Tidbits on January 15, 2015
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Photographs of the Scenic
Mountain Village of Jackson, New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Hotels/Jackson/Jackson01.htm
Tidbits on January 15, 2015
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
Happy New Year 2015!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lWdrVWIPhk
Werner Herzog Plays Himself in Cartoon That Satirizes Obama’s
2008 Election & Race in America ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/werner-herzog-plays-himself-in-cartoon-that-satirizes-obamas-2008-election-race-in-america.html
Watch This Australian
Python
Devour A Wallaby From Head To Tail ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/australian-python-eats-wallaby-2014-12
Existential Philosophy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained
with 8-Bit Video Games ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/existential-philosophy-explained-with-8-bit-video-games.html
Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Simple Animation
---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/stephen-hawkings-big-ideas-explained-with-simple-animation.html
Three Films Capture 1940s New York, Chicago & Los Angeles in
Vivid Color ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/three-films-capture-1940s-new-york-chicago-los-angeles-in-vivid-color.html
Meet Baxter the General Purpose Robot ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&sns=em&noredirect=1
Thank you Patricia Walters for the heads up
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Home Movies of Duke Ellington Playing Baseball (And How Baseball
Coined the Word “Jazz”) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/home-movies-of-duke-ellington-playing-baseball.html
Kurt Cobain’s Home Demos: Early Versions of
Nirvana Hits, and Never-Released Songs ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/kurt-cobains-home-demos.html
Gioachino Rossini, 'Duetto buffo di due gatti',---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFLF57vDYcQ#t=84
Thanks Jagdish
Monterey Jazz Festival Digital Collection ---
http://collections.stanford.edu/mjf/
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
Pandora (my favorite online music station) ---
www.pandora.com
TheRadio (online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free
music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People,
Presented in an Interactive Infographic ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/the-daily-routines-of-famous-creative-people-presented-in-an-interactive-infographic.html
15 Outstanding Photos From Sony's 2015 World
Photography Awards ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-awesome-photos-from-sonys-2015-world-photography-awards-2014-12
21 Vintage Photos That Show What Syria Was Like 50 Years Ago
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-damascus-syria-from-1965-2014-12
Colorized Rare Photographs ---
http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=d6d9d5385aee
NASA Just Released These Amazing Pictures Of The
'Pillars Of Creation' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-just-released-these-amazing-pictures-of-the-pillars-of-creation-2015-1
Here's What Golden Gate Looked Like Before They Built The
Bridge ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/golden-gate-picture-before-the-bridge-2015-1
These Are The US Navy's Top Photos Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-navys-top-photos-of-2014-2015-1
Incredible Photo Montage Shows The Greek Island
Of Ikaria Being Pummeled By An Intense Lightning Storm ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/lightning-storm-struck-greek-island-2015-1
Mœbius Illustrates Dante’s Paradiso ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/moebius-illustrates-dantes-paradiso-1999.html
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi ---
http://ngmaindia.gov.in
Berkeley 1968-1973 Poster Collection ---
http://digitalcollections.library.ubc.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/berkpost
Charlie Hebdo’s most famous cartoons, translated
and explained ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7515673/charlie-hebdo-cartoons-translated
National Museums of Scotland: Explore ---
http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Shakespeare Tutorials ---
https://www.playshakespeare.com/
Hear James Joyce’s Great Short Story “The Dead,” Performed by
Cynthia Nixon & Colum McCann ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/hear-james-joyces-great-short-story-the-dead-performed-by-cynthia-nixon.html
Mœbius Illustrates Dante’s Paradiso ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/moebius-illustrates-dantes-paradiso-1999.html
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on January 15, 2015
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2015/TidbitsQuotations011515.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
There Are Way Too Many ‘Best Of 2014′ Lists ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-are-way-too-many-best-of-2014-lists/
Also see the "cruel exclusions" ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/12/29/the-cruel-exclusions-of-the-literary-establishment/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
7 Ways
Michelle Obama Positively Influenced Education in 2014 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-lynch-edd/7-ways-michelle-obama-pos_b_6417060.html
Companies paid record sums to settle bribery probes in 2014
http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2015/01/06/companies-paid-record-sums-to-settle-bribery-probes-in-2014/?mod=djemCFO_h
The Top 10 Law School Stories Of 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/top-10-law-school.html
15 worthy resolutions for 2015 from some of history's greatest minds ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/05/resolutions/
At the End of 2014: The Healthiest and Unhealthiest States
http://www.statedatalab.org/chart_of_the_day/
The Worst Science Blunders Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worst-science-fail-moments-2014-12
13 Scientific Predictions For 2015 --- Click Here
http://www.businessinsider.com/science-predictions-for-2015-2015-1
2014 finishes as 4th coldest year on record for Illinois ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3244041/posts
Harvard: The Tech Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2015 ---
Click Here
https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-tech-trends-you-cant-ignore-in-2015/?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_hotlist&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hotlist112612&cm_ite=weeklyhotlist-011215+%281%29&cm_lm=rjensen%40trinity.edu&referral=00202&cm_ven=spop-email&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-weekly_hotlist-_-hotlist112612
These Are The Most Egregious Examples Of Government Waste In 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-egregious-examples-of-government-waste-in-2014-2014-12
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 of All Time ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/ridiculous-ted-talks-2014-8?op=1#ixzz3BJVOOTac
25 of the Most Ridiculous Media Quotations of in 2014 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2015/01/03/the-25-most-obnoxious-quotes-of-2014-n1938140?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
2014 Legal Education Year in Review ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/12/nlj-legal-education-.html
Look Back in Rancor: The Worst Op-eds of 2014 ---
http://reason.com/archives/2015/01/07/the-worst-op-eds-of-2014
Library Scientists Pick the Best Ten Stories That Shaped 2014 ---
http://lisnews.org/ten_stories_that_shaped_2014
The Best Brain Pickings Articles of the Year ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/30/best-of-2014/
From The New Yorker's John Cassidy
Twelve Geopolitical Lessons for 2015 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/twelve-lessons-2015
The 10 Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts Of 2014 (mostly non-tax posts) ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/the-10-most-popular-.html
The Top 10 Tax Cases (And Rulings) Of 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/the-top-ten-tax-cases.html
The Top 12 Legal Education Stories Of 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/the-top-12.html
48 Of The The Most Important Scientific Discoveries Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/2014s-most-important-discoveries-2015-1
Time Magazine's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Apps
---
http://time.com/3582114/top-10-apps/?xid=newsletter-brief
The 20 Most Beautiful Apps Of The Year ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-most-beautiful-apps-of-the-year-2014-12
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
ReadWrite's Best Stories of 2014 ---
http://readwrite.com/2014/12/31/readwrite-best-stories-2014
The Best Wired Stories of 2014 ---
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/best-wired-stories-2014/
The most painful customer service moments of 2014, and how you can avoid them
in 2015 ---
http://www.zoho.com/support/blog/the-most-painful-customer-service-moments-of-2014-and-how-you-can-avoid-them-in-2015.html
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
\
The Tech Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2015 ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14abf57a69453384
The Best Wired Stories of 2014 ---
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/best-wired-stories-2014/
The Sad Internet: 2014 in Review ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-sad-internet-2014-in-review-106557156229.html
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
Six brands that may not make it through 2015 ---
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/6-brands-may-not-2015-103000752.html
Laptop Market Shares in Q3 of 2014 ---
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/07/apple-mac-us-pc-record/
Experts Predict The Cybercrime Of 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/beyond-phishing-experts-predict-the-cybercrime-of-2015-2014-12
12 Big Geopolitical Events We Think Will Happen In 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/12-geopolitical-predictions-about-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
The Top Technology Failures of 2014 (MIT) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533546/the-top-technology-failures-of-2014/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20141231
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
Nate Silver 5:38 Blog: 33 Weirdest Charts From 2014 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/our-33-weirdest-charts-from-2014/
Going Concern Editors' Picks 2014 (accountancy) ---
http://goingconcern.com/post/going-concern-editors-picks-2014
2014 in Energy: Dire Warnings, Slow Progress, and a Fusion Boast ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533666/2014-in-energy-dire-warnings-slow-progress-and-a-fusion-boast/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150102
Embarrassing Moments in Tech 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/embarrassing-moments-in-tech-2014-the-high-105632798859.html
Also see
http://readwrite.com/2014/12/31/2014-worst-moments-in-tech
Comparisons of Commodity Price Changes in 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/2014-futures-performance-2014-12
All you have to do today is buy some coffee and hamburger in order to choke on
the price increases.
I paid way too much to fill my big heating oil tank (for this winter) in May.
Sigh! That was a price speculation that failed.
Note how the price of cattle increased while the price of cattle feed declined
in 2014, illustrating the lag effect of having farmers sell off their herds a
few years ago during the Midwest drought. This year rain was plentiful in the
Midwest, but the cattle herds do not return as quickly as the crops that feed
them. There's still a shortage of feeder cattle.
Because grain farmers tend to hedge prices in advance of harvest time they did
not lose as much as the price-change chart suggests.
Note that bonds increase in price as interest rates plunge. Many banks hedge
(often with swaps) against big changes in interest rates so they are not deep
into interest rate speculations.
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
USA Population Trends in 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/demographic-trends-have-created-two-americas-2014-12
Note how many blue states in terms of population are red states in terms of
politics and vice versa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
Best of 2014: How Google "Translates" Pictures into Words Using Vector
Space Mathematics ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/533756/best-of-2014-how-google-translates-pictures-into-words-using-vector-space-mathematics/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150102
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/
Steven Soderbergh Creates a Big List of What He Watched, Read & Listened
to in 2014 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/what-steven-soderbergh-watched-read-heard-in-2014.html
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
The Most Incredible Wildlife Photos Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-animal-pictures-of-the-year-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 Incredible Photos The Air Force Took In 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-air-forces-2014-in-photos-2015-1
The Most Jaw-Dropping Science Pictures Of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-science-pictures-of-the-year-2014-12
The 10 Coolest Archaeological Discoveries Made In 2014 --- |
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-coolest-archeological-discoveries-of-2014-2014-12
Top Ten Harvard Kennedy School Web Stories of 2014 ---
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/articles/2014-top-ten-web-stories
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/
Some Hilarious Pranks of 2014 ---
http://guff.com/the-absolute-best-pranks-ever/15
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 Movies of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-movies-2014-2014-12
The 15 Best-Reviewed Movies of 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/top-movies-2014-2014-12
Three Films Capture 1940s New York, Chicago & Los Angeles in Vivid Color
---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/three-films-capture-1940s-new-york-chicago-los-angeles-in-vivid-color.html
The 15 best songs of 2014 ---
http://www.vox.com/2014/12/30/7463577/songs-of-the-year
Best Classical Albums Of 2014 ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2014/12/11/370067981/best-classical-albums-of-2014
The Drunkest Countries In The World ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-that-drink-the-most-2015-1
The 50 Coolest New Businesses In America ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/coolest-new-businesses-in-america-2014-12
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
The Five Foot Shelf of Great Works, Towards a Required Reading List for
Business ---
http://professorelam.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/12/the-five-foot-shelf-of-great-works-towards-a-required-reading-list-for-business.html
No great works in accounting here
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
100 Years of Price Changes ---
http://news.yahoo.com/glimpse-expenses-100-years-ago-140000459.html
A Lot of Bull: History of Bear and Bull Markets in the USA ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/illustration-of-bull-and-bear-markets-2014-12
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
Vladimir Nabokov Names the Greatest (and Most Overrated) Novels of the
20th Century ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/vladimir-nabokov-names-the-greatest-novels-of-the-20th-century.html
Perhaps television viewers are shunning
political programming outliers.
NBC covers both ends of the political spectrum with MSNBC and CNBC, both of
which are tanking in terms of viewer interest. If I were to investigate some of
the reasons I would look for boring repetitions of commentators saying the same
things over and over and then over again.
CNBC to stop
using Nielsen for ratings
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cnbc-to-stop-using-nielsen-for-ratings-1420520556
MSNBC Closes 2014
In Last Place ---
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2014/12/30/msnbc-closes-2014-in-last-place-hemorrhaging-viewers/
CNBC and MSNBC are fighting back with
non-political programming in some prime time slots.
For example, CNBC is now giving primetime coverage to exposes of business
frauds? CNBC?
And MSNBC now features hidden camera thrillers (not comedy) in things like
police chases and shoot outs that make the cops look abused. MSNBC?
"The Retraction War: Scientists seek demigod status, journals want
blockbuster results, and retractions are on the rise: is science broken?" by
Jill Neimark, Aeon, 2014 ---
http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/are-retraction-wars-a-sign-that-science-is-broken/
We assuredly need tests for new knowledge versus new fictions.
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People, Presented in an Interactive
Infographic ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/the-daily-routines-of-famous-creative-people-presented-in-an-interactive-infographic.html
How to Mislead With Statistics
The 15 College Majors With The Lowest Starting Salaries ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/college-majors-with-the-lowest-starting-salaries-2015-1?op=1
Jensen Comment
This a in some cases a little misleading such as when careers entailing
12-months on the job with two weeks paid vacation are compared with others
entailing 9-months on the job with an added 8+ weeks paid vacation. The latter
careers with five months free are especially popular for parents having or
expecting young children at home.
Starting salaries are not nearly as important as career growth and enjoyment
of the work. For example, some employees will take lower pay to work with
children or to work in biblical studies. Careers that have little variation in
routine over decades can become very boring. I think physical therapy might be
interesting for a time but can become very boring over 40+ years.
Keep in mind that these rankings are based on averages that in some cases
have varying standard deviations. For example, law graduates may have higher
averages but many start out at very low salaries as clerks or lowly-paid
interns.
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"'Crap-Free' University Websites," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog,
January 6, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/crap-free-.html
Jensen Comment
What amazes me is how difficult most universities make it to find faculty
Websites. Perhaps this is due to the university's embarrassment over some of the
Websites or, more likely, the failure of so many faculty to have Websites.
Jensen Comment
If you spend 24/7 like me writing some every day, much depends upon why you are
writing. Before my days as a prolific blogger I was a prolific writer 24/7. Most
of what I wrote never was shared with a single person, although parts generally
were revised and appeared in some form in my courses. I tried my hand at writing
novels and poetry but was never any good at that --- largely because being a
good fiction writer or poet takes too much of every day. They generally carry
notepads and write at random moments throughout each day. I tended to write more
when I was also reading.
I had to publish in scholarly journals for my job performance, and some of
every day was taken up writing drafts that were eventually submitted about 25%
of the time and eventually published less than 10% of the time ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm
Most of my working papers were not shared elsewhere before I had a Website.
After I had a Website I shared some of my unpublished working papers, including
some very old working papers.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/default4.htm#BigOnes
There are of course many newer working papers that are now more like journals
that are constantly updated and revised ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Threads.htm
Sometimes I wrote while I read as a student and later as a professor because
writing while I read helped me organize and remember what I read. Those became
vast files of yellow page notes.
I shared more of my thoughts and findings in the last 10 years of my career
and almost 10 years in retirement because I became an active blogger. Writing
became more efficient as the world went digital because quotations could be cut
and pasted before or after my commentaries. Contrary to what some of my "fans"
think, there is much that I write that I do not post to my blogs.
One of my biggest "tricks" to being prolific was and still is to not be a
perfectionist. Write it down with the warts and all. I call this the Thomas
Wolfe approach to writing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Wolfe
Wolfe wrote semi-loads and left it to his overwhelmed editor to make parts of it
publishable.
"The Trick to Being a Prolific Scholar," by Tanya Golash-Boza,
Chronicle of Higher Education's Vitae, December 15, 2014 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/836-the-trick-to-being-a-prolific-scholar?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
Religion ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
A cleverly-constructed timeline on the history of the
world's great religions ---
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf
Bridging World History ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/
Islam in Europe ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/01/islam-in-europe/
Cops Say Nothing Happened at UVA Frat Accused of Gang Rape, But Who Really
Cares? ---
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/12/cops-say-nothing-happened-at-uva-frat-ac
According to the
press release:
The reinstatement resulted after consultation
with Charlottesville Police Department officials, who told the
University that their investigation has not revealed any substantive
basis to confirm that the allegations raised in the Rolling Stone
article occurred at Phi Kappa Psi.
U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan informed
fraternity officials of the decision to reinstate the chapter's
Fraternal Organization Agreement with the University after learning of
the update to the police investigation.
"We welcome Phi Kappa Psi, and we look forward
to working with all fraternities and sororities in enhancing and
promoting a safe environment for all," U.Va. President Teresa A.
Sullivan said.
That's it? No apology? No sorry about
our huge mistake and rush to judgment? Keep in mind that the
false accusation had
consequences for the
Phi Psi house,
Continued in article
Update on BYU Flipped Variable-Speed Video Courses in Accounting
BYU replaced live lectures in the on-campus two introductory courses in
accounting with variable -speed video 15 years ago. I wrote about the pioneering
efforts of adjunct professor Norman Nemrows who developed these CDs years ago
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo
The variable speed videos enable students to navigate more efficiently through
the video files and to slow down on parts they want to study.
I think Norm supervised the courses and held office hours when students wanted
some help. As I recall he did all this for $1 per term.
This was a one of the early campus classroom replacements on online lectures
with video. My contention then and now was that this would not work well on many
campuses. It worked well at BYU because the accounting majors are nearly all
highly motivated students who learn well on their own or in small groups. In a
course having a high proportion of unmotivated students there is generally more
need for live instructors to kick butt.
2015 Update
"When a Flipped-Classroom Pioneer Hands Off His Video Lectures, This Is What
Happens," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, January
7, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/When-a-Flipped-Classroom/151031/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
In a way, there are
two Norman Nemrows. There’s the real-life professor who spent much of his
career teaching accounting students at Brigham Young University. And there’s
the one I'll call Video Norm, the instructor immortalized in lectures on
accounting that he began recording nearly 15 years ago.
For more than a decade, students at BYU learned
from both Norms. About half of the class sessions for his
introductory-accounting course were "software days," when students watched
an hour or two of video lectures on their computers anywhere they wanted and
then completed quizzes online. The other class periods were "enhancement
lectures," in which students—as many as 800 at a time—gathered in a
classroom and did group work led by the actual Mr. Nemrow.
Back when it started, in 2000, this method of
reducing in-person classes and replacing them with videos and tutorials was
an innovation, but today it is a buzzword: the
flipped classroom.
A few years ago, the living, breathing Norman
Nemrow retired from the university. And that’s when things got interesting,
or at least more complicated, because students at BYU still learn from Video
Norm.
In fact, every student taking introductory
accounting at the university watches the video lectures, some 3,000 students
each year. And the in-person sessions? They’re now led by another accounting
professor, Melissa Larson, who has been thrust into the novel role of doing
everything a traditional professor does except the lecturing. The tough
question—and one of the biggest for the future of the flipped model—is
whether other professors will be willing or able to become sidekicks to
slick video productions.
Ms. Larson gets high marks on student evaluations
for leading group work in the large classroom sessions and answering
questions by email. But Video Norm remains the star.
That was clear when Mr. Nemrow showed up, in
person, at the end of the fall semester to give a guest lecture for the
introductory course. You’d think a Hollywood actor had come to campus.
Students showed up early to take selfies with the professor they had spent
so many hours watching on video.
"We got front-row seats," said Celeste Harris, a
junior in the course. "We said, we have to see what this guy is like in real
life."
How did Mr. Nemrow compare with the digital
version? "He’s a little older than when he recorded the videos," Ms. Harris
noted, "but it was actually one of the best lectures I’ve heard." It was
inspirational, she said, because Mr. Nemrow recounted the story of this
unusual accounting course, which has become a kind of legend on the campus.
From Business to Teaching
Mr. Nemrow started out as a businessman. He worked
at a consulting firm in California, then helped start a
real-estate-investment firm. But he was drawn to the classroom. For years he
taught accounting on the side, first as an adjunct at California State
University at Fullerton, then full time at Pepperdine University.
Around the time he turned 30, he sold his business
and decided to retire early. He didn’t want to do nothing, but he no longer
had to work for money, he says, even with a wife and five small children.
"I didn’t really have a burning desire to create
another business," he says. He took some art classes. He played a lot of
golf. "For a couple of years I was trying to kind of find myself," he
recalls. "I decided what I really wanted to do is probably teach."
So he called up the dean of the business school at
his alma mater, Brigham Young, and asked if there was a teaching spot for
him. He had a master’s degree but not a Ph.D., and at first the answer was
no. "When I told him I was willing to do it as a volunteer, his attitude
changed," Mr. Nemrow recounts, with a laugh. "He let me teach the intro
course for a year."
BYU hired Mr. Nemrow as a full-time professor. He
donated his salary to the university, he says. A devout Mormon, he saw the
work as a way to give back to the church. In his mind, that left his
teaching in the category of volunteer work. "I wanted to have complete and
total freedom, and I didn’t want to make a commitment to how long I’d be
there."
After several years of teaching the introductory
course, he says, he began to get tired of repeating himself and answering
the same questions. He considered writing a textbook and even drafted a
couple of chapters. "But I thought to myself, this isn’t as effective as
when I’m explaining it in person."
So, in 1998, he approached the university’s
fledgling instructional-technology group and pitched his idea to reformat
his course around a series of videos and computerized homework assignments.
"They were worried about getting funding, so I just put up the money
myself," about $50,000, he says.
After two years of development and some lobbying to
persuade the accounting faculty to let him try his flipped experiment, Video
Norm was born.
Mr. Nemrow says the software increased the number
of students he could teach at one time, while reducing the time it took him
to do it. And he says his surveys showed that 93 percent of his students
reported learning more effectively from the flipped format than from a
traditional one. Both his inner businessman and his inner philanthropist
thought: This is going to be big.
Hitting the Road
Mr. Nemrow believed that his system was simply
better than the old way, and he thought that once other accounting
professors saw it, they’d immediately adopt his videos and software rather
than the textbook-and-lecture method.
He started a company, Business Learning Software
Inc., to manage and update the videos and the delivery technology. True to
his desire to keep his teaching like volunteer work, he says, he donates any
profits to charities. Because the software and videos were developed at BYU,
the university owns them and gets a portion of any revenue from their sale.
And he made
all of the
videos for his intro course available free online.
Mr. Nemrow traveled to accounting departments and
academic conferences around the country, evangelizing his teaching approach
and his software. But, to his surprise, he found few takers.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade (including flipped
classrooms) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Knowledge Doubling Every 12 Months, Soon to be Every 12 Hours ---
http://www.industrytap.com/knowledge-doubling-every-12-months-soon-to-be-every-12-hours/3950
Jensen Comment
This has implications for the common core in undergraduate college education.
Something from days of old has to give if we keep adding to knowledge such as
what we call the 100 Great Books. As new books are added some books have to be
taken out of the list.
This also has implications for licensing examinations in the professions. If
passage rates remain unchanged over time, then what is typically happening is
that current candidates have to study more material but often in less depth.
If anything Uniform CPA Examination passage rates have increased slightly
from the days when there were only about fie hundred paragraphs of standards.
Now that there are thousands of paragraphs one would expect that coverage is not
as deep these days if the passage rate actually crept upwards.
Remember the old saying about deep narrow rivers versus broad shallow rivers.
This is not lawyer joke: Do law schools verify that the applicant is
still breathing?
"The Troubling Decline of 25th Percentile LSAT Scores at 'Bottom-Feeder' Law
Schools," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, January 10, 2015 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/the-troubling-decline-of-25th-percentile-lsat-scores-.html
The Top 10 Law School Stories Of 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/top-10-law-school.html
Question
In the NFL, who is the most famous "clutch post-season quarterback of all time?
Nate Silver ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver
One Answer
The famous Bayesian statistician Nate Silver's answer will "probably" surprise
you ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-clutch-postseason-quarterback-of-all-time-is-eli-manning/
Bayesian Probability ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Jensen Comment
Most of the top Bayesian analysts do not rely on Rev. Thomas Bayes all the time
in their clever analyses.
Elo Rating System ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
Added Jensen Comment
Of course we could complicate the analysis by pointing out the various
uncontrollable factors affecting performance in a given contest such as health
and fatigue and (gasp) age. For example, last week Tom Brady had a week extra to
rest up compared to Joe Flacco.
Would some of the greatest quarterbacks have better Elo ratings if they had
retired earlier? I remember John Elway playing when he could barely walk.
"Black And Hispanic Students Are Making Meaningful Gains, But It’s Hard To
Tell," by Mikhail Zinshteyn, Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, January 12,
2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/black-and-hispanic-students-are-making-meaningful-gains-but-its-hard-to-tell/
Are these really the best hotels in every USA state? ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-hotel-in-every-state-2014-11?op=1
Jensen Comment
It's impossible to define "best" for different people with different tastes and
different needs. For example, people have widely varying preferences for hotel
restaurants. People have widely different preferences for activities. For
example, some might really like a white sand beach relative to downhill skiing
and mountain climbing. Some may really prefer a small intimate hotel while
others like an enormous towering hotels
The above list is useful in that it may point out a hotel or inn that you've
never heard of even in the state where you live. What it calls the best inn in
New Hampshire is only about an hour from our cottage, but I had never heard
about this inn. I don't know if it's really as good as this article states.
Hotels have attractions to meet certain needs. For example, you may be
looking for a great hotel near a college campus or large medical center. If
that's the case in New Hampshire you may prefer the Hanover Inn on the Dartmouth
Campus.
Or you may be looking for a great hotel near live theater. Even though the
article's chosen Rosewood Hotel in Manhattan is a great choice in many respects,
you may really prefer a hotel within convenient walking distance of Broadway
Theatres so you can avoid having to fight for a taxi after a show. In this case
I would prefer the cramped rooms of the nice Algonquin Hotel to the more elegant
Rosewood Hotel.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on January 11, 2015
Electric-car pioneer Musk charges head-on at Detroit
---
Tesla Motors Inc.
is on a collision course with the auto industry’s giants like never before,
but the CEO has no plans to stop cursing or obsessing about the tiniest
design details. In a speech
Tuesday, Chief Executive Elon Musk is expected to criticize
larger auto makers for not responding to Tesla even more aggressively. Tesla
is worth $26 billion in stock-market value, nearly half the size of
General Motors Co.
or Ford Motor Co.
Meanwhile,
GM is readying a one-two punch
in the electric-car market, hoping to gain against
Tesla with a next-generation Chevrolet Volt, as well as a $30,000
all-electric vehicle called the Chevrolet Bolt, slated for 2017.
GM Has A New Electric Hybrid Volt, Says It Can Get 1,000 Miles Between
Refills ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-gm-hopes-new-volt-plug-in-helps-evs-get-out-of-low-gear-2015-1
General Motors Co on Monday will unveil its
next-generation Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and is expected to restate a
commitment to build an affordable long-range electric car, doubling down in
a segment with scant sales and even skimpier profits.
Electric cars and plug-ins like the Volt account
for less than 1 percent of the global vehicle market, and falling oil prices
are widening the cost gap between electrified cars and petroleum-fueled
internal combustion engine vehicles.
GM's current Volt has sold well below initial
company projections and is a money loser, analysts say. The company doesn't
disclose profits by model line. Last year, U.S. sales of the Volt fell
almost 19 percent to fewer than 19,000 vehicles.
Fiat Chrysler
Automobiles Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne last May asked
consumers to steer clear of his company’s Fiat 500e.
"I hope you don't buy it because every time I sell
one it costs me $14,000," he said.
Still, GM and its major rivals persist in their
efforts because without “zero-emission” vehicles and ultra-high mileage
hybrids, they could fall short of meeting government demands to more than
double fuel efficiency by 2025. In addition, California has set its own
quotas for zero-emission vehicle sales, and China is pushing the industry
for more battery-powered vehicles.
. . .
GM also plans to offer a new EV called the Chevy
Bolt that would include a 200-mile electric driving range, something Akerson
said in 2013 might “radically change the calculus” for EVs.
Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-gm-hopes-new-volt-plug-in-helps-evs-get-out-of-low-gear-2015-1#ixzz3Oc8iliwK
Jensen Comment
One problem with the Volt has always been its low gas mileage after it depends
on electricity generation from gasoline when battery power goes weak. It'ss a
very heavy car for its size.
Another problem with hybrid and fully electric cars is that batteries have
not yet been invented that do well in cold weather. Don't look for much of a
battery-car market in Canada and the northern states in the USA.
Meet Baxter the General Purpose Robot ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&sns=em&noredirect=1
Knowledge and Skills on the Decline --- Piano Playing
"Piano stores closing across US as kids snub lessons for other activities
," The Guardian, January 2, 2015 ---
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/02/piano-stores-closing-kids-snub-lessons-compete-technology
When Jim Foster opened his piano store 30 years
ago, he had 10 competitors selling just pianos.
When he closed Foster Family Music in late
December, not one was still selling pianos in the Quad-Cities area of Iowa
and Illinois.
“We did try hard to find a buyer,” Foster said.
There were no takers.
Stores dedicated to selling pianos like Foster’s
are dwindling across the country as fewer people take up the instrument and
those who do often opt for a less expensive electronic keyboard or a used
piano. Some blame computers and others note the high cost of new pianos, but
what’s clear is that a long-term decline in sales has accelerated.
The best year for new piano sales in the US was
1909, when more than 364,500 were sold. But after gently falling over the
years, piano sales have plunged more recently to between 30,000 and 40,000
annually.
Larry Fine, a Boston-based piano technician,
consultant and author, said it is an indication of a changing society.
“Computer technology has just changed everything
about what kids are interested in,” said Fine, who also publishes a website
offering consumer information on new and used pianos. “People are interested
in things that don’t take much effort, so the idea of sitting and playing an
hour a day to learn piano is not what kids want to do.”
Youth sports demands also compete with music
studies.
“Children these days are being recruited for so
many other activities, whether it’s soccer, gymnastics or swimming,” said
Robin Walenta, CEO of West Music, a music retailer with a chain of stores in
Iowa and Illinois.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
One could argue that it's hard to keep selling products that never wear out, but
this is only the part of the problem with musical instruments like the piano
that can be refurbished and resold for hundreds of years.
My mother was a teacher of piano over the years and usually had 10-30 piano
students coming into our home each week for private lessons. The piano is a
little different than band instruments where a kid could be in the high school
marching band with limited training and practice on a band instrument. Piano
takes more years concentrated effort, study, and never-ending practice,
practice, practice throughout the K-12 years and beyond. More importantly it
also takes talent, talent, and more talent.
It was a disappointment to my mother that I, as her only child, did not have
her ear, her aptitude, and her drive to become a pianist. We tried in various
ways, including sending me to another teacher. Even though we were not Catholic,
I took lessons from the stern and unsmiling Sister Mary Anita in Algona, Iowa
until Sister Mary Anita informed my mother that I was probably a hopeless case
who would never practice, practice, practice.
One of my least fond memories is a recital in which I got into a loop and
kept playing the same part over and over and over. Sister Mary Anita finally had
to walk out on stage in her nun's habit and led me to the end of my misery.
Today there are millions of wanna-be guitar players. But, if the numerous of
K-12 schools had not consolidated, it would've been harder and harder to find
competent pianist to accompany choirs and perform in high school orchestras.
Among other things, being a pianist is no longer a very competitive career
track.
I grew up in the final days of the big bands that usually had a pianist among
the musicians that toured from town to town in nostalgic dance halls. When I was
in high school there were still dances at Interlaken in Fairmont, Minnesota and
other dance palaces beside such lakes as Iowa's Lake Okoboji (The Roof Garden)
and Clear Lake (The Surf). .
I danced to only small number of the many bands listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_big_band_bandleaders
But when it comes to the fondest memories of me, my parents, and the kids I grew
up with in northern Iowa it would be hard to find memories more vivid than the
listening to and dancing to the big bands. And I don't think there was a big
band that did not feature at least one pianist and sometimes an organ player as
well.
And yes our larger towns in Iowa and Minnesota usually had piano stores where
owners made their livings tuning and selling only new and used pianos. In those
towns that are now partly or totally boarded up the first stores to shut down
were often the piano stores followed by the roller skating rinks. On weekends my
mother played a Wurlitzer in the center of a roller rink in Emmitsburg, Iowa.
But on Sunday mornings she shifted gears for the Lutheran Church in Algona,
Iowa. When she eventually retired the church had a difficult time replacing her.
Of course her five-dollar a week salary from the church did not attract many job
applicants. But she did qualify eventually for Social Security payments from the
quarter or so that was deducted from her five dollars every week. It did not
take long to receive much more from the Social Security Retirement System than
she ever paid into that system her entire life.
Since she wanted me to ride along each time she drove to Emmitsburg I became
much better at roller skating than dancing.
"Apple Laptops May Be Vulnerable To A Virus That 'Can't Be Removed',"
The Telegraph, January 9, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-laptops-may-be-vulnerable-to-a-virus-that-cant-be-removed-2015-1
A security expert has found a way to install
malicious code on a tiny chip built into Apple laptops which would resist
any attempt at removal – even replacing the
entire hard disk will not delete it.
The attack, which is being called Thunderstrike, is
virtually undetectable and would require an attacker to get access to a
machine for mere moments. And because it is new, no security software will
even be looking out for it.
Trammell Hudson, who works for New York hedge fund
Two Sigma Investments, said that the discovery came about when his employer
asked him to look into the security around Apple laptops.
Continued in article
Question
So what's wrong with the President's "Free Tuition Plan" for the first two years
of college?
"Obama's Free Tuition Plan Is a Subsidy for Colleges, Not Students,"
by Scott Shackford, Reason Magazine, January 9, 2015 ---
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/09/obamas-free-tuition-plan-is-a-subsidy-fo
California has a very cheap community college
program. Annual tuition can cost less than $1,500 a year. According to this
college calculation service, you're likely to
spend more on books than you will on your classes.
California also has a problem in that
its community college system already cannot
accommodate all the students who want to attend. In 2012,
California reported having
470,000 students on waiting lists. The inability
to provide classes for students was blamed on budget cuts, of course, not on
its economic model. They did raise tuition rates, though, from $20 a unit to
$46 a unit.
You cannot look at California's community college
system and conclude that subjecting all community college students even
further to the vicissitudes of government spending commitments is a good
idea. Yet, this is exactly what President Barack Obama is proposing. Obama's
"America's College Promise" proposal, reported yesterday and formally
introduced today, would provide "free"—as in subsidized by federal and state
governments—community college educations.
Here's how the White
House says it will work:
Enhancing Student Responsibility and
Cutting the Cost of College for All Americans: Students who
attend at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA while in college, and make
steady progress toward completing their program will have their tuition
eliminated. These students will be able to earn half of the academic
credit they need for a four-year degree or earn a certificate or
two-year degree to prepare them for a good job.
Building High-Quality Community
Colleges: Community colleges will be expected to offer programs
that either (1) are academic programs that fully transfer to local
public four-year colleges and universities, giving students a chance to
earn half of the credit they need for a four-year degree, or (2) are
occupational training programs with high graduation rates and that lead
to degrees and certificates that are in demand among employers. Other
types of programs will not be eligible for free tuition. Colleges must
also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve
student outcomes, such as the effective Accelerated Study in Associate
Programs (ASAP) programs at the City University of New York which waive
tuition, help students pay for books and transit costs, and provide
academic advising and supportive scheduling programs to better meet the
needs of participating students, resulting in greater gains in college
persistence and degree completion.
Ensuring Shared Responsibility with
States: Federal funding will cover three-quarters of the
average cost of community college. States that choose to participate
will be expected to contribute the remaining funds necessary to
eliminate community college tuition for eligible students. States that
already invest more and charge students less can make smaller
contributions, though all participating states will be required to put
up some matching funds. States must also commit to continue existing
investments in higher education; coordinate high schools, community
colleges, and four-year institutions to reduce the need for remediation
and repeated courses; and allocate a significant portion of funding
based on performance, not enrollment alone. States will have flexibility
to use some resources to expand quality community college offerings,
improve affordability at four-year public universities, and improve
college readiness, through outreach and early intervention.
So right off the bat
I see a huge incentive for further grade inflation for
community colleges. Remember, of
course, the free money getting tossed around is going to college faculty and
administrators, not to students. It's not the students being subsidized,
it's the college. So they're going to do everything in their power to keep
these students attending, even if it results in students leaving college
with associate's degrees they can barely read, which will subsequently
devalue the degrees in the eyes of employers.
Even in an era of grade
inflation, though, community colleges also have
terrible completion rates for students seeking two-year degrees.
The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a
handy map showing completion rates lower than 10
percent in states like Indiana and Rhode Island after three years of
attendance. The best state, South Dakota, has a 52.9 percent completion
rate. For-profit colleges, for all their criticism for taking advantage of
students (and federal subsidies), have a higher graduation rate than
community colleges.
But to be clear, having a low completion rate over
three years shouldn't necessarily be seen as a criticism of the community
college system. What community colleges allow is the ability for people who
cannot commit (for a variety of fiscal or personal reasons) to a traditional
education model to nevertheless advance their educations. They may take a
few classes and drop out because they have to prioritize other parts of
their life, at least for the time being. Maybe they'll come back in time.
Maybe not. Sometimes it's a money issue, but not always. In fact, the White
House acknowledges exactly what community colleges are:
By 2020, an estimated 35 percent of job
openings will require at least a bachelor’s degree and 30 percent will
require some college or an associate’s degree. Forty percent of college
students are enrolled at one of America’s more than 1,100 community
colleges, which offer students affordable tuition, open admission
policies, and convenient locations. They are particularly important for
students who are older, working, need remedial classes, or can only take
classes part-time. For many students, they offer academic programs and
an affordable route to a four-year college degree. They are also
uniquely positioned to partner with employers to create tailored
training programs to meet economic needs within their communities such
as nursing, health information technology, and advanced manufacturing.
Okay, so why is this program needed at all?
If the White House's position is that community colleges are accessible and
affordable, why a new program? What they're offering doesn't appear to be a
loan. If a student falls into the extremely high drop-out rate for students,
the government (and the taxpayers) don't get the money back. So the White
House is promoting a program funded by taxpayers to subsidize—wait, I mean
further subsidize—a system that has baked in an extremely high
failure rate.
But again, this program is not a subsidy for
students. It's a subsidy for faculty and
college level administrative bloat.
The Weekly Standard notes that the White House declined to detail the
cost of the proposal, but the math is easy to calculate. The administration
states that 9 million students would "save" $3,800 a year. That puts the
cost at
$34 billion, split between the federal government
and states who participate. Community college presidents across the country
are drooling.
Remember, the blame for skyrocketing college costs
has been laid squarely at the feet of bloating administrative staff in
higher education. One study states from early 2014 states administrative
staff led to a
28 percent boom in the higher education workforce,
even in the middle of this recession (while faculty salaries remained fairly
flat). Community colleges actually lost both part-time and full-time faculty
members during the recession, but nevertheless gained an average of
three administrative positions per 1,000 students.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
In Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the rest of Europe educators realize that that the goal of
education should not be that of turning out an oversupply of
lackluster scholars. The goal should be that of turning out people more prepared
to meet the supply and demand needs of a fantastic labor force. In Germany, for
example, only the top 25% of high school graduates are allowed to go to college.
The other graduates are offered trade school opportunities with apprenticeships.
The USA may become the only nation of the world that offers high school
graduates false promises of the wonders of a college education for their
careers.
The "Free Tuition" program will add new flood levels to the current false
promise rivers for most running toward community colleges. My worry is that the
curricula of community colleges will be biased toward scholarly tracks that are
not good deals for most of the students that will be lured into taking this
"Free Tuition" route. Most of these curricula will be geared for getting
students into advanced years of college for which they have poor abilities,
aptitudes, and motivation.
The "Free Tuition" money for many of these students would be better spent on
preparing them for skilled trades that have better career prospects than the
majority of them have with bachelor degrees. In Germany only the top 25% of high
school graduates are admitted into colleges. Most of the others are steered into
outstanding vocational programs having a combination of vocational schooling and
on-the-job apprenticeships.
Also the "Free Tuition" money would be better spent upgrading the many lousy
high schools in the USA. For example, rigorous programs could be created for the
most promising college prospects so that they could qualify for grants and
scholarships in our leading state-supported universities.
It would be great if the community colleges receiving the taxpayer subsidy
focused on vocational curricula with tremendous apprenticeship opportunities.
This probably won't happen in USA community colleges, because it's more
difficult and costly to create the German model in our present community
colleges. Instead community colleges will do what they don't do a very good job
at already --- the unattainable dream of prepare most community college students
to become great college-level scholars. Meanwhile up
here in the White Mountains having to pay nearly $100 per hour for not-so-great
carpetners, plumbers and heating system mechanics.
In Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the rest of Europe educators realize that that the goal of
education should not be that of turning out an oversupply of
lackluster scholars. The goal should be that of turning out people more prepared
to meet the supply and demand needs of a fantastic labor force. In Germany, for
example, only the top 25% of high school graduates are allowed to go to college.
The other graduates are offered trade school opportunities with apprenticeships.
The USA may become the only nation of the world that offers high school
graduates false promises of the wonders of a college education for their
careers.
Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
"Proof That College Football Refs Are Riddled With Bias," by Bryan
Gruley, Bloomberg Businessweek, January 9, 2015 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-09/proof-that-college-football-refs-are-riddled-with-bias?campaign_id=DN010915
Jensen Comment
Perhaps the word "proof" is too strong due to the many degrees of freedom in
this research. The outcomes are, however, highly suggestive. One problem is that
a bit like Dan Stone's message regarding climate change and the fact that 2014
was the fourth coldest year on record for Illinois.
January 9, 2015 reply from Dan Stone
from the Illinois state climatologist, "In summary,
while it was a cold year
for Illinois, the effect was largely confined to the Midwest and was not
global and it does not reflect the long-term temperature trend in Illinois."
source:
https://climateillinois.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/2014-4th-coldest-year-on-record-for-illinois/#more-4919
Climate change is confusing because:
1. it requires understanding data, outliers, and statistics
2. of the fossil fuel industry which, very much like the tobacco industry of
50 years ago, funds promotion campaigns to deny the scientific evidence,
3. a major political party, which is funded by the fossil fuel industry,
promotes science denial.
Dan Stone
January 9, 2015 reply from Bob Jensen
Perhaps given the many referees studied (some impeccably honest and some
biased), perhaps the bias in football refereeing is confusing because "it
requires understanding data, outliers, and statistics."
Statistical analysis just does not work very well for non-stationary
systems. But repeated outcomes may suggest patterns of non-randomness that
are difficult to completely ignore in spite of the limitations in theory.
Bob Jensen
The 9 Biggest Home Repair Scams ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-9-biggest-home-repair-scams-2015-1
What are the odds that it was difficult to earn a high grade in this
course?
What are the odds that the ethics modules in this course really sunk in?
More Than Half Of Dartmouth's Football Team Was Enrolled In The Sports Ethics
Class Where Dozens Cheated ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/dartmouth-football-hockey-basketball-teams-in-cheating-scandal-course-2015-1
"Click for Me if I'm Not There" sounds like it could be a title of a country
song
"Dartmouth Accuses 64 Students of Cheating in Popular Course," by Andy
Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/dartmouth-accuses-64-students-of-cheating-in-popular-course/91857?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Dartmouth College has accused 64 students of
cheating in a “Sports, Ethics, and Religion” course taught last fall, the Valley
News
reports. Randall
Balmer, chairman of the religion department, discovered in October that
absent students in his class were passing their clickers to classmates who
were present to answer in-class questions on their behalf.
Mr. Balmer told the newspaper that most of the
students involved had been suspended for a semester. In the fall he counted
43 students who handed off their clickers in the roughly 275-person class,
but that number does not include the students who facilitated the cheating.
Think Students in Your Class Might Be Cheating? Here’s What to Do
The popular class was initially designed to help
the college’s athletes, many of whom struggled with freshman-year
coursework.
Diana Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the college, said
it would not offer more-detailed comment on the proceedings until the
appeals process ends this month.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
It would be interesting to know the grading distribution in this course. My
hypothesis is that students are more apt to skip class and cheat in a course
where they are assured of an A grade with very little effort. This is what
happened when over 120 students cheated in a political science course assignment
at Harvard University. All students in that course were assured of getting A
grades such that there's less incentive to work hard in the course. In Harvard's
case over half the cheaters were expelled from the University. It appears that
Dartmouth College will be a little less harsh.
Scary!
"Chinese Teens Have Found Remarkable High-Tech Ways To Cheat On Tests,"
by Kayla Ruble, Business Insider, June 14, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/high-tech-ways-to-cheat-2014-6
China’s students have apparently developed skills for
building cheating devices to use during an SAT-like exam that look like they
have been pulled straight from a James Bond movie.
Ahead of China’s
massive college entrance exam — the Gaokao — that took
place on Saturday and Sunday, local media outlets released
photos of cheating devices confiscated by police
around the country in recent weeks.
The photos show intricate cheating equipment, a
majority of which were created
by students in the southwestern city of Chengdu
before taking a different test, the National Professional and Technological
Personnel Qualification Examination.
Around 40 students, all originally from Shanghai,
were reportedly caught with the devices, which were disguised to look like
everyday objects.
Some of the uncovered equipment included miniature
cameras installed into both a pen and a set of glasses, as well as wireless
earphones resembling small earplugs. In one instance, a grey tank top was
wired with a plug capable of connecting to a mobile phone that could be used
to send out information. There was also a camera installed in the shirt.
“Cheating happens in every country, but it’s
extremely rampant in China," Yong Zhao, the presidential chair at the
University of Oregon's College of Education, told VICE News. "This isn’t the
first time and it won’t be the last.”
Cheating has been an enduring issue in China, where
the emphasis placed on standardized tests can create high-pressure
environments.
“For over a thousand years China has been using
tests,” Zhao said. “Standardized tests tend to be the only way for upward
social mobility, passing the test has been a way to change people’s lives.”
Ahead of this year’s exam, which was taken by
nearly 9.4 million students across the country, Beijing was preparing to
send police out to monitor and handle cheating incidents.
In fact, students practically expect to be able to
cheat on exams.
During protests last summer against a crackdown on
Gaokao cheating, students chanted, "We want fairness. There is no fairness
if you do not let us cheat."
The Gaokao is China’s SAT or A-level equivalent,
with many students' chances at matriculating into college reliant on their
exam results.
One of this year's essay questions from a Shanghai
version of the test translated into English reads: "You can choose your own
road and method to make it across the desert, which means you are free; you
have no choice but finding a way to make it across the desert, which makes
you not free.Choose your own angle and title to write an article that is not
less than 800 words."
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on January 9, 2015
Google loses most search share since 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-07/google-loses-most-u-s-search-share-since-2009-while-yahoo-gains.html
Google Inc.’s search share fell to 75.2% in December from 79.3% a
year previous, according to analytics firm StatCounter. It was Google’s
smallest share since at least 2008 and likely the result of Yahoo
Inc. replacing Google as the default search engine on Firefox
browsers in November, Bloomberg
reports
Here's Where The Options Market Thinks The S&P 500 Could Go in 2015
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/sp-500-option-implied-volatility-2015-1
Jensen Comment
You can get a forecast from an individual expert or a consensus forecast from a
group of experts who probably do not have most of their own financial futures
tied up in equity investments. Or you can get a forecast from investors in stock
options who actually put enormous amounts of money down in leveraged
speculations on where the stock prices will go in terms of short-term options
(e.g., 30 days) or long-term options for all or a greater part of 2015. The
options can be long (calls) or shorts (puts). Actually each derivatives market
transaction takes an investor betting long and another investor betting short.
The problem with all these forecasts is that we cannot foresee some events
that can make all these forecasts way off the mark. There could be a major
earthquake such as an enormous earthquake in California. Militants could
(heavens forbid) blow up refineries in Saudi Arabia, and that would cause
a huge spike in oil prices. There could be a giant volcano that would greatly
change all the climate forecasts for years to come.
Imagine what might happen if the Chicago Cubs win the World Series!
Autoregressive Model ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoregressive_model
Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_autocorrelation_function
"ARDL Modelling in EViews 9," by David Giles, Econometrics Beat,
January 9, 2015 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/01/ardl-modelling-in-eviews-9.html
My
previous posts relating to ARDL models (here
and
here) have drawn a lot of
hits. So, it's great to see that
EViews 9 (now in Beta release -
see the details
here) incorporates an ARDL modelling option,
together with the associated "bounds testing".
This is a great feature, and I
just know that it's going to be a "winner" for EViews.
It certainly deserves a post, so here goes!
First, it's important to note that although there was
previously an EViews "add-in" for ARDL models
(see
here and
here), this was quite
limited in its capabilities. What's now available is a
full-blown ARDL estimation option, together with bounds
testing and an analysis of the long-run relationship
between the variables being modelled.
Here, I'll take you through another example of ARDL
modelling - this one involves the relationship between
the retail price of gasoline, and the price of crude
oil. More specifically,
the crude oil price is for
Canadian Par at Edmonton; and the gasoline price is that
for the Canadian city of Vancouver.
Although crude oil prices are recorded daily, the
gasoline prices are available only weekly. So, the price
data that we'll use are weekly (end-of-week), for the 4
January 2000 to 16 July 2013, inclusive.
The oil prices are measured in Candian dollars per cubic
meter. The gasoline prices are in Canadian cents per
litre, and they exclude taxes. Here's a plot of the raw
data:
Common Accountics Science and Econometric
Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm
"Apple's Software Is In a 'Nosedive' That Is Deeply Concerning For Its
Future, Longtime Apple Supporter Says," by Jay Yarow, Business Insider,
January 4, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-software-is-in-a-nosedive-says-respected-developer-2015-1
Respected developer Marco Arment is worried about
Apple's future.
In
a blog post, he writes: "Apple's hardware today is
amazing — it has never been better. But the software quality has taken such
a nosedive in the last few years that I'm deeply concerned for its future."
Arment was CTO at Tumblr before he left to start
Instapaper, the first app that let users save stories to be read later. He
also launched Overcast, an increasingly popular podcasting app. He records
his own podcast, which has a devoted following in Apple and developer
circles.
Arment is not an alarmist. He dislikes people who
are alarmist. And he knows the reaction his posts will provoke, so he's
generally careful with his words.
"Apple has completely lost the functional high
ground," Arment says. "'It just works' was never completely true,
but I don't think the list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been
longer."
Arment blames the prioritizing of marketing for the
problems with Apple's software. Apple wants to have new software releases
each year as a marketing hook, but the annual cycles of updating Apple's
software are leading to too many bugs and problems, he says:
I suspect the rapid
decline of Apple's software is a sign that marketing has a bit too much
power at Apple today: the marketing priority of having major new releases
every year is clearly impossible for the engineering teams to keep up with
while maintaining quality. Maybe it's an engineering problem, but I suspect
not — I doubt that any cohesive engineering team could keep up with
these demands and maintain significantly higher quality.
On Twitter, other people normally supportive of
Apple and what it does chimed in, agreeing with Arment.
Ben Thompson, analyst at Stratechery,
said he agreed. Chris Dixon, venture capitalist at
Andreessen Horowitz,
tweeted, "Sadly, this
is true."
Not everyone agrees. Dan Frommer of
Quartz said "Apple
can and should do better, but situation not dire."
Continued in article
Movie Attendance Has Been On A Dismal Decline Since The 1940s ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/movie-attendance-over-the-years-2015-1
Jensen Comment
A solid segment of the market is made up of those divorced spouses and
grandparents who cannot think of many other ways to entertain children on
visitations. Sometimes when we visit our grandkids they see movies for the third
time.
New York Law Schools Suffer Large (21%) Enrollment Declines ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/new-york-law-schools.html
Microsoft is reportedly building a new browser as part of its Windows 10
push ---
http://news.yahoo.com/video/microsoft-killing-internet-explorer-093704509.html
Cancer along a "bad luck" random walk through parts of life
Overall, they attributed 65% of cancer incidence to random mutations in genes
that can drive cancer growth ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-biological-bad-luck-blamed-in-two-thirds-of-cancer-cases-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Albert Einstein was not a biologist or a geneticist. But he would probably argue
that randomness merely signifies ignorance of the underlying causes.
"Why Airlines Want to Make You Suffer," by Tim Wu, The New Yorker,
December 29, 2014 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/airlines-want-you-to-suffer
Jensen Comment
I used to love to fly, especially when comfortable full jet airliners even
served smaller towns like Ft. Dodge, Iowa and Bangor, Maine. Flying made me feel
important when somebody else paid for my ticket. Now air travel is degrading and
uncomfortable no matter who pays for the ticket. The merged airlines ruined my
interest in air travel in our retirement. My wife wants to take one last trip to
visit her relatives in Germany. It was with great relief that daughter Maria, an
RN in Wisconsin, volunteered to go along in my place. I will even pay for their
first class travel. However, Erika's health may prevent this trip. I did,
however, agree to take her to a wedding in Wisconsin in May if she can handle
the flight. Sigh!
"The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls," by Nelson D. Schwartz,
The New York Times, January 3, 2015 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-and-nostalgia-of-dead-malls.html?_r=0
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Inside the gleaming mall here on
the Sunday before Christmas, just one thing was missing: shoppers.
The upbeat music of “Jingle Bell Rock” bounced off the
tiles, and the smell of teriyaki chicken drifted from the food court, but
only a handful of stores were open at the sprawling enclosed shopping
center. A few visitors walked down the long hallways and peered through
locked metal gates into vacant spaces once home to retailers like H&M, Wet
Seal and Kay Jewelers.
“It’s depressing,” Jill Kalata, 46, said as she tried
on a few of the last sneakers for sale at the Athlete’s Foot, scheduled to
close in a few weeks. “This place used to be packed. And Christmas, the
lines were out the door. Now I’m surprised anything is still open.”
The Owings Mills Mall is poised to join a growing
number of what real estate professionals, architects, urban planners and
Internet enthusiasts term “dead malls.” Since 2010, more than two dozen
enclosed shopping malls have been closed, and an additional 60 are on the
brink, according to Green Street Advisors, which tracks the mall industry.
Premature obituaries for the shopping mall have
been appearing since the late 1990s, but the reality today is more nuanced,
reflecting broader trends remaking the American economy. With income
inequality continuing to widen, high-end malls are thriving, even as stolid
retail chains like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter, taking the middle-
and working-class malls they anchored with them.
“It is very much a haves and have-nots situation,”
said D. J. Busch, a senior analyst at Green Street. Affluent Americans “will
keep going to Short Hills Mall in New Jersey or other properties aimed at
the top 5 or 10 percent of consumers. But there’s been very little income
growth in the belly of the economy.”
At Owings Mills, J. C. Penney and Macy’s are
hanging on, but other midtier emporiums like Sears, Lord & Taylor, and the
regional department store chain Boscov’s have all come and gone as anchors.
Having opened in 1986 with a renovation in 1998,
Owings Mills is young for a dying mall. And while its locale may have
contributed to its demise, other forces played a crucial role, too, like
changing shopping habits and demographics, experts say.
“I have no doubt some malls will survive, but major
segments of our society have gotten sick of them,” said Mark Hinshaw, a
Seattle architect, urban planner and author.
One factor many shoppers blame for the decline of
malls — online shopping — is having only a small effect, experts say. Less
than 10 percent of retail sales take place online, and those sales tend to
hit big-box stores harder, rather than the fashion chains and other
specialty retailers in enclosed malls.
Instead, the fundamental problem for malls is a
glut of stores in many parts of the country, the result of a long boom in
building retail space of all kinds.
“We are extremely over-retailed,” said Christopher
Zahas, a real estate economist and urban planner in Portland, Ore. “Filling
a million square feet is a tall order.” Continue reading the main story
Like beached whales, dead malls draw fascination as
well as dismay. There is a popular website devoted to the phenomenon —
deadmalls.com — and it has also become something of a cultural meme, with
one particularly spooky scene in the movie “Gone Girl” set in a dead mall.
“Everybody has memories from childhood of going to
the mall,” said Jack Thomas, 26, one of three partners who run the site in
their spare time. “Nobody ever thinks a mall is going to up and die.”
Well aware of the cultural dimensions, as well as
the economic stakes, the industry is trying to turn around public perception
of these monuments to America’s favorite pastime: shopping.
In August, the International Council of Shopping
Centers, a trade group based in New York for the shopping center industry,
including mall owners, hired the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller “to
put the real story out there and stop the negativity around the idea that
the mall isn’t going to exist in the next few years,” said Jesse Tron,
communications director for the trade group.
While it is true that many thriving malls will
continue to flourish in the years ahead, it is not clear what the industry
can do to prevent more and more malls from falling on hard times.
About 80 percent of the country’s 1,200 malls are
considered healthy, reporting vacancy rates of 10 percent or less. But that
compares with 94 percent in 2006, according to CoStar Group, a leading
provider of data for the real estate industry.
Nearly 15 percent are 10 to 40 percent vacant, up
from 5 percent in 2006. And 3.4 percent — representing more than 30 million
square feet — are more than 40 percent empty, a threshold that signals the
beginning of what Mr. Busch of Green Street calls “the death spiral.”
Industry executives freely admit that the mall
business has undergone a profound bifurcation since the recession.
Continued in article
First Blockbuster and Radio Shack, Now Kroeger and HEB
"How E-Commerce Is Finally Disrupting The $600 Billion-A-Year Grocery
Industry," by Cooper Smith, Business Insider, January 1, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/e-commerce-disrupting-huge-grocery-market-2014-12
At $600 billion a year in sales, food
and beverage is by far the largest retail category in the U.S. by a wide
margin. However, it's also the category that has been the least disrupted by
e-commerce; less than 1% of food and beverage sales currently occur online,
according to
BI Intelligence's estimates.
But shopping habits are changing, and
niche online grocery services that compete on convenience and selection are
gaining traction. Meanwhile tech giants like Amazon are fronting the cost of
expensive delivery infrastructure that has so far held back grocery
e-commerce.
In a new in-depth report, BI Intelligence looks at why the
grocery business has proved so challenging to e-commerce companies — from
consumer reluctance to complicated and expensive logistics — and what new
strategies e-commerce startups and big-name tech companies are pursuing to
push more grocery sales online. Between 2013 and
2018, online grocery sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of 21.1%, reaching nearly $18 billion by the end of the forecast period. For
comparison, offline grocery sales will rise by 3.1% annually during the same
period.
Access The Full Report And Downloadable Charts By Signing Up For A Free
Trial>>
Here are some of the key findings
explored in the report:
-
There are a number of disadvantages to buying groceries online on both
the consumer and business side, such as the cost and complexity of
logistics, shipping fees, and the quality and freshness of orders. For
online grocers to deliver the freshness consumers want, they have to be
able to deliver orders fast while maintaining the quality of easily
damaged foods like produce.
- But there are still some advantages to
online grocery shopping, in particular convenience and a large selection
of products. Only
15% of U.S. adults have purchased general food items online, but 25%
said they have bought specialty food
and beverages online, which are hard to find elsewhere.
-
New startups that focus on concierge shopping and subscription prepared
meals are innovating on the online grocery model
and offering services that really are
differentiated from traditional supermarket shopping. We
believe these services could change the way people shop for food. In
addition, established online grocers have an opportunity in enterprise
grocery sales, which lowers costs through bulk purchases.
- Some of the biggest names in tech —
Amazon, eBay, and Google — are beginning to offer and promote same-day
delivery services. As consumers get used to the convenience of
ordering something online and receiving it the same day, grocery
e-commerce may benefit too, with people more likely to buy food they
know they will get quickly.
While same-day delivery comes with a big price tag, 25% of millennials
said they would pay a premium for same-day delivery.
Jensen Comment
Even in the boon docks where we cannot get same-day delivery, we probably buy
more groceries other than perishables from Amazon than we do from the local
markets. The reason is a combination of things including point-and-click
convenience, availability of harder to find items up here, savings in time and
money (think fuel for 20 miles round trip), and "free" shipping via Amazon
Prime. Since we buy in bulk, our basement looks like a supermarket with shelves
to hold the items we now buy by the case.
If we still lived in San Antonio we probably would buy less online mainly
because we would not want to leave our garage unlocked for deliveries from UPS,
the Post Office, and FedEx. Up here, however, we never lock our garage and
disconnected it from our home security system (that we mainly have for fire and
pipe-freezing prevention).
In cities like San Antonio I think neighborhood convenience stores should add
services for holding parcel deliveries from UPS, the Post Office, and FedEx.
There has to be business opportunity here.
France Just Quietly Killed Off Its Failed 75% Supertax ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/france-ended-75-super-tax-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Tennis star Serena Williams once claimed she would prefer to live in Paris but
would never do so with the 75% Supertax. Now she's free to reconsider.
Coursera Free Courses ---
https://www.coursera.org/
Jensen Comment on Coursera
Enter the search term for accounting and note the free accounting courses
from the University of Illinois, University of California at Irvine, Penn
(Wharton), and the University of West Virginia
200+ Free Courses and Certificates from Top Professors in Leading
Universities
200 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in January ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/200-moocs-massive-open-online-courses-getting-started-in-january.html
Complete Listing ---
http://www.openculture.com/free_certificate_courses
Note the free financial accounting courses from Penn (Wharton) and various
free forensic accounting courses from elsewhere (not all begin in January)
"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
Most MOOCs are college courses
that comprise part of the curriculum at a university,
usually a leading university. The typical MOOC is the filmed
version of a complete live course on campus where onsite
students get credits for taking the course in a campus
classroom.
Online MOOC viewers usually watch the videos of an onsite
course and may even get together in online learning teams,
but viewers typically do not pay for or receive transcript
credit unless they take competency examinations that are
usually not administered by the MOOC professors. Prestigious
universities created EdX and Coursera for purposes of
competency testing and granting of transcript credits.
Most Webinars are much shorter
training modules conducted live that were never intended to
provide college course credits. They may be replayed as videos,
but viewers can usually ask questions online and interact with
the Webinar leaders only when the Webinar was first filmed.
Business firms like KPMG usually provide Webinars. Webinars are
not commonly provided by colleges and universities. Typically
Webinars are intended for employees, customers, or clients, but
these Webinars may be shared freely with college faculty and
students worldwide. Organizations like the FASB also conduct
Webinars bit do not offer MOOCs. Webinars may also be conducted
for continuing education (CEP) credits.
Bob Jensen's threads on thousands of
MOOC courses and instructions on how to sigh up for (free) MOOCs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Contrary to popular belief, the typical
MOOC is not an introductory course in a discipline. More commonly a
MOOC is an advanced specialty course in a college. For example,
MOOCs are available on the writings of great poets but not
introductory courses how to write compositions or poems. There are
exceptions of course and often the most popular MOOCs are less
advanced such as an introductory MOOC in social psychology versus an
advanced MOOC on memory and metacognition.
Distance Education Fee-Based Courses are Not MOOCs
Bob Jensen's threads on tens of thousands
of fee-based distance education and training courses that usually have
assignments, examinations, interactions with instructors, and associate,
undergraduate, or graduate degree credits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Such fee-based courses and online degrees are now offered (selectively)
by the majority of colleges ranging from community colleges to Ivy
League universities. It's common for universities to have multiple
sections of a course where some sections are onsite and some are online.
No distinction is usually made on a transcript if the course is taken
onsite or online such that it becomes very difficult to enforce a policy
of not offering transfer credit for a distance education course,
especially a distance education course from a leading university like
the University of Wisconsin or the University of Texas.
Thus it becomes somewhat of a joke when the
Texas Society of CPAs limits (for CPA candidates) the number of accounting
courses that can be taken online when leading universities do not reveal on
a transcript whether a course was taken online versus onsite. The key should
be the academic reputation of the university rather than how the course was
taken from a leading university.
I'm still skeptical of online doctoral
programs, because I think an on-campus experience is extremely important to
preparing doctoral students for reaching and research. Having said this,
there are some respectable online doctoral programs such as a Ph.D. in
pharmacy from the University of Colorado.
In my viewpoint, however, there are no respectable Ph.D. programs in
accounting --- period! There probably can and will be such USA programs in
the future, but I think they will have to begin at the top such as an online
doctoral program from an accounting program ranked in the Top 10 accounting
degree programs by US News.
Yeah! I'm a biased snob when it comes to online doctoral programs
And I am aware that one of the Pathways Commission initiatives is to
experiment with newer types of Ph.D. programs in accountancy. But these
should probably be more along the lines of onsite clinical Ph.D. programs
rather than online Ph.D. programs.
And yes it is possible to conduct clinical research in accounting much like
clinical research has become the most important type of research in medical
schools --- but certainly not doctoral programs in accountancy. Ant that's a
shame!
Bob Jensen's threads on free MOOCs, tutorials, learning videos, and course
materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"Nonprofit Fights Illiteracy By Getting Books To Kids Who Need Them,"
by Lynn Leary, NPR, December 29, 2014 ---
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/29/373729964/first-book-gets-reading-material-into-the-hands-of-low-income-students
What We Used to Ask Librarians Before Google and Wikipedia ---
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/28/373268931/before-the-internet-librarians-would-answer-everything-and-still-do
Jensen Comment
Some of these questions also appeared on college admission examinations.
One question I recall answering correctly on the GMAT in the 1960s asked for the
name of Don Quixote's horse. The answer is now at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote
Business Insider recently posted
a list of handy math tricks, and among them is a quick way to estimate how
long it will take to double an investment with a given rate of return ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rule-of-72-works-2014-12
The Beautiful Monarch Butterfly Is In Deep Trouble --- |
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-monarch-butterfly-eyed-for-possible-us-endangered-species-protection-2014-12
The Imitation Game ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game
Thank you Denny Beresford for making me think about this one as well as
order it from NetFlix (on a waiting list)
Alan Turing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
The Turing Test ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
Why Walter Isaacson Wanted to Make Alan Turing Famous ---
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/geeks-guide-walter-isaacson/
The recent film
The Imitation Game stars
Benedict Cumberbatch as
Alan Turing, a British mathematical genius who
helped the Allies win World War II by working to break the German
Enigma code. After
the war Turing was persecuted for his homosexuality, and subjected to cruel
and degrading treatment that led him to take his own life. Last year Turing
received a posthumous pardon from the Queen, and his legacy endures in such
areas as mathematics, computer science, and artificial intelligence. One of
his admirers is
Walter Isaacson, whose new book
The Innovators profiles Turing and other
digital pioneers.
“One of the reasons I wrote this book is because I
wanted to make people like Alan Turing famous,” Isaacson says in Episode 131
of the
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And now
I must admit that Benedict Cumberbatch, by playing him, has done that a
thousand times better than I ever could have.”
Isaacson is famous for his biographies of such
figures as
Benjamin Franklin,
Albert Einstein, and
Steve Jobs. But lately he’s come to feel that the
biography format puts too much emphasis on individual personalities. The
Innovators tries to show that great breakthroughs mostly come from team
efforts, something The Imitation Game conveys very well.
“What the movie does show clearly is that Turing
comes to the realization that you can’t do it alone, you’ve got to
collaborate and be part of a team,” Isaacson says.
Isaacson hopes the film will inspire audiences to
seek out more information about the real-life story of Turing, whether that
means turning to The Innovators or to other works of nonfiction
such as
Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
“The movie does get to some real truths by taking
literary license, but also the real story of Alan Turing is just a
beautiful, heroic, and tragic story,” he says.
Listen to our complete interview with Walter
Isaacson in Episode 131 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast
(above), in which he discusses the work of Alan Turing and other digital
pioneers, and check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Walter Isaacson on
Ada Lovelace:
“She was
Lord Byron’s daughter, and thus she was kind of
poetic, but her mother was a mathematician, so she developed what she called
‘poetical science,’ and she loved looking at how punchcards were instructing
the looms of industrial England in the 1830s to make beautiful patterns. She
had a friend,
Charles Babbage, who was making a numerical
calculator, and she realized that with punch cards that calculator could do
anything—art, music, words, as well as numbers. And so to me she’s a patron
saint of the revolution. … So I think that women have been at the forefront
of pioneering the art of programming, but they’ve been written out of
histrory a bit, and they really haven’t had as much of a role since then as
they should have. … My daughter first introduced me to the importance of Ada
Lovelace, because she was 15 and a computer geek, and she said that the only
computer programmer who was a woman she’d ever heard of was
Oracle in the Batman
comics. And then she heard of Ada Lovelace, so she got excited, because she
realized that real women could be programmers.”
Walter Isaacson on the creation of the Internet:
“When I was at Time magazine, we wrote the
story that it was done to survive a nuclear attack, and we got a letter from
Steve Crocker, who was in charge of what was
called the ‘Request for Comments’—these were the ideas and rules and
protocols for doing the Internet. And he sent us a letter saying, ‘No,
that’s not why the Internet was created. It was created because we wanted to
decentralize control over it.’ And Time magazine was very arrogant
back in those days, so it sent a letter back to Steve Crocker saying, ‘No,
we’re not going to print your letter, because we have better sources than
you about why it was done.’ And I thought, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous.’ But
when I was doing this book I still had the right to go back rummaging
through the archives at Time magazine, and I tried to find out who
was the better source—it turned out to have been Steve Lukasik, who had
become the head of
ARPAnet, and Steve Lukasik said, indeed, that’s
how he got the money from the colonels in the Pentagon, or Congress, by
emphasizing it would survive a Russian attack. And he said, ‘You can tell
Steve Crocker that he was on the bottom and I was on the top, so he didn’t
really know what was happening.’ When I sat and had coffee with Steve
Crocker, interviewing him for this book, I told him that, and he strokes his
chin, and he said, ‘You can tell Steve Lukasik that I was on the bottom and
he was on the top, so he didn’t know what was happening.'”
Walter Isaacson on
“Al Gore invented the Internet”:
“It got a little annoying after a while, because
people would laugh and think, ‘Ha ha, what an original joke.’ And so I did
do a bit on why
Al Gore was
important. When I was running digital management for Time magazine
in the early 1990s, you could not as an average person go right onto the
Internet. You could only go on the Internet if you were part of a university
or a research group, something like that. And in 1992, Al Gore passes the
Gore Act of 1992, which opens up the Internet so that anybody who can dial
up with a modem and get to an online service like AOL or CompuServe or
Prodigy, or just wants to dial up, can go directly onto the Internet. This
transforms the digital revolution. It makes it not just a network of
research centers, but it makes it into the Internet we have today. At that
time, speaking of WIRED and Time magazine, Louis Rossetto and I
were friends—he had founded WIRED—and we were both on AOL and CompuServe,
these proprietary services. And it was in late 1993, I remember talking to
him about, ‘Why don’t we go directly onto the Internet?’ Especially since
the World Wide Web had been developed by
Tim Berners-Lee, which made it easier to navigate
to places on the Internet. And that was a big transforming thing that
happens in 1992-1994 where the number of websites goes from zero to 10,000
in one year, and it’s largely because of the Gore Act of 1992, which opens
up the Internet to the general public.”
Walter Isaacson on artificial intelligence:
“It always seems to be 20 years away. In fact, at
the beginning of this year, if you just search it, you’ll find stories in
the New York Times saying that
neuromorphic chips
are being developed that’ll mimic the human mind, and in 20 years we’ll have
artificial intelligence. It always seems to be a bit of a mirage, and it
always seems that things like Google or Wikipedia that combine human
creativity with machine power always make greater advances than machine
power alone does. … This is something that Gary Kasparov figures out when he
gets beaten by the IBM machine
Deep Blue. He decides to create a contest in which
humans working with computers can play either the best computer or against
the best human grand master. And in all of these contests, the combination
of the human and machine—even if it’s amateur players working with laptop
machines—tends to beat the grand master or the best computer. And this is a
game—chess—which you have to remember is simply an algorithmic rule-driven
game, so eventually computers should be able to crack that totally. On far
more complicated things like ‘Should the
NSA be allowed to
eavesdrop?’ that’s a question I don’t think machines will ever be able to
answer as well as a combination of machines and humans could.”
Continued in article
"Never Lose Your Stuff Again: 6 Bluetooth Trackers Reviewed<" by David
Pogue, Yahoo Tech, December 4, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-development-of-a-new-kind-of-bluetooth-radio-104285475424.html
Jensen Question
Not just for car keys. Will Hillary get one for Bill in the 2016 campaign?
From the Econometrics Beat blog by David Giles on December 29, 2014
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-multivariate-median.html
I'll bet that
in the very first "descriptive statistics" course you ever took,
you learned about measures of "central tendency" for samples or
populations, and these measures included the median. You no
doubt learned that one useful feature of the median is that,
unlike the (arithmetic, geometric, harmonic) mean, it is
relatively "robust" to outliers in the data.
(You probably weren't told that J. M. Keynes provided the
first modern treatment of the relationship between the
median and the minimization of the sum of absolute deviations.
See Keynes (1911) - this paper was based on his thesis work of
1907 and 1908. See
this earlier post
for more details.)
At some later stage
you would have encountered the arithmetic mean again, in the
context of multivariate data. Think of the mean vector,
for instance.
However, unless you
took a stats. course in Multivariate Analysis, most of you
probably didn't get to meet the median in a multivariate
setting. Did you ever wonder why not?
One reason may have
been that while the concept of the mean generalizes very simply
from the scalar case to the multivariate case, the same is not
true for the humble median. Indeed, there isn't even a single,
universally accepted definition of the median for a set of
multivariate data!
Let's take a closer
look at this.
New Year Reading List from Econometrics Beat ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-year-reading-list.html
Happy New Year - and happy reading!
-
Arlot, S. and A. Celisse,
2010. A survey of cross-validation procedures for model
selection. Statistics Surveys, 4, 40-79. (HT Rob)
-
Marsilli, C., 2014.
Variable selection in predictive MIDAS models.Working Paper No.
520, Bank of France.
-
Kulaksizoglu, T.,
2014. Lag order and critical values of the augmented
Dickey-Fuller test: A replication. Journal of Applied
Econometrics, forthcoming.
-
Mooij,
J. M., J. Peters, D. Janzing, J. Zscheischler, and B. Scholkopf,
2014. Distinguishing cause from effect using observational data:
Methods and benchmarks. Working Paper. (HT Roger)
-
Polak, J., M. L. King, and X. Zhang,
2014. A model validation procedure. Working Paper 21/14,
Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash
University.
-
Reed, W. R., 2014.
Unit root tests, size distortions and cointegrated data. Working
Paper 28/2014, Department of Economics and Finance, University
of Canterbury. (HT Bob)
"Blogging changes the nature of academic research, not just how it is
communicated," by Patrick Dunleavy, London School of Economics, January 2015
---
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/12/28/shorter-better-faster-free/
Academic blogging gets your work and research
out to a potentially massive audience at very, very low cost and relative
amount of effort.
Patrick Dunleavy argues blogging and
tweeting from multi-author blogs especially is a great way to build
knowledge of your work, to grow readership of useful articles and research
reports, to build up citations, and to foster debate across academia,
government, civil society and the public in general.
One of the recurring themes (from many different
contributors) on the LSE Impact of Social Science blog is that a new
paradigm of research communications has grown up — one that de-emphasizes
the traditional journals route, and re-prioritizes faster, real-time
academic communication. Blogs play a critical intermediate role. They link
to research reports and articles on the one hand, and they are linked to
from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+ news-streams and
communities. So in research terms blogging is quite simply, one of the most
important things that an academic should be doing right now.
But in addition, STEM scientists, social scientists
and humanities scholars all have an obligation to society to contribute
their observations to the wider world. At the moment that’s often being done
- in ramshackle and impoverished ways
- in pointlessly obscure or charged-for forums
- in difficult language where you need to look
up every second word in Wikipedia. Some of this is necessary for
condensed specialist communication. But much of it is just unneeded
jargon and poor writing dressed up as necessary vocabulary
- with acres of ‘dead-on-arrival’ data (that
will never be used by anyone else in the world), often presented in
unreadable tables
- and all delivered over bizarrely long-winded
timescales. From submission to publication in some top economics
journals now takes 3.5 years. At the end of such a process any published
paper is no more than a tombstone marking where happening debate and
knowledge used to be, four or five years earlier.
So the public pay for all or much of our research
(especially in Europe and Australasia). And then we shunt back to them a few
press releases and a lot of out-of-date, arcanely phrased academic junk.
Types of blogs
A lot of people think that all blogs are solo
blogs, but this is a completely out of date view. A ‘blog’ is defined by
Wikipedia as:
‘a truncation of the expression web log… [It]
is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web
and consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in
reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until
2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of
a small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently
“multi-author blogs” (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large
numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from newspapers,
other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups and
similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic.
The rise of Twitter and other “microblogging” systems helps integrate
MABs and single-author blogs into societal newstreams’. [Accessed 29
August 2014]. (Let me pause here to reassure some academic readers who
may be bristling at being asked to read Wikipedia text – I know this
passage is sound since I co-wrote much of it).
Actually the evolution of academic blogs
specifically has now progressed even further, so that we can distinguish
group or collaborative blogs as an important intermediate type between solo
blogs and multi-author blogs. The two tables below summarize how these three
types of blogs now work, drawing attention to their very different
advantages and disadvantages.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on blogs, listservs, and social media ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob
Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Threads.htm
For earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
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
Bookmarks for the World's Library ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
"Report: Duke Ignored Warnings on Research Fraud," by January 13,
2015, Inside Higher Ed, January 13, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/13/report-duke-ignored-warnings-research-fraud
Duke University ignored a graduate student's
warnings about possible misconduct in the lab of a cancer researcher, years
before the case exploded into public view, The Cancer Letter
reported. The newsletter published documents
showing that a medical student, Bradford Perez, tried to inform campus
administrators about statistical anomalies in studies produced in the lab of
Anil Potti, a cancer researcher. But university officials discouraged Perez
from filing a formal complaint, the newsletter reported. Potti ultimately
was found to have misrepresented his credentials and Duke was sued by
participants in clinical trials that the university suspended amid the
controversy.
"Medical Scholar Built Career on Enormous Fraud, Investigation Finds,"
by Andy Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 10, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/medical-scholar-built-career-on-enormous-fraud-investigation-finds?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Two years ago, West Virginia University was nearly
ready to name a new department chair: Anoop Shankar, a member of the Royal
College of Physicians with a Ph.D. in epidemiology and dozens of papers in
scholarly journals under his belt.
There was just one problem,
reports NBC News: Mr. Shankar wasn’t any of those
things.
The results of the network’s investigation,
published Wednesday morning, show Mr. Shankar’s exploits to be that of “a
charming, bright-minded impostor who built a career on a base of lies.”
The extent of Mr. Shankar’s deceptions began to
emerge when the chair of the School of Public Health’s promotion and tenure
committee began a review of his résumé. He found, among many other
falsehoods, that Mr. Shankar had not actually written any of the papers
listed on his curriculum vitae. After the university dug deeper, Mr. Shankar
resigned, in December 2012.
But the university hasn’t spoken publicly on the
case. As a result, NBC News reports, Mr. Shankar was hired for a position at
Virginia Commonwealth University. That college opened its own probe only
after NBC News submitted questions about Mr. Shankar for its investigation.
As a result, he left the university last month.
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
"6 Football Players at South Dakota Implicated in Fraud," Inside
Higher Ed, January 12, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/12/6-football-players-south-dakota-implicated-fraud
Eleven people -- six of them former football
players at the University of South Dakota -- have pleaded guilty in a scheme
in which students filed tax forms to receive refunds on behalf of people
other than themselves, the
Associated Press reported. The schemed involved
students identifying people they know and then filing the tax returns with
other addresses than those of the people ostensibly filing, and then keeping
the refunds.
The fraud managed to obtain more than $400,000.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"Robot Journalist Finds New Work on Wall Street: Software that turns
data into written text could help us make sense of a coming tsunami of data,"
by Tom Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, January 9, 2015 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533976/robot-journalist-finds-new-work-on-wall-street/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150112
Video: Meet Baxter the General Purpose Robot ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&sns=em&noredirect=1
Thank you Patricia Walters for the heads up
"Corporate Filers Beware: New “RoboCop” Is
On Patrol (detecting fraud)," by John Carney and Francesca Harker,
BakerHostetler, Forbes, August 9, 2013 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2013/08/09/how-secs-new-robocop-profiles-companies-for-accounting-fraud/
It may not be the
superhuman robotic police officer who patrolled the lawless streets of
Detroit in the 1987 sci-fi thriller, but corporate filers should be
every bit as concerned about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s
(“SEC”) new Accounting Quality Model (“AQM”), labeled
not-so-affectionately by some in the financial industry as “RoboCop.”
Broadly speaking, the AQM is an analytical tool which trawls corporate
filings to flag high-risk activity for closer inspection by SEC
enforcement teams. Use of the AQM, in conjunction with statements by
recently-confirmed SEC Chairman Mary Jo White and the introduction of
new initiatives announced July 2, 2013, indicates a renewed commitment
by the SEC to seek out violations of financial reporting regulations.
This pledge of substantial resources means it is more important than
ever for corporate filers to understand SEC enforcement strategies,
especially the AQM, in order to decrease the likelihood that their firm
will be the subject of an expensive SEC audit.
The Crack Down on
Fraud in Accounting and Financial Reporting
In his speech nominating
Mary Jo White to take over as chairman of the SEC, President Obama
issued a warning: “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo.” That statement
now seems particularly true for corporate filers given the direction of
the SEC under her command. Previously a hallmark of the SEC, cases of
accounting and financial-disclosure fraud made up only 11% of
enforcement actions brought by the Commission in 2012. Since taking
over as chairman, Ms. White has renewed the SEC’s commitment to the
detection of fraud in accounting and financial disclosures.
“I think
financial-statement fraud, accounting fraud has always been important to
the SEC,” Ms. White said during a June interview “It’s certainly an area
that I’m interested in and you’re going to see more targeted resources
in that area going forward.” She has backed that statement up with a
substantial commitment of resources. In July, the commission announced
new initiatives which aim to crack down on financial reporting fraud
through the use of technology and analytical capacity, including the
Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force and the Center for Risk and
Quantitative Analytics (“CRQA”). These initiatives will put financial
reports under the microscope through the use of technology-based tools,
the most important of which is RoboCop.
RoboCop: Corporate
Profiler
RoboCop’s objective – to
identify earnings management – is not a novel one; rather, it is the
model’s proficiency that should worry filers. Existing models on
earnings management detection generally attempt to estimate
discretionary accrual amounts by regressing total accruals on factors
that proxy for non-discretionary accruals. The remaining undefined
amount then serves as an estimate of discretionary accruals. The fatal
flaw in this approach is the inevitable high amount of
“false-positives”, rendering it useless to SEC examiners.
The AQM extends this
traditional approach by including discretionary accrual factors in its
regression. This additional level of analysis further classifies the
discretionary accruals as either risk indicators or risk inducers. Risk
indicators are factors that are directly associated with earnings
management while risk inducers indicate situations where strong
incentives for earnings management exist. Based on a comparison with the
filings of companies in the filer’s industry peer group, the AQM
produces a score for each filing, assessing the likelihood that
fraudulent activities are occurring.
While the SEC will be
keeping their factor-composition cards close to the chest, the “builder
of RoboCop”, Craig Lewis, Chief Economist and Director of the Division
of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation (“RSFI”) at the SEC, has
offered several clues about the types of information most likely to
catch RoboCop’s attention (Is it just a coincidence that RoboCop’s movie
partner was an Officer Lewis?).
“An accounting policy
that could be considered a risk indicator (and consistently measured)
would be an accounting policy that results in relatively high book
earnings, even though firms simultaneously select alternative tax
treatments that minimize taxable income,” said Mr. Lewis. “Another
accounting policy risk indicator might be a high proportion of
transactions structured as ‘off-balance sheet.’”
Frequent conflicts with
independent auditors, changes in auditors, or filing delays could also
be risk indicators. Examples of risk inducers include decreasing market
share or lower profitability margins. This factor-based analysis allows
for model flexibility, meaning examiners are able to add or remove
factors to customize the analysis to their specific needs. The SEC will
be able to continually update the model to account for the moves filers
are taking to conceal their frauds.
Next Generation
RoboCop
One of the perceived
weaknesses of RoboCop is its dependence on financial comparisons between
filers within an industry peer group. As Lewis points out, “most firms
that are probably engaging in earnings management or manipulation aren’t
doing it in a way that allows them to stand out from everybody else.
They’re actually doing it so they blend in better with their peer
group.”
To account for this, the
SEC’s current endeavor is expanding the model’s capabilities to include
a scan of the “Management Discussion & Analysis” (“MD&A”) sections of
annual reports. Through a study of past fraudulent filings, analysts at
RSFI have developed lists of words and phrasing choices which have been
common amongst fraudulent filers in the past. These lists have been
turned into factors and incorporated into the AQM
“We’re effectively going
in and we’re saying: what are the word choices that filers make that
maximize our ability to differentiate between fraudsters in the past and
firms that haven’t had fraud action brought against them yet?” Mr. Lewis
explained during a June conference in Ireland.
“So what we’re doing is
taking the MDNA section, we’re comparing them to other firms in the same
industry group, and we’re finding that in the past, fraudsters have
tended to talk a lot about things that really don’t matter much and they
under-report all the risks that all the other firms that aren’t having
these same issues talk quite a bit about.”
Firms engaged in
fraudulent activity have tended to overuse particular words and phrasing
choices which are associated with relatively benign activities. They
have also tended to under-disclose risks which are prevalent among a
peer group. When a filer has engaged in similar behavior, RoboCop will
flag these types of unusual choices for examiner review.
How the SEC Uses
RoboCop
Although the SEC has
cautioned that the AQM is not the “robot police coming out and busting
the fraudsters,” filers would be wise to understand the power of this
tool. RoboCop is a fully automated system. Within 24 hours from the
time a filing is posted to EDGAR, it is processed by the AQM and the
results are stored in a database. The AQM outputs a risk score which
informs SEC auditors of the likelihood that a filing is fraudulent. The
SEC then uses this score to prioritize its investigations and
concentrate review efforts on portions of the report most likely to
contain fraudulent information.
The results of RoboCop’s
analysis will likely become the basis for enforcement scheduling and
direction of resources in the near future. A filing’s risk score will
determine whether a filing is given a quick, unsuspecting review, or
whether it is thoroughly dissected by an SEC exam team, possibly leading
to an expensive audit. The SEC has also said it plans to use the risk
scores as a means of corroborating (or invalidating) the approximately
30,000 tips, complaints, and referrals submissions it estimates will be
received each year through its Electronic Data Collection Systems or
completed forms TCR.
Continued in article
Ole yust does not yet vant Lena to be da boss
Women CEOs are rare in Norway and Sweden even though these nations are
highest in terms of gender equality on other criteria
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_executive_officer
. . .
In some European Union countries, there are
two separate boards,
one executive board for the day-to-day business and one supervisory board
for control purposes (selected by the shareholders). In these countries, the
CEO presides over the executive board and the chairman presides over the
supervisory board, and these two roles will always be held by different
people. This ensures a distinction between management by the executive board
and governance by the supervisory board. This allows for clear lines of
authority. The aim is to prevent a conflict of interest and too much power
being concentrated in the hands of one person.
Women on Board The Norwegian Experience (June 2010)
---
http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/ipa/07309.pdf
- Norway was the first country to introduce a quota
for women on company boards. Since its introduction in 2003, the number of
women on board has reached 40 per cent as required by law.
- In several European countries, Germany being one
of them, a debate has begun on how to increase the number of women in
leading positions in business. The question of whether or not quota
legislation is needed to reach this goal is highly contested.
- The Norwegian experience reveals that a quota is
the key to a successful implementation. Not only does it create the pressure
needed for fundamental change but it also triggers a public debate at the
core of which are questions of gender equality in wider society
Ole yust does not yet vant Lena to be da boss
(Norway is not in the 28-Member European
Union)
From the Harvard Business Review Blog on December 30, 2014
Norwegian Companies Morph to Avoid
Gender-Balance Law
One of the consequences of Norway’s law mandating
that at least 40% of the directors of public limited companies be female is
that numerous firms have switched their organizational form, sometimes at
significant cost, so that they are no longer public limited companies, say
Øyvind Bøhren and Siv Staubo of Norwegian Business School. Among the
companies in that category when the law was passed in 2003, 51% chose to
become private limited-liability firms by the time it became binding five
years later. However, Norway may further extend the board-representation
rule to other corporate forms.
SOURCE:
Does mandatory gender balance work? Changing organizational form to avoid
board upheaval
http://links.mkt3142.com/ctt?kn=14&ms=MTAyNjY5MjMS1&r=MTkyODM0MDg0MAS2&b=0&j=NDQyMzY1ODgzS0&mt=1&rt=0
Germany since passed quota (30% in 2016) legislation for
publically-traded companies but rejected similar quotas for private
corporations ---
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cdu-and-spd-agree-on-gender-quota-in-german-boardrooms-a-934155.html
Jensen Comment
In the USA the CEO generally has enormous power is choosing the slate of
board members voted on by the shareholders. Also shareholders uninterested in
voting often give voting proxies to the CEO. Hence the election of board members
is not exactly an example of great democracy in action. For public relations
purposes and for purposes of competency, however, CEOs are increasingly
attempting to get women on corporate boards. Also corporate boards for sometimes
complicated reasons, including competency, are increasingly trying to appoint
women as CEOs. No longer are women mere tokens for public relations.
Gender Equality ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_equality
Global Gender Gap Report (2013) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Gender_Gap_Report
Gender Inequality Index ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index
Note that this index is based on multiple criteria and is not a measure of
business executive power or executive compensation.
Female Labor Force in the Muslim World ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_labor_force_in_the_Muslim_world
Bob Jensen's threads on gender issues ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
Steven Hawking and the Golem A cautionary tale about artificial
intelligence ---
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/Steven-Hawking-and-the-Golem.html
Rodney Brooks is less worried about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Brooks
AI researcher Rodney Brooks writes, “I think it is
a mistake to be worrying about us developing malevolent AI anytime in the
next few hundred years. I think the worry stems from a fundamental error in
not distinguishing the difference between the very real recent advances in a
particular aspect of AI, and the enormity and complexity of building
sentient volitional intelligence.”
Rodney Brooks is featured in a film about him
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast,_Cheap_%26_Out_of_Control
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
Question
What's one difference between Anchorage, Alaska and Sugar Hill, NH?
Answer
In 2014 Anchorage never had a day below 0F.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/30/anchorage-alaska-never-saw-a-day-below-zero-in-2014/
Actually Sugar Hill had very few days below zero last year and never went deep
below zero like the first year we lived here about ten years ago.
Anchorage has also known much colder years than 2014 even though it's generally
warmer in Anchorage than in most other parts of Alaska. The coldest place in New
Hampshire is generally atop Mt. Washington where temperatures often plunge way
below zero in the midst of ferocious winds ---
https://www.mountwashington.org/experience-the-weather/mount-washington-weather-archives/default.aspx
The warmer winters does not yet mean we will be planting palm trees anywhere
outdoors in Alaska or New Hampshire.
NFL Players Must “Go Long” On Retirement ---
http://blog.futureadvisor.com/nfl-players-must-go-long-on-retirement/
Sports Illustrated estimates that almost 80% of NFL
Players are broke three years into retirement (and they retire before age
40). How can such high-paying careers possibly end in bankruptcy?
The NFL pays players the worst, on average, among
professional sports organizations. Your typical NBA player makes a cool $5
million per year; your average NFL player makes $1.9 million — less than
half. And the highest earners skew the average for both leagues, so the
averages don’t represent most players. The median salary for an NFL player
is $770,000.
That sounds like a lot, but that salary is only
earned over a few years. NFL players’ careers are very short compared to
white-collar workers. Football players might have a retirement that’s 50
years long. Combine this with the average 3.5 year career of a player and
you can see the problem. These guys need to be really good at planning for
their future, and they have a very small window of time to make the right
decisions.
Going Long ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_%28finance%29
It might also merely refer to thinking long-term about investing.
Going Short ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_%28finance%29
Jensen Comment
Actually I would not ipso facto advise going long or short without more
information on the alternatives and circumstances. Astute investors often hedge
with both long and short positions. To advise an NFL player about investing we
need to know more about cash holdings and deferred payment contracts. Much also
depends in the the investment value of the player's name. For example, Hall of
Fame players usually have names that can be used to advantage in automobile
dealerships, restaurants or even restaurant chains, hotels, etc.
And in many case they can use what I call the Donald
Trump strategy of putting up the name without having to invest much cash.
I would probably advise most NFL players to avoid gambling completely
(Michael Jordon's addiction) and modest consumption (avoid the fancy cars,
show-off estates, expensive travel, and gold-digging lovers/friends).
Also avoid blood sucking investment advisors and learn how
to manage your own portfolio. And stay away from those so-called
investment seminars often conducted by con men and con women in fancy hotels.
First thing I would look into investing in a tax exempt fund (like a fund
from Fidelity or Vanguard). Certainly do not invest everything in tax exempts
and be prepared for the remotely possible politics in Washington that could
limit the amount of tax exempt income allowed each year. Risk in tax free bonds
can be diversified by investing in large tax-exempt funds, but investors should
study the other risks involved in this and any other type of investment.
Try to avoid consuming capital and live on labor plus only a portion of
income on investments. Think twice about real estate investments since cash
flows for property taxes and insurance can eat you alive.
Please understand that I'm not an investment adviser and do not pretend to be
an expert on such matters. However, I do provide some free personal finance
helpers and links to learn about how to manage your own funds ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Apple’s Guided Tour to Using the First Macintosh (1984) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/apples-guided-tour-to-using-the-first-macintosh-1984.html
Bob Jensen's threads on computing history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---ComputerNetworking-IncludingInternet
Laptop Market Shares in Q3 of 2014 ---
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/07/apple-mac-us-pc-record/
Bill Gates would probably be selling used cars today if Apple had outsourced its
Mac OS and computer manufacturing to other companies like Dell and HP.
Confucius will no longer say anything in Swedish ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/05/stockholm-university-close-confucius-institute
"Is It OK to Cheat Airlines if It Saves You Money?" by Justin Bachman,
Bloomberg Businessweek, December 31, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-12-31/united-and-orbitz-lawsuit-against-skiplaggedcom-raises-ethical-questions?campaign_id=DN123114
Would you “scam” an airline’s ticketing policy if
it saved $25? $70? $400?
A federal lawsuit is bringing public attention to
“hidden city” ticketing, the technique of buying an airline ticket between
two cities with a connection but ditching the rest of the trip. Say, for
example, you want to fly from Boston to San Francisco but notice that a
ticket from Boston to Seattle—with a connection in San Francisco—is cheaper.
Once your flight lands in San Francisco, you prance out of the airport at
your intended destination, pocketing the savings.
Airlines hate this maneuver—which has been around
for decades—and argue that it violates the terms of the sale. Others contend
that it’s no big deal. “I think it’s fair game,” says John DiScala, a travel
expert who blogs as Johnny Jet. “I think it’s smart for the consumer.” Jay
Sorensen, a consultant and former executive with Midwest Airlines, argues
that airlines also violate the terms of sale with their customers “and then
rely on the customer to write a letter to complain to get that violation
addressed.” (In a phone call on Tuesday, Sorensen noted that his wife, who
is also a former airline executive, vehemently disagreed.) “I think there
are greater sins in life,” he says.
The world’s second-largest airline, United, along
with online travel agency Orbitz Worldwide, aren't convinced. They've filed
suit seeking an injunction to stop a New York programmer’s website,
Skiplagged.com, from sending United ticket buyers to Orbitz.com to purchase
such “hidden city” tickets. The ticketing technique “interferes with
United’s ability to sell unused seats on the final leg(s) of connecting
flights, resulting in the loss of revenue that United would have earned by
selling the unused seats,” the company said in its lawsuit last month in
U.S. District Court in Chicago. The companies also want at least $75,000 in
damages and attorney fees. “This practice violates our fare rules, and we
are taking action to stop it to help protect the vast majority of customers
who buy legitimate tickets,” United spokeswoman Christen David said on
Tuesday. The airline also says such passengers can cause delays as gate
agents try to determine where a person expected on a flight may be.
Passenger count also affects a flight’s total weight calculation, which can
delay the plane’s departure.
The problem for the airline industry, of course, is
that the public holds them in roughly the same esteem as cable-TV companies
and tax collectors. We aren't inclined to be terribly sympathetic about
protecting carriers’ pricing schemes or saying "no thanks" to a bargain.
“Send them to hell, please,” wrote someone who donated $666 to Skiplagged
founder Aktarer Zaman, who began raising money online in late November to
fund his defense against the lawsuit. On Tuesday he boosted his target to
$25,000 after quickly passing the prior $20,000 target given media attention
on the lawsuit. “That's because I really don't know how much this lawsuit is
going to ultimately cost, other than probably a lot,” Zaman wrote in a note
thanking donors. “However, you have my word that how every cent is spent
will be posted here. If there are any remaining funds, those will be
completely donated to charity.” Zaman did not reply on Tuesday to an e-mail
sent via his personal website.
Hidden city fares are found on almost every airline
that operates with a hub-and-spoke system. These cheaper fares arise from
the fact that nonstop flights typically command a premium, given that most
people—especially business travelers—prefer to avoid connections when
possible. That’s why American, for example, enjoys strong pricing from its
Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) hub on nonstop routes. Delta and United, meanwhile,
have plenty of service on the same routes from DFW Airport, but they
typically route passengers through one of their own hubs with a connecting
flight. Writ large across the industry, that dynamic leads to “hidden city”
fares that can amount to savings of hundreds of dollars.
“If [airlines] didn’t try to price flights to
certain hubs so high, perhaps you wouldn’t have as many people trying to buy
hidden city fares,” says Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Atmosphere
Research Group. Yet given strong customer demand, airlines would be foolish
to “leave money on the table” if they can command top prices on some
flights, he notes. “To a certain degree then, they encourage this type of
behavior,” says Harteveldt, who doesn’t consider the practice ethical.
“There’s no easy solution to this.”
One airline measure has been to void frequent-flyer
miles if an airline determines that a person skipped a connecting flight. In
some cases with repeat offenders, Harteveldt and Sorensen said, an airline
may shut down the account or try to collect the fare difference on the
flight a passenger actually used. American warns travel agents not to sell
such tickets, likening the practice to “switching price tags to obtain a
lower price on goods sold at department stores.”
DiScala, who travels more than 150,000 miles per
year and was spending the holidays with his wife in Hawaii, says hidden city
tickets have been an occasional financial temptation—but one he's avoided.
“I didn’t want to lose my miles,” he says.
Jensen Comment
The bigger question is whether it's ethical to cheat a company or government
agency that prices or taxes in a way to encourage being cheated. It seems that
you are playing a game that the house invented --- a little like but not
entirely like counting cards while playing blackjack in a casino. Much depends
upon what is part of the rules of the game. For example, if the rules
specifically ban use of electronic devices while playing cards in a casino then
secretly using a device like a hidden camera or wristwatch computer is cheating
on the rules. That is unethical.
One could argue that it's the responsibility of the house to enforce its own
rules whereas it's the ethical obligation of the players to live by the Kant's
Categorical Imperative not to play the game in a way that every player should
play the game beyond the level of enforced rules ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
For example, throwing away a ticket for a reserved seat leg of a flight might
conceivably prevent another passenger from using an empty seat. In this case the
damage extends beyond penalizing the airline by throwing away a ticket. Immanuel
Kant probably would frown at this if he was still capable of frowning.
Having said this, I must admit that I've thrown away tickets before. As I
recall the most common reason was when the price of a round trip ticket booked
well in advance was less than
the price of a one-way ticket booked well in advance. This was a pricing
strategy used by airlines to hit business travelers with higher prices by
denying them deals on one-way tickets --- since
one-way tickets are more apt to be used by business travelers than tourists.
In those instances I merely threw away the return tickets. Before the days of
photo ID requirements it was tempting to try to sell a return ticket. But I
viewed that is too unethical as well as difficult to accomplish. But my
conscience did not bother me when I threw those return tickets away. However,
upon arrival at my destination I did cancel the return reservation so somebody
else could use my seat. The airlines reacted gratefully as if they expected
astute travelers to figure out how to get cheaper one-way tickets. I was never
hauled off in handcuffs when I told the airline I was not going to use a return
ticket.
With Immanuel Kant it's all about treating others as you would want to be
treated.
None of the return tickets I turned back to the airlines were refundable.
These were nonrefundable tickets purchased long in advance of the flights. I
merely notified the airline in advance so that somebody would not be denied a
reserved seat that would otherwise be vacant.
I was not doing this to help the airline get more revenue. I merely wanted to
help out other passengers in need of my reserved seat. I admit that I also
wanted to show the airlines how absurd it was to price round trip tickets
cheaper than one-way tickets.
This is a matter of ethics, now law! I would be very unhappy if I could not
reserve a seat that was certain to be vacant --- which is not what I would do to
others if I did not want this done to myself.
Somebody wrote to me that it makes no sense to sell a half-gallon container
of milk for less than a quart of milk. Somebody wanting a quart of milk for
lunch will simply buy the cheaper half-gallon and pour the rest away.
With airline tickets, however, pricing gets more complicated under the
calculations of CPV analysis.
Reply from Bob Jensen on January 3, 2015.
Good point, but we have to look a bit deeper into why the airlines will
sell round trip tickets cheaper than one-way tickets. Those cheap round trip
tickets usually are non-refundable. Business travelers often want refundable
tickets even if they are more expensive because it's so common for business
travel plans to change relative to personal vacations to Disney World.
Hence, pricing of vacation travel is discounted due to CPV analysis.
Vacation travel is very price elastic such that airlines can make more
revenue by having higher volume at lower prices. But the airlines want to
prevent business travelers from taking advantage of those lower fares. Hence
the lower fares have added restrictions such as requiring Saturday night
stay-overs that business travelers hate. Also business travelers hate
non-refundable tickets and tickets that cannot be changed without heavy
re-booking penalties.
Airlines studied price elasticity and volume among customer segments very
carefully. One thing they learned is that one=way tickets are almost
entirely used by business travelers for various and sometimes unknown
reasons, but usually it;s because business travelers take a one way trip
from City A to City B, spend a few nights in City B and then use another
one-way ticket to go from City B to visit customers in City C and on and on.
Hence airlines decided that there would not be significantly increased
volume of one-way tickets among vacation travelers wanting discounted
tickets like they want round-trip discounted tickets.
As a result airlines just do not offer great deals on one-way tickets
purchased in advance.
Thanks for the reply,
Bob
Too Little Remedy Too Late for a UNC Philosophy Professor (after nearly 20
years of fake classes and lax grading of athletes)
"UNC Is Firing The Sports Ethics Professor Involved In The Fake Class Scandal,"
by Peter Jacobs, Business Insider, December 31, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/unc-is-firing-the-sports-ethics-professor-involved-in-the-fake-class-scandal-2014-12
"Former UNC Basketball Star Says He Got Straight A's Without Going
To A Single Class," by Emmitt Knowlton, Business Insider, June 6,
2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/rashad-mccants-on-unc-academic-scandal-2014-6
"UNC's Fake 'Paper Classes' Were Not Just For Athletes — They Were Also
Very Popular With Frat Boys," by Peter Jacobs, Business Insider, October 23,
2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/uncs-fake-paper-classes-were-also-popular-with-frat-boys-2014-10
Jensen Comment
The University of North Carolina would like to have us believe that the higher
administration and coaches were unaware of the athlete cheating scandals for
nearly 20 years. Yeah Right!
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who allow students to cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward
Bob Jensen's threads on athletics scandals in higher education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Athletics
Economist Magazine Goofs
"The Economist List Of The Most Influential Economists Is A Disaster," by
Myles Upland, Business Insider, December 30, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/economist-most-influential-economists-2014-12
"Evidence Grows That Online Social Networks Have Insidious Negative
Effects," MIT's Technology Review, August 29, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/530401/evidence-grows-that-online-social-networks-have-insidious-negative-effects/
Online social networks have permeated our lives
with far-reaching consequences. Many people have used them to connect with
friends and family in distant parts of the world, to make connections that
have advanced their careers in leaps and bounds and to explore and visualize
not only their own network of friends but the networks of their friends,
family, and colleagues.
But there is growing evidence that the impact of
online social networks is not all good or even benign. A number of studies
have begun to find evidence that online networks can have significant
detrimental effects. This question is hotly debated, often with conflicting
results and usually using limited varieties of subjects, such as
undergraduate students.
Today, Fabio Sabatini at Sapienza University of
Rome in Italy and Francesco Sarracino at STATEC in Luxembourg attempt to
tease apart the factors involved in this thorny issue by number crunching
the data from a survey of around 50,000 people in Italy gathered during 2010
and 2011. The survey specifically measures subjective well-being and also
gathers detailed information about the way each person uses the Internet.
The question Sabatini and Sarracino set out to
answer is whether the use of online networks reduces subjective well-being
and if so, how.
Sabatini and Sarracino’s database is called the
“Multipurpose Survey on Households,” a survey of around 24,000 Italian
households corresponding to 50,000 individuals carried out by the Italian
National Institute of Statistics every year. These guys use the data drawn
from 2010 and 2011. What’s important about the survey as that it is large
and nationally representative (as opposed to a self-selecting group of
undergraduates).
The survey specifically asks the question “How
satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays?” requiring an answer
from extremely dissatisfied (0) to extremely satisfied (10). This provides a
well-established measure of subjective well-being.
The survey also asks other detailed questions such
as how often people meet friends and whether they think people can be
trusted. It also asked about people’s use of online social networks such as
Facebook and Twitter.
This allowed Sabatini and Sarracino to study the
correlation between subjective well-being and other factors in their life,
particularly their use of social networks. As statisticians they were
particularly careful to rule out spurious correlations that can be explained
by factors such as endogeneity bias where a seemingly independent parameter
is actually correlated with an unobserved factor relegated to the error.
They found for example that face-to-face
interactions and the trust people place in one another are strongly
correlated with well-being in a positive way. In other words, if you tend to
trust people and have lots of face-to-face interactions, you will probably
assess your well-being more highly.
But of course interactions on online social
networks are not face-to-face and this may impact the trust you have in
people online. It is this loss of trust that can then affect subjective
well-being rather than the online interaction itself.
Sabatini and Sarracino tease this apart
statistically. “We find that online networking plays a positive role in
subjective well-being through its impact on physical interactions, whereas
[the use of] social network sites is associated with lower social trust,”
they say. “The overall effect of networking on individual welfare is
significantly negative,” they conclude.
That’s an important result because it is the first
time that the role of online networks has been addressed in such a large and
nationally representative sample.
Sabatini and Sarracino particularly highlight the
role of discrimination and hate speech on social media which they say play a
significant role in trust and well-being. Better moderation could
significantly improve the well-being of the people who use social networks,
they conclude.
Facebook, Twitter, and others take note.
Bob Jensen's threads on social networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
A Clever Interactive Chess Game
Play Chess Against the Ghost of Marcel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game
---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/play-chess-against-the-ghost-of-marcel-duchamp.html
Click once on a piece to see the possible moves you can make with that piece. I
did not do so well, but them I'm not a good chess player.
It's "unusual" to deny transfer credits from accredited college, but it's
entirely possible
What's even more unusual is to name names of those "shoddy" colleges
"What One (California) College Did to Crack Down on Shoddy Transfer Credits,"
by Brad Wolverton, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 30, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-One-College-Did-to-Crack/150893/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
It's not at all unusual for accounting majors to cherry pick what courses to
take off campus --- the hardest courses. This is especially common in the case
of smaller colleges having only some of the hardest courses taught without
choices as to who teaches those courses. When Trinity University (about 2,200
students in total with no programs for part-time students) our roughly 25
accounting majors sought, in advance, to take summer courses elsewhere when
Trinity did not offer those courses in the summer we could usually predict what
upper level courses would be chosen for undergraduate transfer credits.
It was also common for some graduate masters of accounting students to seek
to take my accounting theory course off campus. However, there were virtually no
accounting theory courses at the time that covered FAS 133 like I covered FAS
133. Permission was denied in advance of every summer. There are probably still
no accounting theory courses that cover FAS 133 like I covered FAS 133. I
consider FAS 133 a very important module for accounting theory even though FAS
133 is never covered in any depth on the CPA examination.
I considered FAS 133 an important launch for teaching fair value accounting
and accounting for structured financing as well as the obvious distinction
between speculation and hedge accounting. The big problem with having a heavy
module on FAS 133 in accounting theory is that quite a lot of time has to be
spent of use of derivatives contracts in finance before you can even teach how
to account for those derivatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/acct5341.htm
"U. of Texas Flagship Is Investigating ‘Chronicle’ Report of Cheating
Scandal," by Andy Thomason, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
January 5, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-texas-flagship-is-investigating-chronicle-report-of-cheating-scandal/91731?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Grade Fixing for Hundreds of Athletes
"Confessions of a Fixer," The Chronicle of Higher Education,
January 5, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Fixer/150891/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on teachers who help students cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward
Bob Jensen's threads on coaches and administrators who help athletes cheat
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Athletics
No Kangaroo Courts for "Ridiculous Research Grants" in Australia
"No Audit of 'Ridiculous' Grants." by Jared Owens for The
Australian, Inside Higher Ed, January 6, 2014
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/06/australian-government-backs-away-vow-audit-ridiculous-research-grants
Golden Fleece Awards ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Fleece_Award
Rather than put down "Ridiculous Grants" Jamie Briggs should give them Golden
Fleece Awards.
From the Scout Report on January 9, 2015
Timeful ---
http://www.timeful.com
If you're looking for a clean, clear, simple app
that helps you find time for the things you want to do, look no further.
More than just a calendar app, Timeful intelligently helps you keep track of
your life. For instance, after repeated To-Dos, Events, and Habits provided
by you, the app will begin to make suggestions. Your approval or dismissal
of these notifications help make smarter alerts for the future. Timeful is
currently available for Apple devices running iOS 7.0+.
Vine ---
https://vine.co
Put simply, Vine is a social video app. It allows
you to shoot six second videos (continuously or stopping and starting) and
share them with the world. While this might not sound like groundbreaking
web genius, the catchy platform and online video sharing community can make
it an addictive experience. Available for iOS (6.0+), Android (varies with
device), and Windows.
The Latest from Kepler: A Number of Possibly Habitable Planets
NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Discovers New Batch of Earthlike Planets
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150106-kepler-goldilocks-exoplanets-universe-space-science/
ALIEN EARTH: Red sun's habitable world spotted 470 light years away
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/07/alien_earth_with_a_red_sun_discovered_470_lightyears_away/
'Alien Earth' is among eight new far-off planets
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30705517
Eight New Planets Found in "Goldilocks" Zone
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-04
Kepler Mission Overview
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/overview/#.VK2tPmTF_pA
Validation of twelve small Kepler transiting planets in the habitable zone
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~torres/smallHZ/smallHZplanets.pdf
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Free Shakespeare Tutorials ---
https://www.playshakespeare.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Mars for Educators ---
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/participate/marsforeducators/
Bridging World History ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/
Teaching Climate ---
http://www.climate.gov/teaching
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Office of Science and Technology Policy ---
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp
"The Retraction War: Scientists seek demigod status, journals want
blockbuster results, and retractions are on the rise: is science broken?" by
Jill Neimark, Aeon, 2014 ---
http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/are-retraction-wars-a-sign-that-science-is-broken/
Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Simple Animation ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/stephen-hawkings-big-ideas-explained-with-simple-animation.html
What NASA Hopes to Find on Pluto ---
http://time.com/3645704/pluto-new-horizons-spacecraft/?xid=newsletter-brief
Mars for Educators ---
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/participate/marsforeducators/
The Weekly Epidemiological Record ---
http://www.who.int/wer/en/
Teaching Climate ---
http://www.climate.gov/teaching
Whale and Dolphin Conservation ---
http://us.whales.org
The Pitch Drop Experiment ---
http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment
Meet Baxter the General Purpose Robot ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU&sns=em&noredirect=1
From the Scout Report on January 9, 2015
The Latest from Kepler: A Number of Possibly Habitable Planets
NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Discovers New Batch of Earthlike Planets
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150106-kepler-goldilocks-exoplanets-universe-space-science/
ALIEN EARTH: Red sun's habitable world spotted 470 light years away
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/07/alien_earth_with_a_red_sun_discovered_470_lightyears_away/
'Alien Earth' is among eight new far-off planets
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30705517
Eight New Planets Found in "Goldilocks" Zone
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-04
Kepler Mission Overview
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/overview/#.VK2tPmTF_pA
Validation of twelve small Kepler transiting planets in the habitable zone
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~torres/smallHZ/smallHZplanets.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Bridging World History ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/
Islam in Europe ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/01/islam-in-europe/
Explore Capitol Hill ---
http://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-hill
Housing: Spotlight on Statistics ---
http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2014/housing/home.htm
Berkeley 1968-1973 Poster Collection ---
http://digitalcollections.library.ubc.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/berkpost
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
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math and Statistics Tutorials
Probability and Statistics ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_and_statistics
Past, Present, and Future of Statistical Science
---
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781482204964
A Long Article
"Statisticians in World War II: They also served How statisticians
changed the war, and the war changed statistics," The Economist,
December 20, 2014 ---
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636589-how-statisticians-changed-war-and-war-changed-statistics-they-also-served
Jensen
Comment
The article above avoids the heated disputes especially those involving
Ronald Fisher and Thomas Bayes ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bayes
Common
Mistakes in Statistical Analysis ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
History Tutorials
Bridging World History ---
http://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/
The Oldest Time Capsule In American History Was Just Opened — Here's What's
Inside ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/boston-time-capsule-opened-2015-1
The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People, Presented in an Interactive
Infographic ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/the-daily-routines-of-famous-creative-people-presented-in-an-interactive-infographic.html
The Biggest Flaw Of 'The Obama Team' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-biggest-flaw-of-the-obama-team-2015-1
Apple’s Guided Tour to Using the First Macintosh (1984) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/apples-guided-tour-to-using-the-first-macintosh-1984.html
Bob Jensen's threads on computing history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---ComputerNetworking-IncludingInternet
Werner Herzog Plays Himself in Cartoon That Satirizes Obama’s 2008 Election &
Race in America ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/werner-herzog-plays-himself-in-cartoon-that-satirizes-obamas-2008-election-race-in-america.html
Explore Capitol Hill ---
http://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-hill
Henri Rousseau’s Heartening Story of Success after a Lifetime of Rejection,
Illustrated ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/09/the-fantastic-jungles-of-henri-rousseau/
National Museums of Scotland: Explore ---
http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/
Soviet and Warsaw Pact Military Journals
http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/soviet-and-warsaw-pact-military-journals
American Languages: Our Nation's Many Voices ---
http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AmerLangs
Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman by Joan Rothfuss –
review (a tear jerker) ---
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/31/topless-cellist-charlotte-moorman-book-review
Existential Philosophy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8-Bit
Video Games ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/existential-philosophy-explained-with-8-bit-video-games.html
Free Shakespeare Tutorials ---
https://www.playshakespeare.com/
Three Films Capture 1940s New York, Chicago & Los Angeles in Vivid Color ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/three-films-capture-1940s-new-york-chicago-los-angeles-in-vivid-color.html
The Pitch Drop Experiment ---
http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi ---
http://ngmaindia.gov.in
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
American Languages: Our Nation's Many Voices ---
http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AmerLangs
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Music Tutorials
"Tristan and Isolde: A spine-tingling and blissful infinity The magic of
Wagner’s opera springs from a musical trick," The Economist, January 3,
2015 ---
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21637349-magic-wagners-opera-springs-musical-trick-spine-tingling-and-blissful?fsrc=nlw|hig|30-12-2015|NA
Home Movies of Duke Ellington Playing Baseball (And How Baseball Coined the
Word “Jazz”) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/home-movies-of-duke-ellington-playing-baseball.html
Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman by Joan Rothfuss –
review (a tear jerker) ---
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/31/topless-cellist-charlotte-moorman-book-review
Monterey Jazz Festival Digital Collection ---
http://collections.stanford.edu/mjf/
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
Seven Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Stories and Poems ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/seven-tips-from-edgar-allan-poe-on-how-to-write-vivid-stories-and-poems.html
Australian Slang Vocabulary ---
http://www.australianslang.org/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
December 30, 2014
December 31, 2014
January 1, 2015
January 2, 2015
January 5, 2015
January 6, 2015
January 7, 2015
January 8, 2015
January 9, 2015
January 10, 2015
January 12, 2015
January 13, 2015
January 14, 2015
The Weekly Epidemiological Record ---
http://www.who.int/wer/en/
15 Terrible Things That Happen If You Eat Too Much Sugar ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/effects-of-eating-too-much-sugar-2014-3
At the End of 2014: The Healthiest and Unhealthiest States ---
http://www.statedatalab.org/chart_of_the_day/
Scientists Might Have Found The Exact Point Where The Ebola Epidemic
Started ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-hollow-tree-in-guinea-was-possible-site-of--ebolas-ground-zero-2014-12
What To Do If You Are Bitten By A Snake ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-treat-snake-bite-2015-1
Rheumatoid and Osteoarthritis: What's the Difference? ---
http://news.yahoo.com/rheumatoid-osteoarthritis-whats-difference-143553621.html
Cancer along a "bad luck" random walk through parts of life
Overall, they attributed 65% of cancer incidence to random mutations in genes
that can drive cancer growth ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-biological-bad-luck-blamed-in-two-thirds-of-cancer-cases-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Albert Einstein was not a biologist or a geneticist. But he would probably argue
that randomness merely signifies ignorance of the underlying causes.
Bipolar Disorder ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder
"Help! My Best Friend is Bipolarl" by Katie Rose Guest Pryal,"
Chronicle of Higher Education's Vitae, January 2, 2015 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/845-help-my-best-friend-is-bipolar?cid=VTEVPMSED1
Jensen Comment
The above article is written in the context of a friend. There are some added
dimensions when that friend is also an employee. In that case the problems vary
for employers and colleagues. Colleges and universities tend not to have a pool
of substitute teachers such that colleagues are often called upon to cover
classes when bipolar employees shut down and do not show up for classes. How
many of these shut down days are too many before they have to be counseled into
a disability status?
Sometimes bipolar employees who show up for work cannot function fully on
some days. This may not be critical in some jobs, but it's not what you want in
your partner on police patrol or a pilot of a jetliner.
The bottom line is that when bipolar people are good at their jobs much of
the time and poor at their jobs or no-shows at their jobs at other times they
create problems for which there are no easy answers or no Swiss Army Knife
solutions. A huge help is having a supportive family. It must be horrible to
face this disorder, like almost all other mental disorders, all alone.
I have a friend who is severely bipolar. She was given a year's leave at full
pay and now is on full Social Security Disability status with Medicare but also
with considerably less life support income. Medications for bipolar patients
have improved greatly, but the final resolution of medications and dosages took
a very long time in her case. And optimal medications some days are not optimal
for other days. Without her family I don't know what would happen to her.
There is some evidence that bipolar symptoms and some other mental disorders
occasionally diminish with age ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder#Elderly
When it happens it's a blessing since the elderly more often are thrust into
having to care for themselves such as when a lifetime spouse passes on or is
confined to a nursing home.
Title: Overcoming Bipolar Disorder: A Comprehensive Workbook for
Managing Your Symptoms & Achieving Your Life Goals
Author: Mark S Bauer
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=9781608826926
There are various other books like this, but they also contain no magic
bullets.
A Bit of Humor January 1-15, 2015
Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxNrizGdhtY&app=desktop
International Pi Day on March 14 ---
http://www.piday.org/
Note the Pi Sightings link
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
Brains of older people are slow because they know so much. People do not
decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because
they have more information in their brains, scientists believe. Much like a
computer struggles as the hard drive gets full, so, too, do humans take longer
to access information when their brains are full. Researchers say this slowing
down process is not the same as cognitive decline. The human brain works slower
in old age, said Dr. Michael Ramscar, but only because we have stored more
information over time The brains of older people do not get weak. On the
contrary, they simply know more. Also, older people often go to another room to
get something and when they get there, they stand there wondering what they came
for. It is NOT a memory problem, it is nature's way of making older people do
more exercise.
SO THERE!!
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
If you can read this, you have a strange mind, too. Only 55 people out of 100
can.
I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The
phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde
Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny
iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a
wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you can
raed this forwrad it
John Cleese on How “Stupid People Have No Idea How Stupid They Are” (a.k.a.
the Dunning-Kruger Effect) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/john-cleese-on-stupidity-and-a-cornell-study.html
A woman has been jailed on charges she broke into a stranger's central
Pennsylvania home after a night of drinking and was found by police in bed ---
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0d183df47def4205b5cef54ee0cde9f7/police-burglary-suspect-found-sleeping-bed
Police say they matched a would-be pizza shop robber to a roll of toilet
paper in his Pennsylvania home.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3c129eff3e9041a789b1ee035df9a613/police-toilet-paper-links-man-heist-attempt
Uniontown police say 29-year-old Eric Frey tried to rob Michael Maria's Pizza
on Saturday by handing an employee a note written on toilet paper that read: "I
have a gun. Give me $300."
Police arrived before Frey could leave because an employee hit a panic
button.
Frey told officers he was forced to commit the robbery by a large, bearded
man with a gun who accosted him in a nearby alley.
But police say a search of Frey's apartment wiped out that explanation:
That's where they say they found a newly opened roll of toilet paper with the
pen impression from Frey's note on an outer sheet.
Online court records don't list an attorney for Frey.
Humor January 15-29, 2014
Marilyn Monroe’s Go-Getter List of New Year’s Resolutions (1955) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/marilyn-monroes-go-getter-list-of-new-years-resolutions-1955.html
She forgot to resolve to save Kennedy half dollars when they were only worth 50
cents each.
Why does this remind me of Madam Boxer in the USA Senate?
Councilman orders newspaper to stop using his name. Newspaper prints
hilarious response ---
I did not quote from the article in fear of having to use his name.
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
Brains of older people are slow because they know so much. People do not
decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because
they have more information in their brains, scientists believe. Much like a
computer struggles as the hard drive gets full, so, too, do humans take longer
to access information when their brains are full. Researchers say this slowing
down process is not the same as cognitive decline. The human brain works slower
in old age, said Dr. Michael Ramscar, but only because we have stored more
information over time The brains of older people do not get weak. On the
contrary, they simply know more. Also, older people often go to another room to
get something and when they get there, they stand there wondering what they came
for. It is NOT a memory problem, it is nature's way of making older people do
more exercise.
SO THERE!!
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
If you can read this, you have a strange mind, too. Only 55 people out of 100
can.
I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The
phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde
Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny
iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The
rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a
wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you can
raed this forwrad it
John Cleese on How “Stupid People Have No Idea How Stupid They Are” (a.k.a.
the Dunning-Kruger Effect) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/john-cleese-on-stupidity-and-a-cornell-study.html
A woman has been jailed on charges she broke into a stranger's central
Pennsylvania home after a night of drinking and was found by police in bed ---
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0d183df47def4205b5cef54ee0cde9f7/police-burglary-suspect-found-sleeping-bed
Police say they matched a would-be pizza shop robber to a roll of toilet
paper in his Pennsylvania home.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3c129eff3e9041a789b1ee035df9a613/police-toilet-paper-links-man-heist-attempt
Uniontown police say 29-year-old Eric Frey tried to rob Michael Maria's Pizza
on Saturday by handing an employee a note written on toilet paper that read: "I
have a gun. Give me $300."
Police arrived before Frey could leave because an employee hit a panic
button.
Frey told officers he was forced to commit the robbery by a large, bearded
man with a gun who accosted him in a nearby alley.
But police say a search of Frey's apartment wiped out that explanation:
That's where they say they found a newly opened roll of toilet paper with the
pen impression from Frey's note on an outer sheet.
Online court records don't list an attorney for Frey.
Actual call center conversations!
Customer: 'I've been calling 700-1000 for two days and can't get through;
can you help?'
Operator: 'Where did you get that number, sir?'
Customer: 'It's on the door of your business.'
Operator: 'Sir, those are the hours that we are open.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Samsung Electronics
Caller: 'Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?'
Operator: 'I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about.'
Caller: 'On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that
I need to unplug the fax machine from the AC wall socket and
telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give me the
number for Jack?'
Operator: 'I think it means the telephone plug on the wall.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
RAC Motoring Services
Caller: 'Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am
traveling in Australia ?'
Operator: 'Does the policy name give you a clue?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Caller (inquiring about legal requirements while traveling in Europe )
'If I register my car in France , and then take it to England ,
do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Directory Inquiries
Caller: 'I'd like the number of the Argo Fish Bar, please'
Operator: 'I'm sorry, there's no listing. Are you sure that the spelling is
correct?'
Caller: 'Well, it used to be called the Bargo Fish Bar but the 'B' fell
off.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: 'Woven? Are you sure?'
Caller: 'Yes.. That's what it says on the label -- Woven in Scotland ...'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box
told a worried operator: 'I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window
to write the number on.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tech Support: 'I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop.'
Customer: 'OK..'
Tech Support: 'Did you get a pop-up menu?'
Customer: 'No.'
Tech Support: 'OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?'
Customer: 'No.'
Tech Support: 'OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this
point?'
Customer: 'Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tech Support: 'OK. At the bottom left hand side of your screen, can
you see the 'OK' button displayed?'
Customer: 'Wow! How can you see my screen from there?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Caller: 'I deleted a file from my PC last week and I just realized that I
need it.
So, if I turn my system clock back two weeks will I get my file back again?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following has to be one of the funniest things in a long time. I think
this guy should have been promoted, not fired. This is a true story from the
WordPerfect Helpline, which was transcribed from a recording monitoring the
customer care department.
Needless to say the Help Desk employee was fired; however, he/she is
currently suing the WordPerfect organization for Termination without Cause.'
Actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee.
(Now I know why they record these conversations!):
Operator: 'Ridge Hall, computer assistance; may I help you?'
Caller: 'Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect .'
Operator: 'What sort of trouble?'
Caller: 'Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went
away.'
Operator: 'Went away?'
Caller: 'They disappeared'
Operator: 'Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?'
Caller: 'Nothing.'
Operator: 'Nothing??'
Caller: 'It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type.'
Operator: 'Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?'
Caller: 'How do I tell?'
Operator: 'Can you see the 'C: prompt' on the screen?'
Caller: 'What's a sea-prompt?'
Operator: 'Never mind, can you move your cursor around the screen?'
Caller: 'There isn't any cursor; I told you, it won't accept anything I
type..'
Operator: 'Does your monitor have a power indicator?'
Caller: 'What's a monitor?'
Operator: 'It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV.
Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on?'
Caller: 'I don't know.'
Operator: 'Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where
the power cord goes into it. Can you see that??'
Caller: 'Yes, I think so.'
Operator: 'Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's
plugged into the wall..
Caller: 'Yes, it is.'
Operator: 'When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that
there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one? '
Caller: 'No.'
Operator: 'Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and
find the other cable.'
Caller: 'Okay, here it is.'
Operator: 'Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into
the back of your computer..'
Caller: 'I can't reach.'
Operator: 'OK. Well, can you see if it is?'
Caller: 'No...'
Operator: 'Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?'
Caller: 'Well, it's not because I don't have the right angle -- it's because
it's dark.'
Operator: 'Dark?'
Caller: 'Yes - the office light is off, and the only light I have is
coming in from the window.'
Operator: 'Well, turn on the office light then.'
Caller: 'I can't..'
Operator: 'No? Why not?'
Caller: 'Because there's a power failure.'
Operator: 'A power .... A power failure? Aha. Okay, we've got it
licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and
packing stuff that your computer came in?'
Caller: 'Well, yes, I keep them in the closet..'
Operator: 'Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it
up just like it was when you got it, Then take it back to
the store you bought it from.'
Caller: 'Really? Is it that bad?'
Operator: 'Yes, I'm afraid it is.'
Caller: 'Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?'
Operator: 'Tell them you're too damned stupid to own a computer!'
Humor Between December 1-31, 2014
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor123114
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
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