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/
GAO: Fiscal Outlook & The Debt --- http://www.gao.gov/fiscal_outlook/overview
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
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
Bob Jensen's illustrations of multivariate data visualization (including faces) ---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-
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.
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
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
Is $1+ Trillion in Student Debt a Huge Problem?
"What Does $1-Trillion in Student Debt Really Mean? Maybe Not That Much,"
by Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 16, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Does-1-Trillion-Mean-/131900/
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.
Election Gaming "Fraud" in Primary Elections in the USA:
Making Sure Your General Election Opponent is a Real Loser
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudulentElections.htm
Table of Contents
Funding Losers
Communications Juggernauts in Crossover Voting Frauds
Funding Opponent Scandals
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Alice Goffman --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Goffman
Controversy About Alice's Academic Integrity --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Goffman#Controversy
But again, to focus exclusively on
Goffman’s individual conduct misses the larger point. Alice Goffman is a product
of system that uncritically rewards the kind of things she was doing, even when
those things may have included engaging in serious crimes, or serious academic
misconduct.
"Alice Goffman's Implausible Ethnography," by Paul Campos, Chronicle
of Higher Education, August 21, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Alice-Goffmans-Implausible-/232491/?cid=at
'On the Run’ reveals the flaws in how sociology is sometimes produced, evaluated, and rewarded.
. . .
Those words make a moving statement, spoken as they are by a man who has worked hard all his life to overcome the racism that blights American society, and who has seen his daughter and his grandchildren fall victim to drug addiction, chronic unemployment, and a criminal-justice system that imprisons an astonishingly high percentage of African-American men.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know if George Taylor actually said those things. Indeed, Taylor’s speech raises the possibility that Goffman embellished or conflated some of the most compelling material in her book.
Attentive readers will have noticed that Taylor’s remarks appear to have been made after Barack Obama became president. Yet Goffman dates her interview with Taylor to the fall of 2007, when Obama was just emerging as a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination, and did not yet herald the coming of "a new era" to anyone.
Even more inexplicably, readers will discover two pages later that Chuck, whom Goffman says she has just visited in the county jail before meeting his grandfather, was no longer alive in the fall of 2007, since, as the book recounts, he was murdered in the summer of that year. As far as I’ve been able to determine, none of the book’s many enthusiastic reviewers — not to mention its editors or the academic referees who vetted the manuscript for the University of Chicago Press — seem to have noticed this incongruity. (Douglas Mitchell, an executive editor at the press, declined to answer questions about On the Run.)
Standing alone, this kind of mistake might not be particularly significant. Perhaps Goffman misread her field notes, and the interview with Taylor took place in 2008 or 2009. Perhaps the reference to visiting Chuck several months after his murder can be explained in similar terms, although that seems improbable; Goffman describes Chuck’s death as a shattering emotional event for her personally, so it’s hard to imagine how she could have made such an error.
But this incident is just one of numerous and significant incongruities, contradictions, inaccuracies, and improbable incidents scattered throughout On the Run. (Goffman declined interview requests, and decided not to answer most questions by email. The Chronicle Review has invited Goffman to respond to this article.).
Continued in a very long article
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Internal Control --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_control
"In the NSF's Priciest Grant-Fraud Settlement, Northeastern
U. Will Pay $2.7 Million," by Paul Baskin, Chronicle of Higher Education,
August 21, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/In-the-NSFs-Priciest/232511/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Northeastern University has agreed to pay $2.7 million to cover nine years of mishandling federal research funds, in the largest-ever civil settlement with the National Science Foundation.
The case stems from the management of NSF grant money awarded to Northeastern for work at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, from 2001 to 2010. The work was led by a professor of physics, Stephen Reucroft.
Both the NSF and Northeastern declined to discuss the matter in detail. But the university issued a written statement that put the blame largely on Mr. Reucroft, who retired from Northeastern in 2010.
"The conduct in question related to accounting and grant oversight," Northeastern said in a written statement. "The university self-reported the discrepancies to the funding agency, the National Science Foundation, as soon as they were discovered and fully cooperated with the agency’s review."
But the terms of the $2.7-million settlement suggested that Northeastern bore substantial responsibility. According to the agreement, the university failed to provide necessary oversight, failed to pay interest due, paid salaries without required documentation, and paid expense money based on inadequate or fraudulent documentation submitted by Mr. Reucroft.
Northeastern "continued to engage in these practices when it knew or should have known in 2006, if not before, that Professor Reucroft had violated NSF requirements when he submitted fraudulent claims for personal expenses," said the settlement, which was signed by lawyers for Northeastern and by Anita Johnson, an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston.
Continued in article
One of the problems is that the first trait may make the organization
complacent about the other two traits. Exhibit A is Brigham Young University
that certainly gets an A+ on the "encouraging an ethical culture" trait. But
this made BYU complacent about skepticism and engaging employees in internal
controls. Who would have guessed that a financial officer at BYU would pilfer
hundreds of thousands of dollars (2002)? ---
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/948838/Ex-BYU-official-is-charged-with-stealing-fees.html?pg=all
PROVO — Prosecutors say that a former BYU finance officer and his wife used a defunct corporation as a shell to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in collection fees from the university over several years.
In a preliminary hearing Friday in 4th District Court, deputy Utah County Attorney David Wayment charged that John Davis and his wife, Carol, used an expired corporate name as a front to skim thousands in inflated student fees that were supposed to go to collection agencies.
By the end of the four-hour hearing, Judge James Taylor found probable cause to bind John Davis over on seven counts of theft and one count of racketeering, all second-degree felonies. Taylor, however, found the state lacked enough evidence to prove that Carol Davis knew that potential criminal activity was going on, despite having her name on several bank accounts related to the crime.
Taylor ordered that four counts of theft and one count of racketeering be dropped against Carol Davis.
During the hearing, finance officials with Brigham Young University testified finding strange financial activity involving John Davis, who worked as BYU's supervisor of collections.
Mark Madsen, assistant treasurer over student financial services at BYU, testified of finding several checks requested by John Davis made payable to a company called RCM (Regional Credit Management). Madsen assumed that the company was a collection agency contracted with BYU to collect on outstanding debts from students who had failed to pay their tuition, library fees or parking tickets.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Universities are notorious for relying upon trust without adequate internal
controls. Much of the problem lies in tight budgets and unwillingness to
allocate funds for better internal control systems.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
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:
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 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 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: 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.
From Two Former Presidents of the AAA
"Some Methodological Deficiencies in Empirical Research Articles in
Accounting." by Thomas R. Dyckman and Stephen A. Zeff , Accounting
Horizons: September 2014, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 695-712 ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/acch-50818 (not free)
This paper uses a sample of the regression and behavioral papers published in The Accounting Review and the Journal of Accounting Research from September 2012 through May 2013. We argue first that the current research results reported in empirical regression papers fail adequately to justify the time period adopted for the study. Second, we maintain that the statistical analyses used in these papers as well as in the behavioral papers have produced flawed results. We further maintain that their tests of statistical significance are not appropriate and, more importantly, that these studies do not�and cannot�properly address the economic significance of the work. In other words, significance tests are not tests of the economic meaningfulness of the results. We suggest ways to avoid some but not all of these problems. We also argue that replication studies, which have been essentially abandoned by accounting researchers, can contribute to our search for truth, but few will be forthcoming unless the academic reward system is modified.
The free SSRN version of this paper is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324266
Can the 2008 investment banking failure be traced to a math error?
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street ---
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
Link forwarded by Jim Mahar ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/recipe-for-disaster-formula-that-killed.html
Some highlights:
"For five years, Li's formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.
His method was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street banks to ratings agencies and regulators. And it became so deeply entrenched—and was making people so much money—that warnings about its limitations were largely ignored.
Then the model fell apart." The article goes on to show that correlations are at the heart of the problem.
"The reason that ratings agencies and investors felt so safe with the triple-A tranches was that they believed there was no way hundreds of homeowners would all default on their loans at the same time. One person might lose his job, another might fall ill. But those are individual calamities that don't affect the mortgage pool much as a whole: Everybody else is still making their payments on time.
But not all calamities are individual, and tranching still hadn't solved all the problems of mortgage-pool risk. Some things, like falling house prices, affect a large number of people at once. If home values in your neighborhood decline and you lose some of your equity, there's a good chance your neighbors will lose theirs as well. If, as a result, you default on your mortgage, there's a higher probability they will default, too. That's called correlation—the degree to which one variable moves in line with another—and measuring it is an important part of determining how risky mortgage bonds are."
I would highly recommend reading the entire thing that gets much more involved with the actual formula etc.
The
“math error” might truly be have been an error or it might have simply been a
gamble with what was perceived as miniscule odds of total market failure.
Something similar happened in the case of the trillion-dollar disastrous 1993
collapse of Long Term Capital Management formed by Nobel Prize winning
economists and their doctoral students who took similar gambles that ignored the
“miniscule odds” of world market collapse -- -
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#LTCM
The rhetorical question is whether the failure is ignorance in model building or
risk taking using the model?
Also see
"In Plato's Cave: Mathematical models are a
powerful way of predicting financial markets. But they are fallible" The
Economist, January 24, 2009, pp. 10-14 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Bailout
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
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Help us build it!
While this project is only available as a demo for users on Windows 10 currently, we would love to hear from you and learn how TechSmith Loop would be most valuable in your organization! If you have ideas, or just want to learn more, please fill out this form so we can start the conversation.
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:
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.
. . .
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-schoolHow 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-crowdfundingThe History of Crowdfunding
https://www.crowdfunder.com/blog/wp-content/uploaded-files/History-of-Equity-Crowdfunding.pdfHow 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-
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
11 popular programming languages that can help you land a job ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/programming-languages-in-highest-demand-2015-6?op=1#ixzz3eIfM4fpC
Java:
Originally invented in 1991 as a programming language for smart televisions, Oracle's Java is now the most popular language in the world — a position solidified by the fact that Java is crucial to Android app development and lots of business software. Java: Originally invented in 1991 as a programming language for smart televisions, Oracle's Java is now the most popular language in the world — a position solidified by the fact that Java is crucial to Android app development and lots of business software. Flickr/ D. Miller. . .
PHP:
This language for programming web sites is incredibly common — some estimates say it powers one-third of the web. Big sites like WordPress, Facebook, and Yahoo use it. A lot of programmers also hate PHP with a passion — Stack Exchange founder Jeff Atwood once wrote "PHP isn't so much a language as a random collection of arbitrary stuff, a virtual explosion at the keyword and function factory." PHP: This language for programming web sites is incredibly common — some estimates say it powers one-third of the web. Big sites like WordPress, Facebook, and Yahoo use it. A lot of programmers also hate PHP with a passion — Stack Exchange founder Jeff Atwood once wrote "PHP isn't so much a language as a random collection of arbitrary stuff, a virtual explosion at the keyword and function factory." Reddit. . .
Perl:
Originally developed by a NASA engineer in the late eighties, Perl excels at processing text, and developers like it because it's powerful and flexible. It was once famously described as "the duct tape of the web," because it's really great at holding websites together, but it's not the most elegant language. Perl: Originally developed by a NASA engineer in the late eighties, Perl excels at processing text, and developers like it because it's powerful and flexible. It was once famously described as "the duct tape of the web," because it's really great at holding websites together, but it's not the most elegant language. Wikimedia Commons. . .
C:
One of the oldest programming languages still in common use, C was created in the early 1970s. In 1978, the language's legendary and still widely read manual, the 800-page "The C Programming Language," saw print for the first time. C: One of the oldest programming languages still in common use, C was created in the early 1970s. In 1978, the language's legendary and still widely read manual, the 800-page "The C Programming Language," saw print for the first time. Flickr. . .
Objective-C:
The original C programming language was so influential that it inspired a lot of similarly named successors, all of which took their inspiration from the original but added features from other languages. Objective-C has grown in popularity as the standard language to build iPhone apps, though Apple's been pushing its own Swift language, too. Objective-C: The original C programming language was so influential that it inspired a lot of similarly named successors, all of which took their inspiration from the original but added features from other languages. Objective-C has grown in popularity as the standard language to build iPhone apps, though Apple's been pushing its own Swift language, too. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. . .
JavaScript:
This is a super-popular programming language primarily used in web apps. But it doesn't have much to do with Java besides the name. JavaScript runs a lot of the modern web, but it also catches a lot of flak for slowing browsers down and sometimes exposing users to security vulnerabilities. JavaScript: This is a super-popular programming language primarily used in web apps. But it doesn't have much to do with Java besides the name. JavaScript runs a lot of the modern web, but it also catches a lot of flak for slowing browsers down and sometimes exposing users to security vulnerabilities. Dmitry Baranovskiy via Flickr. . .
Visual Basic:
Microsoft's Visual Basic (and its successor, Visual Basic .NET) tries to make programming easier with a graphical element that lets you change portions of a program by dragging and dropping. It's old, and some think it's lacking features next to other languages, but with Microsoft's backing, it's still got its users out there. Visual Basic: Microsoft's Visual Basic (and its successor, Visual Basic .NET) tries to make programming easier with a graphical element that lets you change portions of a program by dragging and dropping. It's old, and some think it's lacking features next to other languages, but with Microsoft's backing, it's still got its users out there. Wikimedia Commons. . .
Ruby:
Like Python, developers like this 24-year-old language because it's easy to read and write the code. Also popular is Rails, an add-on framework for Ruby that makes it really easy to use it to build web apps. The language's official motto is "A programmer's best friend." Ruby: Like Python, developers like this 24-year-old language because it's easy to read and write the code. Also popular is Rails, an add-on framework for Ruby that makes it really easy to use it to build web apps. The language's official motto is "A programmer's best friend." ©V&A imagesPython:
This language traces back to 1989, and is loved by its fans for its highly readable code. Many programmers suggest it's the easiest language to get started with. Python: This language traces back to 1989, and is loved by its fans for its highly readable code. Many programmers suggest it's the easiest language to get started with. Flickr/nyuhuhuu CSS: Short for "Cascading Style Sheets," CSS is a programming language to design the format and layout of a website. A lot of website menus and mobile app menus are written with CSS, in conjunction with JavaScript and garden-variety HTML.CSS:
Short for "Cascading Style Sheets," CSS is a programming language to design the format and layout of a website. A lot of website menus and mobile app menus are written with CSS, in conjunction with JavaScript and garden-variety HTML. Wikimedia Commons. . .
R:
This is the programming language of choice for statisticians and anybody doing data analysis. Google has gone on record as a big fan of R, for the power it gives to its mathematicians.Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/programming-languages-in-highest-demand-2015-6?op=1#ixzz3eIfsCJdR
Free Code Camp --- http://www.freecodecamp.com/
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/
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/
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-schoolHow 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-crowdfundingThe History of Crowdfunding
https://www.crowdfunder.com/blog/wp-content/uploaded-files/History-of-Equity-Crowdfunding.pdfHow 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
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
August 12, 2015
August 13, 2015
August 14, 2015
August 15, 2015
August 17, 2015
August 19, 2015
August 20, 2015
August 22, 2015
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!
Southerners know their summer weather report:
Humidity
Humidity
Humidity
-------------------------
Southerners know their vacation spots:
The beach
The rivuh
The crick
--------
Southerners know everybody's first name:
Honey
Darlin'
Shugah
--------
Southerners know the movies that speak to their hearts:
Fried Green Tomatoes
Driving Miss Daisy
Steel Magnolias
Gone With The Wind
-----------
Southerners know their religions:
Bapdiss
Methdiss
Football
--------------
Southerners know their cities dripping with Southern charm:
Chawl'stn
S'vanah
Foat Wuth
N'awlins
Addlanna
---------------
Southerners know their elegant gentlemen:
Men in uniform
Men in tuxedos
Rhett Butler
-----------------
Southern girls know their prime real estate:
The Mall
The Country Club
The Beauty Salon
--------------
Southern girls know the 3 deadly sins:
Having bad hair and nails
Having bad manners
Cooking bad food
----------
Only a Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption fit, and that you don't "HAVE" them, you "PITCH" them.
_____
Only a Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc., make up "a mess."
_____
Only a Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of "yonder."
_____
Only a Southerner knows exactly how long "directly" is, as in: "Going to town, be back directly."
_____
Even Southern babies know that, "Gimme some sugar," is not a request for the white, granular, sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.
_____
All Southerners know exactly when "by and by" is.
They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.
_____
Only a Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who's got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. If the neighbor's trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin'!
_____
Only Southerners grow up knowing the difference between "right near" and "a right far piece." They also know that"just down the road" can be 1 mile or 20.
_____
Only a Southerner both knows and understands the difference between a redneck, a good ol' boy, and po' white trash.
_____
No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.
_____
A Southerner knows that "fixin" can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.
_____
Only Southerners
make friends while standing in lines, ... and when we're "in line,"...
we talk to
everybody!
_____
Put 100 Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they're related, even if only by marriage.
_____
In the South, “y'all” is singular, “all y'all” is plural.
_____
Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.
_____
Every Southerner knows that tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that red eye gravy is also a breakfast food; that scrambled eggs just ain’t right without Tabasco, and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.
_____
When you hear someone say, "Well, I caught myself lookin'," you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!
_____
Only true Southerners say "sweet tea" and "sweet milk." Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it -- we do not like our tea unsweetened. "Sweet milk" means you don't want buttermilk.
_____
And a true Southerner knows you don't scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say, “Bless her sweet little heart"... and go your own way.
_____
To those of you who are still a little embarrassed by your Southernness: Take two tent revivals and a dose of sausage gravy and call me in the morning. Bless your heart!
_____
And to those of you who are still having a hard time understanding all this Southern stuff....bless your hearts, I hear they’re fixin' to have classes on Southernness as a second language!
_____
Southern girls know men may come and go, but friends are fah-evah !
Now Shugah, send this to someone who was raised in the South or wish they had a ‘been! If you're a Northern transplant, bless your heart, fake it. We know you got here as fast as you could.
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
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi- AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
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Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
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AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation. |
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Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
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FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
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The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts
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Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu