Tidbits on December 14, 2015
Bob Jensen

Part 1 of the History of the Homestead Inn Torn Down in 2015
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Hotels/Homestead/Set01/Set01.htm

 

Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

For earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 
Bookmarks for the World's Library --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm 

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

Updates from WebMD --- Click Here




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio

See Norway Like Never Before ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/see-norway-like-never-before/vi-BBngaHR?ocid=spartandhp

Travel Back in Time and See Picasso Make Abstract Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/travel-back-in-time-and-see-picasso-make-abstract-art.html

Buster Keaton: The Wonderful Gags of the Founding Father of Visual Comedy ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/buster-keaton-the-wonderful-gags-of-the-founding-father-of-visual-comedy.html

The largest airplane ever built has a wingspan that’s nearly the length of a football field ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-airplane-ever-built-soviets-mriya2015-11

A short Visit with God --- https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?t=12&v=moBvLFbFdJ4 |
Thank you Paula for the heads up.


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

Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Buddy Guy & B.B. King ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/jimi-hendrix-play-the-delta-blues-on-a-12-string-acoustic-guitar.html

Finland's Finest: The Seven Symphonies Of Jean Sibelius ---
http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/12/08/458232716/finlands-finest-the-seven-symphonies-of-jean-sibelius

Watch Musicians Plays Bach & the Jaws Theme on the Octobass, the Gargantuan String Instrument Invented in 1850 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/watch-musicians-plays-bach-the-jaws-theme-on-the-octobass-the-gargantuan-string-instrument-invented-in-1850.html

15-Year-Old French Guitar Prodigy Flawlessly Rips Through Solos by Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmour, Yngwie Malmsteen & Steve Vai ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/15-year-old-french-guitar-prodigy-flawlessly-rips-through-solos-by-eddie-van-halen-david-gilmour-yngwie-malmsteen-steve-vai.html

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Introduced to America by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/new-wave-music-devo-talking-heads-blondie-elvis-costello-gets-introduced-to-america-by-abcs-tv-show-2020-1979.html

ILHC 2013 - Invitational Strictly Lindy Hop Finals ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9xxeWRxSbA

Steve Martin Writes a Hymn for Hymn-Less Atheists ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/steve-martin-writes-a-hymn-for-hymn-less-atheists.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

NASA just released incredible new images of Pluto — the best we'll see in decades ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-images-pluto-new-horizons-2015-12

14 photos of glaciers that reveal Patagonia's disappearing beauty ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/14-photos-of-glaciers-that-reveal-patagonias-disappearing-beauty-2015-12

The Atlantic's Top 25 News Photos of 2015 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/12/top-25-news-photos-of-2015/419184/
These are good!

7 obscure yet unbelievable military weapons ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/7-unbelievable-military-weapons-people-have-never-heard-of-2014-6

Video:  70 Complete Episodes of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting Now Free to Watch Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/70-complete-episodes-of-bob-ross-the-joy-of-painting-now-free-online.html

45,000 Works of Art from Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center Now Freely Viewable Online---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/45000-works-of-art-from-stanford-universitys-cantor-arts-center-now-freely-viewable-online.html

The American West has some of the world's most breathtaking canyons ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/breathtaking-canyons-2015-11

The largest airplane ever built has a wingspan that’s nearly the length of a football field ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-airplane-ever-built-soviets-mriya2015-11

Travel Back in Time and See Picasso Make Abstract Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/travel-back-in-time-and-see-picasso-make-abstract-art.html

Striking Poster Collection from the Great Depression Shows That the US Government Once Supported the Arts in America ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/striking-poster-collection-from-the-great-depression-proves-that-the-us-government-once-supported-the-arts-in-america.html

Sometimes what passes as writerly craft is actually the product of a political agenda. Consider the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the 1950s ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/books/review/workshops-of-empire-by-eric-bennett.html?_r=0

OldMapsOnline --- http://www.oldmapsonline.org

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

15 Incredible Photos That’ll Remind You to Be Awed by Planet Earth ---
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/calacademy-bigpicture-photos-planet-earth/

This travel photographer shows one of Italy's most beloved cities in a way you've never seen before ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-venices-amazing-floors-2015-12

Unforgettable photos from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/pearl-harbor

Smithsonian: Seriously Amazing --- http://seriouslyamazing.si.edu/

A History of US Public Libraries --- http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/history-us-public-libraries

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

BBC:  100 Greatest British Novels ---
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151204-the-100-greatest-british-novels

Hannah Arendt’s Triumph --- https://newrepublic.com/article/125030/hannah-arendts-triumph

Hear Flannery O’Connor’s Short Story, “Revelation,” Read by Legendary Historian & Radio Host, Studs Terkel ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/flannery-oconnors-short-story-revelation-read-by-studs-terkel.html

In 1849, Herman Melville arrived in London with a vague idea for a "romance of adventure." Moby-Dick was born during a walk around town ---
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2015/12/white-whale-big-smoke-how-geography-london-inspired-moby-dick

Aldous Huxley was a prolific and panoramic thinker on the question of human potential. He was also something of a dupe...
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1637201.ece

Iris Murdoch said she was "capable of being in love with about six men at once.” Something about the sexual as well as intellectual thrill of the student–teacher relationship ---
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ink-inclination

When T.S. Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, he was nearly 70 and she was 30. Obscene poems followed. Explicitness, of course, is less erotic than suggestion...
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2015/11/t-s-eliot-and-sexual-wasteland

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

Library of Congress:  Banned Books That Shaped America ---
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica

This week, The New York Times published my first review for them, of Harvard particle physicist and cosmologist Lisa Randall's remarkable book Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs. The piece was a labor of love many weeks in the making, but I knew that the book – an expansive and enormously stimulating story of how we got to where we are now by one of the most brilliant women in the entire history of science – was well worth the investment. So I poured tremendous time, thought, and care into the review and spent more time with this book than with any other in my entire reading life. This is what my galley looked like after I was done:
Maria Popova
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/books/review/dark-matter-and-the-dinosaurs-by-lisa-randall.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

Free Electronic Literature --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI




Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on December 14, 2015
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2015/TidbitsQuotations121415.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 

Cato Institute: Social Security http://www.cato.org/research/social-security

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




Web Page Rank Checker
Check PAGE RANK of Web site pages Instantly ---
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
Thank you Jim Martin for the heads up.


History Corner ---
Some people think Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer; others that she is hugely overrated. Two hundred years after her birth, Emma Duncan assesses the legacy of the ultra-numerate countess ---
http://www.intelligentlifemagazine.com/intelligence/cracking-coder


Case Teaching at the Harvard Business School: C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning: Case Method in Practice --- 
http://www.hbs.edu/teaching/case-method-in-practice/index.html

Bob Jensen's threads on case method teaching and research ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases


How exactly did consciousness become a problem? And why, after years off the table, is it a hot research subject now? ---
https://aeon.co/essays/how-and-why-exactly-did-consciousness-become-a-problem


In an attempt to develop empathetic students, business schools are teaching literature. Does that work?

"Better Management Through Belles Lettres:  Literature at the B-school," by Lisa Haney, Baffler.com, December 2015 ---
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/better-management-belles-lettres/haney_wgroundb29-3_42rgb  

At six o’clock on a Wednesday evening last spring, dozens of students at Columbia Business School jostled into William C. Warren Hall to learn how the study of literature might prepare them for executive success. They were there to attend “Leadership Through Fiction,” a three-hour weekly course led by adjunct associate professor Bruce Craven, a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter turned business school administrator.

Craven was all smiles as he stood in the middle of an ultramodern amphitheater, radiating can-do energy and West Coast cool. This evening, the class was discussing Little Big Man, Thomas Berger’s 1964 parody of the western genre. Narrated by 111-year-old Jack Crabb, who claims to be the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn, the novel moves briskly through a series of gruesome confrontations between the Cheyenne tribes and white settlers in the nineteenth century. But Craven did not begin the class discussion by pointing to the history of colonial conquest or its attendant politics of racial genocide, as one might expect in a literature class. What he focused on, rather, was the failure to communicate.

“You can see how ineffective the communication is between the Cheyenne and the settlers,” Craven said. “In their world at the time, violence was the immediate reaction. Yet we can still fall into these kinds of traps. What kinds of insights can we take away from this?”

“These types of situations really make you tough,” one student volunteered. “They thicken your skin. It might be painful, but it can be really beneficial.”

“Good!” Craven said. “Anyone else?”

“I think its good when youre talking with people from different cultures to bring things back to the human level,” said another student. “Talk about things that arent inherently contentious—the weather, your family, children. Thats a good way to bridge the gap.”

“But sometimes conflicts just cant be resolved,” said Brian, a former Navy officer who quickly emerged as one of the classs more outspoken students. “Through a leaders—or a heros—journey, it’s important to realize whats worth fighting for, and when you shouldnt compromise your values.”

Craven nodded. “It often comes down to finding a balance between protecting your identity—staying true to your identity and your values—and finding common ground.” Then he launched into a story about running an executive coaching program in China. “One of the things I had to practice was listening and not always jumping in as a big loud American trying to talk my way through differences,” he recalled. He reframed this insight with his signature nonchalance. “For the Cheyenne, its like, ‘Our laws are better . . . Our women are hotter . . . Our culture rocks.Its like Coachella, Lollapalooza, Woodstock—but with knives.”

A four-minute promotional video posted online alongside Craven’s syllabus outlines the rationale for repurposing literature as management shibboleth—a teaching philosophy that embraces everything from ordinary self-improvement to solipsistic delusion. The camera leads the viewer to the King’s Highway Diner, just inside Palm Springs, California. Craven sits at the counter, flanked by a pile of books. As he rifles through the stack, he puts on his reading glasses and peers over them intently when he wants to make a point. These novels, he explains, are “narratives about characters in many different professions” who must find a “balance between their professional obligations, their personal expectations, and goals.” Like real people, fictional characters stumble, and it is “through their stumbling,” Craven promises, “that we will learn how to prepare ourselves for the future.”

The Stumbling Muse

Through my own travels in the literary frontiers of New York, I had heard of classes like Craven’s. Some years earlier, I had received an email from a friend, a former investment banker, tipping me off to a class he was taking at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business called, improbably enough, “The Moral Leader.” “It’s probably a lot like what you do now,” he assured me. “We read novels and plays and poems to try to figure out how they can make us better people.” When I tried to explain that that wasn’t at all what I did—I was a literary critic, not a therapist or a spiritual guru—he seemed distressed. “You should give it a try,” he replied encouragingly, and added, almost as an afterthought: “Plus, you could make a lot more money teaching in a business school than at a college.”

What we want from fiction: emotional intimacy, the opportunity to transcend the barrier of self-consciousness that constrains us ---
http://www.thenation.com/article/real-realist-realistic-and-false/

Jensen Comment
One of the Accounting Education Change Commission funded projects was an experiment at the University of North Texas (a noteworthy humanities university) where humanities and accounting professors team taught some accounting courses. However, students were given choices between the humanities-laced accounting sections and traditional accounting sections. Most accounting students opted for the traditional accounting courses, My hypothesis is that accounting majors' primary interest is in content that will be on the CPA examination. All the humanities content got in the way of accounting learning ---
http://www2.aaahq.org/AECC/history/cover.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature and free libraries ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/electronicLiterature.htm


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

Social benefits are now dysfunctional in motivating the labor force in Finland to a point where Finland is considering a bold experiment in changing the welfare model to get people to work ---
Finland is considering giving every citizen €800 a month tax free cash annuity wage supplement --- 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/finland/12035946/Finland-is-considering-giving-every-citizen-800-a-month.html

Jensen Comment
Unemployment is soaring to record levels in Finland and many people on unemployment or other welfare benefits do better by staying on the dole rather than working to get off the dole. Hence, the proposal being considered in Finland is to give every adult about $1,000 per month tax free and do away with the many other dysfunctional welfare benefits.

The tax free supplemental income is not unlike what is happening in the USA due to the $2 trillion underground cash labor market such as when a San Antonio housekeeper and mother Erika and I know quite well receives $25 per hour tax free for cleaning houses plus getting child welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. She owns a relatively new car and sends a great deal of money to her family in Mexico. The underground economy is technically illegal in the USA, but enforcement of the law is of low priority. This is why the underground economy is so enormous and growing.

There are many unknowns in the article above such as whether the monthly wage supplements in Finland will become lifetime annuities and/or will eventually be progressively taken away from higher income taxpayers or all taxpayers. It's also not clear what will become of other social benefits like subsidized health care, child care, elder care, higher education, etc. For example, higher education is highly subsidized in Finland but only about a third of the Tier 2 students are allowed into Tier 3 colleges. Perhaps more should be allowed to go to college.

 

"When my daughter went to nursery here in Glasgow, 75% of my salary went towards her care" . . . She pointed out that the situation is very different in Finland, where childcare is means-tested and inexpensive or free. Not all parents take more than the initial year off, either wanting to work or needing the income. The crucial difference is that they have a choice.
Family welfare in Finland - a lesson for Scotland ---
http://www.contributoria.com/issue/2014-10/53e76df48d4eae7d77000005/
It's not clear whether the $1,000 per month annuity would affect the benefit of having a year off work for a new baby in Finland.

 

Jensen Comment
This tax-free annuity supplement to all adults will be very inflationary, and inflation is relatively high in all the Nordic countries. If unemployment among younger workers is approaching 25% in Finland it's not clear that this is the best way to create jobs is this annuity proposal. Finland is a small nation that depends heavily on exports from its electronics, lumber, and ship building industries. At one time Finland manufactured a large market share of the cell phones (Nokia) and television sets sold in Europe. These exports have since fallen off a cliff due to competition such as the superior technology and lower costs of smart phones manufactured in Asia.

What should be considered are more effective and efficient ways to create jobs, especially for younger workers in Finland. Perhaps subsidies to employers would be a better way to motivate the companies to develop more competitive exports, especially in high technology where Finland tended to excel until recently.

Finland, Denmark, and Norway thus far severely restrict refugee inflows that are becoming an enormous drag on the Swedish economy. Sweden's economy is in far greater danger even though it does have an advantage over Finland by not being part of the Euro-currency nations that are being heavily taxed for support of nations bordering on the Mediterranean Sea.

Finland, Norway, and Sweden each have roughly half as many people as Sweden's 10 million population. The Nordic countries combined have many fewer people to care for than California's 40 million (that excludes millions that are not counted in California's census). Small populations enable the Scandinavians to consider annuitizing their social welfare. At the same time it increases their dependencies on balance of trade to maintain their economies at higher employment rates.

Norway is bleeding now because of the crash in oil prices. Sweden is bleeding because of immigration overflows. Finland is bleeding because of technological obsolescence. Denmark is bleeding due to lack of productivity of its work force. These are some of the things Bernie Sanders doesn't mention in his campaign.

Bernie does not mention that social benefits are now dysfunctional to motivating the labor force in all of Scandinavia. I wonder if he will praise the $1,000 per month annuity being considered for every adult in Finland. This sounds great in the headlines but not so great when you read between the lines.


Norway is paying refugees thousands of kroner to return home ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/norway-is-paying-refugees-to-return-home-2015-12

Tens of thousands of kroner are being offered to each person who voluntarily leaves the country. They also have their flights paid for.

Katinka Hartmann, head of the immigration department’s return unit (UDI), said that many of the people arriving from Syria, Iraq, the Middle East and Africa expect to receive protection quickly and cannot wait the months or even years the process can take.

“They thought they would have the opportunity to work or take an education – and maybe even to get their family to Norway,” she told NRK television.

“Many cannot wait (for the asylum process to run its course). They have family at home who expect them to be able to help.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This would not work as well in the USA where deported immigrants return the following week and would try collect again and again and again.

ISIS is tearing Europe apart --- http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-is-tearing-europe-apart-2015-12


"Those Israel Boycotts Are Illegal:  In many cases, educational associations that shun Israel may be sued for violating their charters,"  by Eugene Kontorovich and Steven Davidoff Solomon, The Wall Street Journal, December, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/those-israel-boycotts-are-illegal-1449013865?mod=djemMER  

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) voted on Nov. 20 to boycott Israel, though the resolution—which would prohibit Israeli academic institutions from any involvement in the organization, such as participation in conferences and hiring events—must still be approved by the group’s full membership in coming months. Ten days later the National Women’s Studies Association voted to call for a boycott of “entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel.” Boycott votes are also scheduled at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association.

The moral myopia and academic perversity of these boycotts have been widely discussed. Less well understood is that in many cases they also are illegal. Under corporate law, an organization, including a nonprofit, can do only what is permitted under the purposes specified in its charter.

Boycott resolutions that are beyond the powers of an organization are void, and individual members can sue to have a court declare them invalid. The individuals serving on the boards of these organizations may be liable for damages.

Consider the American Historical Association. Its constitution—a corporate charter—states that its purpose “shall be the promotion of historical studies” and the “broadening of historical knowledge among the general public.” There’s nothing in this charter that would authorize a boycott. And an anti-Israel boycott will do nothing to promote “historical studies” or broaden “historical knowledge.”

Continued in article


"The Perils of Protectionism," by Dwyer Gunn, Jstor, November 24, 2015 ---
http://daily.jstor.org/the-perils-of-protectionism/

A new report from economists Simon Evenett and Johannes Fritz of the Center for Economic Policy Research indicates that protectionist trade policies are on the rise among the world’s biggest economies.  India, Russia, and the U.S. are the biggest offenders. “Overall, the Group of 20 leading economies, whose leaders meet Sunday, have resorted to so-called ‘trade distortions’ 40% more frequently in the first 10 months of 2015 than they did last year,” writes the Wall Street Journal.

While the protectionist measures of today are limited in comparison to past policies, protectionism has historically backfired on the United States. In 1930, the United States Congress passed the legendary Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising tariffs on thousands of imported goods. The role of the tariff on the U.S. economy is subject to debate, but economists agree that it set off a raft of protectionist measures around the world and resulted in a significant collapse in international trade.

Continued in article

Southern Accreditor Places Tennessee-Martin on Probation ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/12/10/southern-accreditor-places-tennessee-martin-probation?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3adda94729-DNU20151210&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3adda94729-197565045

Jensen Comment
The university's Website has not (yet) made note of this probation.

The University has an accounting program. My Hasselback Directory lists seven accounting faculty, five of whom have Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arkansas and the University of Mississippi, There's one ABD from Houston who may have a Ph.D. by now. I suspect the failure to meet academic standards lies elsewhere in the university.


Trans-Pacific Partnership (that excludes China) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

"How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights," by Maira Sutton, Electronic Frontier Foundation, December 8, 2015 ---
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/how-tpp-will-affect-you-and-your-digital-rights#libraries_archives_museums


"The Consumer Bureau Cover-Up:  The feds knew their data showing racial bias was false but sued anyway," The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-consumer-bureau-cover-up-1449707193?mod=djemMER

. . .

This illegal guessing game of name-that-race underscores how much antidiscrimination law has become a political shakedown, and how the consumer bureau is a lawless body that needs to be reined in if it can’t be eliminated.

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm 


"Bank of Canada opens door to negative interest rates as oil, dollar sink," by David Parkinson and Barrie McKenna, Globe and Mail, December 8, 2015 ---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/bank-of-canada-unveils-new-measures-to-deal-with-economic-shocks/article27643760/ 

. . .

“Today’s remarks should in no way be taken as a sign that we are planning to embark on these policies,” he told an Empire Club of Canada luncheon in downtown Toronto. “We don’t need unconventional policy tools now, and we don’t expect to use them. But it’s prudent to be prepared for every eventuality.”

The unveiling of the central bank’s new unconventional-policy framework comes after a week of distressing developments affecting Canada’s still-fragile economy. Oil prices plumbed six-year lows, sending the Canadian dollar to its lowest level against its U.S. counterpart in 11 years. Prices of other resource commodities also slumped, contributing to a 5-per-cent sell-off of the Toronto Stock Exchange in the past five trading days.

And all this is taking place just days before the powerful U.S. Federal Reserve looks likely to raise its key interest rate next week for the first time since before the Great Recession.

Most of the world’s central banks, including Canada’s, have been cutting rates. A Fed hike will mark a major divergence in global interest rates that is already sending tremors through the world’s stock, bond, commodity and currency markets.

Jensen Comment
Most USA banks are looking forward to a return to sanity on interest rates so their loans will become more profitable. I suspect the same is true in Canada. The possibility of negative interest rates on deposits in the Bank of Canada is only that --- a possibility if things get worse in Canada

"Less Than Zero: Living With Negative Interest Rates (in Europe)," by Tommy Stubbington, Business Insider, December 8, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/less-than-zero-living-with-negative-rates-1449621094?mod=djemCFO_h 

 Once, it was a good thing to have money in the bank.

Now, Danish companies pay taxes early to rid themselves of cash. At one small Swiss bank, customer deposits will shrink by an eighth of a percent a year.

But it isn’t all bad. Some Danes with floating-rate mortgages are discovering that their banks are paying them every month to borrow, instead of charging interest on their home loans.

Such is life in the upside-down world of negative interest rates, in which banks impose a levy on customers to hold their money, instead of paying interest on deposits.

The European Central Bank last week pushed down its deposit rate—what it pays commercial banks—to minus 0.3% from minus 0.2%.

Three of the eurozone’s smaller neighbors—Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland—have pushed their interest rates deeper into negative territory in response to the ECB’s rate cuts, resulting in a number of unusual outcomes with ramifications for big businesses and consumers and everyone in between. These countries offer a window into what might happen if the eurozone travels further down the path of negative rates.

Continued in article


Sometimes I read a poem or a book I just don't look for or find the hidden meanings. This was certainly the case a few years back when I read the book entitled Room.
For me the horrors of captivity vastly outweighed any possible redeeming elements.

"Room” Is the “Crash” of Feminism by Sarah Blackwood  ---
https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/room-is-the-crash-of-feminism


Question
What big reasons for the reduction of crime in the USA did Lind and Lopez miss below (except that it falls generically under point five below)?

Why did crime plummet in the United States?
Edited by Dara Lind and German Lopez
Vox
December 10, 2015
http://www.vox.com/cards/crime-rate-drop

1. There's about half as much violent crime in the US as there was 25 years ago

2. The theory: putting more people in prison helped reduce crime

3. The theory: putting more police on the streets prevented crime

4. The theory: broken-windows policing prevented serious crime

5. The theory: police have gotten better at detecting and preventing crime

6. The theory: more guns, less crime

7. The theory: the economy got better and crime got less appealing

8. The theory: crime is harder because people don't carry cash as much anymore

9. The theory: people aren't committing crimes because they're inside playing video games

10. The theory: gentrification is taking over crime-ridden neighborhoods

11. The theory: people are committing fewer crimes because they're drinking less alcohol

12. The theory: psychiatric pills reduced violent and criminal behavior

13. The theory: less crack use led to less crime

14. The theory: America's gangs have gotten less violent

15. The theory: the US population is just aging out of crime

16. The theory: legal abortion is preventing would-be criminals from being born

17. The theory: lead exposure caused crime, and lead abatement efforts reduced it

Jensen Comment
Except for having so many repeated episodes my favorite TV show is called Forensic Files about real crimes and real criminals. I think it appeals to me because I like to see the bad guys get caught and punished.

What I think led to less crime, especially violent crime, in the past 25 years is forensic science. Exhibit A is DNA technology that got a whole lot better in the past 25 years, especially when being able to find a criminal from a microscopic bit of evidence like a drop of blood on a shirt that's been in storage for 20 years. It took a while but now potential criminals are deterred by the high probability of making some miniscule mistake that leads to indisputable evidence --- a strand of hair or a spec of fluid. Forensic science can get much more out of crime scenes and autopsies.

What also is leading to reduced crime is video surveillance. We are witnessing less police abuse with all the video detection. We are also witnessing less street crime, store crime, and maybe even bank robberies because of 24/7 video surveillance. We now even have some cars that dial 911 automatically after an accident. Last week a woman who committed a hit and run was captured because her car dialed 911 and the police traced the car.

What we still have, however, is far too much white collar financial crimes that are punished way too lightly unless they are violent. Hold up a victim on the street with a knife for $5 and you can get 20 years in tough prison. Steal $30 million from Enron (think Andy Fastow) and you get six years in Club Fed ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraudconclusion.htm#CrimePays

When it is stated that there is "less crime" than in the 1980s much depends on what you mean by "less crime."
We may have fewer incidents of crime but millions more victims in this age of technology where hundreds of millions of identities are stolen. There are millions of more victims to scams. Exhibit A is the IRS that is losing billions to identity theft. Exhibit B are credit card holders and their banks that get ripped off in identity theft.

My wife had 15 spine surgeries, some of which were paid for, in part, Medicare supplemental insurance from Blue Cross Anthem. A short time ago hackers stole the medical records of over 80 million Anthem customers, including my wife. Now a couple of years later we are getting phone calls from scammers trying to sell her a back brace. They don't really sell back braces. What they want is a credit card order from us so they can get our credit card number. They will never ship a product. They found out about her spine condition from the stolen Blue Cross Anthem hacked data. The hackers were probably from China or Russia. The hackers then sold the medical record data to scammers here in the USA or Nigerians. And we become potential victims due to the Anthem hacking. If if we don't fall for the scam we have to put up with all the robo-dialing interruptions.

My point is that massive databases vulnerable to sophisticated hackers greatly increased the number of crime victims. So I don't think there is less crime. There are just different kinds of crimes in the 21st Century.

 


Murakami and Franzen: Why are their new books so familiar? Commercially successful novelists have a tendency to repeat the same old formula ---
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/12/01/novel-kind-of-conformity/

Jensen Comment
When browsing books I seldom seek out the latest edition of thrill writers like James Patterson ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Patterson
Patterson is a formula writer. I grow weary of writers who apply the same old formula time and time again even though each new edition is usually a best seller.

I enjoy the challenge sometimes in trying to find a formula. Maybe Agatha Christie had a formula, and she probably did so, but I have a difficult time finding the formula among her scores of books.

I'm reminded of a successful textbook writer named Dale Yoder who taught management when I was a doctoral student at Stanford. In truth I never had a course from him. But this was before the days of personal computers, and legend had it that Yoder's textbook was typed on index cards. When it came time for a new edition the joke was that Professor Yoder simply reshuffled the cards and added a change of wording now and then to disguise his "formula."

In financial accounting textbooks there is a lot of reshuffling of the deck. However, the formula is obscured by having to revised for the continual changes and additions due to new standards. The formula is less obscure in managerial accounting textbooks where there are fewer changes and additions.


"Why parenting may not matter and why most social science research is probably wrong," by Brian Boutwell, Quillette, December 1, 2015 ---
http://quillette.com/2015/12/01/why-parenting-may-not-matter-and-why-most-social-science-research-is-probably-wrong/

I want you to consider the possibility that your parents did not shape you as a person. Despite how it feels, your mother and father (or whoever raised you) likely imprinted almost nothing on your personality that has persisted into adulthood. Pause for a minute and let that heresy wash across your synapses. It flies in the face of common sense, does it not? In fact, it’s the type of claim that is unwise to make unless you have some compelling evidence to back it up. Even then it will elicit the ire of many. Psychologists especially get touchy about this subject. I do have evidence, though, and by the time we’ve strolled through the menagerie of reasons to doubt parenting effects, I think another point will also become evident: the problems with parenting research are just a symptom of a larger malady plaguing the social and health sciences. A malady that needs to be dealt with.

In terms of compelling evidence, let’s start with a study published recently in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.1 Tinca Polderman and colleagues just completed the Herculean task of reviewing nearly all twin studies published by behavior geneticists over the past 50 years. For some background, behavior genetics is the field devoted to studying human differences, and let’s be honest, whether you are a scientist or not you are interested in why people are different from one another. Besides being inherently fascinating, the reality of those differences impacts your life daily. The knowledge that some people are more trustworthy, honest, violent, impulsive, and aggressive than others is essential to navigating life. It’s simply not a good personal policy to assume that everyone you stumble upon in life has your best interest at heart.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a behavioral scientist or a plumber; we’re all theorists about these differences. People speculate about human variability in their free time constantly (think about how often you’ve wondered why your boss is such a huge…source of inspiration). Parenting effects usually play some role in our conception of why some people behave differently than others. Behavior genetics, luckily, provides us with meaningful insight regarding the sources of human differences in the population (unfortunately I can’t say anything about your boss specifically). So what about the results of that massive review of twin research? Genetic factors were consistently relevant, differentiating humans on a range of health and psychological outcomes (in technical parlance, human differences are heritable). The environment, not surprisingly, was also clearly and convincingly implicated, but interestingly it wasn’t the “environment” you might have anticipated.

Before progressing, I should note that behavioral geneticists make a finer grain distinction than most about the environment, subdividing it into shared and non-shared components.1,2,3,4 Not much is really complicated about this. The shared environment makes children raised together similar to each other.3 The term encompasses the typical parenting effects that we normally envision when we think about environmental variables. Non-shared influences capture the unique experiences of siblings raised in the same home; they make siblings different from one another. Another way of thinking about non-shared environments is that they represent the parts of your life story that are unique from the rest of your family. Importantly, this also includes all of the randomness and pure happenstance that life tends to hurl in our direction from time to time. Returning to the review of twin research, the shared environment just didn’t matter all that much (that’s on average, of course, for some traits it mattered more than others). The non-shared environment mattered consistently.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The article is critical about lack of evidence but has a lack of evidence for it's criticisms. I have too much anecdotal evidence to agree with some of the conclusions. I think Asian children in the USA tend to be better students because their parents are often very demanding (those Tiger moms) about study habits and education goals relative to other races and ethnic groups, although the world is full of exceptions on both sides.

Many of the progressive (liberal) faculty I've encountered at Trinity University contend they avoid revealing their most liberal political biases in class because their students are apt to be more conservative due to the earlier influence of conservative parents. Conservatives in class are more apt to punish overly liberal teachers/preachers on student evaluations. Trinity tends to heavily recruit students from the wealthy suburbs of Dallas, Houston, and Austin since these students are more apt to be able to afford the higher tuition of a university not supported by taxpayers. My subjective feeling is that political biases of college students are more affected by parents than teachers, although the world is full of exceptions.


Norway is paying refugees thousands of kroner to return home ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/norway-is-paying-refugees-to-return-home-2015-12

Tens of thousands of kroner are being offered to each person who voluntarily leaves the country. They also have their flights paid for.

Katinka Hartmann, head of the immigration department’s return unit (UDI), said that many of the people arriving from Syria, Iraq, the Middle East and Africa expect to receive protection quickly and cannot wait the months or even years the process can take.

“They thought they would have the opportunity to work or take an education – and maybe even to get their family to Norway,” she told NRK television.

“Many cannot wait (for the asylum process to run its course). They have family at home who expect them to be able to help.

Continued in article


Political Correctness --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

"The Coddling of the American Mind:  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," 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/

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.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”

This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job

The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives. The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness

 


Google Analytics --- https://www.google.com/analytics/ 

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No matter what kind of app you’re building, implementing Google Analytics for Mobile Apps will help you achieve business objectives and set yourself up for success.

Rather than waiting months for site code updates, Google Tag Manager lets you launch new tags with just a few clicks. The result? You’ll enjoy faster, tighter control over your digital marketing and analytics programs.


18 gifts that math nerds actually want ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/18-gifts-that-math-nerds-actually-want-2015-11


"2008-2013 Executive Compensation at Private and Public Colleges," by Sandhya Kambhampati and Brian O'Leary, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/interactives/executive-compensation?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en&elq=df4f6bcdd9ef4d30998daf886ca9e497&elqCampaignId=2006&elqaid=7133&elqat=1&elqTrackId=1e93418d674344a4a3e2a53b9e24a3c6#id=table_private_2013
Also see
http://chronicle.com/article/32-Leaders-of-Private-Colleges/234482?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elq=36b483447a814e7b880d644abf1f59f8&elqCampaignId=2003&elqaid=7128&elqat=1&elqTrackId=197e7875dd0b441bae4c786e36e79a0f


Tim Cook Believes Money Will Be a Thing of the Past ---
http://finance.townhall.com/video/draft-n2080333?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

On November 22, 2015 CBS Sixty Minutes ran a module showing that the Kenya economy is better off by having virtually eliminated cash. Wages are paid and financial transactions (consumer and business) by telephone calls on cheap cell phones (no need for smart phones). Citizens of Kenya, even the poorest people on the streets, no longer need bank accounts or cash.

This was made possible in Kenya because the banking system did not put up a fight. In virtually every other nation of the world the banking systems will prevent an economy without cash. Criminals who deal in black markets and the underground economy will also fight tooth and nail politically to prevent what happened in Kenya from happening elsewhere in the world. The fear is that there will become records of transactions, and this scares the pants off of criminals, including our unethical members of Congress and drug kingpins. Of course that does not mean that money laundering has been entirely eliminated in Kenya. Clever crooks can beat any economic and banking system.

The Sixty Minutes module called The Future of Money is at
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-future-of-money/

The first nation to issue paper money will be among the first to take it away
Sweden has declared war on cash --- http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-has-declared-war-on-cash-2015-12


Gutting of the General Education Core
"Degrees of Ignorance," by Michael W. Clune, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 6, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Gutting-of-Gen-Ed/234453?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&elq=4c5d0e2d05d34186bb7935fae07df987&elqCampaignId=2005&elqaid=7132&elqat=1&elqTrackId=fa0b52d1aa714bd086213ccaa62c96bc

I was nearly 30 the first time I met an example of the new breed — a University of Michigan graduate who knew nothing beyond what was necessary to pursue his trade. It was my first job out of graduate school, and Michigan had one of the highest-ranked engineering schools in the country.

Let’s call him Todd. He’d graduated a few years before. I met him at a party. He had a good job at a local engineering firm and drove a nice car. Talk turned to intellectual matters, and I soon learned that he was a creationist. He didn’t seem to be aware of arguments for the other side. He was surprised to learn that Russia had fought in World War II. He’d done well in AP high-school English, which had gotten him out of having to take literature classes, and he hadn’t read a book since graduating from college. "Most manuals nowadays are online," he said. Learning that I was an English professor, he asked me if I’d be willing to help him with a self-assessment document he had to write for his job. I was curious, and when a few days later his draft landed in my inbox, I discovered that his writing suffered from basic flaws.

I think even those most committed to putting vocational training at the center of higher education will agree that Michigan had failed Todd. The key Todd-prevention mechanism, which had somehow malfunctioned in this case, is known as general education. This set of courses required for all majors is designed to transmit the rudiments of critical thinking, writing, science, history, and cultural literacy to the students whom our universities are training — as Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker memorably put it — to meet our "work-force needs."

. . .

The lack of exposure to different disciplines, exacerbated by counting AP credits toward distribution requirements, troubles scientists as well as humanists. Steve Rissing, a professor of biology at Ohio State University whose recent work focuses on scientific pedagogy, tells me that he doesn’t believe the AP course in biology "meets the scientific-literacy needs of a college graduate." The course appears designed to meet "the needs of future STEM majors, including and especially those preparing for medical schools. This is a fine thing to do, but is not the same as teaching scientific literacy."

Our educational system is oriented toward producing students who know how to do their jobs. But Rissing finds an important difference between the preprofessional training given to students majoring in STEM fields and the kind of scientific education that allows students to understand and appreciate the processes and effects of scientific discovery.

Aside from teaching more than the minimum required to do their jobs, courses in fields outside one’s prospective major open students to career options they may not have considered. Robert B. Townsend, director of the Washington office of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, tells me that student interest in the humanities is often sparked by enrollment in introductory courses, which serve as a "vital gateway to attracting majors."

Parents alarmed by the media stereotype of English majors doomed to work in fast food might be calmed by considering the most recent AAAS study, which found that the earnings of humanities BAs were "on par with the social, behavioral, and life sciences." (While below the wages of engineers, this par is significantly above the median earnings of American families). If it were true that following your interests doomed you to a life of poverty and struggle, there might be some reason for sheltering students from the opportunity of discovering their interests. But it’s not true, and there is no reason to unduly limit our students’ horizons.

By surveying the various attacks on general education, one might assume that its goal — to expose students to forms of knowledge beyond their majors — is controversial. But it’s not. Without exception, the professors, administrators, students, and parents I’ve spoken with believe that a college education should endow every graduate with a knowledge of the world beyond the terms and techniques of their chosen trade. Our colleges are failing to do this. Faux interdisciplinary courses, slashed distribution requirements, and the practice of using AP credits to fulfill those that remain are symptoms of a system that doesn’t want to do the work it takes to educate students broadly and that wants to conceal this failure from the world.

In the late summer of 1993, my college adviser sat down with me to plan my schedule. She asked me what I intended to major in. I responded by telling her I wanted to be a lawyer when I graduated. She nodded and told me I should spend at least part of my first year fulfilling my distribution requirements. She helped me select the courses: "Introduction to Biology." "Introduction to British Literature." "Introduction to World History." The names were familiar. These were high-school subjects.

But as I sat in those lecture halls and seminar rooms that first semester and listened as the professors conjured the mysteries of poems and protozoa, it didn’t feel the way learning had ever felt. It didn’t feel the way anything had ever felt. It felt like freedom.

Today’s students are being deprived of that freedom, and we educators are to blame.

Michael W. Clune is a professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. His most recent book is Gamelife (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

Jensen Comment
One of the big problems with general education is that the course alternatives were expanded to include a smorgasbord of choices in terms of topics. As majors flocked to professional career majors like business, pre-med, nursing, pharmacy, engineering, etc. departments on the losing ends of budgets and majors commenced to fight for space in the gen ed core. Harvard led the way in expanding the smorgasbord of choices such that the gen ed core taken by Student A barely resembles the gen ed core chosen by Student B. To make matters worse the Cornell Study of course grades across the campus for five years found that students shopped for the easiest courses and sections of courses rather than the best gen ed core courses for their education. ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor


"Resignation at Yale," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, December 6, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/07/academic-center-yale-controversy-over-halloween-costumes-wont-teach-there-again?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=2743fe76df-DNU20151207&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-2743fe76df-197565045

. . .

Douglas Stone, a professor of physics at Yale who organized last week's open letter, said via email that the resignation of Christakis from teaching was a cause for great concern. "This is a very disturbing development," he said. "Last year Erika Christakis's classes were shopped by over 300 students and many who wished to take them were turned away. She has received truly exceptional teaching evaluations. This year she planned to teach additional sections to handle the demand. The attacks she has received, not just on her ideas, but on her character and integrity, have led to the decision not to teach …. Those who mounted the campaign against her have significantly reduced educational choice for all Yale undergrads."

Stone added that there was "real reason" to worry about academic freedom at Yale. "Several undergraduates have told me in conversation or by email that they feel scared to express their honest opinions relating to current events that have raised racial issues because of the likely negative and aggressive response of peers," he said. "In some cases these were nonwhite students, who care deeply about racism and sexism, but nonetheless support the sentiments expressed in our letter of support for the Christakises. They have also claimed that their view is probably held by the majority of undergrads; even if that is not true (and I don't know how one can decide at the moment), it suggests that there are substantial barriers to free exchange of views on these issues at Yale in the current climate."

Among those expressing concern about the Christakis announcement was Corey Robin, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Robin is a prominent voice of the academic left on Twitter.

He said that he wouldn't have been concerned if Christakis had quit or been removed from her position in a residential college, since that is primarily an administrative role.

More issues are raised, Robin wrote on Twitter, by someone in a teaching position who feels unable to teach because of political pressure over her ideas. "All the evidence suggests she is an excellent, popular teacher; the only reason she is stepping down is because of political views she has expressed in the public sphere," Robin wrote.

Continued in article


Everything you always wanted to know about dogs but were afraid to ask ---
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-dogs-but-were-afraid-to-ask-1.2425992

Jensen Comment
Some of the claims lack evidence --- like do all dogs poop facing north?


Edudemic (teacher aids for learning about technology) --- http://www.edudemic.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Bill Gates:  The Best Books I Read in 2015 ---
http://qz.com/566945/what-critics-agree-are-the-best-books-of-2015/

Time Magazine:  Top 10 Apps in 2015 ---
http://time.com/4105654/top-10-apps-2/?xid=newsletter-brief
And the winner is HBO Now. Not as good as Netflix for a vast archives of video but for for streaming video that does not require a cable subscription.
Jensen Comment
NetFlix has a much bigger archive for DVD rentals than it has for streaming video. My frustration is that for many of the DVD movies there's a waiting list that takes months.

Time Magazine:  Top 10 TV Episodes in 2015 ---
http://time.com/4130218/top-10-tv-episodes-2/?xid=newsletter-brief

This stat shows how thoroughly Netflix is crushing its competitors ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-bandwidth-usage-compared-to-competitors-2015-12
More than 70% of internet traffic during peak hours now comes from video and music streaming

Gadget Gift Guide for Accountants ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2015/dec/2015-technology-gift-guide-for-cpas.html

Time Magazine:  Top 10 Gadgets of 2015 ---
http://time.com/4105591/top-10-gadgets/?xid=newsletter-brief
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology

Time Magazine:  The 25 Best Inventions of 2015 ---
http://time.com/4115398/best-inventions-2015/

Time Magazine's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Apps ---
http://time.com/3582114/top-10-apps/?xid=newsletter-brief

Yahoo Tech's Choices for the 2014 Top 10 Gadgets ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-10-most-wanted-tech-c1417549586539/photo-iphone-6-photo-1417549459482.html


Quartz:  What critics agree are the best books of 2015 ---
http://qz.com/566945/what-critics-agree-are-the-best-books-of-2015/


If you bought a new Dell in 2015 you should check out the following link or its equivalent ---
Dell: How to kill that web security hole we put in your laptops ---
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/24/dell_superfish_2/

The www.Dell.com site is not too helpful yet, so you may want to check via email or telephone using the contact information given to you by Dell for tech support. Don't use third party sites that you can't be sure of for correcting this problem. University employees with new Dell computers should probably check with their campus tech support team.


Skepticism 101 --- http://www.skeptic.com/skepticism-101

How to Mislead With Statistics (spurious correlations) ---
https://reason.com/archives/2015/12/04/did-california-prop-47-cause-state-crime


This should set accountics scientists rethinking about their failures to replicate each other's research
"New Evidence on Linear Regression and Treatment Effect Heterogeneity." by Tymon Słoczyński, iza, November 2015 ---
http://ftp.iza.org/dp9491.pdf

Jensen Comment
Accountics scientists seldom replicate the works of each other ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theoryTar.htm

The Tymon Słoczyński's replications of two studies published in the American Economic Review should make accountics scientists rethink their implicit "policy" of not replicating.

It is standard practice in applied work to rely on linear least squares regression to estimate the effect of a binary variable (“treatment”) on some outcome of interest. In this paper I study the interpretation of the regression estimand when treatment effects are in fact heterogeneous. I show that the coefficient on treatment is identical to the outcome of the following three-step procedure: first, calculate the linear projection of treatment on the vector of other covariates (“propensity score”); second, calculate average partial effects for both groups of interest (“treated” and “controls”) from a regression of outcome on treatment, the propensity score, and their interaction; third, calculate a weighted average of these two effects, with weights being inversely related to the unconditional probability that a unit belongs to a given group. Each of these steps is potentially problematic, but this last property – the reliance on implicit weights which are inversely related to the proportion of each group – can have particularly severe consequences for applied work. To illustrate the importance of this result, I perform Monte Carlo simulations as well as replicate two applied papers: Berger, Easterly, Nunn and Satyanath (2013) on the effects of successful CIA interventions during the Cold War on imports from the US; and Martinez-Bravo (2014) on the effects of appointed officials on village-level electoral results in Indonesia. In both cases some of the conclusions change dramatically after allowing for heterogeneity in effect.

Common Accountics Science and Econometric Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.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


Problem:
NY’s proposal to lift the 63% pass rate in Algebra
Solution (following the lead of California)
make the test easier (or follow the lead in Massachusetts by dropping Common Core entirely)
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/11/30/nys-proposal-to-63-pass-rate-in-algebra-make-the-test-easier/

Joke of the Day
NY officials were supposed to grade the test on a curve, but they couldn't figure out how to make a curve.


"Can the Student Course Evaluation Be Redeemed?" By Dan Barrett, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 27, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Can-the-Student-Course/234369?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en&elq=cdc203b7ad184169b59af6d6d978b347&elqCampaignId=1945&elqaid=7044&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0ff4ec0626744bed977f7c7336e88fa7

One of the latest and most visible critiques of these assessments came this year from Carl E. Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. He cast doubt on their validity and reliability, proposing that instead, professors complete an inventory of the research-based teaching practices they use. That would be more likely to promote learning than garden-variety evaluations do, Mr. Wieman wrote in a recent issue of the magazine Change. "Current methods," he said, "fail to encourage, guide, or document teaching that leads to improved student learning outcomes."

Is there a better tool out there? If student input matters, how can it be made meaningful?

The IDEA Center, a 40-year-old nonprofit that spun off from Kansas State University, thinks it has a student-ratings system that overcomes two chief critiques of most surveys: poorly designed questions and misused results. Its course-evaluation tool, which has been steadily gaining traction on campuses, is designed to help professors judge how well they’re meeting their own course goals. "It’s all about the improvement of teaching and learning," says Ken Ryalls, the center’s president.

Still, IDEA says it’s a mistake to rely too much on any one factor to evaluate teaching. That should involve multiple measures: student feedback, peer observation, and instructors’ self-reflection. "We’re the first ones to say that student ratings are overemphasized," says Mr. Ryalls.

Most of what’s wrong with typical evaluations, he says, is that administrators often take their results as numerical gospel. The difference in scores of, say, 4.3 and 4.4 becomes objective and meaningful. That’s like judging a researcher on one standard, the center says, like number of publications or grant money. "Neither by itself would signal quality research," the center’s staff wrote in response to Mr. Wieman, "any more than an average student ratings score should be used as the only measure of teaching effectiveness."

Nuanced Findings

However they’re used, a lot of course evaluations simply aren’t very good, Mr. Ryalls says.

But as flawed as they are, faculty members still turn to them as some gauge of effectiveness in the classroom. About three-quarters of instructors use formal evaluations and informal feedback "quite a bit" or "very much" when altering their courses, according to the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement.

One limitation of many tools is that they ask students things they don’t really know. A frequent example: Was your instructor knowledgeable about course content?

Continued in article

Jensen Comment

Note the comment of Doug Holten at the end of this article

Student evaluations negatively correlate with learning, and things which should be irrelevant significantly influence student ratings, such as appearance, gender, and so on. See for example:
http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/fa...

(Mis-)use of these end of course surveys leads to dumbed-down courses and reduced rigor. Department chairs also have no training in how to interpret these ratings, which leads to misconceptions and poor judgment in evaluating instructors.

However, if an instructor wants to raise student satisfaction scores AND learning, I'd recommend having an outside specialist survey and talk with your students in the middle of the semester, while there is still time to make changes. This is called 'midterm student feedback' or another common name is 'small group instructional diagnosis': http://fod.msu.edu/oir/mid-ter...

IDEA also needs to follow ethical guidelines when conducting anonymous performance reviews & surveys. For example, not sharing individual responses when there are less than 12-15 respondees, as it is not as hard for the evaluated person to guess who wrote which responses. For that reason alone I cannot recommend them.

Added Jensen Comment
This article does not address the biggest criticism of student evaluations of their teachers. Since those evaluations started to be shared with administrators, promotion and tenure committees, and sometimes even the public there has been a strong correlation with the explosion of grade inflation --- the theory being that too many teachers are afraid to have less than A- grade medians in their classes ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
Note the graphs!


If you are daydreaming about the differences between men and women don't forget this important difference.

In July I had occasion to visit a friend in our local nursing home in Franconia. I had to pass by a large number of residents on the porch before reaching the front door. I counted 18 old women and 2 old men. Why weren't the gender odds like this the same when I was a student on campus?

From the CPA Newsletter on December 4, 2015

Women face higher long-term care costs
Women are more likely to need long-term personal care as they age, research shows. In addition, women often need this type of care for longer periods than men do, partly because they tend to live longer. Total projected spending on long-term care exceeds $182,000 for women over 65, half of which will be out of pocket. Forbes (12/3)

Jensen Comment
Remember that Medicare does not fund nursing home confinement, and the costs of such confinements are exploding in part due to demand increases from the aging baby boomer generation. Yikes that's me!

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

PwC:  Managing Your Wealth:  Guide to Tax and Wealth Management ---
http://www.pwc.com/us/en/cfodirect/issues/tax/tax-wealth-management-guide.html


Banned From Setting Foot on Campus:  Kiss Her Tenure Prospects Goodbye
With this scarlet letter hanging around her neck it's not likely she will ever be allowed to teach students in the USA

"Kansas Professor on Leave After Using Racial Slur in Class," Time Magazine, November 21, 2015 ---
http://time.com/4123543/kansas-professor-on-leave-after-using-racial-slur-in-class/?xid=newsletter-brief

. . .

But Amy Schumacher, a first-year doctoral student who was in the class of nine white students and one black student, said most “just shut down” after Quenette’s using the slur. Schumacher said she believes Quenette “actively violated policies” during the discussion, hurt students’ feelings — including the one black student, who left “devastated” — and has a previous history of being unsympathetic to students.

Quenette is relieved of all teaching and service responsibilities, university spokesman Joe Monaco said. He said administrative leaves are often used “to address substantial disruptions to the learning environment or concerns about individuals’ welfare” while investigations are underway.

Quenette said she hopes to secure an attorney to represent her.

She also said she believes academic freedom protects her comments and that they were not discriminatory.

“I didn’t intend to offend anyone,” she said. “I didn’t intend to hurt anyone. I didn’t direct my words at any individual or group of people.”

Continued in article
Also see http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/22/university-kansas-professor-placed-on-leave-after-using-racial-slur-in-class/

Author (and Lawyer) Wendy Kaminer Defends Her Use Of A Racial Slur During A Free Speech Panel ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/05/wendy-kaminer-racial-slur-free-speech_n_7521858.html

Library of Congress:  Banned Books That Shaped America ---
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica


28 charts that show how America changed since the Fed gave us 0% rates ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/economic-indicators-since-great-recession-zero-interest-rate-policy-2015-12

The charts are misleading if readers attribute the all the good news to 0% interest rates and Quantitative Easing (essentially printing money). Certainly 0% contributed to economic recovery but there would have been economic recovery without QE and 0% rates.

These are the good news charts. What about the bad news like the returns on low risk savings accounts like Certificates of Deposit? In essence the Fed gave the finger to investors who want low-risk interest rates on savings and said either "burn your capital" or "invest is risky alternatives." The savings rate on a 5-year locked-in Certificate of Deposit is now less than 1% per year. You can do about as well stuffing your mattress with your cash. Now retirees must settle for variable-rate annuities that go up and down with financial risk. Some months retirees may do quite well and other months its stale bread and water for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Note that I do not recommend fixed-income annuities for younger investors. However, after retirement age the inflation risks and liquidity-demand needs are lower since there aren't many years left in life.

Ben Bernanke can gloat all he wants, but what saved his reputation is that his 0% interest rates did not make inflation soar. Reasons are complex, but the main reason is that the USA became the tallest midget in the global economy. Inflation did not soar in the USA because the other nations of the world were so bad off in terms of their own economies relative to the USA.  Also economic recovery is partly due to the broken backs of folks retiring after 2008.

So what about taking on financial risks for that portion of retirement savings that is not invested in lifetime annuities? What worked for me may not be a good answer for other retirees, but I had good luck with insured tax exempt funds (in my case from Vanguard). The monthly tax exempt cash flow from these has been relatively steady. Valuation of the shares goes up and down but since I don't intend to have to sell these shares in my lifetime I don't even track the value other than to note that share value went up with Fed's 0% interest policy. Value might go down if and when the Fed kicks in higher rates, but the rate changes will be so gradual that I'm not much worried about my tax-exempt share valuations in my lifetime. Just keep up the monthly cash flows that are tax free.

I would have more value on paper if I had kept the Iowa farm I inherited because the stupid government keeps requiring corn ethanol in our gas tanks. But being a remote landlord and paying the farm income and property taxes are headaches I do not need in my blissful retirement.


Demanding That 10% of Faculty in Colleges and Universities be African American
Chronicle of Higher Education
November 30, 2015
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/30/student-activists-want-more-black-faculty-members-how-realistic-are-some-their-goals?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a4aa6bbc5a-DNU20151130&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a4aa6bbc5a-197565045

. . .

Student protesters on a number of campuses want to see many more black faculty members. But how realistic are some of their goals?

That approach is similar to one taken by the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, in which the central administration pledged $50 million for faculty diversity hiring and other initiatives. That amount was to be matched by individual colleges and schools.

Beyond that, Penn purposely avoided setting a specific diversity goal. That’s primarily because not meeting it might seem like a failure -- even if good was achieved.

“The challenge of a specific target like that is of course we’re talking about a finite pool of new Ph.D.s and new professional school graduates and continuing scholars,” Anita Allen, vice provost for the faculty, told Inside Higher Ed earlier this year. “I just don’t know that it’s wise to present those kinds of goals as being imperative to the real goal, which is making the faculty diverse and inclusive.”

Brown University, on the other hand, did establish a hard target earlier this year: doubling its percentage of underrepresented minority faculty by 2025, from 9 percent to 18 percent. Like Penn, Brown’s preliminary plan included hiring initiatives, as well as efforts at increasing the number of minority students in the Ph.D. pipeline to the professiorate. Funds also were earmarked for climate and mentoring programs to keep them in academe.

This month, in light of recent events, Brown President Christina Paxson announced additional elements to the diversity plan -- including support for undergraduates -- as well as the price tag, previously undisclosed: $100 million.

Brown’s updated plan was “profoundly informed, and substantially improved by, recent campus conversations about structural racism,” Paxson wrote in a letter to students, faculty and staff. “The deep pain that we have heard expressed by students of color in the past weeks and months -- a pain that has been affirmed by faculty and staff members who work closely with and care deeply about our students -- is very real.”

She added, “Although we cannot solve these problems globally, we can ensure that all members of our community are treated with dignity and respect, and are provided the opportunities they need to reach their full human potential. We can make sure that Brown is a place where these issues are acknowledged and better understood through the courses we teach and the scholarship we conduct. And we can prepare leaders who make significant positive changes in the world throughout their lives.”

How realistic are these goals? Penn proves informative. Even with its prestige and an arsenal of cash, progress has been steady but relatively slow -- at least compared to the Mizzou timeline. Between 2011 and 2013, the percentage of new hires who were underrepresented minorities grew from 9 to 14 percent. But the total percentage of underrepresented minorities on the faculty jumped just 1 percent, to 7 percent, from 2010-13. Minority professors over all increased from 13 percent in 2013 to 16 percent in 2014.

Part of the problem is that black students are underrepresented in a majority of Ph.D. programs and among Ph.D. holders.

While black people make up 14 percent of the U.S. population, they’ve earned roughly 6 percent of the research doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents each year since 2003, according to the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies' Survey of Earned Doctorates. While blacks hold a relatively high proportion of education doctorates, earning about 13 percent of such degrees awarded in 2013, they’re underrepresented in other fields. According to 2013 data, the most recent available, they earned 6 percent of life sciences doctorates, 3 percent of physical sciences doctorates and 5 percent of engineering doctorates. In the social sciences, blacks earned 7 percent of doctorates. It was 5 percent in history and about 4 percent in the humanities. In business, it was 9 percent.

According to the survey, 2,167 black citizens or residents earned research doctorates in 2013. Compare that number to 130 -- that's how many full-time black faculty members Kevin Eagan, interim managing director at the Higher Education Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, says Mizzou alone would need to hire in the next two years to meet the 10 percent demand.

Or consider another stat: of the 128 new faculty members Mizzou hired in 2013, according to IPEDS, just 14 were black, Eagan said.

Beyond supply, there are concerns about retention among minority faculty members in higher education. Griffin’s own research suggests that female and minority Ph.D.s in biomedical fields are more likely than others to lose interest in faculty careers while earning their doctorates.

A missing piece of the puzzle is “whether the black graduates of doctoral programs actually want to stay in academia, despite their abilities and commitment to their communities,” Griffin said, noting that interest in academic careers among underrepresented minority women in particular still wanes in relation to their peers even when controlling for scholarly productivity, prestige of program and quality of advisers. “Something is happening to career interests in graduate school that we must address to see change.”

Climate is one area of concern. There is a growing literature on the experiences of faculty of color that suggests that they face many challenges in terms of how they and their work are perceived in the tenure and promotion system, Griffin said. And they may also be subject to stereotypes and microaggressions -- subtle slights based on race -- which are at the heart of many of the student protests

Continued in article

Reviewing Trends in U.S. Minority Business Doctoral Completions (part 1)
AACSB February 7, 2015
http://aacsbblogs.typepad.com/dataandresearch/2014/02/reviewing-trends-in-us-minority-business-doctoral-completions-part-1.html#sthash.lRpqwOEL.dpuf

Are U.S. business PhD programs increasing the proportion of minority graduates? That was a question posed to me recently and explored in the charts below. No doubt the findings will be of interest to supporters of and participants in The PhD Project, an innovative program established by the KPMG foundation in 1994 with the mission to increase the proportion of PhD graduates who are considered African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native-American. AACSB, along with several other organizations, has been a steadfast supporter of The PhD Project and its goal to strengthen management education by increasing the diversity of qualified faculty for business schools.

Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provided by the National Center for Education Statistics helps to shed light on trends with respect to the business doctoral completions for these groups over the past two decades – from 1994 (the start of The PhD Project) to 2012 (the most recent available data set).

The following graph illustrates completions, as a percentage of total completions, for the aforementioned minority groups from 1994 to 2012, at all schools in the United States (including non AACSB-accredited schools). - See more at: http://aacsbblogs.typepad.com/dataandresearch/2014/02/reviewing-trends-in-us-minority-business-doctoral-completions-part-1.html#sthash.lRpqwOEL.dpuf

. . .

The slope of the trendline for African-Americans at U.S. AACSB-accredited schools is far less steep than at all U.S. schools. A potential reason for this difference can likely be accounted for (in part) by the increase in PhD accessibility through the rise of certain non AACSB-accredited schools, such as University of Phoenix, Walden University, Argosy University, and Capella University. -

See more at: http://aacsbblogs.typepad.com/dataandresearch/2014/02/reviewing-trends-in-us-minority-business-doctoral-completions-part-1.html#sthash.lRpqwOEL.dpuf

Jensen Comment
Probably the best-known effort over two decades of trying to get more minority (especially African American) accounting and business Ph.D. graduates is the Ph.D. Project of the KPMG Foundation ---
http://www.kpmgfoundation.org/~/media/Sites/kpmgfoundation/pdf/KPMG_2014_annual report_s.pdf

The PhD Project Association Changing the face of business school faculties

Twenty years ago, many of the fledgling PhD Project’s earliest supporters in academia – the same deans and professors who most wanted it to succeed – were doubtful that it could ever achieve its ambitious objectives.

The task of diversifying the faculty of American business schools – where minorities were almost non-existent in front of the classroom – seemed too daunting. Besides, they noted, other such efforts had tried and failed.

But they pitched in energetically and enthusiastically to join KPMG Foundation and its allies in launching the program. Today, each one of them is delighted to admit how wrong they were back in 1994.

At the close of fiscal 2014, as The PhD

Project celebrated its 20th anniversary, the number of African-American, Hispanic American and Native American professors in the business disciplines had more than quadrupled – from 294 in 1994 to 1,253.  Another 311 were in the pipeline, pursuing their PhD.

“The idea of diversifying the faculty at business schools to many seemed like a more or less hopeless endeavor,” observes Dr. Scott Cowen, President Emeritus of Tulane University. “Thanks to the relentless and deliberate work of The PhD Project, we now know that it can be done.”

The PhD Project consists of two linked and essential elements: an outreach, marketing and educational campaign to attract and inform minorities who may wish to trade in their successful careers in business for a new career in academia; and a peer support and professional development program to ensure that those who do so will successfully complete the lengthy and rigorous business doctoral program. 

Thanks to this support and development, which centers around annual meetings each summer of all current doctoral students and continues online throughout the year, PhD Project participants significantly outperform the general population of doctoral students. About 90% of PhD Project doctoral students complete their doctoral program; the general population’s completion rate in business programs is about 70%. Today, PhD Project professors teach, conduct research and mentor the next generation of business students – both majority and minority – at dozens of . . .

Jensen Comment
Read on about KPMG's Accounting Minority Doctoral Program Scholarships to over 300 recipients ---
http://www.kpmgfoundation.org/~/media/Sites/kpmgfoundation/pdf/KPMG_2014_annual report_s.pdf
Note that the Foundation did more for many of these recipients than just provide them with annual funding. An effort was made to provide customized help in individual circumstances to help students continue in selected AACSB accredited doctoral programs.

Note that the KPMG Foundation's Minority Doctoral Program Scholarships are funded by various accounting and business firms in a joint effort to provide more minority role model faculty in college and university business schools. Selected AACSB-accredited doctoral programs have cooperated in affirmative action admission and mentoring of scholarship recipients.

The KPMG Foundation restricts funding to African American, Hispanic, and Native American applicants. The proportion of Asians in USA and Canadian accounting and business doctoral programs soared without affirmative action funding and accommodation. This coincided with replacing the accounting content of accounting doctoral program curricula with vastly increased mathematics and statistics content that has led the Pathways Commission to seek more diversity of content in accounting doctoral programs.

A White-Collar Profession:  African American Certified Pubic Accountants Since 1921
Author:  Theresa A. Hammond
University of North Carolina Press, 2002
https://books.google.com/books?id=2v4PjpT2ZvsC&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214&dq=AACSB+%22African+American+Faculty%22&source=bl&ots=p0K5blFKQD&sig=rnSMH3u75zi-cEwJ6t86WO8K-Io&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjN4o65irjJAhUDLSYKHdNUAxQQ6AEILDAD#v=onepage&q=AACSB%20%22African%20American%20Faculty%22&f=false


"Wikipedia-Mining Algorithm Reveals World’s Most Influential Universities," MIT's Technology Review, December 7, 2015 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544266/wikipedia-mining-algorithm-reveals-worlds-most-influential-universities/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151208

Jensen Comment
What is interesting is to compare what ranking biases are removed by having an algorithm versus what ranking biases are added by having an algorithm. The algorithm itself does not add these biases, but the biases are embedded in the data. For example, a university that maintains a massive database of archived research may get citation credit for research that is is actually done elsewhere. For example, one such archive is the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR), the USA's largest archives for social science research. Although ISR does a lot of contract research, it also is an archive for a massive amount of research studies and data. The fact that the University of Michigan made the Top 20 ranking in the Wikipedia ranking cited above may be in part due to the ISR archives of research and data.

Even more to my point is that Cambridge and Oxford have some of the largest archives in classical studies. These universities Rank 1 and 2 respectively in the Wikipedia ranking outcomes cited above. However, this may be more due to the historic archives relative to the research currently taking place at these universities. The same might be said about other universities like the University of Humboldt in Berlin that is an important research center in Germany but probably not as important as other research institutes in Germany.


"Too Many Teaching Waivers? At the University of Missouri at Columbia, half the faculty don't meet the annual minimum teaching load. Does that matter?" by Coleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, December 8, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/12/08/how-many-too-many-teaching-waivers-public-research-institution?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=ac896d702d-DNU20151208&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-ac896d702d-197565045

. . .

So how exactly do the numbers break down? According to a copy of the Schaefer memo, obtained by Inside Higher Ed via a public records request, there were 884 tenure-line, waiver-eligible faculty members at Columbia in 2013-14. Of those, 445 taught at or above the minimum load. Some 439 others -- about 50 percent -- received waivers. The numbers were nearly the same in 2014-15, with about 51 percent of 874 waiver-eligible faculty members receiving teaching requirement exemptions.

Waiver rates at the university system’s three other non-research-intensive campuses included in the report -- Science and Technology, St. Louis, and Kansas City -- predictably were lower, from about 25 to 40 percent. That's because waivers were most commonly awarded across the system for research.

At flagship Mizzou, 37 percent of waivers last year were awarded for research or scholarship -- by far the biggest share (totaling 198 of 535). Some 15 percent were granted for service emphasis and miscellaneous reasons, respectively. Thirteen percent were granted for doctoral supervision. Other reasons equaling much smaller shares included new faculty teaching reductions and off-campus or extension campus exemptions.

Not included in Schaefer’s memo was just who received these exemptions. According to additional, preliminary 2015-16 data provided by Mizzou, some 199 of the 445 faculty members who received waivers so far this year are conducting research. Of those, 50 percent (99 of 199 total) are natural science and engineering faculty -- important, as these faculty members tend to bring in the biggest external grants from federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Health sciences faculty made up 14 percent. Business, education and journalism faculty made up 16 percent of the research-waiver recipients, while humanists made up 13 percent. Social scientists made up 8 percent.

According to average teaching load data for this year, the mean teaching load of those faculty members who did not obtain waivers was 25 section credits and 485 student credit hours for the year -- well above the 180-credit-hour minimum. Among those faculty members who did receive waivers, the mean teaching load was 129 student credit hours, meaning that most were still teaching some courses and students

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The minimum white line in Missouri is 180 student semester credit hours per year per teacher, although there are some exemptions for faculty who also have administrative duties and specialty faculty in medicine and music. That translates to such loads as two sections of a course or two courses per semester with at least 15 students. Presumably there are also exceptions for faculty intensively supervising doctoral students.

In most R1 research universities the official standard load is four sections per term with the possibility of one section less for faculty most engaged in research. But this almost always results in loads of three sections per term with an added section off for researchers such that many faculty doing research only teach two sections per term.

But there are wide variations in this standard, especially in disciplines where there is a shortage of supply of faculty. For example, in accountancy there are only about 170 Ph.D. graduates per year in the USA to fill thousands of openings. The R1 universities accordingly make exceptional deals to land an accounting Ph.D. graduates from a top universities.

For example, one of my former students named Igor Vaysman who eventually got an accounting Ph.D. from Stanford landed a faculty appointment at UC Berkeley in which he only had to teach one small seminar per year. Igor now teaches a lot more than that at IMEDE in Switzerland.

What do accounting programs do when they cannot fill vacant positions? Mostly they hire adjunct specialists who do not have doctoral degrees to teach. The adjuncts do not get factored into teaching load studies such as the study cited above.


Jensen Comment
Aside from the free toothpaste, tooth brushes, shaving crème, extra pillows (for Erika's back) and razors Erika and I never would think to ask for the things in the listing below when checking into a hotel. Of course at our age, there are some things like yoga mats that we don't have any use for, but if the grandchildren are along I will keep this listing in mind for the future. We don't ask for the freebies unless there's a need such as not wanting to carry a can of shaving crème on an airplane.

We do call ahead for a refrigerator and microwave on the morning of the day of our arrival. Ironically, the cheaper hotels (e.g., Comfort Inn) are more apt to have these appliances in every room whereas you have to phone ahead and hope when checking into an expensive hotel like a Hilton or a Marriott. You can request a microwave and refrigerator when you make the reservation, but we have better luck when we also make a request early on the day of arrival.

There are other things that cheaper hotels do better. For example, Comfort Inn as free quality coffee 24/7 in the lobby whereas Hilton and Marriott force you make crummy coffee in a machine in the room or pay an outrageous price in a restaurant. We carry a thermos pot with us to get better coffee in the lobby or in the restaurant.

Of course there are more amenities if you pay $100 or more per day for a premium room in an expensive hotel. We don't travel much these days, but I am willing to pay the premium if the conference is in an expensive hotel. The best amenities for us are at home. I guess home greater home appreciation is part of the aging process.

17 things you should definitely ask for the next time you check in to a hotel ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/free-things-you-can-get-at-a-hotel-2015-11


Bob,
I see that you’ve shared a Iot information in the past so I wanted to drop you a quick email to tell you about our ‘State of Internet of Things’ graphic which might be of interest -
 
http://www.appcessories.co.uk/blog/the-state-of-internet-of-things-in-six-visuals/


MIT:  China Wants to Replace Millions of Workers with Robots ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544201/china-wants-to-replace-millions-of-workers-with-robots/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-weekly-robotics&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151209
Jensen Comment
This shows the sign of the times when a nation with hundreds of millions of low-skill workers intends to replace them with robots. Where do they look for work?

MIT:  Researchers from Google’s AI Lab say a controversial quantum machine that it and NASA bought in 2013 resoundingly beat a conventional computer in a series of tests ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544276/google-says-it-has-proved-its-controversial-quantum-computer-really-works/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151209

MIT: Recommended Robot and AI Reads (for the Week Ending November 25, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/543981/recommended-robot-and-ai-reads-this-week/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151125

MIT:  Seven Must-Read Stories (Week ending November 28, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/543811/seven-must-read-stories-week-ending-november-28-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151127

MIT:  Recommended from Around the Web (Week ending November 28, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/543806/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-november-28-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151127

MIT: Recommended Computing Reads (Week ending December 3, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544146/recommended-computing-reads-this-week/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151203

MIT: Recommended Computing Reads (Week ending December 10, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544381/recommended-computing-and-internet-reads-this-week/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151210

MIT:  Recommended from Around the Web (Week ending December 5, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544046/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-december-5-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151204

MIT:  Seven Must-Read Stories (Week ending December 5, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544051/seven-must-read-stories-week-ending-december-5-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151207

MIT:  Recommended from Around the Web (Week ending December 13, 2015) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/544296/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-december-13-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151211


On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit ---
http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf
Thank you Jagdish Gangolly for the heads up.

Also see
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/detecting-bs/

Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html


Who Turns Down the Best Business Schools?
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-bschool-choices/?cmpid=BBD120215

Jensen Comment
This does not tell us much unless we know why they did not accept offers from a given school. For example, the final school of their choice may have offered a better financial deal. A personal contact such as a phone call from an alumnus may have changed their minds in favor of another school. Subsequent research may have turned up something negative about the school they turned down such as a set of rankings from another media source other than US News. For example, Bloomberg, The Economist, and the WSJ also rank MBA programs and the rankings differ rather markedly due to different criteria used.


"Math Geek Mom: Things of Value," by Rosemarie Emanuele, Inside Higher Ed, December 8, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/mama-phd/math-geek-mom-things-value

I often begin classes in Economics with a discussion of how values of things are determined. I point out that the price of some things may or may not accurately reflect their importance in our lives. For example, water and air are vitally important in our lives, but often very inexpensive. Alternatively, diamonds are very expensive, but do little to sustain or improve our lives. The reason for this apparent paradox is found in the fact that prices are determined by the interaction of both supply and demand, allowing rare things that are not vital to our lives to become expensive, and important things that are readily available to become relatively inexpensive. I thought of this lately as I looked around at the current bustle and remembered a sign I saw in a store many years ago. Trying to encourage seasonal buying, it said "We make Christmas Cheaper."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Accountants have struggled with valuation issues for years. Historical cost book value is not really "value" in a dictionary context. Exit values are values but they are often misleading as valuation measures for going concerns that are lot going to be divided up and sold in yard sales. Entry (replacement costs) are not "values in a dictionary context after we get through adjusting for depreciation, depletion, and amortization. Also they ignore the adjustments needed for going concerns when items being valued are interactively combined like the synergy value of the assets under CEO Smith versus CEO Jones.

What accountants would really like is to report value in use but they've never figured out how to measure that in an effective and efficient way.

In the above article Rosemarie Emanuele goes on to discuss what accountants would call the intangibles of value, which is something accountants are really not good at measuring even though over the years we've learned to appreciate those intangibles.

Bob Jensen's threads on valuation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#FairValue


Flashcard Machine --- http://www.flashcardmachine.com/

A free service for creating web-based study flashcards that can be shared with others.

With over 109 million flash cards created to-date, Flashcard Machine is your premier online study tool.

For example, search for the word "accounting" at
http://www.flashcardmachine.com/flashcards/flashcards.cgi
There are over 3,000 hits

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.flashcardmachine.com/flashcards/flashcards.cgi


"Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P-values," by Christie Aschwanden, Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, November 30, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/not-even-scientists-can-easily-explain-p-values/

P-values have taken quite a beating lately. These widely used and commonly misapplied statistics have been blamed for giving a veneer of legitimacy to dodgy study results, encouraging bad research practices and promoting false-positive study results.

But after writing about p-values again and again, and recently issuing a correction on a nearly year-old story over some erroneous information regarding a study’s p-value (which I’d taken from the scientists themselves and their report), I’ve come to think that the most fundamental problem with p-values is that no one can really say what they are.

Last week, I attended the inaugural METRICS conference at Stanford, which brought together some of the world’s leading experts on meta-science, or the study of studies. I figured that if anyone could explain p-values in plain English, these folks could. I was wrong.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Why all the fuss? Accountics scientists have a perfectly logical explanation. P-values are numbers that are pumped out of statistical analysis software (mostly multiple regression software) that accounting research journal editors think indicate the degree of causality or at least suggest the degree of causality to readers. But the joke is on the editors, because there aren't any readers.

November 30, 2015 reply from David Johnstone

Dear Bob, thankyou for this interesting stuff.

 

A big part of the acceptance of P-values is that they easily give the look of something having been found. So it’s an agency problem, where the researchers do what makes their research outcomes easier and better looking.

 

There is a lot more to it of course. I note with young staff that they face enough hurdles in the need to get papers written and published without thinking that the very techniques that they are trying to emulate might be flawed. Rightfully, they say, “it’s not my job to question everything that I have been shown and to get nowhere as a result”, nor can most believe that something so established and revered can be wrong, that is just too unthinkable and depressing. So the bandwagon goes on, and, as Bob says, no one cares outside as no one much reads it.

 

I do however get annoyed every time I hear decision makers carry on about “evidence based” policy, as if no one can have a clue or form a vision or strategy without first having the backing of some junk science by a sociologist or educationist or accounting researcher who was just twisting the world whichever way to get significant p-values and a good “story”. This kind of cargo-culting, which is everywhere, does great harm to good or sincere science, as it makes it hard for an outsider to tell the difference.

 

One thing that does not get much of a hearing is that the statisticians themselves must take a lot of blame. They had the chance to vote off P values decades ago when they had to choose between frequentist and Bayesian logic. They split into two camps with the frequentists in the great majority but holding the weakest ground intellectually. The numbers are moving now, as people that were not born when de Finetti, Savage, Lindley, Kadane and others first said that p-values were ill-conceived logically. Accounting, of course, being largely ignorant of there being any issue, and ultimately just political, will not be leading the battle of ideas.

 


Power of a Type 1 (alpha error) Statistical Test --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power

From Econometrics Beat by David Giles on

Questions About the Size and Power of a Test ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/07/questions-about-size-and-power-of-test.html

Type 2 Error --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors#Type_II_error
Jensen Comment
In most cases testing for Type 2 error is more ideal than testing for Type 1 error, but the Type 2 error tests are generally not robust in terms of imprecise knowledge of the underlying error distribution of the process. Type 2 error is sometimes tested in quality control in manufacturing where the underlying distribution of a process that meets specifications is well known (with operating characteristic curves) .
See Operating Characteristics --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positives_and_false_negatives

It's relatively rare in academic study to see tests of Type 2 error. I can't recall a single accountancy study of real-world data that tests for Type 2 error.


Even in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, an ancient crossroads where torture and bribery allegations are endemic, Gulnara Karimova, the president’s Harvard-educated daughter, stood out for her ruthlessness.
"The Silk Road Affair: Power, Pop and a Bunch of Billionaires," by Stephanie Baker, Bloomberg, November 27, 2015 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-29/the-silk-road-affair-power-pop-and-a-bunch-of-billionaires?cmpid=BBD113015

Jensen Comment
Hollywood salivates for material like this! It's got all the ingredients of a blockbuster.


The Free Employee (and their families) Degree Program for Both Employees and Dealer Employees Appears to Be More Generous Than the Programs at Wal-Mart and Starbucks

"Fiat Chrysler Offers Degrees to Employee Families," Inside Higher Ed, November 23, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/23/fiat-chrysler-offers-degrees-employee-families?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b3c3eb755f-DNU20151123&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b3c3eb755f-197565045

Jensen Comment
Next we hope the company can manufacture more reliable vehicles, especially Jeeps, Fiats, and Rams.

Fiat is the least reliable new car. Jeep is ranked second as the least reliable new car. Dodge Ram is the least reliable truck ---
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2015/10/top-10-most-reliable-and-least-reliable-cars.html

I've owned a Jeep Cherokee for 10 years. Sadly I bought the money pit model. Our local Jeep repair center, however, was kind enough to put my name plate on a chair in the waiting room.


"Former Florida State (Finance) Professor Convicted of Embezzlement," Inside Higher Ed, November 23, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/23/former-florida-state-professor-convicted-embezzlement?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b3c3eb755f-DNU20151123&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b3c3eb755f-197565045

A federal jury last week found James Doran, formerly a professor at Florida State University, guilty of embezzling $650,000 from the institution, the Associated Press reported. Doran was charged with taking money from a fund designed to let business students make real investments. He was alleged to have returned the money when an audit discovered what happened. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors say Doran oversaw the Student Investment Fund as a faculty adviser in the university’s College of Business.
http://www.winknews.com/2015/11/19/former-professor-convicted-of-embezzling-at-florida-state/

Jensen Comment
Typically most student investment funds are seeded with money to invest for the university's general endowment fund. Amounts vary, but typical funding ranges from $500K to $2 million. FSU must have had a fairly large fund since the $650,000 Doran pilfered was only part of the fund. The purpose of the fund is to give finance majors experience in managing portfolios.

Actually "pilfered" may be too strong a word here. Most likely Doran engaged in unauthorized borrowing to profit his personal portfolio while fully intending to return the borrowed funds plus small returns to the university. This is a bit different than buying a sailboat or a lake house with the money. But it's just as illegal nevertheless. This is a common crime among trust managers in offices of attorneys and banks where the trust manager intends to profit from the spread between returns actually earned and the returns given to the owners of the trust funds. The devious trust manager who takes financial risks with the "borrowed" funds gets into trouble when those risky investments turn into losses.

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


The number of libraries in the UK fell by 2.6% in the last year, from 4,023 to 3,917, according to a new survey. The figures were released by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) following its annual survey of libraries in Great Britain. Wales saw the biggest loss in the last year, with a fall from 308 to 274. In England, the number of libraries fell from 3,142 to 3,076, while Scotland saw a drop from 573 to 567 ---
http://lisnews.org/node/43969/


Competency-Based Learning --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competency-based_learning

"Measuring Competency," by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed, November 25, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/25/early-glimpse-student-achievement-college-america-competency-based-degree-provider?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=389f6fe14e-DNU20151125&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-389f6fe14e-197565045

Southern New Hampshire U's College for America releases a promising early snapshot of the general-education learning and skills of students who are enrolled in a new form of competency-based education.

A preliminary snapshot of the academic skills of students who are enrolled in a new, aggressive form of competency-based education is out, and the results look good.

Southern New Hampshire University used an outside testing firm to assess the learning and skills in areas typically stressed in general education that were achieved by a small group of students who are halfway through an associate degree program at the university’s College for America, which offers online, self-paced, competency-based degrees that do not feature formal instruction and are completely untethered from the credit-hour standard.

The university was the first to get approval from the U.S. Department of Education and a regional accreditor for its direct-assessment degrees. A handful of other institutions have since followed suit. College for America currently enrolls about 3,000 students, most of whom are working adults. It offers associate degrees -- mostly in general studies with a concentration in business -- bachelor’s degrees and undergraduate certificates.

To try to kick the tires in a public way, College for America used the Proficiency Profile from the Educational Testing Service. The relatively new test assesses students in core skill areas of critical thinking, reading, writing and mathematics. It also gives “context-based” subscores on student achievement in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The results could be notable because skeptics of competency-based education fear the model might not result in adequate learning in these areas.

Continued in article

There are other competency-based learning programs around the USA and Canada that are mentioned in Bob Jensen's threads on competency-based learning ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge


Forwarded by Scott Bonacker on November 25, 2015 ---

HOW THE FRAUD GOES DOWN: IRS and Treasury officials have repeatedly tried to warn taxpayers about the escalating problem of return fraud, with one deputy inspector general even disclosing that he had once been a target. One journalist, Lisa Bennett, has written about just how simple it can be to fall for the scam - which involves criminals masquerading as federal investigators - especially for people who don't want any part of breaking the law and find themselves intimidated by the IRS and the tax code.

Bennett's report: "Throughout my hourlong ordeal I was very aware that it could be a scam, and that there were many things that didn't make sense. Yet I was also deeply afraid that it could be true - that I could have made a mistake on my tax forms; that IRS forms could have been sent but never arrived; and that events could get out of control and go terribly wrong. And this combination of plausibility, fear and confusion soon drove most rational thoughts from my head." http://bit.ly/1lgDd1C

(From “Politico’s Morning Tax” newsletter http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-tax/2015/11/getting-to-be-extenders-time-the-eitc-fraud-hurdle-beps-double-trouble-211457 )

 

Scott Bonacker CPA – McCullough and Associates LLC – Springfield, MO

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


Exchange Traded Funds --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund

Should You Fear the ETF?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/should-you-fear-the-etf-1449457201

 


"Bad Information and Faculty Buyouts," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, November 7, 2011 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/07/appeals-court-faults-college-over-faculty-payouts

A ruling last week by a California appeals court may show how important it is for colleges offering tenured faculty members retirement buyouts to be sure that the information they receive to make their decisions is accurate.

The ruling found that Whittier College committed fraud when it described to tenured law professors what would happen if significant numbers of them did not accept buyouts. The law school was sued by Nelson Rose, a professor who accepted a buyout, when he saw that conditions for those who remained were in fact better than predicted. "Whittier’s statements concerning salaries and workloads were material misrepresentations and a valid basis for holding it liable for fraud and negligent misrepresentation," said the ruling by the appeals court.

The appeals court upheld trial court's $350,000 award to Rose, finding it reasonable, but rejected $500,000 in punitive damages (although the latter rejection was based on Rose's failure to present certain evidence about Whittier's overall financial condition, not Rose's grievances).

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Whittier's fortunes waned in the years following 2011 and is now Whittier is truly struggling to survive in these tough times for law schools.

Whittier Law School in Orange County, California is, officially, the worst law school in the United States. Appalachian School of Law edges out the University of Law Verne College of Law and several other richly deserving candidates for second-worst place.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/31/gulags-the-10-worst-aba-accredited-law-schools/#ixzz3sVAGHHgt
US News places it among the lowest Tier 2 law schools that are not ranked. Typically Tier 2 schools have the worst passage rates on the Bar Examination.
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/03/2016-us-news-peer-reputation-.html

My point is that Nelson Rose probably sued at a good time before the hard times really did set in on Whittier.
My other point is that when faculty get buyout offers, like then entire tenured law school faculty at Gonzaga in 2015obtained, the employer must really be cautious about presenting the future outlook of the institution.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/11/25/faculty-buyouts-gonzaga-u-law-school?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=389f6fe14e-DNU20151125&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-389f6fe14e-197565045


Question
Is it possible to have capital market discoveries negate those discoveries after the discoveries are made public?
The answer is yes, but it's always interesting to find new examples.
In other words does knowing something destroy the value of the knowledge in finance and possibly in the social sciences in general?
Or in another context is an investment strategy that never fails bound to fail once it becomes public knowledge?

Jensen Comment
In the instance below this negation should be relatively easy to test over the next succession of policy-setting meetings of the Federal Reserve.

"A Berkeley professor has found a pattern in when the Fed leaks secrets about monetary policy," by Anne Saphir, Business Insider, November 23, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-pssst-want-to-play-the-market-count-the-fed-leak-weeks-study-2015-11

Vissing-Jorgensen and her colleagues found that the stock market delivers better returns versus Treasury bills the second, fourth, and sixth weeks after each of the Fed's eight policy-setting meetings during a given year. During odd weeks, returns are poor, they found.

An investor could simply exit the stock market during odd-numbered weeks, and return during even-numbered ones, and make much more than an investor who stayed in the stock market the whole time, they suggested.

Continued in article
Of course if the effects are small transactions costs could prevent becoming rich with this as private knowledge.

Jensen Comment
One of the many things that divides the physical sciences from the social sciences is that the mere physical science discovery of a phenomenon will not change the phenomenon due only to the discovery itself. When it was discovered (Galileo or Stevinus) in the context of falling bodies that "time of descent was independent of their mass" the discovery did not change the behavior of gravity.

Apparently there's an exception in quantum mechanics where mere discovery leads to changed behavior, but I've never really understood this due to my ignorance of quantum mechanics.

Discovery can change human behavior. For example, once a child is caught shoplifting the child might never shoplift again.


How to mislead with statistics
The 13 best jobs for people who don't want to work a lot ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-jobs-for-people-who-dont-like-to-work-a-lot-2015-11

Jensen Comment
I think this is perhaps one of the most misleading articles I ever read. The fundamental problem is that the article confuses pay-for-performance versus pay-for-effort versus pay-for-no-effort types of work. For example, there many types of jobs that only pay for performance living on realtor sales commissions. Another example is a cab driver who gets a percentage of the fares collected. Another cab driver who gets paid for the miles driven is being paid for effort rather than performance since that driver makes the same whether the moving cab does or does not have a passenger. At the other extremes there are jobs where people get paid for presence irrespective of performance or effort. Volunteer firefighters may get paid whether or not they are called away from their homes and day-jobs usually are paid only a small proportion of time spent actually fighting fires.

There are also careers where it's almost impossible to separate work time from leisure time. For example, fiction writers in some ways are on the job during every waking moment since they are continually looking for ideas to act upon in their writing. Researchers are almost always thinking about their work even when they are doing other things like changing diapers of their babies.

The bottom line is that I see little of value in this article. About all it says is that there are some jobs where employees have the option or determining the number of hours worked. Or they are at the beckoning call of employers who decide when they will get paid for working. Some employees have the option of ether taking the job or turning it down such as the way some flight attendants work for the airlines when there are more people wanting a given routing than are needed for that routing. The routings are then usually allocated on the basis of seniority.

In any case the phrase "don't want to work" is ambiguous. Some people "don't want to work" because they are lazy and are willing to make less money by avoiding work. Some people don't want to work 40 or more hours a week because they have other things they have to do like being a parent or slaving away at a hobby.


Of the 83,963 people who took the bar exam to become attorneys last year, 60 of them skipped the traditional step of, you know, going to law school. It’s apparently allowed for a lawyer to become official by serving as an “apprentice” under a practicing attorney or a judge. According to last year’s results, 17 of the 60 apprentices who took the bar exam passed it.
http://priceonomics.com/how-to-be-a-lawyer-without-going-to-law-school/
Jensen Comment
Oh my gosh! Those 60 students did not take the required ethics courses in law school. Now most of them especially the 17 who passed the bar exam, will most likely be shysters.


This week, The New York Times published my first review for them, of Harvard particle physicist and cosmologist Lisa Randall's remarkable book Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs. The piece was a labor of love many weeks in the making, but I knew that the book – an expansive and enormously stimulating story of how we got to where we are now by one of the most brilliant women in the entire history of science – was well worth the investment. So I poured tremendous time, thought, and care into the review and spent more time with this book than with any other in my entire reading life. This is what my galley looked like after I was done:
Maria Popova
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/books/review/dark-matter-and-the-dinosaurs-by-lisa-randall.html?emc=eta1&_r=0


"The Intelligence of Emotions: Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on How Storytelling Rewires Us and Why Befriending Our Neediness Is Essential for Happiness," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, November 23, 2015 ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/23/martha-nussbaum-upheavals-of-thought-neediness/?mc_cid=b4de18dd0a&mc_eid=4d2bd13843


Connecticut Auditors Raise Questions About Pension Calculations ---
http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/archives/entry/auditors_raise_questions_about_pension_calculations/

Financial State of the States Report on September 2015 ---
http://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/TIAFSOS9-2015.pdf

SINKHOLE STATES WITH THE WORST TAXPAYER BURDENS

Massachusetts
Kentucky
Illinois
Connecticut
New Jersey

SUNSHINE STATES: 5 BEST TAXPAYER SURPLUSES

South Dakota
Utah
Wyoming
North Dakota
Alaska

STATES WITH THE HIGHEST TAXPAYER BURDEN

New Jersey (Highest)
Connecticut
Illinois
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Hawaii
California
New York
Michigan
Delaware
Pennsylvania
Louisiana
Vermont

. . .

While the financial condition of most states appears to have improved as a result of a change in how unfunded pension debt is calculated, the financial condition of four of the five worst states, identified as "Sinkhole States" (New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and Kentucky), continued to deteriorate. Massachusetts is the only sinkhole state that improved from its 2013 Taxpayer Burden during 2014, but only by a modest $600 per taxpayer.

 

 




From the Scout Report on November 27, 2015

Google Analytics --- https://www.google.com/analytics/ 

For readers who are searching for ways to evaluate their website's performance and boost its reach, Google Analytics provides a free service for which many other companies charge. Anyone with a Google account can access and use Google Analytics to track multiple sites, monitor social networks, and measure video. To sign up, select Sign Up from the homepage. Then enter a tracking code onto your pages. Hours later, Google Analytics will begin offering you data about your site, which can then be exported to Excel, CSV, PDF, and other files. 


RescueTime --- https://www.rescuetime.com/ 

A PC Magazine Editor's Choice for September 2015, RescueTime is one of the most popular productivity apps on the market. While a pay version is available, the free version, RescueTime Lite, will likely satisfy the needs of most users. To use the app, first sign up for an account, then download and install. From there, configure your account by entering your top three most productive and most distracting activities, among other details. RescueTime will then begin tracking your productivity, offering weekly reports that provide a detailed, visually compelling analysis of when you are being the most productive and how you are spending your time. Users interested in productivity news and tips may also enjoy the RescueTime blog, available from the homepage.


Understanding the Upcoming Climate Talks in Paris
Climate optimism builds ahead of Paris talks
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-optimism-builds-ahead-of-paris-talks-1.18863

More the 2,000 academics call on world heads to do more to limit global
warming
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/23/over-2000-academics-world-heads-do-more-limit-global-warming-noam-chomsky

Paris climate talks explained
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/paris-climate-talks-explained

Eight Common Questions about Paris Climate Talks Answered
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eight-common-questions-about-paris-climate-talks-answered/

The Weight of the World: Can Christiana Figueres persuade humanity to save
itself?
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/the-weight-of-the-world

A Student's Guide to Global Climate Change: Lesson Plans for Educators
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/resources/lesson-plans.html
 


From the Scout Report on December 4, 2015

DuckDuckGo  ---- https://duckduckgo.com/ 

Most search engines suffer from "search leakage." In other words, when you search and then click a link, the search terms that you entered are shared with that site, along with your IP Address and other identifying information. The DuckDuckGo search engine, by contrast, redirects your request so that sites do not have access to your search terms. In addition, DuckDuckGo does not save IP address, user agent, or browser cookies during your searches, which means that your private information is better protected. For a more complete description of everything that DuckDuckGo offers, select the About section under the drop down tab on the right hand side of the screen. Meanwhile, searching with the engine is as easy as typing into the text box. All the increased privacy is built into the service.


Taco --- https://tacoapp.com/ 

For readers who use multiple task, project, and issue trackers like Asana, Todoist, Wunderlist, Evernote, Basecamp, or Gmail (among many others), there can come a time when confusion sets in. Enter Taco. The app strikes an excellent balance between bringing tasks from various programs together into a single interface, and simultaneously keeping them distinct on the clean and crisp interface. To get started, create a free account. Then select from the 35+ platforms that Taco supports in order to build your personal Taco page. From there, use the incredibly simple drag-and-drop functionality to organize your tasks across platforms.


New Study Suggests Some Dinosaurs Nested Like Birds
Eggshells Reveal How Dinosaurs Nested
http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/eggshells-reveal-how-dinosaurs-nested-151130.htm

Missing link between dinosaur nests and bird nests
http://news.sciencemag.org/paleontology/2015/11/missing-link-between-dinosaur-nests-and-bird-nests

Eggshell Porosity Provides Insight on Evolution in Dinosaurs
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142829

Baby Dinosaurs Hatched into a World of Danger
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/09/baby-dinosaurs-were-born-into-a-world-of-danger/

National Museum of Natural History: Dinosaurs
http://paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/info/everything/what.html

Fossil Eggshell: Fragments from the past
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/eggshell/index.php
 




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


Education Tutorials

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Popular Intro to Computer Science Course: The 2015 Edition ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/learn-to-code-with-harvards-popular-intro-to-computer-science-course.html
Other free alternatives for leaning how to code ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#---ComputerNetworking-IncludingInternet

Skepticism 101 --- http://www.skeptic.com/skepticism-101

Youngzine --- http://www.youngzine.org/

Edudemic (teacher aids for learning about technology) --- http://www.edudemic.com/

EUROPA: Teachers' Corner --- http://europa.eu/teachers-corner/

New York Public Library: For Teachers --- http://www.nypl.org/voices/blogs/blog-channels/for-teachers

Case Teaching at the Harvard Business School: C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning: Case Method in Practice --- 
http://www.hbs.edu/teaching/case-method-in-practice/index.html

The Why Files (University of Wisconsin helpers for science teachers) --- http://whyfiles.org/

ScienceNetLinks: Today in Science --- http://sciencenetlinks.com/daily-content/

Cambridge English: Resources for Teachers ---
http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/resources-for-teachers/

TeachArchives.org --- http://www.teacharchives.org/

Gates Notes (learning from the blog of Bill Gates) --- http://www.gatesnotes.com/

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden: Download Teaching Modules ---
http://www.fairchildgarden.org/education/kids-families/downloadable-learning-modules

Video:  70 Complete Episodes of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting Now Free to Watch Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/70-complete-episodes-of-bob-ross-the-joy-of-painting-now-free-online.html

Smithsonian: Seriously Amazing --- http://seriouslyamazing.si.edu/

Smithsonian Libraries: Fantastic Worlds --- http://library.si.edu/digital-library/collection/fantastic-worlds/all

1932 and 1944: Two new books shine spotlight on success, failure of FDR ---
http://watchdog.org/250338/1932-1944-two-new-books-shine-spotlight-success-failure-fdr/

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

ScienceBlogs --- http://scienceblogs.com/

The Why Files (University of Wisconsin helpers for science teachers) --- http://whyfiles.org/

ScienceNetLinks: Today in Science --- http://sciencenetlinks.com/daily-content/

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden: Download Teaching Modules ---
http://www.fairchildgarden.org/education/kids-families/downloadable-learning-modules

NASA just released incredible new images of Pluto — the best we'll see in decades ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-images-pluto-new-horizons-2015-12

Engineering Ethics Blog --- http://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/

The Pitch Drop Experiment (viscosity of pitch) --- http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment

Stinks, Bangs and Booms: The Rise and Fall of the American Chemistry Set --- http://chemistryset.chemheritage.org/#/

Gates Notes (learning from the blog of Bill Gates) --- http://www.gatesnotes.com/

Google Analytics --- https://www.google.com/analytics/

Smithsonian: Seriously Amazing --- http://seriouslyamazing.si.edu/

Smithsonian Libraries: Fantastic Worlds --- http://library.si.edu/digital-library/collection/fantastic-worlds/all

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 Aspen Institute: Roundtable on Community Change --- http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/community-change

IssueLab --- http://www.issuelab.org/

The Sentencing Project (to combat unjust sentencing along racial lines) --- http://www.sentencingproject.org/

iCivics (learn about goverments and the courts) ---  http://www.icivics.org/

Project I'm Ready (aids for Native American learning) --- http://projectimready.org/

Gates Notes (learning from the blog of Bill Gates) --- http://www.gatesnotes.com/

South Asian American Digital Archive --- https://www.saada.org/

Awakening Joy: Blog (psychology of happiness) --- https://awakeningjoy.info/blog/

xkcd: Congress (inforgraphic on the history of the USA House and Senate) --- http://xkcd.com/1127/

Global Health Policy Blog --- http://www.cgdev.org/global-health-policy-blog

CIA Museum --- https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/

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

iCivics (learn about goverments and the courts) ---  http://www.icivics.org/

The Sentencing Project (to combat unjust sentencing along racial lines) --- http://www.sentencingproject.org/

Engineering Ethics Blog --- http://engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com/

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


Math Tutorials

The Pitch Drop Experiment (viscosity of pitch) --- http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment

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

A History of US Public Libraries --- http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/history-us-public-libraries

Library of Congress:  Banned Books That Shaped America ---
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica

Some people think Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer; others that she is hugely overrated. Two hundred years after her birth, Emma Duncan assesses the legacy of the ultra-numerate countess ---
http://www.intelligentlifemagazine.com/intelligence/cracking-coder

Aldous Huxley was a prolific and panoramic thinker on the question of human potential. He was also something of a dupe...
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1637201.ece

BBC:  100 Greatest British Novels ---
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151204-the-100-greatest-british-novels

Inside the Operating Theater: Early Surgery as Spectacle --- http://daily.jstor.org/inside-the-operating-theater-surgery-as-spectacle/

Striking Poster Collection from the Great Depression Shows That the US Government Once Supported the Arts in America ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/striking-poster-collection-from-the-great-depression-proves-that-the-us-government-once-supported-the-arts-in-america.html

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Introduced to America by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/new-wave-music-devo-talking-heads-blondie-elvis-costello-gets-introduced-to-america-by-abcs-tv-show-2020-1979.html

Travel Back in Time and See Picasso Make Abstract Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/travel-back-in-time-and-see-picasso-make-abstract-art.html

Gates Notes (learning from the blog of Bill Gates) --- http://www.gatesnotes.com/

CIA Museum --- https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/

EUROPA: Teachers' Corner --- http://europa.eu/teachers-corner/

Iris Murdoch said she was "capable of being in love with about six men at once.” Something about the sexual as well as intellectual thrill of the student–teacher relationship ---
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ink-inclination

OldMapsOnline --- http://www.oldmapsonline.org

New York Public Library: For Teachers --- http://www.nypl.org/voices/blogs/blog-channels/for-teachers

Holocaust Theater Catalog --- http://htc.miami.edu/

Holocaust:  "Everyone would believe my pictures": The Legacy of Julien Bryan --- 
http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/bryan/

TeachArchives.org --- http://www.teacharchives.org/

xkcd: Congress (inforgraphic on the history of the USA House and Senate) --- http://xkcd.com/1127/

Skepticism 101 --- http://www.skeptic.com/skepticism-101

Google Analytics --- https://www.google.com/analytics/

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

Piktochart: 5 Language Infographics (story telling in pictures) --- http://piktochart.com/5-top-language-infographics/

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


Music Tutorials

How did Sam Phillips invent rock ’n’ roll? By listening to the voices of poor people neglected by history ...
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/698-what-sam-phillips-heard

We celebrate — and mock — Hemingway as a swaggering celebrity, a revolutionary. But his real talents were listening, mimicry, and revision ---
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/hemingway-surprise/

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

Cambridge English: Resources for Teachers ---
http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/resources-for-teachers/

Sometimes what passes as writerly craft is actually the product of a political agenda. Consider the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the 1950s ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/books/review/workshops-of-empire-by-eric-bennett.html?_r=0

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/

November 22, 2015

November 24, 2015

November 25, 2015

November 26, 2015

November 30, 2015

December 2, 2015

December 3, 2015

December 4, 2015

December 5, 2015

December 7, 2015

December 8, 2015

December 9, 2015

December 10, 2015

December 11, 2015

December 12, 2015

 


Google has filed a patent for a smartwatch that can take your blood without needles ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-has-filed-a-patent-for-a-smartwatch-that-can-take-your-blood-2015-12


Scientists genetically modified a mosquito that causes 90% of malaria deaths, and it could be a game changer ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/mosquito-gene-drive-could-end-malaria-2015-12


Time Magazine:  The 50 (New) Healthiest Foods ---
http://time.com/4121973/the-50-new-healthiest-foods-of-all-time-with-recipes/?xid=newsletter-brief


9 Habits nurses have developed ---
http://www.mightynurse.com/9-habits-nurses-have-developed-stories/
God bless you daughter Maria


Global Health Policy Blog --- http://www.cgdev.org/global-health-policy-blog


Inside the Operating Theater: Early Surgery as Spectacle --- http://daily.jstor.org/inside-the-operating-theater-surgery-as-spectacle/


Word after word, page after page, mile after mile: Why do so many writers take up running? They're chasing a state of mind...
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/why-writers-run/415146/




Humor December 1-14, 2015

The Ultimate Guide To Winning Your White Elephant Gift Exchange Using Game Theory ---    
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/white-elephant-yankee-swap-game-theory/

Casablanca’s Hilarious Alternative Final Scene Featuring Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon: Pragmatism Carries the Day!
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/casablancas-hilarious-alternative-final-scene.html

Buster Keaton: The Wonderful Gags of the Founding Father of Visual Comedy ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/buster-keaton-the-wonderful-gags-of-the-founding-father-of-visual-comedy.html

Dad Jokes
https://www.facebook.com/Postize/photos/pcb.1020015178030536/1020014358030618/?type=3
Thank you Jason Hardin for the heads up.

Steve Martin Writes a Hymn for Hymn-Less Atheists ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/steve-martin-writes-a-hymn-for-hymn-less-atheists.html

Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html


An awful one forwarded by Paula

A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard when, all of a sudden, he hears music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source.

He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: "Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770- 1827".

Then he realizes that the music is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and it is being played backwards!

Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him.

By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time, it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backwards.

Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backwards.

The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed . . . the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th.

By the next day the word has spread, and a crowd has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then, the graveyard's caretaker ambles up to the group.

Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the music.

"I would have thought it was obvious," the caretaker says. "He's decomposing."




Humor November 1-30,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q4.htm#Humor113015

Humor October 1-31,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q4.htm#Humor103115

Humor September 1-30,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q3.htm#Humor093015

Humor August 1-31,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q3.htm#Humor081115

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

 




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

 

For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to   http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators) http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.

Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing, doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics) research, publication, replication, and validity testing.

 

CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/  (Closed Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog

Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board on this financial reporting blog from Financial Executives International. The site, updated daily, compiles regulatory news, rulings and statements, comment letters on standards, and hot topics from the Web’s largest business and accounting publications and organizations. Look for continuing coverage of SOX requirements, fair value reporting and the Alternative Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such as the subprime mortgage crisis, international convergence, and rules for tax return preparers.
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv

September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as well as a practicing CPA)

I found another listserve that is exceptional -

CalCPA maintains http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/  and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.

There are several highly capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and the answers are often in depth.

Scott

Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

Yes you may mention info on your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not have access to the files and other items posted.

Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I will get the request to join.

Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.

We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in California.... ]

Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

If any questions let me know.

Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
 

 

 

 

Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm

 

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

Some Accounting History Sites

Bob Jensen's Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
 

Accounting History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) --- http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.

MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting --- http://maaw.info/

Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/

Sage Accounting History --- http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269

A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm 

A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

From Texas A&M University
Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html

Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds

History of Fraud in America --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

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

All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone:  603-823-8482 
Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu