Tidbits on August 25, 2015
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Set 2 of Photographs of Erika's Summer Roses
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Roses/Domestic/Set02/DomesticRosesSet02.htm

Tidbits on August 25 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 Anything at All? BBC Animations Feature the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Hume, Popper & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/how-can-i-know-anything-at-all-bbc-animations-feature-the-philosophy-of-wittgenstein-hume-popper-more.html

James Baldwin Debates Malcolm X (1963) and William F. Buckley (1965): Vintage Video & Audio ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/james-baldwin-debates-malcolm-x-1963-and-william-f-buckley.html

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Vivid, Startling Color ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/see-berlin-before-and-after-world-war-ii-in-vivid-startling-color.html

Here's Russia's new 5th gen fighter performing impressive aerial acrobatics ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-russias-new-5th-gen-fighter-performing-impressive-aerial-acrobatics-2015-8#ixzz3iPwqh600

360° video brings you aboard a P-51 fighter flying with an F-22 in close formation ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/aboard-p-51-flying-f-22-in-formation-2015-8#ixzz3iW9iZrF4

From Clay to Mosaics ---
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oEc-ESRjntg?rel=0&autoplay=1
Thank you Auntie Bev

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dating Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/how-to-bake-ancient-roman-bread-dating-back-to-79-ad.html

Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Hear Mahler’s 9th Played in 6 Minutes on the Squeezebox by “The Greatest Accordionist in the World” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/hear-mahlers-9th-played-in-6-minutes-on-the-squeezebox-by-the-greatest-accordionist-in-the-world.html

Pres. Obama Releases a Free Playlist of 40 Songs for a Summer Day (Plus 6 Books on His Summer Reading List) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/pres-obama-releases-a-hip-playlist-of-40-songs-for-a-summer-day.html

A-ha’s “Take On Me” Performed by North Korean Kids with Accordions ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/a-has-take-on-me-performed-by-north-korean-kids-with-accordians.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

The life of the tallest man who ever lived is utterly fascinating ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tall-man-2015-7#ixzz3jXm2bsBu
For more details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow

Pictures of the ISIS Price List for Sex Slaves ---
https://www.google.ca/search?q=ISIS++%22Price+List%22&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CC4QsARqFQoTCPDv4OzFqMcCFYkXkgodiI8CBw&biw=1024&bih=505

Declassified photos show the US's final preparations for the only nuclear weapons attacks in history ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/atomic-bombs-preparation-declassified-photos-2014-10#ixzz3iQ1SFLvK

This was the US Navy's cutting-edge stealth ship ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/navys-premier-ship-stealth-test-platform-2015-8#ixzz3iQ3ReCP5

Finnish Cultural Institute in NYC (art history) --- http://www.fciny.org/

Street Art with Google Art https://streetart.withgoogle.com

14 incredible national parks around the world ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/incredible-national-parks-around-the-world-2015-8

POSTmatter (artists and their art) --- http://postmatter.com/

Unarmed US Marines foil suspected terrorist attack onboard high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris after they take down Kalashnikov-wielding Moroccan gunman known to intelligence services ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3206426/U-S-Marines-armed-gunman-onboard-high-speed-train-Amsterdam-Paris.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus

Meet the First Female Tattoo Artists: Maud Wagner (1877-1961) & Jessie Knight (1904–1994) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/meet-the-first-female-tattoo-artists.html

Bob Jensen's threads on art history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#ArtHistory

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

Bob Jensen's threads on libraries --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries

Books That Shaped America | National Book Festival - Library of Congress ---
http://lisnews.org/books_that_shaped_america_national_book_festival_library_of_congress

Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as Free eBooks & Audio Books --- Click Here
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenCulture/~3/3_2ZvPhZOCg/download-the-complete-works-of-edgar-allan-poe-macabre-stories-as-free-ebooks-audio-books.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Edgar Allan Poe Museum --- https://www.poemuseum.org/index.php

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price & Basil Rathbone ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/5-hours-of-edgar-allan-poe-stories-read-by-vincent-price-basil-rathbone.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

The Rabbit Box: Unusual Vintage Children’s Book for Grownups Celebrates the Mystery of Life and the Magic of Falling in Love ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/19/the-rabbit-box-pintauro-laliberte/?mc_cid=74b7067de7&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Classic Horror Story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/iggy-pop-reads-edgar-allan-poes-classic-horror-story-the-tell-tale-heart.html

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Classic Album by The Alan Parsons Project ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/hear-orson-welles-read-edgar-allan-poe-on-a-album-by-the-alan-parsons-project.html

Download The Complete Audio Book Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birthday ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/download-the-complete-works-of-edgar-allan-poe-on-his-birthday.html

 The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Available Online: Japanese, Italian, Thai & Much More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/the-new-york-times-makes-17000-tasty-recipes-available-online.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 August 25, 2015
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2015/TidbitsQuotations082515.htm      

U.S. National Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Also see http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Peter G. Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/

Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

Just down the road from our cottage where a new house is being built a professional artist has been setting up each day to add more to a painting. His name is Ard Berge and his art page is at
http://www.ardberge.com/
I really like his work even though his work on occasion surprises me. He most certainly sets himself apart from other artists.

Here are a couple of pictures of Ard at work:
Scroll down at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Roses/Domestic/Set02/DomesticRosesSet02.htm

Instead of p-values, the journal will require “strong descriptive statistics, including effect size.
"Science Isn’t Broken:  It’s just a hell of a lot harder than we give it credit for." by Christie Aschwanden, Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, August 19, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/ 

If you follow the headlines, your confidence in science may have taken a hit lately.

. . .

Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a shady enterprise that spits out a bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve spent months investigating the problems hounding science, and I’ve learned that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere distractions. The state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a universal problem: Science is hard — really fucking hard.

If we’re going to rely on science as a means for reaching the truth — and it’s still the best tool we have — it’s important that we understand and respect just how difficult it is to get a rigorous result. I could pontificate about all the reasons why science is arduous, but instead I’m going to let you experience one of them for yourself. Welcome to the wild world of p-hacking.

. . .

f you tweaked the variables until you proved that Democrats are good for the economy, congrats; go vote for Hillary Clinton with a sense of purpose. But don’t go bragging about that to your friends. You could have proved the same for Republicans.

The data in our interactive tool can be narrowed and expanded (p-hacked) to make either hypothesis appear correct. That’s because answering even a simple scientific question — which party is correlated with economic success — requires lots of choices that can shape the results. This doesn’t mean that science is unreliable. It just means that it’s more challenging than we sometimes give it credit for.

Which political party is best for the economy seems like a pretty straightforward question. But as you saw, it’s much easier to get a result than it is to get an answer. The variables in the data sets you used to test your hypothesis had 1,800 possible combinations. Of these, 1,078 yielded a publishable p-value,¹ but that doesn’t mean they showed that which party was in office had a strong effect on the economy. Most of them didn’t.

The p-value reveals almost nothing about the strength of the evidence, yet a p-value of 0.05 has become the ticket to get into many journals. “The dominant method used [to evaluate evidence] is the p-value,” said Michael Evans, a statistician at the University of Toronto, “and the p-value is well known not to work very well.”

Scientists’ overreliance on p-values has led at least one journal to decide it has had enough of them. In February, Basic and Applied Social Psychology announced that it will no longer publish p-values. “We believe that the p < .05 bar is too easy to pass and sometimes serves as an excuse for lower quality research,” the editors wrote in their announcement. Instead of p-values, the journal will require “strong descriptive statistics, including effect sizes.”

Continued in article

The limits of mathematical and statistical analysis and Social Engineering
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on April 18, 2014

The limits of social engineering
Writing in MIT Technology Review, tech reporter Nicholas Carr pulls from a new book by one of MIT’s noted data scientists to explain why he thinks Big Data has its limits, especially when applied to understanding society. Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, in his book “Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread – The Lessons from a New Science,” sees a mathematical modeling of society made possible by new technologies and sensors and Big Data processing power. Once data measurement confirms “the innate tractability of human beings,” scientists may be able to develop models to predict a person’s behavior. Mr. Carr sees overreach on the part of Mr. Pentland. “Politics is messy because society is messy, not the other way around,” Mr. Carr writes, and any statistical model likely to come from such research would ignore the history, politics, class and messy parts associated with humanity. “What big data can’t account for is what’s most unpredictable, and most interesting, about us,” he concludes.

Jensen Comment
The sad state of accountancy and many doctoral programs in the 21st Century is that virtually all of them in North America only teach the methodology and technique of analyzing enormous archived databases  with statistical tools or the analytical modeling of artificial worlds based on dubious assumptions to simplify reality ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

The Pathways Commission sponsored by the American Accounting Association strongly proposes adding non-quantitative alternatives to doctoral programs but I see zero evidence of any progress in that direction. The main problem is that it's just much easier to avoid having to collect data by beating purchased databases with econometric sticks until something, usually an irrelevant something, falls out of the big data piñata.

"A Scrapbook on What's Wrong with the Past, Present and Future of Accountics Science"
Bob Jensen Jensen
February 19, 2014
SSRN Download:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2398296 

Bob Jensen's threads on statistical mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on replication and critical commentary ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

"Classic Data Visualizations," by David Gilles, Econometrics Beat, August 12, 2015 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/08/classic-data-visualizations.html

My thanks to Veronica Johnson at Investech.com for drawing my attention a recent piece of theirs relating to Classic Data Visualizations.

As they say:

"A single data visualization graphic can be priceless. It can save you hours of research. They’re easy to read, interpret, and, if based on the right sources, accurate, as well. And with the highly social nature of the web, the data can be lighthearted, fun and presented in so many different ways.

What’s most striking about data visualizations though is that they aren’t as modern a concept as we tend to think they are.

In fact, they go back to more than 2,500 years—before computers and tools for easy visual representation of data even existed."

Here are the eleven graphics that they highlight:

Continued in article

Ten  Helpful Online Resources for Improving Public Speaking Skills
http://blogs.nd.edu/graduate-school-professional-development/2013/02/12/10-helpful-online-resources-for-improving-public-speaking-skills/

How naive can a University of Wisconsin leader (a former assistant district attorney) get?
Shoplifting should be allowed in big box stores because the companies can get shoplifting insurance?
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/21/wisconsin-college-admin-police-shouldnt-prosecute-shoplifters-video/

. . .

“I just don’t think that they should be prosecuting (shoplifting) cases … for people who steal from Wal-Mart. I just don’t think that, right?” said UW-Madison director of community relations Everett Mitchell. “I don’t think [with] Target or all them other places, them big box stores that have insurance, they should be using justification, the fact that people steal from there as justification to start engaging in aggressive police practices, right?”

Everett’s remarks were made Tuesday as part of a UW-Madison panel on the topic of “Best Policing Practices.” Everett argued that community police shouldn’t prioritize enforcing the law, but instead should focus on achieving “safety” as it is defined by a local community, even if that definition includes allowing some stores to be robbed with impunity.

Read more:
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/21/wisconsin-college-admin-police-shouldnt-prosecute-shoplifters-video/#ixzz3jTvWGQfY

Jensen Comment
Using the same reasoning homeowners who cannot get an adequate price for their houses should be allowed to burn them down for the insurance.

Doesn't Everett realize that the price of shoplifting insurance would go through the roof if shoplifters were not restrained by the law? The ultimate price of allowing shoplifting will be the loss of the stores where shoplifting is not prosecuted. The poorest neighborhoods once again will be those either without stores or without shopping freedoms.

For example, while at a conference in San Francisco I went to a nearby liquor store. The clerks and all the merchandise were behind bars and bulletproof glass. Shoppers could not pick up bottles and read labels. They had to either wait for a clerk to hold the bottle up to the bulletproof glass or buy the product without inspecting the label. In order to buy a bottle, the money (cash only) had to be put into a slider drawer where it was impossible to point a gun through even a tiny hole. This would not be a good way to sell shoes, clothing, and any product that customers like to try out before making a purchase.

There will be no big box stores in neighborhoods that do not prosecute shop lifting. If traffic laws (like speeding limits) are not enforced it will be dangerous just to be on the roads and sidewalks. Since black lives matter let's protect the black victims of crimes.

This entire movement to reduce prosecuting crime makes no sense to me. Reducing prosecutions increases to number of victims (black as well as white and the cost of crime itself. How often are armed home invaders committing crimes out of desperation to get money to buy drugs on the street? There are exceptions of course. I'm reminded of a case years back where a guy mugged a tourist because of an urgent need to get a higher-priced massage in a massage parlor.

Exhibit A:  California's  Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" isn't living up to its promise
In the Wake of Proposition 47, California Sees a Crime Wave ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/debrajsaunders/2015/08/16/in-the-wake-of-proposition-47-california-sees-a-crime-wave-n2039121?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

. . .

Gascon spokesman Alex Bastian told me, "The voters indicated that possessing small amounts of narcotics" should not constitute a felony. Californians don't want three-year sentences for drug possession. I don't, either, but on the ground, the legal fix is not living up to its hype. Prop 47 has made it easier for drug offenders to avoid mandated treatment programs. The measure reduced penalties for the theft of goods worth less than $950. Habitual offenders know that, critics say, and they've changed their habits to avoid hard time. The measure's approval also prompted the state to free some 3,700 inmates.

In San Francisco, theft from cars is up 47 percent this year over the same period in 2014. Auto theft is up by 17 percent. Robberies are up 23 percent. And aggravated assaults are up 2 percent, according to San Francisco police spokesman Carlos Manfredi. Burglaries are down 5 percent.

The City of Angels saw a 12.7 percent increase in overall crime this year, according to the Los Angeles Times; violent offenses rose 20.6 percent, while property crime rose by 11 percent. Mayor Eric Garcetti says Prop 47 may explain Los Angeles' change in course from crime reduction to crime increases.

"It used to be that if you were caught in the possession of methamphetamine, you would be arrested; you'd end up in drug court or in some other program, probably in custody receiving some type of treatment," Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig told the Daily Democrat. "Well, now the officers on the street just give them a ticket. So they have been arrested for a crime. The case actually gets forwarded to my office. We charge them with a crime, but they never show up to court. They get arrested again and are given another ticket for methamphetamine. And so we've seen that."

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell says LA substance abuse treatment rolls are down 60 percent. Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean told the Ventura County Reporter that Prop 47 got drug offenders out of jail "but it also got them out of treatment." He also believes the measure will increase violent crime, as substance abusers commit more robberies and assaults.

Continued in article

August 22, 2015 reply from MacEwan Wright <macewanwright@hotm in Australia

Dear Bob,
I agree with Everett Mitchell, in fact I would suggest there is a six step solution to shoplifting, but see steps 7.8.9.
 
Step 1/ shoplifting allowed
Step 2/ shoplifting increases
Step 3/ Shoplifting insurance either ceases or becomes prohibitively expensive
Step 4/ Stores factor theft into prices (they already do) and prices rise
Step 5/ shoppers stop buying more expensive goods
Step 6/ Shops close
Step 7/ Shoplifting ceases ( because there are no shops to lift  stuff from).
Step 8/ Criminals move to other soft targets eg home invasion
Step 9/ collapse of civil order!
Best wishes,
Mac

August 22, 2015

I agree with your scenario except Step 8 where there is less incentive for home invasions since homes will be empty without shops.

In the USA we may skip Steps 1-8 and go directly to Step 9 in the election year 2016.

Thanks,
Bob

MOOC Providers --- Click Here
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=32623deadd-DNU20150817&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-32623deadd-197565045

Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs and other free open sharing from prestigious university ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

"What Law Schools Can Learn From Medical Schools," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, August 18. 2015 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/08/what-law-schools-can-learn-from-medical-schools.html

• WSJ: Law School Should Be More Like Medical School (Jan. 28, 2007)
• Law School Should Be More Like Medical School (Apr. 29, 2010)
• Massachusetts Bar's Advice to Law Schools: Be More Like Medical Schools (May 23, 2012)
• Will Top Tier Law Schools be the First to Close, Like Emory and Georgetown Dental Schools? (Nov. 18, 2013)
• Will 10% of Law Schools Close by 2019, Just as 10% of Dental Schools Closed 25 Years Ago? (Oct. 21, 2014)

Jensen Comment
What schools of accountancy could learn from both medical and law schools is that becoming a good starting professional takes more years of graduate study than what accountancy masters degree students are getting before they graduate and take the CPA examination. Firstly there are 3-5 years of full-time graduate study in law and medicine. And then in medicine there are 1-5 years of low-paid residency when learning specialties like neurosurgery and psychiatry. In the article above, however, Professor Caron focuses more on studies of ethics rather than study of professional specialites.

"In Praise of Missing Out: Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on the Paradoxical Value of Our Unlived Lives," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, August 17, 2015 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/17/missing-out-adam-phillips/?mc_cid=74b7067de7&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Jensen Comment
Throughout my college years my dream was to own a ranch, raise horses, and spend my winters hot dogging down ski trails in search of wild women. All that changed when I got married in my dissertation year and took my first full-time faculty job at Michigan State University. I became bitten by the career bug and lost sight of my college dreams. My dream changed to excelling as best I could in my career without horses, skis, and wild women. I did have some saddle horses when I was on the faculty at Florida State University, but it just was not the same having horses as when I was a kid on a farm in Iowa.

My point is that when you are obsessed for one or a few compatible goals you don't seem to mind missing out when you accept the fact that really have to miss out on most things in life while trying to be an achiever --- even if that meant achieving in being a dull accounting professor.

When I retired I had added choices for filling a bucket list due living on lifetime annuities and no longer depending on paychecks. More importantly I was no longer my resume. But my body in retirement just is  not up to hot dogging on ski trails, and travel in reality is not what it is in dreams. I changed my surroundings by moving to the White Mountains, but my life is largely what it was before retirement --- obsessed with scholarship.

I'm still missing out of most of what I used to dream about. Life really is what you're doing now while dreaming about the "unlived life" you're missing out of in reality.

You stay happy by being content with the life you've got.
Sigh!

"Report: States Lack Consistent Standards for Literacy Teacher Preparation," by Leila Meyer, T.H.E. Journal, August 15, 2015 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/08/19/report-states-lack-consistent-standards-for-literacy-teacher-preparation.aspx

 From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on August 21, 2015

Authors group seeks DOJ probe of Amazon
http://www.wsj.com/articles/authors-group-seeks-doj-probe-of-amazon-1440090438?mod=djemCFO_h
Hundreds of authors asked the Justice Department for an antitrust investigation of Amazon.com Inc. for having created a “monopoly” with “unprecedented power over America’s market for books.” The group, Authors United, formed last year in response to Amazon’s bruising negotiations with publisher Hachette Book Group, primarily over pricing. Led by author Douglas Preston, the group sent a letter to the DOJ that said Amazon has repeatedly blocked or limited the sale of thousands of books on its website, sold some books below cost to gain market share, and attempted to compel customers to buy books from its own imprints rather than from other companies.

August 21, 2015 reply from Gadal Damian

Two sides to every story:

https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/whats-next-for-authors-united/

"Another Surge in Student-Loan Risk," by James Freeman, The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/another-surge-in-student-loan-risk-1440154366

Avoiding on-time repayment becomes more popular than ever, plus Noonan and Strassel debate John Kasich and Donald Trump debates the Fourteenth Amendment.

“Enrollment in plans that cap student-debt payments as a share of borrowers’ incomes has grown 56% over the past year, the Education Department said Thursday. As of June 30, almost 3.9 million borrowers under the federal government’s main student-loan program were enrolled in the plans,” reports the Journal.

Borrowers can reduce their monthly payments and eventually have debts forgiven in many cases—especially if they choose Obama-favored careers in government or the non-profit sector. Earlier this week the Journal reported on a Florida lawyer who plans to stick taxpayers with a $300,000 unpaid bill.

Yet even with recent expansions in such plans allowing borrowers to avoid timely repayment, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Thursday that a full 21% of student-loan borrowers are still more than 30 days delinquent. Naturally, Hillary Clinton has decided that the problem in higher education is that it needs more taxpayer funding...

Today’s lead editorial helpfully explains the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and why Donald Trump and roughly half the GOP field are wrong about babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants...

Continued in article

Florida lawyer who plans to stick taxpayers with a $300,000 unpaid bill.
"Grad-School Loan Binge Fans Debt Worries," by Josh Mitchell, The Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/loan-binge-by-graduate-students-fans-debt-worries-1439951900?mod=djemMER

Graduate students account for 40% of borrowing; many seek federal forgiveness.

Virginia Murphy borrowed a small fortune to attend law school and pursue her dream of becoming a public defender. Now the Florida resident is among an expanding breed of American borrower: those who owe at least $100,000 in student debt but have no expectation of paying it back.

Ms. Murphy pays just $330 a month—less than the interest on her $256,000 balance—under a federal income-based repayment program that has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing entitlements. She plans to use another federal program to have her balance forgiven in about seven years, a sum set to swell by then to $300,000.

The promise of forgiveness is “the only reason I would have ever considered” amassing so much debt to attend Tulane University Law School, says Ms. Murphy, 45 years old. She earns $56,500 a year as an assistant public defender in West Palm Beach.

The doubling of student debt since the recession, to $1.19 trillion, has stoked a national discussion over how to rein in college costs and debt and is becoming a major issue in the 2016 presidential race. Little noted in the outcry is the disproportionate role played by postgraduate borrowers, who now account for roughly 40% of all student debt but represent just 14% of students in higher education.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

"Student Wrongfully Expelled for Rape Triumphs in Court: Due Process Beats 'Yes Means Yes'," by Robbie Soave, Reason Magazine, August 12m 2015 ---
http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/12/student-wrongfully-expelled-for-rape-tri

The University of Tennessee shifted the burden of proof and violated the rights of accused student Corey Mock.

A judge overturned the expulsion of Corey Mock—a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga student and star wrestler—after determining that UTC’s administration had improperly required Mock to prove that he was innocent of sexually assaulting another student.

The decision is a significant blow to the concept of affirmative consent. According to Judge Carol McCoy, UTC’s consent standard wrongfully shifted the burden of proof and violated Mock’s due process rights.

Mock’s expulsion stemmed from a sexual encounter with a fellow student, Molly Morris, during the spring of 2014. Morris and Mock had met online and quickly become friends; they hung out on several occasions and decided to attend a house party together. Morris had too much to drink—someone might have slipped her something, though no evidence established this—and went to the bathroom to be sick. Mock found her, took her to a bedroom, and they had sex.

A week after the incident, Morris told Mock that she had not given consent. Three months later, she formally accused him of raping her.

The campus judicial process initially cleared Mock, but UTC Chancellor Steven Angle took an interest in the case after meeting with Morris. Angle asked the campus adjudicators to re-hear the case. This time, Mock was found guilty.

The rationale was atrocious. As KC Johnson of Minding the Campus explains:

Angle, for his part, argued that Mock had failed to prove that he had obtained affirmative consent—that is, that Mock, not UTC, had the burden of proof in the initial hearing. UTC hadn’t adopted a “yes means yes” policy, but Angle inferred it through various provisions in the school’s code, and in other writings.

UTC’s decision was a powerful confirmation of due process advocates’ worst fears about affirmative consent policies. I have long-argued that the “Yes Means Yes,” when judged by university officials, in tandem with a preponderance of the evidence standard, creates a de facto assumption that an accused student is guilty unless he can prove otherwise--turning innocent until proven guilty on its head.

Consider what evidence Mock would have had to present at his hearing in order to clear himself. Only a signed document—or, perhaps, a video of the encounter—could have definitively established that he had Morris’s permission to proceed. Do college administrators really expect students to draw up consent papers, or film sex tapes? (Sadly, some activists do.)

Earlier this week, Judge Carol McCoy recognized the fundamental unfairness of Mock’s situation and agreed with him that UTC had established an impossible standard. According to her ruling:

The UTC Chancellor improperly shifted the burden of proof and imposed an untenable standard upon Mr. Mock to disprove the accusation that he forcibly assaulted Ms. Morris. He made no finding that Ms. Morris did not consent, intertwined the definition in SOC 7 of sexual assault and sexual misconduct, and made no distinction as to which acts had occurred.

The Washington Examiner’s Ashe Schow reports that Mock and his family are relieved:

Mock's father, in an email to the Washington Examiner, said that he and his son are "very pleased with the judge's decision; we weren't sure if anyone was going to follow the law, and this has restored our faith." But he is aware that UTC may try to appeal the ruling and that this case may not be over.

As for what's next for Corey Mock, his father is unsure.

"No idea where Corey goes from here, he is weighing his options, something he hasn't had in a long time," Mock's father wrote. "This is the first good news we have had in over a year and we are thanking God and trying to enjoy it."

Continued in article

Inventory --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventory

"See what it's like inside Amazon's massive warehouses," by Jillian D'Onfro and Madeline Stone, Business Insider, August 12, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-in-amazons-massive-warehouses-fulfillment-centers-2014-11

Jensen Comment
Those of us that shop almost daily on Amazon do so because of product selection choices and availability. For example, if I go down to the physical store of Sam's Club in Concord (about 75 miles distant) and sort through a table of cargo pants it's almost certain that I will not find my correct size and a style that I prefer.  For the same or lower price on Amazon I can get the exact style and size with free shipping and no travel costs to a store.

The gigantic  amounts of inventory (sizes and styles) carried by Amazon are its strength and its possible Achilles Heel.  Advantages of carrying large amounts of inventory include volume purchase discounts when Amazon purchases from its suppliers. And even more important is customer satisfaction with shopping at Amazon when there is so much selection in terms of style, prices, and sizes.

Those of us who taught managerial accounting and-or operations research always warned students that there are serious carrying costs of inventory beyond the the cost of building space and handling. The most serious costs are carrying costs of insurance and capital tied up in inventory ownership. Amazon in the past decade benefitted greatly from the virtually zero interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve.  Carrying large amounts of inventory caused a millions of businesses to declare bankruptcy back in the days when interest rates were high. Amazon is in big trouble if the days of high interest rates return. Fortunately for Amazon the chances of that are about the same as the chances of peace on earth.

Amazon can avoid inventory carrying costs on some products by either warehousing them on consignment (where the supplier bears the capital cost) or by merely acting as an intermediary between the supplier and the customer. For example, Amazon could and probably does carry some books on consignment in warehouses, books that are still owned by the publishers. And Amazon most certainly in some cases does not warehouse books that it sells. Instead the owners (such as in the case of used books) store the books and ship them directly to customers who rely on Amazon's guarantee of deliver and payment processing. When buying used books I would be nervous if I gave my credit card number to unknown John Smiths that ship the books directly to me. I would rather that only Amazon have my credit card. By the way I have a Visa card that I only use for Amazon purchases.

There are some added factors these days that we did not build into our inventory models in the old days. For example, Amazon avoids shoplifting costs and the added costs of insuring for customer injury (fraudulent or real) while shopping in a store. It would be an interesting project for students to investigate shoplifting prevention costs of big box stores (security guards, video surveillance, and special employee training).

There's another risk in the Amazon inventory model. Whereas Walmart makes customers incur much of the delivery cost when customers pay travel costs to and from stores and handling costs getting items in and out of their vehicles, Amazon relies on USPS, UPS, and FedEx. For example, these carriers bring my Amazon purchase up my driveway and leave them inside the garage. But there's a risk in this for Amazon. Amazon would not be competitive with Walmart if USPS, UPS, and FedEx doubled their delivery prices.

In this video from TEDxStanford, Hoover Institution research fellow and former CIA operative Alice Miller shares why, at the age of 50, she chose to transition from male to female. "It's never too late to be who you are," she says ---
Video:  The Importance of Being Alice | Alice Miller | TEDxStanford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScG-lv9dCeY&list=PLsRNoUx8w3rN6_4wJsEdAuasodNUUhO31

Jensen Comment
Years ago when I was on the faculty of Stanford University my frequent luncheon friend was economics professor Bill Breit. Bill told me about the transgendering of his his professional friend who now was a well-known economic and statistics historian named Deirdre McCloskey ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey

Deirdre is a very popular writer and speaker where audiences are tolerant of her very prominent stammer. Among her popular books is a book about her transgendering history. The title of her book is Crossing: A Memoir, Sep 1, 2000 and is available from vendors like Amazon.

As chance would have it some years after I retired I was invited to be a discussant of Deirdre's plenary session at one of the  annual meetings of the American Accounting Association. I also had a very delightful breakfast with her before she went on stage shortly after the breakfast.

Her Plenary Session video is available to AAA members on the Commons along with our panel discussions video:

1.00 Bruce Carruthers and Deirdre McCloskey—Video1

brightcove video posted August 31, 2012 by AAA HQ, tagged Home Page Announcement, keynote in Annual Meeting 2012 > Annual Meeting 2012 Speaker and Workshop Videos restricted

 

1.02 Deirdre McCloskey Follow-up Panel—Video14.0

brightcove video posted August 31, 2012 by AAA HQ, tagged Home Page Announcement, keynote in Annual Meeting 2012 > Annual Meeting 2012 Speaker and Workshop Videos restricted

 

Deirdre McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics,...2

featured session posted May 24, 2012 by AAA HQ, tagged Home Page Announcement in Annual Meeting 2012 > Annual Meeting 2012 Features public

Also see
The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm

MIT:  Seven Must-Read Stories (Week ending August 22, 2015) --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/540741/seven-must-read-stories-week-ending-august-22-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150821

MIT:  Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending August 22, 2015) --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/540736/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-august-22-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150821

MIT:  Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending August 15, 2015) --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/540286/seven-must-read-stories-week-ending-august-15-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150814

MIT:  Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending August 15, 2015) --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/540281/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-august-15-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150814 

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money..
Tyler Durden --- http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-12/did-epa-intentionally-poison-animas-river-secure-superfund-money

U. of North Carolina Reports New Potential Violations to NCAA ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-north-carolina-reports-new-potential-violations-to-ncaa/103167?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on 20 years of fake courses taken by thousands of students at UNC ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward

Jensen Comment
Before I retired I lived for 24 years in one of the Top 10 property tax states (Texas). It also had a relatively high sales tax but no state income tax. After retirement I live in one of the Top 10 property tax states (New Hampshire). It does not have an income tax although is does have a cash interest and dividends tax with a $5,000 exemption. New Hampshire does not have a sales tax with some exceptions for restaurant tabs, hotel bills, and real estate sales.

Most of the other Top 10 property tax states also hit residents with income taxes.

The 10 states with the highest property taxes ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-states-with-highest-property-taxes-2015-8#ixzz3isbyYdLo
Sadly some of those states squeezing the most everything-possibley tax blood out of taxpayers also are in the worst shape in terms of unfunded state worker and school teacher pensions, especially Illinois and New York. California would probably be near the top in terms of property taxes if Proposition 13 had not greatly limited the revenues that California can raise in property taxes. California and Illinois are in the worst shape in terms of unfunded (in many cases criminal) public worker and teacher pensions.

Khan Academy:  How do computers store the world's information --- Click Here
Decision theorists would probably prefer the use of the word "data" in place of "information" above.

Countries of Origin of Recent Legal Immigrants in Each of the 50 States in the USA ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/baml-immigration-state-map-2015-8

Jensen Comment

Immigration in the USA --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

. . .

Legal immigration to the U.S. increased from 250,000 in the 1930s, to 2.5 million in the 1950s, to 4.5 million in the 1970s, and to 7.3 million in the 1980s, before resting at about 10 million in the 1990s.[68] Since 2000, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 per year, of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States now are at their highest level ever, at just over 37,000,000 (now over 41 million) legal immigrants. Illegal immigration may be as high as 1,500,000 per year with a net of at least 700,000 illegal immigrants arriving every year.[69][70] Immigration led to a 57.4% increase in foreign born population from 1990 to 2000.[71]

Contemporary immigrants settle predominantly in seven states, California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois, comprising about 44% of the U.S. population as a whole. The combined total immigrant population of these seven states was 70% of the total foreign-born population in 2000. If current birth rate and immigration rates were to remain unchanged for another 70 to 80 years, the U.S. population would double to nearly 600 million.[72]

The top twelve emigrant countries in 2006 were Mexico (173,753), People's Republic of China (87,345), Philippines (74,607), India (61,369), Cuba (45,614), Colombia (43,151), Dominican Republic (38,069), El Salvador (31,783), Vietnam (30,695), Jamaica (24,976), South Korea (24,386), and Guatemala (24,146). Other countries comprise an additional 606,370.[73]

[See the table for a listing of countries of origin]

. . .

The Census Bureau estimates the US population will grow from 281 million in 2000 to 397 million in 2050 with immigration, but only to 328 million with no immigration.[80] A 2008 report from the Pew Research Center projects that by 2050, non-Hispanic whites will account for 47% of the population, down from the 2005 figure of 67%.[81] Non-Hispanic whites made up 85% of the population in 1960.[82] It also foresees the Hispanic population rising from 14% in 2005 to 29% by 2050.[83] The Asian population is expected to more than triple by 2050. Overall, the Pew Report predicts the population of the United States will rise from 296 million in 2005 to 438 million in 2050, with 82% of the increase from immigrants.[84]

In 35 of the country's 50 largest cities, non-Hispanic whites were at the last census or are predicted to be in the minority.[85] In California, non-Hispanic whites slipped from 80% of the state's population in 1970 to 42.3% in 2001 and 39% in 2013.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I was not aware that printer  manufacturers developed outrageous  strategies to screw the public!

"Review: Epson’s New Inkjet Printers Eliminate Cartridges, Save You $500 a Year," by David A. Pogue, Yahoo Tech, August 6, 2015 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/review-epsons-new-inkjet-printers-eliminate-125950545829.html

. . .

How do printer executives look at themselves in the mirror?!

That’s not the only inkjet outrage. Over the years, the inkjet companies have steadily decreased the amount of ink you get in each cartridge. They want you to keep coming back to the well to buy more cartridges. More and more and more. 

It actually gets worse yet. Consumer Reports figured out that as much as half the ink on your cartridge never winds up on the page: It gets squirted out to unclog the print heads or gets soaked up by sponges.

To the printer companies, we’re a bunch of sheep with Visa cards.

So: Inkjet cartridges are expensive, inconvenient, an environmental idiocy, and — above all — they’re just evil. They represent the worst kind of business model: consumer manipulation. It works out great for the printer companies. According to IDC, they’ll sell $8.2 billion of printers this year–but (according to InfoTrends) $28 billion in cartridges!

But what choice do we have?

. . .

Its new (Epson) EcoTank printers don’t require any tiny, expensive cartridges. Instead, they come with entire bottles of ink, which you use to fill entire tanks of ink. We’re talking a huge amount of ink in each bottle — on average, two years’ worth, Epson says.

The printer itself costs more than the cheapo models — because this time, Epson isn’t selling it at a loss that it hopes to make up in cartridge sales. This time, you’re buying the printer instead of signing a promissory note to pay Epson forever for its expensive ink.

Continued in article

Google announced on Monday that it was splitting itself apart and creating a new holding company, Alphabet, to contain all the pieces.---

I'll Put Your Name on Mine if You Put My Name on Yours (and the risks in doing so)
"More Scientific Papers Have Dozens of Authors," Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 20158 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/08/11/more-scientific-papers-have-dozens-authors?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=0cac71a7a2-DNU20150811&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-0cac71a7a2-197565045

Jensen Comment
Years ago Cooley, Heck, and Jensen noted the rise in co-authoring in accounting research journals. One of the main reasons is an effort to increase the number of hits in this era where promotion and tenure committees mainly count the number of hits in research journals irrespective of the number of authors on a paper. Also division of labor came about with the popularity of shaking the piñata of purchased databases with econometric models. Some co-authors of accounting research papers are experts in data mining who know almost nothing about accounting. My point is that the rise of computer analysis is one of the causes of the rise in co-authoring.

"An Analysis of Contributors to Accounting Journals Part II: The Individual Academic Journals," by Philip Cooley, Louis Heck, and Bob Jensen, The International Journal of Accounting, Vol.26, 1991, pp. 1-17.

"An Analysis of Contributors to Accounting Journals. Part I: The Aggregate Perfformances," by Philip Cooley, Louis Heck, and Bob Jensen, The International Journal of Accounting, Vol.25, 1990, pp. 202-217. Released in 1991.

One risk of being a co-author is that if one of your co-authors cheats (e.g., faked data or plagiarism) your name gets dragged down in the retraction process. Exhibit A are the 30+ accounting research papers that had Jim Hunton as a co-author ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize

Retraction Watch (cheating in research) --- http://retractionwatch.com

Bob Jensen's threads on the rise of cheating in academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

Learn to Speak 48 Languages for Free: Everything from Arabic to Indonesian to Yiddish ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/learn-to-speak-48-languages-for-free.html

"Leisure, the Basis of Culture: An Obscure German Philosopher's Timely 1948 Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Human Dignity in a Culture of Workaholism," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, August 10, 2015 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper/?mc_cid=c738efb0b7&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Jensen Comment
Erika and I are both workaholics. When she's driven to the couch because of her back pain afflictions she feels great guilt over having to interrupt her work. In retirement I find it harder to define my "work." If I'm doing the same things (unpaid) I did on my former job as a professor I still consider those activities  "work" and spend maybe eight (usually more)  hours a day on average doing the same things I did on the job (minus the committee meetings, student advising, faculty-club chit chats,  sitting in  airplanes/airports, and classroom teaching).  Yipes! I working more in retirement than I did on the job.

Erika and I do watch one Netflix movie on most afternoons. I guess this is the closest thing I do that's truly leisure. I rarely watch television except for the evening news. I'm in bed by 8:30 p.m. most days and at the computer by  5:00 a.m. For me retirement is rarely boring! The Internet is my window to the world's library.

In the summers I do yard work and in the winters I clear snow and ice. I also help with some of the heavier housework and shopping. This is harder to define as work versus leisure. But since it's physical labor that has to be done I tend to think of it more as a form of work that's actually easier than mental work.

If I sit in my den chair or on a deck reading a book I suppose I would define that as leisure. Sadly, I tend to doze off or daydream when I read like that. I mostly read at my desk and stay alert taking  computer notes on anything and everything I read (even fiction). This kind of reading becomes more like "work" when I in front of my computer. My posted tidbits are a very small portion of my vast computer files of notes taken while reading.

The biggest casualty of my "work" is that I sit too much, way too much. I used to take longer and boring routine walks both outside and on a walking machine. I've got to get back into that --- someday.

I live on a golf course and never waste time playing golf. Travel is difficult for Erika so that we don't travel as much as most retired couples. Can't say I really miss traveling. Been there, done that!

Robot --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

Robotics --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics

"Robot Invasion Undercuts Modi’s Quest to Put Indians to Work," by Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg, August 9, 2015 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-09/india-robot-invasion-undercuts-modi-s-quest-to-put-poor-to-work?cmpid=BBD081015_BIZ

Jensen Comment
Nobody seems to ask what we will do when the West, including the USA,  opens the borders wider to millions of workers of the world.  The myth is that robots will only replace unskilled workers. Reality is that jobs at all levels are threatened, including teaching, truck driving, and even the evening news on television. For example, it's only a matter of time until freeway lanes will be dedicated to self-driving trucks and cars.

Robots don't need medical insurance for their families, pension plans, or funding to pay union dues. Thus far no robot has ever filed an unfair labor practice lawsuit, but knowing lawyers like we do that may not be far off in time.

The Turing Test --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test#Human_intelligence_vs_intelligence_in_general

The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Alan Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine that is designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen so that the result would not be dependent on the machine's ability to render words as speech.^[2] If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human (Turing originally suggested that the machine would convince a human 70% of the time after five minutes of conversation), the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble those a human would give.

The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," while working at The University of Manchester (Turing, 1950; p. 460).^[3] It opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words."^[4] Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?"^[5] This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think".^[6]

In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticised, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.^[1][7]

Continued in article

Artificial Intelligence --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

"Never Mind Turing Tests. What About Terminator Tests?" by aniel Rockmore and David Krakauer, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Never-Mind-Turing-Tests-What/232183/?cid=at

. . .

One explanation is the focus on Turing’s question and the comparative neglect of the Terminator test. Intelligence is not unitary and need not be human or even in the service of human goals. We need to become sophisticated about a range of intelligences, including crowdsourced recommendation systems, surveillance systems, search engines, and, the focus of the open letter, autonomous weapons.

In a world increasingly lived online, these are the kinds of newly deployed forms of intelligence that are shaping our actions and interactions. In some cases, such as automated movie queues and algorithmic music selection, these seem less likely to amplify or support human values (e.g., privacy) than to substitute for and eliminate them. They can provide incredible advantages but they can also threaten to undermine judgment in the pursuit of economic efficiencies. The National Security Agency has a host of reasons for wanting a transparent society, but so does Madison Avenue.

If the road to the Singularity is paved through Turing tests and Terminator tests, should we halt AI work? Oddly, the loudest, or at least the most publicized, voices, are those of science pioneers who in one way or another (physically or financially) have benefited greatly from precisely the kinds of research they now cry out against. One might object to their remarks, which can sound like "this research approach was great for me, but I worry about you." But it is more likely that these pioneers have seen very clearly how the ethical and social worries are catching up to, and perhaps even overtaking, the huge profits that have been or could be made from such technologies.

But when you think about it, many of our current concerns relate not to the smartest technologies but to ubiquitous and relatively dumb ones. Preoccupation with the ill-defined sci-fi version of the Singularity is a distraction from the real and actionable if difficult conversations we should have around the steady collection of our personal data and its seamless inclusion in commercial transactions, and about autonomous weapons.

In mathematics we also have a notion of a singularity. It is effectively the mathematical definition of a phenomenon like Hawkings’s black holes: places of no escape pocking a landscape that is generally benign and easily, enjoyably navigable. The way in which we deal with these phenomena mathematically is to investigate all sorts of approaches to the danger zone, gently probing the curvature around the singularity to assess the nature of phenomena nearby.

Continued in article

"Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat?" by Angela Chen, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 11, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Artificial-Intelligence-a/148763/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

"IBM seeks to transform image-based diagnostics by combining its cognitive computing technology with a massive collection of medical images," by Mike Orcutt, MIT's Technology Review, August 11, 2015 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540141/why-ibm-just-bought-billions-of-medical-images-for-watson-to-look-at/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150812

Jensen Comment
You might consider asking your students to ponder why medical diagnostics and prediction is expected, in my opinion, to be more successful in medicine than finance and investing. My skepticism regarding financial diagnostics of data mining in finance is the same as my skepticism about statistical analysis in finance and investing.

Much of it boils down to when the assumptions of stationary states fail us in financial data.
There is also a problem that business and government accounting records are more error prone.

Wall Street’s Math Wizards Forgot a Few Variables
What wasn’t recognized was the importance of a different species of risk — liquidity risk,” Stephen Figlewski, a professor of finance at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, told The Times. “When trust in counterparties is lost, and markets freeze up so there are no prices,” he said, it “really showed how different the real world was from our models.
DealBook, The New York Times, September 14, 2009 ---
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/wall-streets-math-wizards-forgot-a-few-variables/

Bob Jensen's threads on CDOs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on common statistical analysis mistakes in accountics science ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm

TechnSmith Loop Work in Progress --- Click Here
http://blogs.techsmith.com/news-events/introducing-techsmith-loop/?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=dnl70&utm_campaign=tsc&spMailingID=49296011&spUserID=Mzk1NjE2NzQ1MTAS1&spJobID=741763336&spReportId=NzQxNzYzMzM2S0
Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up.

Have you ever tried telling someone how to do a hands-on job, without actually being there? How about telling them over the phone? Now imagine you’re the person trying to learn. How do you know if you’re doing it correctly? You can’t improve what you can’t see, which is why we made TechSmith Loop.

Meet TechSmith Loop

Our latest project, TechSmith Loop, brings side-by-side video review into the workplace – the same technology professional sports and athletes have used for years to identify flaws and opportunities to improve performance in the moment. With TechSmith Loop you can capture and analyze motion, processes, and procedures; and refine best practices. Learn more in the video below.

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Continued in article

TechSmith is the company that brings you Camtasia, SnagIt, and other innovative products.
Bob Jensen's video helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Student Debt --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt

Student Debt Forgiveness. like nearly all debt forgiveness, is taxable income
"There's a big problem with the government's offer to 'forgive' your mountain of student-loan debt," by Jonathan Garber and Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, August 11, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/problem-government-forgive-student-loan-debt-2015-8 

. . .

The loan-forgiveness repayment plans are helpful, but it's not that simple.

Two of the more popular ones are Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income-Based Repayment.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness allows those working in the public sector to apply to have their loans forgiven after 10 years of service, which equates to 120 payments.

For those who don't work in the public sector, the government created a few income-driven plans. These allow borrowers to pay between 10% and 20% of their discretionary income toward their student loans, which will then be forgiven in 20 to 25 years.

However, there is one big problem. The loan balance at the time of forgiveness is treated as income and taxed as such. Depending on the interest rate of the loan (some Federal loans have interest of more than 7%), the income-based payments might not cover the interest that is accumulating on the debt, which would cause the payoff amount of the loan to snowball over those 25 years.

Also, if someone is making income-based payments, chances are they are doing so because they cannot afford to make their regular loan payments. If that's the case, what makes the government think borrowers will be able to foot the massive tax bill at the end of 20 or 25 years?

The government has a handy loan-repayment calculator that lets borrowers see what their payments will look like under different repayment programs.

We made a hypothetical situation where a new borrower took out $100,000 in direct subsidized loans at a conservative 4% annual interest rate, has an annual income of $45,000, is single, lives in New York, and has no children.

Under a standard repayment plan, our hypothetical borrower would have monthly payments of $1,012 for 10 years. Under the Income-Based Repayment program for new borrowers, our recent graduate would have much lower monthly payments over 20 years, ranging from about $228 to $719, as her income increases over time:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/problem-government-forgive-student-loan-debt-2015-8#ixzz3iW12zwvl
 

Bob Jensen's taxation helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation

"Accounting for Universities’ Impact: Using Augmented Data to Measure Academic Engagement and Commercialization by Academic Scientists,"
SSRN
August 3, 2015

Authors

Markus Perkmann Imperial College London

Riccardo Fini University of Bologna - Department of Management ; Imperial College London

Jan-Michael Ross Imperial College London

Ammon Salter University of Bath - School of Management

Cleo Silvestri Imperial College London

Valentina Tartari Copenhagen Business School - Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics

Link
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2639125

Abstract

We present an approach that aims to comprehensively account for scientists’ academic engagement and commercialization activities. While previous research has pointed to the economic and social impact of these activities, it has also been hampered by the difficulties of accurately quantifying them. Our approach complements university administrative records with data retrieved from external sources and surveys to quantify academic consulting, patenting and academic entrepreneurship. This allows us to more accurately account for ‘independent’ activity, i.e. academic engagement and commercialization outside the formal university channels and often not recorded by universities. We illustrate this approach with data for 10,000 scientists at Imperial College London. Results indicate that conventional approaches systematically underestimate the extent of academic scientists’ impact-relevant activities by not accounting for independent activities. We find a larger proportion of scientists to be externally active, yet with the exception of consulting we find no significant difference between individuals involved in supported (university-recorded) and independent activity, respectively. Our study contributes to work concerned with developing appropriate and accurate research metrics for demonstrating the public value of science.

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm 

Thomas Piketty --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty

"Piketty's Doom Scenario of Inequality in the Twenty-First Century,"
SSRN
July 31, 2015

Author

Adriaan Ten Kate Sr.

Link
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2638480 

Abstract

For Piketty there are two laws of capitalism and one fundamental inequality which, taken together, drive us towards a world of increasing inequality. For what is left of the twenty-first century he foresees a less meritocratic society with an enhanced role for inherited wealth. In this article I do not criticize the data on which his conclusions are based, but his reasoning. I show that his laws of capitalism are accounting identities valid by definition, regardless of the way society is organized and that his fundamental inequality compares incomparable variables. I argue that his concept of inherited wealth is poorly defined and susceptible to wide margins of interpretation. In my opinion, there is no need to be so pessimistic. To avoid misunderstanding, I do believe there are reasons to be concerned about increasing inequalities, but I do not think there is an iron mechanism ingrained in the capitalist system that drives us inevitably to an ever less equal world, as suggested by Piketty.

Krugman Slams Piketty's 'New' Book On Inequality ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/08/krugman-slams-pikettys-new-book-on-inequality.html

Jensen Comment
Stanford University had a professor of management in the 1960s who made a lot of money selling his textbook. In tiny fonts it was typed  on very large index cards in a clever way where he could get a new edition by merely shuffling the deck for each chapter and then re-arranging the chapters.

"The Coddling of the American Mind," by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, September 2015 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

. . .

Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students. At present, many freshman-orientation programs try to raise student sensitivity to a nearly impossible level. Teaching students to avoid giving unintentional offense is a worthy goal, especially when the students come from many different cultural backgrounds. But students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses. Why not teach incoming students how to practice cognitive behavioral therapy? Given high and rising rates of mental illness, this simple step would be among the most humane and supportive things a university could do. The cost and time commitment could be kept low: a few group training sessions could be supplemented by Web sites or apps. But the outcome could pay dividends in many ways. For example, a shared vocabulary about reasoning, common distortions, and the appropriate use of evidence to draw conclusions would facilitate critical thinking and real debate. It would also tone down the perpetual state of outrage that seems to engulf some colleges these days, allowing students’ minds to open more widely to new ideas and new people. A greater commitment to formal, public debate on campus—and to the assembly of a more politically diverse faculty—would further serve that goal.

Thomas Jefferson, upon founding the University of Virginia, said:

This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

We believe that this is still—and will always be—the best attitude for American universities. Faculty, administrators, students, and the federal government all have a role to play in restoring universities to their historic mission.

Common Cognitive Disorders
A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’s Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012)

.  . .

Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”

9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”

10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”

11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”

12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”

August 16, 2015 reply from Richard Sansing

On a not unrelated point, Julian Bond died last night. He would not have
stood for this nonsense.

David Howard, an aide the mayor of DC, referred to a budget as "niggardly"
and was forced to resign because some people thought it was an ethnic
slur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22#
David_Howard_incident

Julian Bond stepped in and in effect forced the mayor to rehire Howard,
famously stating: "You hate to think you have to censor your language to
meet other people's lack of understanding. Mayor Williams should bring him
back ‹ and order dictionaries issued to all staff who need them.²

Richard Sansing

RANKED Based On Default Swap Market: The world's national debts, from safest to most Risky ---
http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-riskiest-sovereign-bonds-ranked-2015-8#ixzz3imnTxc63

From the Scout Report on August 14, 2015

Until --- AM http://until.am 

Created by two Finnish designers, Until AM is a web-based DJing app that draws from the music in your hard drive (e.g. iTunes) and music from SoundCloud (an enormous social sound platform, where anyone can post their music for free). To get started, drag and drop songs onto the left and right "turn tables." From there, use the volume fader, pitch fader, cross fader, and play/pause buttons to bring the two songs together. To "scratch," click and drag on the vinyl. When it comes to a free, web-based DJ app, Until AM is hard to beat.  

---

R: The R Project for Statistical Computing ---  https://www.r-project.org/ 

While R might not look like much at first glance, data analysts all over the world use the free, open-source data analysis software to run statistics on everything from psychology research to the stock market. Created in 1996 by two statistics professors in New Zealand, the programming language is comparatively user-friendly especially when paired with R Studio (https://www.rstudio.com/), a free downloadable template. Admittedly, learning the language takes work. However, there are a number of sites around the web with tutorials and tips, as well as easily locatable R help books, online support groups, and videos on YouTube and Vimeo. For data analysts who are tired of the limitations and costs of SPSS and other corporate programs, R is an extremely powerful and fluid alternative.

---

As College Costs Rise, Some Students Turn to Crowdfunding to Finance their Academic Dreams Kickstarting college: Students use crowdfunding to help pay for school
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0810/Kickstarting-college-Students-use-crowdfunding-to-help-pay-for-school 

How to crowdfund your college tuition or student debt
http://college.usatoday.com/2015/05/21/how-to-crowdfund-your-college-tuition-or-student-debt/ 

A brief history of crowdfunding
http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/a-brief-history-of-crowdfunding 

The History of Crowdfunding
https://www.crowdfunder.com/blog/wp-content/uploaded-files/History-of-Equity-Crowdfunding.pdf 

How The Cost Of College Went From Affordable To Sky-High
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/290868013/how-the-cost-of-college-went-from-affordable-to-sky-high 

---

Paying for College
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college 
The cost of college has been much in the news over the past several years, as parents, students, and politicians struggle to cope with rising tuition in four year institutions around the country. While the mounting price tag has a number of causes, including cuts to state funding during the recent recession and the predatory marketing practices of some for-profit institutions, a few students have begun to take matters into their own hands with the help of an unprecedented tool: crowdfunding. Using sites like Indiegogo Life, GoFundMe, and Dreamfund, some millennials have had great success raising money for college. In fact, a young man in New York recently raised over $8,000 to attend another year at his private liberal arts college, while a Minnesota native managed to solicit some $60,000 to pay off the debt she accrued during her undergraduate years. While such stories may not assuage the one billion dollar student loan crisis, they are testimony to the old adage that necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention.

The first two links, from the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, offer coverage of the recent phenomena of crowdfunding university expenses. In the third and fourth links, readers will find both an article and an infographic that map out the terrain of crowdfunding's brief, eventful history. Next, the fifth link navigates to NPR's explanation of how the student debt crisis came to be, including an overview of the GI Bill, which made college affordable for more Americans then ever before, as well as the the economic downturn of 2008, which spurred states to cut funding to their public universities. The last link, from the U.S. News & World Report, navigates to a number of articles centered on the theme of paying for college.

From the Scout Report on August 21, 2015

RAW --- http://app.raw.densitydesign.org/ 

For users who are relatively experienced with spreadsheets (e.g. Excel, Numbers, etc.) but haven't taken the plunge into data visualization, Raw may be a good, user-friendly first stab at making your data visual. The process includes four relatively simple steps: first, copy and paste from your spreadsheet onto the Raw website; second, choose a layout and map dimensions; third, customize the visualization from Raw's templates; fourth, export the visualization as an SVG (a format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation). Readers may like to begin with the two minute video and the FAQ section on the site. However, experimentation is probably the best way to learn this free online data visualization tool.

---

Background Burner --- https://burner.bonanza.com/

For anyone who has tried to remove the background from a downloaded image with Photoshop, Background Burner may come as somewhat of a revelation. In fact, what was once a labor intensive and time consuming process can now be accomplished in minutes. First, upload the image you'd like to separate from its background. The app will then take less than a minute to try to to remove the background. Much of the time, the image it offers is perfectly clipped. However, if the uploaded image was complex, users may use the interface to touch up the image. When finished, the completed image may then be downloaded as a JPG with a white background or as a PNG with a transparent background. While Background Burner offers a Professional Edition, most readers will find the free version to be powerful enough for their needs.

---

Faked Peer Reviews Lead to 64 Retractions by Major Publisher
Faked peer review prompts 64 retractions
http://www.nature.com/news/faked-peer-reviews-prompt-64-retractions-1.18202

Another Mass Retraction
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43761/title/Another-Mass-Retraction/

The stm report: An overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing
http://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf

Hindawi Concludes an In-depth Investigation into Peer Review Fraud
http://www.hindawi.com/statement/

COPE statement on inappropriate manipulation of peer review processes
http://publicationethics.org/news/cope-statement-inappropriate-manipulation-peer-review-processes

Retraction Watch
http://retractionwatch.com/

Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Education Tutorials

Khan Academy:  How do computers store the world's information --- Click Here
Decision theorists would probably prefer the use of the word "data" in place of "information" above.

MathPapa (learn algebra) --- http://www.mathpapa.com

Civics Renewal Network: A Republic, If We Can Teach It --- http://www.civicsrenewalnetwork.org/

10 Helpful Online Resources for Improving Public Speaking Skills
http://blogs.nd.edu/graduate-school-professional-development/2013/02/12/10-helpful-online-resources-for-improving-public-speaking-skills/

Parker Palmer's Spectacular Commencement Address on the Six Pillars of the Examined Life ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/parker-palmer-naropa-university-commencement-address/?mc_cid=c738efb0b7&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Social Media for Teachers: Guides, Resources, and Ideas --- http://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-media-resources-educators-matt-davis

MediaSmarts: Teacher Resources --- http://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources

Teaching Tolerance: Classroom Resources --- http://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources

Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Teach --- http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/

CS For All: Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming ---
https://www.edx.org/course/cs-all-introduction-computer-science-harveymuddx-cs005x

Code.org (computer science education and learning) --- http://code.org/

Free Computer Tutorials at GCFLearnFree --- http://www.gcflearnfree.org/computers

From Google:  Made with Code --- https://www.madewithcode.com/

Aspen Institute: Skills for America's Future ---
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/economic-opportunities/skills-for-americas-future

MIT Video (150 channels and over 12,000 videos) --- http://video.mit.edu/ 

Pew Research Center: Web IQ Quiz --- http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/web-iq-quiz

Tech Insider (magazine) ---  http://www.techinsider.io/ /

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

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

The Center for Science and Democracy --- http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy

American Chemical Society: ChemMatters Magazine ---
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters.html

International Desalination Association --- http://idadesal.org/

BLDGBLOG (landscape architecture_ --- http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/

The Physics Front --- http://www.thephysicsfront.org/

MIT OpenCourseWare Physics --- http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/

NOVA's Physics Blog --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/blog/

Inside Science TV --- http://www.ams.org/news/discoveries/discoveries

Web Adventures: Explore Science --- http://webadventures.rice.edu/

NSF:  Physics Discoveries --- http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=11

Physics Education Research Central --- http://www.compadre.org/per/

CERN Education (nuclear physics) ---  http://education.web.cern.ch/education/Chapter2/Intro.html

European Physical Society --- http://www.eps.org

American Institute of Physics --- http://www.aip.org/history-programs/physics-history

Open Source Physics --- http://www.compadre.org/osp/

Physics News --- http://phys.org/physics-news/

Physics Central: Physics in Action --- http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/index.cfm

Symmetry Magazine: Dimensions of Particle Physics --- http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/

NASA: Magnetospheric Mission (MMS) --- http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mms/index.html#.VQrodWTF_K0

Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) --- http://www.cap.ca

Canadian Academy of Health Sciences: Reports http://www.cahs-acss.ca/reports/

Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Teach --- http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/

The Plant List (well over a million plants) --- http://www.theplantlist.org/

History of neurology --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_neurology

Brain Facts: Explore the Brain and Mind --- http://www.brainfacts.org/

Sex After Death
Critically endangered species successfully reproduced using frozen sperm from ferret dead for 20 years ---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150813130242.htm

CS For All: Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming ---
https://www.edx.org/course/cs-all-introduction-computer-science-harveymuddx-cs005x

Code.org (computer science education and learning) --- http://code.org/

Free Computer Tutorials at GCFLearnFree --- http://www.gcflearnfree.org/computers

From Google:  Made with Code --- https://www.madewithcode.com/

Aspen Institute: Skills for America's Future ---
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/economic-opportunities/skills-for-americas-future

MIT Video (150 channels and over 12,000 videos) --- http://video.mit.edu/ 

Pew Research Center: Web IQ Quiz --- http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/web-iq-quiz/

Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Social Science and Economics Tutorials

The Center for Science and Democracy --- http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy

Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments --- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/world-leaders-1/

How Can I Know Anything at All? BBC Animations Feature the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Hume, Popper & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/how-can-i-know-anything-at-all-bbc-animations-feature-the-philosophy-of-wittgenstein-hume-popper-more.html

Civics Renewal Network: A Republic, If We Can Teach It --- http://www.civicsrenewalnetwork.org/

Parker Palmer's Spectacular Commencement Address on the Six Pillars of the Examined Life ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/parker-palmer-naropa-university-commencement-address/?mc_cid=c738efb0b7&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Social Media for Teachers: Guides, Resources, and Ideas --- http://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-media-resources-educators-matt-davis

MediaSmarts: Teacher Resources --- http://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources

Indians of the Midwest: The Newberry Library ---  http://publications.newberry.org/indiansofthemidwest/

Teaching Tolerance: Classroom Resources --- http://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources

ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism  --- http://global100.adl.org/

Wisconsin Women Making History --- http://womeninwisconsin.org/

From the Scout Report on August 14, 2015

As College Costs Rise, Some Students Turn to Crowdfunding to Finance their Academic Dreams Kickstarting college: Students use crowdfunding to help pay for school
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0810/Kickstarting-college-Students-use-crowdfunding-to-help-pay-for-school 

How to crowdfund your college tuition or student debt
http://college.usatoday.com/2015/05/21/how-to-crowdfund-your-college-tuition-or-student-debt/ 

A brief history of crowdfunding
http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/a-brief-history-of-crowdfunding 

The History of Crowdfunding
https://www.crowdfunder.com/blog/wp-content/uploaded-files/History-of-Equity-Crowdfunding.pdf 

How The Cost Of College Went From Affordable To Sky-High
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/290868013/how-the-cost-of-college-went-from-affordable-to-sky-high 

---

Paying for College
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college 
The cost of college has been much in the news over the past several years, as parents, students, and politicians struggle to cope with rising tuition in four year institutions around the country. While the mounting price tag has a number of causes, including cuts to state funding during the recent recession and the predatory marketing practices of some for-profit institutions, a few students have begun to take matters into their own hands with the help of an unprecedented tool: crowdfunding. Using sites like Indiegogo Life, GoFundMe, and Dreamfund, some millennials have had great success raising money for college. In fact, a young man in New York recently raised over $8,000 to attend another year at his private liberal arts college, while a Minnesota native managed to solicit some $60,000 to pay off the debt she accrued during her undergraduate years. While such stories may not assuage the one billion dollar student loan crisis, they are testimony to the old adage that necessity is, indeed, the mother of invention.

The first two links, from the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, offer coverage of the recent phenomena of crowdfunding university expenses. In the third and fourth links, readers will find both an article and an infographic that map out the terrain of crowdfunding's brief, eventful history. Next, the fifth link navigates to NPR's explanation of how the student debt crisis came to be, including an overview of the GI Bill, which made college affordable for more Americans then ever before, as well as the the economic downturn of 2008, which spurred states to cut funding to their public universities. The last link, from the U.S. News & World Report, navigates to a number of articles centered on the theme of paying for college.

Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Law and Legal Studies

Teaching Tolerance: Classroom Resources --- http://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources

Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Math Tutorials

MathPapa (learn algebra) --- http://www.mathpapa.com

Khan Academy:  Can you use trigonometry to find the hypotenuse? --- Click Here
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/trigonometry/basic-trigonometry/basic_trig_ratios/e/trigonometry_1.5?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Highlighted Content 081615&utm_term=Stuff You Might Like Test Cohort

Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

History Tutorials

Books That Shaped America | National Book Festival - Library of Congress ---
http://lisnews.org/books_that_shaped_america_national_book_festival_library_of_congress

Magna Carta: The British Library --- http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta

Treasures of the New York Public Library (American History) --- http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/162

Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments --- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/world-leaders-1/

Robben Island Museum (South Africa) ---  http://www.robben-island.org.za/

Finnish Cultural Institute in NYC (art history) --- http://www.fciny.org/

Street Art with Google Art https://streetart.withgoogle.com

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dating Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/how-to-bake-ancient-roman-bread-dating-back-to-79-ad.html

Meet the First Female Tattoo Artists: Maud Wagner (1877-1961) & Jessie Knight (1904–1994) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/meet-the-first-female-tattoo-artists.html

How Can I Know Anything at All? BBC Animations Feature the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Hume, Popper & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/how-can-i-know-anything-at-all-bbc-animations-feature-the-philosophy-of-wittgenstein-hume-popper-more.html

James Baldwin Debates Malcolm X (1963) and William F. Buckley (1965): Vintage Video & Audio ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/james-baldwin-debates-malcolm-x-1963-and-william-f-buckley.html

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Vivid, Startling Color ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/see-berlin-before-and-after-world-war-ii-in-vivid-startling-color.html

POSTmatter (artists and their art) --- http://postmatter.com/

Khan Academy:  What came before Communist China? --- Click Here

Indians of the Midwest: The Newberry Library ---  http://publications.newberry.org/indiansofthemidwest/

ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism  --- http://global100.adl.org/

 The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Available Online: Japanese, Italian, Thai & Much More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/the-new-york-times-makes-17000-tasty-recipes-available-online.html

Work in Progress (writers and literature) --- http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/ 

Wisconsin Women Making History --- http://womeninwisconsin.org/

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  

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Language Tutorials

Learn to Speak 48 Languages for Free: Everything from Arabic to Indonesian to Yiddish ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/learn-to-speak-48-languages-for-free.html

Lingua.ly (language learning for a fee) --- http://www.lingua.ly 

There are an abundance of language learning programs on the market. Few of them, however, take advantage of the world wide web. Lingua.ly seeks to do just that. So far it is offered in English, Spanish, French, and Hebrew with the option to learn one of nine other languages. After first creating a free account, readers can start by learning vocabulary. Once that is accomplished, the program starts to recommend websites that are at the learner's reading level. In this manner, the web becomes a language learning facility.

Work in Progress (writers and literature) --- http://www.fsgworkinprogress.com/ 

Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages

Music Tutorials

Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Writing Tutorials

22 lessons from Stephen King on how to be a great writer ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-king-on-how-to-write-2014-8#ixzz3j4E1KuYo

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writers ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/stephen-kings-top-20-rules-for-writers.html

Jensen Comment
King's advice also applies in most instances to academic writing, but it does not apply in all instances. For example, background is generally more important in academic writing. Ideally there are convenient online links to background. Wikipedia is often great for background, but there are limitations. Providing background in references to fee-based journals limits readership, especially among students and foreign readers.

My own advice is to take a lot of notes for your writing projects, but don't put off commencing to write in the process of note taking. Writing a way of guiding both thought and note taking.

National Association of Science Writers http://www.nasw.org 

Sentence Structure of Technical Writing http://web.mit.edu/me-ugoffice/communication/technical-writing.pdf 

LabWrite for Students http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/ 

Introduction to Technical Communication
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/writing-and-humanistic-studies/21w-732-5-introduction-to-technical-communication-explorations-in-scientific-and-technical-writing-fall-2006/ 

The Purdue OWL: Conducting Research  https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/8/ 

The Official Site of Richard Feynman http://www.richardfeynman.com 

Merriam-Webster http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary-apps/android-ipad-iphone-windows.htm 

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine

Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

August 11, 2015

• Old Electronics: Source of Lead Exposure in Kids?
• Prescription Meds: Too Common in Pregnancy?
• What's the Best Method for Cleaning Hospital Rooms?
• Steroids May Help Speed Pneumonia Recovery
• Music Therapy Might Help People With Epilepsy
• Skipping Breakfast Bad Idea for Type 2 Diabetics
• The Most Effective Way to Protect an Aging Brain
• Could Too Many Refined Carbs Make You Depressed?
• Bodybuilder Supplement Abuse a Growing Concern
• What Keeps Moles From Becoming Melanomas?

August 12, 2015

• Fresh Donor Eggs May Mean More Births Than Frozen
• Screen Depressed Teens for Heart Disease: Experts
• 1 in 3 With Ovarian Cancer Live 10 Years or More
• Mixed Results on Testosterone Supplements for Men
• Omega-3s May Protect Against Schizophrenia
• What's the Best Method for Cleaning Hospital Rooms?
• Steroids May Help Speed Pneumonia Recovery
• Prescription Meds: Too Common in Pregnancy?
• Old Electronics: Source of Lead Exposure in Kids?
• Music Therapy Might Help People With Epilepsy

August 13, 2015

• Lyme Disease in U.S. Is Under-Reported, CDC Says
• Early Egg Harvest May Up Pregnancy Odds for Some
• Vaccine Combo Promising Against RSV Infection
• This Many Million Adults May Have Pain Daily
• Women's Pelvic Pain Often Unreported
• Mixed Results on Testosterone Supplements for Men
• Fresh Donor Eggs May Mean More Births Than Frozen
• Screen Depressed Teens for Heart Disease: Experts
• Omega-3s May Protect Against Schizophrenia
• Calorie Burn Boost: Weight-Loss Surgery's Secret?

August 14, 2015

• Former President Carter's Cancer: FAQ
• Broader BRCA Mutation Gene Test May Help Some
• Saturated Fats: What to Know Now
• Vaccine Sharply Curbs Chickenpox Cases in U.S.
• 1 in 4 Senior Women in U.S. Has Osteoporosis: CDC
• Some Employers Look To Control High Drug Costs
• Your Favorite Music May Boost Post-Op Recovery
• Lyme Disease in U.S. Is Under-Reported, CDC Says
• Early Egg Harvest May Up Pregnancy Odds for Some
• Vaccine Combo Promising Against RSV Infection

August 15, 2015

• FDA OKs OxyContin for Some Children
• Vitamin D Supplements Little Help for Obese Teens
• How to Mend a Broken Heart? Your Gender May Matter
• Yeast's New Use: Making Narcotic Painkillers
• Type 2 Diabetes Tied to Women's Language Problems
• Broader BRCA Mutation Gene Test May Help Some
• Vaccine Sharply Curbs Chickenpox Cases in U.S.
• Former President Carter's Cancer: FAQ
• Saturated Fats: What to Know Now
• 1 in 4 Senior Women in U.S. Has Osteoporosis: CDC

August 17, 2015

• FDA OKs OxyContin for Some Children
• Vitamin D Supplements Little Help for Obese Teens
• How to Mend a Broken Heart? Your Gender May Matter
• Type 2 Diabetes Tied to Women's Language Problems
• Former President Carter's Cancer: FAQ
• 1 in 4 Senior Women in U.S. Has Osteoporosis: CDC
• Yeast's New Use: Making Narcotic Painkillers
• Broader BRCA Mutation Gene Test May Help Some
• Vaccine Sharply Curbs Chickenpox Cases in U.S.
• Saturated Fats: What to Know Now

August 19, 2015

• Are Vaginal Germs Linked to Preemie Birth?
• Can Coffee Lower Risk of Colon Cancer's Return?
• Survey: More Parents Accepting Vaccine Use
• City Grime Releases Pollutant In Sunlight
• WebMD Survey: Parents Don't See Kids' Stress Signs
• FDA OKs OxyContin for Some Children
• Vitamin D Supplements Little Help for Obese Teens
• How to Mend a Broken Heart? Your Gender May Matter
• Type 2 Diabetes Tied to Women's Language Problems
• Former President Carter's Cancer: FAQ

August 20, 2015

• Psoriasis Linked to Higher Risk of Depression
• Early Stage Breast Cancer Not a Death Sentence
• Can What You Eat Affect Your Mental Health?
• Jimmy Carter: Melanoma Has Spread to Brain
• Aging Brains and Vulnerability to Alzheimer's
• Those With Few Moles and Deadlier Skin Cancer Risk
• Workaholics May Face Higher Stroke Risk: Study
• Insulin Pumps Cut Risk of This in Type 1 Diabetes
• Black Women Less Likely to Survive Uterine Cancer
• Weight Loss While You Relax? Mouse Study Details

August 22, 2015

• Could Laser Skin Test Replace Biopsy For Melanoma?
• 2 Million Exchange Enrollees Miss Out On Aid
• Doctor's Support Boosts Weight Loss, Study Shows
• Pot Belly Linked to Heavy Smoking
• Single and Happy? View on Relationships is Key
• NFL Study Suggests Preteen Football May Harm Brain
• Contact Lens Wearers Take Chances With Their Eyes
• 9 Factors May Be Key to Alzheimer's Risk
• Eating on the Run May Mean Eating More Later
• Psoriasis Linked to Higher Risk of Depression

Pain Medication --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analgesic

Should you take Tylenol, Advil, or aspirin for pain? Here's what the evidence says ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/17/9165189/best-painkiller-tylenol-aspirin-advil

"The Pharma Industry Thinks It Finally Has a Fix for Migraines," by David Wainer, Bloomberg, July 21, 2015 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-21/there-s-hope-beyond-botox-as-pharma-races-for-first-migraine-fix?cmpid=BBD072115_BIZ

Some wear sunglasses indoors, apply cold vinegar compresses or chew on ginger. Others sit in the dark for days. But there’s one thing most migraine sufferers agree on: the pharma industry has failed them.

Four drugmakers are working to fix that by bringing to market the first generation of drugs developed to prevent migraines. The products, designed to target a peptide known to touch off the pain attacks, all have blockbuster potential.

Continued in article

"Surgeons Smash Records with Pig-to-Primate Organ Transplants," by Antonio Regalado, MIT's Technology Review, August 12, 2015 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540076/surgeons-smash-records-with-pig-to-primate-organ-transplants/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150813

A biotech company is genetically engineering pigs so that their organs might work in people.

Canadian Academy of Health Sciences: Reports --- http://www.cahs-acss.ca/reports/

These Photographs Capture The Dual Lives Of People With Mental Illness ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/dual-lives-of-people-with-mental-illness-2015-1#ixzz3j0KK9AVp

Jensen Comment
In one sense Liz Obert was fortunate that she "got dressed, went to work, and acted as if everything was fine." Many more afflicted people often cannot get themselves to work or, in the case of students, to class and find it harder and harder to pretend everything is fine. One of my mentally ill relatives, a teacher, just stopped showing up for work. The school district generously carried her at full pay and benefits for well over a year until she got full-time Social Security disability.

I've had several students who asked for grade W (withdrawal from the course) long after the term deadline for withdrawing. In every one of those cases that I recall  the student had a failing grade at the time. I generally insisted that the administrator in charge disabled student counseling to change the grade since I did not have access to the medical history of such students. In most instances the grade was changed by the administrator.

In some instances I gave I (incomplete) grades, but these were usually based upon more clear-cut reasons (yes sometimes Grandma does die before a term paper is due). In those instances each student was otherwise doing pretty well in the course when tragedy struck.

"The Gender Orgasm Gap," by Mona Chalabi, Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, August 20, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-gender-orgasm-gap/

Sex appears in my inbox at least once a month. We all occasionally wonder if we’re normal, especially when it comes to the most private parts of our lives. This week, after I received two questions from readers about their masturbation habits (something I’ve quantified before by age, frequency and relationship status), I decided to return to the original data source to see if I had missed anything.

I had — statistics on what makes women and men reach orgasm.

In 2009, the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB) asked 1,931 U.S. adults ages 18 to 59 about their most recent sexual experience. The topline findings show that men are more likely to orgasm than women — 91 percent of men said they climaxed during their last sexual encounter, compared with 64 percent of women.

But there seems to be a perception gap, too — at least among men. Eighty-five percent of men said their partners in that recent sexual encounter had reached climax, far higher than the percentage of women who said they orgasmed. That can’t simply be explained away by saying that the men were referring to different sexual partners. Most of these sexual encounters were heterosexual — 92 percent of men and 98 percent of women said their last sexual encounter was with someone of the opposite sex. So it seems like some of those men were wrong when they said their partners had orgasmed — either their egos are causing them to overestimate, or some of those women are faking it.

The survey also asked which sexual acts people had engaged in and whether they had experienced an orgasm during that encounter. It’s worth mentioning at this point that only people who reported a sexual experience in the previous 12 months were included in the survey — presumably because it might get tricky to accurately recall sexual encounters after a while, especially the forgettable ones.

For men, the results don’t vary much — they orgasmed around 90 percent of the time regardless of which sexual acts the encounter included. But for women, there were some big differences — 64 percent of women reported orgasms in encounters that included partnered masturbation (defined in the study as “masturbating with a partner, rubbing genitals together, dry sex, or humping”), while 81 percent orgasmed during encounters in which they received oral sex.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I didn't check the NSSHB Survey to find out how many responders had their "last sexual encounter" alone in the room --- that old Rodney Dangerfield admission  about his first "frightening" sexual experience.

A Bit of Humor for August 14-31, 2015

Jean Louise's second impulse was to blame it on the minister. He was a young man, a Mr. Stone by name, with what Dr. Finch called the greatest talent for dullness he had ever seen in a man on the near side of fifty. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with Mr Stone, except that he possessed all the necessary qualifications for a certified public accountant: he did not like people, he was quick with numbers, he had no sense of humor, and he was butt-headed.
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, in her newly released book, Go Set a Watchman, Chapter 7 ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14f370e95e1cd3ab
Thank you Denny Beresford for the heads up. When you employ or marry Mr. Stone you've hit rock bottom.

Air Sickness Bag  (read that barf bag) Virtual Museum --- http://www.airsicknessbags.com/

Cartoons that perfectly describe life in Silicon Valley ---
 http://www.businessinsider.com/17-silicon-valley-cartoons-2015-8#ixzz3iPxTucuD
Some aren't very funny; Others are over my head.
I did like:  "I'm not unemployed --- I'm pre-revenue"
I would have liked: "While in the pre-profits state I'm good at revenue gaming."

17 Lies Parents Told Their Kids --- http://www.teamjimmyjoe.com/2015/01/17-funniest-lies-parents-told-their-kids/

Forwarded by Paula

There ain't no magazine named "Northern Living" for good reason. There ain't nobody interested in livin' up north, nobody would buy the magazine!

Humor July 1-31,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q3.htm#Humor073115

Humor June 1-30,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q2.htm#Humor043015

Humor May 1-31,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q2.htm#Humor043015

Humor April 1-30, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q2.htm#Humor043015

Humor March 1-31, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor033115

Humor February 1-28, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor022815

Humor January 1-31, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor013115

Humor December 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor123114

Humor November 1-30, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor113014

Humor October 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor103114

Humor September 1-30, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor093014

Humor August 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor083114

Humor July 1-31, 2014--- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor073114

Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Update in 2014
20-Year Sugar Hill Master Plan --- http://www.nccouncil.org/images/NCC/file/wrkgdraftfeb142014.pdf

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/

Online Distance Education Training and Education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud  (College, Inc.) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

• With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
• With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
• With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR
• With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses

The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm

How Accountics Scientists Should Change: 
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm 

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock and Calendar --- http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones --- http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) --- http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
         Also see http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
         Facts about population growth (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth --- http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons --- http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.

Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

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.

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