Tidbits on December 30, 2014
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Photographs of
the Robert Frost Museum Down the Road from Our Cottage
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/FrostMuseum/FrostMuseum01.htm
Wendell Berry wrote that "Pride and
Despair Are the Two Great Enemies of Creative Work," Bob Jensen contends that
the great poet Robert Frost is a total exception to to Wendell Berry's
hypothesis on "pride and despair" ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/17/wendell-berry-pride-despair-solitude/
I don't think it's difficult to find exceptions in virtually any profession. In
fact, being proud and optimistic may be the exception rather than the rule for
creativity relative to being humble and upbeat.
I do agree with Wendell Berry on the
importance of solitude. Robert Frost created fantastic poems in austere
solitude, and even created in times of mental depression. However, he was a very
proud man who despaired about the mental illnesses of his family and himself..
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/FrostMuseum/FrostMuseum01.htm
Tidbits on December 30, 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
Surviving an ISIS Massacre ---
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000003077656/surviving-isis-massacre-iraq.html?playlistId=100000003264440
State Trooper's Memories of Christmases Past ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxjZB5S_g7s
Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vases Come to Life with 21st
Century Animation ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/watch-art-on-ancient-greek-vases-come-to-life-with-21st-century-animation.html
Watch the Opening of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the
Original, Unused Score ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/watch-the-opening-of-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-with-the-original-unused-score.html
Spectacular Outdoor Show ---
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8oqPR5-GLuA?rel=0 '
Champion gymnast with Down syndrome overcomes obstacles,
inspires others ---
http://www.today.com/news/champion-gymnast-down-syndrome-inspire-others-1D80381285
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Watch Darlene Love perform "Christmas" on
Letterman for the last time ---
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/20/7424123/david-letterman-darlene-love
Alan Lomax Recordings (folk music archive) ---
http://clio.lib.olemiss.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/lomax
Christmas Song Lip Synch ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SzXJ3vuCzCc
Lou Reeds Sings “Blue Christmas” with Laurie
Anderson, Rufus Wainwright & Friends ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/lou-reeds-sings-blue-christmas.html
Johnny Cash’s Christmas Specials, Featuring June
Carter, Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman & More (1976-79) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/johnny-cashs-christmas-specials.html
Celtic Woman’ Quartet Sings Beautiful Rendition
of ‘O Holy Night’ ---
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/celtic-woman-quartet-sing-beautiful-rendition-o-holy-night
Cute polar bear cub hitches a lift from his
mother in the Canadian wilderness ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2879253/Polar-bear-cubs-mothers-bond-pictured-10-years.html
Watch the Opening of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey with the Original, Unused Score ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/watch-the-opening-of-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-with-the-original-unused-score.html
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
Pandora (my favorite online music station) ---
www.pandora.com
TheRadio (online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free
music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
Emotional Photos Show Fellow Officers Honoring A
Fallen NYPD Cop ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/powerful-photos-of-rafael-ramos-funeral-2014-12
International Center for Photography ---
http://www.icp.org/museum
This Amazing Aerial Video From The 1980s Provides
A Remarkable View Of America ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-aerial-footage-of-america-2014-12
These Are The 25 Best Satellite Images Of The
Year 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/digitalglobes-best-satellite-images-2014-12
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
2014's Best National Geographic Photos ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/annual-national-geographic-photo-contest-2014-2014-12
25 Incredibly Clever Works Of Art by Banksy ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/banksy-art-2014-10
The Tate Digitizes 70,000 Works of Art; Now
Digitizing Another 52,00 Letters, Photographs & Sketchbooks from British Artists
---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/the-tate-digitizes-70000-works-of-art.html
A Computer Gets Delivered in 1957: Great Moments
in Schlepping History ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/a-computer-gets-delivered-in-1957.html
Incredible Shots Of Chicago From The
International Space Station ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/chicago-seen-from-international-space-station-2014-12
15 Awesome Photos From Sony's 2015 World
Photography Awards ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-awesome-photos-from-sonys-2015-world-photography-awards-2014-12
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
T
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 December 30, 2014
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2014/TidbitsQuotations123014.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
Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone, eReader with Free eBooks, Movies,
Audio Books, Online Courses & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/fill-your-new-kindle-ipad-iphone-ereader-with-free-ebooks-movies-audio-books-online-courses-more.html
Each year I think about ranking AECM listserv postings in terms of the
numbers of replies the original postings generate. However, my experience on the
AECM over the years is that replies take zigs and zags such that they often
become threads totally unrelated to the seminal postings.
There Are Way Too Many ‘Best Of 2014′ Lists ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-are-way-too-many-best-of-2014-lists/
The Worst Science Blunders Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worst-science-fail-moments-2014-12
10 TED talks that defined 2014
Plus the 20 most popular TED talks of all time ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-10-ted-talks-2014-12
The 20 Most Popular TED Talks Of All Time ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-ted-talks-2014-10
10 Of The Most Ridiculous TED Talks ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-ted-talks-2014-8?op=1#ixzz3BJVOOTac
2014 Legal Education Year in Review ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/12/nlj-legal-education-.html
Library Scientists Pick the Best Ten Stories That Shaped 2014 ---
http://lisnews.org/ten_stories_that_shaped_2014
Time Magazine's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Apps
---
http://time.com/3582114/top-10-apps/?xid=newsletter-brief
The 5 Most Popular K-12 Educational Apps of 2014 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/12/17/the-top-5-apps-of-2014.aspx?=THEMOB
The 10 Most-Popular Wired Campus Articles of 2014 (Chronicle of Higher
Education) ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/10-most-popular-wired-campus-articles-of-2014/55381?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
For 2014 what is likely to be the worst performing stock in the Dow Jones
index?
http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-stock-about-to-hit-an-embarrassing-milestone-2014-12
2014 David Pogue Awards ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-2014-pogue-awards-good-evening-and-welcome-105621974869.html
Here Are The 10 Big Market Stories That'll Dominate 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-top-market-themes-for-2015-2014-11
Experts Predict The Cybercrime Of 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/beyond-phishing-experts-predict-the-cybercrime-of-2015-2014-12
Predictions: 10 Things That Will Rock the Tech Market in 2015 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/predictions-10-things-that-will-rock-the-tech-106006071234.html
Best of 2014: Google's Secretive DeepMind Startup Unveils a "Neural Turing
Machine" ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/533741/best-of-2014-googles-secretive-deepmind-startup-unveils-a-neural-turing-machine/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141230
The weirdest political stories of 2014 (Yahoo) ---
http://news.yahoo.com/the-weirdest-political-stories-of-2014-191919116.html
Embarrassing Moments in Tech 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/embarrassing-moments-in-tech-2014-the-high-105632798859.html
2014 in Numbers: Huge Valuations, Shocking Security Stats, and a Big
Climate Deal (MIT) ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533681/2014-in-numbers-huge-valuations-shocking-security-stats-and-a-big-climate-deal/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141229
2014 in Computing: Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533686/2014-in-computing-breakthroughs-in-artificial-intelligence/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141229
Time Magazine: The Top 10 Gadgets of 2014 ---
http://time.com/3582115/top-10-gadgets-2014/?xid=newsletter-brief
Top Five 2014 Wearable Devices ---
http://readwrite.com/2014/12/26/top-wearables-2014-smartwatches-fitness-trackers-vr
The CPA technology gift guide: Consider these products ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2014/dec/cpa-technology-gift-guide.html
Time Magazine: The Best Inventions of 2014 ---
http://time.com/3594971/the-25-best-inventions-of-2014/?xid=newsletter-brief
Yahoo Tech's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Gadgets
---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-10-most-wanted-tech-c1417549586539/photo-iphone-6-photo-1417549459482.html
Jensen Comment
Some of these inventions are cool and very expensive. I find the MS Surface tablet computer
not so expensive and not very cool. I'll take a laptop over a tablet any day of
the week.
One of the many things I don't like are the mini ports that are just too
fragile along with the mini plugs that plug into them Thin is nice in people.
It's not nice in computers. I recommend using a USB port replicator (under $10)
on your tablet computer such that you only have one mini plug to contend with
for USB devices. But I don't like the other mini connectors such as the
mini-power connector.
I like mini skirts but not mini ports on thin tablet computers.
These Are 17 Of Our Favorite Gadgets From The 1990s ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-gadgets-from-the-1990s-2014-12
The Best Art, Design, and Photography Books of the Year ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/08/best-art-design-photography-books-2014/
"The Year's Best Books on Psychology, Philosophy, and How to Live
Meaningfully," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, December 22, 2014 ---
ttp://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/01/best-psychology-philosophy-books-2014/
"The 14 Best Books," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, December 1, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/22/best-books-2014/
The 15 Best Business Books Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-business-books-of-2014-2014-12
The 10 Most Important Sustainable Business Stories from 2014 (Harvard
Business Review) ---
https://hbr.org/2014/12/the-10-most-important-sustainable-business-stories-from-2014?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
America's Best And Worst Banks 2015 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/12/22/full-list-americas-best-and-worst-banks-2015/
The 10 Most Interesting Dating Studies Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-interesting-dating-studies-of-2014-2014-12
2014's Best National Geographic Photos ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/annual-national-geographic-photo-contest-2014-2014-12
15 Awesome Photos From Sony's 2015 World Photography Awards ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-awesome-photos-from-sonys-2015-world-photography-awards-2014-12
The 49 Most Mesmerizing Sports Photos Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-mesmerizing-sports-photos-2014-12
The Most Jaw-Dropping Science Pictures Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-science-pictures-of-the-year-2014-12
The 52 Strangest Photos Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/strangest-photos-2014-2014-12
The Biggest Career Crashes Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-career-crashes-2014-12?op=1
The Best Games of 2014 ---
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/best-games-of-2014/
The 20 Best Video Games of 2014 (yawn) ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-20-best-video-games-c1419375659120.html
Watch the 10 Most Popular YouTube Videos of the Year 2014 (Yahoo Tech)
---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/watch-the-10-most-popular-youtube-videos-of-the-104776395799.html
The Worst Movies of 2014 ---
https://tv.yahoo.com/news/worst-movies-2014-colin-farrell-211600971.html
The 15 Highest-Grossing Movies Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/highest-grossing-movies-2014-2014-12
That does not make them the best movies of 2014. Children's movies do well even
if they're awful because when dads pick up their kids for a weekly visit they
have to do something for entertainment.
The 15 Best-Reviewed Movies Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-movies-2014-2014-12
Best Classical Albums Of 2014 ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2014/12/11/370067981/best-classical-albums-of-2014
The Great Transformation - 33 Top Quotes from Global Peter Drucker Forum
2014 ---
http://www.slideshare.net/vladimirvulic/33-top-quotes-from-global-peter-drucker-forum-2014
SSRN's Top 10,000 Downloads (Ranked) ---
http://hq.ssrn.com/rankings/Ranking_display.cfm?TRN_gID=10
The Guardian's Choice of the 100 Greatest Novels of All Time ---
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction
Dave Barry's Year in Review 2014 ---
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article4940373.html
It was a year of mysteries. To list some of the
more baffling ones:
▪ A
huge airliner simply vanished, and to this day nobody has any idea what
happened to it, despite literally thousands of hours of intensive
speculation on CNN.
▪ Millions
of Americans suddenly decided to make videos of themselves having ice water
poured on their heads. Remember? There were rumors that this had something
to do with charity, but for most of us, the connection was never clear. All
we knew was that, for a while there, every time we turned on the TV, there
was a local newscaster or Gwyneth Paltrow or Kermit the Frog or some random
individual soaking wet and shivering. This mysterious phenomenon ended as
suddenly as it started, but not before uncounted trillions of American brain
cells died of frostbite.
▪ An
intruder jumped the White House fence and, inexplicably, managed to run into
the White House through the unlocked front door. Most of us had assumed that
anybody attempting this would instantly be converted to a bullet-ridden pile
of smoking carbon by snipers, lasers, drones, ninjas, etc., but it turned
out that, for some mysterious reason, the White House had effectively the
same level of anti-penetration security as a Dunkin’ Donuts.
▪ LeBron
James deliberately moved to Cleveland.
Of course not everything that happened in 2014 was
mysterious. Some developments — ISIS, Ebola, the song Happy — were
simply bad. There was even some good news in 2014, mostly in the form of
things that did not happen. A number of GM cars — the final total could be
as high as four — were not recalled. There were several whole days during
which no statements had to be issued by the U.S. Department of Explaining
What The Vice President Meant To Say. And for the fifth consecutive year,
the Yankees failed to even play in the World Series.
But other than that, it was a miserable 12 months.
In case you have forgotten why, let’s take one last look back, starting
with…
JANUARY
…when the nation is invaded by the Polar Vortex,
which blasts in from Canada, bringing with it heavy snows, record low
temperatures and Justin Bieber, who penetrates as far south as Miami before
being arrested for racing a Lamborghini. Weather is also the big story in
drought-stricken California, where the state legislature passes a tough new
water-conservation law requiring all noncelebrity residents to go to the
bathroom in Oregon.
In Colorado, the new year begins on a “high” note
as the sale of recreational marijuana becomes legal. Despite dire
predictions from critics that this will lead to increases in crime and
addiction, state law-enforcement officials report that if you stare for a
while at the flashing lights on top of their cars, you can see some amazing
colors.
The U.S. Senate confirms Janet Yellen as chair of
the Federal Reserve after she assures senators that she will let them know
if anybody ever figures out what the Federal Reserve actually does.
In a major speech, President Barack Obama,
responding to allegations that the National Security Agency has been
electronically snooping on foreign leaders, announces that all federal
agencies will henceforth follow strict new guidelines on the sale and
distribution of photos of Angela Merkel naked.
In other foreign affairs, French President François
Hollande is embroiled in a sex scandal involving his attractive girlfriend
and an attractive actress despite the fact that he looks remarkably like
George Costanza.
Elsewhere abroad, NBA legend and idiot Dennis
Rodman makes a fourth visit to North Korea to hang out with his
misunderstood pal Kim Jong-Un, who defeats Rodman 168-0 in a friendly
one-on-one game refereed by the North Korean army, then celebrates by firing
a missile at Japan.
Speaking of soldiers, in…
FEBRUARY
…as the Northeast continues to be battered by heavy
snows and subzero temperatures, the Massachusetts National Guard is called
out to battle the Polar Vortex, eventually cornering it inside a Costco
store near Boston, where it barricades itself along with several dozen
hostages who are forced to survive by eating caramel cheddar popcorn from
containers the size of hot tubs.
In sports, the largest audience in American TV
history tunes in to watch one of the most anticipated Super Bowls in years,
pitting the Denver Broncos against the Seattle Seahawks in a historic
matchup so boring that the entire second half is pre-empted by Bud Light
commercials. In other football news, Michael Sam, a defensive end for the
University of Missouri, makes history by becoming the first Division I
college football player to openly declare that he actually attended some
classes.
But the big sports story takes place in Sochi,
where Russia hosts the Winter Olympics. Despite fears of violence, the games
go smoothly until late in the opening ceremony, when — in what observers
view as a troubling omen — the Russian biathlon team wipes out the entire
Ukrainian delegation.
General Motors recalls 800,000 Chevrolet Cobalts
and Pontiac G5s after tests show they don’t always have enough wheels.
President Obama hosts a state dinner for French President François “Le
Muffin de Stud” Hollande, who arrives at the White House driving a red
scooter with two women riding on the back and three more chasing on foot.
In politics, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie,
responding to a radio interviewer’s questions about his alleged role in the
2013 “Bridgegate” lane-closure scandal, eats the interviewer. And in a
historic policy shift, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announces that
same-sex married couples will henceforth be subject to the same
incomprehensible tax laws as everybody else.
Speaking of incomprehensible, in…
MARCH
…the news is dominated by the baffling
disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has millions of viewers
tuning in to CNN to follow its round-the-clock exclusive video coverage of
random unidentified objects floating in the ocean that might be airplane
pieces — although they never actually turn out to BE airplane pieces, but
they MIGHT have been — accompanied by countless hours of analysis by a wide
array of experts who have no more actual knowledge of what happened to
Flight 370 than the people selling jewelry on the Home Shopping Network.
Abroad, the big story involves the Crimea, which
until now many of us thought was a disease, as in “Bob has a bad case of the
Crimea,” but which turns out to be a part of Ukraine that Russia wants to
annex. As tension mounts in the region, the United States and the European
Union issue Stern Warnings to Russia, such as “You better not annex the
Crimea!” And: “Don’t make us turn this car around!” Nevertheless Russia goes
ahead and annexes it, forcing the U.S. and Europe to escalate from Stern
Warnings to Harsh Sanctions, including the suspension of Vladimir Putin’s
Netflix account.
In other international developments, Bill Clinton
discreetly inquires about the legal requirements involved in running for
president of France.
Hopes for an end to the brutal winter weather are
dashed when the Polar Vortex, having disguised itself as a warm front,
manages to slip past surrounding Massachusetts National Guard troops and
escape moments before the Costco is leveled by artillery fire, destroying
two-thirds of the state’s supply of jerky.
On a happier note, Colorado announces that it has
already collected marijuana sales taxes totaling $2million, which the state
plans to spend on “a subwoofer the size of Delaware.”
General Motors recalls 1.5million more cars to
correct a steering issue that causes certain models to deliberately aim for
elderly pedestrians.
In a development that surprises film critics,
Academy Awards voters, apparently hoping to woo a younger audience, award
the Oscar for Best Picture to Sharknado.
Speaking of surprises, in…
APRIL
…Russia, ignoring both the Stern Warnings and the
Harsh Sanctions, continues its military intervention in Ukraine, leaving the
United States with no choice but to deploy the ultimate weapon: Joe Biden,
who is sent to Kiev to deliver a Strong Rebuke, followed by dinner.
On the domestic front, U.S. Secretary of Health and
Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who oversaw the rollout of Obamacare,
resigns from the cabinet to take a position overseeing email storage for the
Internal Revenue Service.
In an aviation miracle, a 15-year-old boy sneaks
into the landing-gear compartment of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767 and
somehow survives a five-hour flight from San Jose to Maui. Hours later major
U.S. airlines jointly announce that they are offering “an exciting new
seating option for budget-minder flyers who enjoy fresh air.”
In financial news, India edges ahead of Japan to
become the world’s third-largest economy in purchasing power, behind JayZ
and Beyonce.
General Motors, in what analysts view as a shrewd
tactical move, announces that it is recalling 435,000 Fords. Tyson Foods
recalls 75,000 pounds of frozen chicken nuggets following reports that some
of them may contain chicken.
On a happier note, the Polar Vortex finally goes
back to Canada after becoming involved in a street altercation with Alec
Baldwin.
In sports, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald
Sterling, whose racist comments have sparked widespread outrage, is given
the NBA’s harshest possible punishment: season tickets to the Knicks.
Speaking of harsh punishments, in…
MAY
…the United States and Europe, which are really
starting to lose patience with Russia’s actions in Ukraine, announce that
they intend to “seriously consider” taking steps that could ultimately
result in the cancellation of Vladimir Putin’s American Express card.
Continued in article
21 Uses For Rubber Bands You Never Thought Of ---
http://www.brainjet.com/random/6497/21-uses-for-rubber-bands-you-never-thought-of?til=d-dy-6497#slide/0
The illustrated guide to a Ph.D
By Computer Scientist Matt Might
http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
Jensen Comment
I always define scholarship as the mastery of existing knowledge versus research
as the discovery of new knowledge.
How to Ensure Your Home Router Has the Latest Security Updates ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/205299/how-to-ensure-your-home-router-has-the-latest-security-updates/
How To Monitor File And Folder Changes in Windows ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/205144/how-to-monitor-file-and-folder-changes-in-windows/
How to Troubleshoot the Chrome Browser on Windows ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/troubleshoot-chrome-home-081503576.html
Google Tools ---
http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/products/
Jensen Comment
I have a long-standing problem playing Adobe Flash on Firefox but not Chrome or
Windows Explorer browsers.
By now most of us are familiar with Camtasia and some of the other software
(ranging from free on up) for recording computer screen changes into video files
along with accompanying microphone narration ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
Other alternatives for putting digital pictures into video shows
Here are some of the lesser-known alternatives, e.g., alternatives for putting
digital pictures into video shows ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/205742/how-to-record-your-windows-mac-linux-android-or-ios-screen/
I'm sure that others have noticed what I've noticed is that the correlation
of standout stars on a team and team performance is not as highly correlated as
most star-struck people believe. Both the top NBA playoff team in 2014 and the
NFL super bowl winning teams had no superstar individual players.
NBA Power Rankings by Team at the end of 2014 ---
http://espn.go.com/nba/powerrankings
NBA Superstars at the end of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/nba-mvp-power-rankings-week-8-2014-12
Having said this, the power rankings of the NFL at the end of 2014 almost
all, but not all, have a high-ranking quarterback ---
http://espn.go.com/nfl/powerrankings
But a great team is seemingly a necessary condition to having a high-ranking
quarterback. The real test of a football team is how well it can do without
the team's number one quarterback. For example, a great defense gives the
offense a lot more time on the field for scoring touchdowns. A great offense
generally has scoring alternatives without the top quarterback, especially the
ability to chew up the game clock.
In academe the top researchers and top teachers are not necessarily the top
education leaders.
For example, the highest performers on the Pathways Commission in the American
Accounting Association do not come to mind as being the top-ranked researchers
or classroom teachers, although rankings of teachers are more difficult to find
than rankings of researchers. The leaders on the Pathways Commission tend not to
be from the US News highest ranked business schools. Perhaps they are
more like team players than stars.
Sysinternals ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysinternals
This How-To Geek School series will teach you how to use SysInternals tools
like a pro, and even the most hard-core geeks will probably learn something new.
Join us as we take a deep dive into SysInternals.
-
What Are the SysInternals Tools and How Do You Use Them?
-
Understanding Process Explorer
-
Using Process Explorer to Troubleshoot and Diagnose
-
Understanding Process Monitor
-
Using Process Monitor to Troubleshoot and Find Registry Hacks
-
Using Autoruns to Deal with Startup Processes and Malware
-
Using BgInfo to Display System Information on the Desktop
-
Using PsTools to Control Other PCs from the Command Line
-
Analyzing and Managing Your Files, Folders, and Drives
-
Wrapping Up and Using the Tools Together
Amazon Echo ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo
"We Try the Amazon Echo," by Rob Pegoraro, Yahoo Tech, December
15, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/we-try-the-amazon-echo-105298730089.html
"Working In Wealth Management Taught Me Most Financial Advisers Aren't
Worth The Cost," by Peter Dolan, FutureAdvisor, Business Insider,
December 15, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-financial-advisers-arent-worth-the-cost-2014-12
Jensen Comment
I agree. I think investors should first try out the free services from
trustworthy funds like Vanguard or Fidelity. Or they might get into some
long-term investments but not retain the financial adviser year-after-year.
Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
"These Are the Students Getting the Biggest Signing Bonuses Next Year,"
Akane Otani, Bloomberg Businessweek, December 17, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-17/these-are-the-students-getting-the-biggest-signing-bonuses-next-year
It's not clear that Otani surveyed selected graduates from the most
prestigious MBA programs and top athletics programs who, on occasion, receive
very large signing bonuses. However, since so many of their graduating cohorts
receive zero bonuses the averages may become quite low.
There are also definitional problems when it comes to "bonuses."
For example, are reimbursed moving expenses "signing bonuses?" Are travel
expense reimbursements and gifts (like technology equipment) prior to moves from
campus "signing bonuses?" Some Ph.D. graduates, including accounting Ph.D.
graduates, get instant research expense budgets before the teaching chores
begin. For example, top R1 research programs may provide new accounting Ph.D.s
with starting expense budgets of $10,000 to $30,000 in addition to summer salary
stipends before commencing the Fall Term. Are these in essence "signing
bonuses?"
Some employers will provide funding of some type to tag-along spouses. For
example, University X may really want that new Ph.D. from MIT and will offer the
spouse with an MBA a part-time adjunct teaching position. Is this in essence a
"signing bonus?"
And there are universities in expensive housing markets that will offer deals
on housing. Stanford and NYU offer relatively low cost and often temporary
housing on campus to new faculty for five years. The Harvard Business School has
dorms where with faculty apartments for new faculty.
Skype’s Newest App Will Translate Your Speech in Real Time ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/skypes-newest-app-will-translate-your-speech-in-105272438739.html
Prezy --- http://prezi.com/
Sway Office App ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sway_%28Office_app%29
Swaying the Public
"Microsoft's Answer To PowerPoint-Killer Prezi Is Here." by Julie Bort,
Business Insider, December 15, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-death-of-powerpoint-has-begun-2014-12
Sway, Microsoft's answer to PowerPoint killer Prezi,
is now open and
available for anyone to try. It was previously an
invite-only thing.
Prezi is a web presentation app especially popular
with the young folk. About 50 million people use Prezi, the site claims.
Microsoft hopes to stop that in its tracks with its
own web app. Sway also works on mobile devices, including the iPad and
iPhone.
Sway lets you drag and drop photos, videos, files
from your computer, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or cloud storage. It works
via a web browser or an app for your phone, and the presentation is stored
on the web.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Slide Rule ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule
History of the Slide Rule ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule#History
Calculator ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator
History of the Calculator ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator#History
"Here's the impossibly complicated way calculators used to look," by
Sarah Lewin, PRI, December 18, 2014 ---
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-12-18/heres-impossibly-complicated-way-calculators-used-look
Mark Glusker had
heard rumors about the mechanical calculator, a Monroe
PC-1421; that it was one the most
complicated devices of the sort ever built; that it was powerful but
notoriously difficult to keep running; that it was at the pinnacle of an
effort to compete with the first electronic calculators.
“It’s kind of a holy grail
machine for me,” says Glusker, a mechanical engineer and collector of early
calculators. “When you’d read the specifications, you’d think, ‘That’s just
crazy.’” And once he finally got his hands on the 40-pound behemoth from a
retiring professor at the University of Iowa, it proved just as intricate as
he’d imagined.
“There’s so much going on
inside there,” says photographer Kevin Twomey, who photographed the PC-1421
and other calculators in Glusker's collection. “These chains, levers and
gears were almost reminding me of how ligaments and joints are working
together."
The Monroe PC-1421, with a
price tag of $1,175, at the top end for a mechanical calculator, debuted in
1964 — right as electronic calculators were overtaking mechanical ones. To
stay relevant, manufacturers constantly fought to improve the speed of
their machines. For instance, while early mechanical calculators required an
operator to turn a crank by hand in order to add, subtract, multiply, and
divide, later models like the PC-1421 turned automatically with a motor.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
When I was an undergraduate you were not fully dressed unless you had a
complicated slide rule fastened to your belt. There were a lot of things that
could be done with those slide rules, but I only used them for simple arithmetic
and logarithmic calculations.
When I worked as a staff accountant in the Denver office of Ernst & Ernst, we
had a few desk calculators that were fun to watch. There was a floating bar on
the top that went rata-tat-tat as it moved in jumping motions from left to right
while doing arithmetic. These were Monroe calculators much like the what is
pictured at
http://hpgarland.blogspot.com/2008/08/monroe-calculators.html
Bob Jensen's threads on computing history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---ComputerNetworking-IncludingInternet
This 71-Year-Old Makes Up To $8,500 A Month Teaching Online Classes
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/earning-money-online-courses-2014-12
Question
What's the most important thing Putin must do to stay in power in Russia?
Answer
http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-vodka-price-cap-2014-12
"The End of the Professions?" by Peter Augustine Lawler, National
Review, December 28, 2014 ---
http://www.nationalreview.com/postmodern-conservatism/395385/end-professions-peter-augustine-lawler
. . .
We also read that much of what lawyers do now will
be turned over to machines. (Insert lawyer joke here.) The supply of lawyers
already far exceeds the demand. This seems, of course, bad news for
political science as a liberal-arts, pre-professional major. Constitutional
law used to be touted as a really tough course that would show your
readiness for law school. Well prepared by all the reading and writing you
did in college, you will, it’s very, very likely, do well enough in law
school to be rather securely set for life in a good firm. Many a Berry grad
has followed some version of that “career path.”
But things have changed. It’s easier to get into
law school. Some pretty decent programs, in fact, aren’t filling up and are
getting desperate for warm bodies. Even grads from the best programs are
having trouble getting secure jobs, and compensation for lawyers is, in
general, getting worse. The business of borrowing huge bucks to fund your
legal education is now way too risky. Everyone knows of underemployed
law-school grads (many of whom got good grades in law schools) drowning in
debt. So the new challenge is to go to law school for free or at least on
the cheap, and that is getting a lot easier to do, as law-school discounting
is getting closer to college discounting. A reputable law school not far
from where I’m sitting now used to basically stiff their students with an
exorbitant tuition, and the profit was redistributed to the rest of the
campus programs. Now, money is being frantically redistributed to the law
school for financial aid to keep it afloat.
It’s still the case that if you want to be a lawyer
you should “follow your passion” and go to law school. But you have to do so
with a much more entrepreneurial spirit.
Jobs aren’t guaranteed for the nerds who get all A’s.
Everyone has to hustle to find gainful employment. And lawyers are more and
more stuck with being independent contractors selling their labor piecemeal
for a price.
Does this mean that pre-professional liberal
education is no longer relevant? It means exactly the opposite. It’s more
true than ever that it’s the foundation of the flexibility required to
flourish in the 21st-century competitive marketplace. You probably won’t
have some securely placed ”career” as a lawyer. And the most marketable
skills remain lucid and precisely detailed speaking, writing, and reading
comprehension, and the world still belongs to those with huge active
vocabularies, those who can deploy the world of the screen and techno-jargon
with effective irony, those who can really use words to describe the world
as it is. And the main source of a “real vocabulary” is absorbing the
content of ”real books.”
Well, there’s another route: Being on very good
terms with the “genius machines” that will be continue to expand as sources
of our productivity. But that route is not for everyone. And the world
belongs to those who know enough to be able to tell those nerds what to do.
Peter Thiel, remember, majored in philosophy and went to law school. And
Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s educational narrative is the same sort of
undergraduate foundation in real books followed by “professional
development.”
Jensen Comment
Accountants and lawyers should thank the heavens that the tax code really is not
yet amenable to artificial intelligence.
Question
For 2014 what is likely to be the worst performing stock in the Dow Jones index?
Hint
The company is really blue at the moment.
Answer
http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-stock-about-to-hit-an-embarrassing-milestone-2014-12
"18 Free Online Business Courses That Will Boost Your Career," by John
A. Byrne, Business Insider, December 18, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-free-online-business-courses-in-january-2014-12
. . .
To learn more about these courses — and register
for them — click on the links below.
Gamification / Wharton / January 26
Globalization of Business Enterprise / IESE / January 19
Entrepreneurship 101 and Entrepreneurship 102 / MIT / January 9
ContractsX: From Trust to Promise to Contract / Harvard / January 8
Technology Entrepreneurship / Stanford / January 6
Asset Pricing – Part One / University of Chicago / January 18
Innovation and Commercialization / MIT / January 13
Grow To Greatness: Smart Growth For Private Businesses – Part II /
University of Virginia / January 12
Financial Analysis of Entrepreneurial Ideas / Babson College / January or
February
Time to Reorganize! Understand Organizations, Act, and Build a Meaningful
World / HEC Paris / January 13
Game Theory II: Advanced Applications / Stanford / January 11
U.Lab: Transforming Business, Society, and Self / MIT / January 7
Make An Impact: Sustainability for Professionals / University of Bath /
January 12
Managing People: Engaging Your Workforce / University of Reading / January
12
Decision Making in a Complex and Uncertain World / University of Groningen /
January 19
Project Management for Business Professionals / January 26
Subsistence Marketplaces / University of Illinois / January 26
DQ 101: Introduction to Decision Quality / Strategic Decisions Group /
January 15
More from John A. Byrne:
This article originally appeared at
LinkedIn. Copyright 2014. Follow LinkedIn on
Twitter.
Read more: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-mooc-courses-business-john-a.-byrne#ixzz3MLx1WEeQ
"What Are MOOCs Good For? Online courses may not be changing colleges as
their boosters claimed they would, but they can prove valuable in surprising
ways," by Justin Pope, MIT's Technology Review, December 15, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/review/533406/what-are-moocs-good-for/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141215
A few years ago, the most
enthusiastic advocates of MOOCs believed that these “massive open online
courses” stood poised to overturn the century-old model of higher education.
Their interactive technology promised to deliver top-tier teaching from
institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, not just to a few hundred
students in a lecture hall on ivy-draped campuses, but free via the Internet
to thousands or even millions around the world. At long last, there appeared
to be a solution to the problem of “scaling up” higher education: if it were
delivered more efficiently, the relentless cost increases might finally be
rolled back. Some wondered whether MOOCs would merely transform the existing
system or blow it up entirely. Computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, cofounder
of the MOOC provider Udacity,
predicted that in 50
years, 10 institutions would be responsible for delivering higher education.
Then came the backlash. A high-profile experiment
to use MOOCs at San Jose State University foundered. Faculty there and at
other institutions rushing to incorporate MOOCs began pushing back,
rejecting the notion that online courses could replace the nuanced work of
professors in classrooms. The tiny completion rates for most MOOCs drew
increasing attention. Thrun himself became disillusioned, and he lowered
Udacity’s ambitions from educating the masses to providing corporate
training.
But all the while, a great age of experimentation
has been developing. Although some on-campus trials have gone nowhere,
others have shown
modest success (including a later iteration
at San Jose State). In 2013, Georgia Tech
announced a first-of-its-kind
all-MOOC master’s program in computer science
that, at $6,600, would cost just a fraction as much as its on-campus
counterpart. About 1,400 students have enrolled. It’s not clear how well
such programs can be replicated in other fields, or whether the job market
will reward graduates with this particular Georgia Tech degree. But the
program offers evidence that MOOCs can expand access and reduce costs in
some corners of higher education.
Meanwhile, options for online courses continue to
multiply, especially for curious people who aren’t necessarily seeking a
credential. For-profit Coursera and edX, the nonprofit consortium led by
Harvard and MIT, are up to nearly 13 million users and more than 1,200
courses between them.
Khan Academy, which began as a series of YouTube
videos, is making online instruction a more widely used tool in classrooms
around the world.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I always hate to see the Khan Academy, YouTube Channels, MOOCs, and Distance
Education for fees and credits mingled together in the same article. MOOCs are
usually filmed versions of live courses at prestigious universities. They are
free by definition, although fees might be charged by third parties for taking
competency examinations for credits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"The MOOC Where Everybody Learned: And
they learned just as much as MIT students who had taken a similar course on the
campus, according to a new study." by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher
Education, September 16, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/the-mooc-where-everybody-learned/54571?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
EdX ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdX
"6 Big Takeaways From the EdX Global Forum," by Joshua Kim, Inside
Higher Ed, November 23, 2014 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/6-big-takeaways-edx-global-forum
Distance education courses are usually fee-based online courses for credit.
In many instances at major universities some sections of courses are taught live
on campus and others are taught live online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Khan Academy and YouTube Channels offer free tutorials. Learners can cherry
pick topics and watch basic and advanced learning videos that vary in length
form a few minutes to longer but usually much less than an hour for each module.
These were never intended to be anything more than self-learning alternatives
for highly motivated students. Some leading universities like the University of
Wisconsin now over limited choices for taking competency examinations for
college credit, but the distance between a few learning videos and college
credit is a very long distance indeed.
More than 100
colleges have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many
universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
Search for words like “accounting”
"The 12 Most Popular Free Online Courses (MOOCs) For
Professionals," by Maggie Zhang, Business Insider, July 8, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/free-online-courses-for-professionals-2014-7
12. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health's "Data
Analysis"
Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/free-online-courses-for-professionals-2014-7#ixzz37LiJgQ57
For Members of the American Accounting Association
One of the best sessions at the AAA's 2014 Annual Meetings was the the session
7.02 The Impact of MOOCs and Online Courses on Accounting...
A video of this entire session is now available to AAA members ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/4a2206f6ab
There were three panelists including a leading technical speaker from EdX and a
professor who teaches accounting in Wharton's MOOCs of virtually all of its MBA
core courses (for free to the world).
The speakers are outstanding, but the videos do not show the PowerPoint screens.
This is a bit frustrating, but the speakers generally described what was on each
PowerPoint slide.
AAA members who did not attend the above session really missed what was one
of the best technical sessions at the 2014 Annual Meetings.
Other videos of sessions are linked at
http://commons.aaahq.org/hives/8d320fc4aa/summary
I also highly recommend watching the video of Jimmy Wales' Plenary Session.
Jimmy is the founder and CEO of Wikipedia. Wikipedia for most of us is the most
important site in the world for instant learning from an unbelievable number of
crowd-sourced encyclopedia modules. When I say unbelievable I mean an
UNBELIEVABLE number of topics covered in over 200 languages. Nearly five million
of these topics are in English. Jimmy reported that Wikipedia has over 500
million visitors per month. The population of the USA is only about 300 million
people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Wikipedia (i//
or
i//
WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə)
is a
free-access,
free content
Internet encyclopedia, supported and hosted by the non-profit
Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone who can access the site[6]
can edit almost any of its articles. Wikipedia is the sixth-most popular
website[5]
and constitutes the
Internet's
largest and most popular general
reference work.[7][8][9]
Jimmy Wales and
Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001. Sanger[10]
coined
its name,[11]
a
portmanteau of wiki (from the
Hawaiian
word for "quick")[12]
and
encyclopedia. Although Wikipedia's content was initially
only in English, it quickly became
multilingual, through the launch of versions in different languages. All
versions of Wikipedia are similar, but important differences exist in
content and in editing practices. The
English Wikipedia is now one of more than 200 Wikipedias, but remains
the largest one, with
over 4.6 million articles. As of February 2014, it had 18 billion page
views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.[13]
Wikipedia has more than 22 million accounts, out of which there were over
73,000 active editors globally as of May 2014.[2]
Studies tend to show that Wikipedia's accuracy is similar to Encyclopedia
Britannica, with Wikipedia being much larger. However, critics have worried
that
Wikipedia exhibits systemic bias, and that its
group dynamics hinder its goals. Most
academics,
historians,
teachers
and
journalists reject Wikipedia as a reliable source of information for
being a mixture of truths, half truths, and some falsehoods,[14]
and that as a resource about controversial topics, Wikipedia is notoriously
subject to manipulation and spin.[15]
Wikipedia's
Consensus and
Undue Weight policies have been repeatedly criticised by prominent
scholarly sources for undermining
freedom of thought and leading to false beliefs based on incomplete
information.[16][17][18][19]
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
One of the great sources for accuracy arises when professors assign graduate
students to correct and otherwise improve Wikipedia modules. One of the most
important uses of Wikipedia is for people seeking to learn about medical
ailments, treatments, and medications. Among the
great happenings in Wikipedia is the truly active role medical schools play in
perfecting these medical modules since errors and misleading statements in those
modules can be particularly damaging to hundreds of millions of users of those
modules.
Of course, users of any encyclopedia or most any other academic source must
always remain skeptical. The hired editors must spend an undue amount of time on
controversial topics, particularly political topics. These editors often warn
people to be skeptical when encountering particular modules. These editors also
resist allowing the public to delete criticisms that in the eyes of editors are
justified. Virtually all of the 73,000+ editors do not want Wikipedia to become
too much of a public relations database. I applaud them for their dedication and
hard work.
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and open
sharing learning materials in general ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's library links of the world ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
December 19. 2014 Department of Education Letter
Q&A Regarding Competency-Based College Credits (and merit badges of
competence) ---
http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/GEN1423.html
Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based education.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge
Note that there are two very different types of programs --- those that
require courses versus those that require no courses. For example,
Western Governors University requires course credits where distance education
course instructors do not assign grades in a traditional manner. Instead grading
is based on competency-based performance examinations are required.
At the other extreme a few universities like the University of Wisconsin now
have selected programs where students can earn college credits based upon
competency-examination scores without course sign ups. These programs are
considered the first steps toward what is increasingly known as a transcript of
merit badges that may eventually replace traditional degree programs such as
masters degrees in the professions such as medical professions.
In a sense residency programs in medical schools are already have "merit
badges" based upon upon experience and competency (licensing) examinations to
become ophthalmologists, cardiologists, urologists, neurologists, etc.
Video: A Scenario of Higher Education in 2020
November 14, 2014 message from Denny Beresford
Bob,
The link below is to a very
interesting video on the future of higher education – if you haven’t seen it
already. I think it’s very consistent with much of what you’ve been saying.
Denny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ
November 15, 2014 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Denny,
Thank you for this link. I agree with many parts of this possible
scenario, and viewers should patiently watch it through the Google Epic in
2020.
But this is only one of many possible scenarios, and I definitely do not
agree with the predicted timings. None of the predictions for the future
will happen in such a short time frame.
It takes a long time for this video to mention the role of colleges as a
buffer between living as a protected kid at home and working full time on
the mean streets of life. And I don't think campus living and learning in
the future will just be for the "wealthy." We're moving toward a time when
campus living will be available more and more to gifted non-wealthy
students. But we're also moving toward a time when campus living and
learning may be available to a smaller percentage of students --- more like
Germany where campus education is free, but only the top 25% of the high
school graduates are allowed to go to college. The other 75% will rely more
and more on distance education and apprenticeship training alternatives.
Last night (November 14) there was a fascinating module on CBS News about
a former top NFL lineman (center) for the Rams who in the prime of his
career just quit and bought a 1,000 acre farm in North Carolina using the
millions of dollars he'd saved until then by playing football.
What was remarkable is that he knew zero about farming until he started
learning about it on YouTube. Now he's a successful farmer who gives over
20% of his harvest to food banks for the poor.
This morning I did a brief search and discovered that there are tons of
free videos on the technical aspect of farming just as there are tons of
videos that I already knew about on how to be a financial analyst trading in
derivative financial instruments.
My point is that there will be more and more people who are being
educated and trained along the lines of the video in your email message to
me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ
The education and training will be a lifelong process because there is so
much that will be available totally free of charge. We will become more and
more like Boy-Girl Scouts earning our badges.
College degrees will be less and less important as the certification
badges (competency achievements) mentioned in the video take over as
chevrons of expertise and accomplishment. Some badges will be for hobbies,
and some badges will be for career advancement.
These are exciting times for education and training. We will become more
and more like the Phantom of the Library at Texas A&M without having to live
inside a library. This "Phantom" Aggie was a former student who started
secretly living and learning in the campus library. Now the world's free
"library" is only a few clicks away --- starting with Wikipedia and YouTube
and moving on to the thousands of MOOCs now available from prestigious
universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Also see the new-world library alternatives at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Thanks Denny
Bob
How To Use Math To Win At Monopoly ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/use-math-to-win-monopoly-2014-12
Texas A&M Just Imploded (part of) Its Football Stadium To Make Room For
Over 102,000 Aggies Fans Next Season ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-texas-am-kyle-field-implode-aggies-2014-12
The Aggies also fired their Football defensive coach after the Aggies had a 7-5
season, slightly better than the University of Texas 6-6 season.
"A Notorious Alleged Rapist At Columbia University Finally Speaks Out,"
by Natasha Bertrand, Business Insider, December 22, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-notorious-accused-rapist-at-columbia-is-finally-speaking-out-2014-12
The histories of the symbol, concept, and the number zero are complicated. In
early Egypt the symbol was used for accounting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29
"The Origin of the Number Zero Deep in the jungle, an intrepid scholar
locates a symbol of power and mystery," by Amir Aczel, Smithsonian
Magazine, December 2014 ---
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/origin-number-zero-180953392/?no-ist
Four miles from the great temple of Angkor Wat,
deep in the Cambodian jungle, I opened the door of a makeshift shed with a
corrugated tin roof and walked into a dusty room painted in pale gray.
Thousands of chunks and slabs of stone covered the dirt floor: smashed heads
of statues of Khmer kings and Hindu gods, broken lintels and door frames
from abandoned temples, the remains of steles with ancient writing. After
years of searching, I’d finally arrived here, hoping to find a single dot
chiseled into a reddish stone, a humble mark of incredible importance, a
symbol that would become the very foundation of our number system—our first
zero.
It was a lifelong love that led me to this
threshold. I grew up on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean that often called
at Monte Carlo, and I was drawn to the alluring numbers on roulette wheels:
half of them red, half black. My fascination led to a career as a
mathematician, and, dabbling in mathematical archaeology, I’ve tracked down
many ancient numerals, including a magic square (those mysterious numerical
grids in which the sum of every column, row and diagonal is the same) on the
doorway of a tenth-century Jain temple at Khajuraho, India.
I’m convinced that the creation of numerals to
represent the abstract entities we call numbers was our greatest
intellectual achievement. The simple sign “3” represents all trios in the
universe; it is the quality of “being three”—distinct from “being five” or
“being seven.” Numerals allow us to keep track of belongings, record dates,
trade goods, calculate so precisely that we are able to fly to the moon and
operate on the brain.
We use them with such ease that we take them for
granted. Surprisingly, our number system took hold in the West only in the
13th century, after the Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa—better known
as Fibonacci—introduced the numerals to Europeans. He’d learned them from
Arab traders, who presumably adopted them during travels to the Indian
subcontinent.
Of all the numerals, “0”—alone in green on the roulette
wheel—is most significant. Unique in representing absolute nothingness,
its role as a placeholder gives our number system its power. It enables
the numerals to cycle, acquiring different meanings in different
locations (compare 3,000,000 and 30). With the exception of the Mayan
system, whose zero glyph never left the Americas, ours is the only one
known to have a numeral for zero. Babylonians had a mark for
nothingness, say some accounts, but treated it primarily as punctuation.
Romans and Egyptians had no such numeral either.
A circle inscribed at a temple in Gwalior, India,
dating to the ninth century, had been widely considered the oldest
version of zero in our system, the Hindu-Arabic. At the time it was
made, trade with the Arab empire connected East and West, so it could
have come from anywhere. I was after an older zero, a particular
instance arguing for an Eastern origin.
Found on a
stone stele, it was documented in 1931 by a French scholar named George
Coedès. Assigned the identifying label K-127, the inscription reads like
a bill of sale and includes references to slaves, five pairs of oxen and
sacks of white rice. Though some of the writing wasn’t deciphered, the
inscription clearly bore the date 605 in an ancient calendar that began
in the year A.D. 78. Its date was thus A.D. 683. Two centuries older
than the one at Gwalior, it predated wide-ranging Arab trade. But K-127
disappeared during the Khmer Rouge’s rule of terror, when more than
10,000 artifacts were deliberately destroyed.
I describe my obsession with finding this earliest
zero in my forthcoming book,
Finding Zero. I
spent countless hours poring over old texts in libraries from London to
Delhi and emailing and calling anyone who might know someone who could
help me locate K-127. I made several
unsuccessful trips to Cambodia,
spending a significant amount of my own money. On the verge of giving
up, I received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and forged
ahead. Cambodia’s director general of the Ministry of Culture and Fine
Arts, Hab Touch, directed me to the sheds at Angkor Conservation, a
restoration and storage site closed to the public. When I was turned
away twice, Touch graciously made a phone call, and in early January
2013, I was invited in. I still didn’t know if K-127 had even survived.
And yet, within two hours, the roulette wheel had spun
in my favor. My eye caught a piece of tape with a pencil-scribbled
“K-127,” and then I recognized that single dot on the 3- by 5-foot slab,
intact but for a rough break at the top. I was elated. I dared not touch
the stone surface for fear I might harm it.
Since that
fortuitous moment, I’ve pondered the feat that brought us numerals, this
time wondering not where and when, but how? I’ve asked dozens of
mathematicians a long-debated question: Were numbers discovered or
invented? The majority view is that numbers exist outside of the human
mind. Unlike Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, they don’t require a human
creator. What gave numbers their power was the very act of naming them
and writing them down. I’m now working with Cambodian officials to move
K-127 to a museum in Phnom Penh, where a wide audience can appreciate
the incredible discovery it represents.
Basket weaving by any other name in the
curriculum is --- basket weaving!
Actually genuine basket weaving is probably too tough academically for
Interdisciplinary Studies majors at top NCAA Division 1 universities.
Helping Athletes with Learning Disabilities --- major in
Interdisciplinary Studies
"At Top Athletics Programs, Students Often Major in Eligibility," by
Jonah Newman, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 18. 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/At-Top-Athletics-Programs/150917/?cid=at
When the University of Oregon Ducks and the Florida
State University Seminoles meet on New Year’s Day for the first
college-football playoff game ever, the two teams will have more in common
than just dominance on the gridiron and a place in sporting history.
They’ll also have an academic link: On each team
about one-third of the players are majoring in social sciences, a
multidisciplinary liberal-arts major.
At both institutions only about 3 percent of all
students graduate with a bachelor’s degree in general social sciences. That
means that Ducks and Seminoles football players are roughly 10 times as
likely as their peers to be pursuing this general-studies major.
Coincidence? Unlikely.
The Chronicle analyzed the majors of
athletes at 17 of the 25 universities whose football teams made the first
college-football playoff rankings in late October. (The eight other
universities declined to provide information or failed to respond to
public-records requests.) At almost every institution, we found some
athletes clustering in a small number of majors.
Of course, clustering is no surprise. Ask a few
average students at a Division I college, and they are likely to be able to
name the "jock major" at their institution. But the clustering can be
awfully stark, and at its most extreme it illuminates the central tension of
college sports—the push-pull between academics and athletics.
At the University of Arizona, for example, 23
percent of all athletes are majoring in general studies, another broad
liberal-arts degree, which graduates just 3 percent of all undergraduates.
(A note here: We’re comparing the overall number of students who graduate in
a discipline with the smaller number of athletes currently majoring in that
discipline. That’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s the best we can do
with readily available data.)
As in most of the athletic departments The
Chronicle analyzed, football players are especially likely to cluster
in the top athlete majors: 34 percent of Arizona’s football players are
seeking a degree in general studies.
. . .
Not All Athletes, Not All Majors
Most investigations of athletes’ academic
clustering—defined, in the first academic study on the topic, as 25 percent
or more of the students on a single team in the same major—focus on the
revenue-generating sports of football and men’s basketball. But The
Chronicle's analysis found some clustering in nearly every sport and across
genders.
At the University of Alabama, home of the country’s
top-ranked football team, there was actually very little clustering among
football players. The most popular football major, general studies,
accounted for just 13 percent of all declared football players, well below
the clustering cutoff.
But 35 percent of the men’s baseball team, which
barely cracked the top 30 in national rankings, are studying exercise
science, a common major among athletes at several universities in our
analysis. Half of all women’s softball players at Alabama are also
exercise-science majors.
At Mississippi State University, clustering spans
the entire athletic department. Half of all athletes, male and female, are
pursuing just four majors: kinesiology, business administration, human
sciences, and biological sciences. Those programs graduate just 20 percent
of all undergraduates.
Clemson University, by contrast, exemplifies how
clustering can be specific to both sport and gender.
One-quarter of women’s cross-country athletes, 29
percent of women’s softball players, and 31 percent of women’s basketball
players at Clemson are majoring in health sciences.
On the men’s side, health sciences isn’t the most
popular major in a single sport. But parks, recreation, and tourism
management—its website declares that its majors "study fun"—is quite
popular. The department claims one-quarter of all football players, 29
percent of men’s baseball players, and 36 percent of men’s basketball
players, but it graduates just 3 percent of all undergraduates.
Continued in article
The independent study course at the University of Georgia that's one
centimeter behind fake courses at the University of North Carolina
NCAA Slaps U. of Georgia With $5,000 Fine for Coach’s Effort to Keep
Athlete Eligible ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/ncaa-slaps-u-of-georgia-with-5000-fine-for-coachs-effort-to-keep-athlete-eligible/91307?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
UNC investigation: Bogus classes were pushed by academic counselors,"
by Dan Kane and Jane Stancill, newsobserver.com, October 22, 2014,
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/10/22/4255098_unc-investigation-bogus-classes.html?rh=
"New Report Implicates UNC's Athletics Department In Fake Classes Scandal
(for nearly 20 years)," by Peter Jacobs, Business Insider, October
22, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-report-implicates-uncs-athletics-department-in-fake-classes-scandal-2014-10
Academic Fraud and Friction at
Florida State University
On Friday,
the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced
that more than 60 athletes at the university had
cheated in two online courses over a year and a half long period, one of
the most serious cases of academic fraud in the NCAA's recent history.
Yet just about all anyone seemed to be able to talk about -- especially
Florida State fans in commenting on the case and
news publications in reporting on it -- is
how the NCAA's penalties (which include requiring Florida State to
vacate an undetermined number of victories in which the cheating
athletes competed) might undermine the legacy of the university's
football coach, Bobby Bowden. Bowden has one fewer career victory than
Pennsylvania State University's longtime coach, Joe Paterno, and if
Florida State has to wipe out as many as 14 football wins from 2007 and
2008, it could end Bowden's chance of being the all-time winningest
coach in big-time college football.
Inside Higher Ed, March 9, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/09/fsu
Bob Jensen's threads on the fake courses at UNC and other academic scandals
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Athletics
"Helping Students with Learning Disabilities Transition to College:
Although assistive technologies and other supports can help, too few students
who need them take advantage once they leave high school. Here's what K-12
schools can do to help," by Dennis Pierce, T.H.E. Journal, December
16, 2014 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/12/16/helping-students-with-learning-disabilities-transition-to-college.aspx
Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for disabled students ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
"LEAKED: A Closer Look At Microsoft's Big Plan To Fix The Windows 8
Disaster," by Lisa Eadicicco, Business Insider, December 15, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-screenshots-leak-2014-12
Microsoft told us a little bit about its next
version of Windows back in September, but a new leak seems to give us a
closer look at a few features that haven't been officially revealed just
yet.
Screenshots published by
blog WinBeta and
The Verge's Tom Warren, who has a solid track
record when it comes to Windows news, reportedly show an early build of
Windows 10 called "9901."
Microsoft is calling its next big software update
Windows 10 since it supposedly represents such a major overhaul that it made
sense to skip "Windows 9" entirely in the Windows naming convention.
Based on what we've seen so far regarding Windows
10, it seems like Microsoft is making a big effort to fix many of the
complaints surrounding Windows 8 — especially when it comes to the desktop
experience.
With Windows 10, Microsoft is adding a new Start
menu that combines the classic menu from previous versions of Windows with
the tiled "Modern UI" introduced with Windows 8.
Microsoft showed us this in September, and it
appears again in the batch of recently leaked screenshots.
Continued in article
How to Mislead With Statistics
There's a
Lake Wobegon Effect Inside Every New York K-12 School
"Cuomo’s Grade Inflation," by Alysia Finley, The Wall Street Journal,
December 22, 2014 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-cuomos-grade-inflation-1419279956?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
Nothing quite motivates New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
like bad publicity. Last Thursday—mere days after the state’s new and
putatively improved teacher-evaluation system was exposed as a sham—a top
aide to Mr. Cuomo revealed the Democratic governor’s heretofore undetected
interest in aggressive school reform.
Earlier in the week, the state Board of Regents had
reported that nearly 96% of teachers statewide were rated “effective”
(53.7%) or “highly effective” (41.9%) under New York’s new evaluation
system. Fewer than 1% of teachers were deemed “ineffective.” Grades for
principals were similarly inflated, with 93.5% receiving good marks.
New York’s teacher evaluations were widely panned:
How could so many teachers and principals be excelling when, according to
the state, only 34.8% of students are proficient in math and 31.4% in
English?
Mr. Cuomo’s director of state operations, Jim
Malatras, shot off a missive to state Education Commissioner John King and
Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch calling the failing status quo
“unacceptable. “How is the current teacher evaluation system credible when
only one percent of teachers are rated ineffective?” Mr. Malatras wrote.
Last year the governor hailed the new teacher
evaluations as “one of the strongest in the country.” Yet school districts
receive wide latitude on how to assess teachers. Only 20% of the evaluation
must be based on student learning.
But don’t blame Mr. Cuomo for the “unacceptable”
state of schools. “As you know, the Governor has little power over
education, which is governed by the Board of Regents,” wrote Mr. Malatras.
Ostensibly, that’s why Mr. Cuomo is soliciting the Board’s input before
pursuing “an aggressive legislative agenda” next year.
Mr. Malatras asked Mr. King and Ms. Tisch for their
thoughts about removing bad teachers; changing teacher training; providing
financial incentives for high-performing teachers; overhauling teacher
tenure; raising the charter school cap; and modifying mayoral control of New
York City schools.
Asking for feedback is all very well, but Mr. Cuomo
here is merely looking for cover. The governor would win more credit as a
leader if he weren’t always punting decisions (tax reform, fracking) to
state bureaucrats to avoid leaving political fingerprints. One might
describe his governing style as an invisible hand.
Continued in article
Metaphorical Meaning of the Phrase "Cargo Cult Science" ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Metaphorical_uses_of_the_term
The term "cargo cult" has been used metaphorically
to describe an attempt to recreate successful outcomes by replicating
circumstances associated with those outcomes, although those circumstances
are either unrelated to the causes of outcomes or insufficient to produce
them by themselves. In the former case, this is an instance of the
post hoc ergo propter hoc
fallacy.
The metaphorical use of "cargo cult" was
popularized by physicist
Richard Feynman at a 1974
Caltech
commencement speech, which later became a chapter
in his book
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, where he
coined the phrase "cargo
cult science" to describe activity that had some
of the trappings of real science (such as publication in
scientific journals)
but lacked a basis in honest experimentation.
Later the term
cargo cult programming developed to describe
computer software containing elements that are
included because of successful utilization elsewhere, unnecessary for the
task at hand.
Questions
Why does the business world ignore business school academic research including
accountics research?
What other academic researchers have become "irrelevant?"
Answer
The authors blamed business schools’ scientifically
rigorous research into arcane areas – studies whose theories didn’t have to
be proved to work in the real world, only to the academic journals in which
they hoped to get published (and, they maintained, on which tenure
depended).
The same irrelevancy of academic researchers is taking place in sociology
and anthropology.
"Making Business School Research More Relevant," by James C. Wetherbe
Jon Eckhardt, Harvard Business School Blog, December 24, 2014 ---
Click Here
https://hbr.org/2014/12/making-business-school-research-more-relevant?utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date&cm_ite=DailyAlert-122514+%281%29&cm_lm=rjensen%40trinity.edu&referral=00563&cm_ven=Spop-Email&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date
In
a landmark 2005 Harvard Business Review
article, USC business professors Warren
Bennis and James O’Toole argued that the skills imparted by most business
schools were not relevant to students and their eventual employers. The
authors blamed business schools’ scientifically rigorous research into
arcane areas – studies whose theories didn’t have to be proved to work in
the real world, only to the academic journals in which they hoped to get
published (and, they maintained, on which tenure depended). Do management
professors “believe that the regard of their peers is more important than
studying what really matters to executives who can put their ideas into
practice?” Bennis and O’Toole wrote. “Apparently so.”
Nearly 10 years after the article was published, we
believe this problem is even more acute, and that as such business schools
need to get serious about making research more relevant to business. The
best way do that is to emulate the world of medical research: conduct
research and then put it into practice with real companies.
The rise of rigorous research in business schools
has fostered an unfortunate paradox: business schools have become
increasingly disconnected from practice. The reason is that business school
faculty are almost exclusively rewarded on two metrics. First, they are
rewarded for the number of scientific papers that they write that are
published in prestigious journals that are exclusively controlled by, and
read by, other academics. Second, they are rewarded by their citation
count—the number of times their articles are cited by articles from other
professors.
These incentives play a powerful role in how
business schools are ranked. In fact, professors are often terminated during
tenure evaluation if they do not perform well on these two dimensions. These
incentives mean business professors spend most of their time searching for
research topics they think will interest other business professors,
conducting that research, and attending academic conferences to promote
their work to other professors and increase citation counts. Professors who
attend industry conferences or immerse themselves in the practice of
business decrease the chances of performing well on publication and cite
counts.
The result of this scholarly activity is a closed
system. Business faculty create a body of knowledge that is scientifically
novel, interesting, and important. But far too often, the research doesn’t
address the real problems of entrepreneurs, managers, investors, marketers,
and business leaders.
While many business professors view putting
research into practice as incompatible with modern research universities,
they only need to look across their campuses to academic medical centers to
see that this view is outdated. Medical schools understand that patients are
not well served by research driven solely by biologists, chemists,
psychologists, and other research faculty who never treat patients.
Academic medical centers integrate research with
practice through what the medical community refers to as “translational
research.” Translational research takes scientific research conducted in the
lab and makes it useful to people. Fully integrated translational research
faculty are tenured professors who practice medicine and use the
latest scientific techniques to answer questions about those techniques from
practicing physicians. In addition, they often coauthor research papers with
basic scientists and collaborate on clinical initiatives with clinical
faculty.
The work of translational medical scientists means
the knowledge production engines of medical schools advance basic science,
applied science, and the practice of medicine. Why should business research
and business professors be any different?
Five changes would initiate a new era of highly
relevant business school research:
- Create translational business faculty
appointments for professors who are trained in scientific research
techniques and also want to be involved in business practice.
- Create and treat as prestigious translational
business journals. Then make sure business school “scientists,”
translational scientists, and practitioners jointly make publication
decisions.
- Create translational business doctoral
programs to build a cadre of future faculty who integrate research on
business with practice by doing both.
- Actively seek out businesses to fund studies,
and reward faculty who obtain corporate-funded research and thus reduce
the reliance on university funding.
- In evaluating faculty performance, include
business consulting activity (that comes out of research) and its impact
on businesses.
To be sure, corporate funding of medical research
for some time has been accused of biasing findings in favor of for-profit
interests. Corporate-funded business school research has the potential for
conflicts of interest as well. But the way to resolve them is through full
disclosure of funding sources and high research standards. The academic
journal referrees of any business study should look closely at whether its
findings and research methodology could have been biased. For their part,
researchers must specifically explain how their methodology eliminated such
bias.
Getting business professors to change their
research agenda requires deans who embrace fundamental institutional change.
While such change is never easy, the good news is that business schools have
a strong scientific capability to build upon. They only need to apply that
capability to issues that are much more relevant to the organizations that
will employ their graduates.
Bob Jensen's threads on the how accountics scientists need to 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
There are other disciplines where academic researchers have lost their
relevance.
Anthropology Without Science: A new long-range plan for the American
Anthropological Association that omits the word �science� from the
organization's vision for its future has exposed fissures in the discipline
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AntropologyNonScience
"How Sociologists Made Themselves Irrelevant," by Orlando Patterson,
Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, December 1, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Sociologists-Made/150249/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Early in 2014,
President Obama announced a new initiative,
My Brother’s Keeper, aimed at alleviating the
problems of black youth. Not only did a task force appointed to draw up the
policy agenda not include a single professional sociologist, but I could
find no evidence that any sociologist was even consulted in the critical
first three months of the group’s work, summarized in a report to the
president, despite the enormous amount of work sociologists have done on
poverty and the problems of black youth.
Sadly, this situation is typical because
sociologists have become distant spectators rather than shapers of policy.
In the effort to keep ourselves academically
pure, we’ve also become largely irrelevant
in molding the most important social enterprises of our era.
Continued in article
How Accountics Scientists Made Themselves Irrelevant:
In the effort to keep ourselves academically pure
---
The Cargo Cult of Accounting Research
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
"How Can Accounting Researchers Become
More Innovative? by Sudipta Basu, Accounting Horizons, December 2012,
Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 851-87 ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/acch-10311
We fervently hope that the
research pendulum will soon swing back from the narrow lines of
inquiry that dominate today's leading journals to a rediscovery
of the richness of what accounting research can be. For that to
occur, deans and the current generation of academic accountants
must give it a push.�
Michael H. Granof and Stephen A. Zeff (2008)
Rather than clinging to the
projects of the past, it is time to explore questions and engage
with ideas that transgress the current accounting research
boundaries. Allow your values to guide the formation of your
research agenda. The passion will inevitably follow �
Joni J. Young (2009)
. . .
Is Academic Accounting a “Cargo Cult Science”?
In a commencement address at Caltech titled “Cargo
Cult Science,” Richard Feynman (1974) discussed “science, pseudoscience, and
learning how not to fool yourself.” He argued that despite great efforts at
scientific research, little progress was apparent in school education.
Reading and mathematics scores kept declining, despite schools adopting the
recommendations of experts. Feynman (1974, 11) dubbed fields like these
“Cargo Cult Sciences,” explaining the term as follows:
In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people.
During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they
want the same things to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut
for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and
bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait
for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is
perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work.
No airplanes land. So I call
these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent
precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing
something essential, because the planes don't land.
Feynman (1974) argued that the key distinction
between a science and a Cargo Cult Science is scientific integrity: “[T]he
idea is to give all of the information to help others judge the value of
your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one
particular direction or another.” In other words, papers should not be
written to provide evidence for one's hypothesis, but rather to “report
everything that you think might make it invalid.” Furthermore, “you should
not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist.”
Even though more and more detailed rules are
constantly being written by the SEC, FASB, IASB, PCAOB, AICPA, and other
accounting experts (e.g., Benston et al. 2006), the number and severity of
accounting scandals are not declining, which is Feynman's (1969) hallmark of
a pseudoscience. Because accounting standards often reflect
standard-setters' ideology more than research into the effectiveness of
different alternatives, it is hardly surprising that accounting quality has
not improved. Even preliminary research findings can be transformed
journalistically into irrefutable scientific results by the political
process of accounting standard-setting. For example, the working paper
results of Frankel et al. (2002) were used to justify the SEC's longstanding
desire to ban non-audit services in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, even
though the majority of contemporary and subsequent studies found different
results (Romano 2005). Unfortunately, the ability to bestow status by
invitation to select conferences and citation in official documents (e.g.,
White 2005) may let standard-setters set our research and teaching agendas
(Zeff 1989). Academic Accounting and the “Cult of Statistical Significance”
Ziliak and McCloskey (2008) argue that, in trying
to mimic physicists, many biologists and social scientists have become
devotees of statistical significance, even though most articles in physics
journals do not report statistical significance. They argue that statistical
tests are typically used to infer whether a particular effect exists, rather
than to measure the magnitude of the effect, which usually has more
practical import. While early empirical accounting researchers such as Ball
and Brown (1968) and Beaver (1968) went to great lengths to estimate how
much extra information reached the stock market in the earnings announcement
month or week, subsequent researchers limited themselves to answering
whether other factors moderated these effects. Because accounting theories
rarely provide quantitative predictions (e.g., Kinney 1986), accounting
researchers perform nil hypothesis significance testing rituals, i.e., test
unrealistic and atheoretical null hypotheses that a particular coefficient
is exactly zero.15 While physicists devise experiments to measure the mass
of an electron to the accuracy of tens of decimal places, accounting
researchers are still testing the equivalent of whether electrons have mass.
Indeed, McCloskey (2002) argues that the “secret sins of economics” are that
economics researchers use quantitative methods to produce qualitative
research outcomes such as (non-)existence theorems and statistically
significant signs, rather than to predict and measure quantitative (how
much) outcomes.
Practitioners are more interested in magnitudes
than existence proofs, because the former are more relevant in decision
making. Paradoxically, accounting research became less useful in the real
world by trying to become more scientific (Granof and Zeff 2008). Although
every empirical article in accounting journals touts the statistical
significance of the results, practical significance is rarely considered or
discussed (e.g., Lev 1989). Empirical articles do not often discuss the
meaning of a regression coefficient with respect to real-world decision
variables and their outcomes. Thus, accounting research results rarely have
practical implications, and this tendency is likely worst in fields with the
strongest reliance on statistical significance such as financial reporting
research.
Ziliak and McCloskey (2008) highlight a deeper
concern about over-reliance on statistical significance—that it does not
even provide evidence about whether a hypothesis is true or false. Carver
(1978) provides a memorable example of drawing the wrong inference from
statistical significance:
What is the probability of obtaining a dead person
(label this part D) given that the person was hanged (label this part H);
this is, in symbol form, what is P(D|H)? Obviously, it will be very high,
perhaps 0.97 or higher. Now, let us reverse the question. What is the
probability that a person has been hanged (H), given that the person is dead
(D); that is, what is P(H|D)? This time the probability will undoubtedly be
very low, perhaps 0.01 or lower. No one would be likely to make the mistake
of substituting the first estimate (0.97) for the second (0.01); that is, to
accept 0.97 as the probability that a person has been hanged given that the
person is dead. Even though this seems to be an unlikely mistake, it is
exactly the kind of mistake that is made with interpretations of statistical
significance testing—by analogy, calculated estimates of P(D|H) are
interpreted as if they were estimates of P(H|D), when they clearly are not
the same.
As Cohen (1994) succinctly explains, statistical
tests assess the probability of observing a sample moment as extreme as
observed conditional on the null hypothesis being true, or P(D|H0), where D
represents data and H0 represents the null hypothesis. However, researchers
want to know whether the null hypothesis is true, conditional on the sample,
or P(H0|D). We can calculate P(H0|D) from P(D|H0) by applying Bayes'
theorem, but that requires knowledge of P(H0), which is what researchers
want to discover in the first place. Although Ziliak and McCloskey (2008)
quote many eminent statisticians who have repeatedly pointed out this basic
logic, the essential point has not entered the published accounting
literature.
In my view, restoring relevance to mathematically
guided accounting research requires changing our role model from applied
science to engineering (Colander 2011).16 While science aims at finding
truth through application of institutionalized best practices with little
regard for time or cost, engineering seeks to solve a specific problem using
available resources, and the engineering method is “the strategy for causing
the best change in a poorly understood or uncertain situation within the
available resources” (Koen 2003). We should move to an experimental approach
that simulates real-world applications or field tests new accounting methods
in particular countries or industries, as would likely happen by default if
accounting were not monopolized by the IASB (Dye and Sunder 2001). The
inductive approach to standard-setting advocated by Littleton (1953) is
likely to provide workable solutions to existing problems and be more useful
than an axiomatic approach that starts from overly simplistic first
principles.
To reduce the gap between academe and practice and
stimulate new inquiry, AAA should partner with the FEI or Business
Roundtable to create summer, semester, or annual research internships for
accounting professors and Ph.D. students at corporations and audit firms.17
Accounting professors who have served as visiting scholars at the SEC and
FASB have reported positively about their experience (e.g., Jorgensen et al.
2007), and I believe that such practice internships would provide
opportunities for valuable fieldwork that supplements our experimental and
archival analyses. Practice internships could be an especially fruitful way
for accounting researchers to spend their sabbaticals.
Another useful initiative would be to revive the
tradition of The Accounting Review publishing papers that do not rely on
statistical significance or mathematical notation, such as case studies,
field studies, and historical studies, similar to the Journal of Financial
Economics (Jensen et al. 1989).18 A separate editor, similar to the book
reviews editor, could ensure that appropriate criteria are used to evaluate
qualitative research submissions (Chapman 2012). A co-editor from practice
could help ensure that the topics covered are current and relevant, and help
reverse the steep decline in AAA professional membership. Encouraging
diversity in research methods and topics is more likely to attract new
scholars who are passionate and intrinsically care about their research,
rather than attracting only those who imitate current research fads for
purely instrumental career reasons.
The relevance of accounting journals can be
enhanced by inviting accomplished guest authors from outside accounting. The
excellent April 1983 issue of The Accounting Review contains a section
entitled “Research Perspectives from Related Disciplines,” which includes
essays by Robert Wilson (Decision Sciences), Michael Jensen and Stephen Ross
(Finance and Economics), and Karl Weick (Organizational Behavior) that were
based on invited presentations at the 1982 AAA Annual Meeting. The
thought-provoking essays were discussed by prominent accounting academics
(Robert Kaplan, Joel Demski, Robert Libby, and Nils Hakansson); I still use
Jensen (1983) to start each of my Ph.D. courses. Academic outsiders bring
new perspectives to familiar problems and can often reframe them in ways
that enable solutions (Tullock 1966).
I still lament that no accounting journal editor
invited the plenary speakers—Joe Henrich, Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Michael
Hechter, Eric Posner, Robert Lucas, and Vernon Smith—at the 2007 AAA Annual
Meeting to write up their presentations for publication in accounting
journals. It is rare that Nobel Laureates and U.S. Presidential Early Career
Award winners address AAA annual meetings.20 I strongly urge that AAA annual
meetings institute a named lecture given by a distinguished researcher from
a different discipline, with the address published in The Accounting Review.
This would enable cross-fertilization of ideas between accounting and other
disciplines. Several highly cited papers published in the Journal of
Accounting and Economics were written by economists (Watts 1998), so this
initiative could increase citation flows from accounting journals to other
disciplines.
HOW CAN WE MAKE U.S. ACCOUNTING JOURNALS MORE
READABLE AND INTERESTING?
Even the greatest discovery will have little impact
if other people cannot understand it or are unwilling to make the effort.
Zeff (1978) says, “Scholarly writing need not be abstruse. It can and should
be vital and relevant. Research can succeed in illuminating the dark areas
of knowledge and facilitating the resolution of vexing problems—but only if
the report of research findings is communicated to those who can carry the
findings further and, in the end, initiate change.” If our journals put off
readers, then our research will not stimulate our students or induce change
in practice (Dyckman 1989).
Michael Jensen (1983, 333–334) addressed the 1982
AAA Annual Meeting saying:
Unfortunately, there exists in the profession an
unwarranted bias toward the use of mathematics even in situations where it
is unproductive or useless. One manifestation of this is the common use of
the terms “rigorous” or “analytical” or even “theoretical” as identical with
‘‘mathematical.” None of these links is, of course, correct. Mathematical is
not the same as rigorous, nor is it the same as analytical or theoretical.
Propositions can be logically rigorous without being mathematical, and
analysis does not have to take the form of symbols and equations. The
English sentence and paragraph will do quite well for many analytical
purposes. In addition, the use of mathematics does not prevent the
commission of errors—even egregious ones.
Unfortunately, the top accounting journals
demonstrate an increased “tyranny of formalism” that “develops when
mathematically inclined scholars take the attitude that if the analytical
language is not mathematics, it is not rigorous, and if a problem cannot be
solved with the use of mathematics, the effort should be abandoned” (Jensen
1983, 335). Sorter (1979) acidly described the transition from normative to
quantitative research: “the golden age of empty blindness gave way in the
sixties to bloated blindness calculated to cause indigestion. In the
sixties, the wonders of methodology burst upon the minds of accounting
researchers. We entered what Maslow described as a mean-oriented age.
Accountants felt it was their absolute duty to regress, regress and
regress.” Accounting research increasingly relies on mathematical and
statistical models with highly stylized and unrealistic assumptions. As
Young (2006) demonstrates, the financial statement “user” in accounting
research and regulation bears little resemblance to flesh-and-blood
individuals, and hence our research outputs often have little relevance to
the real world.
Figure 1 compares how frequently accountants and
members of ten other professions are cited in The New York Times in the late
1990s (Ellenberg 2000). These data are juxtaposed with the numbers employed
in each profession during 1996 using U.S. census data. Accountants are cited
less frequently relative to their numbers than any profession except
computer programmers. One possibility is that journalists cannot detect
anything interesting in accounting journals. Another possibility is that
university public relations staffs are consistently unable to find an
interesting angle in published accounting papers that they can pitch to
reporters. I have little doubt that the obscurantist tendencies in
accounting papers make it harder for most outsiders to understand what
accounting researchers are saying or find interesting.
Accounting articles have also become much longer
over time, and I am regularly asked to review articles with introductions
that are six to eight pages long, with many of the paragraphs cut-and-pasted
from later sections. In contrast, it took Watson and Crick (1953) just one
journal page to report the double-helix structure of DNA. Einstein (1905)
took only three journal pages to derive his iconic equation E = mc2. Since
even the best accounting papers are far less important than these classics
of 20th century science, readers waste time wading through academic bloat
(Sorter 1979). Because the top general science journals like Science and
Nature place strict word limits on articles that differ by the expected
incremental contribution, longer scientific papers signal better quality.21
Unfortunately, accounting journals do not restrict length, which encourages
bloated papers. Another driver of length is the aforementioned trend toward
greater rigor in the review process (Ellison 2002).
My first suggestion for making published accounting
articles less tedious and boring is to impose strict word limits and to
revive the “Notes” sections for shorter contributions. Word limits force
authors to think much harder about how to communicate their essential ideas
succinctly and greatly improve writing. Similarly, I would encourage
accounting journals to follow Nature and provide guidelines for informative
abstracts.22 A related suggestion is to follow the science journals, and
more recently, The American Economic Review, by introducing online-only
appendices to report the lengthy robustness sections that are demanded by
persnickety reviewers.23 In addition, I strongly encourage AAA journals to
require authors to post online with each journal article the data sets and
working computer code used to produce all tables as a condition for
publication, so that other independent researchers can validate and
replicate their studies (Bernanke 2004; McCullough and McKitrick 2009).24
This is important because recent surveys of science and management
researchers reveal that data fabrication, data falsification, and other
violations in published studies is far from rare (Martinson et al. 2005;
Bedeian et al. 2010).
I also urge that authors report results graphically
rather than in tables, as recommended by numerous statistical experts (e.g.,
Tukey 1977; Chambers et al. 1983; Wainer 2009). For example, Figure 2 shows
how the data in Figure 1 can be displayed more effectively without taking up
more page space (Gelman et al. 2002). Scientific papers routinely display
results in figures with confidence intervals rather than tables with
standard errors and p-values, and accounting journals should adopt these
practices to improve understandability. Soyer and Hogarth (2012) show
experimentally that even well-trained econometricians forecast more slowly
and inaccurately when given tables of statistical results than when given
equivalent scatter plots. Most accounting researchers cannot recognize the
main tables of Ball and Brown (1968) or Beaver (1968) on sight, but their
iconic figures are etched in our memories. The figures in Burgstahler and
Dichev (1997) convey their results far more effectively than tables would.
Indeed, the finance professoriate was convinced that financial markets are
efficient by the graphs in Fama et al. (1969), a highly influential paper
that does not contain a single statistical test! Easton (1999) argues that
the 1990s non-linear earnings-return relation literature would likely have
been developed much earlier if accounting researchers routinely plotted
their data. Since it is not always straightforward to convert tables into
graphs (Gelman et al. 2002), I recommend that AAA pay for new editors of AAA
journals to take courses in graphical presentation.
I would also recommend that AAA award an annual
prize for the best figure or graphic in an accounting journal each year. In
addition to making research articles easier to follow, figures ease the
introduction of new ideas into accounting textbooks. Economics is routinely
taught with diagrams and figures to aid intuition—demand and supply curves,
IS-LM analysis, Edgeworth boxes, etc. (Blaug and Lloyd 2010). Accounting
teachers would benefit if accounting researchers produced similar education
tools. Good figures could also be used to adorn the cover pages of our
journals similar to the best science journals; in many disciplines, authors
of lead articles are invited to provide an illustration for the cover page.
JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) reproduces paintings
depicting doctors on its cover (Southgate 1996); AAA could print paintings
of accountants and accounting on the cover of The Accounting Review, perhaps
starting with those collected in Yamey (1989). If color printing costs are
prohibitive, we could imitate the Journal of Political Economy back cover
and print passages from literature where accounting and accountants play an
important role, or even start a new format by reproducing cartoons
illustrating accounting issues. The key point is to induce accountants to
pick up each issue of the journal, irrespective of the research content.
I think that we need an accounting journal to “fill
a gap between the general-interest press and most other academic journals,”
similar to the Journal of Economics Perspectives (JEP).25 Unlike other
economics journals, JEP editors and associate editors solicit articles from
experts with the goal of conveying state-of-the-art economic thinking to
non-specialists, including students, the lay public, and economists from
other specialties.26 The journal explicitly eschews mathematical notation or
regression results and requires that results be presented either graphically
or as a table of means. In response to the question “List the three
economics journals (broadly defined) that you read most avidly when a new
issue appears,” a recent survey of U.S. economics professors found that
Journal of Economics Perspectives was their second favorite economics
journal (Davis et al. 2011), which suggests that an unclaimed niche exists
in accounting. Although Accounting Horizons could be restructured along
these lines to better reach practitioners, it might make sense to start a
new association-wide journal under the AAA aegis.
CONCLUSION
I believe that accounting is one of the most
important human innovations. The invention of accounting records was likely
indispensable to the emergence of agriculture, and ultimately, civilization
(e.g., Basu and Waymire 2006). Many eminent historians view double-entry
bookkeeping as indispensable for the Renaissance and the emergence of
capitalism (e.g., Sombart 1919; Mises 1949; Weber 1927), possibly via
stimulating the development of algebra (Heeffer 2011). Sadly, accounting
textbooks and the top U.S. accounting journals seem uninterested in whether
and how accounting innovations changed history, or indeed in understanding
the history of our current practices (Zeff 1989).
In short, the accounting academy embodies a
“tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968) where strong extrinsic incentives to
publish in “top” journals have led to misdirected research efforts. As Zeff
(1983) explains, “When modeling problems, researchers seem to be more
affected by technical developments in the literature than by their potential
to explain phenomena. So often it seems that manuscripts are the result of
methods in search of questions rather than questions in search of methods.”
Solving common problems requires strong collective action by the social
network of accounting researchers using self-governing mechanisms (e.g.,
Ostrom 1990, 2005). Such initiatives should occur at multiple levels (e.g.,
school, association, section, region, and individual) to have any chance of
success.
While accounting research has made advances in
recent decades, our collective progress seems slow, relative to the hard
work put in by so many talented researchers. Instead of letting financial
economics and psychology researchers and accounting standard-setters choose
our research methods and questions, we should return our focus to addressing
fundamental issues in accounting. As important, junior researchers should be
encouraged to take risks and question conventional academic wisdom, rather
than blindly conform to the party line. For example, the current FASB–IASB
conceptual framework “remains irreparably flawed” (Demski 2007), and
accounting researchers should take the lead in developing alternative
conceptual frameworks that better fit what accounting does (e.g., Ijiri
1983; Ball 1989; Dickhaut et al. 2010). This will entail deep historical and
cross-cultural analyses rather than regression analyses on machine-readable
data. Deliberately attacking the “fundamental and frequently asked
questions” in accounting will require innovations in research outlooks and
methods, as well as training in the history of accounting thought. It is
shameful that we still cannot answer basic questions like “Why did anyone
invent recordkeeping?” or “Why is double-entry bookkeeping beautiful?”
Bravo to Professor Basu for having the guts address the Cargo
Cult in this manner!
"A 'Partial Win' for Publishers," by Carl Straumsheim, Inside
Higher Ed, October 14, 2014 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/20/federal-appeals-court-rejects-georgia-state-us-10-percent-rule-determining-fair-use
While academic publishers on Friday
notched a rare win in the ongoing legal debate about digital access to
copyrighted works, proponents of fair use said the opinion in
Cambridge v. Patton recognizes that colleges
and universities can legally create digital reserves of books in their
collections.
In a unanimous decision, a three-judge
panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which covers
Alabama, Georgia and Florida, rejected a broad ruling on how to determine
fair use. The decision guarantees the case has a long and litigious road
ahead of it by reversing the district court’s opinion and sending the case
back for further deliberations.
Rather than strike a decisive blow
against fair use, the legal concept that places some limits on the rights of
copyright holders, the appeals court instead issued a stern warning against
quick-fix, one-size-fits-all solutions to legal disputes -- specifically,
the idea that copying less than a chapter or 10 percent of a book
automatically protects an institution from a lawsuit.
“To further the purpose of copyright, we
must provide for some fair use taking of copyrighted material,” the opinion,
authored by Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat, reads. “But if we set this
transaction cost too high by allowing too much taking, we run the risk of
eliminating the economic incentive for the creation of original works that
is at the core of copyright and -- by driving creators out of the market --
killing the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.”
Yet the court also came away “persuaded”
that the Copyright Act of 1976 contains specific protections for colleges
and universities, noting that Congress “devoted extensive effort to ensure
that fair use would allow for educational copying under the proper
circumstances.”
“While it can be worrisome to see a fair
use win sent back, in this case, it seems to be mostly for the right
reasons,” Mike Masnick, founder of the technology blog
Techdirt, wrote. “Given these new instructions, it
seems like the lower court now has a chance to come to the right answer for
the right reasons, and that’s always going to be a better result.”
Rejected on Process, Not Merits
The case concerns an initiative created
by Georgia State University, which in 2004 began letting faculty members
scan book and journal excerpts and host them in the university’s e-reserves.
Instead of waiting in turn for their classmates to finish an assigned
reading on hold in the library, students could read the digitized version
online. Three publishers, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University
Press and Sage Publications, said Georgia State’s actions, similar to those
used at many other colleges, constituted copyright violations.
Judge Orinda D. Evans in May 2012
endorsed the university's practices, ruling in its
favor on 94 of 99 instances of alleged copyright violation. As long as the
university didn’t make too much of the copyrighted books or articles
available -- up to 10 percent or one chapter, whichever is less -- the
digitized copies were considered fair use of the works, she ruled.
The publishers
criticized
the court for what they said was a narrow opinion, and
for relying on a “legally incorrect” fair use analysis. They
appealed the case to the higher court that
September.
The appeals court, which released its
opinion late Friday afternoon, sided with the publishers -- at least on
their criticism of Evans’s process.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Fair Use and the DMCA ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright
The number of foreign students in Germany has surged
to 300,000, putting Germany just behind America, Britain and Australia as a
destination. If you can’t get into Stanford, Germany is now another option.
"German universities Between great and so-so," The Economist,
December 13, 2014 ---
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21636060-not-elite-improving-german-universities-bet-middle-way-between-great-and-so-so
A GLANCE at the global rankings of universities
suggests that nothing much has changed in recent years. MIT, Stanford,
Cambridge, Oxford and a few other English-speaking campuses remain at the
top, fighting it out with large endowments, celebrity professors and
selective entry. By contrast, universities in Germany are nowhere near the
top, even after several reforms, including an “excellence initiative” since
2005. Many students waste away in overflow rooms next to packed and stuffy
lecture halls. Their best hope of seeing professors is through opera
glasses.
. . .
After 1945, West German universities revived the
stuffy bits but without the excellence. Only the idolising of titles
survived: even outside academia, Germans insist on being addressed with the
full mouthful of “Herr Professor Doktor”. In the 1960s German students
rebelled in vain. One slogan was “under the robes, the musty stink of 1,000
years”.
With the country’s first Social Democratic
government in 1969, the emphasis shifted to widening access across social
classes. Until a court ruling in 2005, German universities—which, like
schools, are run by the states—were not allowed to charge tuition fees.
Since then, seven states (all in the old West Germany) have tried, but all
have given up after howls of outrage. The final holdouts, Bavaria and Lower
Saxony, have recently dropped fees.
But Germany knows that higher education needs to
improve. One push has, since 1999, come from the European Union’s Bologna
process, which has made the German system more compatible internationally,
replacing traditional degrees with bachelors’ and masters’. Germany has also
allowed private universities and specialised colleges for engineers or
business, with courses in English.
Their success has been limited, however. The idea
that alumni should donate money to their alma maters remains anathema. The
assumption is that education is the government’s business and should cost
nothing. Only 6% of students go to private colleges.
Even so, some progress has been made. The federal
government and a research foundation have given money to 30 promising
universities known tongue-in-cheek as an Ivy League in the making.
The number of foreign students in Germany has surged
to 300,000, putting Germany just behind America, Britain and Australia as a
destination. If you can’t get into
Stanford, Germany is now another option.
Tertiary education ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education
Tertiary education, also referred to as third stage, third
level, and post-secondary education, is the educational level
following the completion of a school providing a
secondary education. The
World
Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities
as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning
such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing
schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning
centers.[1]
Higher education is taken to include
undergraduate and
postgraduate education, while
vocational education and training beyond secondary education is known as
further education in the
United Kingdom, or
continuing education in the
United States.
Tertiary education generally culminates in the receipt of
certificates,
diplomas,
or
academic degrees.
Education by Country ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_education_articles_by_country
Education in Germany ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany
The Most Educated Countries in the World (in terms of "tertiary education")
---
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html?page=all
- Canada
- Israel
- Japan
- United States
- New Zealand
- South Korea
- United Kingdom
- Finland
- Australia
- Ireland
Countries with the highest proportions of college graduates ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/22/countries-with-the-most-c_n_655393.html#s117378&title=Russian_Federation_54
- Russian Federation 54.0% (quality varies due to rampant cheating and
corruption where students can buy course grades and admission)
- Canada 48.3%
- Israel 43.6%
- Japan 41.0%
- New Zealand 41.0%
- United States 40.3% (colleges vary greatly in terms of admissions
standards and rigor for graduation)
- Finland 36.4%
- South Korea 34.3%
- Norway 34.2%
- Australia 33.7%
Germany is still under the OECD average in terms of proportions of college
graduates at 23.9% ---
http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2010/09/education-governments-should-expand-tertiary-studies-to-boost-jobs-and-tax-revenues.html
.
Jensen Comment
This tidbit was inspired by reference to the fact that tertiary education in
Germany was free and is now returning to virtually free. Note, however, that
getting into college in Germany is extremely competitive based mostly upon
examinations along the way in what we call K-12 schools ---
http://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/education/
Note there's a huge difference between free tuition and free college
education covering tuition, room, board, transportation, computers, books, etc.
It's much more likely in the USA that students can both live at home and get
college degrees due to higher numbers of nearby college campuses all across the
USA and the increasing prevalence online college degree opportunities relative
to all of Europe, especially in Germany. Germans may get free tuition, but they
may have to leave home and pay for their own relatively expensive room and board
in large cities.
Germany has a smaller proportion of college graduates in large measure due
somewhat to both the status and the wages of people that elect to go into the
skilled trades rather than college where salaries may often be lower.
But the primary reason is the limited space in German universities and the
competitiveness of the qualifying examinations to get in. Unlike the USA, first
year German college students are good in reading, writing, and college-level
mathematics. In the USA colleges increasingly are faced with students needing
to have remedial courses in reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Germany is still under the OECD average in terms of proportions of college
graduates at 23.9% ---
http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2010/09/education-governments-should-expand-tertiary-studies-to-boost-jobs-and-tax-revenues.html
.
The study's setting off the
usual alarm bells (g) in Germany. I
speculated on the cause of Germany's low
college-graduation rates a while ago, but I think one factor I forgot to
mention is cost. It's not that some German universities have introduced
tuition fees -- in international comparison, these tuition fees are
negligible. The problem is rather that Germany has a woefully inadequate
system for financing higher education. Germany does have a loan/grant scheme
for students (called Bafoeg), but it's
extremely complex and miserly (g). Not that I'm a
big fan of student loans, but a well-regulated system of affordable student
loans is much better than Germany's current system of measly scholarships,
half-time university posts, and help from relatives.
Even if simple, affordable loans were available, the
problem would remained that lots of young Germans are reluctant to face what
students in most other countries have long accepted: college costs money,
and that means debt. I'm consistently surprised to meet Germans who could
have gone to college but didn't, and instead decided to become hairdressers,
chimney sweeps, butchers, or machinists. There are ads all over my
university right now which advise university students who "don't like
studying" to drop out of college and train to become air-traffic
controllers.
The rationale behind people who choose these
professions is that "we'll always need" people to do these jobs, so they
offer steadier employment. I'm not so sure. In fact, something tells me that
15 years from now or so, we're going to need a
whole lot fewer human air-traffic controllers than
we do now...
In comparison say in the USA and Australia, the skilled trades may pay better
in many instances but the social status of college graduates is generally higher
relative to the status of skilled trades workers in Germany. Also in the USA
college graduates are less bounded due to the American Dream of reaching almost
unheard of salaries as physicians, veterinarians, corporate executives, etc.
relative to counterparts in Germany where white collar salaries are more bounded
by taxes and culture relative to living expenses (that are generally higher,
especially for big houses luxury condos, and acreages).
There is an increasing and long-delayed initiative to open up the German
education system to be more like the North American dreams.
Berlin's Gymnasium Lottery
In 2009 the Berlin Senate decided that Berlin's gymnasium schools should no
longer be allowed to pick all of their students. It was ruled that while
they would be able to pick 70% to 65% of their students, the other places
were to be allocated by lottery. Every child is able to enter the lottery,
no matter how he or she performed in primary school. It is hoped that this
policy will increase the number of working class students attending a
gymnasium. The Left proposed that Berlin gymnasiums should no longer be
allowed to expel students who perform poorly, so that students who won a
gymnasium place in the lottery have a higher chance of graduating from that
school. It is not clear yet whether Berlin's senate will decide in favor of
The Left's proposal.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"For-Profit Educator Will Pay $3.75-Million Over Deceptive Marketing,"
by Andy Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12. 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/for-profit-educator-will-pay-3-75-million-over-deceptive-marketing?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A for-profit education company has agreed to pay
Massachusetts $3.75-million to settle claims it engaged in deceptive
marketing practices, The Boston Globe
reports. The office of the state’s attorney
general, Martha Coakley,
announced on Friday that the Salter chain, which
is owned by Premier Education Group LP, had claimed its admissions process
was selective when it wasn’t and had misrepresented job-placement rates. The
company’s chief executive, Gary Camp, disputed the allegations but said the
company had agreed to change some of its practices and begin offering career
counseling for current and former students in 2015.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Street Smart versus Ethics: How Not to Teach
Ethics in the Slums
Chicago's Champion Little League Team Won Because Parents and Officials
Allegedly Cheated
"Jackie Robinson West Broke Residency Rules,
Suburban League Claims," by Mark Konkol, DNAinfor.com, December 16, 2014
---
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141216/morgan-park/jackie-robinson-west-broke-residency-rules-suburban-league-claims
The
Jackie Robinson West sluggers from Chicago’s
struggling South Side became national celebrities this summer when they hit
and pitched their way to the Little League World Series and took home the
U.S title.
But now the adults who put together the team —
parents, coaches and league administrators — face allegations they violated
Little League residency rules by stacking the lineup with All-Star ringers
from the suburbs to create a “super team” that became champs.
In an email to Little League International obtained
by DNAinfo.com Chicago, a neighboring south suburban league called on Little
League officials to investigate whether Jackie Robinson West engaged in
“manipulating, bending and blatantly breaking the rules for the sole purpose
of winning at all costs.”
“We have very good reason to believe that [there]
were several members of this team that did not live within JRW's boundaries
and, per Little League residency requirements, should not have been allowed
on this team,” Evergreen Park Athletic Association vice president Chris
Janes wrote.
Evergreen Park league officials say they decided to
speak out despite the risk of being criticized in hopes of protecting the
integrity of Little League baseball — a once small-town organization that’s
now worth more than $80 million — and keep their league, as well as others,
alive.
Jackie Robinson West league officials say they
fully complied with residency rules — and Little League International’s
request for additional supporting documentation last month — pointing to a
finding of no wrongdoing.
“Oh my goodness, we did not cheat. We did not
recruit these guys,” Jackie Robinson West president Bill Haley said.
“Nothing was done to put these kids together. We absolutely did not cheat.”
Little League residency rules require players to
either reside or attend school within a league’s boundaries with very few
exceptions, and specifically state it is unacceptable for a parent to
establish residency to qualify for tournament play.
According to a league map obtained by DNAinfo.com,
the Jackie Robinson West boundaries include sections of the Morgan Park,
Washington Heights, Auburn Gresham, Englewood and New City neighborhoods of
Chicago — but do not include any suburbs.
Janes and fellow Evergreen Park league board
members said news reports during and after the World Series that quoted
suburban officials celebrating various players as hometown heroes exposed
some of Jackie Robinson West players as suburbanites and confirmed what some
Evergreen Park Little League volunteers had suspected for years — preteen
blue-chip players were being recruited to join the team.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
They might have recruited stars from the Chicago Cubs, but those stars weren't
good enough for the Jackie Robinson West team.
Jensen Comment
From Hard Workers to Couch Potatoes: Television Advertising Fills the Days (not
mine, although in retirement Erika and I do watch one Netflix movie most days.
Lately its been a long and well-written and addictive TV series called Longmire.
The nice thing about watching such a series on Netflix is that there are no
commercial breaks.)
"Over The Past 150 Years, There Has Been
A Profound Shift In What Humans Do With Their Time," by Henry Blodget,
Business Insider, December 27, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-humans-spend-their-time-2014-12
. . .
150 years ago, we spent about 70 of those 112
waking hours working.
Thanks to the remarkable productivity enhancements
we have made over the past 150 years, the average workweek in most countries
has dropped by about 30 hours:
This remarkable drop in working hours has freed up
a lot of extra time.
So what do we humans do with all the extra hours
our miraculous progress and productivity enhancements have allowed us to
create for ourselves?
We spend them watching television.
According to recent figures, the average human
spends about 4 hours a day, or 28 hours a week, watching television.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
How we spend our 21st Century leisure time varies somewhat in across different
cultures and ages. For example, bike riding is increasingly popular in the USA
but not to the extreme that we find in Denmark and Holland. In Latin American
countries, where it is quite hot and humid, clusters of men stand around a lot
outdoors seemingly doing nothing but conversing. In the USA that is also the
case but most of them are ostensibly doing road repairs with two workers
actually working while ten more are standing around conversing.
Aside from bike riding, men and women in the USA
spend a lot more time walking and running indoors and outdoors. When I drive to
town I always see a lot of cars parked at our most popular (Evergreen) physical
fitness center. Golf and swimming seem to have increased in popularity while
tennis and fishing declined.
Many men find more time for hobbies like antique
car restoration. Women are increasingly into gardening, art, and crafts. Both
men and women spend a lot more time on their computers and gadgets.
Teens spend an enormous amount of time in social
networking, computer games, and video games. In middle age, studies show that
middle-aged women are more prone than middle-aged men toward social networking
and game addictions.
With fuel prices plunging, many more folks in
the USA will be on the roadways with their motor homes. They will still be
watching a lot of TV in the RV parks. I guess we could write poems about the
TV-RV thing.
By the end of the day nearly all of us have
spent more of our non-working days on television and movies than on hobbies and
books.
"The Rise of Men Who Don’t Work (and
What They Do Instead)," by Barry Ritholtz, December 16, 2014 ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/12/the-rise-of-men-who-dont-work-and-what-they-do-instead/
Jensen Comment
Many men and women who do not get W-2 forms for working hours are nevertheless
still earning wages in the $2 trillion underground economy while working in
construction, house cleaning, etc.
ttp://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Many of them are on food stamps and other
forms of welfare.
The welfare average
will be $1.4 trillion in the USA
over the next decade not counting tens of millions of people receiving full
disability payments fraudulently
"America in Urgent Need of Welfare Reform," by Vann Ellison, Townhall,
December 16. 2014 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/vannellison/2014/12/16/by-vann-r-ellison-n1932197?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Case Studies in Gaming the Income Tax
Laws ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Desalinization ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
California's Carlsbad Plant Turns to
the Pacific Ocean for 54 million gallons of desalinized water
"Desalination out of Desperation," by David Talbot, MIT's Technology Review,
December 16, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalination-out-of-desperation/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141216
. . .
The process is called reverse osmosis (RO), and
it’s the mainstay of large-scale desalination facilities around the world.
As water is forced through the membrane, the polymer allows the water
molecules to pass while blocking the salts and other inorganic impurities.
Global desalination output has tripled
since 2000: 16,000 plants are up and running around the world, and the pace
of construction is expected to increase while the technology continues to
improve. Carlsbad, for example, has
been outfitted with state-of-the art commercial membranes and advanced
pressure-recovery systems. But the plants remain costly to build and
operate.
Seawater desalination, in fact, is one of the
most expensive sources of fresh water.
The water sells—depending on site conditions—for between $1,000 and $2,500
per acre-foot (the amount used by two five-person U.S. households per year).
Carlsbad’s product will sell for around $2,000, which is 80 percent more
than the county pays for treated water from outside the area. One reason is
the huge amount of energy required to push water through the membranes. And
Carlsbad, like most desalination plants, is being built with extra pumps,
treatment capacity, and membrane tubes, the better to guarantee uptime.
“Because it is a critical asset for the region, there is a tremendous amount
of redundancy to give high reliability,” says Jonathan Loveland, vice
president at Poseidon Water, the owner of the plant. “If any piece fails,
something else will pick up the slack.”
Already, some 700 million people worldwide suffer
from water scarcity, but that number is expected to swell to 1.8 billion in
just 10 years. Some countries, like Israel, already rely heavily on
desalination; more will follow suit. In many places, “we are already at the
limit of renewable water resources, and yet we continue to grow,” says John
Lienhard, a mechanical engineer and director of the Center for Clean Water
and Clean Energy at MIT. “On top of that we have global warming, with hotter
and drier conditions in many areas, which will potentially further reduce
the amount of renewable water available.” While conservation and recycling
will help, you can’t recycle what you don’t have. “As coastal cities grow,”
he says, “the value of seawater desalination is going to increase rapidly,
and it’s likely we will see widespread adoption.”
Against this grim backdrop, there is some good
news. In short, desalination is ripe for technological improvement. A
combination of sensor-driven optimization and automation, plus new types of
membranes, could eventually allow for desalination plants that are half the
size and use commensurately less energy. Among other benefits, small, mobile
desalination units could be used in agricultural regions hundreds of miles
away from the ocean, where demand for water is great and growing.
Jensen Comment
I read that a each pound of
guacamole made from pulverized
avocados
takes 74 gallons of fresh water to grow not far from the Carlsbad plant in
Southern California. Ironically salt is taken out of the sea water to grow the
avocados and then put back into the guacamole for flavoring.
When You're Really Good at What you Do
"Chemical-Sensing Displays and Other Surprising Uses of Glass: An
inside look at Corning’s labs suggests what’s next for the inventor of Gorilla
Glass," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, December 17. 2014
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533076/chemical-sensing-displays-and-other-surprising-uses-of-glass/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141217
. . .
Founded in 1851, Corning survived in the past because of its ability to keep
reinventing the possibilities of glass. At about the same time that the
market for fiber optics collapsed, its business selling glass for
cathode-ray-tube TVs also took a steep dive. It was saved by a process it
had invented for making the high quality glass needed for the transistors
that control pixels in LCD displays—the very display technology that was
destroying its cathode-ray business. A few years later, the company got a
call from Steve Jobs, who needed tough glass for the first iPhone. Corning
just happened to have a technology sitting on the shelf—the toughened glass
that came to be called Gorilla Glass. Corning hopes to be ready for the next
call.
"End-of-Semester Econometrics Examination," by David Giles,
Econometrics Beat, December 2014 ---
http://web.uvic.ca/~dgiles/blog/Final2014.pdf
"The Rotterdam Model," by David Giles, Econometrics Beat, December
14, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-rotterdam-model.html
How appropriate it
is to see this important landmark in econometrics honoured in
this way. And how fitting that this paper is written by two Australian
econometricians, given the enormous contributions to empirical
demand analysis that have come from that group of researchers -
including Ken and his many students - over the years. (But more
on this another time.)
Any student who wants to see
applied econometrics at its best can do no better than look at
the rich empirical literature on consumer demand. That
literature will take you beyond the "toy" models that you meet
in your micro. courses, to really serious ones: the Linear
Expenditure System, the Rotterdam Model, the Almost Ideal Demand
System, and others. Where better to see the marriage of sound
economic modelling, interesting data, and innovative statistical
methods? In short - "econometrics".
Back to Ken and Grace's
paper, though. Here's the abstract:
"Half a
century ago, Barten (1964) and Theil (1965) formulated what
is now known as the Rotterdam model. A path-breaking
innovation, this system of demand equations allowed for the
first time rigorous testing of the theory of the utility-maximising
consumer. This has led to a vibrant, on-going strand of
research on the theoretical underpinnings of the model,
extensions and numerous applications. But perhaps due to its
European heritage and unorthodox derivation, there is still
misunderstanding and a tendency for the Rotterdam model to
be regarded with reservations and/or uncertainties (if not
mistrust). This paper marks the golden jubilee of the model
by clarifying its economic foundations, highlighting its
strengths and weaknesses, elucidating its links with other
models of consumer demand, and dealing with some recent
developments that have their roots in Barten and Theil’s
pioneering research of the 1960s."
I hope that you'll
take the time to read this excellent paper.
Jensen Comment
I think LinkedIn's ranking of USA accounting programs is BS because of the top
programs (in my viewpoint) that it leaves out of the Top 25.
"The 25 Best Colleges To Attend If You Want To Be An Accountant
(according to BS Linked in Data)," Business Insider, October 3, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-colleges-for-accountants-2014-10
Keep in mind that most states now require one year of college beyond the
undergraduate years.
What are the top-ranked accounting graduate programs?
It all depends on what programs and what criteria are used for the rankings
Top Accounting MBA in Accounting Specialty Programs Ranked by US News
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/accounting-rankings
University of Texas—Austin (McCombs)
Austin, TX
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
Philadelphia, PA
University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL
University of Chicago (Booth)
Chicago, IL
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor (Ross)
Ann Arbor, MI
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
Brigham Young University (Marriott)
Provo, UT
University of Southern California (Marshall)
Los Angeles, CA
New York University (Stern)
New York, NY
University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
Chapel Hill, NC
Jensen Comment
In some ways the above rankings of MBA programs with accounting specialties are
misleading. There are some top-ranked MBA programs above that should probably be
avoided for graduates seeking careers as CPAs in auditing and taxation. All the
programs above have accounting Ph.D. programs, but the above top rankings for
MBA in accounting specialties are not necessarily the top accounting doctoral
programs.
Students seeking to pass the CPA examination and aiming for careers in
auditing and taxation should probably seek out masters of accounting or masters
of taxation programs rather than MBA programs. Brigham Young University
(Marriott) has a top-ranked masters of accounting program but no accounting
doctoral program. The University of Texas, the University of Michigan, the
University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina, and the
University of Illinois have top masters of accounting programs, MBA programs,
and Ph.D. programs.
Stanford University and the University of Chicago have prestigious MBA
programs but do not have masters of accounting programs. Students seeking to
pass the CPA examination and searching for careers in auditing and taxation
would not normally choose Stanford or Chicago.
Top Masters of Accounting Programs
Best Master’s in Accounting Schools According to
Professors
Here are the top ranked master’s in accounting programs in 2013 according
to the Public Accounting Report:
1. University of Texas
2. Brigham Young University
3. University of Illinois
4. University of Notre Dame
5. University of Mississippi
6. University of Southern California
7. University of Michigan
8. Texas A&M University
9. Indiana University
10. University of North Carolina
The
Public Accounting Report ranks accounting programs annually based on a
survey of accounting professors at over 200 colleges and universities.
Accounting Schools with the Highest 2013 First-Time CPA
Pass Rate
1. Brigham Young University
2. University Georgia
3. University of Wisconsin Madison
4. University of Michigan Ann Arbor
5. University of Notre Dame
6. Texas A&M University
7. University of Virginia
8. University of Texas Austin
9. Lehigh University
10. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
These rankings are for large schools with at least 60 candidates for the
CPA exam. For all candidates in the United States, the first-time pass rate
was 54.6% in 2013 according to Nasba.org. You can find more information and
specific statistics on the
2013 NASBA Uniform CPA Examination Candidate Performance report.
If we were to just rank the
accounting doctoral programs in terms of research performance the
rankings might be quite different from the rankings shown above for MBA
specialty and Master of Accounting Programs ---
http://www.byuaccounting.net/rankings/univrank/rankings.php
"Law School Enrollments Continue Their Free Fall," Chronicle of Higher
Education, December 17, 2014 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/12/17/law-school-enrollments-continue-their-free-fall
Jensen Comment
We can thank turnover in public accounting for maintaining steady growth in
accounting enrollments in masters degree programs in accountancy. The job
opportunities combined with the lower cost becoming a CPA give the accountancy
profession a huge edge these days over law schools where seven or more years of
full-time college are required to sit for the BAR exam in all 50 states.
The cost of those extra three years of law school combined with mounting student
debt at the undergraduate level hare huge discouragements for taking on tens of
thousands of dollars in student loans to become a lawyer. This has not hit the
medical schools quite as hard because of the better job market for new
physicians.
It's sad that law schools are on a "free fall," because law schools helped to
generate undergraduate majors in nonprofessional disciplines in liberal arts
such as in history and philosophy. Now liberal arts graduates have a harder time
getting into careers without taking more undergraduate prerequisites such as
undergraduate accounting and criminal justice courses. By the way there are even
more dire shortages of criminal justice Ph.D. graduates than the well-known
shortages of new Ph.D.s in accountancy.
From the Scout Report on December 19, 2014
Photozeen ---
http://www.photozeen.com
Photozeen is an educational platform for
photographers. It teaches users how to take better pictures through a
process of skills tips, feedback, and community connections. The app
revolves around "quests," which start with general topics and then narrow to
hone basic photography skills. Photozeen is currently available for iPads
and iPhones running iOS 6.0+ and will soon be available for Android users.
Telegram ---
https://telegram.org
Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop
messaging app with a specific focus on security and speed. If you're
concerned about your data privacy when messaging others, Telegram may be for
you. There are two big advantages of using Telegram - it's open source and
it's entirely cloud-based - so even if you don't have your phone, you can
still access all of your data from your computer. Users can even set a timer
for messages to self-destruct, erasing it from the receiving device as well.
Telegram is available across all platforms.
Costs and Benefits of
Electronic Cigarettes Still Under Scrutiny
Can e-cigarettes actually help smokers quit?
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/12/can-e-cigarettes-actually-help-smokers-quit
E-cigarettes can help smokers quit or cut down heavily, say researchers
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/17/e-cigarettes-smokers-quit-vaping
Electronic cigarettes and health: Vapour Trail
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21636714-latest-investigation-vaping-suggests-it-can-help-you-quit-smoking-vapour
Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation and reduction
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD010216.pub2/abstract
Are E-Cigarettes Less Harmful? Yes and No, New Study Suggests
http://www.insidescience.org/content/are-e-cigarettes-less-harmful-yes-and-no-new-study-suggests/1996
E-cigarettes: The lingering questions
http://www.nature.com/news/e-cigarettes-the-lingering-questions-1.15762
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Sustainability Education & Economic Development (SEED) ---
http://theseedcenter.org
Community College Research Center ---
http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/
Continuing Education ---
http://www.rand.org/topics/continuing-education.html
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
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Physics of the Universe ---
http://www.bnl.gov/science/physics.php
Windows to the Universe: The Sun ---
http://www.windows2universe.org/sun/sun.html
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life at UC Berkeley ---
https://seti.berkeley.edu
It might come as no surprise that some creatures at Berkeley are from another
planet
Neuroscience Research Portal ---
http://neuroportal.gmu.edu
Propulsion Research Center ---
http://www.uah.edu/prc
The Era Of The Flying Car Has Finally Arrived ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-era-of-the-flying-car-has-finally-arrived-2014-11
New research suggests an existing drug, riluzole, may prevent foggy 'old age'
brain ---
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-12-drug-riluzole-foggy-age-brain.html
What We Know (about climate change) ---
http://whatweknow.aaas.org
Scientists develop first effective and affordable bedbug bait and trap ---
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-scientists-effective-bedbug-bait.html
2014 in Computing: Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533686/2014-in-computing-breakthroughs-in-artificial-intelligence/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141229
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Open Anthropology ---
http://www.aaaopenanthro.org
From Princeton University
Innovations for Successful Societies ---
http://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu
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
Stored Communications Act (SCA) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math Tutorials
FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver's Blog on probabilities of elections,
sports, etc.) ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
History Tutorials
New Historian (latest historical discoveries) ---
http://www.newhistorian.com
The Chairman Smiles (historical communism posters) ---
http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/chairman/index.php
This Animated Map Shows How European Languages Evolved ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/map-how-indo-european-languages-evolved-2014-12
You may have to move the mouse to keep the animation running
International Center for Photography ---
http://www.icp.org/museum
The Tate Digitizes 70,000 Works of Art; Now Digitizing Another 52,00 Letters,
Photographs & Sketchbooks from British Artists ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/the-tate-digitizes-70000-works-of-art.html
From Princeton University
Innovations for Successful Societies ---
http://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu
American Ballet Theatre ---
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/american-ballet-theatre/index.html
The Search for Extraterrestrial Life at UC Berkeley ---
https://seti.berkeley.edu
It might come as no surprise that some creatures at Berkeley are from another
planet
Bunraku (Japanese puppet theater) ---
http://bunraku.cul.columbia.edu
Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vases Come to Life with 21st Century Animation ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/watch-art-on-ancient-greek-vases-come-to-life-with-21st-century-animation.html
Computer History
John Vincent Atanasoff and the Birth of Electronic Digital Computing ---
http://jva.cs.iastate.edu/
"The World’s First Computer Is Much Older Than Previously Thought," by
Kukil Bora, International Business Times via Business Insider,
Novenmber 29, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-first-computer-is-much-older-than-previously-thought-2014-11
Silicon Valley ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/
History of Computing
Internet Archive: Computers & Technology ---
http://archive.org/details/computersandtechvideos
Great Moments in Computer History: Douglas Engelbart Presents “The Mother of
All Demos” (1968) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/douglas-engelbart-presents-the-mother-of-all-demos.html
"Forgotten PC history: The true origins of the personal computer --- The PC's
back story involves a little-known Texas connection," by Lamont Wood,
Computer World, August 8, 2008 ---
Click Here
Steve Jobs at the Smithsonian ---
http://www.si.edu/Exhibitions/stevejobsputational Science Education Reference Desk ---
http://www.shodor.org/refdesk/
A Computer Gets Delivered in 1957: Great Moments in Schlepping History
---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/a-computer-gets-delivered-in-1957.html
Watch the World’s Oldest Working Digital Computer — the 1951 Harwell Dekatron —
Get Fired Up Again
A Short History of Romanian Computing: From 1961 to 1989
“They Were There” — Errol Morris Finally Directs a Film for IBM
The Internet Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vintage Video Games in Your Web Browser
(Free)
Free Online Computer Science Courses
Harvard’s Free Computer Science Course Teaches You to Code in 12 Weeks
Bob Jensen's threads on computing history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---ComputerNetworking-IncludingInternet
2014 in Computing: Breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533686/2014-in-computing-breakthroughs-in-artificial-intelligence/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141229
Cold War Paranoia
Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Identify It’s A Wonderful Life as Communist
Propaganda ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html
"What New Left History Gave Us The New Left historians’ withering
critiques of liberalism have proven enormously influential: But do they
hold up in our more conservative age?" by Rich Yeselson, Democracy --- A
Journal of Ideas, Winter 2015 ---
http://www.democracyjournal.org/35/what-new-left-history-gave-us.php?page=all
In this age of partisan and ideological
polarization, something unusual happened in May: A writer from the right
delivered an encomium to a writer from the left. The Washington Examiner’s
Timothy Carney—a relentless libertarian who has never seen a government
program he did not view as a squalid arrangement between statist liberals
and corporate welfare seekers—paid tribute to Gabriel Kolko, a historian
identified with the New Left of the 1960s who had passed away earlier that
month.
Carney wrote that Americans typically believe a
classic “fable” that courageous “trust busters” like Teddy Roosevelt used
“the big stick of federal power to battle the greedy corporations.” Kolko’s
work, especially his most significant book, The Triumph of Conservatism
(1963), though little known today to anybody but specialists in early
twentieth-century history, “dismantled this myth.” Carney quoted Kolko’s
core argument: “The dominant fact of American political life” in the
Progressive Era “was that big business led the struggle for the federal
regulation of the economy.” And to both Carney and Kolko, this is pretty
much everything you need to know.
Continued in a very long article that's difficult to summarize except to
say that the New Left's intellectual heroes have changed the paradigm from a
study of the history of power to a study of the history of society.
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
This Animated Map Shows How European Languages Evolved ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/map-how-indo-european-languages-evolved-2014-12
You may have to move the mouse to keep the animation running
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Music Tutorials
American Ballet Theatre ---
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/american-ballet-theatre/index.htm
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/
December 15, 2014
December 16, 2014
December 17, 2014
December 18, 2014
December 19, 2014
December 20, 2014
December 23, 2014
December 24, 2014
December 25, 2014
December 22, 2014
December 29, 2014
December 30, 2014
Have you heard the one about the guy who steps up to the bar and orders a
riluzole?
New research suggests an existing drug, riluzole, may prevent foggy 'old age'
brain ---
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-12-drug-riluzole-foggy-age-brain.html
Scientists develop first effective and affordable bedbug bait and trap
---
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-scientists-effective-bedbug-bait.html
Navy Seal Workout ---
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/strength-and-power-training/Kokoro-Camp-Extreme-Fitness-for-Navy-Seals.html
"Scientists tallied up all the advice on Dr. Oz's show. Half of it was
baseless or wrong," by Julia Belluz, Vox, December 17, 2014 ---
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/17/7410535/dr-oz-advice
Do ‘Brain Training’ Games Work? It Depends on Which Scientists You Ask ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/do-brain-training-games-work-it-depends-on-which-scientists-you-ask/55325?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
I don't know if brain training games work, but I do think brain activity is
import for older folks in danger of losing memory skills. We have a 91-year old
friend who is still very active in playing bridge and doing crossword puzzles.
I think such activities are important for aged brains.
I think it's good for retired professors to stay active in their scholarship.
From the Scout Report on December 19, 2014
Costs and Benefits of
Electronic Cigarettes Still Under Scrutiny
Can e-cigarettes actually help smokers quit?
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/12/can-e-cigarettes-actually-help-smokers-quit
E-cigarettes can help smokers quit or cut down heavily, say researchers
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/17/e-cigarettes-smokers-quit-vaping
Electronic cigarettes and health: Vapour Trail
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21636714-latest-investigation-vaping-suggests-it-can-help-you-quit-smoking-vapour
Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation and reduction
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD010216.pub2/abstract
Are E-Cigarettes Less Harmful? Yes and No, New Study Suggests
http://www.insidescience.org/content/are-e-cigarettes-less-harmful-yes-and-no-new-study-suggests/1996
E-cigarettes: The lingering questions
http://www.nature.com/news/e-cigarettes-the-lingering-questions-1.15762
"Thinking and Writing: Cognitive Science and Intelligence Analysis,"
by Robert S. Sinclair
Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1984
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Thinking-and-Writing-Feb2010-web.pdf
"Thinking and Writing : The CIA’s Guide to Cognitive Science &
Intelligence Analysis," by Robert S. Sinclair
Review by Miguel Barbosa
May 14, 2014
http://www.simoleonsense.com/
This CIA Monograph (re-released
in 2010 by Robert Sinclair) presents “the
implications of growing knowledge in the cognitive sciences for the way the
intelligence business is conducted – in how we perform analysis, how we
present our findings, and even its meaning for our hiring and training
practices”. In other words, this paper is about, “thinking and writing [and]
the complex mental patterns out of which writing comes, their strengths and
limitations, and the challenges they create, not just for writers but for
managers”. Below are some curated excerpts.
P.S. Don’t confuse this paper with the popular CIA
book, “Psychology of Intelligence Analysis” which I have linked to in the
past. This paper draws upon similar cognitive research but has a different
focus (mainly that of communicating clearly).
Introduction
Two quotations sum up what this essay is about:
“Our insights into mental functioning are too often
fashioned from observations of the sick and the handicapped. It is difficult
to catch and record, let alone understand, the swift flight of a mind
operating at its best.”
“A writer in the act is a thinker on a full-time
cognitive overload.”
“In brief, I hope to describe some of the powerful
metaphors about the workings of our minds that have developed over the past
couple of decades.”
“…although this essay talks a lot about writing, it
is not designed to deal with the how-to-write issue. As the title indicates,
its topic is thinking and writing the complex mental patterns out of which
writing comes, their strengths and limitations, and the challenges they
create, not just for writers but for managers.”
“I would argue that the elements of cognitive
science highlighted in the monograph are still the ones of first-order
relevance for the DI. I do not think an intelligence analyst will gain much
professionally from knowing how neurons fire or which parts of the brain
participate in which mental operations. I do consider it essential, however,
that we be aware of how our brains ration what they make available to our
conscious minds as they cope with the fact that our “ability to deal with
knowledge is hugely exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man’s
environment.” Not only do they select among outside stimuli, they also edit
what they let us know about their own activities. This is the focus of the
monograph.”
“For every analyst and every reviewer in this
serial process, the analysis starts from a body of analogies and heuristics
that are unique to that individual and grow out of his or her past
experience after images of ideas and events that resonate when we examine a
current problem, practical rules of thumb that have proven useful over
time.The power of this approach is incontestable, but we are all too easily
blinded to its weaknesses. The evidence is clear: analysis is likely to
improve when we look beyond what is going on in our own heads—when we use
any of several techniques designed to make explicit the underlying structure
of our argument and when we encourage others to challenge our analogies and
heuristics with their own. Little about the current process fosters such
activities, it seems to me; they would be almost unavoidable in a
collaborative environment.”
On Writing
“If the very act of writing puts a writer any
writer at all—into “full-time cognitive overload,” then perhaps we would
benefit from a better understanding of what contributes to the overload.”
“The novelist and poet Walker Percy offers a
concept that may be even more fruitful. In a series of essays dealing with
human communication, Percy asserts that a radical distinction must be made
between what he calls “knowledge” and what he calls “news.” Percy’s notion
takes on added significance in light of the findings of cognitive science
(of which he seems largely unaware), and I will be discussing it at greater
length in due course. For the present “I would simply assert that the nature
of our work forces us to swing constantly back and forth be- tween knowledge
and news, and I believe cognitive science has something to contribute to our
under- standing of the problem. “
Why We Use Heuristics / Mental Shortcuts In
Decision Making
“What is it about heuristics that makes them so
useful? First, they are quick and they get the job done, assuming the
experiential base is sufficient and a certain amount of satisficing is not
objectionable. Second, what cognitive scientists call the problem-space
remains manageable. Theoretically that space becomes unmanageably large as
soon as you start to generalize and explore: any event may be important now,
any action on your part is possible, and you could get paralyzed by
possibilities as the centipede did. But humans constantly narrow the
problem-space on the basis of their own experience. And most of the time the
results are acceptable: what more efficient way is there to narrow an
indefinitely large problem-space? ”
Limits To Using Heuristics / Mental Shortcuts In
Decision Making
“Heuristics are inherently conservative; they
follow the tried-and-true method of building on what has already happened.
When the approach is confronted with the oddball situation or when someone
asks what is out there in the rest of the problem-space, heuristics begin to
flounder. Yet we resist using other approaches, partly because we simply
find them much less congenial, partly because the record allows plausible
argument about their effectiveness when dealing with an indefinitely large
set of possibilities.”
“As most people use them, heuristics are imprecise
and sloppy. Some of the reasons why cognitive activity is imprecise were
noted earlier; another reason is the tendency to satisfice, which encourages
us to go wherever experience dictates and stop when we have an adequate
answer. With perseverance and sufficient information one can achieve
considerable precision, but there is nothing in the heuristic approach
itself that compels us to do so and little sign that humans have much of an
urge to use it in this way. Most of the time, moreover, the information is
not terribly good. We then may find ourselves trying to get more precision
out of the process than it can provide.”
“In everyday use, heuristics are not congenial to
formal procedures such as logic, probability, and the scientific method.
This fact helps explain why we rarely use logic rigorously, why we tend to
be more interested in confirming than in disconfirming a hypothesis, and why
we are so poor at assessing odds.”
We Can’t Talk About Mental Shortcuts Without
Talking About Memory & “Chunking”
“It should be apparent the heuristic approach is
critical to the effectiveness of our conscious mental activity, since
short-term memory needs procedures like heuristics that narrow its field of
view. On the other hand, the drawbacks are equally apparent. The ability to
process large quantities of information is always an advantage and sometimes
a necessity. How can we operate effectively if we can consider so little at
a time? The answer to this question lies in the speed and flexibility with
which we can manipulate the information in short-term memory; to use the
terminology, in our chunking prowess.”
A chunk, it should be clear, equates to one of the
roughly seven entities that short-term memory can deal with at one time.
Hunt’s formulation notwithstanding, it need not be tied to words or discrete
symbols. Any conceptual entity—from a single letter to the notion of Kant’s
categorical imperative- can be a chunk. And not only do we work with chunks
that come to us from the outside world, we create and remember chunks of our
own. Anything in long-term memory probably has been put there by the
chunking process. We build hierarchies of chunks, combining a group of them
under a single conceptual heading (a new chunk), “filing” the subordinate
ideas in long-term memory, and using the overall heading to gain access to
them. We can manipulate any chunk or bring wildly differing chunks together,
and we can do these things with great speed and flexibility.
“In some ways “chunk” is a misleading term for the
phenomenon. The word calls to mind something discrete and hard-edged,
whereas the very essence of the phenomenon is the way we can give it new
shapes and new characteristics, and the way conceptual fragments
interpenetrate each other in long-term memory. A chunk might better be
conceived of, metaphorically, as a pointer to information in long-term
memory, and the information it retrieves as a cloud with a dense core and
ill-defined edges. The mind can store an enormous number of such clouds,
each overlapping many others.This “cloudiness” the way any one concept
evokes a series of others is a source of great efficiency in human
communication; it is what lets us get the drift of a person’s remarks
without having all the implications spelled out. But it can also be a source
of confusion.”
Heuristics/ Mental Shortcuts & “Chunking” Work Hand
in Hand During Decision Making
“Heuristics—non-random exploration that uses
experience and inference to narrow the field of possibilities—loom large in
the development of each individual and are deeply ingrained in all of us
(particularly when we are doing some- thing we consider important). Combined
with the chunking speed of short-term memory, the heuristic approach is a
powerful way to deal with large amounts of information and a poorly defined
problem space.“
“But there is always a tradeoff between range and
precision. The more of the problem space you try to explore—and the “space,”
being conceptual rather than truly spatial, can have any number of
dimensions—the harder it is to achieve a useful degree of specificity.
Talent and experience can often reduce the conflict between the need for
range and the need for precision, but they cannot eliminate it. We almost
always end up satisficing.”
“We are compulsive, in our need to chunk, to put
information into a context. The context we start with heavily conditions the
way we receive a new piece of information. We chunk so rapidly that “the
problem,” whatever it is, often has been sharply delimited by the time we
begin manipulating it in working memory.“
“Although the conceptual network formed through
years of experience may make an individual a more skillful problem-solver,
it can also make him or her less open to unusual ideas or information—a
phenomenon sometimes termed “hardening of the categories.” The conservative
bias of the heuristic approach—the tendency we all share of looking to past
experience for guidance—makes it easy for an old hand to argue an anomaly
out of the way. In fact the old hand is likely to be right nearly all the
time; experience usually does work as a model. But what about the situation
when “nearly all the time” isn’t good enough? Morton Hunt recounts an
instance of a computer proving better than the staff of a mental hospital at
predicting which patients were going to attempt suicide.”
Cognitive Aspects of Speaking & Writing
Here are some of the ways in which writing and
speech differ:
“With speech, much of the communication takes place
in ways that do not involve words: in gesture, in tone of voice, in the
larger context surrounding the exchange. Speech is a complex audio-visual
event, and the implications we draw—the chunks we form—are derived from a
whole network of signals. With writing there is nothing but the words on the
paper. The result may be as rich as with speech—nobody would accuse a
Shakespeare sonnet of lacking richness—but the resources used are far
narrower.”
“Writing calls for a sharper focus of attention on
the part of both producer and receiver. When you and I are conversing, we
both can attend to several other things—watching the passing crowd, worrying
about some aspect of work, waving away a passing insect—and still keep the
thread of our discourse. If I am writing or reading I must concentrate on
the text; these other activities are likely to register as distractions.”
“The pace and pattern of chunking is very different
in the two modes. With speech, one word or phrase quickly supersedes the
last,and the listener cannot stop to ponder any of them. What he ponders is
the chunk he forms from his perception of everything the speaker is saying,
and he is not likely to ponder even that very intensively. He does have the
opportunity to ask the speaker about what he has heard (an opportunity
almost never available to a reader), but he rarely does so; the spoken
medium has enormous forward momentum. In compensation, speech uses a much
narrower set of verbal formulae than writing. It relies heavily on
extralinguistic cues, and by and large it is more closely tied to a larger
context that helps keep the participants from straying too far from a common
understanding. In the written medium, by contrast, the reader can chunk more
or less at his own pace. He can always recheck his conclusion against the
text, but he has little recourse beyond that. All the signals a writer can
hope to send must be in the written words.”
“A reader is dealing with a finished product: the
production process has been essentially private. A listener is participating
in a transaction that is still in progress, a transaction that is
quintessentially social.”
“Partly because of the factors listed so far,
writing is capable of more breadth and more precision than speech. Neither
complex ideas nor complex organizations would be possible without writing.
My own impression is that even in this television-dominated era, people
attach more solidity and permanence to something written than to something
spoken. Perhaps we have an ingrained sense that the products of speech are
more ephemeral than the products of writing. But to achieve this aura of
permanence writing sacrifices a sense of immediacy. A writer tends to speak
with the voice of an observer, not a participant.”
Communicating Knowledge vs News
“…. I am building toward an assertion that…..there
are correlations between news and the cognitive processes involved in speech
on the one hand, and between knowledge and the cognitive processes involved
in writing on the other.”
Continued in article
How the U.S. Government Botched Its Multibillion-Dollar Plan to Beat
Childhood Disease ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-23/how-the-national-childrens-study-fell-apart?campaign_id=DN122314
4 Reasons People With Schizophrenia Resist Treatment ---
http://inhealth.healthgrades.com/advances-in-schizophrenia/4-reasons-people-with-schizophrenia-resist-treatment?did=t9_tabtxt2
Extreme Types of Insane Murderers (they're not all alike) ---
http://www.newsweek.com/aurora-shooting-what-does-killer-think-65627
The problem is knowing in advance which few of the very many will actually
become murderers.
A Bit of Humor
Christmas Song Lip Synch ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SzXJ3vuCzCc
The Lone Ranger on David Letterman's Last Show ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEsbXXsiUUg&feature=youtu.be
New Parody of Downtown Abbey Features George Clooney & the Cast of the Show
---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/parody-of-downton-abbey-features-george-clooney.html
An Aging Accountant by David Albrecht ---
http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/2014/11/
This year, I’ve been working on a top ten list of
things to think about today.
10. Counting is mandatory, a-counting is not.
9. Your wife doesn’t depreciate you any more.
8. The tax loophole named after you pays
royalties.
7. The dry cleaner won’t charge for removing
today’s coffee stains.
6. Would the course of history have been
different if debits were on the right?
5. Everyone complains you are accrual.
4. You are certified but not crazy.
3. You are a debit to your profession.
2. How to Frame a Figg (on Netflix) is
your favorite movie.
1. Today only, no spouse can contradict an
auditor’s opinion.
Watch Darlene Love perform "Christmas" on Letterman for the last time ---
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/20/7424123/david-letterman-darlene-love
A Southwest Airlines flight landed in Los Angeles
with one more passenger than when it took off. A passenger gave birth shortly
after Flight 623 took off from San Francisco on Tuesday and the Phoenix-bound
jet diverted to Los Angeles International Airport. ---
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/541472211c0e4dc7aac6916b6c602205/baby-born-flight-aboard-airliner-over-california
Forwarded by Paula
Texting Codes for Seniors
Seniors
have their own texting codes:
* ATD- At the Doctor's
* BFF - Best Friend's Funeral
* BTW- Bring the Wheelchair
* BYOT - Bring Your Own Teeth
* CBM- Covered by Medicare
* CUATSC- See You at the Senior Center
* DWI- Driving While Incontinent
* FWIW - Forgot Where I Was
* GGPBL- Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low
* GHA - Got Heartburn Again
* LMDO- Laughing My Dentures Out
* LOL- Living on Lipitor
* OMSG - Oh My! Sorry, Gas
* TOT- Texting on Toilet
* WAITT - Who Am I Talking To?
Hope these help . . . oops . . .
*OTTBA
= Off to the bathroom again
"When I picked up the little guy, the lioness came
over to me and tapped me with her head as if to say: 'take care of him.' And
then she left." (zoo keeper) Zerdzicki said. He turned to his old English
sheepdog, Carmen, for help. He said the canine was "surprised, at first" by the
little lion, but she quickly accepted the cub alongside her five puppies.
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2014/10/10/Rejected-lion-cub-adopted-by-sheepdog/2361412952002/?spt=sec&or=on
A British dwarf who dropped his pants at a
government office and defecated on the floor was warned by a judge to clean up
his act or face jail time.
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2014/10/07/Dwarf-who-defecated-on-floor-of-govt-office-warned-with-jail/8791412694237/?spt=sec&or=on
Humor Between November 1-30, 2014
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor113014
Humor Between October 1-31, 2014
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor103114
Humor Between September 1-30, 2014
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor093014
Humor Between August 1-31, 2014
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor083114
Humor Between July 1-31, 2014---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor073114
Humor Between June 1-31, 2014 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q2.htm#Humor063014
Humor Between May 1-31, 2014, 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 and September 30, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q3.htm#Humor093013
Humor Between July 1 and August 31, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q3.htm#Humor083113
Humor Between June 1-30, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor063013
Humor Between May 1-31, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor053113
Humor Between April 1-30, 2013
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book13q2.htm#Humor043013
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Update in
2014
20-Year Sugar Hill Master Plan ---
http://www.nccouncil.org/images/NCC/file/wrkgdraftfeb142014.pdf
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu