAT the
average gpa was 3.098. These where not the ream of the crop business students
choosing to take the LSAT.
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
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
Is the Lecture Hall Obsolete?: Thought Leaders Debate the Question ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/is-the-lecture-hall-obsolete.html
For Motivated Students Studies Show Pedagogy Alternatives Don't Differ
Significantly
The No-Significant-Differences Phenomenon ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#AssessmentIssues
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade (including classroom
flipping) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Wow!
Finance Learning Modules at the Khan Academy ---
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9F0B2DF69976D8FE
"Post-Chavez, Venezuela Enters a Downward Spiral,"
Knowledge@wharton, April 4, 2014 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/post-chavez-venezuela-enters-downward-spiral/
Beginning in mid-February, Venezuela has
experienced a stream of social demonstrations that have left about 30 people
dead and hundreds wounded or under arrest, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez
among them. The incidents are being called the largest wave of protests in
Venezuela in the last decade.
Much like the social revolts that have occurred
elsewhere in the world, students were the first in Venezuela to take their
frustrations to the streets. They were later joined by others who were
similarly concerned with the country’s high crime rate, galloping inflation
and chronic shortages of basic goods. According to the country’s Central
Bank, nearly 30% of all products — or their substitutes — cannot be
purchased in Venezuela.
These economic problems are not necessarily new —
such imbalances already existed when Hugo Chavez, who had led the country
since 1999, died of cancer last March. But the challenges have recently
become more acute. “Venezuela is much worse off now than it was a year ago,”
says Jaime Sabal, professor of financial management at ESADE in Barcelona.
“It continues to get worse. Even the poorest sectors that have been
benefiting from numerous subsidies and gifts over all these years are now
beginning to be affected by economic shortages and other problems.”
Such subsidies created positive results with
respect to social projects and social inclusion, “but their success came
with a high cost,” according to Juan Carlos Martinez Lázaro, professor of
economics at the IE Business School in Madrid. Martinez Lázaro notes that
during the Chavez years, the government pursued an economic policy “based on
subsidies in order to create a social ‘clientelism’ [a system that depends
on patronage relationships, in which officials do special favors for their
clients], which has brought the country to real ruin.”
Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, who
assumed power after winning a narrow victory in elections last April, has
inherited some imbalances that have grown “like a snowball,” says Martinez
Lázaro, noting that the situation in Venezuela — with or without Chavez —
“would have deteriorated inexorably.”
Continued in article
What Is the Relationship Between Technology and Democracy?
Condoleezza Rice and Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen discuss communication
technologies, foreign policy, and geopolitics.
Stanford Graduate School of Business
April 2014 ---
Click Here
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/what-is-relationship-between-technology-democracy?utm_source=Stanford+Business+Re%3AThink&utm_campaign=7545c3ff4a-Stanford_Business_Re_Think_Issue_344_2_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-7545c3ff4a-70265733&ct=t%28Stanford_Business_Re_Think_Issue_344_2_2014%29
Jensen Comment
This program focuses heavily upon leakage issues from huge databases collected
for intelligence purposes. Intelligence is needed to get advance warnings on
threats and to defuse threats. At the same time getting this information may
impinge on rights to privacy and to misuse of the data for unintended purposes.
There are no easy answers even among these outstanding experts.
Courts sometimes order colleges to pay damage awards, but it is rare for a
court to force a college to make a hiring, promotion, and/or tenure action of a
particular professor.
"Judge Orders University to Promote Professor Who Won Anti-Bias Lawsuit,"
by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/judge-orders-unc-wilmington-to-promote-professor-who-won-anti-bias-suit/75601?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
2U Distance Education Course Provider ---
http://www.study2u.com/
2U (The Anti-MOOC Provider) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_technology
"3 Universities (Baylor,
Southern Methodist, and Temple Universities)
Will Grant Credit for 2U’s Online Courses," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle
of Higher Education, July 30, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/3-universities-will-grant-credit-for-2us-online-courses/45143?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
That was July 30, 2013. It's unclear what role the new 2U will play in terms of
providing transfer credit accepted by Baylor, SUM, Temple, and other
universities after May 2014.
"2U Ends Semester Online," by Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed,
April 3, 2014 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/03/online-education-provider-2u-disband-semester-online-consortium
The online education provider 2U will
this summer eliminate its online course pool initiative in favor of
developing fully online undergraduate degree programs, ending a high-profile
effort to offer scalable, credit-granting online courses at residential
colleges.
The consortium, known as
Semester Online,
was initially marketed as a platform for top-tier
universities to offer online courses to paying students at participating
universities. During the 2012 media storm surrounding massive open online
courses, it emerged with a distinctive message, promising small course sizes
and live, interactive videoconferencing sessions.
But before the launch of last fall’s
pilot, Duke and Vanderbilt Universities and the University of Rochester had
backed out, and Wake
Forest University
remained on the fence. At the colleges that
dropped out and at Wake Forest, the decisions came after intense faculty
debate; Duke, for example,
rejected joining the
consortium in a 16-14 vote by the Arts & Sciences Council. Although Wake
Forest eventually joined the consortium, which this spring expanded with new
courses and international partners, the universities and 2U reached a mutual
decision to end the initiative.
“Semester Online was always an
experiment,” Chance Patterson, 2U’s senior vice president of communications,
said in an email. “The pilot program experienced significant challenges
related to the complexities of a consortium structure.”
In addition to losing some of its
founding members, Semester Online’s fall pilot also struggled with low
enrollment. Some participating universities were unable to sign up students
until mid-June -- several months after fall registration -- meaning some
courses were left with single-digit enrollments.
Patterson described Semester Online as an
“informative” experience that has “helped 2U develop its instructional model
for the undergraduate population.” And along with Wednesday’s announcement
that it would disband the consortium, 2U also unveiled its first
undergraduate degree program, an RN to BSN program developed in partnership
with Simmons College.
In an email, Claire E. Sterk, provost of
Emory University, described her institution's participation in Semester
Online as a learning experience, and thanked the faculty "for being open to
academic innovation."
"From my perspective, it was a great
experiment led by our dean of arts and sciences and the faculty," Sterk wrote.
"We also learned important lessons about the ways in which universities
teach and are able to compare traditional versus more innovative modes of
teaching."
Ed Macias, provost emeritus at Washington
University in St. Louis, said via email that he was "proud to have been part
of this experiment in online education," and that courses had been "top
quality."
2U, fresh off a successful initial public offering
last week, is better-known for developing fully online master’s degree
programs for institutions such as Georgetown University, the University of
California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina, among others.
Those programs have generally been well-received
among graduate school faculty. Writing about his experiences with
the University of North Carolina's online M.B.A. program, Scott Cohen, a
professor with more than three decades of teaching in graduate-level
business courses,
described the online
experience as "more intimate than 90 percent of the seminars I’ve taught in
or taken."
Jensen Comment
Some universities claim that they do not accept distance education transfer
credit. However, in some instances it's impossible on a transcript to know
whether a student took one or more courses from a highly regarded university
online or onsite. Universities like the University of Wisconsin and Indiana
University have multiple sections of courses where some sections can be taken on
campus and other sections can be taken online. The transcripts may not
differentiate between those sections when students from those universities are
seeking to transfer to other universities.
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 training and education courses and degree
programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Too Big to Indict
OCR Investigates Fla. State Handling of Assault Charge
The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights has
started an investigation into how Florida State University responded to
allegations of a sexual assault by Jameis Winston, a star football player,
USA Today reported. Florida officials announced
last year that no charges would be filed against Winston, but victim's
rights advocates have questioned the way authorities and the university
responded to the case.
Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#EMH
"Why Those Guys Won the Economics Nobels," by Justin Fox, Harvard
Business Review Blog, April 2, 2014 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/why-those-guys-won-the-economics-nobels/
Jensen Comment 1
They won their Nobel Prizes on the assumption of the speed and fairness to which
stock markets react under the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). In the recent
furor raised by Michael Lewis regarding high speed robot traders allegedly
skimming profits it will be interesting to see how Fama, Shiller, and Hansen
react to defend High Speed Trading in theory --- I assume they will come
to the defense of HSP for the sake of the EMH.
The may wait for the FBI and SEC findings, however, before they defend the
HSP as currently implemented and maligned by Machael Lewis.
Jensen Comment 2
When I had almost no money, while in college, I was a very, very small
time call options investor and sometimes went to a brokerage firm to watch the
NYSE trading prices flashing by on an electronic ribbon. In those days those
were the up-to-the-moment trading prices. Now they're misleading phony prices
that are skimmed by higher-speed robots that beat your orders in microseconds to
13 public exchanges armed with your bid or ask price just to steal some of your
money. Thank you Michael Lewis and the clever detectives you write about who
discovered how these high speed robots are ripping off investors --- no thanks
to the obsolete SEC.
In simple terms here's how the high speed robots
work using an analogy form one of the detectives described in 60 Minutes
segment. If you want to buy four online tickets for an event a robot detects
your order for four tickets costing at an unknown cost not to exceed $25
apiece.. Your order is immediately filled for only two tickets at $20 apiece.
The robot buys the adjoining two tickets for $20 apiece and makes them available
for $25 apiece. In the completed transaction you pay $90 for the four tickets.
High speed skimming ripoffs on the stock exchanges don't work exactly like that,
but the robots sneak ahead of your orders in microseconds to skim part or all of
your ultimate purchase or sale of stocks and bonds.
There is some debate as to whether this is
illegal "stealing," but let's say that the future of keeping investors in the
stock market means that the government and the stock exchange managers will
have to put an end to this practice or investors will abandon the market in
droves or go to a new stock exchange that is electronically blocking these robot
ripoffs.
By All Means Watch the CBS 60 Minutes Interview
With Michael Lewis (links shown below)
"Book Review: 'Flash Boys' by Michael Lewis High-frequency traders use
dedicated data cables and specialized algorithms to trade milliseconds ahead of
the rest of the market.," by Philip Delves Broughton, The Wall Street
Journal, March 31, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304432604579473281278352644?mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
Back in the day, if an investor wanted to buy or
sell a stock, he would call a broker, who would find a way to execute the
trade as efficiently as possible by talking to other human beings. The
arrival of computerized exchanges slowly eliminated people from the process.
Instead, bids and offers were matched by servers. The shouting men in
colorful jackets on the exchange floors became irrelevant. In theory, this
meant that the cost of trading fell and that the markets became more
efficient. But the effects of technology are rarely so simple.
In 2002, 85% of all U.S. stock-market trading
happened on the New York Stock Exchange and the rest mostly on the Nasdaq.
NDAQ +0.60% By early 2008, there were 13 different public exchanges, most
just stacks of computer servers in heavily guarded buildings in northern New
Jersey. Now, if you place an order for 1,000 shares of Microsoft, MSFT
+0.32% it pings from exchange to exchange claiming a few shares at each
stop, seeking the best price until the order is completed. But the moment
that it hits the first exchange, the HFTs see it, and they race ahead to the
other exchanges, buy the stock you want, and sell it back to you for
fractionally more than you hoped to pay. All in a matter of milliseconds,
millions of times a day to millions of investors—your grandmother and
hedge-fund titans alike. These tiny but profitable trades, Mr. Lewis writes,
add up to big profits for firms like Getco and Citadel. He cannot put a hard
number on the size of the industry, suggesting only that many billions are
involved.
If this sounds like the old Wall Street scam of
front-running the market, that's because it is. Except, in this case, it is
entirely legal. Indeed, Mr. Lewis suggests, the strategies of high-frequency
traders were the unintended consequence of well-intentioned regulation. Back
in 2005 the SEC, in an effort to ensure greater fairness for investors,
changed a key rule. Once, brokers had to perform the "best execution" for
their clients. This meant taking into account factors such as timing and
likelihood of completing the transaction, as well as price. Now they have to
find the "best price," as determined by regulators' own creaky computers,
scanning the bids and offers available on the various exchanges. But traders
could do the same analysis more quickly using their own networks, and make
trades in the milliseconds between an investor placing an order, the SEC
establishing the best price and the broker executing the trade.
A decade later, the HFTs do such big business that
they have begun to influence the operations of the exchanges that depend on
them. The exchanges take fees from the HFTs for access to the flow of
orders, as do investment banks that run their own private exchanges, called
"dark pools." Exchanges bend their rules to the bidding of the
high-frequency traders: The HFTs wanted an extra decimal place added to
stock prices, for instance, so they could mop up every thousandth of a penny
in price fluctuations; the exchanges obliged. "By the summer of 2013,"
writes Mr. Lewis, "the world's financial markets were designed to maximize
the number of collisions between ordinary investors and high-frequency
traders—at the expense of ordinary investors."
"Flash Boys" is not as larky as "Liar's Poker"
(1989), Mr. Lewis's memoir of working at Salomon Brothers during the lead-up
to the 1987 crash, or as accessible as "The Big Short" (2010), his
jaw-dropping take on the subprime meltdown. It may end up more important to
public debate about Wall Street than either, however, in exposing what one
of his central characters calls the "Pandora's box of ridiculousness" that
financial exchanges have become.
Mr. Lewis wants to argue, though, that the markets
are not just ridiculous, but rigged. The heroes of this book are clear: Mr.
Katsuyama eventually assembles a team of talented misfits to create an HFT-proofed
exchange called IEX, where a price is a price is a price. It's backed by
leading hedge funds and banks (and Jim Clark, the co-founder of Netscape and
the subject of Mr. Lewis's 1999 book, "The New New Thing"). Mr. Lewis gives
the reader extensive insight into how his heroes see the market, but the
alleged villains of the piece—HFTs themselves—are all but silent in their
own defense. "Flash Boys" is a decidedly one-sided book.
Yet there are reasonable arguments to be made that
the frenetic trading by HFTs leads to greater liquidity and more efficient
pricing. Or, God forbid, that they are not nearly so harmful to investors'
returns as Mr. Lewis makes out. Their rise has coincided with a historic
bull market. It is not hard to imagine a different book by Michael Lewis,
one celebrating HFTs as revolutionary outsiders, a cadre of innovative
engineers and computer scientists (many of them immigrants), rising from the
rubble of 2008 and making fools of a plodding financial system. "Flash Boys"
makes no claim to be a balanced account of financial innovation: It is a
polemic, and a very well-written one. Behind its outrage, however, lies
nostalgia for a prelapsarian Wall Street of trust and plain dealing, which
is a total mirage.
Mr. Delves Broughton's latest book is "The Art of the Sale: Learning
From the Masters About the Business of Life."
"Speed Traders Play Defense Against Michael
Lewis’s Flash Boys," by Matthew Philips, Bloomberg Businessweek,
March 31, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-31/speed-traders-play-defense-to-michael-lewiss-flash-boys?campaign_id=DN033114
In Sunday night’s
60 Minutes interview about his new book
on high-frequency trading—Flash Boys—author Michael Lewis got right
to the point. After a brief lead-in reminding us that despite the strongest
bull market in years, American stock ownership is at a record low, reporter
Steve Kroft asked Lewis for the headline: “Stock market’s rigged,” Lewis
said nonchalantly. By whom? “A combination of stock exchanges, big Wall
Street banks, and high-frequency traders.”
Flash Boys was published today. Digital
versions went live at midnight, so presumably thousands of speed traders and
industry players spent the night plowing through it. Although the book was
announced last year, it’s been shrouded in secrecy. Its publisher,
W. W. Norton,
posted some excerpts briefly online before taking
them down.
Despite a lack of concrete details, word started
getting around a few months ago that Lewis had spent a lot of time with some
of the HFT industry’s most vehement critics, such as
Joe Saluzzi
at Themis Trading. The 60 Minutes interview
only confirmed what many people had suspected for months: Flash Boys
is an unequivocal attack on computerized speed trading.
In the interview, Lewis adhered to the usual
assaults: High-frequency traders have an unfair advantage; they manipulate
markets; they get in front of bigger, slower investors and drive up the
prices they pay to buy a stock. They are, in Lewis’s view, the consummate
middlemen extracting unnecessary rents from a class of everyday investors
who have never been at a bigger disadvantage. This has essentially been the
nut of the
HFT debate over the past five years.
Continued article
The Flash Boys book ---
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_7?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=flash%20boys%20michael%20lewis&sprefix=Flash+B%2Cstripbooks%2C236
The Kindle Edition is only $9.18
Jensen Comment 3
The three segments on the March 30, 2014 hour of
CBS Sixty Minutes were exceptional. The most important to me was an interview
with Michael Lewis on how the big banks and other operators physically laid very
high speed cable between stock exchanges to skim the cream off purchase an sales
of individuals, mutual funds, and pension funds. The sad part is that the
trading laws have a loop hole allowing this type of ripoff.
The fascinating features of this show and a new
book by Michael Lewis include how the skimming operation was detected and how a
new stock exchange was formed to block the skimmers.
Try the revised links below. These are
examples of links that will soon vaporize. They can be used in class
under the Fair Use safe harbor but only for a very short time until you
or your library purchases these and other Sixty Minutes videos.
But the transcripts will are available from CBS
and can be used for free on into the future. Click on the upper menu choice
"Episodes" for links to the transcripts.
Note the revised video links. a menu should appear
to the left that can lead to the other videos currently available for free
(temporarily).
The three segments on the March 30, 2014 hour
of CBS Sixty Minutes were exceptional. The most important to me was an
interview with Michael Lewis on how the big banks and other operators
physically laid very high speed cable between stock exchanges to skim the
cream off purchase an sales of individuals, mutual funds, and pension funds.
The sad part is that the trading laws have a loop hole allowing this type of
ripoff.The fascinating features of
this show and a new book by Michael Lewis include how the skimming operation
was detected and how a new stock exchange was formed to block the skimmers.
Free access to the video is very limited, so
take advantage of the following link now:
Lewis explains how the stock market is rigged ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/is-the-us-stock-market-rigged/
Cliff Asness Explains How High-Frequency Trading Helps Us And Why
Everyone Else Is Making A Big Stink About It
http://www.businessinsider.com/cliff-asness-on-high-frequency-trading-2014-4#ixzz2xkXEzgt1
Jensen Comment
What Asness fails to mention is that high-frequency trading will be a
disaster if millions of investors and investment funds leave the HFT
exchanges in favor of other exchanges that ban high frequency trading the
HFT robots will be left making markets for one another without the trillions
of dollars of investors who are weary of being ripped off by HFT exchanges.
Time will tell, but it's great that alternatives will be available to
investors who fear the high speed robotic traders.
Department of Justice Investigating High
Speed Insider Trading
"Holder Says U.S. Is Investigating High-Speed Trading Attorney General
Says Practice Has 'Rightly Received Scrutiny From Regulators," by Andrew
Grossman and Devlin Barret, The Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2014
---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303532704579481232323439224?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303532704579481232323439224.html
The Justice
Department is investigating high-speed trading practices to determine
whether they violate insider-trading laws,
Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers Friday.
Mr. Holder said the
practice has "rightly received scrutiny from regulators."
"The department is
committed to ensuring the integrity of our financial markets," Mr.
Holder said in testimony about the Justice Department's budget before
the House Appropriations Committee. "We are determined to follow this
investigation wherever the facts and the law may lead."
The Federal Bureau of
Investigation said earlier this week that it is probing high-frequency
trading. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission
are also looking into the practice.
Pressed by Rep. Jose
Serrano (D., N.Y.), Mr. Holder acknowledged authorities aren't yet sure
whether some types of high-frequency trading might violate federal law.
"I am really getting up
to speed on this,'' Mr. Holder said, to which Mr. Serrano replied, "we
all are.''
The attorney
general said the concern of federal prosecutors "is that people are
getting an inappropriate advantage, an information advantage...
Milliseconds can matter, so we're looking at this to try to determine if
any federal criminal laws have been broken.''
Jensen Comment 4
The big question remaining is why it is
taking the SEC so long to put an end to skimming by high speed traders? It
may take a very long time given the SEC's lousy track record in facing up to
Wall Street frauds. For example, look Gallagher's false claim about the
Liar's Poker book by Michael Lewis.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-10/high-frequency-trades-are-intense-focus-of-sec-white-says-1-.html
High-Frequency Trades Are ‘Intense Focus’
of SEC, White Says ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-10/high-frequency-trades-are-intense-focus-of-sec-white-says-1-.html
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core Threads
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
Gasparino (Fox News) Shreds Michael
Lewis, Says He's A 'Lefty' And 'Completely And Utterly Disingenuous'
http://www.businessinsider.com/gasparino-on-michael-lewis-2014-4#ixzz2xq53yeFp
Jensen Comment
Yeah right! Watch the naive Charlie Gasparino get shredded in the comments
to this naive article. Read the comments following the article if you can
overlook some of the foul language.
I don't think I want Charlie Gasparino to be
my investment adviser.
Charles Schwab Seems to Agree With Michael
Lewis
SCHWAB: High-Frequency Trading Is A
Growing Cancer That Must Be Addressed ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/schwab-on-high-frequency-trading-2014-4#ixzz2xq82daen
Brokerages Make Millions Selling Orders
To High Frequency Trading Firms
http://www.businessinsider.com/brokerages-make-millions-selling-orders-to-high-frequency-trading-firms-2014-4#ixzz2yIfG9qh5
In his book
'Flash Boys', Michael Lewis attempts to answer
the question — what happens to my trade once I hit 'execute' now that
high frequency trading firms are in the market?'
Here's one answer — your
broker sells you trade to a high frequency trading firm in a bundle with
a bunch of other trades.
At that point they're
just orders. The high frequency trading firm that buys this bundle pays
your broker a lot of money for the privilege of executing your order and
turning it into a trade.
This practice is called
'payment for order flow', and it's not new to the market. Bernie Madoff
used to do it by paying other brokers a penny per share. Then his firm
would use that to trade with a better understanding price. (This part of
his business was totally different than the Ponzi scheme)
Think about it: If you
know demand in the market, and you know when/how other people (i.e. the
orders you just bought) are trading, you can trade smarter and better
for yourself — sometimes by sacrificing the best price for the order you
bought.
In our HFT world,
payment for order flow has a new incarnation that HFT critics have been
railing about for years.
Now it looks like
regulators are going to start looking into the practice. Because of
that, says the
Wall Street Journal, stocks like Charles
Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and E*Trade got killed last week. E*Trade fell
10%, Schwab fell 5%, and TD Ameritrade fell 9.2%.
One look at Charles
Schwab's 2013 annual report and you can see why the bears came out in
full force on this news. In 2012 the brokerage took in $236 million from
"other revenue" sources. One of the sources was payment for order flow.
From the report:
Other revenue – net
decreased by $20 million, or 8%, in 2013 compared to 2012 primarily due
to a non-recurring gain of $70 million relating to a confidential
resolution of a vendor dispute in the second quarter of 2012 and
realized gains of $35 million from the sales of securities available for
sale in 2012, partially offset by an increase in order flow
revenue that Schwab began receiving in November 2012.
Other revenue – net
increased by $96 million, or 60%, in 2012 compared to 2011 primarily due
to a non-recurring gain of $70 million relating to a confidential
resolution of a vendor dispute mentioned above. In November 2012, the
Company began receiving additional order flow rebates from market venues
to which client orders are routed for execution. Order flow
revenue increased by $23 million due to this revenue and the inclusion
of a full year of optionsXpress’ order flow revenue.
Charles Schwab told the
WSJ that payment for order flow is "entirely different from the unfair
access and practices used by high-frequency trading outfits that put
investors at a disadvantage."
It also released a note
calling for the end of HFT saying that "traders are gaming the system,
reaping billions in the process and undermining investor confidence in
the fairness of the markets."
Yet at the same time,
payment for order flow gives HFT firms the ammo they need to do
everything that they do.
Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core Threads
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
"Is High-Frequency Trading Insider
Trading?" by Matthew Philips, Bloomberg Businessweek, April 4,
2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-04/is-high-frequency-trading-insider-trading?campaign_id=DN040414
Watch the Video
Ever since Michael
Lewis went on 60 Minutes Sunday night to accuse high-frequency
traders of rigging the stock market, it has been hard to avoid the
debate over
HFT’s merits and evils. Some of it’s been
useful; most has been a lot of angry yelling. The peak of the frenzy
came on Tuesday afternoon in a heated segment on CNBC with IEX’s Brad
Katsuyama and BATS Chief Executive Officer William O’Brien.
To me, this debate is
just circling the ultimate question: Should high-frequency trading be
considered insider trading?
Classically defined, insider trading means
having access to material, non-public information before it reaches the
rest of the market; it’s like getting a heads-up about a merger before
it’s announced, or maybe a
phone call from a Goldman
Sachs (GS)
board member saying that Warren Buffett is about
to invest $5 billion in the bank. Over the past few years, federal
prosecutors have
collected a
number of big insider-trading convictions of
people who got early word about a piece of highly valuable information
and made a lot of money as a result.
To its most vehement
critics, high-frequency trading is not terribly dissimilar. The most
common accusation is that these traders get better information faster
than the rest of the market. They do this through three primary methods:
First, they put
computer servers next to those of the exchanges, cutting down the time
it takes for an order to travel from their computers to the exchanges’
electronic matching engines. Second, they use faster pathways—fiber-optic
cables, microwave towers, and yes,
even laser beams—to trade more quickly between
far-flung markets such as Chicago and New York.
Last, they pay
exchanges for proprietary data feeds. This is where it gets really
complicated. These proprietary feeds are different than the public,
consolidated data feed maintained by the public exchanges, called the
securities information processor, or the SIP. Though it’s now a piece of
software, the public feed is the modern-day equivalent of the ticker
tape that provided stock price data to brokers, traders, and media
outlets. It’s what feeds the stock quotes crawling along the bottom of
the screen on CNBC
(CMCSA)
Bloomberg TV, or on financial websites; when the
public feed
broke in August,
trading on NASDAQ stopped for 3 hours.
While the purpose of the
public feed is to ensure that everyone gets the same price information
at the same time, the playing field isn’t as level as it would seem
since exchanges sell proprietary feeds. And not just to HFT firms. Lots
of different types of investors buy proprietary market data from
exchanges. By law, prices must be entered into the SIP and the
proprietary feeds at the same time, but once the data leaves the
exchanges, the proprietary systems often process and transmit the
information faster. These feeds arrive sooner and contain more robust
information—including all prices being offered, not just the best ones.
From 2006 to 2012,
Nasdaq’s proprietary market data revenue more than doubled, to
$150 million. The money it earns from the public feed fell 21 percent
over roughly the same period. So while Nasdaq used to earn more money
from its public feed, it now makes more from proprietary ones.
Especially after the August outage, this has stirred a lot of complaints
from market players that the
SIP has been neglected in favor of prop feeds.
For its part, Nasdaq has been
lobbying the committee
that oversees the SIP to beef it up.
Speed traders spend a
lot of money for faster access to better information. This allows them
to react more quickly to news and, in some cases, jump in front of other
people’s orders by figuring out which way the market is going to move.
So is that insider trading?
New York Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman has called HFT “insider trading 2.0″ on a
number of
occasions. His office is looking into the
relationships between traders, brokers and exchanges and asking whether
it all needs to be reformed. The FBI spent the last year looking to
uncover manipulative trading practices among HFT firms; the federal
agency is
now asking speed traders to come forward as
whistleblowers.
U.S. laws dealing with
insider trading were first passed 80 years ago. Some restrict the way
corporate executives and board members can trade in and out of their
company’s shares. Others deal with the fair disclosure of important
information—which, when it comes to high-frequency trading, is what
we’re talking about here. These laws essentially require companies to
release material information, such as earnings, to everyone at the same
time. No playing favorites.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger
on April 3, 2014
High-frequency trading book slows Virtu’s race to market
Executives
at Virtu Financial
Inc. underestimated the firestorm that would surround the release of
“Flash Boys,” Michael Lewis’s new book about high-frequency trading,
report WSJ’s Telis Demos and Bradley Hope.
Even though the firm was mentioned only in a footnote, the entire
industry has been hit by accusations of corruption, which has dragged on
the shares of comparable
companies. Still, Virtu officials are confident the controversy will
pass and plan to move ahead. The earliest roadshow is expected to take
place this month.
The Flash Boys book ---
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_7?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=flash%20boys%20michael%20lewis&sprefix=Flash+B%2Cstripbooks%2C236
The Kindle Edition is only $9.18
A Segment on March 30, 2014 hour of CBS
Sixty Minutes
Free access to the video is very limited, so take advantage of the following
link now:
Tesla’s Elon Musk on solar power & science fiction ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/tesla-and-spacex-elon-musks-industrial-empire/
It is unbelievable how such a rich man will put his entire fortune on the
line for untested innovations that are still in his mind
A Segment on March 30, 2014 hour of CBS
Sixty Minutes
Truth is Indeed Stranger Than Fiction: This blind man's music skills are
beyond belief
Free access to the video is very limited, so take advantage of the following
link now:
Jamming behind the scenes with jazz greats
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-virtuoso-marcus-roberts/
It pays to make contributions to selected
politicians like the controversial Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J
"Medicare Paid A Tiny Group Of Doctors A
Whopping $1.5 Billion," by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Associated
Press, Business Insider, April 9, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/medicare-doctor-payments-database-2014-4
Jensen Comment
Like many government programs, such as Medicare and Pentagon spending
programs, the trillions in funds are giant pinatas for fraudsters of various
types, including those who overbill for services or bill for nonexistent
services.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Best Business Schools 2014 according to
US News ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings#5?campaign_id=DN040414
Click on the Blue Tabs for "Graduate (182 schools),"
"International (non-USA)," and "Undergraduate
(186 schools)"
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
Bob Jensen's threads on rankings
controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
This is an "almost" humorous account how the best of intentions can be turned
into crimes by scammers who are almost always more clever than professionals
trying to prevent scams.
"How Scammers Turn Google Maps Into Fantasy Land," by Dune Lawrence,
Bloomberg Businessweek, March 28, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-28/how-scammers-turn-google-maps-into-fantasy-land
Even if your highest paying job offer is from Stanford University, you can
live for much, much less on a vastly superior acreage in outside Boulder or in
the countryside of most anywhere else other than Hawaii and NYC
12 Incredibly Modest — But Insanely Expensive — Homes For Sale In Silicon
Valley ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/modest-but-expensive-homes-in-silicon-valley-2014-4?op=1#ixzz2xkNx1GKd
Sunnyvale and San Jose are long commutes to Stanford University. Add several
million, maybe tens of million dollars, to get closer to Palo Alto or nearby
Woodside. Watch the slide show and then settle into a Colorado acreage.
Actually Stanford has some more "reasonably priced" campus homes that are
restricted to Stanford's employees. But "reasonably priced" relative to Woodside
prices is an oxymoron.
Even if your highest paying job offer is from Stanford University, you can
live for much, much less on a vastly superior acreage in outside Boulder or in
the countryside of most anywhere else other than Hawaii and NYC
12 Incredibly Modest — But Insanely Expensive — Homes For Sale In Silicon
Valley ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/modest-but-expensive-homes-in-silicon-valley-2014-4?op=1#ixzz2xkNx1GKd
State Pension Funding Falling Further and Further Behind
"Pew survey: State funding gap grew in 2012," by Hazel Bradford, Pensions and
Investments, April 1, 2014 ---
Click Here
http://www.pionline.com/article/20140401/ONLINE/140409973?AllowView=VDl3UXk1TzlDdldCblIzQURleUhaRUt0ajBnVUErOWFHZz09&utm_campaign=smartbrief&utm_source=linkbypass&utm_medium=affiliate#
State pension plans continued to experience a
significant gap between funding and liabilities in fiscal 2012, according to
the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Using the most comprehensive data for all public
plans, Pew researchers found that state-run retirement systems had a $914
billion shortfall between pension benefits promised and actual pension
funding, which represents a 14% increase from 2010. The shortfall for local
governments was more than $1 trillion in fiscal 2012.
Keith Brainard, research director of the National
Association of State Retirement Administrators, in an interview dismissed
the report as “old news. Between the strong investment returns of the last
five years and the multiple reforms that have been made in every state,
pension funding levels are improving.” Referring to the title of Pew's state
funding reports of recent years, which have referenced a funding gap, he
said, “I look forward to a new title — 'The Narrowing Gap' — because that's
where we're headed.”
David Draine, a Pew senior researcher, said the
funding gap is expected again in 2013 data, particularly as 2009 investment
losses remain on balance sheets, but the gap could start to shrink this year
or next. The key, said Mr. Draine, is whether states make and keep their
commitments to improve funding levels.
“With the stronger market returns, we can
anticipate that many pension plans will show greater asset growth,” said
Elizabeth Kellar, president and CEO of the Center for State and Local
Government Excellence. “The question remains – how much of the (actuarially
required contribution) will most pension plans have made in 2013?”
According to Pew, only 14 states consistently made
at least 95% of their ARC from 2010 through 2012.
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of pension funding and accounting,
especially in the public sector ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Pensions
I always thought the pressure to ban video making in class would come from
the faculty. I never thought about other students contending that filming them
speaking in class is an invasion of their privacy.
"Campus Stung by Controversial Video Moves to Ban Recordings in Class,"
by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 26, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Campus-Stung-by-Controversial/145595/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin
at Whitewater has responded to a controversy over a surreptitiously obtained
classroom video of a guest lecturer lambasting
Republicans by moving to bar students from recording and disseminating such
footage.
Although the campus’s chancellor, Richard J. Telfer,
has not yet signed off on the videotaping policy, statements issued by him
and a spokeswoman on Thursday suggested he expected to approve it as soon as
it lands on his desk.
"Faculty on this campus have the right to establish
the policies for their individual classrooms," Mr. Telfer said in a written
statement.
"Also," Mr. Telfer added, "I believe it is
important that our faculty and students are able to have the free exchange
of ideas without concern that what is said will be communicated beyond the
limits of the classroom or campus."
Kyle R. Brooks, the freshman who recorded the video
that triggered the controversy, expressed frustration that the institution
had responded to his producing the video rather than what it depicts: a
guest lecturer denouncing many Republicans as racist, classist, sexist,
homophobic, and dishonest.
"People should have been upset that he came into
the classroom and said that," Mr. Brooks said, "but instead they were upset
that I recorded it and made it public."
The question of how to deal with students’
videotaping of classroom interactions has become more pressing for colleges
as technological advances have made both the production and dissemination of
such recordings easier. The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater is one of
several higher-education institutions that have come under fire in recent
years after covertly obtained recordings of controversial statements by
faculty members have been posted online.
Of 72 four-year colleges whose faculty leaders
recently responded to a Chronicle question on the subject, 20 said
they had policies intended to
prevent the unauthorized recording and
redistribution of classroom speech. In December officials at the University
of Colorado at Boulder cited fears of such videotaping to justify their
decision to
discipline a sociology professor over a classroom
skit on prostitution.
‘White Rage’
The incident that sparked the controversy at
Whitewater occurred in late February, in an introductory sociology course
called "Individuals and Society." The instructor, Monique Liston, a doctoral
student in urban education and women’s studies at the University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee, had arranged for students to hear a guest lecture by
Eyon Biddle Sr., political director and director of organizing for the
Milwaukee-based Service Employees International Union Local 150.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
With technology these days, I'm not optimistic about policies banning videos
taken scrumptiously by students on the various devices available to them. For
example, it's fairly obvious when students wear Google Glass eyewear or keep
their mobile phones aimed at a speaker. But I have a pair of eyeglasses that
look like common eyeglasses and also take video of anything that I am looking
at. These eyeglasses also record audio, but the miniture microphone leaves
something to be desired. Often I only record the video without audio.
You can watch a video I took some years ago with my eyeglass camera ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/VideoCoolSunglasses/SnowSculptures.3gp
Bob Jensen's threads on video are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Video
"The Critics Absolutely Love Everything About Office For The iPad Except
The Price," by Lisa Eadicicco, Business Insider, March 27, 2014
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-office-for-ipad-review-roundup-2014-3
Also at:
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-office-for-ipad-review-roundup-2014-3#ixzz2xCJ6kbg8
"Academics Spy Weaknesses in Bitcoin’s Foundations: Game theory suggests
the rules governing Bitcoin may need to be updated if the currency is to endure,"
by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, March 24, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525676/academics-spy-weaknesses-in-bitcoins-foundations/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140324
OneNote is Now Free: Is Microsoft’s Note-Taking App Worth Using? ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/185334/onenote-is-now-free-is-microsofts-note-taking-app-worth-using/
. . .
OneNote vs. Evernote
OneNote is a more robust, full-featured application
than Evernote. It incorporates features not found in Evernote and allows you
to embed many types of multimedia files inline in a note, while such files
would have to be attached as file attachments to a note in Evernote. If you
plan on writing notes by hand — such as with a stylus on a Windows tablet or
iPad — OneNote is definitely the leader in dealing with handwritten input.
OneNote’s editing interface is similar to Word’s.
Evernote’s editing interface is simpler and more
focused on editing text notes. These text notes may also contain images and
formatting, but they can’t contain all the types of content a note could in
OneNote. Depending on the types of notes you’re creating, you may prefer
Evernote’s more minimal text-notes interface to OneNote’s more full-featured
interface.
OneNote also syncs your notes and changes
instantly, while the desktop versions of Evernote will only sync them every
15 minutes. Evernote’s synchronization features have been criticized for
being unreliable lately.
If you’re interested in OneNote, you should give it
a try and see how you like it. You may prefer it to Evernote. OneNote can’t
import Evernote notes directly, but there are tools like Evernote2OneNote
that will import notes for you.
If you want to switch back in the future, OneNote
includes the ability to export your notes and Evernote can directly import
OneNote files.
Learn To Code in 12 Weeks With Harvard’s Free Introduction to Computer
Science Course ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/harvards-free-introduction-to-computer-science-course.html
Jensen Comment
This is 12 weeks of blood, sweat, and tears for introductory students who are
not yet coders. You must be self-motivated to really, really work.
Watch Six TED-Style Lectures (not entire courses) from Top Harvard Profs
Presented at Harvard Thinks Big 5 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/harvard-thinks-big-5.html
Learn Right From Wrong with Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for
Complete Beginners ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/oxfords-free-course-a-romp-through-ethics-for-complete-beginners.html
Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/download-100-free-philosophy-courses.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
MOOC FAQ ---
http://www.openculture.com/mooc_faq
"Harvard and MIT Release Visualization Tools for Trove of MOOC Data,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20, 2014 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/harvard-and-mit-release-visualization-tools-for-trove-of-mooc-data/50631?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on how to sign up for free MOOCs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Jensen Comment
I don't advise MOOC courses for "students" who do not have some prerequisites in
the subject matter. For example, the first MOOC course ever invented was filmed
live in an artificial intelligence course for computer science majors at
Stanford University. These students were not first year students who had never
taken computer science courses.
Interestingly students in that course were given the option of attending live
classes or MOOC classes. After several weeks the majority of students opted for
the MOOC classes. Of course at Stanford the students were graded on assignments
and examinations since they were getting course credit.
Off-campus MOOC students were not given an option to receive course credit.
They just learned on their own. There are now options in some MOOC courses to
take competency-based examinations for credit, although these usually do not
involve the course instructors and are not free like the courses themselves.
MOOC courses themselves by definition are free, unlike most other distance
education courses.
200 Free Documentaries: A Super Rich List of Finely-Crafted Documentaries
on the Web ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/144a6f44e0b82d12
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 24, 2014
Mortgage Tax Breaks Trickle Up, New Study Shows
A new study has revealed that Federal tax benefits, rather than
boost first-time home ownership enable wealthier people to borrow more money
for bigger houses instead,
the WSJ reports.
The
research by the R Street Institute estimates that tax preferences,
particularly the mortgage-interest deduction, have helped drive up the size
of houses by as much as 18% in the nation’s most affluent areas while not
broadly encouraging people to buy homes. The new findings add to a growing
body of economic research that suggests Americans don’t benefit broadly
from the tax preferences, which the study estimates cost the government
$175 billion annually in forgone revenue. The study also found that suburban
residents were twice as likely to benefit from the tax code as those in
urban areas.
Jensen Comment
There are other considerations. Firstly, elimination of the mortgage tax break
in the U.S. will once again cripple the real estate market that has been much
slower recovering on a broad basis than the stock market. Secondly, mortgage
contracts are a beneficial forced savings relative to monthly rent payments. A
portion of each mortgage payment generally goes toward increased percentage of
ownership in the property. Thirdly, owners take pride in both maintaining their
property and investing in improvements. Renters do not make sacrifices to
maintain and improve rental properties.
Some of the conclusions of the above study are obvious. Of course suburban
people are more likely to own homes. They are the people that moved out of the
cities in search of better schools and bigger houses for their growing families.
The conclusion that "Americans don't benefit greatly from the tax
preferences" is absurd in my judgment. America has the best housing in the
world, and tax preferences played a huge role in maintaining and improving
housing quality. Firstly, as mentioned above, home owners are much more likely
to make sacrifices to maintain and improve their land and houses. Secondly, new
housing developments are financed by people borrowing to own their new homes.
It's possible that government will build and rent all the new suburbs of each
village, town, and city in America but onely if taxes to pay for such
developments soar through the roof. Welcome to socialism on a grand scale.
One need only compare the quality and cost of housing in Canada versus the
USA. In Canada, smaller houses on postage-stamp-sized lots cost a lot more than
big houses on one or two acres in the USA>Rents are also much higher in Canada
after adjusting for currency differentials. I think housing would be a whole lot
cheaper and better in Canada if there were more tax preferences for home
ownership.
"Open Syllabus Project: Linda’s Adventures in OSPLand: Pt. 2,"
by Linda Bawcom, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2014 ---
http://opensyllabusproject.org/
. . .
I got a little tired of doing HCCS, so I thought
I’d browse the next largest college, which is Texas A & M (HCCS has around
70,000-90,000 students depending on where you look, and Texas A & M about
60,000). After a little snooping around, I realized that they don’t have a
web site like HCCS that is not password protected for the syllabi by
department or discipline. The good news is, I found the web site where all
the syllabi are listed on pages where Outwit recognized “Next” (so maybe
it’s not dyslexic but classist and will only do this if it feels the
university is up to its standards). The bad news is that they are listed not
by department or course, but by CRN (class number). The good news is that we
now have 14,500 syllabi spanning three years. The bad news is that we won’t
know what course each syllabus is for until we open it…or could we?
Continued in article
Read Part 1
here ---
http://opensyllabusproject.org/lindas-adventures-in-ospland-part-1/
Jensen Comment
There are huge issues regarding copyrights. Some universities contend syllabi
are properties of each university. Many instructors are likely to object and not
spend a lot of time on authorship of their syllabi under such circumstances.
However, this is counterbalanced by the possibility that the quality of their
open-shared syllabi might be a key factor in their professional reputations.
There may be fine lines between what are syllabi and what are course notes
shared with students.
Some professors like me share syllabi and course materials on their Websites.
Others post to password-controlled servers like Moodle and Blackboard. I always
thought that once you've shared something on any server with your students that
you might as well consider it public information. Even lectures these days are
secretly put on video and shared in one way or another. It's not a good era to
be paranoid about protecting what you teach.
Some accounting professors share their syllabi on the AAA Commons, although
the Commons is not designed to serve up high volumes of course materials as
well. A common way of sharing course material these days is to use YouTube where
the free server space is virtually unlimited.
Herbie Hancock Present the Prestigious Norton Lectures at Harvard
University: Watch Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/herbie-hancock-present-the-prestigious-norton-lectures-at-harvard-university.html
There may be no more distinguished lecture series
in the arts than
Harvard’s Norton lectures,
named for celebrated professor, president, and editor of the
Harvard Classics, Charles Eliot Norton. Since
1925, the Norton Professorship in Poetry—taken broadly to mean “poetic
expression in language, music, or fine arts”—has gone to one respected
artist per year, who then delivers a series of six talks during their
tenure. We’ve previously featured Norton lectures from
1967-68 by Jorge Luis Borges and
1972-73 by Leonard Bernstein. Today we bring you
the first three lectures from this year’s
Norton Professor of Poetry, Herbie Hancock.
Hancock delivers his fifth lecture today (perhaps even as you read this) and
his sixth and final on Monday, March 31. The glories of Youtube mean we
don’t have to wait around for transcript publication or DVDs, though perhaps
they’re on the way as well.
The choice of Herbie Hancock as this year’s Norton
Professor of Poetry seems an overdue affirmation of one of the country’s
greatest artistic innovators of its most unique of cultural forms. The first
jazz composer and musician—and the first African American—to hold the
professorship, Hancock brings an eclectic perspective to the post. His
topic: “The Ethics of Jazz.” Given his emergence on the world stage as part
of Miles Davis’ 1964-68 Second Great Quartet, his first lecture (top) is
aptly titled “The Wisdom of Miles Davis.” Given his swerve into jazz fusion,
synth-jazz and
electro in the 70s
and 80s, following Davis’ Bitches Brew revolution, his second (below)
is called “Breaking the Rules.”
"Coursera Hires Former Yale President as Its Chief Executive," by
Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 24, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Coursera-Hires-Former-Yale/145531/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Coursera has won powerful allies in higher
education by persuading them that it plans to behave more like a university
than an investor-backed Silicon Valley company.
Now Coursera has taken another step to bolster its
academic bona fides. The company announced on Monday that it had hired
Richard C. Levin, who led Yale University as president for 20 years, to
serve as its chief executive.
Mr. Levin, an economist who stepped down last year,
spent the later years of his presidency cultivating relationships overseas,
notably with China and its universities. Mr. Levin also led a controversial
effort to create a liberal-arts college in Singapore, Yale-NUS College.
Continued in article
Online Courses Look for a Business Model,
Wall Street Journal, January 2013. MOOC providers, Udacity,
Coursera and edX, seek to generate revenue while they continue to
experiment with open platforms.
Jensen Comment
By definition, MOOCs are free although some companies and universities may
charge for certificates or transcript credits. Transcript credits entail
standards for academic performance such as term papers and competency-based
examinations. Usually the MOOC instructors do not get involved in assigning
grades except for their own students on campus. MOOCs are often videos filmed in
class that are made available without charge to anybody in the world.
There are various platforms for delivering
MOOCs, including Coursera and edX used by Harvard and MIT. There are also other
competitors.
What is surprising is the number of MOOCs
available from prestigious universities.
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
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
Bob Jensen's threads on how to sign up for free MOOCs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Added Jensen Comment
I don't advise MOOC courses for "students" who do not have some prerequisites in
the subject matter. For example, the first MOOC course ever invented was filmed
live in an artificial intelligence course for computer science majors at
Stanford University. These students were not first year students who had never
taken computer science courses.
Interestingly students in that course were given the option of attending live
classes or MOOC classes. After several weeks the majority of students opted for
the MOOC classes. Of course at Stanford the students were graded on assignments
and examinations since they were getting course credit.
Of-campus MOOC students were not given an option to receive course credit.
They just learned on their own. There are now options in some MOOC courses to
take competency-based examinations for credit, although these usually do not
involve the course instructors and are not free like the courses themselves.
MOOC courses themselves by definition are free, unlike most other distance
education courses.
MOOC FAQ ---
http://www.openculture.com/mooc_faq
"Harvard and MIT Release Visualization Tools for Trove of MOOC Data,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20, 2014 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/harvard-and-mit-release-visualization-tools-for-trove-of-mooc-data/50631?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and other sharings of prestigious
universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free
to Download and Use ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/new-york-public-library-puts-20000-hi-res-maps-online.html
Stop the World, I Want Off
"Reading Brigid Schulte’s Overwhelmed," by Anastasia Salter,
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/reading-brigid-schultes-overwhelmed/56291?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
I recently returned from “Spring Break,” a week
that sounded relaxing when I was an undergraduate and has seemed to diminish
every year since. Appropriately, Brigid Schulte’s book Overwhelmed:
Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time came
out just in time to land on my spring break reading list.
In
her review, Jennifer Howard observed that
[f]or many of us, life unspools as a
never-ending to-do list…Weekends, which ought to be oases of leisure,
have their own hectic rhythms: errands, chores, sports events, grocery
shopping, exercise. Dispatch one task and six more take its place, a
regenerating zombie army of obligations.
This cycle is very familiar to most of us,
particularly as our engagement with technology makes us particularly
vulnerable to what
Ian Bogost has termed hyperemployment. Here at
ProfHacker we’ve written regularly about the pursuit
of work-life balance, but no one’s yet
found the silver bullet.
Brigid Schulte’s
book particularly
demands that we contemplate the consequences of this feeling of constant
activity:
I am always doing more than one thing at a time
and feel I never do any one particularly well. I am always behind and
always late, with one more thing and one more thing and one more thing
to do before rushing out the door.
Sound familiar? Brigid Schulte’s book takes on the
very idea of leisure time, taking note of the claim that thanks to
technology and other time-saving progress we are supposed to have more
leisure time than ever–and yet none of us can seem to find it. Brigid
Schulte has several answers to why, but
the claim I found most compelling was her analysis
that “somewhere around the end of the 20th century, busyness became
not just a way of life but a badge of honor.” I see this all the
time, and even fall into the trap myself: many of us post on Facebook and
Twitter about how busy we are, how stressed we are, how we can’t possibly do
one more thing. When I asked other academics how spring break had gone, most
of them laughed at the very notion that a week away from teaching offered
any “break” at all. As academics, we are particularly proud of how busy we
are, perhaps because the alternative seems worse–being irrelevant.
As I wrote about last month, I’ve been working on a
game a week as an
exercise in
making things and
moving forward with new ideas. The game I made as a contemplation on spring
break and the “busy-ness” phenomenon,
Balance,
turns the work-life ideal into a goal of a simple game of catching falling
tasks on a never-ending to-do list. When I shared the game on Twitter, a few
academics told me that just playing the game caused some feelings of
anxiety. By contrast, I found making it to be almost therapeutic: a reminder
that busyness is, in part, a choice. Reading Brigid Schulte’s book
definitely helps put that search for balance into context, and offers
insight into both the institutional and personal factors at work.
Jensen Comment
Don't confuse leisure time with discretionary time. Discretionary time means not
having to multitask while doing something that is or should be on your A list of
priorities. For example, discretionary time is what happens when your toddler is
taking a nap and you don' yet have to pick up the older child at school. You can
then surf the AECM and read the posts that you think might most affect your
work, your career, and/or life.
Leisure time is what happens when you say to Hell with your to-do list, put
up your feet, and take a nap or have sex or both. You don't make any progress
toward time priorities during leisure time other than perhaps getting some
exercise to improve your health. However, when you don't enjoy the exercise it
is probably no longer a leisure time activity.
Too much leisure time grows boring.
Discretionary time is not boring as long as it is either very intense (like
writing passages of a paper or book) or varied due to choices you make to
relieve boredom during discretionary time. I write many passages for the AECM
and for my Websites. Doing so relieves the boredom of leisure.
You can also do varied things to relieve boredom during leisure time, but
usually leisure time moments (other than for sex) are less intense and by
definition more boring. I can't imagine anything more boring than sailing or
fishing alone or sitting on a beach for more than an hour. Sitting on a beach
becomes boring for me after ten minutes even if there are a lot a bikinis in
view. Am I getting old or what?
In 1968, Stanley Kubrick Makes Some Wild Predictions for the Year 2001
---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/in-1968-stanley-kubrick-makes-some-wild-predictions-for-the-year-2001.html
Jensen Comment
Certainly his timing was off, although this is not uncommon (e.g.,
1984 by
George Orwell).
The question is where Kubrick and Orwell are off by more than mere timing.
For example, it's already evident that we're prolonging life, but freezing dying
people and thawing them out in later years when their current diseases are
curable seems pretty far-fetched. Reproducing them from their DNA now seems
closer to a possibility, but thawing out their brains complete with memories and
former self-awareness seems very far-fetched.
Another question is where futurists failed to anticipate monumental changes
that have already transpired.
For example. only Dick Tracy's author seems to have anticipated
wireless technology and the mobile (wrist watch) phone.
States With the Highest (and Lowest) Taxes ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/04/02/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-taxes/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=APR022014A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Jensen Comment
States vary in these rankings over time. For example, Vermont and Maine used to
be the most taxing states. Maine dropped out of the Top 10 and Vermont dropped
to Number 9. Also the tax bite varies a lot with income. Maryland has a
proportionately large number of very wealthy people. Hence, Maryland makes the
Top 10 ranking of the most taxing states. But this is not so for Maryland's
share of the 50% of the USA taxpayers who pay no income taxes.
Except when people retire, state taxation is probably not the main driver of
where to live. Other things like economic opportunity and life style preferences
are more important before retirement.
Also the differences in the highest taxing states are not all that great in
total, but they can be highly different in terms of certain individual taxes.
For if you commute or otherwise drive a lot, Pennsylvania is worse than nearly
every other state even though is barely makes the Top 10 list in total state
taxation.
It's easy to get around some taxes. For example, since New Hampshire has no
sales tax, New Hampshire is where people from Vermont shop. Hotel chains build
close to Wal-Mart stores in New Hampshire. New Hampshire Wal-Mart parking lots
have to accommodate the big pickup trucks pulling huge trailers with green
Vermont license plates. An added attraction is the relatively low liquor and
cigarette pricing in New Hampshire. New Yorkers, however, live further away from
New Hampshire and are screwed in many ways by the NY tax collectors. and liquor
stores.
From the Scout Report on March 28, 2014
Icebergs ---
https://icebergs.com/site
If you're looking for a great place to save
creative projects and inspiring materials, Icebergs is a terrific resource.
After signing up for a free account, visitors can get started by adding web
content to their online archive. From there, information and materials can
be shared with other designated team members as well. Key items can even be
visually highlighted, which is quite handy. This version is compatible with
all operating systems.
Shared Count ---
http://lab.neerajkumar.name/sharedcount/
If you're interested in checking out the social
media shares for various websites, the Shared Count tool is a nice find.
Visitors just need to enter the URL in question and then can find out how
often the site has been shared on a range of social media platforms. This
version is compatible with all operating systems.
Big dig for celebrated video game is called off in New Mexico
E.T.'s Curse: The strange saga of the world's worst video game
http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2014/03/e_t_the_video_game_legend_is_the_atari_game_really_buried_in_a_new_mexico.html
RIP ET: The Legend of the Long-Buried Video Game
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/25/294385139/rip-et-the-legend-of-the-long-buried-video-game
Documentary About Mysterious Atari Video Game Burial of 1983 in the Works
http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/documentary-about-mysterious-atari-video-game-burial-of-1983-in-the-works/
The Console Living Room
https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom
Virtual Atari
http://www.virtualatari.org/
Videogame History Museum
http://www.vghmuseum.org/
From the Scout Report on April 4, 2014
Everhour ---
http://everhour.com/
If you're looking for a simple time management and
reporting tool, why not give Everhour a look over? First-time visitors would
do well to start with the Features area to get acquainted with all of the
bells and whistles. It's very user friendly and visitors can customize the
appearance of the program to reflect the order and tempo of their workday.
This version is compatible with all operating systems.
Mobento ---
http://www.mobento.com/
Mobento is a free online video platform that cuts
through the dross that can be ubiquitous across the web. On the site,
visitors can search through hundreds of videos dealing with technology,
energy independence, anthropology, and much more. The videos are culled from
high quality sources, such as NASA, Stanford University, and TED. This
helpful application is compatible with all operating systems
House music 'godfather' Frankie Knuckles dead at 59
Frankie Knuckles, 'Godfather of House Music', Dead at 59
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/frankie-knuckles-godfather-of-house-music-dead-at-59-20140401
Frankie Knuckles dead
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/turnitup/chi-frankie-knuckles-obit-20140331,0,565674.column
Remembering Frankie Knuckles: House-Builder
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/04/remembering-frankie-knuckles
Frankie Knuckles Dies: Highlights from the house music pioneer's brilliant
remixing career
http://metro.co.uk/2014/04/01/frankie-knuckles-dies-highlights-from-the-house-music-pioneers-brilliant-remixing-career-4684823/
Stars pay tribute to Frankie Knuckles
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/dj-frankie-knuckles-dead-stars-6902395
House Music from Chicago
http://www.5chicago.com/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Richard Feynman on Religion, Science, the Search for Truth & Our Willingness
to Live with Doubt ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/richard-feynman-on-religion-science.html
NASA Published The 'Clearest Panorama' Of The Milky Way Ever Created ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz2wsbfH3Gw
Watch Episode #5 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Unlocking the Mysteries of
Light (US Viewers) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/watch-episode-5-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos.html
Watch Episode #4 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: The Big Bang, Black Holes &
More (US Viewers) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/watch-episode-4-of-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos.html
Carl Sagan’s Original Cosmos Series on YouTube: The 1980 Show That Inspired a
Generation of Scientists ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/carl-sagans-original-cosmos-series-on-youtube.html
Web Adventures: Explore Science ---
http://webadventures.rice.edu/
The Science of Smell: How the Most Direct of Our Senses Works ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/04/10/how-smell-works-diane-ackerman-senses/
NSDL Science Literacy Maps ---
http://strandmaps.nsdl.org/
Earth Exploration Toolbook: Writing to Support the Theory of Plate Tectonics
---
http://serc.carleton.edu/eet/writing_tectonics/index.html
National Science Foundation: Chemistry & Materials Classroom Resources ---
http://www.nsf.gov/news/classroom/chemistry.jsp
Public Health Image Library ---
http://phil.cdc.gov/phil
Wisconsin Fast Plants ---
http://www.fastplants.org/activities/
Interpersonal Botany ---
http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/interpersonal/index.php
Earth Science Literacy Maps ---
http://www.dlese.org/library/literacy_maps/
Bridge Ocean Education Teacher Resource Center ---
http://web.vims.edu/bridge/?svr=www
Live Cams: Discovery Channel (wildlife Webcam) ---
http://www.discovery.com/live-cams
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
Studs Terkel Interviews Bob Dylan, Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou & More in
New Audio Trove ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/studs-terkel-interviews.html
University of California Transportation Center ---
http://www.uctc.net/
Hispanic Reading Room: Online Collections ---
http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/onlinecol.html
HUD Archives ---
http://archives.hud.gov/
The HUDdle (urban development and housing) ---
http://blog.hud.gov/
Living Wage Calculator ---
http://livingwage.mit.edu/
Asia-Pacific Digital Library ---
http://apdl.kcc.hawaii.edu/
A History of Social Welfare Digital Collection ---
http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/s/social/
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
Beautiful Equations: Documentary Explores the Beauty of Einstein & Newton’s
Great Equations ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/beautiful-equations-documentary-explores-the-beauty-of-einstein-newtons-great-equations.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Human, All Too Human: 3-Part Documentary Profiles Nietzsche, Heidegger &
Sartre ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/human-all-too-human.html
Debates in the Digital Humanities ---
http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/
Journal of Digital Humanities ---
http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/
CLIC Digital Collections (oral histories) ---
http://content.clic.edu/cdm/macalestercollege
The Elliston Project: Poetry Readings and Lectures at the University of
Cincinnati ---
http://digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/elliston/
The Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection (music history in theater and the
media) ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/kayefine/kayefine-home.html
Download 35,000 Works of Art from the National Gallery, Including
Masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rembrandt & Many More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/download-35000-works-of-art-from-the-national-gallery.html
From Stanford University
Humanities Research Network (including music and composition)---
https://www.humanitiesnetwork.org/
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center: Land Ownership Maps
http://maps.bpl.org/highlights/land-ownership-maps
Lawrence University: Images & Digital Collections ---
http://www.lawrence.edu/library/find/images_digital_collections
The Tibet Mirror (1925-1963 magazine) ---
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6981643_000/index.html
New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to
Download and Use ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/new-york-public-library-puts-20000-hi-res-maps-online.html
Watch a “Lost Interview” With Michel Foucault: Missing for 30 Years But Now
Recovered ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/lost-interview-with-michel-foucault.html
Monnet's Brandy and Europe's Fate (early efforts to unite Europe) ---
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2014/monnets-brandy-and-europes-fate
A History of Social Welfare Digital Collection ---
http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/s/social/
A Young Sigmund Freud Researches & Gets Addicted to Cocaine, the New “Miracle
Drug,” in 1894---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/igmund-freud-researched-got-addicted-to-cocaine.html
Hispanic Reading Room: Online Collections ---
http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/onlinecol.html
Dime Novel and Popular Literature
http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Collection/vudl:24093
Tennie Toussaint Photographs (Barn Raisings in Vermont in the Early 1900s)
---
http://cdi.uvm.edu/collections/getCollection.xql?pid=tennietoussaint&title=Tennie
Toussaint Photographs
Vermont Historical Society ---
http://www.vermonthistory.org/
Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City, 1860-1942 ---
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=cities&col_id=243
Clara Barton National Historic Site (nursing) ---
http://www.nps.gov/features/clba/feat0001/flash.html
Clara Barton's House: Home of the American Red Cross ---
http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/27barton/27barton.htm
Spanish Civil War Memory Project ---
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/scwmemory/
Houston Area Digital Archives ---
http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/maps
Historic Houston Photographs ---
http://digital.lib.uh.edu/cdm4/about_collection.php?CISOROOT=/p15195coll2
Public Health Image Library ---
http://phil.cdc.gov/phil
From the Scout Report on March 28, 2014
Big dig for celebrated video game is called off in New Mexico
E.T.'s Curse: The strange saga of the world's worst video game
http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2014/03/e_t_the_video_game_legend_is_the_atari_game_really_buried_in_a_new_mexico.html
RIP ET: The Legend of the Long-Buried Video Game
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/25/294385139/rip-et-the-legend-of-the-long-buried-video-game
Documentary About Mysterious Atari Video Game Burial of 1983 in the Works
http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/documentary-about-mysterious-atari-video-game-burial-of-1983-in-the-works/
The Console Living Room
https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom
Virtual Atari
http://www.virtualatari.org/
Videogame History Museum
http://www.vghmuseum.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
The Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection (music history in theater and the
media) ---
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/kayefine/kayefine-home.html
From the Scout Report on April 4, 2014
House music 'godfather' Frankie Knuckles dead at 59
Frankie Knuckles, 'Godfather of House Music', Dead at 59
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/frankie-knuckles-godfather-of-house-music-dead-at-59-20140401
Frankie Knuckles dead
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/turnitup/chi-frankie-knuckles-obit-20140331,0,565674.column
Remembering Frankie Knuckles: House-Builder
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/04/remembering-frankie-knuckles
Frankie Knuckles Dies: Highlights from the house music pioneer's brilliant
remixing career
http://metro.co.uk/2014/04/01/frankie-knuckles-dies-highlights-from-the-house-music-pioneers-brilliant-remixing-career-4684823/
Stars pay tribute to Frankie Knuckles
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/dj-frankie-knuckles-dead-stars-6902395
House Music from Chicago
http://www.5chicago.com/
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
Lists of the Best Sentences — Opening, Closing, and Otherwise — in
English-Language Novels ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/lists-of-the-best-sentences-opening-closing-and-otherwise-in-english-language-novels.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
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
March 27, 2014
March 31, 2014
April 1, 2014
oo Much Running Tied to Shorter Life Span
Fruits and Veggies May Reduce Death Risk
For California’s Uninsured, a Rush to the Finish
Shaky Web Site Frustrates Insurance Helpers
Monday Is Deadline to Sign Up for Obamacare
Poor Heart Health Linked to Alzheimer's Risk
Some Colon Cancer Patients May Benefit From Aspirin
Alli Weight Loss Drug Recalled Over Tampering
New Hair-Loss Treatments in the Pipeline
Stem Cells May Rejuvenate Failing Hearts
April 2, 2014
April 3, 2014
April 5, 2014
April 7, 2014
April 8, 2014
April 9, 2014
April 10, 2014
April 12, 2014
April 14, 2014
Scientists Fully Regenerate Organ In Living Animal For The First Time
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-scientists-regenerate-immune-organ-in-mice-2014-08#ixzz2yIbdo1vd
Jensen Comment
I'm not certain that "for the first time" is accurate. For some time researchers
have had some success with regenerative stem cell bladders ---
https://www.inspire.com/groups/bladder-cancer-advocacy-network/discussion/regenerative-bladder-trial/
There are also successes in regenerating eyesight, although the regenerated eyes
are often not fully as functional as natural eyes.
Jim Martin in MAAW's Blog reports that his neighbor with ALS (Lou Gehrig's
Disease) is using Eyegaze to surf the internet with her eyes ---
http://www.eyegaze.com/
Bob Jensen's threads for disabled and handicapped learners ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
A Young Sigmund Freud Researches & Gets Addicted to Cocaine, the New “Miracle
Drug,” in 1894---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/04/igmund-freud-researched-got-addicted-to-cocaine.html
Depression ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28mood%29
The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
Hardcover
by Jonathan Rottenberg
http://www.amazon.com/The-Depths-Evolutionary-Depression-Epidemic/dp/0465022219/?tag=bpnewsletter-20
Nearly every depressed person is assured by
doctors, well-meaning friends and family, the media, and ubiquitous
advertisements that the underlying problem is a chemical imbalance. Such a
simple defect should be fixable, yet despite all of the resources that have
been devoted to finding a pharmacological solution, depression remains
stubbornly widespread. Why are we losing this fight?
"The Unaddressed Business of Filling Our
Souls: Mood Science and the Evolutionary Origins of Depression," by Maria
Popova, Brain Pickings, March 24, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/24/the-depths-rottenberg-depression/
Does Breastfeeding Reduce Childhood Disability? ---
http://freakonomics.com/2014/03/07/does-breastfeeding-reduce-childhood-disability/
Innovative Skin Patch That Relieves Tremors ---
"A Bandage That Senses Tremors, Delivers Drugs, and Keeps a Record," by David
Talbot, MIT's Technology Review, April 1, 2014 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525976/a-bandage-that-senses-tremors-delivers-drugs-and-keeps-a-record/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140402
Offering a preview of what future wearable medical
devices may look like, researchers in Korea have built a skin patch that’s
thinner than a sheet of paper and can detect subtle tremors, release drugs
stored inside nanoparticles on-demand, and record all of this activity for
review later.
While still under development, the technology might
someday be useful to sufferers of Parkinson’s disease or other movement
disorders. “The system represents a new direction in personalized health
care that will eventually enable advanced diagnostics and therapy on devices
that can be worn like a child’s temporary tattoo,” says Dae-Hyeong Kim,
assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Seoul National
University, who led the work (see “Innovators
Under 35: Dae-Hyeong Kim”).
The work was done with researchers at MC10, a
startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is working on commercializing the
underlying “stretchable electronics.” MC10, which has investments from big
medical device companies including Medtronic, is working with partners in
the pharmaceutical and medical device industries to launch products that
would do part of what the Korean group demonstrated: detect and store
signals like tremors, respiration, heart rate, and temperature so that
doctors can review data about neuromuscular and cardiovascular disorders.
Continued in article
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on
April 1, 2014
The
diet-soda business in in freefall
A growing distaste for artificially sweetened beverages accelerated
a nearly decade-long decline in U.S. carbonated-drink sales last year, the
WSJ’s Mike Esterl reports.
And there’s no sign that 2014 will be any better. The
drop-off is a mounting problem for industry giants Coca-Cola Co.,
PepsiCo Inc. and Dr
Pepper Snapple Group Inc., which have long depended on zero-calorie
sodas to make up the difference as Americans became increasingly concerned
about the health effects of sugared drinks.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on April 1, 2014
Sales soar for pricey hepatitis drug Solvaldi
It costs $1,000 a day, but insurers are proving challenged to curb usage of
a hepatitis C pill from
Gilead Sciences Inc., the
WSJ’s Jonathan D. Rockoff reports.
Newly-approved Sovaldi could ring up $5 billion in
U.S. sales this year if current patterns hold, and some analysts say the
figure could reach $9 billion. Those sales threaten the bottom lines of many
insurers, who could see their earnings per share dip by double-digit
percentages this year.
Solvaldi in Canada ---
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodpharma/sbd-smd/drug-med/sbd_smd_2014_sovaldi_165043-eng.php
Jensen Comment
This is an illustration of how the USA medical system fails some very ill
patients with regard to very expensive life-laving medications. Even if
insurance companies take huge losses when paying toward such medications, the
high deductible portions of these very pricey medications probably are out of
sight for most USA patients.
Fortunately we have no need for really expensive medications
that are priced like Solvaldi.
Erika has some expensive medications that are heavily covered by Medicare D and
our supplemental plans until the "donut hole" is reached. Then our share of the
costs jumps to somewhere around 50% or more. Unless patients are on Medicaid I
don't see how many of them can afford such prices. Our very expensive Medicare
supplemental plans pay something toward medications when we are in the "donut
hole," but coverage is less than when we are outside the "donut hole."
We have not tried it yet, but some of our friends up here in the
White Mountains make occasional runs to the Canadian border for prescribed
medications. From our cottage it only takes about an hour to drive to Canada.
There are Canadian doctors on the border (some are jointly licensed to practice
in the USA and Canada). A Canadian doctor will launder your USA prescription
into a Canada prescription. The savings are considerable for expensive
medications that are not currently covered by Medicare due to the "donut hole"
or due to not paying for Medicare D supplemental coverage.
However, I've no idea if very expensive drugs like Solvaldi can
be acquired in this manner from Canada.
There are also ways of getting medications from Canada online,
but I've no idea how USA prescriptions are laundered online for this purpose.
Everybody I know up here in the mountains drives to the Canadian border if they
want to buy medications in Canada.
I'm told you can also do such things across the Mexican border,
but I would be less trustful of medication suppliers in Mexico. People who are
very familiar with Mexico probably know where to find trustworthy suppliers.
From
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/doughnut-hole.asp
Definition of 'Medicare Doughnut Hole'
A range of total prescription drug spending in the Medicare Part D
program where all of the costs must be covered out-of-pocket. As a
result of the Medicare doughnut hole, Medicare Part D participants are
forced to choose between paying higher insurance premiums, or
potentially paying thousands of dollars out-of-pocket to bridge the
coverage gap. Many lower-income participants in Medicare are unable to
afford either option.
Investopedia explains 'Medicare Doughnut Hole'
While supplemental plans exist which offer some amount coverage through
the doughnut hole range, they are significantly more expensive that the
standard plans.
For 2009, the coverage gap was between the initial coverage amounts up
to $2,700 of total drug spending and the catastrophic coverage level
which provides coverage when total drug spending reaches over $6,154 per
year. Therefore, if total drug spending was between $2,700 and $6,154
the amount would have to paid out of pocket.
Also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D_coverage_gap
Question 1
Would you want to be revived by CPR or put on a life support ventilator?
Question 1
Are you ignorant or do you know almost as much as your physician about such
things?
Message from Jagdish Gangolly
This is the most profoundly informative podcast I
have ever heard, morbid as the topic might be.
http://www.upworthy.com/the-way-doctors-think-about-death-is-pretty-different-from-the-way-their-patients-do?c=ufb1
An idea; program to inform advance directive.
Regards,
Jagdish
Jagdish S. Gangolly Department of Informatics
College of Computing & Information State University of New York at Albany
1400 Washington Ave Albany, NY 12222 Phone: 518-956-8251, Fax: 518-956-8247
A Bit of Humor
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
What happens when you open an outhouse door? ---
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GGW6Rm437tE
Bob Hope Entertaining the Troops ---
http://biggeekdad.com/2011/02/bob-hope-christmas/
Forwarded by Paula
Murphy
says to Paddy, "What ya talkin' into an envelope for?"
Says Paddy,
"I'm sending a voicemail, ya thick eejit !"
Forwarded by Dr. Wolff
What is the truest definition of Globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana's death.
Question: How come?
Answer :
An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend
crashes in a French tunnel, riding in a
German car
with a Dutch engine,
driven by a Belgian
who was drunk
on Scottish whisky,
(check the bottle before you change the spelling),
followed closely by
Italian Paparazzi,
on Japanese motorcycles,
treated by an American doctor, using
Brazilian medicines.
This is sent to you by
a New Zealander
who received it from
a Canadian,
using
American Bill Gates' technology,
and you're probably reading this on your computer,
that uses Taiwanese chips, and
a
Korean monitor,
assembled by
Bangladeshi workers
in a Singapore plant,
transported by Indian
truck drivers,
hijacked by Indonesians,
unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen,
and trucked to you by Mexican illegals....
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
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu