Tidbits on April 14, 2015
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 1 of Maple Sugaring
Photographs
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Trees/MapleSugar/01/01.htm
Tidbits on April 14, 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
How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Philosophy Animations
on Ethics Narrated by Harry Shearer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/how-can-i-know-right-from-wrong-watch-philosophy-animations-on-ethics.html
Edgar Allan Poe Animated: Watch Four Animations of Classic Poe
Stories ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/edgar-allan-poe-animated-watch-four-animations-of-timeless-poe-stories.html
National Science Foundation YouTube Channel --- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRuCgmzhczsm89jzPtN2Wuw
What Ignited Richard Feynman’s Love of Science Revealed in an
Animated Video ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/what-ignited-richard-feynmans-love-of-science-revealed-in-an-animated-video.html
All the World's Volcano Webcams ---
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/worlds-volcano-webcams/
Quentin Tarantino Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghetti
Westerns, Starting with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/quentin-tarantino-lists-his-20-favorite-spaghetti-westerns.html
The Dance of Flowers Opening Up --- http://player.vimeo.com/video/27920977?title=0&%3bbyline=0&%3bportrait=0href
Guernica: Alain Resnais’ Haunting Film on Picasso’s Painting &
the Crimes of the Spanish Civil War ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/guernica-alain-resnais-haunting-film-on-picassos-painting-the-crimes-of-the-spanish-civil-war.html
The History & Legacy of Magna Carta Explained in Animated
Videos by Monty Python’s Terry Jones ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/an-animated-history-of-magna-carta.html
Many educators have a tough time imagining a world
where academic issues are more important than athletic ones at institutions with
big-time programs. "Saturday Night Live" this weekend created such a world (slow
loading) ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/04/06/snl-imagines-academic-primacy-over-athletics
Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Little Girl Conducts Choir in Kyrgyzstan! --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5-CiG0XmoI
All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach
Performances Online: Watch the First 53 Recordings and the St. Matthew Passion
---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/all-of-bach-putting-performances-of-1080-bachs-works-online.html
Anderson & Roe's Personalized Bach ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2015/02/17/384060300/anderson-roes-personalized-bach
Watch Four Iconic Live Performances by Billie Holiday on Her
100th Birthday on April 7, 2015 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/four-iconic-billie-holiday-performances-on-her-100th-birthday.html
The Touching Story Behind Paraguay’s Landfill
Orchestra: Now Told in Film, and Soon a Book ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-touching-story-behind-paraguays-landfill-orchestra.html
Langston Hughes Presents the History of Jazz in
an Illustrated Children’s Book (1955) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/langston-hughes-presents-the-history-of-jazz-i.html
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
Pandora (my favorite online music station) ---
www.pandora.com
TheRadio (online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free
music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breathtaking
Photos of Historic New York City ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/an-online-gallery-of-over-900000-breathtaking-photos-of-historic-new-york-city.html
Download 100,000 Art Images in High-Resolution
from The Getty ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-100000-art-images-in-high-resolution-from-the-getty.html
Download 422 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan
Museum of Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-422-free-art-books-from-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art.html
Rijksmuseum Digitizes & Makes Free Online 210,000
Works of Art, Masterpieces Included! ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/rijksmuseum-digitizes-makes-free-online-210000-works-of-art-masterpieces-included.html
Visualising China --- http://visualisingchina.net
Norman Rockwell ---
http://www.kingsacademy.com/
The world's most dangerous pathway just reopened
to the public after 15 years — and the views are dizzying ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-caminito-del-rey-2015-3
Grand Teton National Park --- http://www.grandtetonpark.org/
Artists Illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy Through
the Ages: Doré, Dalí, Blake, Botticelli, Mœbius & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/artists-illustrate-dantes-divine-comedy-through-the-ages.html
Download 100,000 Art Images in High-Resolution
from The Getty ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-100000-art-images-in-high-resolution-from-the-getty.html
Download 422 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan
Museum of Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-422-free-art-books-from-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art.html
Epically awesome photos of Mars --- http://www.businessinsider.com/hirise-photos-of-mars-2015-3
Images from the History of Medicine ---
http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/
Alaska's Digital Archives: Alaska Native & Culture Pathway --- http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm/pathway
Hysterical Literature: Art & Sexuality Collide in
Readings of Whitman, Emerson & Other Greats (NSFW) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/hysterical-literature.html
Photographing the World’s Vanishing Glaciers --- http://www.newsweek.com/photographing-worlds-vanishing-glaciers-317130
Place, Evolution, and Rock Art Heritage Unit (Australian Rock
Art) ---
http://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-humanities/research/perahu
Enormous Smallness: The Sweet Illustrated Story
of E. E. Cummings and His Creative Bravery ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/30/enormous-smallness-e-e-cummings-matthew-burgess/?mc_cid=eb6acb519f&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Langston Hughes Reveals the Rhythms in Art & Life
in a Wonderful Illustrated Book for Kids (1954) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/langston-hughes-reveals-the-rhythms-in-art-life-in-a-wonderful-illustrated-book-for-kids-1954.html
On Broadway --- http://on-broadway.nyc
Download Images From Rad American Women A-Z: A
New Picture Book on the History of Feminism ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-images-from-rad-american-women-a-z.html
Guernica: Alain Resnais’ Haunting Film on
Picasso’s Painting & the Crimes of the Spanish Civil War ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/guernica-alain-resnais-haunting-film-on-picassos-painting-the-crimes-of-the-spanish-civil-war.html
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
250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives --- http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives/
Goodreads --- http://www.goodreads.com/
Langston Hughes Reveals the Rhythms in Art & Life in a Wonderful
Illustrated Book for Kids (1954) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/langston-hughes-reveals-the-rhythms-in-art-life-in-a-wonderful-illustrated-book-for-kids-1954.html
Edgar Allan Poe Animated: Watch Four Animations of Classic Poe
Stories ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/edgar-allan-poe-animated-watch-four-animations-of-timeless-poe-stories.html
Hysterical Literature: Art & Sexuality Collide in Readings of
Whitman, Emerson & Other Greats (NSFW) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/hysterical-literature.html
Enormous Smallness: The Sweet Illustrated Story of E. E.
Cummings and His Creative Bravery ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/30/enormous-smallness-e-e-cummings-matthew-burgess/?mc_cid=eb6acb519f&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Download the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio
Books ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/download-the-major-works-of-jane-austen-as-free-ebooks-audio-books.html
The Touching Story Behind Paraguay’s Landfill Orchestra: Now
Told in Film, and Soon a Book ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-touching-story-behind-paraguays-landfill-orchestra.html
Consolation for Life's Darkest Hours: 7 Unusual and Wonderful
Books that Help Children Grieve and Make Sense of Death ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/23/best-childrens-books-death-grief-mourning/?mc_cid=bb97b591d0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Arabic Fiction --- http://www.arabicfiction.org
Artists Illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy Through the Ages:
Doré, Dalí, Blake, Botticelli, Mœbius & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/artists-illustrate-dantes-divine-comedy-through-the-ages.html
Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/isaac-newton-creates-a-list-of-his-47-sins-circa-1662.html
Read An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: A Fun Primer on How
to Strengthen, Not Weaken, Your Arguments ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/an-illustrated-book-of-bad-arguments.html
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on April 14, 2015
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2015/TidbitsQuotations041415.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
From the Chronicle of Higher Education
Search for Job Openings in Higher Education ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/job_search/new
Higher Education Recruitment Consortium --- http://www.hercjobs.org/
How to Quickly Search-and-Replace Text on Any Computer ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/213474/how-to-quickly-search-and-replace-text-on-any-computer/
Starbucks Free Online Courses to Employees Becomes More Like Walmart's Employee Benefits for College Credits
Starbucks and Arizona State University announced on
Monday that they will expand the full benefits of their tuition-discounting
partnership to include
Starbucks employees who have not yet accrued 60 college credits.
http://chronicle.com/article/StarbucksArizona-State-U/229127/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads for online training and education degree programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Misleading Statistics from the Government
"Obama
Administration Exaggerates Enrollment In Critical Student Loan Plan As Borrowers
Suffer," by Shahien Nasiripour, Huffington Post, April 7, 2015 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/07/obama-student-loan-income-based-repayment_n_7010344.html?cmpid=BBWGP040815
Question
What makes Norway, Sweden, and Finland smell like rotten eggs?
Answer ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/536421/military-scientists-solve-the-mystery-of-the-foul-smelling-gas-that-enveloped-norway/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150408
Robot Wisdom and How Jorn Barger Invented Blogging ---
http://firstsiteguide.com/robot-wisdom-and-jorn-barger/
http://firstsiteguide.com/robot-wisdom-and-jorn-barger/
"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/
Bob Jensen's threads on listservs, blogging, and social media ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
"Student Financial Savvy Lacking," by Dian Schaffhauser, T.H.E.
Magazine, April 3, 2015 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/04/03/student-financial-savvy-eroding.aspx
College students aren't as good at handling their finances as they think they are. Although they're more likely to have a credit card and a checking account than they were in 2012, they're also less likely to pay their credit bills on time or in full or to follow a budget. On top of that, they're more likely to have more than a single credit card and to carry larger balances and less likely to review their bills or credit history, let alone to save or invest even five percent of what they earn.
Among four-year students, only 62 percent check their account balances; 12 percent don't because they're "too nervous." Additionally, 16 percent of student respondents live paycheck to paycheck and yet only 72 percent stop spending when their bank account balances were low.
This year's " Money Matters on Campus" survey questioned 43,000 college students across institutions in the United States about their money practices for the third year in a row, and the results were eye-popping. The financial attitudes of college students "displayed more materialism, more compulsion, less caution and less aversion to debt as time spent on campus increased," the report stated.
The survey asked students to answer six questions related to their financial literacy, such as, "As a general rule, how many months' expenses do financial planners recommend that you set aside in an emergency?" Those who had a checking account tended to show better results than those who didn't. Among two-year students, who did the best, those with bank accounts answered 2.54 questions correctly vs. 1.97 for those without bank accounts. That suggests, the report's authors said, that "increased experience with 'transactional' accounts for high school students would be of great benefit to promoting self-efficacy."
The issue of debt is a big one for this segment. Compared to three years ago, students reported that they were more likely to take out student loans, but less likely to plan for paying off their loans, making their payments on time or consolidating their loans.
The report was compiled by Higher One and EverFi, two companies that have a business interest in the topic of student finances. Higher One provides payment, refund disbursement and other services to colleges and universities, as well student debit cards. EverFi provides financial education programs for students and adults.
Currently, the researchers said, "more than half of those with student loans report being concerned about their ability to repay the debt." As the report pointed out, along with steady increases in tuition rates, new graduates "face an unstable job market." Those between 21 and 24 have an 8.5 percent unemployment rate and a 16.8 percent underemployment rate.
Continued in article
Take a look at what exactly student athletes will learn in the new personal finance course at Ole Miss
Jensen Comment
Given that ignorance of personal finance is the greatest stress in families and
the biggest reason for divorce I think personal finance should be part of the
common core in all colleges and universities.
"Teach Financial Literacy," by Steven Bahls, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/13/essay_on_responsibility_of_colleges_to_teach_financial_literacy
Most importantly take a look at some of the free training and education sites
linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Wharton Professor Olivia Mitchell on Worldwide Financial Literacy
http://www.ssga.com/definedcontribution/docs/Olivia_Mitchell_GlobalFinancialLiteracy_SSgADC_The Participant02.pdf
Thank you Jim Mahar for the heads up.21 Scams Used By Devious Car Dealers — And How To Avoid Them ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-avoid-21-car-dealer-scams-tricks-2013-9Education: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City --- http://www.kansascityfed.org/education/
Note the Financial Fables section --- http://www.kansascityfed.org/education/fables/index.cfmHelpers in planning for retirement --- http://www.plan-for-retirement.com/
Personal Financial Helpers: From the Virginia Society of CPAs --- http://www.vscpa.com/Financial_Fitness/
Video: Investing for Inflation ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/janet-tavakoli-author-of-dear-mr-buffett-on-investing-for-inflation/What five classic Disney movies can teach us about personal finance ---
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/ 0904/What-five-classic-Disney- movies-can-teach-us-about- personal-finance U.S. Social Security Retirement Benefit Calculators --- http://www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator/
Continued at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
The following article is not specific enough for me to pass judgment on the content, but it has many of the correct headings. Because I am an accountant I would probably lean more toward some of the more technical aspects of personal finance such as income budgeting and grasp of the time value of money (which sadly is not what it used to be with today's miserable savings interest rates).
For example, I think college graduates should be able to make technical comparisons about whether to buy or lease a car and to verify the annual percentage rate of a loan contract. When is it a good or bad idea to buy a service contract? Why is it a terrible idea to only make what your credit card company calls the minimum payment? When should you buy used or refurbished items on Amazon versus new items? It's a good idea to look for the used options, but it's not always a good idea to order a used item like a computer.
Many of my colleagues would probably accuse me of being too technical in my vision of a personal finance class. I'm open to debate on this.
When is it advisable to become an Amazon Prime member versus when it it a waste of money? For me it's a tremendous idea here in the boondocks, but it may not be the best idea for everybody.
How necessary is your smart phone if you are paying for it on a tight budget? Bob Jensen only carries an old prepaid-time cell phone for calling out.
"Take a look at what exactly student athletes will learn in the new
personal finance course at Ole Miss," by Libby Kane, Business Insider, April
6, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance-class-offered-to-student-athletes-at-ole-miss-2015-4
LinkedIn just bought online learning company Lynda for $1.5 billion
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-buys-lyndacom-for-15-billion-2015-4#ixzz3WofcdvHS
Lynda Weinman --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynda_Weinman
Linda.com --- http://www.lynda.com
We provide training to more than 4 million people, and our members tell us that lynda.com helps them stay ahead of software updates, pick up brand-new skills, switch careers, land promotions, and explore new hobbies. What can we help you do?
Our teachers are effective, passionate educators, who are also respected authorities in software, creative, and business fields. They're here to share their expertise in dozens of topics with you, with courses organized into these eight subject areas.
For example, view all of Linda's accounting courses at
http://www.lynda.com/Accounting-training-tutorials/30-0.html
There especially seems to be quite a lot on QuickBooks training.
PC Magazine Review --- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385781,00.asp
- Pros
Amazing library of more than 1,000 learning courses for people at all experience levels. Deep training for advanced software, particularly Adobe products. Well structured site. Excellent video and audio quality. Instructors are well vetted.
- Cons
Can be tough to find entry-level training for very complex software, i.e., better for keeping skills sharp than learning high-end software from scratch. Equally helpful training videos sometimes available for free online or with software upgrade purchases.
- Bottom Line
lynda.com excels at helping busy professionals keep their software skills razor sharp. While the content isn't exclusively about digital skills, that certainly is where lynda.com makes its mark. Quality is one of its strong suits. And while you can sometimes find similar video content online for free, lynda.com divides courses into easy-to-find sections.
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education and training ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
"How ‘Elite’ Universities Are Using Online Education," by Steve
Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Elite-Universities/229233/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
After years of skepticism, higher education’s upper class has finally decided that online learning is going to play an important role in its future. But what will that role be?
Recently, conversations about "elite" online education has revolved around the free online courses, aka MOOCs, which Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and dozens of other top universities started offering several years ago. But it soon became clear that high marks in those courses would not translate to academic credit at the institutions offering them (or anywhere else).
So how exactly does online education figure into the future of elite higher education? Judging by what we’ve seen so far, the answer can be divided into three parts.
1. Free online courses for everyone.
MOOCs are the McMansions of online higher education — capacious, impressive-looking, and easy to supply to the masses once professors have drawn up the blueprints.
Families who want to work with the architects directly are not opting for a sequence of free online courses instead of an exclusive residential program that ends with a degree. Even if the MOOCs lose money, wealthier universities can afford to take a hit — especially if it means increasing their visibility in valuable overseas markets.
Despite their flagging hype, MOOCs remain very popular. Top institutions will probably continue to build them.
2. Paid online courses for professional graduate programs.
Yale University recently unveiled a new master’s program for aspiring physician’s assistants, offered through its medical school. The program will also involve a lot of fieldwork, but much of the academic coursework will be delivered online. It is the second program Yale has created along these lines; the other is a partially online doctoral degree in nursing, which the university announced in 2011.
Degrees in fields like health care and teaching are in high demand, and many lesser-known players have grabbed big chunks of that market online by assuring prospective students that they can go back to school without upending their lives. Yale is not alone in its effort to claim its slice of the pie; graduate schools at the Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and others have also started offering online versions of their professional master’s programs.
Online does not fundamentally threaten the appeal of professional programs, where the "student experience" is not as sacrosanct as it is at undergraduate colleges. Most people who enroll are working adults who already went through dorm life and student organizations and late-night philosophical chats with future members of their wedding parties. They are now mainly interested in learning a trade.
3. Online components in face-to-face undergraduate courses.
In November 2012, a consortium of 10 prestigious colleges announced that they would collaborate with 2U, an online "enabler" company, to build fully online courses that undergraduates could take for credit. The stigma on virtual learning had faded enough that administrators at those colleges — Duke University, Emory University, Washington University in St. Louis, and others — were willing to give it a shot.
A year and a half later, the consortium was kaput. The faculty at Duke nixed the partnership with 2U. Other colleges went ahead with the experiment, but quickly came to a verdict: Thanks, but no thanks.
That does not mean online education has no role to play in undergraduate courses. This spring, Bowdoin College is offering a partially online course in financial accounting, taught remotely by a professor at Dartmouth College’s business school. (The Maine college is supplementing those online sessions with weekly meetings on campus, led by a member its own faculty.) Selective outsourcing could become a trend at top colleges that want to add (or license) specialized courses without hiring new professors.
Continued in article
"Yale Announces ‘Blended’ Online Master’s
Degree," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2015
---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/yale-announces-blended-online-masters-degree/56003?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
There may be a difference between the most prestigious highly endowed
universities and other universities to the extent that distance education
courses are used as cash cows. For example, at the University of Wisconsin at
Milwaukee students pay more for an online section of a course than they do for
an onsite section of that same course possibly taught by the same instructor. If
the online course is taught by a low-paid adjunct instructor the online course
may even cost less to deliver.
Thus online courses that are priced higher become cash cows as well as serving a wider set of prospective students. Pricing of goods and services generally takes demand functions and price elasticity into account. Often there is more demand from part-time students for online courses, and universities may fill online sections with higher prices (hence low elasticity).
Bob Jensen's threads on fee-based distance education and training ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Bob Jensen threads on free MOOCs from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Question about stationary series from a reader of Econometrics Blog
by David Giles on April 7, 2015 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/04/question-from-reader.html
"I’ve a simple but not explicitly answered question within the text books on stationary series. I’m estimating a model with separate single equations (I don’t take into account the interactions among them ). I’ve only non-stationary series in some equations (type 1), only stationary in some (type 2), and a combination of the both in the others (type 3). For the first two cases I apply the usual procedures and for the last case the Pesaran (2011) test. I want to find the short term effects of some variables on the others. I’ve two questions:1) If the Pesaran test turns out inconclusive or rejects cointegration, what’s the next step ? Differencing all the series and applying an OLS? Or differencing only the non-stationary ones? Or another method?2) As I mentioned I’m looking for the short-run effects. In the type 2 equations, I guess running an OLS in levels gives the long-run effects. Therefore I run an OLS in differences. Some claim that differencing an already stationary series causes problems. I’m confused. What do you think?"Let's start out by making sure what Ozan means by "the usual procedures" for his "Type 1" and "Type 2" equations.
I'm presuming he means:
Type 1: All of the series are I(1). Then:
(i) If the variables are not cointegrated, estimate a model using the first-differences of the data (or, perhaps, the log-differences of the data), using OLS or IV.
(ii) If the variables are cointegrated:
(a) Estimate an error-correction model to determine the short-run effects.
(b) Estimate a model in the levels (or, perhaps, log-levels) of the variables to determine the long-run cointegrating relationship between them
Type 2: All of the series are I(0). Then you can:
(i) Model the variables in the levels of the data (or, perhaps, the log-levels) of the data, using OLS or IV estimation.
(ii) Estimate the model using the first-differences (or, perhaps, the log-differences) of the variables. The transformed variables won't be I(0), but they will still be stationary. There is nothing wrong with this. However, one possible down-side is that you may have "over-differenced" the data, and this may show up in the form of an error term that follows an MA process, rather than being serially independent. On this point, see the discussion below.
Now, what about the "Type 3" equations?
In this case, Ozan uses the ARDL/Bounds testing methodology, which I've discussed in some detail here, and in earlier posts. Now, in response to his two questions:
(1) In this case, you could apply either of the two approaches that you mention. However, I'd lean towards the option of differencing all of the variables. The reason for saying this is that if the tests that you've used to test for stationarity / non-stationarity have led you to a wrong conclusion, differencing everything is a conservative, but relatively safe way to proceed. You don't to unwittingly fail to difference a variable that is I(1). The "costs" of doing so are substantial. On the other hand, unnecessarily differencing a variable that is actually I(0) incurs a relatively low "cost". (See the comments for Type 2 (ii), above.)
(2) See the discussion for Type 2 (ii) above. However, to get at the short-run effects (and avoid the over-differencing issue), I'd be more inclined to explore some simple dynamic models of the old-fashioned ARDL type - not the Pesaran type. (See here.) That is, consider models of the form:
yt = α + β0xt + β1xt-1 + β2xt-2 + ..... + βkxt-k + γ1yt-1 + γ2yt-2 + ..... + γpyt-p + εt .
I'd start with a fairly general specification (with large values for k and p), and then simplify the model using AIC or SIC, to get a parsimonious dynamic model.
Then, for instance, if I were to end up with a model of the form:
yt = α + β0xt + γ1yt-1 + ut ,
the short-run marginal effect between x and y would be β0; while the long-run effect would be given by [β0 / (1 - γ1)], etc.
Article by two former presidents of the American Accounting Association that accuses accountics scientists of being naive regarding the use of non-stationary data in (usually) multivariate linear model empirical studies.
"Some Methodological Deficiencies in Empirical Research Articles in Accounting." by Thomas R. Dyckman and Stephen A. Zeff , Accounting Horizons: September 2014, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 695-712 ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/acch-50818 (not free)This paper uses a sample of the regression and behavioral papers published in The Accounting Review and the Journal of Accounting Research from September 2012 through May 2013. We argue first that the current research results reported in empirical regression papers fail adequately to justify the time period adopted for the study. Second, we maintain that the statistical analyses used in these papers as well as in the behavioral papers have produced flawed results. We further maintain that their tests of statistical significance are not appropriate and, more importantly, that these studies do not�and cannot�properly address the economic significance of the work. In other words, significance tests are not tests of the economic meaningfulness of the results. We suggest ways to avoid some but not all of these problems. We also argue that replication studies, which have been essentially abandoned by accounting researchers, can contribute to our search for truth, but few will be forthcoming unless the academic reward system is modified.
The free SSRN version of this paper is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324266
This Dyckman and Zeff paper is indirectly related to the following technical
econometrics research:
"The Econometrics of Temporal Aggregation - IV - Cointegration," by
David Giles, Econometrics Blog, September 13, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-econometrics-of-temporal.html
Common Accountics Science and Econometric Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm
Common Accountics Science and Econometric
Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm
From Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog on
Significant Digits (in current news) on April 8, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/significant-digits-for-wednesday-april-8-2015/
What equals one millimeter cubed?
How to Share a Hotel’s Single Wi-Fi (WiFi, Wireless) Connection With All
Your Devices ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/213761/how-to-share-a-hotels-single-wi-fi-connection-with-all-your-devices/
"Think twice before pulling up personal
information online from a hotel room or coffee shop," by Cale Guthrie
Weissman, Business Insider, March 27, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/public-wifi-think-twice-before-accessing-personal-info-2015-3
"How to Keep Your Public Web Use Secure and Private with a VPN," by
Brain Croxall, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-keep-your-public-web-use-secure-and-private-with-a-vpn/28257?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on April 9, 2015
Electric cars set for upgrades.
Tesla Motors Inc. is upgrading the slower-selling version of its Model S electric sedan, equipping it with a more capable battery, all-wheel drive and a bigger price tag. Meanwhile, General Motors Co. next month will halt production of the Chevrolet Volt for the summer to whittle down seven months of unsold inventory and smooth the way for the next generation of its plug-in hybrid sedan.
Tesla's Model Upgrade Is a Pure Profit Play ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-08/tesla-s-model-upgrade-is-a-pure-profit-play?cmpid=BBD040815
Jensen Comment
Tesla's upgrade is ripe for managerial accounting CPV research on margins and
pricing.
How to Mislead With Statistics: The Consumer Price Index
Moral Hazard --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
Consumer Price Index --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index
. . .
Confusion
It is apparent that much of the muddle in discussing the merits of the different approaches arises from the promiscuous mixing up of arguments about feasibility, about dislike or approval of the way the index would move under a particular approach and about principles of various, often incompatible, sorts. Feasibility is naturally important. The difficulty of dealing with site values is obvious.
Statisticians in a country lacking a good dwelling price index (which is required for all except the rental equivalent method) will go along with a proposal to use such an index only if they can obtain the necessary additional resources that will enable them to compile one. Even obtaining mortgage interest rate data can be a major task in a country with a multitude of mortgage lenders and many types of mortgage. Dislike of the effect upon the behaviour of the Consumer Price Index arising from the adoption of some methods can be a powerful, if sometimes unprincipled, argument.
Dwelling prices are volatile and so, therefore, would be an index incorporating the current value of a dwelling price sub-index which, in some countries, would have a large weight under the third approach. Furthermore, the weight for owner-occupied dwellings could be altered considerably when reweighting was undertaken. (It could even become negative under the alternative cost approach if weights were estimated for a year during which house prices had been rising steeply).
Then, there is the point that a rise in interest rates designed to halt inflation could paradoxically make inflation appear higher if current interest rates showed up in the index. Economists' principles are not acceptable to all; nor is insistence upon consistency between the treatment of owner-occupied dwellings and other durables.
Clarity
Much would be gained if two sets of problems were distinguished.*
What is the Consumer Price Index to measure? How can that be achieved?
Another way of putting this is to distinguish:
What is the question that should be answered? This is a matter for policy makers and other users of the Consumer Price Index. How can it best be answered? This is a matter for the statisticians.
The three approaches should not be regarded as rivals, they are different answers to different questions. One, or possibly more, should be chosen. The three questions can be formulated as follows:
Opportunity cost. What is the change through time in what would be the opportunity cost of the reference-period consumption of the services of owner-occupied dwellings? Spending. What is the change through time in the cash outlays that would correspond to the reference-period cash outlays in respect of owner-occupied dwellings? Transactions. What is the change through time in what would be the purchase value of the reference-period net acquisition of owner-occupied dwellings by consumers?
Which question is to be answered is, as just stated, a policy matter, depending upon the purposes the index is to serve. It is not an issue for statisticians to decide. Their job is the technical, professional one of compiling one or more indexes that answer the selected question or questions as well as possible, given the resources at their disposal. In a perfect world this is how the owner-occupied dwellings issue would be resolved. But the world is not perfect
Continued in Article
No one really denies that the CPI, as presently
calculated, understates the rate of inflation
Why the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a Flawed Measure of Cost of Living
It's largely due to moral hazard caused by
government's incentives to understate inflation and cash flow increases in
things like Social Security
"Deconstructing ShadowStats. Why is it so Loved by its Followers
but Scorned by Economists?" by Ed Dolan, Econ Monitor, March 31, 2015
---
http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2015/03/31/deconstructing-shadowstats-why-is-it-so-loved-by-its-followers-but-scorned-by-economists/
It is hard to think of a website so loved by its followers and so scorned by economists as John Williams’ ShadowStats, a widely cited source of alternative economic data on inflation and other economic indicators. Any econ blogger who has ever written a line about inflation is familiar with ShadowStats. Time and again, readers cite it in comments, not infrequently paranoid in their tone and rude in their language. Brief replies that cast doubt on some of more extreme claims made by ShadowStats fans don’t seem to have much effect. After a recent round of comments, I promised the editor of one website to undertake a thorough deconstruction of ShadownStats. Here is the result.
What ShadowStats Gets Right: The CPI is a Flawed Measure of the Cost of Living
ShadowStats is Williams’ attempt to provide an alternative to the official consumer price index (CPI), which he views as a flawed measure of what members of the general public have in mind when they think of the cost of living. Let me start by saying that although I share the skepticism of many economists about the specific numbers published on ShadowStats, I agree that the official data do not tell the whole story. I support Williams’ attempt to provide an alternative to the official consumer price index that more closely reflects pubic perceptions of inflation. Here, in his own words, is how Williams explains his undertaing:
In the last 30 years, a growing gap has been obvious between government reporting of inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), and the perceptions of actual inflation held by the general public. Anecdotal evidence and occasional surveys have indicated that the general public believes inflation is running well above official reporting . . .
Measurement of consumer inflation traditionally reflected assessing the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living, as measured by a fixed-basket of goods. Maintaining a constant standard of living, however, is a concept not popular in current economic literature, and certainly not within the thinking or the lexicon of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the government’s statistical agency that estimates and reports on consumer inflation. . . Individuals look to the government’s CPI as a measure of the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living, as well as measuring that cost of living in terms of out-of-pocket expenses. Without meeting those parameters, an inflation measure has limited, if any, use for an individual.
Williams is right about the gap between public perceptions of inflation and official indicators. As a recent series of posts on inflation expectations on the Atlanta Fed’s Macroblog noted, “Inflation surveys of households reveal a remarkably wide range of opinion on future inflation compared to those of professional forecasters. Really, really wide.” According to Macroblog, household expectations of inflation for the coming year consistently average two percentage points higher than those of professional forecasters, and some 13 percent of household respondents report inflation expectations of 10 percent or higher even at a time when professional forecasts fall short of 2 percent.
In technical terminology, we refer to a cost of living index based on the changing cost of a fixed-proportion basket of goods that themselves remain unchanged over time as a Laspeyres index without quality adjustment. Williams is again correct when he says that the official CPI, following mainstream academic thinking, has gradually evolved away from the Laspeyres concept toward a measure of the cost of a changing basket of goods that gives equivalent satisfaction as the prices, quantities, and qualities of the goods that consumers buy change over time.
The substitution issue. One of Williams’ key objections to the CPI is that instead of holding the cost-of-living basket unchanged for long periods, the BLS allows for frequent changes in its composition. Some changes in the consumer market basket occur when goods like audio cassette players become technically obsolete and new goods like cell phones appear on the market, but those are not the ones that Williams takes issue with.
What he finds more objectionable are changes in composition of the market basket that stem directly from changes in prices, as, for example, when people eat more chicken because beef becomes unaffordably expensive. To many people, fiddling the market basket to give more weight to the goods whose prices increase least and less to those whose prices increase most sounds like cheating. They see it as if a teacher tried to impress a tenure committee with high test student scores by letting the smart kids take the test several times each while sending their slow-learning classmates home on testing day.
Mainstream economists have a standard response: If we did not account for changed consumption patterns in response to changed prices, they say, we would overstate the cost of maintaining a constant level of satisfaction. Consider an example. Last week you went to the supermarket and bought 5 pounds of chicken at $2 a pound and 5 pounds of steak at $5 a pound, $35 total. This week you go to the supermarket and find that chicken still costs $2 but steak has gone up to $10. There is no question that the new prices leave you worse off than you were the week before, but how do you react?
You would need $60 to buy the same basket of goods that you bought last week for $35. In reality, you might not have that $60 in your wallet or purse, but if I gave you a $60 coupon that you could spend only at the meat counter, you would probably not spend it on the same basket of goods you bought last week. Instead, you might buy, say, 10 pounds of chicken and 4 pounds of steak. However, since $60 would be enough to buy your previous selection if you wanted to, we could conclude that you would change the mix only if the new $60 selection gave you more satisfaction than the original one.
Experience shows that if you put a large number of consumers in this situation and average their behavior, they will shift their consumption toward chicken, even though some individuals might stick with the original mix. Those who did shift would be better off with $60 and the new prices than with $35 and the old prices, and the ones who don’t shift are no worse off. In that sense, $60 overstates the increase in income the average consumer would need to reach the same level of satisfaction as before the price change.
Your cost of living has gone up, and that hurts, but just how much has the increase in the price of steak raised your cost of living? By the ratio of 60/35, a 70 percent increase, or by less than that? It depends on what you mean by the cost of living. If you mean the cost of buying a fixed market basket (the popular conception), then the 70% is correct. If you mean the cost of maintaining a fixed level of satisfaction, then 70% is an overstatement.
The quality issue. In addition to adjusting the relative quantities of goods in the consumer market basket over time, the BLS adjusts the CPI for changes in the quality of goods. The rationale for doing so is that failure to account for quality improvements would cause a further overstatement of the increase in spending that needed to maintain a constant level of consumer satisfaction.
Consider tires for your car. In the old days, you were lucky if a set of bias-ply tires lasted 30,000 miles. Today, a decent set of radial tires will go 60,000 miles or more, and give you a better ride along the way. So, if the price of a set of tires has increased from $100 to $400, what has been the impact on your cost of living? If you calculate the cost per tire, without accounting for quality, tires are four times more expensive than they used to be. If you calculate the cost per mile, they are only twice as expensive.
Williams does not necessarily object to adjusting for quality changes when they are objectively measurable, like package size or the number of miles you get from a set of tires. However, he argues that the BLS exaggerates the importance of quality by making adjustments for changes that consumers don’t really care about. In one post, he uses the example of two computers, purchased ten years apart. Yes, the newer computer has many extra features—more memory, a faster processor, a sharper display, and so on, each of which is quantifiable. However, not all consumers care about the new features. If you just use your computer for e-mail and browsing the web, and not for running big financial spreadsheets or high-powered gaming, who cares about processor speed? The old model does the job just as well.
Other issues. Williams has a number of other criticisms of the CPI beyond the substitution and quality issues. In particular, he takes issue with the way the BLS measures housing prices and medical costs. Without going into detail, in both cases Williams favors an out-of-pocket approach to housing and medical costs as being more in tune with the general public’s concept of the cost of living. I think it is fair to say that mainstream economists agree that these two items, which loom large in household budgets, are particularly difficult to measure, although not everyone agrees with the way Williams would like to see them handled. I hope to deal with these issues in a future post, but this one will focus on the basics.
Where ShadowStats goes wrong: How great is the understatement?
No one really denies that the CPI, as presently calculated, understates the rate of inflation compared to a measure based on a fixed basket of unchanged goods. Rather, what many economists, myself included, find hard to accept is Williams’ estimate of the degree of understatement. The following chart, reproduced by permission and updated monthly on ShadowStats.com, claims that since the early 1980s, the CPI has been understating the true rate of inflation by an ever increasing margin that now amounts to some 7 percentage points.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
It's amazing that labor unions have not had more power in Washington DC to
reduce the understatement of inflation. Understating inflation greatly decreases
union negotiating power for raising wages in the public and private sectors.
Note that the moral hazard of understating inflation affected the Obama years in the presidency, but President Obama certainly did not invent the strategy that for many years preceded his term of office
Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
Hayek on Mill: The (Stuart) Mill– (Harriet) Taylor Friendship and Other
Writings
by Friedrich Hayek, edited by Sandra J. Peart University of Chicago Press, 373
pp., $65.00
Review by Cass R. Sunstein, April 2, 2015 ---
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/john-stuart-mill-harriet-taylor-hayek/
John Stuart Mill may well be the most important liberal thinker of the nineteenth century. In countless respects, his once-revolutionary arguments have become familiar, even part of the conventional wisdom. Certainly this is so for his great 1869 essay The Subjection of Women, which offered a systematic argument for sex equality at a time when the inferior status of women was widely taken for granted. It is also true for On Liberty, published in 1859, which famously argued that unless there is harm to others, people should have the freedom to do as they like. A strong advocate for freedom of speech, Mill offered enduring arguments against censorship. He also had a great deal to say about, and on behalf of, representative government.
Friedrich Hayek was the twentieth century’s greatest critic of socialism, and he won the Nobel Prize in economics. A lifelong defender of individual liberty, he argued that central planning is bound to fail, even if the planners are well motivated, because they cannot possibly assemble the information that is ultimately incorporated in the price system. Hayek described that system as a “marvel,” because it registers the knowledge, the preferences, and the values of countless people. Hayek used this insight as the foundation for a series of works on freedom and liberalism. Committed to free markets and deeply skeptical of the idea of “social justice,” he is a far more polarizing figure than Mill, beloved on the political right but regarded with ambivalence by many others. Nonetheless, Hayek belongs on any list of the most important liberal thinkers of the twentieth century.
Mill and Hayek help to define the liberal tradition, but in both temperament and orientation, they could not be further apart. Mill was a progressive, a social reformer, an optimist about change, in some ways a radical. He believed that, properly understood, liberalism calls for significant revisions in the existing economic order, which he saw as palpably unjust: “The most powerful of all the determining circumstances is birth. The great majority are what they were born to be.” Hayek was not exactly a conservative—in fact he was sharply critical of conservatism on the ground that it was largely oppositional and did not offer an affirmative position—but he generally venerated traditions and long-standing practices, seeing them as embodying the views and knowledge of countless people over long periods. Hayek admired Edmund Burke, who attacked the idea that self-styled reformers, equipped with an abstract theory, should feel free to override social practices that had stood the test of time. Mill had an abstract theory, one based on a conception of liberty from both government and oppressive social customs, and he thought that society could be evaluated by reference to it.
Against this background, there is every reason to be intrigued by a new book with the title Hayek on Mill. Hayek died in 1992, but the University of Chicago Press is continuing with a multivolume edition of his collected works. Readers are discovering essays by Hayek that were never published, were not easily available, or were not widely known. What would Hayek have to say about a great champion of liberty, in some ways his intellectual ancestor, who ended up embracing socialism?
How stunning, then, to find that the volume has only a few snippets on that question. Instead it largely consists of a book, first published in 1951, that grew out of an enormous, uncharacteristic, and somewhat obsessive undertaking by Hayek, which was to assemble what remains of the correspondence between Mill and his eventual wife, Harriet Taylor (one or the other destroyed numerous letters, probably including the most interesting), and to use it as the basis for a narrative account of their mysterious love affair.
The book raises mysteries of its own. For all his greatness, Hayek was a cold, abstract, and distant writer, celebrating the operations of free markets but without a lot of interest in the full range of human emotions. Some liberals (including Mill) have a romantic streak; Hayek is not among them. How was it, exactly, that Hayek, of all people, became captivated by the story of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor? A possible answer is that he had to explain to himself and others why Mill—one of the few thinkers he had to regard as an intellectual equal or superior—moved away from what Hayek celebrated as classical liberalism, which for Hayek was focused on limited government and protection of free markets. But Hayek’s interest in the romance itself outpaced his interest in the evolution of Mill’s thinking (perhaps because of the beauty and great delicacy of the correspondence).
Does that romance have anything to do with liberalism and liberty? I think so. One of the lessons we can draw from Hayek’s work of excavation is that Mill’s distinctive form of liberalism, with its emphasis on individual freedom from the confining effect of social norms, had a great deal to do with his relationship with Taylor. As we shall see, Hayek himself missed the connection entirely, because his own preoccupations lay elsewhere.
Hayek begins the book with one of his central puzzles, and it involves Taylor rather than Mill: “The literary portrait which in the Autobiography John Stuart Mill has drawn for us of the woman who ultimately became his wife creates a strong wish to know more about her.” Mill’s own account suggests that she must have been “one of the most remarkable women who ever lived.” Hayek quotes a very long passage from Mill himself:
In general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament and organization, I have often compared her, as she was at this time, to Shelley: but in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his powers were developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what she ultimately became. Alike in the highest regions of speculation and in the smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle.The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as [well as] her mental faculties, would with her gifts of feeling and imagination have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigourous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would in [the] times when such a carrière was open to women, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind.Mill had a lot more to say about Harriet Taylor:
Were I [but] capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.One of Hayek’s projects is to discover whether Mill’s account was “sheer delusion.”
Mill and Taylor met at a dinner in 1830, when she was just twenty-two, a mother of two boys, and married for four years to John Taylor, eleven years older than she and a junior partner in a family firm of wholesale druggists. Thomas Carlyle called him “an innocent dull good man.” An acquaintance describes her, at the time, as “possessed of a beauty and grace quite unique of their kind,” with “large dark eyes, not soft or sleepy, but with a look of quiet command in them.” She wrote poetry and was soon to produce a number of essays on social usages and conventions, including one that prefigured Mill’s attacks on conformity, decades later, in On Liberty.
For his part, Mill was nothing like the dry, somewhat desiccated old man depicted in photographs. Twenty-four at the time, he must have cut a dashing figure, having been described by Carlyle as “a slender, rather tall and elegant youth,” who was “remarkably gifted with precision of utterance, enthusiastic, yet lucid, calm.” At the same time, his emotional state was not good. In a forlorn letter to a friend, written a year before meeting Taylor, he referred to “the comparative loneliness of my probable future lot,” and contended that there was “now no human being…who acknowledges a common object with me.”
In his autobiography, Mill insisted that it was not until years after meeting Taylor that their relationship “became at all intimate or confidential.” Hardly. Referring to an article published in mid-1831, Taylor’s closest friend pointedly wrote her, “Did you or Mill do it?” In the same year, a letter from a mutual friend, written to John Taylor, spoke mysteriously of the need for a “reconciliation” between Mr. Taylor and Mill. In 1832, Mrs. Taylor wrote Mill that they must not meet again, to which Mill responded in French: “Sa route et la mienne sont séparées, elle l’a dit: mais elles peuvent, elles doivent, se rencontrer. A quelqu’ époque, dans quelqu’ endroit, que ce puisse être, elle me trouvera toujours ce que j’ai été, ce que je suis encore.” (Her path and mine are separate, she said so: but they can, they must, come together. At whatever time, in whatever place that might be, she will find me forever as I was, as I am still.) A few weeks later, their relationship resumed.
By 1832, the two had embarked on some kind of love affair. Taylor wrote Mill: “Far from being unhappy or even low this morning, I feel as tho’ you had never loved me half so well as last night.” And later, in response to an apparent confession from Mill:
Continued in article
"59 amazing things you can do with baking soda," by Megan Willett,
Business Insider, April 6, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/things-you-can-do-with-baking-soda-2015-4
Make laundry even more effective: Add half a cup to your liquid laundry detergent for the best deodorization, whiter whites, and brighter brights. You can also add 1/2 cup for the rinse cycle, too.
Get rid of stains pre-laundry: Make a stain solution with 6 tablespoons of baking soda and 1/3 cup of warm water. Stir together to make a paste and rub it onto the stained area before throwing your clothes into the wash.
Deodorize wastebaskets: Add some baking soda to wastebaskets in the bathrooms, kitchen, or diaper bins regularly as you fill the container. Wash container with a cup of baking soda and a gallon of water regularly after taking out the trash.
Fill nail holes: Mix baking soda with white toothpaste and rub into nail holes to fill. Allow to dry fully.
Get rid of water rings: Make a paste with water and baking soda (sometimes a little toothpaste helps, too). Dip a cloth in the paste and rub away any water rings and spots from wood.
Clean and deodorize drains: Pour a cup of baking soda down the drain and follow with a cup of white vinegar. Let it sit (covered, if possible) and then pour down a gallon of boiling water.
Clean all bathroom surfaces: Make a paste of baking soda and water and use a wet sponge to scrub the walls, sink, tile, and shower surfaces with the mixture. Rinse with warm water and wipe dry with a rag.
Deodorize your fridge: Keep your fridge smelling like, well, nothing by keeping an open box of baking soda in there. You can also do this in your freezer, too.
Clean your dirty dishwasher: Run a cleaning cycle on your dishwasher with a sprinkle of baking soda to remove any old odors. If there are some places that just aren't getting clean (like around the dishwasher door), dip an old toothbrush in hot water and some baking soda and scrub away before rinsing. Wipe dry.
Cut through grease on dishes and pans: Two tablespoons of baking soda with detergent in the dishwasher will zap grease. Or, if you're hand washing, let pans and dishes soak for 15 minutes with the solution and then clean as you normally would. It can even help with dirty, burned pots, too.
Clean your blender (fast): Instead of taking out the blades and having to scrub, fill your blender halfway with water and add a spoonful of baking soda and a drop of dish-washing liquid. Run it for a few seconds and swirl before rinsing. Those blades are clean!
Clean your microwave: After awhile, microwaves can start to smell. Deodorize yours in a few seconds with two tablespoons of baking powder in a bowl of water, and microwave on high for three minutes. Remove the bowl and wipe the inside of the microwave with a cloth or sponge — all the food will come right off.
Clean your coffee maker: Add warm water to your coffee pot and 1/4 cup of baking soda. Swirl to dissolve and then pour into the water reserve tank. Allow the machine to run on a full cycle and repeat the process until the water is clean and clear.
Polish tarnished silver: Clean silver by adding baking soda, sea salt, and vinegar to a baking dish (one of those disposable aluminum ones is fine). Pour in boiling water slowly to mix with the dry ingredients in the dish and use tongs to add the tarnished silverware. Let sit for 30 seconds to a minute and then use tongs to remove and buff with a rag.
Clean the floor: Add a 1/2 cup of baking soda to a bucket of water and mop the floors with the mixture. Rinse clean. For any scuff marks or stains, put some baking soda on the stains and then scrub. Rinse with warm water and dry.
Clean suede: Blot any excess liquid from suede and sprinkle baking soda on the spot. Let it sit and then brush off with a suede brush.
Remove shoe odor: Whether it’s gym shoes or your heels, sprinkle baking soda in your shoes between wearing to neutralize odor and absorb moisture. If you don’t want to clean up the mess in the morning, add sachets filled with baking soda to your shoes after wearing.
Eliminate pet odors: Sprinkle baking soda on carpets and furniture evenly and wait 15 minutes before vacuuming up.
Deodorize plastic containers: Cleaning Tupperware can be the worst because it holds onto food smells for a long time. Soak plastic containers with four tablespoons of baking soda and then wash as usual. Smells will disappear like magic.
Clean kitchen surfaces: Just like in the bathroom, sprinkle baking soda on a clean damp sponge and wipe down surfaces. Rinse thoroughly and wipe dry. This works well for counter tops, stove tops, fridges, and more.
Clean your oven: Make a paste of baking soda and water and apply it to the inside of the oven with a wet sponge. Let it sit for 2-3 hours and then wipe off and rinse.
Remove grime from shower curtains: Sprinkle baking soda on a damp sponge and scrub the shower curtain before rinsing clean. If that doesn’t do the trick, add the curtain with two bath towels to the washing machine on gentle with a 1/2 cup of baking soda and detergent. Add vinegar for the rinse cycle, and let drip-dry.
Grout cleaner: Add three tablespoons of baking soda to a tablespoon of warm water and apply to old grout with an old toothbrush you no longer use. Dirt and grime will rub away effortlessly.
Remove crayon from walls: A paste of baking soda and warm water will remove those crayon stains without damaging your paint. Just dip a washcloth in soapy water, wring out and then dip in baking powder and gently scrub.
Horrific charts show how fast California is losing its water ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/californias-drought-situation-is-worse-than-ever-2015-4#ixzz3WSEkUbRZ
California’s urban areas are responsible for only 10
percent of the state’s water use. Even as the cities have grown, urban
per-capita consumption has declined, from 232 gallons per day in 1990 to 178
gallons per day in 2010. As a result, the cities’ total water use has been
relatively stable. Instead, the thirstiest sector of the state is the
agricultural industry, which makes up 40 percent of water usage. If you set
aside the 50 percent of California’s water that’s reserved for environmental use
(maintaining wetlands, rivers, and other parts of the state’s ecosystem),
agriculture uses 80 percent of the remaining water dedicated directly or
indirectly for human uses.
Leah Libresco, California Chases
Easiest Water Savings, Not Biggest ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/california-chases-easiest-water-savings-not-biggest/
While droughts occur intermittently across the
globe, other societies have learned better how to cope with water shortages. For
instance, Israel (60% desert) has built massive desalination plants powered by
cheap natural gas that helped the country weather the driest winter on record in
2014 and a seven-year drought between 2004 and 2010 ---
"California’s Green Drought How bad policies are compounding the state’s water
shortage," The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-green-drought-1428271308?tesla=y
Jensen Comment
The powerful environmentalists in California would seemingly rather wreck their
state's economy than allow cheap natural gas desalinization. In fairness, the
cost of getting massive amounts of desalinized water to the agricultural regions
are immense. Instead California voters approved $22
billion for water conservation measures that includes paying farmers not to
plant crops. That, however, is a costly solution with no long-term
future.
My Somewhat Personal Story About the Horrible Drought in California
The purpose of this tidbit is to write about one of California's initiatives to conserve water in agriculture.
Our son Mike is a tax accountant about 35 miles north of Sacramento in Yuba City. His beautiful wife Rene is the mother of their four children and part owner of a family farm along with her two sisters, four brothers, their widowed mother. The sons manage this 5,000+ farm/ranch that mainly produces rice. But there are some other crops like juicing tomatoes and safflower.
Nearby orchards include highly productive trees for such things as walnuts, almonds, apricots, oranges, lemons, etc. Not far away are the thirsty vineyards in the Napa Valley wine country. Incidentally, quite a few of the orchard owners are Sikh immigrants from India. Mike does a lot of tax accounting for these Sikhs.
Farms and orchards in this part of California are irrigated by wells and a
network of canals that are usually abundantly replenished with snow melt in the
Sierra Nevada mountain range ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_%28U.S.%29
This year and in several preceding years this snow melt is down over 75%.
Rene's family farm does not have orchards. Therefore, to conserve water for orchards the State of California is paying the family not to raise any crops this year. This policy does not work well for orchards because trees that take upwards of 30 years to mature will die if they are not irrigated. Hence, orchard owners are allowed to dig deeper and deeper wells until the wells eventually will probably grow dry. If and when this will happen is unknown by experts at this point in time.
To add to the tragedy of not growing crops on Rene's family farm there are serious externalities. Embedded in this huge farm is a small town (Robbins) made up of mostly Hispanic workers who both maintain and operate all of the equipment used on the farm such as Caterpillar tractors, 18-wheel tractor trailers, and over 20 enormous combines for the rice, tomatoes, and safflower. Most of those Hispanic families are now trying to get by on welfare since there is very little work left on the farm.
Our son David also lives near Yuba City with his wife and four children. He's employed by what I think is the largest multi-state Caterpillar dealer in the world. The dealership is hurting badly by the cutbacks in farming in California. There is not much in the way of farm equipment new sales and service revenues from idle farms. What saves David's job thus far are sales to companies that build and maintain roads and bridges. How long can this go on in a state where tax revenues will eventually dry up as well?
You can imagine that with the decline in employment on these farms that other businesses in the region will feel the adverse economic effects of idle farm workers and idle farms. Before she had children, Rene was the manager of an agricultural chemical dealership in Yuba City. This dealership and others like it are hit hard by idle farms.
Most of the rice in California is exported to Asia. Hence, the price of rice in our supermarkets may not be severe since most of our rice is grown elsewhere in the USA. But the cutback in California rice exports will adversely affect the USA balance of trade.
The enormous problem looming is that south of Sacramento over 60% of the USA's perishable fruits and vegetables are grown. In most instances these farmers are still allowed to dig deeper and deeper wells for irrigation water to make up for lost from reservoirs that are drying up. There's an unknown limit to how long deeper wells will survive. Eventually, some produce in our grocery stores may be much more expensive than our porterhouse steaks.
In anticipation of increasing demand for local organic farm produce up here
in the New Hampshire mountains, the son, Alex, of one of our best friends up
here quit his high tech computer job and is in Hawaii on an organic farm
internship. In anticipation of the rising prices of fruits (think apples) and
vegetables up here he hopes to start an organic farm in these White Mountains.
Last summer he worked on a rapidly growing organic farm called the Ski Hearth
farm about four miles down the road from our cottage ---
https://www.skihearthfarm.com/winter/about/
It will be sad when Alex fills his first produce order to ship via FedEx to California.
If there is no drought relief soon for California it will be a game changer for the entire USA.
The real villain in the California drought isn't almonds — it's red meat
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/real-villain-in-the-california-drought-isnt-almonds--its-red-meat-2015-4#ixzz3XDQrSpP7
As far as financial reporting goes drought risks for business firms are
mostly covered by accounting rules for contingency liabilities and risks. This
is one of the most important and most poorly covered parts of accountancy theory
and practice. Bob Jensen's threads on contingencies in accountancy are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#TheoryDisputes
"Think twice before pulling up personal information online from a hotel
room or coffee shop," by Cale Guthrie Weissman, Business Insider,
March 27, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/public-wifi-think-twice-before-accessing-personal-info-2015-3
Abundant Wi-Fi is one of the best 21st century conveniences. But while the ease of an open hotspot may be enticing, be careful: Hackers are constantly looking for vulnerable access points intercept data.
Earlier today we reported on a huge internet vulnerability plaguing the hospitality world. Networking equipment often used by hotel chains had a gaping security hole that allowed hackers to gain access into the network and monitor and tamper with any traffic that flowed through. Anyone who used the hotels' Wi-Fi stood the chance of having their traffic intercepted.
We asked the security expert behind this finding, Justin W Clarke, if he thought this meant that all hotel Wi-Fi networks are a hot-bed for nefarious cybercrime.
He wouldn’t go so far. Clarke is a researcher that sees vulnerabilities like these all the time. This week's discovery, while frightening, is an example of the need for security diligence, and for businesses to ensure their infrastructure is secure.
“The reality,” Clarke said, “is that there’s no perfect way to access the internet.” He added that personally he would think twice before checking his bank account at a hotel or cafe. This gets at a critical point most people overlook.
This week's finding isn't about hotels per se; it's about the freewheeling nature people have when they surf the web. People quite often share their data in potentially unsecure environments.
On the extreme opposite end, some individuals may use separate computers only to check their financial information.
There's a middle-point, where people are more mindful of if their data can get intercepted. It's probably wise to not log personal information unless you're absolutely sure about security. Unless you are in your own private network, it’s hard to be sure where your data is going.
Additionally, there are safeguards users can adopt to further protect themselves. People can use a virtual private networks (VPNs) to encrypt their traffic. In fact, that’s what many security experts — including Clarke — do when using public hotspots.
Use common sense. Just think: What am I accessing right now? Is it private? Is my network private? Would it be bad if a third-party could intercept this traffic? Then proceed.
"Hackers may have had access to hundreds of hotels without anyone knowing,"
by Cale Guthrie Weissman, Business Insider, March 27, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/hackers-hotels-wifi-2015-3#ixzz3Vg5Xakup
Jensen Comment
To date I have four different friends who commenced to send me suspicious
promotional emails for questionable products. It turns out their email systems
were probably hacked when they were using computers in hotels. I just came back
from a three-day trip to Boston (sadly Erika will soon have yet another (her
16th) spine surgery). I just stayed away from our Boston hotel's Wi-Fi system.
It was great for catching up on some reading.
If you use a hotel computer for email it is wise to change your password as soon as you get home, although that is no assurance the bad guys did not get into your mail before you got home. Better yet have a friend log in as you just to change your passwords while you are on the road.
"Answer 10 Questions to Become a Better Teacher," by Joe
Hoyle, Teaching Blog, April 6, 2015 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2015/04/answering-ten-questions-will-help-you.html
Read An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: A Fun Primer on How to Strengthen, Not Weaken, Your Arguments --- http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/an-illustrated-book-of-bad-arguments.html
Jensen Comment
Most arguments are likely to be weakened more by debatable underlying
assumptions than fallacies of logic. In a debate think first about an attack on
the opponent's underlying assumptions. The same is true for a critique of a
mathematical analysis. If your opponent attacks your underlying assumptions
counter by pointing out the robustness of your conclusions to departures from
underlying assumptions.
A classic example is the Pythagorean Theorem equation for a 90 degree "right"
triangle ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem
lengths of the sides a, b and c, often called the "Pythagorean equation":
The assumption is that the triangle is a perfect 90.00000... degrees or pi/2. Such a triangle probably never existed in the real world such as in the real world of using triangle supports for a bridge.
One factor in favor of robustness of the Pythagorean Theorem is hypotenuse error in the real world, such as a triangle having 90.00023 degrees, is reduced by the fact that the error's impact is reduced when taking the square root (1/2 power) of that error. Bridge builders would be in deeper trouble if the theorem stated that the length of the hypotenuse was c taken to the 100th power.
The error would be even smaller if the real world, such as a triangle having 90.00023 degrees, would be reduced even more if the error's impact was reduced when taking the square root (1/100 power) of that error.
Robustness gets more complicated in evaluating statistical models ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_statistics
For example, traditional parametric statistical tests are may not be robust when their underlying assumptions fail. For example, they F-tests and T-tests typically assume interval scaling (e.g., temperature) or ratio scaling (length and weight). Many empirical studies such as those employing a Likert scale collect data only on much weaker ordinal scales. Parametric tests are, therefore, not always robust.
Sometimes weaker statistical tests such as non-parametric tests are used
for ordinal and binary data ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonparametric_statistics
Common Accountics Science and Econometric
Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm
I sent the following letter this week to the IRS:
April 7,2015 Dear Sir of Madam of the IRS In all my years of life it has never taken so long to receive my tax refund. It's particularly important this year, because I discovered a hot babe in my nursing home who might soon grow cold --- if you catch my drift. Heh ... Heh
I have certified mail proof that the Kansas City Office of the IRS received my 2014 tax return on February 16, 2015. I would be content with receiving my 12% interest for a delayed refund, but this year I particularly would like to get Erika some flowers and chocolates before she finds somebody else.
Robert E. Jensen, CPA
|
This is the letter I can only dream of receiving from the IRS
April 15,2015 Dear Mr. Jensen We truly apologize for the delay in processing your tax return. Our stingy budget from Congress coupled with the legal expenses of the Lois Lerner scandal overwhelmed us this year. Enclosed is your $19.38 refund plus an added $5 for pharmacy supplies. We do hope you're into Planned Parenthood during your remaining days with Erika in the Whoopsie Daisy Nursing Home. Karen Smith Get some MO if you catch my drift. Heh ... Heh |
PS
Since March 10 I've daily sought to track by tax refund using the following
site:
http://www.irs.gov/Refunds
It appears that the IRS no longer wants to be contacted by taxpayers I can
find no contact telephone numbers for refund complaints at
http://www.irs.gov/
There's no IRS office in this area, and it's just not worth my time and gasoline costs to travel 100 miles to an IRS office and shiver in a two-block line with others who have not received their tax refunds. They can donate my $19 to Lois Lerner's pending bonus.
If you know of any secret telephone number where I can call the IRS requesting my refund please send me that secret telephone number.
"Most Popular Browsers," by Jim Martin, MAAW's Blog,
March 28, 2015 ---
http://maaw.blogspot.com/2015/03/browsers.html
Most popular Browsers:
Chrome: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html
IE: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/ie-11-worldwide-languages
Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Safari: http://www.apple.com/safari/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/computer
Other Browsers for gamers, media junkies, browser lovers, power users, security, and privacy:
CooWon: Designed to be a browser for gamers. http://coowon.com/
Torch: A browser for media junkies. http://www.torchbrowser.com/
Lunascape: A browser for browser lovers. http://www.lunascape.tv/
IceDragon: Promises enhanced security. https://www.comodo.com/home/browsers-toolbars/icedragon-browser.php
Vivaldi: For power users. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2875977/new-vivaldi-browser-aims-to-win-over-power-users.html
SeaMonkey: The old-school all-in-one internet suite. http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Midori: Lightweight browser. http://midori-browser.org/
Maxthon: For multi-device browsing and social. http://www.maxthon.com/
Epic Privacy Browser: Has privacy-enhancing features. https://www.epicbrowser.com/
Browzar: For browse privacy. http://www.browzar.com/
This is what the lucky student who got into all 8 Ivys has been
doing for the past year
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-kwasi-enin-has-been-doing-since-he-started-yale-2015-3#ixzz3W3gmFHHi
I was not all that impressed with this essay.
"Ten Elite Schools Where Middle-Class Kids Don't Pay Tuition,"
by Akane Otani, Bloomberg News, April 1, 2015 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-01/ten-elite-schools-where-middle-class-kids-don-t-pay-tuition?cmpid=BBD040215
Students lucky enough to be accepted to some of the most competitive schools in the country can save hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition.
In a trend that's bound to come as a relief to parents of high school seniors facing sticker prices that approach $63,000 a year, a growing number of Ivy League and elite colleges are making college more affordable for middle-class families.
Stanford University announced last week that, starting this fall, students whose families make less than $125,000 a year will not pay any tuition. Previously, the school had set the bar at $100,000. With the move, Stanford has made it possible for more middle-class students to get a degree for what they'd spend in tuition at an in-state, public university (students with a family income above $65,000 a year still have to cover room and board). That makes an admissions offer that's already among the most coveted in the country even more attractive.
Stanford is not the first elite school to slash tuition for middle-class and upper-middle-class students. (For reference, we're going by the Pew Research Center's definition, which calls a family of three in the U.S. middle class if they made between $40,667 and $122,000 in 2013.) While the wealthiest schools have long covered nearly all costs for their poorest students, Harvard since 2004 has steadily broadened the group of students to whom it gives financial aid, putting pressure on its peers to match its generous discounts. The aid programs have helped absorb some of the sticker shock from continuously rising tuition. Take a look at the top schools that students from a range of middle-class families can attend, tuition-free:
Continued in article
Summary
Princeton
Brown
Cornell
Columbia
Duke
Harvard
Yale
Stanford
MIT
Dartmouth
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Why Can't We Call the UVA Case a Hoax? Evidence of how
extreme and irrational "rape culture" dogma has become," by Cathy Young,
Reason Magazine, April 1. 2015 ---
http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/01/why-cant-we-call-the-uva-case-a-hoax
. . .
It is, of course, nearly impossible to prove a negative. Short of a surveillance tape documenting Jackie's every movement, one cannot know for certain that she was never sexually assaulted at UVA. But the evidence against her is damning. It's not simply that there was no party at Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity named by Jackie, anywhere near the time when she said she was attacked. It's not simply that her account changed from forced oral sex to vaginal rape and from five assailants to seven, or that her friends saw no sign of her injuries after the alleged assault. What clinches the case is the overwhelming proof that "Drew," Jackie's date who supposedly orchestrated her rape, was Jackie's own invention.
Back in the fall of 2012, Jackie's friends knew "Drew" as "Haven Monahan," an upperclassman who supposedly wanted to date her and with whom she encouraged them to exchange emails and text messages. However, an investigation by The Washington Post and other media last December found that "Haven's" messages were fake; the phone numbers he used were registered to online services that allow texting via the Internet and redirecting calls, while his photo matches a former high school classmate of Jackie's who lives in a different state. No "Haven Monahan" exists on the UVA campus or, apparently, anywhere in the United States (at least outside romance novels). The catfishing scheme seems to have been a ploy to get the attention of a male friend on whom Jackie had a crush—the same friend she called for help after the alleged assault.
Is it possible that someone sexually assaulted Jackie on the night when she claimed to be going out with her fictional suitor? Theoretically, yes. But it's also clear that her credibility is as non-existent as "Haven Monahan."
Moreover, the police investigation has debunked another one of Jackie's claims: that in spring 2014, when she was already an anti-rape activist, some men harassed her in the street off-campus and threw a bottle that hit her face and (improbably) broke. Jackie said that her roommate picked glass out of a cut on her face; but the roommate disputes this and describes the injury as a scrape, likely from a fall. Jackie also said she called her mother immediately after that attack, but phone records show no such call.
Despite all this, Chief Longo wouldn't call Jackie's story a false allegation and even referred to her as "this survivor" (though amending it to the more neutral "or this complaining party").
Meanwhile, in the CNN report on the March 23 press conference, anchor Brooke Baldwin, correspondent Sara Ganim and legal analyst Sunny Hostin were tripping over each other to assert that "we have to be very careful" not to brand Jackie a liar and that "she could have been sexually assaulted." Hostin argued that the idea that Jackie made it all up "flies in the face of statistics," because "only about 2 percent of rapes that are reported are false."
This is a bogus statistic, which Hostin misattributed to the FBI. (According to FBI data, 8 to 9 percent of police reports of sexual assault are dismissed as "unfounded"; the reality of false rape reports is far more complicated, and it's almost impossible to get a reliable estimate.) Even if it were true, it would say nothing about Jackie's specific case. What's more, statistics on false allegations generally refer to police reports or at least formal administrative complaints at a college—neither of which Jackie was willing to file.
CNN never mentioned the evidence that Jackie fabricated "Haven Monahan." Neither did the New York Times, which said only that "the police were unable to track Mr. Monahan down."
Jackie's defenders argue that rape victims often change their stories because their recall is affected by trauma. It is true that memory, not just of traumatic events, can be unreliable; a victim may at various points give somewhat different descriptions of the offender or the attack. It is also true that, as writer Jessica Valenti argues, someone who tells the truth about being raped may lie to cover up embarrassing details (such as going to the rapist's apartment to buy drugs).
None of that, however, requires us to suspend rational judgment and pretend that Jackie's story is anything other than a fabrication. While Jackie is probably more troubled than malevolent, she is not the victim here. If there's a victim, it's Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity branded a nest of rapists, suspended and targeted for vandalism—as well as UVA Dean Nicole Eramo, whom the Rolling Stone story painted as a callous bureaucrat indifferent to Jackie's plight.
In this case, at least, there were no specific accused men. But the extreme reluctance to close a rape investigation and call a lie a lie bodes ill for wrongly accused individuals, who may find themselves under a cloud of suspicion even after all the facts exonerate them.
Evading the facts does a disservice to Jackie, too. In a sane environment, she would face disciplinary charges and perhaps mandatory counseling. In a climate where saying that a woman is lying about rape is tantamount to "victim-blaming" and "rape culture"—and where some of Jackie's fellow students say that even if her story "wasn't completely true," it helped bring attention to important issues—she is likely to remain mired in self-destructive false victimhood.
For the rest of us, this episode shows how extreme and irrational "rape culture" dogma has become, and how urgent it is to break its hold on public discourse. The current moral panic may be an overreaction to real problems of failure to support victims of sexual violence. But when truth becomes heresy, the pendulum has swung too far, with disastrous consequences for civil rights and basic justice.
Jensen Comment
Rolling Stones Magazine promises to respond to a scathing investigation
by the Columbia University School of Journalism that purportedly claims the
Rolling Stone Magazine violated nearly all ethics and standards of
professional journalism.
Thoughts While Afflicted With Cabin Fever in These Mountains
Jensen Comment
This has been the longest winter that I can remember up here in New Hampshire's
White Mountains. Today on April 4 we're having yet another snow storm. That's
not uncommon for early April. What's uncommon is the proportion of winter nights
that were below 0F --- seemed like almost every night when I looked up at the
temperature light above our bed. It also seemed like our furnace ran 90% of the
time almost every day. I cringe at the thought of how much it will take to fill
our big oil tank in May. The good news is that oil prices are down and will
hopefully stay that way at least until May.
I would capture the low heating oil prices now, but the oil delivery company cannot get to our buried tank until more of the snow melts. I hope that is not in July.
But I prefer long winters to long hot and very humid summers like we had in Tallahassee and San Antonio. And the long winters do make us more appreciative of the short summers. I read that is why Moscow is a city of flowers in the summer. Long winters make me more appreciative of our own three flower gardens and our wildflower field.
Today I ordered 40 New Guinea Impatiens plants in 2.26 gallon pots for my gardens, but they will not be delivered until after June 1. I'm paranoid about delaying planting until after Memorial Day since three years ago --- when we had a heavy snow on Memorial Day.
A Different Kind of Red States Versus Blue States:
Divisional Average Temperature Ranks---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/record-temp.jpg
New Guinea Impatiens are beautiful, but they cannot take cold nights. And they also take a lot of water that's plentiful up here. They will bloom the entire summer until the first freeze, and bugs like Japanese beetles don't seem to bother these plants up here. Erika is constantly at war with bugs on her domestic roses. I plant her roses but refuse to pluck the bugs off every day. That's her tiresome job!
Impatiens --- My Favorite Annual
The Seasonal Life Cycle of Bob Jensen's Impatiens
Part 1: June
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Impatiens/ImpatiensSet01/ImpatiensSet01.htm
Erika's Roses and the Seasonal Life Cycle of Bob Jensen's Impatiens
Part 2: July-August
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Impatiens/ImpatiensSet02/ImpatiensSet02.htmMy Favorite Annuals in My Gardens --- New Guinea Impatiens
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Impatiens/ImpatiensSet03/ImpatiensSet03.htmAlso see Summertime --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090702.htm
Summertime Favorites
Set 1 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set01/2010Set01.htm
Set 2 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set02/2010Set02.htm
Set 3 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set03/2013Set03.htm
Set 4 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/SummertimeFavorites/Set04/2014Set04.htm
Set 1 of Wild Roses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Roses/Wild/Set01/WildRosesSet01.htm
Also see --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090807.htmThe Life Cycle of Our Peonies in 2012 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Peonies/Set02/PeoniesSet02.htmErika's Domestic Roses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Roses/Domestic/Set01/DomesticRosesSet01.htm
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Impatiens/ImpatiensSet02/ImpatiensSet02.htm
Also see Summertime --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090702.htm
Jones International University --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_International_University
"For-Profit College, Online
Since 1993, Will Close," by Andy Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education,
April 3, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/for-profit-college-online-since-1993-will-close?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jones International University, a for-profit online college based in Colorado, will close because of declining enrollment, The Denver Post reports. From 2011 to 2014, enrollment at the institution dropped by more than 50 percent.
“We examined a number of operational strategies and determined that none would be sufficient to turn around the market dynamics,” the chief college’s operation officer, Bryan Wallace, told the Post.
College officials said the institution wouldn’t completely shut down until it had helped all of its roughly 2,000 students earn degrees or transfer.
The online college was founded in 1993 and was accredited in 1999, the first such institution to win recognition from a regional accreditor.
First Monday, 2001
With the arrival of Jones International University, higher education found its
"first fully accredited online university" [17]. Jones International University
was granted accreditation by the U.S. regional accreditation agency in March
1999, and is the first online university to become fully certified by the Global
Alliance for Transnational Education. Courses at Jones International are taught
over the Internet by part-time, free-lance teachers located in universities all
over the U.S. The courses are highly modular and all involve business subjects.
There is no regular faculty or participatory governance system, and no research
is carried out. Critics of Jones International argue that although it has the
term "university" in its title, it ought not be considered one. Altbach argues
that Jones International is merely a credentialing service, "a degree delivery
machine, providing tailored programs that appeal to specific markets" The
American Association of University Professors has fought to prevent
accreditation of Jones University, along with similar online programs.
"The Work of Education in the Age of E-College," Chris Werry, First Monday,
Volume 6, Number 5 - 7,
May 2001 ---
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/858
The Economist: America's
Flagging Higher Education System ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/04/the-economist-.html
The Economist,
More and More Money Is Being Spent on Higher Education. Too Little Is Known About Whether It Is Worth It:America’s early and lasting enthusiasm for higher education has given it the biggest and best-funded system in the world. Hardly surprising, then, that other countries are emulating its model as they send ever more of their school-leavers to get a university education. But, as our special report argues, just as America’s system is spreading, there are growing concerns about whether it is really worth the vast sums spent on it.
Graphs not shown here
The modern research university, a marriage of the Oxbridge college and the German research institute, was invented in America, and has become the gold standard for the world. Mass higher education started in America in the 19th century, spread to Europe and East Asia in the 20th and is now happening pretty much everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. The global tertiary-enrolment ratio—the share of the student-age population at university—went up from 14% to 32% in the two decades to 2012; in that time, the number of countries with a ratio of more than half rose from five to 54. University enrolment is growing faster even than demand for that ultimate consumer good, the car. The hunger for degrees is understandable: these days they are a requirement for a decent job and an entry ticket to the middle class. . . .
If America were getting its money’s worth from higher education, that would be fine. On the research side, it probably is. In 2014, 19 of the 20 universities in the world that produced the most highly cited research papers were American. But on the educational side, the picture is less clear. American graduates score poorly in international numeracy and literacy rankings, and are slipping. In a recent study of academic achievement, 45% of American students made no gains in their first two years of university. Meanwhile, tuition fees have nearly doubled, in real terms, in 20 years. Student debt, at nearly $1.2 trillion, has surpassed credit-card debt and car loans.
None of this means that going to university is a bad investment for a student. A bachelor’s degree in America still yields, on average, a 15% return. But it is less clear whether the growing investment in tertiary education makes sense for society as a whole. If graduates earn more than non-graduates because their studies have made them more productive, then university education will boost economic growth and society should want more of it. Yet poor student scores suggest otherwise. So, too, does the testimony of employers. A recent study of recruitment by professional-services firms found that they took graduates from the most prestigious universities not because of what the candidates might have learned but because of those institutions’ tough selection procedures. In short, students could be paying vast sums merely to go through a very elaborate sorting mechanism.
If America’s universities are indeed poor value for money, why might that be? The main reason is that the market for higher education, like that for health care, does not work well. The government rewards universities for research, so that is what professors concentrate on. Students are looking for a degree from an institution that will impress employers; employers are interested primarily in the selectivity of the institution a candidate has attended. Since the value of a degree from a selective institution depends on its scarcity, good universities have little incentive to produce more graduates. And, in the absence of a clear measure of educational output, price becomes a proxy for quality. By charging more, good universities gain both revenue and prestige.
Continued in article
Our Compassless Colleges: What are students really not
learning?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Berkowitz
Does Professor Who Is Denied Tenure Have The Right To See
Student Evaluations Of Her And Her Colleagues?
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/04/does-professor-who-is-denied-tenure-.html
Should the confidentiality shrouding students’ evaluations of college instructors always be protected, even if it might conceal violations of the law? A California state court was expected to take up that question last week in response to Pomona College’s refusal to grant access to such records to a former professor suing the college for discrimination.
Lawyers for Alma Martinez, to whom the private college denied tenure and who was dismissed as an assistant professor of theater in 2013, are seeking copies of students’ evaluations not only of Ms. Martinez but also of faculty members who, unlike her, received tenure at Pomona in recent years.
In asking a state Superior Court in Los Angeles to compel Pomona to hand over such documents, her lawyers argue that the court can-not fairly weigh her claim of being discriminated against as a His-panic woman without giving them access to the student evaluations that informed the college’s tenure decision.
They wish to know the identities of students who wrote the evaluations to determine whether those who characterized her negatively had some ulterior motive, such as retaliation for her giving them poor grades or denying them a lead role in some theater production.
Her lawyers, from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or Maldef, say they need copies of students’ evaluations of recently tenured faculty members to show that the college treat-ed Ms. Martinez differently than the others.
Pomona’s lawyers have respond-ed by calling the Maldef lawyers’ request “a poor attempt to gain access to private information with a long history of legal protection.” Pomona maintains that providing the requested evaluations to Ms. Martinez’s lawyers would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law, known as Ferpa, that protects the privacy of student records.
Jensen Comment
I think most universities return teaching evaluations to each teacher being
evaluated after they are archived. Most universities probably do not share
teaching evaluations of other instructors with faculty or students, although
some make those evaluations public or semi-public (available to students and
faculty). Perhaps this is even required by legislatures of some state
universities ---
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/05/should-teaching-evaluations-be-made-public.html
I think that grading distributions should accompany all course teaching evaluations to whomever has access to course evaluations. This might help deter grade inflation.
The real controversy when teaching evaluations are shared with faculty or students is whether such sharing should be limited to numerical ratings versus whether student comments should also be shared. Such comments can be very misleading and even cause for lawsuits such as when a student reveals unauthorized privacy information about a teacher or unsupported allegations like sexual advances.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
Question
Who's taking MOOCs?
Answer
K-12 teachers and college professors (39% among a sample of one million free
MOOC students)
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/whos-taking-moocs-teachers/56305?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and other free online learning
materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Marshall McLuhan --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
How Technology Changed the Medium
The Visionary Thought of Marshall McLuhan, Introduced and Demystified
by Tom Wolfe ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14c6fb9b32f00f0f
Marshall McLuhan’s Strange Reading Habit: “I Read Only the
Right-Hand Page of Serious Books” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/marshall-mcluhans-strange-reading-habit.html
"U.S. 11 Former Atlanta Educators Convicted in Cheating
Scandal," by Kate Brumback, Time Magazine, April 1, 2015 ---
http://time.com/3767734/atlanta-cheating-scandal/?xid=newsletter-brief
In one of the biggest cheating scandals of its kind in the U.S., 11 former Atlanta public school educators were convicted Wednesday of racketeering for their role in a scheme to inflate students’ scores on standardized exams. More 500 Unaccounted For After Dozens Shot at College in Kenya NBC NewsDiplomacy Until Dawn: Kerry, Zarif Burn Midnight Oil NBC NewsTornado Threat Looms in Hail-Lashed Midwest, Plains NBC NewsThese Are 20 Of The World's Best Photos Taken With Cell Phones Huffington PostRichard Paul Evans: How I Saved My Marriage Huffington Post
The defendants, including teachers, a principal and other administrators, were accused of falsifying test results to collect bonuses or keep their jobs in the 50,000-student Atlanta school system. A 12th defendant, a teacher, was acquitted of all charges by the jury. Popular Among Subscribers Star Track: Amy Schumer’s movie Trainwreck Amy Schumer: Class Clown of 2015 Subscribe Cuba Libre Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us
The racketeering charges carry up to 20 years in prison. Most of the defendants will be sentenced April 8.
“This is a huge story and absolutely the biggest development in American education law since forever,” said University of Georgia law professor Ron Carlson. “It has to send a message to educators here and broadly across the nation. Playing with student test scores is very, very dangerous business.”
A state investigation found that as far back as 2005, educators fed answers to students or erased and changed answers on tests after they were turned in. Evidence of cheating was found in 44 schools with nearly 180 educators involved, and teachers who tried to report it were threatened with retaliation.
Similar cheating scandals have erupted in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Nevada and other public school systems around the country in recent years, as officials link scores to school funding and staff bonuses and vow to close schools that perform poorly.
Thirty-five Atlanta educators in all were indicted in 2013 on charges including racketeering, making false statements and theft. Many pleaded guilty, and some testified at the trial.
Former Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall was among those charged but never went to trial, arguing she was too sick. She died a month ago of breast cancer.
Hall insisted she was innocent. But educators said she was among higher-ups pressuring them to inflate students’ scores to show gains in achievement and meet federal benchmarks that would unlock extra funding.
Over objections from the defendants’ attorneys, Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter ordered all but one of those convicted immediately jailed while they await sentencing. They were led out of court in handcuffs.
“They are convicted felons as far as I’m concerned,” Baxter said, later adding, “They have made their bed and they’re going to have to lie in it.”
The only one allowed to remain free on bail was teacher Shani Robinson, because she is expected to give birth soon.
Bob Rubin, the attorney for former elementary school principal Dana Evans, said he was shocked by the judge’s decision and called it “unnecessary and vindictive.”
Prosecutors said the 12 on trial were looking out for themselves rather than the children’s education. Defense attorneys accused prosecutors of overreaching in charging the educators under racketeering laws usually employed against organized crime.
"Dishonest Educators," by Walter E. Williams, Townhall, January
9, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/01/09/dishonest-educators-n1482294?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled "Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal." It reported that "for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history." More than three-quarters of the 56 Atlanta schools investigated had cheated on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, sometimes called the national report card. Cheating orders came from school administrators and included brazen acts such as teachers reading answers aloud during the test and erasing incorrect answers. One teacher told a colleague, "I had to give your kids, or your students, the answers because they're dumb as hell." Atlanta's not alone. There have been investigations, reports and charges of teacher-assisted cheating in other cities, such as Philadelphia, Houston, New York, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Washington.Recently, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's blog carried a story titled "A new cheating scandal: Aspiring teachers hiring ringers." According to the story, for at least 15 years, teachers in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee paid Clarence Mumford, who's now under indictment, between $1,500 and $3,000 to send someone else to take their Praxis exam, which is used for K-12 teacher certification in 40 states. Sandra Stotsky, an education professor at the University of Arkansas, said, "(Praxis I) is an easy test for anyone who has completed high school but has nothing to do with college-level ability or scores." She added, "The test is far too undemanding for a prospective teacher. ... The fact that these people hired somebody to take an easy test of their skills suggests that these prospective teachers were probably so academically weak it is questionable whether they would have been suitable teachers."
Here's a practice Praxis I math question: Which of the following is equal to a quarter-million -- 40,000, 250,000, 2,500,000, 1/4,000,000 or 4/1,000,000? The test taker is asked to click on the correct answer. A practice writing skills question is to identify the error in the following sentence: "The club members agreed that each would contribute ten days of voluntary work annually each year at the local hospital." The test taker is supposed to point out that "annually each year" is redundant.
CNN broke this cheating story last July, but the story hasn't gotten much national press since then. In an article for NewsBusters, titled "Months-Old, Three-State Teacher Certification Test Cheating Scandal Gets Major AP Story -- on a Slow News Weekend" (11/25/12), Tom Blumer quotes speculation by the blog "educationrealist": "I will be extremely surprised if it does not turn out that most if not all of the teachers who bought themselves a test grade are black. (I am also betting that the actual testers are white, but am not as certain. It just seems that if black people were taking the test and guaranteeing passage, the fees would be higher.)"
There's some basis in fact for the speculation that it's mostly black teachers buying grades, and that includes former Steelers wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, who's been indicted for fraud. According to a study titled "Differences in Passing Rates on Praxis I Tests by Race/Ethnicity Group" (March 2011), the percentages of blacks who passed the Praxis I reading, writing and mathematics tests on their first try were 41, 44 and 37, respectively. For white test takers, the respective percentages were 82, 80 and 78.
Continued in article
Jensen Commentary
It should be noted that the author (Walter Williams) of this article is an
African American economics professor at George Mason University..He's also
conservative, which is rare for an African American who grew up in an urban
ghetto. This makes him an endangered species in academe.
The cheating Atlanta Superintendent leader died two months ago
from breast cancer.
The cheating hurt thousands of students by denying them access to remedial
education while the cheating teachers and administrators got bigger bonuses.
Hundreds of other cheating teachers blamed administrators and plea bargained to
stay out of jail and keep their jobs
Bob Jensen's threads on teachers who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Philosophy
Animations on Ethics Narrated by Harry Shearer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/how-can-i-know-right-from-wrong-watch-philosophy-animations-on-ethics.html
Moral Relativism --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
Although moral relativism focuses mostly on differences in morality among different people and cultures there is also an issue of moral relativism in terms of circumstances and situations --- situational relativity.
An interesting question is when murder is justified in the USA on the basis of law and ethics? There are no bright line distinctions but here are a few of the different situations. On the margin in courts of law sometimes judges or jurors have to determine how to punish a "murderer" that the prosecution brings to trial.
Added Comments
In a similar manner much less extreme ethics violations are somewhat
situational. For example, a common situation is a "follow the herd ethics
violation." In a recent Harvard University cheating scandal in a political
science course some cheaters tried to justify their own plagiarism by arguing
that most of the class was doing the same thing. In this instance, only half of
the 120+ cheaters were expelled by Harvard. Why only
half?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#UVA
Looters sometimes argue that during a riot everybody in the store was looting. This is another f"ollow the herd" defense. Another ethics situation is where money is strewn all over the roadway after an armored car is involved in an accident.
Another situation is where a mother or child shoplifts food for very hungry children in a household. This is probably a punishable violation that becomes a crime only in terms of repeat offenses. But is it an ethical violation in desperate circumstances?
Employees sometimes try to justify ethics violations because their supervisors either explicitly or implicitly condone the behavior. This is the defense of some of the guards in Nazi prison camps.
And the list goes on where it is virtually impossible to judge ethics outside of unique situations.
April 8 reply to Elliot and Marc from Bob Jensen
HI Elliot and Marc,
I think "The Unforgiven" movie is more about justifying revenge with murder. This is suggested in the perfectly-chosen title of the movie. The half-blind revenging kid pretending to be a gunslinger is filled with remorse after killing a bad guy in the crapper. The hero, Clint 'Eastwood, never seems to have a conscience regarding revenge killings at first for money and in the end for revenge for torture and murder of his friend.
I don't see that any of the bad guys in this movie are the "most moral" since they are all probably unethical in their thirst for revenge. The character "Bill" played by Gene Hackman is the least moral since he will kill unarmed persons in great numbers just for power and money even if there is no revenge killing per se. Moses in the bull rushes would be killed as a baby by Gene Hackman if the innocent baby was a long-term threat. The baby would not be killed in the bull rushes by Clint Eastwood since it is an innocent baby.
Note that I did not list revenge as one of the examples, because revenge is always controversial.
At one extreme we have the Cold War of the 1950s where Russia and the USA both promise to take revenge in a nuclear attack. It's the strategy of revenge that is intended to prevent nuclear holocaust. The problem with this reasoning is that a crazy leader, like Saddam Hussein or his sons, having a temper tantrum might be willing to sacrifice everything and everybody for revenge alone. Keep nukes away from the crazies!
At the other extreme we have the victim of an April Fools joke contemplating how to get back at a joker. That strategy will seldom prevent April Fools jokes.
I have a little trouble with applying Kant's reasoning to some of my examples. For instance, I would never be a rapist home invader such that I cannot judge whether I would want to be shot if I was a rapist home invader. Felons who do such things probably are mentally ill, although not mentally ill to lock up as a preventative measure.
Hence the "do as as you would have others do on to you" just does not fit in some situations --- hence relative morality.
Thanks,
BobPS
Sometimes there just is not enough evidence to make morality judgments. For example, I think the death penalty deters some crimes but not others, but there's no way of getting evidence on the number of heinous crimes that were actually prevented by a death penalty. For example, the risk of the death penalty under the Lindbergh Law's death penalty at the Federal level probably prevents a significant number of child kidnappings for ransom in the USA. But the death penalty may not do much to prevent domestic murders that are committed in the heat of anger and revenge motives.The death penalty is an example where no amount of evidence for or against is going to convince some hardliners on this issue --- hardliners who rely on on their logic and/or their own religion irrespective of evidence.
Ex-IRS Ethics Office Lawyer Disbarred For … Ethics Violations
---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/04/ex-irs-ethics-office-lawyer-disbarred-for-.html
Jensen Comment
Her punishment sounds serious until you examine the IRS track record for hiring
back fired employees.
"Report: IRS hiring back problem employees," by Kevin G.
Hall, McClatcheyDC, February 5, 2015 ---
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/02/05/255697/report-irs-hiring-back-problem.html
More than one in 10 former employees rehired by the Internal Revenue Services had left the agency with performance and conduct issues, a special inspector general’s report concluded.
The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration was actually released last Dec. 30 but its results were divulged Thursday by the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch.
The IG’s report found that of the 7,000-plus former IRS employees hired back between January 2010 and September 2013, 824 of them had prior employment disciplinary issues. Of those 824, the inspector general said 141 had a prior tax issue and five of them were determined to have willfully failed to file a tax return.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Charles Darwin Creates a Handwritten List of Arguments for
and Against Marriage (1838) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/charles-darwin-creates-a-handwritten-list-of-arguments-for-and-against-marriage-1838.html
Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662)
---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/isaac-newton-creates-a-list-of-his-47-sins-circa-1662.html
Jensen Comment
If I took the time to create my own list the result would be a much longer list.
One issue is sins of deed versus sins of thought such as when President Jimmy
Carter admitted to lust in his heart.
Jimmy Carter: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've
committed adultery in my heart many times."
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1859513_1859526_1859518,00.html
Isaac Newton asserted that "craving worldly things" was a sin. Accordingly he would not have been a good capitalist.
In September of that year, Newton had a
breakdown which included sending wild accusatory letters to his friends Pepys
and Locke. His note to the latter included the charge that Locke "endeavoured to
embroil me with woemen".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Personal_relations
Throughout his life Sir Isaac Newton never married and purportedly had no
"scandals" such as those of sex and cheating. He built the first practical
telescope for peering into the nighttime sky rather than bedrooms.
250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives --- http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives/
Hundreds of libraries and archives exist online, from university-supported sites to accredited online schools to individual efforts. Each one has something to offer to researchers, students, and teachers. This list contains over 250 libraries and archives that focus mainly on localized, regional, and U.S. history, but it also includes larger collections, eText and eBook repositories, and a short list of directories to help you continue your research efforts.
The sites listed here are mainly open access, which means that the digital formats are viewable and usable by the general public. So, such sites as the Connecticut Digital Library (iCONN) are not listed, as they operate on the premise that the user has a Connecticut library card in his or her possession.
Efforts were made to go to the root source for these collections. In other words, if you’re seeking the American Memory Project, which was created and housed at the Library of Congress, then you’ll find the link for the Library of Congress rather than the link for American Memory (although we included that link in the description of the Library of Congress listing). The root sources, in most cases, will lead you to collections that are too numerous to list here. In fact, it would be impossible to list all sources and we know we may have missed some favorites.
As a warning, many states listed their collections as “archives” when, in reality, the sources contained secondary sources such as books and transcriptions rather than a digital image of the actual document. Still, these resources can be invaluable for the person who seeks sources on family histories or on regional histories. To that end, we offer links to localized collections first, categorized by state. Please note that the blog numbering is not meant to be a ranking, as each link list is ranked by alphabetical order within the following topics:
Localized Collections
The sites listed below focus on a certain state’s towns, cities, counties, or regions within a given state. If a state is missing from this list (such as Rhode Island), it’s because that state hasn’t begun to compile digital archives online. This does not mean that you cannot find information about Rhode Island on the Web. Try one of the multi-state collections following this category for your search. Or, you can look for a state’s physical archive Web site or local historical society online for more resources. RootsWeb also holds localized information, or you might try a directory like Cyndi’s List for more information.
Continued in article
Digital al Public Library --- http://dp.la/bookshelf?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Mystery#6528c50f9784d4792723b21aae169759
Digital Public Library of America --- Search the archives of the libraries of major universities in various nations
I find it easier to use than Google BooksGo to http://dp.la/
Click on Bookshelf
Search for a topic like "Accounting"
Note the thousands of hits from various top university libraries
You can filter by library, nation, language, time period, etc.
Scroll down to "By Subject"
Then click on "More"
Once you have a desired set of hits in the middle column you can select a given hit
Note the red up and down arrows to bring up other hitsOnce you expand a given hit note the options in the right hand column
To view the item click on View
Then click on Full View
Sometimes you can download all pages as image files (which you can save in PDF format)
Sometimes you have to click on a linkThis is a great way to search for older books and articles
It is perhaps as current as archives in the stacks of a library before latest acquisitions have been taken to the stacksSometimes you will be allowed to save a page but not an entire book or article. Don't give up right away. Enter the title into Google Advanced Search
http://www.google.ca/advanced_search
Sometimes you can find another server that will allow you to download the entire item. A common alternative is Gutenberg Press ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature searching alternatives --
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
On Broadway --- http://on-broadway.nyc
Question
Among the subset of students where each student was accepted in 2015 to every
Ivy League school, what does every one of these students have in common?
Hints:
The answer is not each student is an all-state athlete with s SAT score
above 2,100.
The answer is not that each student is African American.
Here's the link to the admissions essay of one of these students admitted
to every Ivy League school ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/college-essay-accepted-every-ivy-league-2015-3
I was not all that impressed that this was such an exceptional essay.
How to Mislead With Statistics
These 9 US colleges are more selective than some Ivy League schools ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/these-9-us-colleges-are-more-selective-than-some-ivy-league-schools-2015-3
Jensen Comment
There are various ways in which rejection rates can be misleading. The
first question to as is what proportion of the students who were accepted by
these nine US colleges would be rejected by Ivy League schools. My opinion is
that most would be rejected except for students admitted to exceedingly
prestigious universities like MIT and Stanford.
The College of the Ozarks is a unique institution where students work to pay their tuition. Most students in the Ivy League schools can either afford those schools or have significant financial aid. Rejection rates are high because millions of students would like to get a free college education.
Except for some of those selective 9 colleges like Stanford and MIT, the admission rates themselves are not comparable with Ivy League colleges and universities. Most top graduates do not even bother (and pay) to apply to the most prestigious universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT because they conclude ahead of time that probabilities of being rejected are so high that it's not worth the time, money, and stress to apply in the first place, particularly graduates who do not have very unique resumes in addition to nearly perfect SAT scores. White males and females who have not also done something remarkable other than ace the SAT examination generally know what it takes to be admitted to an Ivy League university.
An example of something unique might be to have gone to Haiti after a huge hurricane and helped to teach children of victims in tent camps. Ot it might help to have given piano lessons or math for three entire summers to children of mothers incarcerated in prison.
What it takes to be admitted to a very prestigious university ---
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=66225
Also see
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part I: Grades
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part II: PSAT, SAT, and ACT
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part III: AP, IB, and SAT II Exams
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part IV: Extracurriculars
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part V: Essays
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part VI: Recommendations
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part VII: Application Strategy
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part VIII: Interviews
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part IX: Checklist
What does it really take to get into the Ivy League? Part X: Epilogue
The Muse (free job hunting site) --- https://www.themuse.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on careers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"County Attorney Sues to Stop the Closure of Sweet Briar College," by
Andy Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/county-attorney-sues-to-stop-the-closure-of-sweet-briar-college/96435?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A county attorney in Virginia sued on Monday to block the closure of Sweet Briar College. In a complaint filed against the college on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the attorney said she was seeking the following actions:
- To enjoin the college from taking further steps to close.
- To bar the college from “using funds raised by charitable solicitations for purposes other than the solicited purposes or the general purposes of the college.”
- To have the college’s interim president and Board of Directors removed, and to have a special fiduciary appointed to take control of the college’s assets.
- To have a new president and board appointed.
The lawsuit makes two central allegations: first, that Sweet Briar violated Virginia’s charitable-solicitation law because it accepted charitable donations intended to bolster its educational mission as it prepared to close, thereby violating the donors’ intentions; and second, that the college violated Virginia’s Uniform Trust Code by acting contrary to the will of its founding documents.
The suit was filed in the Circuit Court of Amherst County, Va., where the college is located, by Ellen Bowyer, the county attorney.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This is like suing the owner of a horse that is dying in agony to keep the horse
from being put down until is dies of natural causes. Why make it suffer
hopelessly?
By way of another analogy suppose the county donated development land and tax breaks for a business venture that builds a factory. When the business venture fails can the county sue to force it to continue operating hopelessly? Probably not! In this case the lawyers who wrote the contracts most likely put in clauses allowing the business venture to close down and contractual clauses that determine what happens to the donated land in case the venture fails.
Most likely the business venture is a separate corporation that has the option of declaring bankruptcy. In that case a court takes over the business. The court can allow the business to carry on in bankruptcy while debts are reorganized, but the court cannot force a hemorrhaging business to continue to operate. That would be like keeping a dying horse hopelessly alive in agony.
I doubt whether the county attorney has jurisdiction to force Sweet Briar to keep hemorrhaging cash in a losing operation. Sweet Briar should declare bankruptcy and let a bankruptcy judge, not the county attorney, make the decisions about operations and/or liquidation of assets. The problem is that in bankruptcy the lawyers and accountants benefit the most like buzzards digging into a carcass of a dead horse.
Remember the movie entitled "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Shoot_Horses,_Don%27t_They%3F_%28film%29
The title itself emphasizes that laws allow society to willfully end the
suffering of animals but not people.
There's a gray zone of ethical and legal controversy when a hospital has a dying patient on life support that the family cannot afford. At the same time suppose the family refuses to allow removal of that life support. How long must the hospital continue to hemorrhaging its own cash keeping a charity patient alive? Eventually this becomes a matter for the courts to decide, but in the meantime the hospital may be losing an enormous amount of money.
Thoughts on Saving Sweet Briar
Consolation for Life's Darkest Hours: 7 Unusual and Wonderful Books that
Help Children Grieve and Make Sense of Death ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/23/best-childrens-books-death-grief-mourning/?mc_cid=bb97b591d0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Bob Jensen's links to free books for children ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Children
Remarkable Commencement Addresses by Nora Ephron, David Foster Wallace,
Ira Glass, and More ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/25/way-more-than-luck-commencement/?mc_cid=bb97b591d0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
We live in an era where religion is, thank "god," increasingly being displaced by culture and secular thought. And yet, secular education and the arts have a great deal to learn from religion as a mode of seeding values of good-personhood.
Continued in article
Question
What does a Boeing 787-10 cost and why is it such a high price?
Answer
In round numbers $300 million for reasons outlined at
http://247wallst.com/aerospace-defense/2015/03/28/why-a-boeing-787-10-costs-298-million/
March 29, 2015 reply from Tom Sellin
Bob, When I used to teach management accounting, which is now a long time ago, I used to begin the class discussion of cost allocation with the following question to the class: How would you measure the cost of the first Boeing 747 produced? (Attribution: John Shank used to ask this question in class also, and I took the idea from him.)
Nowadays, I teach accounting theory, and I will definitely use the article you have provided as the basis for a class discussion. I think we’ll be able to have a lively discussion about "program accounting.”
Thanks,
Tom
March 30m 2015 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Tom,
An interesting point to build on with students is that this airliner is made 50% "composites." Read that as meaning "rare earth composites." The US Department of Energy claims demand for rare earth materials increased over 60% since 2003.
Rare Earth Elements That Were Added to the Periodic Table --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
I really learned a lot from a recent CBS Sixty Minutes module on rare earth elements and their composites. Most of all I learned that rare earth elements in general are not all that rare. They can be found in a lot of places all over the world.
The problem is that they are usually embedded in only small amounts among other earth components such that it becomes both difficult and expensive to extract them with a lot of mining costs and environmental externalities. This has tended to give China a near-monopoly on their mining due to relatively low labor costs and low environmental regulations.
An enormous problem is that the USA military and airline industry are now highly dependent upon China --- a nation willing to exploit its monopolies for economic and political purposes. In times of dire emergencies such as WW III the USA could turn elsewhere for supply, but expanding mining operations elsewhere is both costly and subject to very long delays. There is at least on large mining operation in the USA but it is a drop in the bucket compared to output needs for both the USA and the rest of the world.
The outstanding Sixty Minutes link is at
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rare-earth-elements-not-so-rare-after-all/A blog post by 60 Minutes' Kevin Livelli, one of the producers who reported on rare earth elements this week:
Not long ago, if you had stopped me on the street and told me there was an interesting 60 Minutes story to be told about the lanthanide series of rare earth elements, I would have said you're crazy.
To begin with, who's ever heard of them? And even if you did manage to find them on that obscure bottom rung of the Periodic Table, you'd hit another hurdle - how to pronounce them. They have names only Dr. Seuss might have dreamt up. There's terbium, dysprosium, ytterbium, and lutetium. Neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum. Not exactly the kind of thing that rolls off the tongue.
"...perhaps a little dose of pop culture might spark the imagination. After all, China's hold on rare earth elements is a running theme in 'House of Cards'..."
In this case, I stumbled on rare earths by accident. While doing some other reporting, I found that they were on the mind of the Director of National Intelligence, General James Clapper. He mentioned them in congressional testimony, as part of an annual "Worldwide Threat Assessment" -- a litany of threats to national security.
Clapper told Congress that rare earths are "essential" to the 21st century global economy, including the burgeoning green tech industry, and he emphasized that they are "critical" to advanced defense systems. That was intriguing, I thought. But there was more. One country - China - has been holding a "commanding monopoly" over world supply, at the time about 95 percent of the market, and things weren't going to change soon.
The light bulb went off. Here was something that touched people's lives not just in their everyday use (televisions, smartphones, tablets, computers, stereos, cars), but also had implications for U.S. energy security (hybrids, wind turbines, energy efficient lighting) and national security as well (precision-guided missiles, radar, night-vision goggles, lasers, satellites, fighter jets, submarines).
A little more digging revealed that the U.S. had actually once led the world in the rare earth industry and pioneered many of its common applications before ceding that dominance to China. I wanted to know how that happened and what it all meant. Here were good questions for our 60 Minutes story. My colleague, Graham Messick, and I set out to find the answers.
In doing so, we quickly found reporting on rare earths to be especially challenging. To begin with, we had to learn how rare earths are different from other metals and minerals - like iron or copper. What makes them rare? Turns out, as Lesley Stahl explains in our story, the name is a bit of a misnomer. Rare earths occur naturally in lots of places, but only a few have concentrations high enough to mine. You might think, then, that if the U.S. had more rare earth mines, the problem would be solved. You'd be wrong.
Even if you were to luck out and find a mine like the one owned by Molycorp out in Mountain Pass, California, and get it up and running, your work isn't finished. Unlike other metals, rare earths don't go to market in raw form. They have to be separated from one another and many are turned into metals first, which means they must be processed to exact specifications (sometimes up to several "9's" as in 99.9999 percent purity) that take into consideration their intended end use. And that is very hard to do. So to be successful in the rare earth business, you need to have not just access to the right rocks, but also access to the right know-how that will allow you to turn those rocks into something useful. That complex combination is what makes them "rare."
Another challenge in reporting on rare earths is understanding the supply chain. Rare earths feed the high tech industry around the world, and supply chains from mine to manufacturer can include as many as 12 stops along the way. So, for example, if you were to follow the dozen or so different rare earths metals that experts say are in each iPhone all the way back to the mine, you'd have an extremely hard time doing so. Same goes for the rare earths used in the F-35. The lengthy supply chains get very complicated very quickly.
What's more, lasting success in the rare earth industry, I learned, only comes when the supply chain companies choose to operate close to the source of rare earths and cultivate a symbiotic relationship. Today, China is on top not only because it has the biggest mine and the most know-how, but also as a result of having drawn manufacturers from around the world that use rare earths (i.e. supply chain customers) to Asia.
To help us understand how rare earths impact our lives and to show us where they can actually be found inside our gadgets, we interviewed Ed Richardson, the president of the U.S. Magnetic Materials Association, a trade group that represents American rare earth magnet makers.
In the video player above, you'll see that Richardson came to the interview with what looked at first to be a bunch of electronic junk. It turns out it really was his old stuff - an old cell phone, ear buds, and a toy helicopter -- but then we watched him dissect each object to reveal the rare earth magnets inside.
Along the way, he taught us a few other cool facts about rare earths. For instance, they can hold a thousand times their own weight, and they are a key technology behind the miniaturization of modern gadgets, enabling them to be smaller and lighter.
If, after watching our 60 Minutes story, you still think rare earths bring up too many bad high school chemistry memories, perhaps a little dose of pop culture might spark the imagination.
After all, China's hold on rare earth elements is a running theme in "House of Cards" (think of Raymond Tusk's push for "Samarium 149"). And defending the only U.S. rare earth mine is Jason Bourne's mission in "The Bourne Dominion." There's even a way, if you like to take matters into your own hands, to fight for global control of the rare earth supply in the video game "Call of Duty: Black Ops II." I guess the Periodic Table isn't so boring after all.
Jensen Comment
Rare earth minerals accounting presents wide-ranging research opportunities in
at least two dimensions. One is the dimension of financial risks to the buyers
and produces of rare earth minerals. The other dimension is environmental
accounting in general.
It would appear disclosure guidance to date leaves a lot to be desired.
Making Rare Earth Element Disclosure Transparent and Compliant ---
http://post.nyssa.org/nyssa-news/2011/10/making-rare-earth-element-disclosure-transparent-and-compliant.html
For some links on this matter go to the SEC homepage ---
http://www.sec.gov/
Then conduct a search for "rare earth"
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 30, 2015
It’s really here: TV for babies
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tv-for-babies-born-of-a-reality-1427671277?mod=djemCFO_h
Most TV networks don’t target viewers any younger than four years old, but one channel is testing that boundary. BabyFirstTV aims its programming at children as young as six months, and it now reaches 50 million households.
Jensen Comment
Sounds like a diaper-filling idea to me.
"Stanford's Most Popular Class Isn't Computer Science—It's Something Much
More Important: It's called "Designing Your Life," a course that's part
throwback, part foreshadowing of higher education's future," by Ainsley
O'Connell, Fast Company, March 2015 --- |
http://www.fastcompany.com/3044043/most-creative-people/stanfords-most-popular-class-isnt-computer-science-its-something-much-m
Before Kanyi Maqubela became an investment partner at the Collaborative Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on social enterprises, he was a typical Stanford student in need of career guidance. He was working with startups, studying philosophy, dating someone special—and feeling overwhelmed.
Enter "Designing Your Life," a new and wildly popular course for Stanford juniors and seniors that is grounded in design thinking concepts and techniques. The course’s lessons gave him the perspective he needed to navigate decisions about life and work post graduation.
"It really helped me understand what the concept of vocation was," he says. "I had thought of it either as a narrowly religious concept or for a specific job. But it’s this feeling that I have true agency over my work, because I know what I stand for and I have tools to fix the things that I encounter in my life."
He felt liberated, he says, by how the course positioned the idea of career success: "Take your work personally, but it’s not your person."
At the time, "Designing Your Life" was still an experiment, spearheaded by Bill Burnett, executive director of Stanford's design program, and Dave Evans, who led the design of Apple's first mouse and co-founded Electronic Arts before embarking on a second career in the classroom. They launched the course in spring 2010.
"It took off in just about a heartbeat," says Evans, who oversees instruction with help from guest lecturers and a small army of student volunteers, who lead discussion groups. Today, 17% of seniors enroll in "Designing Your Life," and many more vie for the limited seats in each section. "We’ve had students literally teach the class on the side to their friends who weren’t enrolled," he says.
Evans divides the course into two parts: first, he says, "We reframe the problem. That’s where dysfunctional beliefs get blown-up. Then we give them a set of tools and ideas to take steps to start building the way forward." Each course section convenes for one quarter, two hours per week.
Here's what they learn: gratitude; generosity; self-awareness; adaptability. All reinforced by design thinking-based tools, from a daily gratitude journal to a deck of cards featuring problem-solving techniques. In lieu of a final exam—the class is pass/fail—students present three radically different five-year plans to their peers. Alumni say they still refer back their "odyssey plans"—a term that Evans coined—and revise them as their lives and careers progress.
Maqubela eventually found out that he had played a role in his now-wife's odyssey plan—but at the time, "she wouldn’t show it to me." Today, they still reference "Designing Your Life" when making decisions together. "Building your life around somebody else, and orienting around love as part of one’s career, is part of the class," he says.
For years, students have resisted this kind of overlap between university-sponsored programs and their private lives. After the Civil War, mandatory chapel disappeared, academics rather than ministers became university presidents, and courses like "Evidences of Christianity" vanished from the required curriculum.
"Universities didn’t think they would necessarily be abandoning the moral aspects of students’ education," says Julie Reuben, a Harvard professor who studies the history of American higher education. "Instead, they believed that freely chosen activities were more powerful than externally forced activities."
But, to the chagrin of university leaders, many students abandoned religion and instead embraced extracurricular outlets like athletics and fraternities, which in their own way took on the function of character-formation. In the mid-20th century, the university’s role as authority figure became even more problematic and contested, as protesters dismantled the Ivory Tower’s paternalistic structures and paved the way for increasingly diverse and inclusive institutions. The success of "Designing Your Life" suggests that students may be ready to revisit that earlier university model, with conditions—conditions that design thinking is perhaps well-suited to address.
"In the early academy it was all about moral formation. These days you can’t do that," Burnett says. "Design doesn’t speak to ethics and spirituality and all those things, but they work within its frameworks. Our only bias is, hey, we can make the future better."
The goal of "Designing Your Life," he says, is to change higher education—not by returning to religion, but by reintroducing methods of "forming you into the person that will go out into the world, effect change, and be a leader."
That message resonates with Stanford students. They are filled with a sense of purpose and determined to solve the world's problems—but ill-equipped, in our secular society, to make sense of what they value.
Karen Wright, a management science major with a wry sense of humor, says the odyssey plan exercise better prepared her to live out her commitment to making a difference in the world. "I felt a lot of pressure before the odyssey plan: I need to pick a career," says the California native. At the course end, she presented three starkly divergent scenarios to Evans and her classmates: working in health care and going to business school; joining the Peace Corps; and competing on American Ninja Warrior (surely an odyssey-plan first). "Your eyes light up when you talk about the Peace Corps," her classmates said—so for now, she's focused on door number 2.
What's more, her parents are more supportive than they were before; Wright presented her odyssey plan to them, too. "My family is all from one area," she says. "Ultimately, after graduation, I plan on not being around. I think I was able to convey to my parents more effectively why I want to travel and what I want to get out of it."
As Burnett sees it, the course is also a neat fit for the mercurial economy that students are graduating into. "The thing that’s true about design problems is that you don’t know what the solution is going to look like. You don’t start with the problem; you start with people," he says. "You create a point of view about what a better consumer experience would be. Then you prototype, you test, and you constantly change your point of view. That’s perfect for your 'Designing Your Life.' You can’t know the future, but you can know what’s available and you can prototype different versions of the you that you might become."
Continued in article
"Enrollment Woes Continue for U. of Phoenix," Inside Higher Ed,
March 26, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/03/26/enrollment-woes-continue-u-phoenix
Jensen Comment
An enormous problem for all online programs from for-profit university is the
rise in the popularity and quality of online degree programs from major
state-supported universities. Search for over 1,200 online programs at
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education
This is my recommended search engine for online degree
programs.
Note the links to US News rankings of these online programs at the above site.
Don't trust those online search programs sponsored by for-profit universities because they exclude the affordable and higher quality online programs from major non-profit universities. Almost daily I get requests to link to one of these misleading search programs. I think people get paid if they can get Webmasters like me to link to these search programs (generally it is the same misleading search program under a different name).
Bob Jensen's threads for online education and training programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
"Stanford Reports ‘Troubling’ Increase in Cheating," by Andy Thomason,
Chronicle of Higher Education, March 26, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/stanford-reports-troubling-increase-in-cheating?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Stanford University is investigating a “troubling” increase in cheating by students, Bloomberg News reports. The college’s provost, John W. Etchemendy, wrote in a letter to the faculty that the Office of Community Standards had recently received an uncommonly high number of reports of academic dishonesty. “With the ease of technology and widespread sharing that is now part of a collaborative culture,” he wrote, “students need to recognize and be reminded that it is dishonest to appropriate the work of others.” Mr. Etchemendy asked faculty members to more clearly define collaboration to their students.
Jensen Comment
There are various complicated reason academic cheating in on the rise before
college and during college. The main cause is most likely the importance of
grade point averages for admission to college, admission to graduate school, and
landing job interviews. In 1940 the average grade at Harvard was a C grade, and
a graduate with 2.50 gpa was slightly above average. In the 21st Century 80% of
Harvard students graduate cum laude. A graduate with a 2.50 gpa is
probably the dumbest guy in the class ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
Grade inflation is one of the causes of cheating. Over 120 students in a
political science class at Harvard University were caught plagiarizing in a
course where the instructor gave A grades for the course to any student made an
honest effort, any effort. There is no incentive to do quality work when there's
no reward for quality work. In fact, why why not just cut and paste an
assignment and turn it in for a A grade? When evidence of cheating leaked our
Harvard expelled over half the cheaters. Why the other half of the cheaters were
allowed to remain at Harvard is still a mystery ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
My point is that the main cause of cheating is grade inflation.
Average students who might otherwise get a B grade are desperate for a higher grade in the 21st Century where 3.00 gpa performance is well below average. Students who are assured of an A grade with minimal effort are motivated to cheat in order to free up more time for their harder courses.
The key to getting students to work harder in a course is to limit the percentage of students who get top grades. But this kills teaching evaluations, and teaching evaluations these days affects performance evaluations and even tenure.
"Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review
scandal," by Fred Barbash, Washington Post, March 27, 2015 ---
Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to-retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/
A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications.
The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals. A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it’s not “a China problem. We get a lot of robust research of China. We see this as a broader problem of how scientists are judged.”
Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said.
Peer review is the vetting process designed to guarantee the integrity of scholarly articles by having experts read them and approve or disapprove them for publication. With researchers increasingly desperate for recognition, citations and professional advancement, the whole peer-review system has come under scrutiny in recent years for a host of flaws and irregularities, ranging from lackadaisical reviewing to cronyism to outright fraud.
Last year, in one of the most publicized scandals, the Journal of Vibration and Control, in the field of acoustics, retracted 60 articles at one time due to what it called a “peer review and citation ring” in which the reviews, mostly from scholars in Taiwan, were submitted by people using fake names.
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Journalism Ethics and Standards --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards
The upcoming Columbia UniversityJournalism School
review "offered a blunt indictment of Rolling Stone's reporting (UVA
Phony Rape Scandal) and its violation of journalism
ethics," according to Byers. He reports that Rolling Stone will publish a
significant portion of the external review next month.
http://www.businessinsider.com/review-of-controversial-uva-rape-article-reportedly-skewers-rolling-stone-2015-3#ixzz3VchOzyyh
Jensen Comment
This is stinking bull poop. Sure stimulating the economy is more important than
having retirees and future retirees earn safe interest returns on their savings,
but Bernankie should not lie outright to seniors. He did indeed throw them under
the bus in favor of economic stimulus and Quantitative Easing ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
Ben Bernankie should not lie to us when we're looking up at the bottom of the bus while the capital saved for retirement in confiscated just trying to stay alive before our ticket is punched. I was lucky! In 2006 near my retirement date I negotiated a relatively high lifetime fixed interest rate on my TIAA lifetime annuities.
University employees today are screwed when trying to negotiate safe fixed-rate lifetime annuities under the Bernanke bus with no relief in sight for earning decent retirement returns on their savings balances. The only alternative from under the Bernanke bus is for retirees to take on variable returns based upon fluctuating stock market or real estate values with much higher financial risk and variability than a lifetime of guaranteed monthly lifetime returns.
Bernankie says seniors should just lie there and enjoy QE's miserable low-risk returns on their savings.
Bull Poop
"BERNANKE: We didn't throw seniors under the bus," by Ben Bernanke,
The Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/ben-bernanke-heres-why-interest-rates-are-so-low-2015-3
Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
"How Chicago has used Financial Engineering to Paper over its Massive
Budget Gap," by Kristi Culpepper, Medium, March 26, 2015 ---
https://medium.com/@munilass/how-chicago-has-used-financial-engineering-to-paper-over-its-massive-budget-gap-872d911dd363
Chicago made headlines at the end of February after Moody’s downgraded the city’s general obligation bond rating to Baa2. Moody’s has cut Chicago’s rating five notches in less than two years. This downgrade, however, placed the city’s credit below the termination triggers on some of its outstanding interest rate swaps. The city has been working to renegotiate the terms of those contracts with its counterparties.
If Chicago’s general obligation rating falls below investment grade, the city’s credit deterioration will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The city risks nearly $400 million of swap termination payments and the acceleration of its $294 million of outstanding short-term debt.
Unsurprisingly, some of Chicago’s bonds are already trading at junk levels. Chicago CUSIPs are listed here.
That said, the rating agencies and most other market participants still appear to be light years away from understanding the true scope of Chicago’s financial problems. The city has a very — well, let’s just call it unconventional — approach to borrowing money and probably should not be considered investment grade.
Some budget history
In order for you to follow my discussion of Chicago’s borrowing shenanigans, it is necessary to understand the fiscal machinery behind its bond issues. Please be patient with me here. This story will blow your mind shortly.
Chicago’s budget is divided into seven different fund classifications, but only three funds are relevant to our narrative: the Corporate Fund, Property Tax Fund, and Reserve Funds.
The Corporate Fund is Chicago’s general operating fund. This fund is used to pay for essential government services and activities (e.g. public safety and trash collection). Corporate Fund revenues are derived from a wide variety of sources, including: (1) local tax revenue from utility, transaction, transportation, recreation, and business taxes; (2) intergovernmental tax revenue, which represents the city’s share of the state’s sales and use taxes, income tax, and personal property replacement tax; and (3) non-tax revenue from fees, fines, asset sales, and leases.
Chicago’s property tax revenues do not go into its general operating fund. These revenues go into a Property Tax Fund, which is used to make debt service payments on the city’s general obligation bonds; make required employee pension contributions; and (to a minor extent) fund the library system. The fund also includes tax increment financing revenues that flow to projects in designated TIF districts.
The city used some of the proceeds from long-term leases of city assets to establish Reserve Funds. The Chicago Skyway reserve funds were established in 2005 in the amount of $975 million. The Metered Parking System reserve funds were established in 2009 in the amount of $1.15 billion. Of these funds, $475 million of the Skyway reserves were designated for budgetary uses. What remained was $500 million for the Skyway; $400 million for the Metered Parking System; and $326 million for a budget stabilization fund.
There has been a structural gap in Chicago’s Corporate Fund budget since at least 2003. Although most governments are required to balance their budgets on a cash flow basis each fiscal year, a structural budget gap can arise when recurring expenditures are greater than recurring revenues. Some of the city’s offering documents suggest that this gap is a legacy of the last economic downturn, but in reality the gap pre-dates the economic downturn by several years. The impact of economic downturns on tax collections tends to have a considerable lag anyway.
So, Chicago’s structural budget gap is a political, not economic, creature. Rather than cut expenditures to a level that could be supported by recurring revenues, the city mostly used non-recurring resources to fill the gap from one fiscal year to the next. This is not surprising. Most of Chicago’s Corporate Fund budget goes to salaries and benefits for its employees, and 90% of the city’s employees belong to around 40 different unions. Attempts to adjust expenditures tend to have well organized opposition.
Between fund transfers and drawing down its reserves, the city blew through its financial cushioning quickly. The $326 million budget stabilization fund was exhausted by 2010. From 2009 to 2011, the city used $320 million from the Metered Parking Reserves. The city’s budget gap was at its widest in the wake of the last economic downturn, at over $600 million.
Chicago’s dysfunctional debt program
Now things start to get interesting. Transfers from reserves and other funds have not been the only means Chicago officials (across administrations) have devised to subsidize the city’s Corporate Fund. The city has effectively been using its general obligation bond offerings and interest rate derivatives to accomplish the same thing.
State and local governments typically use the proceeds from their bond offerings to construct or renovate public buildings and infrastructure. These are projects that have long useful lives and will benefit residents for generations.
Dating back to at least 2003, however, Chicago has been issuing long-term tax-exempt and taxable bonds to:
(1) Roll over short-term debt used as working capital;
(2) Pay for maintenance activities that would otherwise be paid from the Corporate Fund;
(3) Pay for judgments and settlements that would otherwise be paid from the Corporate Fund, including wage increases and retroactive pension contributions for its employees; and
(4) Provide discretionary funds to each of the city’s 50 aldermen to pay for activities in their own districts.
The magnitude of tax-exempt bond proceeds used for judgments and settlements over this period is staggering. The Chicago Tribune estimated it at approximately $400 million:
In 2002, for example, the city used tax-exempt bonds to pay an arbitration award involving the Fraternal Order of Police. Rank-and-file officers rejected a city contract offer in 2001, but an arbitrator ruled in favor of the city’s wage proposal a year later.The deal included raises of 2 to 4 percent a year, to be applied retroactively. In bond documents, city officials deemed the back pay the city owed an extraordinary expense and paid $164 million of it with tax-exempt bonds.The city ultimately will need to pay bondholders $280 million to cover the loan …Bonds also ended up covering the $28 million a jury awarded to Joseph Regaldo in 1999. The jury found that, years earlier, a Chicago police officer had beaten him in the back of the head and neck with a blunt object, which ripped apart an artery and cut off the blood supply to his brain. The injuries left Regaldo unable to walk, talk or care for himself.The judgment won’t be paid off until 2019 at the earliest; by then, the total cost will have grown to $53 million.City officials eventually switched to paying judgments with taxable bonds, which are even more costly in the long run.That is, until 2012:
About $54 million from a tax-exempt bond helped cover a legal judgment awarded to African-Americans who were denied a chance to become firefighters by a 1990s entrance exam that favored white applicants. An additional $8 million in tax-exempt bond money went to pay legal fees related to the case, records show.By using bond money, the city created an irony for many of those awarded damages, as their future property taxes will help pay interest on the debt. In 2033, when the city starts paying down the $54 million, interest will have more than doubled the total cost.Stop and let that sink in for a moment. That police brutality case? Wage increases negotiated with labor unions? Not just financed, but financed with long-term debt.
So why haven’t the city’s 50 aldermen protested the use of bond proceeds for these purposes? It probably has something to do with the “Aldermen’s Menu,” which allows the aldermen to use a portion of the proceeds from the city’s general obligation bond issues to pay for whatever they want for their district.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting and
auditing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting
From the Scout Report on March 27, 2015
Tails --- https://tails.boum.org/
For those readers concerned with Internet privacy, Tails will be a welcome innovation. The free, open-source, live operating system can be used from almost any computer. It runs through Tor, an anonymity network of over 6,000 users from around the world, so that readers can surf the web anonymously without sites picking up their IP addresses or other revealing information. The service makes sure sites leave no trace on your computer, and can also be used to encrypt files, emails, and instant messaging. Downloading the program is as easy as clicking a button.
Mailpile --- https://www.mailpile.is/
Mailpile provides a "secure way to read, write, and organize piles and piles of email." The service is free and easily downloadable to any computer. Searching is quick and easy; the platform is designed to be fast, even on slow computers. All of your mail is encrypted on your computer so you control your information. The encryption is built in, rather than an afterthought like some other email platforms. In addition, unlike web based email companies, there are no ads.
The Risks of Being Lonely
Loneliness and social isolation linked to early mortality
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290934.php
Loneliness Can Be Deadly, Study Says
http://www.youthhealthmag.com/articles/11844/20150317/ loneliness-can-be-deadly- study-says.htm
Why Loneliness Is A Growing Public Health Concern — And What We Can Do
About It
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/21/science-loneliness_ n_6864066.html?utm_hp_ref= science
You Asked: How Many Friends Do I Need?
http://time.com/3748090/friends-social-health/?iid= time_speed
Researchers Study "Super Seniors" for Clues to their Longevity
http://canadajournal.net/health/researchers-study- super-seniors-clues-longevity- 23991-2015/
Feeling Lonely Tonight? 7 Strategies to Combat Loneliness
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/11/08/feeling- lonely-tonight-7-strategies- to-combat-loneliness/
From the Scout Report on April 3, 2015
ownCloud --- https://owncloud.org/
For readers who know about Dropbox, ownCloud will be an intuitive find. The services are similar. They both provide online storage space for documents, graphics, mp3s, and other files. They both make sharing files with friends and coworkers simple and allow access from mobile devices and multiple desktops. However, more sophisticated users may prefer ownCloud for at least two reasons. First, as an open-source system, it is more flexible, so that users can adjust the services to their needs. Second, while Dropbox charges for extra storage, users can store huge amounts of data on ownCloud for free. The only catch is that users will need to run and install ownCloud on their own server. This is relatively simple for those who have a website and a little knowledge of hosting.
Threadable --- https://threadable.com/
Anyone who has engaged in group conversations by email knows how unmanageable the threads can become. Threadable seeks to help contain the sprawl of back-and-forth messaging while maintaing the convenience of the traditional mailing list. Sign up for the service is free and easy. Readers simply enter their email address and a password. Then they enter the email addresses of those colleagues and friends they wish to include in their mailing lists. Threadable then opens to a refreshingly simple platform, where users may start conversations and respond to the conversations of others. There are several clever functions that make Threadable helpful. First, users can subdivide discussions, so that some members may have side conversations without filling up the inboxes of others. Second, users may "mute" conversations that don't involve them, allowing for future messages from that thread to skip their inbox. Third, email threads can be turned into actionable tasks that can be efficiently checked off upon completion. For boards, classes, work assignments, or other other groups Threadable is a free, workable list management solution
A STEM Tradition in the Making: White House Hosts its Fifth-Ever
Science Fair Supergirls Conquer Obama at White House Science Fair
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/ supergirls-conquer-obama- white-house-science-fair- n328661
The coolest inventions in this year's White House science fair
http://qz.com/368958/the-coolest-inventions-in-this- years-white-house-science- fair/
White House Science Fair celebrates student research
http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2015/03/white- house-science-fair-celebrates- student-research
The 2015 White House Science Fair
https://www.whitehouse.gov/science-fair
This Day in History: Celebrating Women in STEM at The White House Science
Fair
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/03/23/day-history- celebrating-women-stem-white- house-science-fair
Videos & Photos: Obama Tours Students' Projects at the Science Fair
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/23/obama-tours- students-projects-at-science- fair/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
From the Chronicle of Higher Education
Search for Job Openings in Higher Education ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/job_search/new
Higher Education Recruitment Consortium --- http://www.hercjobs.org/
"Stanford's Most Popular Class Isn't Computer Science—It's Something Much
More Important: It's called "Designing Your Life," a course that's part
throwback, part foreshadowing of higher education's future," by Ainsley
O'Connell, Fast Company, March 2015 --- |
http://www.fastcompany.com/3044043/most-creative-people/stanfords-most-popular-class-isnt-computer-science-its-something-much-m
250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives --- http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives/
Common Core State Standards Initiative --- http://www.corestandards.org
National Science Foundation YouTube Channel --- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRuCgmzhczsm89jzPtN2Wuw
Society for the Teaching of Psychology --- http://teachpsych.org
On Broadway --- http://on-broadway.nyc
Consolation for Life's Darkest Hours: 7 Unusual and Wonderful Books that Help
Children Grieve and Make Sense of Death ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/23/best-childrens-books-death-grief-mourning/?mc_cid=bb97b591d0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Isaac Newton Creates a List of His 57 Sins (Circa 1662) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/isaac-newton-creates-a-list-of-his-47-sins-circa-1662.html
Bob Jensen's links to free books for children ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Children
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
What Ignited Richard Feynman’s Love of Science Revealed in an
Animated Video ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/what-ignited-richard-feynmans-love-of-science-revealed-in-an-animated-video.html
The Big Snoop: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
of Terrorists (Brookings Institution papers on national security
and terrorism) ---
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2014/big-snoop
Recent Science News ---
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/
Physics of the Universe --- http://www.bnl.gov/science/physics.php
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space --- http://www.iss-casis.org/
Echo (history of science and technology) --- http://echo.gmu.edu
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory --- http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu
Windows to the Universe: The Sun --- http://www.windows2universe.org/sun/sun.html
Mars for Educators --- http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/participate/marsforeducators/
National Science Foundation YouTube Channel --- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRuCgmzhczsm89jzPtN2Wuw
Texas Tech University: National Wind Institute --- http://www.depts.ttu.edu/nwi/
Photographing the World’s Vanishing Glaciers ---
http://www.newsweek.com/photographing-worlds-vanishing-glaciers-317130
Moorea Coral Reef LTER --- http://mcr.lternet.edu
All the World's Volcano Webcams ---
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/worlds-volcano-webcams/
Landscape Architecture Magazine --- http://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/
From the Scout Report on April 3, 2015
A STEM Tradition in the Making: White House Hosts its Fifth-Ever
Science Fair Supergirls Conquer Obama at White House Science Fair
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/ supergirls-conquer-obama- white-house-science-fair- n328661
The coolest inventions in this year's White House science fair
http://qz.com/368958/the-coolest-inventions-in-this- years-white-house-science- fair/
White House Science Fair celebrates student research
http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2015/03/white- house-science-fair-celebrates- student-research
The 2015 White House Science Fair
https://www.whitehouse.gov/science-fair
This Day in History: Celebrating Women in STEM at The White House Science
Fair
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/03/23/day-history- celebrating-women-stem-white- house-science-fair
Videos & Photos: Obama Tours Students' Projects at the Science Fair
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/23/obama-tours- students-projects-at-science- fair/
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
Frontiers of Psychology --- http://www.frontiersin.org/Psychology
Burnout Research --- http://www.journals.elsevier.com/burnout-research/
American Psychological Association Help Center --- http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/index.aspx
Visualising China --- http://visualisingchina.net
Council of Canadian Academies --- http://scienceadvice.ca
The Visionary Thought of Marshall McLuhan, Introduced and Demystified by Tom
Wolfe ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14c6fb9b32f00f0f
Consolation for Life's Darkest Hours: 7 Unusual and Wonderful Books that Help
Children Grieve and Make Sense of Death ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/23/best-childrens-books-death-grief-mourning/?mc_cid=bb97b591d0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Society for the Teaching of Psychology --- http://teachpsych.org
Eurasia Outlook - Carnegie Moscow Center --- http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/
Cato Policy Report --- http://www.cato.org/policy-report
The Muse (free job hunting site) --- https://www.themuse.com/
PandoDaily (liberalism in Silicon Valley, including environment and feminism) --- http://pando.com/
Syriaca.org: The Syriac Gazetteer (geography) --- http://syriaca.org/geo/index.html
Download Images From Rad American Women A-Z: A New Picture Book on the
History of Feminism ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-images-from-rad-american-women-a-z.html
From the Scout Report on March 27, 2015
The Risks of Being Lonely
Loneliness and social isolation linked to early mortality
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290934.php
Loneliness Can Be Deadly, Study Says
http://www.youthhealthmag.com/articles/11844/20150317/ loneliness-can-be-deadly- study-says.htm
Why Loneliness Is A Growing Public Health Concern — And What We Can Do
About It
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/21/science-loneliness_ n_6864066.html?utm_hp_ref= science
You Asked: How Many Friends Do I Need?
http://time.com/3748090/friends-social-health/?iid= time_speed
Researchers Study "Super Seniors" for Clues to their Longevity
http://canadajournal.net/health/researchers-study- super-seniors-clues-longevity- 23991-2015/
Feeling Lonely Tonight? 7 Strategies to Combat Loneliness
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/11/08/feeling- lonely-tonight-7-strategies- to-combat-loneliness/
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
How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Philosophy Animations on Ethics
Narrated by Harry Shearer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/how-can-i-know-right-from-wrong-watch-philosophy-animations-on-ethics.html
The Supreme Court Database --- http://scdb.wustl.edu/index.php
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
History Tutorials
Download 100,000 Art Images in High-Resolution from The Getty ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-100000-art-images-in-high-resolution-from-the-getty.html
Hysterical Literature: Art & Sexuality Collide in Readings of Whitman,
Emerson & Other Greats (NSFW) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/hysterical-literature.html
Circulating Now (history of medicine) --- http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/
Images from the History of Medicine ---
http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (funding for humanities) --- http://www.mellon.org
Alaska's Digital Archives: Alaska Native & Culture Pathway --- http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm/pathway
Arabic Fiction --- http://www.arabicfiction.org
Grand Teton National Park --- http://www.grandtetonpark.org/
Eurasia Outlook - Carnegie Moscow Center --- http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/
Visualising China --- http://visualisingchina.net
Syriaca.org: The Syriac Gazetteer (geography) --- http://syriaca.org/geo/index.html
National Geographic: Maps --- http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps
National Geographic-Adventure --- http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/
Place, Evolution, and Rock Art Heritage Unit (Australian Rock Art) ---
http://www.griffith.edu.au/humanities-languages/school-humanities/research/perahu
Guernica: Alain Resnais’ Haunting Film on Picasso’s Painting & the Crimes of
the Spanish Civil War ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/guernica-alain-resnais-haunting-film-on-picassos-painting-the-crimes-of-the-spanish-civil-war.html
Alabama History Online --- http://www.archives.alabama.gov/aho.html
Download Images From Rad American Women A-Z: A New Picture Book on the
History of Feminism ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/download-images-from-rad-american-women-a-z.html
Langston Hughes Presents the History of Jazz in an Illustrated Children’s
Book (1955) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/langston-hughes-presents-the-history-of-jazz-i.html
Remarkable Commencement Addresses by Nora Ephron, David Foster Wallace, Ira
Glass, and More ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/25/way-more-than-luck-commencement/?mc_cid=bb97b591d0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
We live in an era where religion is, thank "god," increasingly being displaced by culture and secular thought. And yet, secular education and the arts have a great deal to learn from religion as a mode of seeding values of good-personhood.
Continued in article
On Broadway --- http://on-broadway.nyc
The History & Legacy of Magna Carta Explained in Animated Videos by Monty
Python’s Terry Jones ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/an-animated-history-of-magna-carta.html
An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breathtaking Photos of Historic New York
City ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/an-online-gallery-of-over-900000-breathtaking-photos-of-historic-new-york-city.html
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Music Tutorials
On Broadway --- http://on-broadway.nyc
All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Performances Online: Watch the
First 53 Recordings and the St. Matthew Passion ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/all-of-bach-putting-performances-of-1080-bachs-works-online.html
Anderson & Roe's Personalized Bach ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2015/02/17/384060300/anderson-roes-personalized-bach
Langston Hughes Presents the History of Jazz in an Illustrated Children’s
Book (1955) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/langston-hughes-presents-the-history-of-jazz-i.html
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
ENGL Professional Writing Program (University of Maryland) ---
http://lib.guides.umd.edu/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/
March 26, 2015
March 28, 2015
March 30, 2015
March 31, 2015
April 2, 2015
April 3, 2015
April 4, 2013
April 6, 2015
April 7, 2015
April 8, 2015
April 9, 2015
April 10, 2015
April 13, 2015
Powassan Virus ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powassan_virus
A Virus Spread by Ticks Could Be More Dangerous Than Lyme Disease ---
http://time.com/3817208/powassan-virus-ticks-lyme-disease/?xid=newsletter-brief
But not yet in great numbers relative to Lyme disease
Illustrations of Biased, Potentially Biased, and Probably Unbiased Medical Research (in this case for prostate swelling or BPH)
Probably Unbiased --- http://www.webmd.com/men/prostate-enlargement-bph/enlarged-prostate-supplements-remedies
Probably Biased But Useful in Referencing Frauds --- http://best-prostate-formulas.com/
Probably Highly Biased and Almost Certainly Misleading --- See any of
the Fake Review Sites Listed at
http://best-prostate-formulas.com/
Jensen Comment
I don't trust Amazon reviews for most drug items unless they are consistent with
respected reviews such as those from WebMD. Reviews are even more risky for drug
items on Amazon because, unlike reviews of books, the sellers are more apt to
place negative reviews of the products of their competitors.
This, however, is only my opinion about Amazon reviews not backed by fact. I do, however, frequently use Amazon reviews for some things like clothing, electronics, and other hardware. Mostly I focus on the negative reviews.
If you are considering purchasing a drug item at least take the time to
search for a review at WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
Don't trust the Dr. Oz Show ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dr._Oz_Show#Criticism
Also don't trust Angie's List ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie%27s_List#Criticism
If you are looking for reviews of most any product or service go to a trusted
review source like Consumer Reports (the reviews are not usually free)
---
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm
For example enter "BPH" into the search box.
One problem is that global or national reputation may differ from local reputation. For example, McDonald's has a pretty good international reputation for cleanliness and sanitation, particularly in restrooms, but the manager of a particular local franchise may be careless about such things.
A Bit of Humor for April 1-14, 2015
Many educators have a tough time imagining a world
where academic issues are more important than athletic ones at institutions with
big-time programs. "Saturday Night Live" this weekend created such a world (slow
loading) ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/04/06/snl-imagines-academic-primacy-over-athletics
The Horrific April Fools Pranks of the 19th Century ---
http://factually.gizmodo.com/the-horrific-april-fools-pranks-of-the-19th-century-1694834642
How Trevor Noah will transform the Daily Show, explained in 7 of his funniest
clips ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/30/7344873/trevor-noah-daily-show
Hunter S. Thompson’s Ballsy & Hilarious Job Application Letter (1958) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/hunter-s-thompsons-ballsy-hilarious-job-application-letter-1958.html
There is No Nobel Prize in Economics: Dilbert Cartoon
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/04/nobel-prize-for-economics/#comments
Read the comments
MIT researchers have discovered the ultimate tongue twister ---
http://modernnotion.com/worlds-hardest-tongue-twisters/#ixzz3WLYfNlrW
The Story of Hillary’s ‘First Presidency’ in Song, Starring 'William
Jefferson' and 'Bill ---
http://www.newsweek.com/story-hillarys-first-presidency-song-starring-william-jefferson-and-billy-319610
She's Ready (Hillary Dances) --- Click here: 2008
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
On my way home one day, I stopped to watch a Little League base ball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first- base line, I asked one of the boys what the score was 'We're behind 14 to nothing,' he answered With a smile.
'Really,' I said. 'I have to say you don't look very discouraged.'
'Discouraged?', the boy asked with a Puzzled look on his face...
'Why should we be discouraged? We haven't Been up to bat yet.'
Forwarded by Gene and Joan
Whenever I'm disappointed with my spot in life, I stop and think about little Jamie Scott.
Jamie was trying out for a part in the school play. His mother told me that he'd set his heart on being in it, though she feared he would not be chosen..
On the day the parts were awarded, I went with her to collect him after school. Jamie rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement.. 'Guess what, Mom,' he shouted, and then said those words that will remain a lesson to me....'I've been chosen to clap and cheer.'
Humor Between March 1-31, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor033115
Humor Between February 1-28, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor022815
Humor Between January 1-31, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor013115
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
Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Update in
2014
20-Year Sugar Hill Master Plan ---
http://www.nccouncil.org/images/NCC/file/wrkgdraftfeb142014.pdf
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi- 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.
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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. |
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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. |
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Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
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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
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The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts
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Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu