Tidbits on June 17, 2014
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 1
of My Favorite Lilac Photographs
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Lilacs/Set01/LilacsSet01.htm
Tidbits on June 17,, 2014
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Academe Around the World ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Remembering/146845/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
Animal Farm: Watch the Animated Adaptation of Orwell’s Novel Funded by the CIA
(1954) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/animal-farm-animated-funded-by-the-cia-1954.html
Miracles of the Natural World ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=FiZqn6fV-4Y
In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 3D Printers
and Trained Monkey Servants ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/in-1964-arthur-c-clarke-predicts-the-internet-3d-printers-and-trained-monkey-servants.html
Dick Cavett’s Worst Show: Starring John Cassavetes, Peter Falk
& Ben Gazzara (1970) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/dick-cavetts-worst-show.html
Oldsters Flash Mob ---
http://www.youtube.com/embed/FIMd5KFG1vQ?rel=0
Unique and Beautiful Horses ---
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Y5XJbSqwriM?rel=0
Monty Python Links ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/michael-palins-tour-of-the-best-loved-monty-python-sketch-locations.html
A Master List of 1,000 Free Courses From Top Universities:
30,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/list-of-1000-free-courses-from-top-universities.html
There are 150 free business courses ---
http://www.openculture.com/business_free_courses
Principles of Managerial Accounting - Free iTunes Audio -
Anthony Catanach & Noah Barskey, Villanova
---
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/principles-managerial-accounting/id388954205?mt=10
Accounting and Its Use in Business Decisions - Free – Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Accounting-and-Its-Use-in-Business-Decisions
Accounting in 60 Minutes: A Brief Introduction - Free - Udemy ---
https://www.udemy.com/accounting-in-60-minutes-a-brief-introduction/?dtcode=th48xvn5
Fundamentals of Accounting – Free - Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Introduction-to-Accounting-1
Introduction to Accounting - Free – US Small Business Administration ---
http://www.sba.gov/sba-learning-center/training/introduction-accounting
Introduction to Cash Accounting - Free – Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Introduction-to-Cash-Accounting
Managerial Accounting - Free – Saylor.org ---
http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus105/
Great Illusions ---
http://www.flixxy.com/darcy-oakes-jaw-dropping-dove-illusions-britains-got-talent-2014.htm
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Ballet Dancers Do Their Hardest Moves in Slow
Motion ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/ballet-dancers-do-their-hardest-moves-in-slow-motion.html
Lost in the Fifties ---
Lost in the Fifties- Another Time, Another Place - YouTube
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
J.S. Bach’s Comic Opera, “The Coffee Cantata,”
Sings the Praises of the Great Stimulating Drink (1735) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/j-s-bachs-comic-opera-the-coffee-cantat.html
Chris Christie's Dance Moves Will Hypnotize And Amaze You ---
Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz34c4dLoJO
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
Colossal (Art History) ---
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/
Gauguin: Metamorphoses (art history) ---
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/gauguin/
Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise (art history) ---
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/gauguin/
The Brummer Gallery Records (Art History) ---
http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16028coll9
Iconic Italian Graphic Artist Bruno Munari's Rare
Vintage "Interactive" Picture-Books ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/12/bruno-munari-nella-nebbia-nella-notte/
19th Century Caricatures of Charles Darwin, Mark
Twain, H.M. Stanley & Other Famous Victorians (1873) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/19th-century-caricatures-of-charles-darwin-twain.html
14 Places To Visit In 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/where-to-travel-in-2014-2014-6
19 More Stunning Images Found On Google Street View ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz33xcMuvoQ
The 20 Most Beautiful iPhone Photos Of The Year 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com#ixzz34QJZalP7
Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget (Common Man Art History) ---
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2014/fasanel
Botticelli’s 92 Illustrations of Dante’s Divine
Comedy ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/botticellis-92-illustrations-of-dantes-divine-comedy.html
Expeditions at the Field Museum: Amazonian Birds
---
http://expeditions.fieldmuseum.org/amazonian-birds-0
Kress Foundation (European Art History) ---
http://www.kressfoundation.org/
Links from The Economist
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
David Brooks’ List of “Really Good Books” ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14686382bfc93495
Read 9 Books By Noam Chomsky Free Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/read-9-books-by-noam-chomsky-free-online.html
"Thoreau on the Greatest Gift of Growing Old," by Maria Popova,
Brain Pickings, May 26, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/05/26/thoreau-on-growing-old/
John Cheever Reads “The Swimmer,” His Famous Short Story, in
Its Entirety (1977) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/john-cheever-reads-the-swimmer.html
Botticelli’s 92 Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/botticellis-92-illustrations-of-dantes-divine-comedy.html
Famous Writers’ Report Cards: Ernest Hemingway, William
Faulkner, Norman Mailer, E.E. Cummings & Anne Sexton ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/famous-writers-report-cards.html
Iconic Italian Graphic Artist Bruno Munari's Rare Vintage
"Interactive" Picture-Books ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/12/bruno-munari-nella-nebbia-nella-notte/
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 June 17, 2014
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2014/TidbitsQuotations061714.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/
GAO: Fiscal Outlook & The Debt ---
http://www.gao.gov/fiscal_outlook/overview
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
3-D Printing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_printing
Do you really know what it is? I don't know much about it except that it's a
really, really big deal for the future.
In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 3D Printers and Trained
Monkey Servants ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/in-1964-arthur-c-clarke-predicts-the-internet-3d-printers-and-trained-monkey-servants.html
This Math Question From A Hong Kong Elementary School Test Has Adults
Stumped (20 second time limit) ---
Ready --- Set --- Go!
http://www.businessinsider.com/math-question-from-hong-kong-elementary-school-test-2014-6
Scary!
"The Dark Side Of Facebook, Where People Lie, Steal, And Make Millions,"
by Alyson Shontell, Business Insider, June 14, 2014
http://www.businessinsider.com/jason-fyk-dark-facebook-cybercrime-2014-6#ixzz34iVslHUj
Scary!
"Chinese Teens Have Found Remarkable High-Tech Ways To Cheat On Tests,"
by Kayla Ruble, Business Insider, June 14, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/high-tech-ways-to-cheat-2014-6
China’s students have apparently developed skills for
building cheating devices to use during an SAT-like exam that look like they
have been pulled straight from a James Bond movie.
Ahead of China’s
massive college entrance exam — the Gaokao — that took
place on Saturday and Sunday, local media outlets released
photos of cheating devices confiscated by police
around the country in recent weeks.
The photos show intricate cheating equipment, a
majority of which were created
by students in the southwestern city of Chengdu
before taking a different test, the National Professional and Technological
Personnel Qualification Examination.
Around 40 students, all originally from Shanghai,
were reportedly caught with the devices, which were disguised to look like
everyday objects.
Some of the uncovered equipment included miniature
cameras installed into both a pen and a set of glasses, as well as wireless
earphones resembling small earplugs. In one instance, a grey tank top was
wired with a plug capable of connecting to a mobile phone that could be used
to send out information. There was also a camera installed in the shirt.
“Cheating happens in every country, but it’s
extremely rampant in China," Yong Zhao, the presidential chair at the
University of Oregon's College of Education, told VICE News. "This isn’t the
first time and it won’t be the last.”
Cheating has been an enduring issue in China, where
the emphasis placed on standardized tests can create high-pressure
environments.
“For over a thousand years China has been using
tests,” Zhao said. “Standardized tests tend to be the only way for upward
social mobility, passing the test has been a way to change people’s lives.”
Ahead of this year’s exam, which was taken by
nearly 9.4 million students across the country, Beijing was preparing to
send police out to monitor and handle cheating incidents.
In fact, students practically expect to be able to
cheat on exams.
During protests last summer against a crackdown on
Gaokao cheating, students chanted, "We want fairness. There is no fairness
if you do not let us cheat."
The Gaokao is China’s SAT or A-level equivalent,
with many students' chances at matriculating into college reliant on their
exam results.
One of this year's essay questions from a Shanghai
version of the test translated into English reads: "You can choose your own
road and method to make it across the desert, which means you are free; you
have no choice but finding a way to make it across the desert, which makes
you not free.Choose your own angle and title to write an article that is not
less than 800 words."
Bob Jensen's threads on new and old ways of cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
"Brazil’s income disparities are great, but so is its progress,"
The Economist, June 12, 2014 ---
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21604202-brazils-income-disparities-are-great-so-its-progress-welcome-italordan
Jensen Comment
Brazil is one of the four BRIC nations whose economic growth will eventually
outstrip entitlement-doomed USA and Europe combined ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
A BRIC nation at the moment is a nation that has vast
resources and virtually no entitlement obligations that drag down economic
growth ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC
In
economics, BRIC (typically rendered as
"the BRICs" or "the BRIC countries") is an
acronym that refers to
the
fast-growing developing economies of
Brazil,
Russia,
India, and
China. The acronym was first coined and
prominently used by
Goldman Sachs in 2001. According to a paper
published in 2005,
Mexico and
South Korea are the only other countries
comparable to the BRICs, but their economies were excluded initially because
they were considered already more developed. Goldman Sachs argued that, since
they are developing rapidly, by 2050 the combined economies of the BRICs could
eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world.
The four countries, combined, currently account for more than a quarter of the
world's land area and more than 40% of the
world's population.
Brazil, Russia, India and China,
(the BRICs) sometimes lumped together
as BRIC to represent fast-growing developing economies, are selling
off their U.S. Treasury Bond holdings. Russia announced earlier this
month it will sell U.S. Treasury Bonds, while China and Brazil have
announced plans to cut the amount of U.S. Treasury Bonds in their
foreign currency reserves and buy bonds issued by the International
Monetary Fund instead. The BRICs are also soliciting public support
for a "super currency" capable of replacing what they see as the
ailing U.S. dollar. The four countries account for 22 percent of the
global economy, and their defection could deal a severe blow to the
greenback. If the BRICs sell their U.S. Treasury Bond holdings, the
price will drop and yields rise, and that could prompt the central
banks of other countries to start selling their holdings to avoid
losses too. A sell-off on a grand scale could trigger a collapse in
the value of the dollar, ending the appeal of both dollars and bonds
as safe-haven assets. The moves are a challenge to the power of the
dollar in international financial markets. Goldman Sachs economist
Alberto Ramos in an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday said
the decision by the BRICs to buy IMF bonds should not be seen simply
as a desire to diversify their foreign currency portfolios but as a
show of muscle.
"BRICs Launch Assault on Dollar's Global Status," The Chosun IIbo,
June 14, 2009 ---
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/06/12/2009061200855.html
Their report,
"Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050," predicted that within 40
years, the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China - the BRICs
- would be larger than the US, Germany, Japan, Britain, France and
Italy combined. China would overtake the US as the world's largest
economy and India would be third, outpacing all other industrialised
nations.
"Out of the shadows," Sydney Morning Herald, February 5, 2005
---
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2005/02/04/1107476799248.html
The first economist, an early Nobel Prize Winning
economist, to raise the alarm of entitlements in my head was Milton
Friedman. He has written extensively about the lurking dangers of
entitlements. I highly recommend his fantastic "Free to Choose"
series of PBS videos where his "Welfare of Entitlements" warning
becomes his principle concern for the future of the Untied States 25
years ago ---
http://www.ideachannel.com/FreeToChoose.htm |
"How We Grieve: Meghan O'Rourke on the
Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss," by Maria Popova,
Brain Pickings, June 9, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/09/meghan-o-rourke-the-long-goodbye/
Summary information about the millions of students who take (but often do not
complete) free non-credit MOOCs from prestigious universities
Surprise (maybe): Only a third of the students are from North America
"8 Things You Should Know About MOOCs," by Jonah Newman and Soo Oh,
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/8-Things-You-Should-Know-About/146901/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
1. The
overwhelming majority of MOOC students are male
2. MOOCs
attract students who already have college degrees
3. The median
age of MOOC participants is 24
4. One-third of
MOOC participants are from North America
5. Nearly half
of registrants never engage with any of the content
6. Europeans
view the most course content
7. Students
with a doctorate viewed more course material
8. Serial
students are the most engaged
What we still don't know
Granted, these data are still a relatively small
sample from a limited number of MOOCs. As the number and variety of MOOCs
has grown exponentially since these initial courses were offered in 2012-13
— EdX alone has offered more than 200 courses from more than 30 partner
institutions — there are certainly more data that can shed light on other
interesting questions. What are the motivations and goals of registrants?
What kinds of content engage students the most? Do students cherry-pick
lessons throughout the course, or tend to drop out as the class progresses?
These are the questions future MOOC data releases
can help us answer, so we can learn even more about how such courses are
being used and by whom.
Jensen Comment
Because of the advanced and specialized content of most MOOCs, it's not
surprising that MOOCs attract experts who already have doctorates. Many of them
are most likely professors who are looking for content from prestigious
universities that that they can add to their own teaching and research.
A median age of 24 does not tell us anything about the distribution of the
students except that the middle age is 24. Half are older and half are younger.
Without assessment we cannot know how much of this content is really learned.
Many students may sign up for ideas about ideas about what to study later on in
life --- a little like my wife who has more planned projects than years left in
her life.
Different MOOCs serve different purposes. For example, most MOOCs are
probably taken by specialists who want to see how prestigious professors in
their specialties deal with those specialties. For example, how does an Harvard
expert on Dylan Thomas
or James
Joyce deal with the writings of Thomas or Joyce? Many MOOC students who sign
up for the free MBA core courses from Penn's prestigious and expensive Wharton
School do so to prepare for their own MBA core courses to be taken elsewhere.
Of course most people probably still sign up for MOOCs because they are
curious about course content in prestigious universities. Most MOOC courses are
filmed during live courses on prestigious university campuses.
Sometimes on-campus students are allowed to take the MOOCs rather than attend
class, as in the case of the first MOOC course that originated in an artificial
intelligence course at Stanford University. Students did not have to attend
class, but they did have to do all the course assignments and take the course
examinations. What they found is that more than have the students preferred to
view the MOOCs rather than attend class. One reason might be the ability to
pause and rerun portions of video lectures until every segment is better
learned.
Students in interactive case courses will, of course, be required to attend
live courses on campus, because what is learned in class is largely derived from
what students contribute to discussions in class. Two sections of a Harvard
Business School case course may differ like night versus day. MOOC courses tend
to be more lecture-based than case-based. Students who sign up are usually more
interested to learn what a professor knows rather than what the students in
class know. Some of the best case-method teachers never reveal what they know
about course content --- at least not directly.
Bob Jensen's threads about MOOC choices and how to sign up for them ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"After Announcing Plans To Destroy Microsoft Windows, Meg Whitman Pulls A
Gutsy Move," by Julie Bort, Business Insider, June 11, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/hp-announces-plans-to-destroy-windows-2014-6
HP CEO Meg Whitman showed more than a little chutzpah
on Thursday during her company's annual customer conference.
Moments after HP announced its grand new plans to
compete with the Microsoft Windows operating system, Whitman was thanking
Microsoft for being a major sponsor of the conference and inviting the
company's new CEO, Satya Nadella, on stage.
Nadella joined Whitman and Intel's new CEO Brian
Krzanich for a fireside chat-style interview conducted by New York Times
columnist and author, Tom Friedman.
But just before Nadella joined via video
conferencing, during Whitman's keynote speech, CTO Martin Fink, head of HP
Labs, showed off what HP hopes will be a game-changing new data center
computer. It's
internally calling that computer "The Machine."
HP is creating a lot of new technology to build The
Machine, especially a new form of memory known as "memristors"
which won't lose data if the power turns off (also known as "non-volatile
memory").
The Machine's claim to fame is that it can process
loads of information instantly while using hardly any power. HP wants this
computer to replace the servers being used in today's data centers. But it
also hopes the tech will become the basis for the next generation of PCs.
And The Machine will not use Windows.
In fact Fink announced on Thursday that the company
is working on a brand new free and open-source operating system and is
inviting universities to help research and build it.
Jensen Comment
But wonders never cease. Now there's a mysterious sea animal that eats white
sharks.
California Dreamin'
With 80% of the world's office workers trained on Windows, MS Office and
software requiring Windows, business firms and government agencies are not about
to spend a trillion dollars to drop Windows and retrain their computer users for
other operating systems. Most USA government agencies like the IRS are still
running on ancient Windows XP. Change does not come easy in government or
business.
If anybody destroys Windows it will be Microsoft --- which since Version 7
may well be on its way to destroying Windows.
Interestingly, HP still offers new computers with Windows 7 installed rather
than later versions of Windows. This shows you what HP customers think of later
versions of Windows.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on June 14, 2014
Intel Thursday cited
stronger-than-expected demand for business PCs, increasing revenue guidance
for the year
”The change in outlook is driven mostly by strong
demand for business PCs,” Intel said in a news release. For the second
quarter, the company expects revenue between $13.4 billion and $14 billion,
compared with its previous guidance of $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion. The Journal’s
Josh Beckerman notes that companies
that make computers or computer parts have benefited from businesses needing
to update aging PCs because of the end of Microsoft’s support for Windows XP
operating system.
Also note how popular technology is becoming in the onsite K-12 classrooms
"Report: 83 Percent of High Schools Offer Online Courses," by Joshua
Bolkan, T.H.E. Journal, June 6, 2014 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/06/11/report-83-percent-of-high-schools-offer-online-courses.aspx
Only 17 percent of high schools do
not currently offer any online classes and more than 40 percent are
offering online courses in English language arts, history, math or
science, according to the latest report from
Project Tomorrow's
Speak Up report.
Based on online survey responses from more than
400,000 teachers, administrators, students and community members, the
latest report, "The
New Digital Learning Playbook: Advancing College and Career Skill
Development in K-12 Schools," examines
attitudes about technology's role in preparing K-12 students for higher
education and careers.
The reasons principals who
participated in the survey cited for offering online classes include
offering remediation, at a rate of 66 percent, Keeping students engaged,
at 63 percent and to provide credit recovery options, at 61 percent.
"Teachers who teach online classes,
in particular, see a strong correlation between the use of
technology and students' college and career ready skill
development," according to information released by Project Tomorrow.
"More than half of these teachers say technology use helps students
understand how to apply academic concepts to real world problems (58
percent), take ownership of their learning (57 percent) and develop
problem solving and critical thinking skills (57 percent)."
Other key findings regarding online
learning and digital resources include:
- 32 percent of elementary
school teachers surveyed told researchers they use games in
their classrooms. The most common reason cited was increasing
engagement, at 79 percent, followed by the ability to address
different learning styles at 72 percent;
- Science teachers are more
likely than other teachers to report using digital content in
the classroom, with 63 percent reporting that they use videos
they find online versus only 48 percent of other teachers.
Science teachers also reported using animations at a clip of 52
percent and only 22 percent of other teachers said the same. The
difference held across other types of digital content as well,
including virtual labs, real time data, online textbooks and
teacher-created videos;
- Teachers with online classes
were more likely than those in 1:1 environments and those using
digital content to report that technology helps students develop
creativity, take ownership of their learning, develop critical
thinking or problem solving skills or understand how concepts
relate to the real world;
- Online teachers were less
likely than teachers in 1:1 environments and teachers who use
digital content to tell researchers technology can increase
motiviation to learn or help students learn to work
collaboratively;
- While 41 percent of teachers
surveyed reported that they had taken at least one online course
for professional development, only 17 percent told researchers
they were interested in teaching an online class;
- More than half, 54 percent,
of administrators who participated in the survey told
researchers they believed " that the effective use of digital
content within the classroom can increase students'
career readiness by linking real world problems to academic
content. Administrators surveyed also said that providing enough
computers and bandwidth to realize those benefits was a
challenge, at rates of 55 and 38 percent, respectively; and
- Technology administrators who
took part in the survey said that sufficient bandwidth would
increase the use of streaming content in classes (74 percent),
increase the use of multimedia tools (68 percent) and the use of
online curricula (57 percent).
Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/06/11/report-83-percent-of-high-schools-offer-online-courses.aspx#ly5DUUCPUp93XCxL.99
Department of Education in March 2014: 17,374 online higher
education distance education and training programs altogether
Jensen Comment
Note that the hundreds of free MOOC courses from prestigious universities are
not the same as fee-based distance education degree and certificate programs
that are more like on-campus programs in terms in student-instructor
interactions, graded assignments, and examinations. Some campuses like the
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee even treat online programs as cash cows
where the tuition is higher for online programs than identical on-campus
programs.
The (Department of Education Report in
March 2014) report says that American colleges now
offer 17,374 online programs altogether, 29 percent of which are master’s-degree
programs, with bachelor’s and certificate programs making up 23 percent each.
Business and management programs are the most popular, at 29 percent of the
total, followed by health and medicine programs (16 percent), education programs
(14 percent), and information technology and computers (10 percent) ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-there-may-be-fewer-online-programs-than-you-think/51163?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
From US News in 2014
Best Online Degree Programs (ranked) ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education
Best Online Undergraduate Bachelors Degrees ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/bachelors/rankings
Central Michigan is the big winner
Best Online Graduate Business MBA Programs
---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/mba/rankings
Indiana University is the big winner
Best Online Graduate Education Programs ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/education/rankings
Northern Illinois is the big winner
Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs
---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/engineering/rankings
Columbia University is the big winner
Best Online Graduate Information Technology
Programs ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/computer-information-technology/rankings
The University of Southern California is the big winner
Best Online Graduate Nursing Programs ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/nursing/rankings
St. Xavier University is the big winner
US News Degree Finder ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/features/multistep-oe?s_cid=54089
This beats those self-serving for-profit university biased Degree Finders
US News has tried for years to rank for-profit universities, but they
don't seem to want to provide the dat
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Question
Is Google God (or at least Skynet?)
"Is Google Replacing God? There are some things that the all-knowing Internet
can't provide," by Christine Rosen, The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/christine-rosen-is-google-replacing-god-1402614743?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
January 3, 2005
message from Glen Gray
Maybe my mind is
drifting—or maybe 2 plus 2 does equal 4.
Terminator 3 has been
playing recently on cable. [Don’t read further if you don’t want to know the
ending!]
At the end of Terminator
3, we learn that Skynet (which takes over the world in the future and tries to
kill all humans) is not controlled by just one major computer as we thought in
Terminators 1 and 2, but instead, Skynet is all the computers on earth connected
together—acting as one giant computer brain.
Tonight I was watching 60
Minutes on TV and they dedicated 30 minutes to Google. Google is able to search
all computers connected to the Internet. Recently Google released software that
will search all the computers on LANS. Now you can Google on your cell phone,
search libraries, etc. etc. etc. Now they are working on a universal translator
(Start Trek anyone?) that will automatically search and translate any document
in any language.
Is Google Skynet?
Think about it.
Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
Dept. of Accounting &
Information Systems
College of Business &
Economics
California State University,
Northridge
Northridge, CA
91330
http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f
January 3, 2005 reply
from Bob Jensen
Hi Glen,
I also watched the excellent
60 Minute module. Google is amazing in almost every aspect, including how it
is managed. I think that all business policy and organization behavior students
should watch this module. It will be interesting to see how long the company
can continue to grow at an exponential pace and maintain its long-standing motto
to “Do No Evil.” These guys really believe in that motto. Google is probably
the most cautious firm in the world about who gets hired and promoted.
There has never been anything
quite like Google in terms of management, except SAS probably comes a little bit
close.
Yes I think Google could become Skynet if it were not for the
serious policy of Google to not be a monopolist (except by default) which is the
antithesis of Microsoft Corporation. Also there is the black cloud of Microsoft
hanging over Google to pull down Google’s Skynet even if it takes a trillion
dollars.
There were some very
fascinating things that I learned from the 60 Minutes module. For one thing,
Google is getting closer to scanning the documents in alternate languages around
the world and then translating each hit into a language of choice (probably
English to begin with). Secondly, I knew that Google bought Keyhole, but I had
not played in recent years with the amazing keyhole (not Google Views) --- http://www.keyhole.com/
Readers interested in the
wonderful “Defining Google” 60 Minutes module should go to
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063.shtml
I might also add that this
module was followed by another module on The World’s Most Beautiful Woman ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/29/60minutes/main663862.shtml
She’s very articulate and a pure delight in this world of sinking morality even
though her movie roles to date have been
Bombay
frivolous.
Tech Links forwarded by How-to-Geek newsletter on June 9, 2014
In traditional Hawaiian culture, the placement of a flower in the
hair of women has subtle symbolism; a flower behind the left ear
indicates the wearer is in a relationship, and a flower behind the
right ear indicates availability. The same symbolism does not apply
to men.
|
Today's Tech Term |
Cold Buffer
A Cold Buffer is a reserved section of computer memory
that has not been used, accessed, or received any data for a
long period of time. |
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What We're Reading from Around the Web |
|
"Chicago Police Caught A Robber With Facial Recognition Technology, And
He's Off To Prison For 22 Years," by Rebecca Borison, Business
Insider, June 9, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/chicago-robber-caught-by-facial-recognition-2014-6
Court Rules in Favor of Firing Bad and Often Absentee Teachers in California
(who until now were protected by teacher union rules on tenure)
This ruling may catch on in other states of the USA
This decision is one for the history books, says the
National Council on Teacher Quality
"End of the age of dinosaurs," The Economist, June 10, 2014 Jun
10th 2014 ---
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/06/teacher-tenure
DESPITE the earthquakes of reform that have rattled
public education in recent years, there are parts of the system that still
resemble “The Lost World”, where prehistoric creatures still roam. A
long-standing demand of education reformers has been that it should be
easier for schools to fire bad teachers. The terms in many teacher contracts
forbid this. Most schools when making cuts are forced to fire the newest
teachers rather than the worst ones—a policy is better known as "last in,
first out". The result is that a lot of bad (and often expensive) teachers
linger in the system.
Having lousy teachers is terrible for children and
their future prospects. Pupils assigned to better teachers are more likely
to go to college and earn decent salaries, and are less likely to be teenage
mothers, according to work published in 2011. If teachers in grades 4 to 8
are ranked according to ability, and the bottom 5% are replaced with
teachers of average quality, a class’s cumulative lifetime income is raised
by $250,000. Bill Gates once pointed out that if every child had mathematics
teachers as good as those in the top quartile, the achievement gap between
America and Asia would vanish in two years.
Owing to the glut of studies showing that teacher
quality is more important than a classroom’s size, income level or access to
high-tech wizardry, 18 states and Washington, DC, now require tenure
decisions to be “informed” by measures of whether a teacher is any good.
Fifteen states and DC are using teacher efficacy as a factor in deciding
whom to lay off. And in 23 states teachers can now be sacked if their
evaluations are unsatisfactory.
California, though, was one of these Jurassic Lost
Worlds where the dinosaurs of the teaching world still roared. Its mighty
teachers’ unions helped it block change. But thanks to a lawsuit brought by
Students Matter, an advocacy group formed by David Welch, a rich
entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, all this may now change. Mr Welch (with
the help of some extremely expensive lawyers) has just won a case
challenging teacher tenure, and a Los Angeles court has now ruled that job
protections are unconstitutional. The court struck down five teacher-tenure
laws.
The lawsuit, brought on behalf of nine
schoolchildren, concentrated on three areas: teacher tenure, dismissal
procedures and seniority rules. The plaintiffs had argued that the rules
resulted in grossly ineffective teachers obtaining and retaining permanent
employment, and these teachers were disproportionately in schools serving
low-income and minority students. The judge said this violated fundamental
rights to equal education. "There is also no dispute that there are a
significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in
California classrooms," he said, adding that “the evidence is compelling.
Indeed it shocks the conscience.”
Implementation of the ruling has been stayed
pending appeals. The California Teachers Association has promised a fight.
Teachers complain that they can now be fired on unreasonable grounds, and
they have criticised the circumvention of the legislative process. But Mr
Welch has said he felt obliged to go through the courts after watching
union-backed Democrats repeatedly thwart reform. From the start he and his
allies were keen to frame the case as a defence of children’s civil rights,
not an attack on teachers. John Deasy, the superintendent of the Los Angeles
school district, compared the denial of adequate education to
ethnic-minority children to the refusal of café owners to serve coffee to
black students over 50 years ago.
This decision is one for the history books, says
the National Council on Teacher Quality, a reformist research group. Even Mr
Welch’s legal team sounded surprised at the scale of their victory. The
ruling will affect one in eight public-school children in America, thanks to
the size of California’s education system, and could resonate well beyond
the Golden State. As the NCTQ announced, “this landmark case should put
states across the country on notice: policies that are not in the best
interest of students cannot stand.” Roars of approval all round.
Jensen Comment
I wonder if and when the courts will consider eliminating tenure in the state
college and university system.
Bob Jensen's threads on tenure controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MLA
For man to be able to live he must either not see
the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect
the finite with the infinite.
"Leo Tolstoy on Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World," by Maria Popova,
Brain Pickings, June 3, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/03/tolstoy-confession/
Shortly after turning fifty,
Leo Tolstoy succumbed to a profound spiritual crisis. With his greatest
works behind him, he found his sense of purpose dwindling as his celebrity
and public acclaim billowed, sinking into a state of deep depression and
melancholia despite having a large estate, good health for his age, a wife
who had born him fourteen children, and the promise of eternal literary
fame. On the brink of suicide, he made one last grasp at light amidst the
darkness of his existence, turning to the world’s great religious and
philosophical traditions for answers to the age-old question regarding
the meaning of life. In 1879, a decade after War and Peace and two years
after Anna Karenina, and a decade before he set out to synthesize these
philosophical findings in his
Calendar of Wisdo, Tolstoy channeled the existential catastrophe of
his inner life in
A Confession (public
library) — an autobiographical memoir of extraordinary candor and
emotional intensity, which also gave us Tolstoy’s prescient meditation on
money, fame, and writing for the wrong reasons.
He likens the progression of his depression to a serious physical illness
— a parallel modern science is
rending increasingly appropriate. Tolstoy writes:
Then occurred what happens to everyone
sickening with a mortal internal disease. At first trivial signs of
indisposition appear to which the sick man pays no attention; then these
signs reappear more and more often and merge into one uninterrupted
period of suffering. The suffering increases, and before the sick man
can look round, what he took for a mere indisposition has already become
more important to him than anything else in the world — it is death!
. . .
A Confession is a remarkable read in
its entirety. Complement it with Tolstoy’s subsequent opus of philosophical
inquiry,
A Calendar of Wisdom, and this
rare recording of him reading from the latter, exploring
the object of life shortly before his death.
Also see more meditations on the meaning of life
from
Carl Sagan,
Maya Angelou,
Richard Feynman,
David Foster Wallace,
John Steinbeck,
Anaïs Nin,
George Lucas, and
Viktor Frankl.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on free downloads of the classics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Thomas Pekkety ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty
Piketty’s second law regards the relationship
between capital (e.g., machines, software, buildings) and national income.
Piketty argues that the owners of capital will capture a growing share of
national income at the expense of labor. He says that will happen because
savings and investment will continue to grow, even as population growth and
technological progress slow, along with overall economic growth.
Piketty's 'Second Law
We simply do not at all agree with the macroeconomic
reasoning that undergirds his forecast . . . Robert Solow, a Nobel prize-winning
economist, was closer to the truth in 1956, when he said that as the economy’s
growth rate slows toward zero, so will the national savings rate. “Postwar U.S.
data, moreover, [are] consistent with this theory in that decades with low
growth have typically been associated with low (or even negative) net savings
rates,” . . .
Tony Smith, a Yale University
economist, and Per Krusell of Stockholm University’s Institute for
International Economic Studies
"Is Piketty's 'Second Law of Capitalism' Really a Law?" by Peter Coy,
Bloomberg Businessweek June 6, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-06/is-pikettys-second-law-of-capitalism-really-a-law
The two economists agree with Piketty that wealth
inequality has grown, but they say the causes include “educational
institutions, skill-biased technical change, globalization, and changes in
the structure of capital markets.”
Update, June 6: In an email
Piketty wrote that he didn’t understand the
professors’ case. He said his book
argues that savings rates have been falling more slowly than growth rates,
not that the process will go on forever. Or, as he put it:
We’ve never written
that the capital income ratio beta=s/g should go to infinity if g goes to
zero: presumably people would stop saving (i.e. s would go to zero) much
before that! We’re just saying that the simplest way to explain the rise in
capital-income ratios that we observe in the data in recent decades is that
saving rates did not fall as much as growth rates, so that mechanically the
capital-income ratio tends to rise to relatively high levels, just like in
the 19th century. I don’t think they are disputing this. Also note that the
rise of capital-income ratio is certainly not bad per se, and does not
necessarily imply high inequality. Tell me if I missed something!
Martin Feldstein ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Feldstein
"Piketty's Numbers Don't Add Up: Ignoring dramatic changes in tax rules
since 1980 creates the false impression that income inequality is rising,"
by Harvard's Martin Feldstein, The Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304081804579557664176917086?mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread
attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an
increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes
in taxation. Although his book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," has
been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests
on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed
interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the
current nature of household wealth.
Mr. Piketty's theoretical analysis starts with the
correct fact that the rate of return on capital—the extra income that
results from investing an additional dollar in plant and equipment—exceeds
the rate of growth of the economy. He then jumps to the false conclusion
that this difference between the rate of return and the rate of growth leads
through time to an ever-increasing inequality of wealth and of income unless
the process is interrupted by depression, war or confiscatory taxation. He
advocates a top tax rate above 80% on very high salaries, combined with a
global tax that increases with the amount of wealth to 2% or more.
His conclusion about ever-increasing inequality
could be correct if people lived forever. But they don't. Individuals save
during their working years and spend most of their accumulated assets during
retirement. They pass on some of their wealth to the next generation. But
the cumulative effect of such bequests is diluted by the combination of
existing estate taxes and the number of children and grandchildren who share
the bequests.
The result is that total wealth grows over time
roughly in proportion to total income. Since 1960, the Federal Reserve
flow-of-funds data report that real total household wealth in the U.S. has
grown at 3.2% a year while the real total personal income calculated by the
Department of Commerce grew at 3.3%.
The second problem with Mr. Piketty's conclusions
about increasing inequality is his use of income-tax returns without
recognizing the importance of the changes that have occurred in tax rules.
Internal Revenue Service data, he notes, show that the income reported on
tax returns by the top 10% of taxpayers was relatively constant as a share
of national income from the end of World War II to 1980, but the ratio has
risen significantly since then. Yet the income reported on tax returns is
not the same as individuals' real total income. The changes in tax rules
since 1980 create a false impression of rising inequality.
In 1981 the top tax rate on interest, dividends and
other investment income was reduced to 50% from 70%, nearly doubling the
after-tax share that owners of taxable capital income could keep. That rate
reduction thus provided a strong incentive to shift assets from
low-yielding, tax-exempt investments like municipal bonds to higher yielding
taxable investments. The tax data therefore signaled an increase in measured
income inequality even though there was no change in real inequality.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the top rate on
all income to 28% from 50%. That reinforced the incentive to raise the
taxable yield on portfolio investments. It also increased other forms of
taxable income by encouraging more work, by causing more income to be paid
as taxable salaries rather than as fringe benefits and deferred
compensation, and by reducing the use of deductions and exclusions.
The 1986 tax reform also repealed the General
Utilities doctrine, a provision that had encouraged high-income individuals
to run their business and professional activities as Subchapter C
corporations, which were taxed at a lower rate than their personal income.
This corporate income of professionals and small businesses did not appear
in the income-tax data that Mr. Piketty studied.
The repeal of the General Utilities doctrine and
the decline in the top personal tax rate to less than the corporate rate
caused high-income taxpayers to shift their business income out of taxable
corporations and onto their personal tax returns. Some of this
transformation was achieved by paying themselves interest, rent or salaries
from their corporations. Alternatively, their entire corporation could be
converted to a Subchapter S corporation whose profits are included with
other personal taxable income.
These changes in taxpayer behavior substantially
increased the amount of income included on the returns of high-income
individuals. This creates the false impression of a sharp rise in the
incomes of high-income taxpayers even though there was only a change in the
legal form of that income. This transformation occurred gradually over many
years as taxpayers changed their behavior and their accounting practices to
reflect the new rules. The business income of Subchapter S corporations
alone rose from $500 billion in 1986 to $1.8 trillion by 1992.
Mr. Piketty's practice of comparing the incomes of
top earners with total national income has another flaw. National income
excludes the value of government transfer payments including Social
Security, health benefits and food stamps that are a large and growing part
of the personal incomes of low- and middle-income households. Comparing the
incomes of the top 10% of the population with the total personal incomes of
the rest of the population would show a much smaller rise in the relative
size of incomes at the top.
Finally, Mr. Piketty's use of estate-tax data to
explore what he sees as the increasing inequality of wealth is problematic.
In part, this is because of changes in estate and gift-tax rules, but more
fundamentally because bequeathable assets are only a small part of the
wealth that most individuals have for their retirement years. That wealth
includes the present actuarial value of Social Security and retiree health
benefits, and the income that will flow from employer-provided pensions. If
this wealth were taken into account, the measured concentration of wealth
would be much less than Mr. Piketty's numbers imply.
The problem with the distribution of income in this
country is not that some people earn high incomes because of skill, training
or luck. The problem is the persistence of poverty. To reduce that
persistent poverty we need stronger economic growth and a different approach
to education and training, not the confiscatory taxes on income and wealth
that Mr. Piketty recommends.
"A modern Marx: Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster book is a great piece of
scholarship, but a poor guide to policy," The Economist, May 3, 2014
---
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21601512-thomas-pikettys-blockbuster-book-great-piece-scholarship-poor-guide-policy
"Thomas Piketty: Marx 2.0," by Rana Foroohar, Time Magazine,
May 19, 2014, pp. 46-49 ---
http://time.com/92087/thomas-piketty-marx-2-0/?pcd=hp-magmod
But "redistribute wealth" is a relative term. Paul Krugman's review ---
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/
Jensen Comment
Especially note Krugman's point about how technology changed the structure of
wealth in America to a point where Piketty's European world is not quite the
same as the U.S. world of the wealthy in 2012. Piketty does not entirely
overlook that in his book.
Ten ways to fight inequality without Piketty's Wealth Tax ---
http://qz.com/201695/ten-ways-to-fight-inequality-without-pikettys-wealth-tax/
ensen Comment
History does not repeat itself in the 21st Century replacement of labor with
capital. Never before in history has capital become so effective and efficient
in replacing labor with robotics and other technology. Soon we will have
driverless on the highways,
Amazon orders will be filled entirely by robots. The parcels will be
delivered by drones above the maddening unemployed crowds below. Soon our wars
will be fought with robots and drowns.
The only human thing left to dissidents will be terrorists blowing up the
power grid and innocent people. Thant and poisoning our food and water supplies.
"Ex-Goldman director Gupta loses bid to stay out of prison," by
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters, June 12, 2014 ---
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/11/usa-crime-insidertrading-gupta-idINL2N0OS1UC20140611
Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc director Rajat Gupta
has failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to delay the June 17 start of
his two-year prison term while he pursues an appeal of his insider trading
conviction.
Gupta, also a former global managing director of
the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, had asked the country's highest court for
permission to stay free during his appeal, after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in Manhattan on May 30 denied him the same request.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who handles emergency
applications from the 2nd Circuit, on Wednesday denied Gupta's request to
stay out of prison.
The full 2nd Circuit has yet to decide whether to
rehear Gupta's appeal of his conviction, which a three-judge panel of that
court upheld on March 25.
Gary Naftalis, a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis &
Frankel who represented Gupta, declined to comment. Seth Waxman, a
WilmerHale partner and former U.S. solicitor general, is also among Gupta's
lawyers.
Gupta, 65, is the highest-ranking corporate
official to be convicted in the government's multi-year probe of insider
trading in the hedge fund industry.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"Time Inc. Has a Big Problem—So Does Digital Journalism: As the
storied magazine company returns to its inky origins, the future looks bright
for digital journalism as a product, but dim for large-scale digital journalism
as a business," by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, June 9, 2014 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/time-inc-has-a-big-problemso-does-digital-journalism/372460/
View the informative. albeit somewhat controversial, charts. The secret to
lots of advertising seems to be giving away a lot of free stuff that people want
--- the Google model.
"Ten States With the Fastest Growing Economies," 24/7 Wall Street,
June 12, 2014 ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/06/12/10-states-with-the-fastest-growing-economies/
Jensen Comment
If you want your state to grow as fast as the winners discover some massive oil
and gas deposits in your back yard. It would be easy to say that having a large
and diverse population hurts growth, but that does not explain economic growth
in Texas in areas other than oil and gas.
Aside from oil and gas, not being bound up in union militancy and not having
high state taxation seems to be a winner for economic growth. Keep in mind that
the rich tend to get richer and poor poorer as evidenced by the growth in
Medicaid that has become the biggest item in nearly all state budgets,
especially the states with low economic growth.
Eventually, economic growth will be tied to rain and water reserves more than
most anything else.
How to Mislead With Statistics
"Why Economists Can’t Always Trust Data," Fiscal Times, June 3,
2014 ---
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/06/03/Why-Economists-Can-t-Always-Trust-Data
To make progress in economics, it is essential that
theoretical models be subjected to empirical tests that determine how well
they can explain actual data. The tests that are used must be able to draw a
sharp distinction between competing theoretical models, and one of the most
important factors is the quality of the data used in the tests.
Unfortunately, the quality of the data that economists employ is less than
ideal, and this gets in the way of the ability of economists to improve the
models they use. There are several reasons for the poor quality of economic
data:
Non-Experimental Data: Economists do not have the
ability to perform experiments, except in a very limited way. Instead, they
must rely upon historical data. This makes tests of theoretical models much
more difficult to conduct.
A chemist can, for example, go the lab and perform
experiments again and again and this has several advantages. To see the
advantages, suppose there are two chemicals that combine imperfectly, and
the investigator would like to know the temperature that produces the most
complete chemical reaction.
The first advantage is that in a laboratory, the
air pressure, amount of oxygen in the air, the temperature, and so on can be
controlled as the chemicals are combined.
When using historical, real-world data this is not
possible. All of the factors will vary –– they cannot be held constant
unless the researcher is lucky enough to encounter a “natural experiment”
where “all else equal” holds and that is rare –– and the inability to hold
“all else equal” confounds the tests. It is still possible to add controls
that try to capture the other factors that might influence the outcome, but
one can never be sure that this has been done sufficiently well to allow
clean statistical tests.
The second advantage is that the experiment can be
repeated many, many times so that any randomness in the outcome of
individual experiments can be averaged out. In the experiment above, for
example, the chemicals could be combined 1,000 times at each temperature,
and then the outcomes averaged to smooth out the noise in individual
experiments.
In economics there is simply no way to, for example,
run an experiment where the Great Recession occurs thousands of times and
various policy interventions are implemented to see what type perform the
best. Economists are stuck with a single historical realization, and can
never be sure the extent to which the outcome is due to randomness or
inadequate controls.
Surveys, Revisions, and Real-Time Data:
Economic data is usually based upon surveys rather than a full tabulation of
the variable of interest. Unemployment data, for example, is based upon
a monthly sample of approximately 60,000 households.
In some cases, as with GDP, the data arrive with a substantial time lag
leading to revisions as new data clarifies the picture. For GDP, there is an
advance estimate based upon data that is available one month after the end
of a quarter, followed by second and third estimates released after two and
three months later. There is also a first annual estimate released in the
summer incorporating further new data, and there are subsequent annual and
five-year revisions.
In economics there is simply no way to, for example, run an experiment
where the Great Recession occurs thousands of times and various policy
interventions are implemented to see what type perform the best.
Economists are stuck with a single historical realization, and can never
be sure the extent to which the outcome is due to randomness or
inadequate controls.
Surveys, Revisions, and Real-Time Data:
Economic data is usually based upon surveys rather than a full
tabulation of the variable of interest. Unemployment data, for example,
is based upon a monthly
sample of approximately 60,000 households. In some cases, as with
GDP, the data arrive with a substantial time lag leading to revisions as
new data clarifies the picture. For GDP, there is an advance estimate
based upon data that is available one month after the end of a quarter,
followed by second and third estimates released after two and three
months later. There is also a first annual estimate released in the
summer incorporating further new data, and there are subsequent annual
and five-year revisions.
- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/06/03/Why-Economists-Can-t-Always-Trust-Data#sthash.XKizjNmC.dpuf
See more at:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/06/03/Why-Economists-Can-t-Always-Trust-Data#sthash.SDS9IFGX.dpuf
Jensen Comment
Much of the problem in the social sciences, and economics and investing in
particular, is that if models predict those affected by the predictions may
change their behavior. Social science research is sometimes very unstable.
Another problem is that there are so many missing variables that are incorrectly
assumed to be insignificant. And there's a huge problem of interdependency among
model variables is often ignored by researchers desperate to imply findings of
causality.
"Harvard and MIT Release MOOC Student Data Set," Inside Higher Ed,
June 2, 2014 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/06/02/harvard-and-mit-release-mooc-student-data-set#sthash.Rvg8e49L.dpbs
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the two universities behind the massive open online course
provider edX, on Friday released the data sets behind the data visualization
tool
Insights. The data covers students who enrolled in
the 16 edX courses offered by the two institutions during 2012-13, and has
been scrubbed for information that could identify individuals. The data set
can be downloaded from the
MITx and
HarvardX Dataverse.
"Will MOOCs Undermine Top Business Schools, or Help Them?"
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/will-moocs-undermine-top-business-schools-or-help-them/53021?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"
Massive open online courses are not currently
cannibalizing tuition-based programs at top business schools, according to
an enthusiastic
report from the
University of Pennsylvania. Rather, MOOCs could become a recruiting tool for
tapping new pools of potential students.
Business schools that offer MOOCs should also
figure out how to charge the many students who sign up for the online
courses without intending to complete them, write the authors of the report.
The report looks at data and survey responses from
students in nine MOOCs offered by Penn’s Wharton School. The researchers
found that 78 percent of the students were from outside the United States,
and 35 percent of the U.S. residents taking the business MOOCs were
foreign-born. Among the Americans, 19 percent were members of
underrepresented minority groups, compared with 11 percent among M.B.A.
students as a whole.
“Our data suggest that, at least at present, MOOCs
run by elite business schools primarily attract students for whom
traditional business-school offerings are out of reach,” write the authors.
Rather than undermine the existing business model,
MOOCs may help Wharton and other business schools recruit outside the normal
pipelines, the researchers speculate. “These three groups—students from
outside the United States, especially developing countries, foreign-born
Americans, and underrepresented American minorities—are students that
business schools are trying to attract,” they write.
The Penn report also reiterates a point that has
become a refrain among researchers looking at free online courses:
Completion rates are poor metrics for judging the success of a MOOC because
the goals of students who register for such courses vary. Indeed, only 5
percent of the registrants in Penn’s business MOOCs finished their courses,
and those who completed were “disproportionately male, well-educated,
employed,” and from countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development; also, American students “tend to be white.” But a mere 43
percent of students who were surveyed said that obtaining a certificate of
completion was important to them.
Based on the apparently diverse motivations of
people who sign up for MOOCs, the Penn researchers offer some business
advice to institutions offering them: Find ways to charge students who have
no plans to complete their MOOCs.
“Business schools must bear this in mind and move
away from a business model of charging for certificates of completion,” the
authors advise. “Instead, they must tailor offerings to the goals of these
learners, whatever they may be.”
Penn, which has released several reports (not
all of them flattering) based on data from its
MOOCs, was an early institutional partner with Coursera, the largest MOOC
company. The university also
owns a stake in the
company. Penn’s provost, Vincent Price, is
listed as a member of Coursera’s advisory
board.
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and other free education materials from
prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Question
"What accounting courses are available on a listing of 1,000 free courses from
prestigious universities?" Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3,
2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/will-moocs-undermine-top-business-schools-or-help-them/53021?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Note that advanced accounting is not covered nearly as well as philosophy,
ethics, computer science, literature, history, etc.
A Master List of 1,000 Free Courses From Top Universities: 30,000 Hours of
Audio/Video Lectures ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/list-of-1000-free-courses-from-top-universities.html
There are 150 free business courses ---
http://www.openculture.com/business_free_courses
Principles of Managerial Accounting - Free iTunes Audio -
Anthony Catanach & Noah Barskey, Villanova
---
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/principles-managerial-accounting/id388954205?mt=10
Accounting and Its Use in Business Decisions - Free – Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Accounting-and-Its-Use-in-Business-Decisions
Accounting in 60 Minutes: A Brief Introduction - Free - Udemy ---
https://www.udemy.com/accounting-in-60-minutes-a-brief-introduction/?dtcode=th48xvn5
Fundamentals of Accounting – Free - Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Introduction-to-Accounting-1
Introduction to Accounting - Free – US Small Business Administration ---
http://www.sba.gov/sba-learning-center/training/introduction-accounting
Introduction to Cash Accounting - Free – Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Introduction-to-Cash-Accounting
Managerial Accounting - Free – Saylor.org ---
http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus105/
Bob Jensen's threads on free course material, videos,
tutorials, and entire courses from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"Former UNC Basketball Star Says He Got Straight A's Without Going To A
Single Class," by Emmitt Knowlton, Business Insider, June 6, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/rashad-mccants-on-unc-academic-scandal-2014-6
Rashad McCants, the second-leading scorer on the
University of North Carolina's 2004-05 basketball team that won the national
championship,
told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that he rarely
attended class, turned in papers written entirely by tutors, and took bogus
courses in the African-American Studies department during his three years in
Chapel Hill.
"I didn't write any papers," McCants said. "When it
was time to turn in our papers for our paper classes, we would get a call
from our tutor ... carpool over to the tutor's house and basically get our
papers and go about our business."
During the spring term of 2005, McCants says he
made the Dean's List and got straight-A's in four classes that he never
attended.
When asked if UNC men's basketball coach Roy
Williams knew about this, McCants told Outside The Lines, "I think he knew
100%. ... It was something that was a part of the program."
Chapel Hill Researcher at Center of Turmoil Over Athletes’ Literacy
Resigns ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/chapel-hill-researcher-at-center-of-turmoil-over-athletes-literacy-resigns/76317?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
"University of North Carolina learning specialist receives death threats
after her research finds one in 10 college athletes have reading age of a THIRD
GRADER," by Sara Malm, Daily Mail, January 10, 2014 ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2537041/University-North-Carolina-learning-specialist-receives-death-threats-research-finds-one-10-college-athletes-reading-age-fifth-grader.html
Mary Willingham exposed college athletes' lack of
academic abilities
- She found that 10 per cent read at elementary
school level
- A majority of players' reading level was
between 4th and 8th grade
- Men's basketball makes $16.9m-a-year for
University of North Carolina
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
More often than not employers make it uncomfortable for whistleblowers who don't
resign. UNC does not deny that for ten years varsity athletes took fake courses
and were "allowed" to change their grades. They just contend that these athletes
did not suffer academically because they were in the wonderful learning
environment of the University of North Carolina. Yeah Right!
UNC Fudging the Grades of Athletes
"Scandal Bowl: Why Tar Heel Fraud Might Be Just the Start," by Paul M.
Barrett, Bloomberg Businessweek, January 6, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-06/unc-athletic-scandal-charges-of-fraud-could-be-tip-of-wider-revelations?campaign_id=DN010614
The corruption of
academics at the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus could
turn into the most revelatory of all of the undergraduate sports scandals in
recent memory. Beginning three years ago with what sounded like
garden-variety reports of under-the-table payments from agents and improper
classroom help for athletes, the affair has spread and deepened to include
evidence of hundreds of sham courses offered since the early 1990s. Untold
numbers of grades have been changed without authorization and faculty
signatures forged—all in the service of an elaborate campaign to keep elite
basketball and football players academically eligible to play.
After belatedly catching up with the UNC debacle in
this recent dispatch,
I’ve decided the still-developing story deserves wider
attention. Or, to put it more precisely, the
excellent reporting already done by the News &
Observer of Raleigh merits amplification outside of North Carolina.
The rot in Chapel Hill
undermines UNC’s reputation as one of the nation’s finest public
institutions of higher learning. Officials created classes that did not
meet. That’s not the only reason more scrutiny is needed. There’s also the
particularly pernicious way that the school’s African and Afro-American
Studies Department has been used to inflate the GPAs of basketball and
football players. The corruption of a scholarly discipline devoted to black
history and culture underscores a racial subtext to the exploitation of
college athletes that typically goes unidentified in polite discussion. (UNC’s
former longtime Afro-Am chairman, Julius Nyang’oro, has been criminally
indicted for fraud.)
Another reason Chapel Hill
requires sustained investigation is the manner in which the athletic and
academic hierarchies at UNC, along with the National Collegiate Athletic
Association, have so far whitewashed the scandal. Officials have repeatedly
denied that the fiasco’s roots trace to an illicit agenda that, in the name
of coddling a disproportionately black undergraduate athlete population, has
left many students intellectually crippled.
Dan Kane, the News & Observer‘s lead
investigative reporter, does old-school, just-the-facts-m’am work—and more
power to him. Digging up the basic data has been a lonely and arduous task
for which Kane has been rewarded with craven accusations of home state
disloyalty. As he wrote
last month, the six official “reviews” and
“investigations” of the wayward Afro-Am Department have all failed to
connect the dots in any meaningful way. In coming weeks and months, I hope I
can supplement Kane’s dogged efforts with some long-distance perspective.
Valuable tips from concerned local people, some of them UNC alumni, are
already pouring in, and that’s part of the reason I’m going to pursue the
story. Keep those e-mails coming.
One source of insight is Jay
Smith, a professor of early modern French history at UNC. A serious scholar
who understands the university’s sports-happy culture, Smith has developed a
powerful distaste for the way his employer has obfuscated the scandal.
“What’s going on here is so important,” he told me by telephone, “because
it’s emblematic of what I think goes on at major universities all across the
country,” where the business of sports undermines the mission of education.
That sounds right to me.
Smith has the best sort of
self-interested motivation for making sense of what has happened on his
campus: He’s writing a book about the whole mess, based in part on
statistics and personal experiences proffered by UNC instructors assigned
over the years to assist varsity athletes. To me that sounds like a
page-turner—and even the basis of an HBO movie.
I asked Smith what he thinks
is going to happen next. He pointed to comments that the local district
attorney made when the disgraced former Afro-Am chairman, Nyang’oro, was
indicted in December. Orange County DA Jim Woodall told the News &
Observer that a second person is also under investigation and could be
indicted soon. Woodall did not identify the second target, except to say the
person is not someone who currently works for UNC. ”Other probes have
identified Nyang’oro’s longtime department manager, Deborah Crowder, as
being involved in the bogus classes,” the News & Observer noted.
“She retired in 2009.” Both Crowder and Nyang’oro have refused to comment
publicly, and Nyang’oro’s criminal defense lawyer didn’t return my e-mail
inquiry.
The indictment of Crowder, a
relatively low-level administrative figure, could crack open the case. It
defies logic that Nyang’oro and his assistant would have operated a rogue
department without the knowledge of more senior faculty members, if not top
university administrators. It further defies reason that this pair would
have created phony classes for athletes without the urging and participation
of people in the UNC athletic bureaucracy. Nyang’oro and Crowder are going
to have ample reason to sing as part of potential plea deals.
Even before that
happens, according to Smith, one or more well-positioned whistle-blowers are
likely to go public and start naming names if they think the powers that be
are planning to isolate Crowder and Nyang’oro as the sole villains. This
thing goes much higher, and there’s much more to come from Chapel Hill.
"Alleged Academic Fraud at U. of North Carolina Tests NCAA's Reach: Myths
surrounding the group's investigation cloud the controversy at Chapel Hill,"
by Brad Wolverton, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 7, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Alleged-Academic-Fraud-at-U/134270/
"North Carolina
Admits to Academic Fraud in Sports Program," Inside Higher Ed,
September 20, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/20/qt#270772
Bob Jensen's threads on professors and Teachers Who Let Students Cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward
"States Spending the Most (and Least) on Education," by Thomas C.
Frohlich, 24/7 Wall Street, June 3, 2014 ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/06/03/states-spending-the-most-and-least-on-education/#ixzz33aTwhr4e
Spending Per Pupil (Top 10 States)
$19,522 New York
17,290 Alaska
17,266 New Jersey
16,273 Connecticut
16,039 Vermont
15,897 Wyoming
14, 142 Massachusetts
14,005 Rhode Island
13,864 Delaware
13,608 Maryland
Spending Per Pupil (Bottom 10 States)
$8,371 Florida
8,294 Tennessee
8,260 Texas
8,222 Nevada
8,200 North Carolina
7,558 Arizona
7,466 Oklahoma
6,658 Idaho
6,206 Utah
Jensen Comment
Reasons are many and complicated for differences between the highest and lowest
ranked states above. One huge factor is that some states do not take advantage
of economies of scale.
Exhibit A is Vermont at $16,039 per pupil. Vermont has no large cities and
lots of small towns. The Vermont Legislature failed in 2014 to consolidate
school districts. There are more school districts than towns in Vermont, and
some school districts have more school board members than teachers. There are
almost no students in some schools due to shrinking birth rates and populations.
Alaska, and Wyoming have problems taking advantage of economies of scale due
to widely dispersed and low-populated school districts that are hard to
consolidate because of long distances between districts. Also there is risky
winter weather for long-distance busing.
Six of the top 10 spending states have powerful labor unions, including
teachers unions, that dominate politics in each state. Unions have far less
power in the bottom ten states.
The differences between the top spending and low spending states do not
necessarily equate to education quality such as average SAT scores. I would
rather have my grandchildren educated in Utah or Idaho versus states like New
York, Alaska, and New Jersey spending more than twice as much per pupil.
Teachers are attracted to quality of life in states like Utah and Idaho and will
work for lower salaries.
Part of the difference between the top 10 and bottom 10 is caused by cost of
living. Cost of living is much higher in New York, Alaska, and New Jersey.
Teacher salaries in Utah and Idaho would be inadequate living costs in New York,
Alaska, New Jersey, Connecticut, or Vermont where food, housing, and state
taxation are killers on personal finances.
Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending June 7, 2014)
MIT's Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/527896/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-june-7-2014/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140606
It's extremely unusual for the courts to force granting of diplomas or even a
grade change in a course
The courts instead prefer to award monetary damages rather than to make academic
standards decisions
If the courts started assigning grades the dockets would be filled with
millions of cases.
"Judge Orders Case Western to Grant Diploma to Medical Student," by
Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 4, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/judge-orders-case-western-to-grant-diploma-to-medical-student/79167?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
On two occasions while I was on the faculty of Trinity University I had to deal
with a student, the student's lawyer, and disgruntled parents regarding my
assignment of F grades. Trinity University was extremely professional in helping
me deal with these two cases. In both instances the proceedings were terminated
before going to court. In one case the graduate still lives with an unchanged F
grade on his transcript even though he took the course again from somebody else.
In the other case I elected to show sympathy for the student. He was a
graduating senior and was already accepted to the University of Texas Law
School. I changed his F to an incomplete and let him repeat the course as a
summertime independent study. He earned a C grade the second time around.
Of course there were many more instances where students did not dispute their
F grades --- at least not with their lawyers sitting beside them.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Keeping Up With the Joneses on RateMyProfessors.com," by Rob Jenkins,
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 28, 2014 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/505-keeping-up-with-the-joneses-on-ratemyprofessors-com?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
I confess: I occasionally check my ratings on
Rate My Professors
to see what students are saying about me. The comments are mostly pretty
good, with the main complaint being that, apparently, it’s hard to get an A
in my class.
I can
live with that. My understanding of the whole grading scale thing is that
A’s are supposed to be hard to get.
But
checking my own ratings isn’t the only reason I go to Rate My Professors.
I’ve learned that what students are saying about me is far less interesting
than what they’re saying about my colleagues.
As a
former department chair and dean who once evaluated faculty members for a
living, I have to say that for the most part students absolutely nail it.
Sometimes they’re a bit harsh, or catty, or mean spirited. Sometimes their
biases are evident, such as when they give a professor both high marks
overall and high marks for “easiness.” And of course it’s always amusing to
read a student trash an English teacher by saying something like, “She not a
very good teacher you cant get A in her class.”
But
mostly they get it right.
For
instance, you know those colleagues you've long suspected of being poor
teachers? Check out their ratings. You may well discover that you were, in
fact, correct. (In some cases, as a former administrator, I know
they’re poor teachers, and it’s gratifying to see the students’ comments
confirm my judgment.) Or how about those department members that you regard
as antisocial, miserable you-know-whats? Turns out students pick up on that
pretty quick, too.
Of
course, there are always those professors who wear their unpopularity with
students like a badge of honor, convinced that being a “good” teacher and
being “liked” are mutually exclusive propositions. Or at least that’s what
they tell themselves, as they look down their noses at the rest of us. I
say, whatever helps you sleep at night.
The
students, for their part, don’t seem to care about those kinds of
self-justifications. They just know which teachers they like and which ones
they don’t, and their jerkometers are always set on high.
I also
enjoy reading what students are saying about the colleagues I admire. Even
the best teacher is bound to elicit a few juicy comments, some of which
may—just may—at some point find their way onto a birthday card that is
passed around the department for everyone to sign. Hey, what are friends
for?
-
See more at:
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/505-keeping-up-with-the-joneses-on-ratemyprofessors-com?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#sthash.SKZxXWi0.dpuf
Jensen Comment
I go to the RateMyProfessors.com site quite often because it is entertaining
(especially humorous) as well as being somewhat informative. Millions of student
responses are now archived on RMP.
The respondents are self selecting.
And the self-selecting samples are often too small to place any credence on the
numerical ratings.
But the subjective comments can be interesting such as comments that the
professor gives credit for participating in campus protests against the
college's administrators. Students often point out how ridiculously easy it is
to get an A in a course.
There are some myths floating around about the RateMyProfessors.com site.
One myth is that only disgruntled students tend to submit reviews. Actually the
opposite is the case. If you study the responses for most any college or
university such as Trinity University you will find that the overwhelming
majority of respondents love and respect their teachers. The smile icons are
much more frequent than the frown icons.
The replies from some professors are also interesting.
Mostly they defend their academic standards.
My biggest disappointment is that so few graduate students send in
evaluations to RateMyProfessor.com.
In part I think this is grade inflation. Most graduate students now get A or B
grades, and a rare C grade is tantamount to a D or F. If graduate courses were
more competitive there would probably be more evaluations sent to RMP.
A second disappointment is that students tend to complain in any course
where there is a lot of work (even when they give high marks to the professor).
This seems to be a sign of the times where students no longer respect
learning if it takes blood, sweat, and tears.
A third disappointment is that the very-highest rated ("Top") professors
especially acknowledged on the RMP site tend to be rated by students as easy
graders. S
adly, this is a sign of the times ---
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/toplists/topLists.jsp
A fourth disappointment is that the RMP site has no special section for
submissions from students 10 or more years after graduation.
I think that student respect for their harder teachers increase over time.
Note the following from the RMP site as of May 2014 ---
http://blog.ratemyprofessors.com/were-getting-a-makeover/
As the title suggests, you’re going to be seeing
some big changes here on RateMyProfessors.com in the near future. Since
you’re always on the go, we’re making it easier for you to use
RateMyProfessors.com from your mobile devices. You’ll be able to search,
browse, and rate with ease from wherever you are. We’ll also be updating our
look and adding some helpful, new features. Excited yet? We are!
Anything you’d like to see changed or added to
RateMyProfessors.com? Let us know in the form below!
Grade Inflation and Dysfunctional Teaching
Evaluations (the biggest scandal in higher education) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation
"Thoreau on the Greatest Gift of Growing Old," by Maria
Popova, Brain Pickings, May 26, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/05/26/thoreau-on-growing-old/
“Living has yet to be generally recognized as
one of the arts,” Karl De Schweinitz wrote in his
1924 guide to the art of living, and as with any
art, genius-level mastery at it is only accomplished through
hours upon hours of deliberate practice. It’s a
truth that
Henry David Thoreau,
one of the great masters of the art of living, illustrates in a particularly
beautiful passage from
The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837–1861
(public
library) — the same treasure trove of wisdom
that gave us Thoreau on
what success really means,
friendship and sympathy, and
why not to quote Thoreau.
Writing in the afternoon of October 20 of 1857,
shortly after his fortieth birthday, Thoreau does what he does best, drawing
from an everyday encounter a profound existential parable:
I saw Brooks Clark, who is now about eighty and
bent like a bow, hastening along the road, barefooted, as usual, with an
axe in his hand; was in haste perhaps on account of the cold wind on his
bare feet. When he got up to me, I saw that besides the axe in one hand,
he had his shoes in the other, filled with knurly apples and a dead
robin. He stopped and talked with me a few moments; said that we had had
a noble autumn and might now expect some cold weather. I asked if he had
found the robin dead. No, he said, he found it with its wing broken and
killed it. He also added that he had found some apples in the woods, and
as he hadn’t anything to carry them in, he put ’em in his shoes. They
were queer-looking trays to carry fruit in. How many he got in along
toward the toes, I don’t know. I noticed, too, that his pockets were
stuffed with them. His old tattered frock coat was hanging in strips
about the skirts, as were his pantaloons about his naked feet. He
appeared to have been out on a scout this gusty afternoon, to see what
he could find, as the youngest boy might. It pleased me to see this
cheery old man, with such a feeble hold on life, bent almost double,
thus enjoying the evening of his days. Far be it from me to call it
avarice or penury, this childlike delight in finding something in the
woods or fields and carrying it home in the October evening, as a trophy
to be added to his winter’s store. Oh, no; he was happy to be Nature’s
pensioner still, and birdlike to pick up his living. Better his robin
than your turkey, his shoes full of apples than your barrels full; they
will be sweeter and suggest a better tale.
But perhaps the greatest gift of old age is that of
unselfconsciousness — 150 years after Thoreau, in
reflecting on her long career of interviewing creative icons,
Debbie Millman observed that the only two people not
plagued by the characteristic self-doubt of creators were Milton Glaser and
Massimo Vignelli who, not coincidentally, were both in their eighties.
Thoreau, too, arrives at the same appreciation in considering the old man:
This old man’s cheeriness was worth a thousand
of the church’s sacraments and memento mori’s. It was better
than a prayerful mood. It proves to me old age as tolerable, as happy,
as infancy… If he had been a young man, he would probably have thrown
away his apples and put on his shoes when he saw me coming, for shame.
But old age is manlier; it has learned to live, makes fewer apologies,
like infancy.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
What I enjoy most about retirement is that I am no longer my resume. I'm not
aspiring for a new career, a new job, a new committee appointment, or a new
honor. I can be me --- take it or leave it.
One of the myths about retirement is that it is less work. After planting
flowers in my three gardens for three solid days I've never been so exhausted in
my life --- one does tire more easily in the autumn of life. I'm impatient in
our short season and tend to buy "seedlings" in one-gallon pots or larger ---
mostly New Guinea Impatiens. If I'm not planting there are always other endless
chores awaiting. Actually "chore" is probably the wrong term. The word chore
suggests that one does not enjoy the activity. I enjoy most of my chores,
especially sitting on a tractor on a cool mountain day while mowing or hauling
or even blowing snow. My mountain home is a bit like Thoreau's
Walden pond. I learn something new almost every time I step outside or turn on
my computer.
Some of
Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
"16 Facts About China (and Russia) That Will Blow Your Mind," by Mamta
Badkar, Business Insider, June 2, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/mind-blowing-facts-about-china-2014-6?op=1#ixzz33WN6ezbL
Jensen Comment
I did not attempt to verify any of these "facts."
At first blush it sounds wasteful to cut 20 million trees each year for chop
sticks. But, if you ate out of disposable paper containers, water and energy to
heat the dish water would not be be needed. What is more costly from an
environmental standpoint --- hot dish water or disposable eating utensils?
Of course the Chinese may mostly wash dishes and use wooden chopsticks ---
the worst of both worlds.
"Frequentist vs. Bayesian Analysis," by David Giles, Econometrics
Beat, June 6, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/06/frequentist-vs-bayesian-analysis.html
"Statisticians
should readily use both Bayesian and frequentist ideas."
So begins
a 2004 paper by Bayari and Berger,
"The Interplay of Bayesian and Frequentist Analysis",
Statistical Science, 19(1), 58-80.
Let's re-phrase
that opening sentence: "Econometricians should readily use both
Bayesian and frequentist ideas."
Before turning to
economics, my undergraduate training was in statistics and pure
mathematics. My statistical training (in the 1960's) came from
professors who were staunchly Bayesian - at a time when it was
definitely "them and us". With few exceptions, the attitude was
that "if you're not with us, then you're against us". And this
was true on both sides of the Frequentist-Bayesian divide.
Hardly a healthy
situation - but we've seen similar philosophical divisions
throughout the history of economics, and in pretty much every
other discipline at some point.
After a very
orthodox training in econometrics (based largely on the texts of
Johnston, and Malinvaud) I ended up doing my Ph.D. dissertation
on some problems in Bayesian econometrics - supervised by a
wonderful man who probably didn't have a Bayesian bone in his
body. My first J. Econometrics paper looked at some of
the sampling properties of certain Bayes estimators. How
non-Bayesian can you get?
So, I've always
told students that they need to be flexible in their econometric
thinking, and they need to be prepared to use both frequentist
and Bayesian tools. Time has proved me right, I believe. Modern
econometric practice takes advantage of a healthy mix of ideas
and techniques drawn from both tool boxes.
Yes, this has been
made possible by the considerable advances that we have seen in
computing methods and power in recent decades. But it's also
reflected something of a shift in the mind-set of statisticians
and econometricians alike.
Here's the
concluding section of the Bayari and Berger paper, in its
entirety (pp.77-78):
"It seems quite
clear that both Bayesian and frequentist philosophy are here to
stay, and that we should not expect either to disappear in the
future. This is not to say that all Bayesian or all frequentist methodology
is fine and will survive. To the contrary, there are many areas
of frequentist methodology that should be replaced by (existing)
Bayesian methodology that provides superior answers, and the
verdict is still out on those Bayesian methodologies that have
been exposed as having potentially serious frequentist
problems.
Philosophical
unification of the Bayesian and frequentist positions is not
likely, nor desirable, since each illuminates a different aspect
of statistical inference. We can hope, however, that we will
eventually have a general methodological unification, with both
Bayesian and frequentists agreeing on a body of standard
statistical procedures for general use"
I hope that
student followers of this blog will take the time to read the Bayari
and Berger paper, and to learn more about Bayesian methods.
Statistical Science Reading List for June 2014 Compiled by David Giles in
Canada ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/05/june-reading-list.html
Put away that novel! Here's some really fun June reading:
-
Berger, J.,
2003. Could Fisher, Jeffreys and Neyman have agreed on testing?.
Statistical Science, 18, 1-32.
-
Canal, L. and R. Micciolo, 2014. The chi-square controversy.
What if Pearson had R? Journal of Statistical Computation and
Simulation, 84, 1015-1021.
-
Harvey, D. I., S. J. Leybourne, and A. M. R. Taylor, 2014. On
infimum Dickey-Fuller unit root tests allowing for a trend break under
the null. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 78,
235-242.
-
Karavias, Y. and E. Tzavalis, 2014. Testing for unit roots in
short panels allowing for a structural breaks. Computational
Statistics and Data Analysis, 76, 391-407.
-
King, G.
and M. E. Roberts, 2014. How robust standard errors expose
methodological problems they do not fix, and what to do about it.
Mimeo., Harvard University.
-
Kuroki, M. and J. Pearl, 2014. Measurement bias and effect
restoration in causal inference. Biometrika, 101, 423-437.
-
Manski, C., 2014.
Communicating uncertainty in official economic statistics. Mimeo.,
Department of Economics, Northwestern University.
-
Martinez-Camblor, P., 2014. On correlated z-values in hypothesis
testing. Computational
Statistics and Data Analysis,
in press.
My favorite critique of statistical inference:
The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs,
Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
"The Thirteenth Annual In2: In Thinking Network Forum," by Jim Martin,
MAAW's Blog, May 30, 2014 ---
http://maaw.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-thirteenth-annual-in2-in-thinking.html
Grade 12 ACT Admissions Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_%28examination%29
"ACT Exam Will Include New Writing Scores and Readiness Indicators,"
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/act-exam-will-include-new-writing-scores-readiness-indicators/38473?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
The big tests keep evolving. Three months after the
College Board
unveiled plans for
revising the SAT, its rival—ACT Inc.—announced on Friday coming changes in
its own examination, now the nation’s most widely used college-entrance
test.
Starting next year, students who take the ACT will
receive more information about their readiness for college and careers, ACT
officials said. The test results will include a “STEM Score,” representing a
student’s performance on the mathematics and science portions of the exam,
and an “English Language Arts Score,” which will combine the student’s
performance on the English, reading, and writing sections.
The exam also will include two new indicators.
One will show whether a student is likely to understand the kinds of complex
texts he or she will take in college.
The other will assess a test taker’s career
readiness, revealing his or her mastery of skills—such as applied math and
reading-for-information—that employers value, ACT officials said. The
measure will be based on the scores of students who have taken both the ACT
and ACT Inc.’s WorkKeys tests, which are job-skills assessments (Illinois
and Michigan, for instance, give both exams to all 11th graders).
“We asked how we can make the results more useful
and more relevant to students, teachers, and counselors,” Jon Erickson,
president of education and career solutions at ACT, said in an interview on
Tuesday.
The new scores and indicators will supplement
students’ overall score on the exam. The ACT’s traditional 1-to-36 scale
will stay the same.
But the ACT’s optional writing test is changing.
Currently, the prompt for the 30-minute essay asks test takers to argue one
side of an issue, such as whether high schools should require students to
wear uniforms. Although samples of the new prompts were not yet available,
Edward R. Colby, a spokesman for ACT, said the questions would be more
nuanced.
“It won’t be ‘this side or that side,’” Mr. Colby
said. “The question will ask students for multiple perspectives and support.
It will be a more-complex prompt than what we’re delivering now.”
The essays will be scored in four categories: ideas
and analysis, development and support, organization, and language use. That
approach will allow students to better determine their strengths and
weaknesses, Mr. Erickson said. (Now, two graders score the essays on a
1-to-6 scale, based on an overall evaluation of the writing; the two scores
are summed.)
Those changes may or may not make the writing test
more appealing to colleges, most of which do not require applicants to
submit writing scores (a shrinking number of institutions—about 12
percent—use the ACT writing test, according to ACT). Still, some of the
colleges that do require it are large, and a majority of ACT takers write
essays (52 percent of high-school seniors graduating this year).
Also this week, ACT officials said that four more
states—Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wisconsin—would require all
high-school juniors in public schools to take the ACT as part of a statewide
assessment program. That will bring the total to 17 states.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Venezuelan Prostitutes Are Making A Killing By Doubling As Currency
Traders," by Linette Lopez, Business Insider, June 9, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/prostitutes-trade-dollars-in-venezuela-2014-6
"Gender Bias Alleged at UCLA's Anderson Business School," by
Melissa,Korn, The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/gender-bias-alleged-at-uclas-anderson-business-school-1401924672
One of the nation's
top-ranked business schools is "inhospitable to women faculty," according to
an internal academic review.
Faculty of the Anderson
Graduate School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles,
received a confidential copy of the review, conducted by a group of
university professors and outside business-school deans, in April. The next
day, the institution's first female dean, Judy Olian, met with the heads of
several other elite business schools at the White House, where the group
discussed business schools' roles in making workplaces friendlier to women
and working families.
Back on campus, many
professors noted the irony. Among the findings of the report, which was
reviewed by The Wall Street Journal: Anderson is inconsistent in how it
hires and promotes women as compared with men; has created "gender ghettos"
in certain academic areas; and shows a "lack of confidence" in female
faculty.
Dr. Olian said her
administration is taking the findings seriously, and that the climate for
women has been a priority since she became dean eight years ago. "This is
going to require a lot more than numbers and policies. It's really
soul-searching," Dr. Olian said. "I have to ask myself, what here might have
had unintended consequences? And what subtle things should we, can we, must
we be doing to improve the climate?"
Dr. Olian has notched many
accomplishments during her tenure at Anderson: She raised $190 million for
the school, successfully wrested administrative control away from the state
education system and, in the past four years, oversaw a 60% jump in
full-time M.B.A. applications.
But other than the dean
herself, no women hold any of the school's 24 endowed chairs, prestigious
positions used to attract and retain top talent.
Women made up 20% of
tenure-track faculty at Anderson and 14.3% of those with tenure in the
2012-2013 academic year, including Dr. Olian, according to school figures.
By comparison, an analysis
of 16 peer institutions—including the business schools at the University of
Virginia, Stanford University and University of Michigan—found that, on
average, about 30% of tenure-track and 19.5% of tenured faculty were women
in the 2012-2013 year. That analysis was done by the Association to Advance
Collegiate Schools of Business, an accrediting group.
Gender is a fraught issue at
many elite business schools. Harvard Business School gained attention last
fall for its aggressive efforts to help women faculty and students thrive
more in the classroom. And at the Yale School of Management, an instructor
sued in federal court late last year, alleging gender and age discrimination
after her appointment wasn't renewed. Yale says the suit is without merit.
Interviews with professors
and administrators at a number of top programs suggest that the problems are
particularly acute at Anderson. The internal report states that women have
high rates of job satisfaction when beginning careers at the school, but
face a "lack of respect" regarding their work and "unevenly applied"
standards on decisions about pay and promotions.
Twice in the past three
years, the university's governing academic body took the relatively rare
step of overruling Dr. Olian, who had recommended against the promotion of
one woman and against giving tenure to another, according to four Anderson
professors.
In one case, the university
found that policies allowing faculty to take parental leave without falling
behind on the tenure track had been incorrectly applied to the candidate. In
that same period, they said, a male candidate for promotion passed through
the Anderson review, but didn't get clearance from the university.
Dr. Olian and a UCLA
representative declined to comment, citing personnel privacy.
After seeing the review's
initial findings in January, Dr. Olian created a Gender Equity Task Force.
Among other things, the group wants to standardize promotion review
criteria, said Aimee Drolet Rossi, a marketing professor and a member of the
task force.
Prof. Rossi, who has been at
the school since 1997, said she hasn't observed overt discrimination or
hostility at Anderson, but said she has witnessed subtle digs and dismissive
comments directed at women from colleagues and students. "It's death by a
thousand paper cuts," she said.
The concerns at Anderson
arose from a November review by the university's academic senate, which
regularly assesses the academic health of UCLA's departments. The authors of
the report—a group that included four UCLA professors and deans of three
other business schools—set out to review issues related to academics only,
but concerns about women faculty arose repeatedly during the evaluation, the
report said.
The report praised the
school's academic rigor and world-class faculty under Dr. Olian's
leadership. But it also concluded that school administrators have done
little to address problems raised in a 2006 study of gender at Anderson.
Dr. Olian disputed that: "To
say that [the 2006 report] didn't capture the attention of the
administration I don't think is really in line with the facts. In fact, I
think it's wrong," she said in an interview, adding that the school
implemented eight or nine of about a dozen recommendations.
Anderson this school year
added female faculty and reduced the overall tenure-track pool, bringing to
28% the share of tenure-track faculty who are women. And the number of
female full professors has tripled during Dr. Olian's tenure—to six, not
including Dr. Olian—making women 12% of the 49 full professors on faculty.
The percentage of women
enrolled in Anderson's full-time M.B.A. program rose to 34% last year from
28% in 2006.
Professors of both sexes at
Anderson said the latest report accurately captured the atmosphere.
"I was, like, 'Wow, it's
spot on,' " said one woman management professor who asked to remain
anonymous. "I was pleased to see it come out."
Barbara Lawrence, a tenured
professor of management and organizations who has spent 30-plus years at
Anderson, is leaving the school this month, weary of being told, for
example, that her research was insignificant.
She also said she fought for
years both before and after Dr. Olian's arrival to bring her salary in line
with male peers after discovering a $30,000 gap, finally nearing parity in
2009.
In an interview, Dr. Olian
declined to comment on Prof. Lawrence's pay differential claim, but said
most merit reviews run on a three to four year cycle.
Continued in article
History of Professional Women ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
Bob Jensen's threads on gender issues in academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GenderSalaryDifferences
From How-to-Geek Newsletter on June 2, 2014
Download Wiley's Information Security Book Bundle -- A Free 228 Page Sampler
This Wiley e-book bundle includes selected materials
from 5 recently published titles in Wiley's expansive catalog of titles. The
material that is included for each selection is the book's full Table of
Contents as well as a full sample chapter for your enjoyment.
Click here to download
Download the Essentials of the Cloud - Includes the Free Demystifying The
Cloud eBook
Download this kit to learn everything you need to know
about Cloud - Includes the Free Demystifying The Cloud eBook
Click here to download
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on June 10, 2014
NCAA in $20 million videogame settlement with ex-athletes
The National Collegiate Athletic
Association settled a lawsuit brought by college players over
Electronic Arts Inc.’s
college-themed football and basketball videogames, announced in the opening
minutes of another landmark trial over pay for college athletes, the
WSJ’s Sharon Terlep reports.
The NCAA said it would pay $20 million to current and
former Bowl Subdivision football players and Division I men’s basketball
players. The settlement is historic in that the NCAA will cut a check to
modern-day college players for their on-field performance, yet the NCAA
maintains it can prohibit college athletes from earning money off their play
while in school.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education athletics controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Athletics
From CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on May 30, 2014
China hacking is deep and diverse
China’s Internet espionage capabilities are deeper and more widely
dispersed than believed, the WSJ
reports, underscoring the challenge the
U.S. faces in addressing what Washington considers economic espionage. Some
of the most sophisticated intruders observed by U.S. officials and
private-sector security firms work as hackers for hire. Sometimes
freelancers appear to take orders from the military, at other times from
state-owned firms seeking a competitive advantage.
"Redesigning Mary Meeker's Ugly Internet Slideshow," by Belinda Lanks,
Bloomberg Businessweek, May 30, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-30/redesigning-mary-meekers-ugly-internet-slideshow
Jensen Comments
Some slides have less text, which is probably a good thing during the
presentation. However, for those of us who cannot attend the presentation,
sometimes more text adds value for a much larger absentee audience. A dark
background is easier on the eye, and the dark background makes it easier to
track a red laser pointer. However, be sure to set the your printer so that it
does not drain your printer ink to print dark backgrounds.
Bob Jensen's threads on PowerPoint and other presentation helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#PowerPointHelpers
Best of the Scout Report (from the University of Wisconsin) for 2014
Reader Favorites
-
National Center for Science Education: Publications & Media
-
Iowa Maps Digital Collection
-
Whaling History: Laura Jernegan, Girl on a Whaleship
Staff Favorites
-
MakeUseOf
-
Finding Our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond
-
Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
-
Butterick's Practical Typography
-
World Food Clock
-
Nature Soundmap
-
Museum of Fine Arts: Hippie Chic
Jensen Comment
Many of the Scout Report links over the years are included in
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
I'm still working on the index by adding a few index items each week.
From the Scout Report on May 29, 2014
Delete It Later ---
http://www.deleteitlater.com/
Have you ever wanted to delete a Facebook or
Twitter post after it was published? It can be a good practice but can be
tough to remember. Delete It Later allows users to schedule the posting of
statuses, updates, and photos along with the option to schedule when the
content will be removed. This version is compatible with all operating
systems.
ReMarkable ---
http://remarkable.seedlessapps.com
Educators and professionals will be delighted to
learn about SeedlessApps.com’s flagship application, ReMarkable. This handy
app allows students or co-workers to submit documents digitally. It's a
great way to reduce the use of paper and users can mark all documents and
then send them back in pdf format. This particular version is compatible
with Apple devices with iOS 6.0 or later
Ancient underwater volcano, Ka’ena, discovered in Hawai’i
Researchers discover precursor volcano to the island of Oahu
http://www.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=6529
Found! New Underwater Volcano Discovered in Hawaii
http://www.livescience.com/45680-new-hawaii-volcano-discovered-ka-ena.html
Ancient Underwater Volcano Discovered in Hawaii
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/20/us-usa-volcano-hawaii-idUSKBN0E006F20140520
Ka’ena: Scientists Discover New Underwater Volcano on Hawai’i
http://www.sci-news.com/geology/science-kaena-volcano-hawaii-01931.html
Hawaii Volcanoes History
http://www.ohranger.com/hawaii-volcanoes/hawaii-volcanoes-history
Violent Hawaii - Video: Full Episode
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/violent-hawaii/video-full-episode/1422/
From the Scout Report on June 13, 2014
Ravel ---
https://www.ravellaw.com/
The Ravel app is designed for lawyers and legal
professionals looking for key law review materials in a timely fashion.
First-time visitors should start with the Take Tour tab to get used to how
it works. Additionally, the in-house blog is a great source of information
and there is a great word cloud feature that can be most useful. This
version is compatible with all operating systems.
Marco Polo ---
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/marco-polo-find-your-phone/id866937080
If you yell out Marco Polo, will your phone appear?
It might if you elect to download this attractive, interactive app. Designed
by Matt Wiechec, users can simply shout "Marco!" and wait for their phone to
reply "Polo!” from wherever it is hiding. It's quite easy to use and it is
compatible with Apple devices running iOS 7.0 or later.
Summer travel season is well under way in the United States
American, Southwest See Strong Start to Summer Travel
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-06-09/american-southwest-see-strong-start-to-summer-travel
STR Predicts Strong Summer Performance for U.S. Hotel Industry
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article78063.html
Five U.S. Summer Trip Ideas
http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/five-us-summer-trip-ideas
8 Best Cheap Summer Vacations
http://travel.usnews.com/Rankings/Best_Cheap_Summer_Vacations/
Nantucket Among Best All-American Summer Trips
http://www.boston.com/travel/new-england/2014/06/10/nantucket-among-best-all-american-summer-trips/e018OtgqxjtEZjtGf1OSOK/story.html
National Park Service: Travel Itinerary Series
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/
Bob Jensen's Travel Ideas and Helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#Travel
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Robert R. McCormick Foundation: Resources (tools for teaching and learning)
---
http://www.mccormickfoundation.org/page.aspx?pid=640
Lesley University Library: Data Sources and Teaching Resources ---
http://research.lesley.edu/content.php?pid=98065&sid=735233
Bay Area Television Archive ---
http://digital-collections.library.sfsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16737coll5
MagLab U: Learning about Electricity and Magnetism ---
http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/
A Master List of 1,000 Free Courses From Top Universities: 30,000 Hours of
Audio/Video Lectures ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/list-of-1000-free-courses-from-top-universities.html
There are 150 free business courses ---
http://www.openculture.com/business_free_courses
Principles of Managerial Accounting - Free iTunes Audio -
Anthony Catanach & Noah Barskey, Villanova
---
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/principles-managerial-accounting/id388954205?mt=10
Accounting and Its Use in Business Decisions - Free – Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Accounting-and-Its-Use-in-Business-Decisions
Accounting in 60 Minutes: A Brief Introduction - Free - Udemy ---
https://www.udemy.com/accounting-in-60-minutes-a-brief-introduction/?dtcode=th48xvn5
Fundamentals of Accounting – Free - Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Introduction-to-Accounting-1
Introduction to Accounting - Free – US Small Business Administration ---
http://www.sba.gov/sba-learning-center/training/introduction-accounting
Introduction to Cash Accounting - Free – Alison ---
http://alison.com/courses/Introduction-to-Cash-Accounting
Managerial Accounting - Free – Saylor.org ---
http://www.saylor.org/courses/bus105/
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
Open Source Physics ---
http://www.compadre.org/osp/
MagLab U: Learning about Electricity and Magnetism ---
http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/
Science Fair Projects in Biology, Natural History and Agriculture Science ---
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/tracer-bullets/bio-agtb.html
Teach the Earth ---
http://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/index.html
"There’s a Huge Underground Ocean (bigger than any ocean on the surface) That
Could Explain the Origin of Seas," by Melissa Hellmann, Time Magazine,
June 13, 2014 ---
http://time.com/2868283/subterranean-ocean-reservoir-core-ringwoodite/
Expeditions at the Field Museum: Amazonian Birds ---
http://expeditions.fieldmuseum.org/amazonian-birds-0
Visionary Engineering: Harold "Doc" Edgerton (MIT History) ---
http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/
Lesley University Library: Data Sources and Teaching Resources ---
http://research.lesley.edu/content.php?pid=98065&sid=735233
U.S. Copyright Office: Historical Information ---
http://www.copyright.gov/history/index.html
Arkansas Natural Resources Commission ---
http://www.anrc.arkansas.gov/
From the Scout Report on May 29, 2014
Ancient underwater volcano, Ka’ena, discovered in Hawai’i
Researchers discover precursor volcano to the island of Oahu
http://www.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=6529
Found! New Underwater Volcano Discovered in Hawaii
http://www.livescience.com/45680-new-hawaii-volcano-discovered-ka-ena.html
Ancient Underwater Volcano Discovered in Hawaii
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/20/us-usa-volcano-hawaii-idUSKBN0E006F20140520
Ka’ena: Scientists Discover New Underwater Volcano on Hawai’i
http://www.sci-news.com/geology/science-kaena-volcano-hawaii-01931.html
Hawaii Volcanoes History
http://www.ohranger.com/hawaii-volcanoes/hawaii-volcanoes-history
Violent Hawaii - Video: Full Episode
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/violent-hawaii/video-full-episode/1422/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Duke University: Sanford School of Public Policy ---
http://research.sanford.duke.edu/papers/
New England Public Policy Center Working Papers (banking) ---
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/neppc/wp
Morrison Institute for Public Policy ---
http://morrisoninstitute.asu.edu/
Lesley University Library: Data Sources and Teaching Resources ---
http://research.lesley.edu/content.php?pid=98065&sid=735233
e-Archives: Governors Web Records (current and former USA governors) ---
http://kdla.ky.gov/records/e-archives/Pages/GovWebRecords.aspx
Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe ---
http://exhibitions.guggenheim.org/futurism/
Arkansas Natural Resources Commission ---
http://www.anrc.arkansas.gov/
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Law and Legal Studies
Duke University: Sanford School of Public Policy ---
http://research.sanford.duke.edu/papers/
U.S. Copyright Office: Historical Information ---
http://www.copyright.gov/history/index.html
From the Scout Report on June 13, 2014
Ravel ---
https://www.ravellaw.com/
The Ravel app is designed for lawyers and legal
professionals looking for key law review materials in a timely fashion.
First-time visitors should start with the Take Tour tab to get used to how
it works. Additionally, the in-house blog is a great source of information
and there is a great word cloud feature that can be most useful. This
version is compatible with all operating systems.
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math Tutorials
MathJax (mathematics visual displays) ---
http://www.mathjax.org/
Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
History Tutorials
Colossal (Art History) ---
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/
The Brummer Gallery Records (Art History) ---
http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16028coll9
Gauguin: Metamorphoses (art history) ---
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/gauguin/
Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise (art history) ---
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/gauguin/
National Archives: Docs Teach (Historical Documents) ---
http://docsteach.org/
Kress Foundation (European Art History) ---
http://www.kressfoundation.org/
Winona Newspaper Project (Small Town Newspaper Histories) ---
http://www.winona.edu/library/databases/winonanewspaperproject.htm
George and Frank C. Hirahara Photograph Collection, 1943-1945 (especially
Japanese American Incarceration) ---
http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/hiraharag
Pullman Digital Collection (Railroad History) ---
http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/index_nby_pullman.php?CISOROOT=/nby_pullman
U.S. Copyright Office: Historical Information ---
http://www.copyright.gov/history/index.html
In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 3D Printers and Trained
Monkey Servants ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/in-1964-arthur-c-clarke-predicts-the-internet-3d-printers-and-trained-monkey-servants.html
Open VA: Video Archive (History of Virginia) ---
http://openva.org/live/
San Francisco Public Library: Golden Gate International Exposition ---
http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000036601
Ralph Fasanella: Lest We Forget (Common Man Art History) ---
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2014/fasanel
Columbia Spectator (History of Columbia University) ---
http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/
Brooklyn Historical Society Blog ---
http://brooklynhistory.org/blog/
The Digital Atlas of Idaho ---
http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/
WSU Vancouver Historic Collection ---
http://library.vancouver.wsu.edu/archive/ws
Idaho Trails ---
http://www.trails.idaho.gov/trails/
Mountains and Mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest ---
https://content.lib.washington.edu/portals/mountaineering/index.html
Priest Lake Museum Association Collection (Idaho)---
http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/priestlake
Horrific WWII Statistics
http://pippaettore.com/Horrific_WWII_Statistics.html
Unearthing St. Augustine's Colonial Heritage ---
http://ufdc.ufl.edu/usach
Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe ---
http://exhibitions.guggenheim.org/futurism/
Duke University: Sanford School of Public Policy ---
http://research.sanford.duke.edu/papers/
Calisphere: Disasters (in California) ---
http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/mapped/disasters/
Teach the Earth ---
http://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/index.html
19th Century Caricatures of Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, H.M. Stanley & Other
Famous Victorians (1873) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/19th-century-caricatures-of-charles-darwin-twain.html
Read 9 Books By Noam Chomsky Free Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/05/read-9-books-by-noam-chomsky-free-online.html
Visionary Engineering: Harold "Doc" Edgerton (MIT History) ---
http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/
e-Archives: Governors Web Records (current and former USA governors) ---
http://kdla.ky.gov/records/e-archives/Pages/GovWebRecords.aspx
Iconic Italian Graphic Artist Bruno Munari's Rare Vintage "Interactive"
Picture-Books ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/12/bruno-munari-nella-nebbia-nella-notte/
Monty Python Links ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/michael-palins-tour-of-the-best-loved-monty-python-sketch-locations.html
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
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
Music Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
May 30, 2014
May 31, 2014
June 2, 2014
June 4, 2014
June 5, 2014
June 6, 2014
June 9, 2014
June 10, 2014
June 11, 2014
June 12, 2014
June 13, 2014
June 14, 2014
"For One Baby, Life Begins with Genome Revealed: How a California
father made an end run around medicine to decode his son’s DNA," by Antonio
Regalado, MIT's Technology Review, June 13, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527936/for-one-baby-life-begins-with-genome-revealed/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140613
Jensen Comment
One year in a think tank one of my colleagues was Nobel Prize Laureate
Josh Lederberg back
in the days when
cloning of frogs had just commenced. His worry was not so much that cloning
would fail --- rather his worry was that cloning would be highly successful.
The article above is not about cloning per se. But it is closely related. The
modern cloning techniques involving
nuclear transfer have been successfully performed on several species.
Notable experiments include:
-
Tadpole: (1952) Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King had
successfully cloned northern leopard frogs: thirty-five complete
embryos and twenty-seven tadpoles from one-hundred and four successful
nuclear transfers.[26][27]
- Carp:
(1963) In
China,
embryologist
Tong Dizhou produced the world's
first cloned fish by inserting the DNA from a cell of a male carp
into an egg from a female carp. He published the findings in a Chinese
science journal.[28]
-
Mice: (1986) A mouse was successfully cloned from an early embryonic
cell.
Soviet scientists Chaylakhyan, Veprencev, Sviridova, and Nikitin had
the mouse "Masha" cloned. Research was published in the magazine "Biofizika"
volume ХХХII, issue 5 of 1987.[clarification
needed][29]
-
Sheep: Marked the first mammal being cloned (1984) from early
embryonic cells by
Steen Willadsen.
Megan and Morag[30]
cloned from differentiated embryonic cells in June 1995 and
Dolly the sheep from a somatic cell in 1996.[31]
-
Rhesus Monkey:
Tetra (January 2000) from embryo splitting[32][clarification
needed][33]
- Pig: the
first cloned pigs (March 2000).[34]
By 2014,
BGI in China was producing 500 cloned pigs a year to test new
medicines.[35]
- Gaur:
(2001) was the first endangered species cloned.[36]
- Cattle:
Alpha and Beta (males, 2001) and (2005) Brazil[37]
- Cat:
CopyCat "CC" (female, late 2001),
Little Nicky, 2004, was the first cat cloned for commercial reasons[38]
- Rat:
Ralph, the first cloned rat (2003)[39]
- Mule:
Idaho
Gem, a john mule born 4 May 2003, was the first horse-family clone.[40]
- Horse:
Prometea, a Haflinger female born 28 May 2003, was the first horse
clone.[41]
- Dog:
Snuppy,
a male
Afghan hound was the first cloned dog (2005).[42]
-
Wolf:
Snuwolf and Snuwolffy, the first two cloned female wolves (2005).[43]
-
Water Buffalo:
Samrupa was the first cloned water buffalo. It was born on February
6, 2009, at
India's Karnal National Diary Research Institute but died five days
later due to lung infection.[44]
-
Pyrenean Ibex (2009) was the first extinct animal to be cloned back
to life; the clone lived for seven minutes before dying of lung defects.[45][46]
- Camel:
(2009) Injaz,
is the first cloned camel.[47]
-
Pashmina goat: (2012)
Noori, is the first cloned pashmina goat. Scientists at the faculty
of veterinary sciences and animal husbandry of
Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of
Kashmir successfully cloned the first Pashmina goat (Noori) using
the advanced reproductive techniques under the leadership of Riaz Ahmad
Shah.[48]
Jensen Comment
In the early 1900s there was no need to clone bookkeepers --- they were all
alike. Today we are plagued by almost too much diversity of thought and
philosophy and confusion.
An Army vet with no engineering training built his
wife the most amazing wheelchair you've ever seen. Read Joshua Green's
profile of the company, Tankchair, or take five minutes and watch
this
incredibly inspirational video.
http://newsletters.businessweek.com/c/1190484/432f990d4411617f/2
"No World for Old People: Battle Hymn for Seniors," by
Accounting Professor Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, June 10, 2014 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2014/06/no-world-for-old-people.html
I recently returned from a trip to see my mom who
is 95 years old and living in an assisted living facility. Dad passed away
about 1 ½ years ago so an assisted living facility is the best place for my
mom who can barely see or hear and has advanced dementia. During my visit I
reflected on the treatment of seniors like my mom and the expectations of
society for valuing those who came before us and provided opportunities for
all of us to live a better life.
Some seniors are quite vigorous even into their
late 80s and early 90s. Others, like my mom, deal with challenges that would
make most of us not want to get out of bed in the morning. One problem is
the way society treats seniors. Unlike many Asian countries that honor and
respect seniors for their knowledge and years of influence, in the U.S. we
all too often see them as a burden. In East Asian cultures steeped in a
Confucian tradition that places a high value on filial piety, obedience and
respect, it is considered utterly despicable not to take care of your
elderly parents.
In his 1994 book, "Beyond Peace," Richard Nixon
predicted that our nation’s biggest challenge would not be war with a
foreign enemy, but rather an internal “war” over how to allocate money
within our borders. With our national debt above $17 trillion, his
prediction is being realized.
Many current fiscal issues are actually decades
old, but a newer economic and cultural war targeting seniors has been
intensifying. The conflict will only worsen; demographers tell us that about
10,000 Americans will turn 65 each day for nearly the next two decades!
This war is being waged on two fronts. First, a
vicious cultural divide is festering among younger Americans toward seniors.
A Facebook study from March 2013 monitored 84 different groups of 20-29 year
olds, conducted by Cal Berkeley, Yale, Hunter College, and Hopkins School in
New Haven. The report's findings are alarming: “Seniors are a burden to
society;” “I hate everything about them;” “They don’t contribute to
society;” “Anyone over 69 should immediately be put in front of a firing
squad.” I thought, that could be me in two years.
Seniors already face a daunting challenge: savings
remain stagnant, but food and medical costs continue to rise. Last year, the
government decided to garnish seniors’ Social Security payments if they
co-signed on any student loans that became delinquent.
There is bipartisan support in Washington for
reducing Social Security cost of living increases by substituting products
in the calculation, forcing seniors to change eating and living habits,
reducing their ability to maintain a standard of living.
The war on seniors is not just an American
phenomenon. An article published in the April 2013 Generation America
magazine (GenerationAmerica.org), entitled “No World for Old People,”
details how seniors are being neglected, abused, and marginalized worldwide.
Increasingly the younger generation sees seniors as
a fiscal burden not only to the country but their own personal finances as
Medicare and Social Security increasingly consume more and more budget
dollars with no end in sight. In fact, the country may reach a point in the
future where retirees will not receive the Social Security and Medicare
benefits they are entitled to because they have paid into the system for
many years. This is no “freebie” for seniors.
Our society does not honor seniors for their
sacrifices that helped build our great nation. We almost never see a news
report that honors what they have done for our society unless it is Veterans
Day or Memorial Day. Let us never forget that many seniors fought in World
War II. They are part of the greatest generation, saved many lives in
Europe, and were trailblazers in their fields.
The lack of respect and caring for seniors just
reinforces the idea that we truly have a “throw away” society with respect
to our seniors. What is lacking in our society is respect, kindness, and
empathy for seniors. I found myself thinking about this during my trip to
see my mom. Do the children of seniors know where their parents and
grandparents are? Do they know what they are doing;? Do they understand the
challenges they are facing? Do they even care? Or, do these children turn a
blind eye toward the quality of life their parents and grandparents have in
their senior years?
Some people may think: Out of sight, out of mind,
so let’s put them in a nursing home or an assisted living facility. Let
someone else deal with the problems of elder care. This is a way to satisfy
our collective consciousness. Instead, we should reach out to our parents
and grandparents; call them on the phone and ask how they are doing; visit
them from time to time. But, above all else, love them unconditionally – the
way we want to be loved.
Nursing homes and assisted living facilities sound
like the perfect answer to the problem of aging and infirm parents and
grandparents. However, all too often they seem like depressing places to be
and oblivious to the needs of those they are entrusted to care for. Many of
the “care-givers” think of elder care as a burden and they lack the empathy
and patience to treat seniors the way they deserve to be treated – the way
the care-givers would like to be treated in their senior years.
We need to fast forward 20 or 30 or 40 or even 50
years and realize, if we’re lucky, we’ll be around and facing the inevitable
challenges of being in our senior years. Will our children be there for us,
or will they ignore us as do all too many young adults today?
After I ended my trip to see my mom, I looked deep
inside my soul and asked myself whether I am doing all that I should to show
my mom respect, kindness and love. Could I do more? What would that be? If
not now, then when?
"Animal Madness: How Deciphering Mental Illness in Our Fellow Beings Helps
Us Become Better Versions of Ourselves," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings,
June 6, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/06/10/animal-madness-laurel-braitman/
On an Airplane: Think Twice Before Eating Pretzels Directly Off Your
Tray Table ---
http://links.mkt3142.com/ctt?kn=4&ms=ODY2MDM2MgS2&r=MTkyODM0MDg0MAS2&b=0&j=MzAyNDI5MTUxS0&mt=1&rt=0
A Bit of Humor
Dick Cavett’s Worst Show: Starring John Cassavetes, Peter Falk & Ben Gazzara
(1970) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/dick-cavetts-worst-show.html
Jon Stewart Perfectly Mocks Liberals Who Deny Science ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-samantha-bee-vaccination-2014-6
Monty Python Links ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/michael-palins-tour-of-the-best-loved-monty-python-sketch-locations.html
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
• Our Phones –
Wireless
• Cooking –
Fireless
• Cars – Keyless
• Food – Fatless
• Tires
–Tubeless
• Dress –
Sleeveless
• Youth –
Jobless
• Leaders –
Shameless
• Relationships
– Meaningless
• Attitudes –
Careless
• Babies –
Fatherless
• Feelings –
Heartless
• Education –
Valueless
• Children –
Mannerless
• Country –
Godless
Congress - Clueless
Forwarded by Maureen
SENIORS & COMPUTERS
As we Silver Surfers know, sometimes we have trouble with our
computers.
Yesterday, I had a problem, so I called Georgie, the 11 year old
next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control, and asked him to come
over.
Georgie clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.
As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong?
He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'
I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An,
ID ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'
Georgie grinned...'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error
before?
'No,' I replied.
'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'
So I wrote down:
ID10T
I used to like Georgie, the little shithead.
Humor Between
May 1-31, 2014 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q2.htm#Humor053114
Humor Between
April 1-30, 2014 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q2.htm#Humor043014
Humor Between March 1-31,
2014 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor033114
Humor Between February 1-28,
2014 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor022814
Humor Between January 1-31,
2014 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor013114
Humor Between December 1-31,
2013 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q4.htm#Humor123113
Humor Between November 1-30,
2013 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q4.htm#Humor113013
Humor Between October 1-31,
2013 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q4.htm#Humor103113
Humor Between September 1-30, 2013 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q3.htm#Humor093013
Humor Between July 1 and August 31,
2013 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q3.htm#Humor083113
Humor Between June 1-30, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor063013
Humor Between May 1-31, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor053113
Humor Between April 1-30, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor043013
Humor Between March 1-31, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q1.htm#Humor033113
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. |
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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
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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