In 2017 my Website was migrated to
the clouds and reduced in size.
Hence some links below are broken.
One thing to try if a “www” link is broken is to substitute “faculty” for “www”
For example a broken link
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
can be changed to corrected link
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
However in some cases files had to be removed to
reduce the size of my Website
Contact me at rjensen@trinity.edu if you really need to file that is missing
Tidbits on January 14, 2016
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 4 of My All Time Favorite
Photographs
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Favorites/Set04/FavoritesSet04.htm
Tidbits on January 14, 2016
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For
earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Bookmarks for the World's Library ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Updates from WebMD
--- Click Here
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
Republic Of Korea Air Force Black Eagles ---
https://www.youtube.com/embed/4MdNXtRZ5fI
Interactive Graph of Global Population Shifts ---
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756390/gif-population-2100
Historic Steam Engine Roars Back to Life ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/raw-historic-steam-engine-roars-back-to-life/vi-CCi6dL?ocid=spartanntp
Free music downloads ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Discover The Music Vault: A Massive YouTube Archive of 22,000
Live Concert Videos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/the-music-vault-a-massive-youtube-archive-of-22000-live-concert-videos.html
All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Complete Works Online: 100 Done,
980 to Come ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/all-of-bach-is-putting-bachs-complete-works-online-100-done-980-to-come.html
The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Online (historic music archive,
especially folk music) ---
http://research.culturalequity.org/home-audio.jsp
David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Performance,
2006 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/david-bowie-rip-sings-changes-in-his-last-live-performance-2006.html
Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ailing Luciano Pavarotti &
Sings Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” at the Grammys (1998) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/aretha-franklin-sings-puccinis-nessun-dorma-at-the-grammys-1998.html
Aretha Franklin Sings “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”:
Brings Down the House, the President to Tears ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/aretha-franklin-sings-you-make-me-feel-like-a-natural-woman.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
These are the 12 largest nuclear
detonations in history ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/largest-nuclear-detonations-in-history-2015-3
Also see
http://qz.com/588519/why-its-so-difficult-to-build-a-hydrogen-bomb
Also see
http://www.businessinsider.com/atomic-hydrogen-bombs-difference-2016-1
/
The First Book Illustrated with
Photographs, Anna Atkins’ Austerely Beautiful Photographs of British Algae
(1843) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/first-book-to-use-photographic-illustrations.html
The First Adult Coloring Book: See the Subversive Executive
Coloring Book From 1961 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/the-first-adult-coloring-book.html
Jensen Comment
Note that man is executive; woman is secretary in 1961. Of course in those days
it was and still is less kinky to color in a man's underwear vis-a-vis a woman's
underwear.
Here's what's ahead for 2016, in 20 pictures ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-2016-outlook-in-pictures-2016-1
New York Public Library’s release
of 180,000 copyright-free materials ---
http://stereo.nypl.org/create
815 Free Art Books from World Class Museums: The Met, the
Guggenheim, the Getty & LACMA ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/815-free-art-books-from-world-class-museums-the-met-the-guggenheim-the-getty-lacma.html
29 Sketchbooks by Renowned Artist Richard Diebenkorn, Containing
1,045 Drawings, Now Freely Viewable Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/29-sketchbooks-by-renowned-artist-richard-diebenkorn-containing-1045-drawings-now-freely-viewable-online.html
National Geographic: 13 stunning photographs that placed in
the 2015 National Geographic photo competition ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/2015-national-geographic-photo-contest
Tall Sand Dunes on Mars ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/curiosity-pictures-at-namib-dune-on-mars-2016-1
The most breathtaking natural wonder in every state ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/tripideas/the-most-breathtaking-natural-wonder-in-every-state/ss-AAgfK7v?ocid=spartanntp
The 57 most mesmerizing sports photos of 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-sports-photos-of-2015-2015-12
Earth ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
Scientists have used groundbreaking technology to figure out how the Earth
looked a billion years ago ---
http://qz.com/577842/scientists-have-used-groundbreaking-technology-to-figure-out-how-the-earth-looked-a-billion-years-ago/
A 12-foot giant squid emerged from the depths of the sea in
Japan ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-squid-emerges-deep-sea-rare-sighting-japan-toyama-bay-2015-12
A telescope under construction in the mountains of China's
Pingtang county is set to become the largest in the world when it reaches
completion in September ---
https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesDaily/posts/1018495238202293
The 50 Most Incredible Photographs of 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-unforgettable-photos-of-2015-2015-12
This should be an
advertisement for planned parenthood ---
http://www.gigapixel.com/image/gigapan-canucks-g7.html
Bob Jensen's threads on art history ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#ArtHistory
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on libraries ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries
Thea’s Tree: An Illustrated Ode to Daydreaming, the Passage of Time, and the
Gift of Human Imagination ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/09/theas-tree-judith-clay/?mc_cid=8c7cf840e6&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
The First Book Illustrated with Photographs,
Anna Atkins’ Austerely Beautiful Photographs of British Algae (1843) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/first-book-to-use-photographic-illustrations.html
Network visualization: mapping Shakespeare’s tragedies ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2016/01/network-visualization-mapping-shakespeares-tragedies/
Before [the great man] can remake his society, his society must make him.”
With whom does the novelist Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy, which began with
“Imperium” (2006) and “Conspirata” (2009) and ends now with “Dictator,” side?
---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/off-with-his-head-1452040077?mod=djemMER
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on January 14, 2016
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2016/TidbitsQuotations011416.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Google Glass ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass
The next generation of Google Glass, Google’s head-mounted wearable
display, is the real deal ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/google-glass-2-0-real-001449764.html
How Badly Can a Car Salesman Swindle You ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-badly-can-a-car-salesman-swindle-you/
Bob Jensen's Car Buying Tips
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudDealers.htm
In Pursuit of an Affordable Tablet for the Blind
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545301/in-pursuit-of-an-affordable-tablet-for-the-blind/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160112
Bob Jensen's helpers for handicapped teaching and
learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Law Schools Have Shed 1,206 Full-Time Faculty (13.3%) Since 2010 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/01/law-schools-have-shed-1206-full-time-faculty-133-since-2010.html
The smartest students know where to find the best blogs in their disciplines.
Unlike academic accounting where it's rare to find an active
blogging professor, there are many economics professors who blog. Larry Summer's
economics blog has become increasingly popular. Recall that Professor Summers in
the controversial former Harvard University President and the first (somewhat
failed) chief economic advisor to President Obama. In his blog Professor Summers
is not opposed to taking up controversial issues and render criticism where
criticism is due (e.g. when Paul Krugman goes off on a rant).
http://larrysummers.com/category/blog/
There is a pretty decent search engine for this blog. For
example, key in the search term "inequality" in the upper right of the screen.
The first of a number of hits on January 9, 2016 reads
Increasing Education: What it will and will not do for earnings inequality
Jensen Comment
What the Larry Summers' blog illustrates to me is how blogging itself is taking over education relative to books (that cannot be updated daily) of students and faculty.
The smartest students know where to find the bes
|
|
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Jensen Comment
What the Larry Summers' blog illustrates to me is how blogging itself is taking
over education relative to books (that cannot be updated daily) of students and
faculty.
The smartest students know where to find the best blogs in their disciplines.
How to mislead with statistics
An MBA is Eventually Worth $22,000 More (6-8 years out) if You're White
or Asian: Is this really the case? ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-07/business-school-is-worth-22-000-more-if-you-re-white-or-asian?cmpid=BBWGP011316_BIZ
For most people, going to business school leads to
bigger and bigger paychecks. But you are likely to get the most out of the
degree if you are a white or Asian man, Bloomberg data show.
Black, Hispanic, and American Indian MBAs who got
their degree six to eight years ago earned exactly as much as their white
and Asian peers right after leaving school, according to a Bloomberg survey
of 12,700 alumni at more than 100 business schools. In the survey, conducted
as part of our annual ranking of full-time MBA programs, both groups said
they made a median $105,000 when they graduated.
But by 2015, MBAs who were underrepresented
minorities—meaning black, Hispanic, or American Indian—earned $150,000,
while white and Asian MBAs made $172,000. Whites and Asians accounted for
about 89 percent of alumni in the survey. Underrepresented groups made up 11
percent.
Female MBAs made less money than the men they
graduated business school with, but women of color were at a particularly
stark disadvantage. Six to eight years after leaving business school, black,
Hispanic, and American India women earned a median $132,250. White and Asian
men earned $181,000—a pay gap of nearly $49,000. Men from underrepresented
minorities earned $163,500—less than white and Asian men but more than white
women, who took home $150,000.
Jensen Comment
A good exercise for your students would be to find underlying factors where the
difference in average incomes are possibly explained by things other than race
and ethnicity per se. For example, .both means and medians are affected by
outliers when the outliers for income are zero or nearly zero.
For example, it is well known that women tend to drop out of the
job market more than men when they have babies. The lower averages for women can
possibly be explained for the mommy zero-imcome phenomenon rather than race per
se. This is complicated when the proportions of gender differences differ by
race such as when more female African Americans have MBA degrees compare to
their male counterparts.
There are so few American Indian MBA alumni I tend to distrust
any outcomes for this subset of the sampling population.
There can also be geographic confounding variables. For example,
the Asian population in the USA is more in big cities and in western cities.
Hispanics are more concentrated in the south. To what extent do geographic
differences in salaries earnings complicate the racist conclusions of this
study?
Canadians Are Going Loonie on Social Media About Skyrocketing Grocery Bills
---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-13/canadians-are-going-loonie-on-social-media-about-skyrocketing-grocery-bills?cmpid=BBD011316_BIZ
Philosophy of Science ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
"When Philosophy Lost Its Way," by Robert Frodeman and Adam Briggle,
The New York Times, January 11, 2016 ---
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/11/when-philosophy-lost-its-way/?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0
Jensen Comment
This is complicated stuff. But there's a lingering question of interest and
relevance. Students in the 21st Century are not clamoring to take philosophy of
science courses or philosophy majors in general. Indeed philosophy lost its way
in the modern university.
Massive Open Online Course ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
"Mapping a MOOC Reveals Global Patterns in Student Engagement," by
Anthony C. Robinson, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Mapping-a-MOOC-Reveals-Global/234795?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elq=359c423d09b3411da341f20c5ff0f72e&elqCampaignId=2209&elqaid=7502&elqat=1&elqTrackId=728d777113e641e0a441d37fb2be0149
Teaching an online course that 49,000 students have signed up for
presents an unprecedented challenge when it comes to an important aspect of
instruction: knowing your audience.
I could see from my course "dashboard" in Coursera that the students
hailed from 190 countries, with 6 percent from India, 31 percent from the
United States, and so on, but these numbers only took me so far. I wondered
which places had lots of students earning a passing grade? Which places had
students who were really engaged with the course?
Since I’m a cartographer, it made sense to make some maps.
. . .
These examples show that the geography of MOOC students goes far beyond
basic reporting that X percent of students came from country Y. When we
drill down to explore things like gender balance and engagement, we start to
see major differences around the world. What we need now are ways to
incorporate this type of analysis into practice while teaching a course, so
that we can make smart interventions to encourage participation and improve
outcomes.
I love teaching in the MOOC realm — it has advantages and possibilities
that just aren’t there in other forms of teaching — but what we’ve seen in
this work helps us understand that we’ve got a long way to go yet in terms
of making a MOOC work for everyone around the world.
The
cumulative number of MOOCs didn’t break 100 until the end of 2012. But by the
end of 2013 that number had grown to over 800. And today the number of
registered MOOC students added in 2015 is nearly equal to the last three years
combined.
"MOOCs Are Still Rising, at Least in Numbers," by Ellen Wexler,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/moocs-are-still-rising-at-least-in-numbers/57527?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elq=7bf78ed93ead47d3a4da220c40587cbd&elqCampaignId=1647&elqaid=6629&elqat=1&elqTrackId=f325471009eb4e959e66d27de2031216
When one of the first
massive open online courses appeared at Stanford University, 160,000
students enrolled. It was 2011, and fewer than 10 MOOCs existed worldwide.
It has been four years since
then, and according to a new report, the cumulative number of MOOCs has
reached nearly 4,000.
Compiled earlier this month
by Dhawal Shah, founder of the MOOC aggregator Class Central, the report
summarizes data on MOOCs from the past four years. And the data show that
even as the MOOC hype has started to die down, interest hasn’t tapered off.
The cumulative number of
MOOCs didn’t break 100 until the end of 2012. But by the end of 2013 that
number had grown to over 800. And today the number of registered MOOC
students added in 2015 is nearly equal to the last three years combined.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Note the graph showing that the cumulative number of MOOCs to date is nearly
4,000 course, most of which are courses from prestigious universities like
MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Rice, etc. Although MOOCs are free by
definition they cannot usually be taken for transcript credit unless a fee
is paid for competency-based testing. The two largest credit providers are
Coursera and EdX. One of the more noted MOOCs available is from Arizona
State University where the entire first year of courses can be taken for
credit.
Noncredit credentials
(badges) for a fee are also available for most MOOCs that demonstrate
completion of a MOOC and sometimes a level of competency that might be
recognized by employers even though they do not qualify for transcript
college credit.
"Who Takes MOOCs?" by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, June 5,
2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/05/early-demographic-data-hints-what-type-student-takes-mooc
Massive open online courses,
or MOOCs, are popular. This much we know.
But as investors and higher
ed prognosticators squint into their crystal balls for hints of what this
popularity could portend for the rest of higher education, two crucial
questions remains largely unanswered: Who are these students, and what do
they want?
Some early inquiries into
this by two major MOOC providers offer a few hints.
Coursera, a company started
by two Stanford University professors, originated with a course called
Machine Learning, which co-founder Andrew Ng taught last fall to a virtual
classroom of 104,000 students. Coursera surveyed a sample of those students
to find out, among other things, their education and work backgrounds and
why they decided to take the course.
Among 14,045 students in the
Machine Learning course who responded to a demographic survey, half were
professionals who currently held jobs in the tech industry. The largest
chunk, 41 percent, said they were professionals currently working in the
software industry; another 9 percent said they were professionals working in
non-software areas of the computing and information technology industries.
Many were enrolled in some
kind of traditional postsecondary education. Nearly 20 percent were graduate
students, and another 11.6 percent were undergraduates. The remaining
registrants were either unemployed (3.5 percent), employed somewhere other
than the tech industry (2.5 percent), enrolled in a K-12 school (1 percent),
or “other” (11.5 percent).
A subset (11,686
registrants) also answered a question about why they chose to take the
course. The most common response, given by 39 percent of the respondents,
was that they were “just curious about the topic.” Another 30.5 percent said
they wanted to “sharpen the skills” they use in their current job. The
smallest proportion, 18 percent, said they wanted to “position [themselves]
for a better job.”
Udacity, another for-profit
MOOC provider founded by (erstwhile) Stanford professors, has also conducted
some initial probes into the make-up of its early registrants. While the
company did not share any data tables with Inside Higher Ed, chief executive
officer David Stavens said more than 75 percent of the students who took the
company’s first course, Artificial Intelligence, last fall were looking to
“improve their skills relevant for either current or future employment.”
That is a broad category,
encompassing both professionals and students, so it does not lend much
nuance to the questions of who the students are or what they want. And even
the more detailed breakdown of the students who registered for Ng’s Machine
Learning course cannot offer very much upon which to build a sweeping thesis
on how MOOCs might fit into the large and diverse landscape of higher
education.
Coursera has since completed
the first iterations of seven additional courses and opened registration for
32 more beyond that. Many of those courses — which cover poetry, world
music, finance, and behavioral neurology — are likely to attract different
sorts of people, with different goals, than Machine Learning did. “I'm
expecting that the demographics for some of our upcoming classes (Stats One,
Soc 101, Pharmacology, etc.) will be very different,” said Daphne Koller,
one of Coursera’s founders, in an e-mail.
Continued in article
"Coursera Tops 1 Million Students," Inside Higher Ed, August
10, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/08/10/coursera-tops-1-million-students
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"Supreme Court Rejects Student Loan Bankruptcy Case," Inside Higher Ed,
January 12, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/12/supreme-court-rejects-student-loan-bankruptcy-case?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=cf4c931911-DNU20160112&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-cf4c931911-197565045
The U.S. Supreme Court on
Monday declined to hear a case on whether people declaring bankruptcy should
have an easier time erasing student loan debt in the process,
The Wall Street Journal
reported. The case was brought by a Wisconsin man with
more than $260,000 in student loan debt from business and law school. He
twice failed the bar exam. The man argues that lower courts should have
allowed him to discharge his debt through bankruptcy. Generally, federal
courts have made it difficult to do so, although a few courts have been more
lenient.
Question
I have a granddaughter working as a pharmacist in Boston. Loan repayment is
taking an enormous bite out of her every paycheck. She's miscalculated by
thinking that by now there would be a way for her to not have to repay her
student loans for years to come. She would declare bankruptcy in a Boston minute
if she had that choice.
What's wrong with the idea of letting students with more debts than assets
declare bankruptcy like nearly all other citizens are entitled to do when their
debts overwhelm their assets.
Answer
First and foremost student load bankruptcy leads to game playing where students
borrow more than is really necessary in anticipation that they will never have
to replay their loans. This, in turn, can lead to complete
ruination of the student loan programs.
Parents will view student bankruptcy as an opportunity to
not have to sacrifice their own wealth for educating their children.
Maybe Bernie Sanders will be elected and taxpayers might be
forced to provide a free education to any USA citizen who requests a free
education. But funding for this will have to be legislated like all other
government funding programs.
Free college education for anybody who wants it should not
bypass the legislative process with bankruptcy game playing.
Sure there can be game playing with bankruptcy for
non-student loans. But this has not ruined the financing of consumers and
businesses. Bankruptcy can ruin student loan programs unless the government
picks up the losses in a way that is legislated by due process.
How States Fare in Their Financial Support of Public Higher
Ed ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/07/how-states-fare-their-support-public-higher-ed?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197565045
"Clinton, Sanders Debate College Plans," Inside Higher Ed,
December 54, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/12/21/clinton-sanders-debate-college-plans?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=162e714d50-DNU20151221&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-162e714d50-197565045
OECD Study Published in 2014: List of
countries by 25- to 34-year-olds having a tertiary education degree ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_25-_to_34-year-olds_having_a_tertiary_education_degree
Jensen Comment
Note that nations having free college and other tertiary education and training
programs such as Germany and Finland control costs by having severe rationing of
admissions into Tier 3 from Tier 2 (what in the USA is called high school).
Nations having the highest proportion graduates from Tier 3 do not offer free
education and training programs, contrary to what Bernie Sanders would like us
to think while he campaigns of for free college education in the USA for anybody
who wants to go to college.
I mistakenly thought all Scandinavian countries
had free tertiary education, but subsequently it was pointed out to me that
Sweden does not have free tertiary education like its Nordic counterparts.
The point is that nations having no price
barriers to tertiary education at the Tier 3 level control taxpayer cost via
severe rationing via admission barriers
Many graduates help finance student loan payoffs with Etsy ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etsy
Of course you don't have to be a college graduate to supplement your income with
Etsy.
.How to Mislead With Statistics
"How To Make Sense Of Conflicting, Confusing And Misleading Crime Statistics,"
by Carl Bialik, Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, January 11, 2016 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-make-sense-of-conflicting-confusing-and-misleading-crime-statistics/
This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts,
January 11, 2016
Clinton and Sanders and MSNBC Will Likely Ignore This Revised
Academic Study of Inequality
'What top researchers discovered when they re-ran the numbers on income
inequality," by Jim Tankersley, The Washington Post, January 6, 2016
---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/06/what-top-researchers-discovered-when-they-re-ran-the-numbers-of-income-inequality/
The world's most famous inequality researchers
unveiled a new way of adding up the growing gap between the super-rich and
everyone else on Tuesday.
The findings by economists Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel
Zucman and Thomas Piketty, which are preliminary, were hotly anticipated
ever since the American Economic Association conference posted a
one-paragraph summary of their results ahead of the event in San Francisco.
"In contrast to survey and individual tax data, we find substantial increase
in average real pre-tax incomes for the bottom 90% since the 1970s," one
line in the preview said, potentially suggesting that concerns about a
stagnant middle had been overblown.
That summary was greeted with cheers by some
conservatives that proof that Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton, have
been wrong to focus on income inequality and middle-class wage stagnation so
much.
On Tuesday, the economists said they analyzed
inequality trends using a new combination of tax, survey and national
accounts data, which the economists say more accurately captures income
levels across the population over time. By their analysis, the bottom 90
percent appears to have done better since the late 1970s than previously
estimated — but not much better. You can see the trend in the following
slide from their presentation.
Continued in article
If you take a nip of alcohol now and then have a gin and tonic before reading
about these
More than a nip and you may not care if they are true or not true
9 More Crazy Math Facts That People Refuse To Believe Are True ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/controversial-math-problems-markov-chain-cantor-coin-flip-2013-5
Yummy Math (illustrations of math in the real
world, including forecasting) ---
http://www.yummymath.com
The 12 Most Controversial Facts in Mathematics (not so much controversial
as surprising) ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-controversial-math-problems-2013-3
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Math
Philips was forced to reverse
recent software updates this week when it was revealed that updates to its Philips
Hue wireless lighting system
cut off access to previously supported light bulbs made
by other companies.---
http://readwrite.com/2015/12/18/philips-hue-smart-home-block
These are the most popular products of 2015,
according to Business Insider readers ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-products-of-2015-amazon-echo-distil-union-wallet-2016-1
Bill Gates: Top Five Books of 2015
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/bill-gates-book-critic-names-his-top-5-books-of-2015.html
Brain Pickings: The Best Brain Pickings of 2015 ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/30/best-of-brain-pickings-2015/?mc_cid=d0d0fe5880&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Brain Pickings: 16 Elevating
Resolutions for 2016 Inspired by Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01/04/resolutions-2016/?mc_cid=279f739d43&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Time Magazine: The Top 10 Everything of 2015 ---
http://time.com/collection/top-10-everything-of-2015/?xid=newsletter-brief
Business Insider: The Biggest Box Office Flops of 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-biggest-box-office-flops-of-2015-2015-12
National Law Journal: The Top 10 Legal Education Stories Of 2015 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/01/nljthe-top-ten-legal-education-stories-of-2015.html#more
MIT: What Robots and AI Learned in 2015 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544901/what-robots-and-ai-learned-in-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160105
MIT: The 6 Biggest Technology Failures of 2015 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544966/the-6-biggest-technology-failures-of-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151231
MIT: Seven Must-Read Stories (Week ending January 2, 2016) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/545081/seven-must-read-stories-week-ending-january-2-2016/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160101
MIT: Recommended from Around the Web (Week ending January 2, 2016)
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/545076/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-january-2-2016/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160101
MIT: Recommended from Around the Web (Week ending January
9, 2016)
---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/545226/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-january-9-2016/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160108
MIT: Seven Must-Read Stories (Week ending January
11, 2016) ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/545236/seven-must-read-stories-week-ending-january-11-2016/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-weekly-business&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160108
Interactive Graph of Global Population Shifts
---
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756390/gif-population-2100
Words of the Year 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/01/10/words-of-the-year-2015/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en&elq=0bd0226da1974bb98331bc4a66995c07&elqCampaignId=2199&elqaid=7489&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0353a3f489f84dbda0c9faee811449f9
January 12, 2016 reply from Wright McEwan in
Australia
Word of the year "Ghost, Verb as in Ghosting" which
I understood to mean ďnserting a fictitious person onto a payment list of
some sort. Kind regards,
Mac
January 12, 2016 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Mac.
Ghosting also arises when three co-authors get their names on three
papers, two papers for which their contribution is negligible.
Thanks, Bob
January 12, 2016 reply from Paul Williams
Bob,
Once again we agree. I reviewed a paper for an accounting journal recently
that tracked changes in The Accounting Review over an extended period of
time and one of the notable trends has been the increase in the number of
co-authors. The way department heads and deans count publication performance
explains how Jesus fed the multitudes. If this is "one" _______________,
then this is ___/___/___/___/___/ five.
Any second grader will tell you if the first line
is one then so is the second one (except for the spaces created by how I
divided the line), but according to my department head the first line is
one, but the second one is five. It is actually one divided into fifths.
Most studies in economics dealing with faculty "productivity" measure it in
terms of equivalent articles. Many papers published in accounting journals
today with 3 or 4 authors are no more complex to do than papers written by
just one or two authors in the past.
At least in the sciences the order of authors is
based on assessments of how much contribution was made so place in the list
is important. In accounting it is usually always alphabetical implying that
each author's contribution was equal. Now we have reached a state where we
have begun to game what is largely already a game in the first place.
When will accounting publish its first paper with
5,300+ authors as the recent physics paper that included every employee at
CERN?
Paul
January 12, 2016 reply from Robin Alexander
Another case of “what is measured is gamed.” in my
experience at two institutions the only thing that mattered was number of
articles and some weight for “prestige” journals. No concern whatsoever for
topic or quality. I had a colleague with an enviable record but just about
all papers were co-authored. Reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story about
a factory’s productivity under the Soviet system: A factory that produced
nails was measured by weight of output, so they made one huge nail. The
measure was changed as a result to number of nails. As you can guess, the
factory produced very many tiny nails.
I was always amazed at how little accounting
faculty seemed interested in what they were researching. They viewed journal
articles as a product and tried to maximize output. Perhaps an unfortunate
byproduct of being in Business. This was so different from my experience in
a good math department where the faculty were passionately interested in
their subjects.
Robin A.
Robots to Help Immigrant Children Learn
German ---
http://www.technology.org/2015/12/23/robots-to-help-immigrant-children-learn-german/
This leaves us wondering if the robots will also teach English to enable the
immigrants to get out of Germany and into the US and the UK.
Will Finnish and Danish robots also teach German and Swedish in an effort to
encourage relocation in Germany or Sweden?
In Norway real teachers will try to convince
immigrant young men that raping women is a bad thing ---
Norway offering
classes to teach refugees it’s wrong to rape women ---
Rob Laurie ---
http://canadafreepress.com/article/77699
The hardest job for both real and robotic
teachers may be in trying to overcome genetics"
"Natural-born paedophiles: Some paedophiles might be hard-wired to
commit their abusive acts. Should that alter their crime in the eyes of the law?"
by Caren Chesler, AEON, January 8, 2016 ---
https://aeon.co/essays/if-paedophilia-is-a-compulsion-is-imprisonment-the-solution?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=adcfb521a6-Weekly_Friday_January_8_20161_8_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-adcfb521a6-68951505
Jensen Comment
One of the problems in both Norway and Venezuela is that prisons offer such a
cushy life and so many opportunities that prison does not deter some crimes. In
Norway those opportunities are positive. In Venezuela those opportunities are
negative in the sense that prisoners have better opportunities to rise in crime
life. USA prisons vary. Federal prisons are cushy compared to most state
prisons.
Prison experience is made more miserable when
mentally ill and unpredictably violent criminals are blended into the general
prison population. Some USA prisons are more notorious than others with respect
to the number of violent (bad tempered) and mentally unstable prisoners.
Ironically early release of the least violent criminals may make prisons more
dangerous since the remaining long-term prisoners are the most dangerous.
Norwegian prisons have an advantage in that
there is less gangland warring. However, this may change somewhat as immigrant
gangs are formed in Norway and other European nations.
Question
If X is correlated with Y, and Y is correlated with Z, does it follow that X and
Z are correlated?
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/12/correlation-isnt-necessarily-transitive.html
"Gadgets get smarter, friendlier at CES show," by Glenn Chapman and
Sophie Estienne, MSN News, January 3, 2016 ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/gadgets-get-smarter-friendlier-at-ces-show/ar-BBo9rFE?ocid=spartanntp
From drones, cars and robots to jewelry, appliances
and TVs, the new technology on display at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show
promises to be smarter and friendlier than ever.
The annual tech extravaganza with more than 3,600
exhibitors set to formally start on Wednesday in Las Vegas is likely to see
innovation across a range of sectors, from health care to autos, connected
homes, virtual reality and gaming.
"There are always a couple of winners at CES, and
sometimes there are the sleepers that turn out to be the cool thing,"
Gartner analyst Brian Blau told AFP.
But Blau said the innovations are "often
evolutionary, not revolutionary."
Televisions will play starring roles at the show as
usual, with giants such as Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio among contenders in a
market rapidly shifting to ultra-high definition.
"We are in the sweetest of the sweet spot in the TV
market," NPD analyst Stephen Baker told AFP while discussing CES.
"Sales of 4K TVs are exploding right now," he said,
referring to the popular new high-definition format.
Drones are also expected to make a splash at CES,
where an Unmanned Systems Marketplace has doubled in size from a year
earlier to cover 25,000 square feet (2,300 square meters).
Blau expects the drones on display at the show to
be more sophisticated, with easy controls and even applications that let
them be operated using smartphones.
"If you want to make it popular with consumers you
have to make it relatively easy to use and foolproof," he said. "And that is
what a lot of drone manufacturers have been doing."
- Apple presence felt -
Electronics makers are also using building smart
technology into all manner of devices, allowing them to adapt to how people
use them, responding to voice or gesture, for example.
"A lot more of your devices are going to run with
less direction from you but a greater sense of how to help you out," Blau
said.
Continued in article
Time Magazine: Top 10 Gadgets of 2015 ---
http://time.com/4105591/top-10-gadgets/?xid=newsletter-brief
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
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
How States Fare in Their Financial Support of Public Higher
Ed
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/07/how-states-fare-their-support-public-higher-ed?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197565045
Jensen Comment
The graph of "grades" given to the 50 states (by a "left leaning liberal
advocacy group") in terms of support of public higher education really surprised
me in some instances. For example, I always assumed that the heartland (think
Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota) of the USA would get good grades since
traditionally those states do relatively quite well on K-12 financial support
and performance measures of higher education. Except for North Dakota the higher
education public support of education is low in the heartland states according
to these liberally-biased biased graders. Similarly, I thought liberal blue
states like Vermont, Maine, Oregon, Hawaii, and Massachusetts would get high
marks. Instead they have low marks. And the conservative red states of Wyoming,
Oklahoma, and Texas have much higher grades than I would have predicted. Go
figure!
For-Profit Universities Turn to Outsourcing Services and Promotions of Other
Learning Providers
"How For-Profit Education Is Now Embedded in Traditional Colleges," by
Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 4, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-For-Profit-Education-Is/234550?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elq=bba4a6ecbd9d4ee8bac64e878e39e15e&elqCampaignId=2155&elqaid=7399&elqat=1&elqTrackId=64428ebd44b9487a9dde5d48cd6a071e
It has come to this. A
once-soaring for-profit college company, Career Education Corporation,
recently announced that it expected to have to pay a buyer to take some of
its struggling colleges off its hands. Then it decided to just close them
altogether.
These days the fortunes of
for-profit colleges are fading fast: Many face diving enrollments and
shrinking market values. Corinthian Colleges Inc. went bankrupt this year,
and several of the companies that remain are facing heightened legal,
political, and regulatory scrutiny. Even the sector’s trade and lobbying
group, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, has been
hit by member defections that have forced it to cut its budget and lay off
staff members.
Yet while
for-profit colleges are on the wane, there is another type
of for-profit higher-education company whose profile and
influence continues to expand. These new for-profits aren't
seeking to run college programs themselves or win the
traditional seal of accreditation. These companies do things
like help traditional colleges start online programs, or
offer colleges analysis on student behavior to help improve
retention.
Call it the
"Embedded For-Profit" sector in education, and it has become
the darling of the venture-capital crowd and attracted
billions in financial backing.
The
emergence of this new sector also brings wide-ranging and
yet-unexamined ramifications for colleges and policy makers,
not to mention the taxpayers who indirectly subsidize these
ventures.
It's
'Everywhere'
When
for-profit higher education meant the University of Phoenix
or an ITT Institute, many in traditional higher education
largely dismissed it. It was "the other."
But
these newer educational for-profits — selling things like
interactive courseware and academic-advising engines — come
much closer to teaching and other educational activities
that colleges have long done for themselves. (A whole other
universe of for-profits is springing up along the edges of
academe, including
coding boot camps.)
"Now,
‘for-profit’ is everywhere," says Jorge Klor de Alva, a
former president of the University of Phoenix and currently
president of the education-focused Nexus Research and Policy
Center
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on
distance education alternatives, the best of which does not usually entail
for-profit organizations ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
"We’re Glad We Say No to College Football," by John A. Frey, The
Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/were-glad-we-say-no-to-college-football-1451855999?mod=djemMER
The spectacle of the NCAA national-championship
game Jan. 11 in Glendale, Ariz., between Clemson University and the
University of Alabama is sure to inspire fresh dreams of prosperity and
prominence at many universities.
That’s too bad, because for all but a handful of
schools the cost of a prime-time sports program will always exceed revenues.
Yet many universities are spending tens or even hundreds of millions to
build football stadiums and training facilities, shelling out millions more
to attract star coaches.
In the past five years public universities have
allocated more than $10.3 billion in student fees and other subsidies to
prop up sports programs, according to a November examination by the
Huffington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education. A study released last
year by the American Association of University Professors found that
athletic spending increased by 25% at public four-year colleges between 2004
and 2011, adjusted for inflation. Funding for instruction and academic
support remained nearly flat. The study also found that the median pay for
NCAA Division I football head coaches increased 93% between 2006 and 2012.
Median pay for professors rose a mere 4%.
In many states the highest-paid state employee is
the head coach of the state university football or basketball team.
University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban made $7.2 million last year,
about 50 times more than the average pay of a full-time professor. But at
least his team returned some revenue to the university.
That is unusual: A NCAA study last year found that
only 20 of the nearly 130 university athletic programs in the top-flight
Football Bowl Subdivision enjoyed a positive operating margin. The average
loss was $17.6 million. These athletic programs wouldn’t survive in the
private economy and only function by “taxing” the rest of the university.
The mounting sports losses force universities to
divert funding from the fundamental task of educating students. Student
fees, according to an analysis by USA Today, fund 65% of Old Dominion
University’s athletic department budget. That Virginia school shared a
conference with the institution of which I am president, Drexel University,
but Old Dominion switched to another in 2013, aspiring for a big-time
football run.
Colorado State University sold $239 million in
bonds earlier this year to build a football stadium. Jessica Wood, an
analyst at Standard & Poor’s said in April that the new debt would “exert
greater pressure on financial resources that we already view as very weak
for the rating.” The university hopes the stadium will attract more
out-of-state applicants and encourage alumni to attend games.
That isn’t a sure bet. Ask the University of Akron,
which opened a $65 million football stadium in 2009. After an initial
attendance bump, the school’s ticket sales can’t cover the stadium’s annual
debt service of $2.2 million.
Pressure to win can also compromise academic
integrity. Nearly half of all big-time college sports programs were punished
for major NCAA rules violations in the past decade, according to the news
outlet Inside Higher Ed. Some schools have been cited multiple times.
Continued in article
January 6, 2016 reply from Paul Williams
Surely. I am a member of the Faculty Athletics
Council and at our last meeting we received a presentation about the
concussion protocols that have been implemented at NC State (similar to the
ones that the NHL has adopted). The head of sports medicine asked us to
guess which sport had the greatest problem with concussive injuries and most
guesses were football or women's soccer/men's soccer (no one predicted
golf). We were all stunned to learn that it is cheerleading by a margin that
could be considered fairly wide. Many schools have adopted a feet on the
ground policy with respect to cheerleading, but we have not since our
cheerleading squad competes in the national tournament and has actually won
the national title twice (maybe three times, not sure). But even at that, I
believe but am not positive, that pyramid building is no longer permitted. A
cheerleader at UNC some years ago was seriously injured that way and her
road to recovery was long and arduous -- she had to relearn things most
people have mastered by the time they are two years old. The UNC Medical
School is one of the leading sites for studying the long term effects of
concussive injuries and has a contract with the NFL Player's Union to help
retired NFL players cope with the effects of having their brains sloshed
around in the skulls during the time they played. Evolution has simply not
designed us to play certain sports; our knees and skulls in particular
simply aren't appropriate for certain sports. Even golf is hard on spines
that weren't designed for a golf swing -- as Tiger Woods recurring back
problems attest. My theory is that we are better designed to sit and watch
sports while drinking beer and eating nachos!
Bob Jensen's threads on athletics controversies in higher education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HIGHerEdControversies2.htm#Athletics
Ten Excel Tricks for Accountants ---
https://www.icas.com/ca-today-news/10-excel-tricks-chartered-accountants
Market looks tight and getting worse for PhD job seekers in English,
foreign languages, history and philosophy ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/04/job-market-tight-many-humanities-fields-healthy-economics?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=6c5ca7522e-DNU20160104&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-6c5ca7522e-197565045
Who and what decides Ph.D. program acceptances versus rejections?
"'Inside Graduate Admissions'," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
January 6, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/new-book-reveals-how-elite-phd-admissions-committees-review-candidates?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=0c8bf0f96a-DNU20160106&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-0c8bf0f96a-197565045
. . .
Many committee members said they simply had too
many applications to review, and that they needed a simple measure with
which to compare applicants and to exclude some. Prestige of undergraduate
program counted for a lot. But grade point average? Not so much. One
astrophysicist Posselt quotes said, “Grade point, most people said it
doesn't affect them very much because basically everybody in the pool --
everybody in the final pool -- has such high GPAs that it's not meaningful.”
A sociologist said this was especially a problem
with the many finalists from top colleges. “Grades are increasingly a lousy
signal, especially at those elite places that just hand out the A’s. So you
don't even have that anymore,” he said.
One professor told Posselt: “I have impressions
that some of my faculty -- senior members -- were simply looking for the
GRE. They have a threshold such as, ‘If it's not over 700, I won't read
anything.’ And that cuts usually two-thirds of applicants.”
Posselt writes of asking committee members why they
were so focused on GRE scores and whether applicants attended elite
undergraduate institutions, even when these criteria minimized diversity of
the accepted applicant pool. She heard in response much talk about how much
graduate admissions is “gambling,” and how important it is to admit students
who will succeed. With small admissions cohorts and faculty members who
depend on graduate students to work with them on research and other tasks,
any attrition is viewed as a disaster, and committee members want to avoid
the risk.
Committee members also seemed to generalize from
the experience of past graduate students who failed, wanting to avoid anyone
like them in the future. They spoke of “being spooked” by seeing such
applicants.
The admissions committee members generally assumed
applicants were getting Ph.D.s for careers like theirs -- faculty jobs at
research universities. So they were looking for signs of research potential.
And they were also unabashed elitists.
“This is an elite university and a lot of the
people at the university are elitists,” one professor said with a laugh. “So
they make a lot of inferences about the quality of someone's work and their
ability based on where they come from.”
Bias Against a Christian College Student?
In most cases Posselt observed, the committee
members used banter and “friendly debate” when they disagreed with one
another. They didn't attack one another or get too pointed in criticizing
colleagues. She describes one discussion she observed -- in which committee
members kept to this approach -- that left her wondering about issues of
fairness.
The applicant, to a linguistics Ph.D. program, was
a student at a small religious college unknown to some committee members but
whose values were questioned by others.
“Right-wing religious fundamentalists,” one
committee member said of the college, while another said, to much laughter,
that the college was “supported by the Koch brothers.”
. . .
Talking About Diversity
When Posselt probed on diversity, she found that
many professors said they felt an obligation to diversify their graduate
student bodies and thus -- eventually -- the collective faculty of their
fields. In some fields, there was discussion about seeking more women, not
just underrepresented minority groups. For example, Posselt found this to be
the case in philosophy, a field that has of late been struggling with a
perception (many say reality) of being hostile to women.
Many faculty members, however, appeared more
comfortable considering race and ethnicity as a slight tip among otherwise
equal candidates who had advanced to a finalist round.
One professor said, “I try not to pay too much
attention. I try to admit students that are the best in my intellect with no
regard for gender and race.” Only with two applicants who are “equal on
intellectual merit, then I will prefer a minority,” the professor said.
Others spoke of diversity in terms of
“opportunity.” They said they wanted to admit minority applicants, but they
regularly spoke about fear of seeing their yield -- the percentage of
admitted applicants who enroll -- go down, as they assumed that the best
minority candidates would end up at just one or two programs. Posselt writes
of hearing comments such as, “Who are we going to get? It's a gamble,” and
“We'll lose him to Princeton and Caltech.”
One economist put it this way: “Gender is an issue
that we get good -- we get top-notch women as well as top-notch men. Black
-- we get fewer blacks. It's true. But we do try -- in the past we've tried
to attract them. But then they get the same attractive offers from Columbia
and Yale and Stanford and Berkeley and so forth. So it's a small group
typically who get a lot of attention.”
Merit and International Students
Many graduate departments -- particularly in
science fields -- rely on international students. The departments observed
by Posselt appear to practice a form of affirmative action for everyone who
is not an international Asian student in that professors de-emphasize the
(typically extremely high) GRE scores of such applicants to avoid admitting
what they would consider to be too many of them. This is in contrast to the
attitudes of many professors with regard to considering American applicants
of various ethnicities -- and who insisted on a single (high) standard
there.
Referring to international applicants, one
scientist told Posselt, “The scores on the standardized tests are just out
of sight, just off the charts. So you can basically throw that out as a
discriminator. They're all doing 90th percentile and above. The domestic
students are all over the place so there was actually some spread, some
dispersion … so you could use that more as one of the quantifiers.”
A philosopher said, “There certainly is a kind of
stereotypical …” and then he paused, appearing to catch himself, before
saying, “Chinese student who will have astronomical scores.”
The professors said their view of international
applicants’ test scores was not discriminatory, but based on the preparation
of students in countries that place more of an emphasis on testing than does
the United States.
Many professors also expressed fears that Chinese
applicants are also inflating test scores through cheating. One professor,
Posselt writes, lowered his glasses during an interview to ask her, “You
know about the cheating, don't you?”
The concerns about cheating are “pervasive,”
Posselt writes, with regard to tests designed to demonstrate English
proficiency. The faculty members on admissions committees pay a lot of
attention to this issue, and report feeling burned in the past by applicants
whose scores indicated proficiency but who arrived in the United States with
very poor English skills. Several departments that do not interview all
applicants require interviews of international applicants.
Chinese applicants appear especially challenging to
many American professors, who report that they “seem alike” and hard to
distinguish, when the admissions process is designed to do just that. One
humanities professor told Posselt, “How do you compare six students from
China, who all have the same last name?” (It is true, Posselt notes, that
the 100 most common last names in China are the names of 87 percent of its
population, and presumably of much of the Chinese applicant pool, while the
100 most common last names in the United States account for only 17 percent
of the American population.)
While departments are trying to do a better job of
understanding Chinese applicants and are certainly admitting many of them,
Posselt writes of a “troubling tendency to think of students from China not
as individuals, but a profile of group averages.”
What Do the Observations Mean?
Posselt said in an interview that she wanted to
study graduate admissions because it is so little understood and is so
important. While admissions leaders constantly talk about the value of
holistic admissions, Posselt said, it is rare to see up close just what that
means. She saw much to admire, she said, in the devotion of faculty members
to their disciplines and their intellectual traditions. And she believes
holistic review has the potential to help graduate programs (and other parts
of higher education) to identify and admit more minority talent.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
In accounting doctoral programs most everything is on a smaller scale. The large
Ph.D. degree mills like the University of Illinois and the University of Texas
that 50 years ago each cranked out 10-20 Ph.D. graduates per year now graduate
2-5 per year. The number of graduates in North America is this year (maybe 150)
is barely over half of what it once was and contains a much larger percentage of
foreign students, especially students weak in accounting who are strong in
mathematics, statistics, and/or computer science from Asia and India.
In my opinion GMAT or GRE scores are dominant in accounting Ph.D. admission
decisions except in the case of affirmative action admissions where GMAT or GRE
scores still are important among selection from the pool of minority applicants.
Among white applicants who grew up in North America limited professional
experience in the accounting profession is a often a necessary condition, but
experience is of lesser importance among foreign applicants. According to the
pathways commission, one of the problems is that Ph.D. programs do little to
enhance accounting knowledge beyond that knowledge before entering the program.
Political conservatism and religion are, in my opinion, less constraining in
accounting and business doctoral programs relative to humanities where admission
committees are more likely to be biased against conservatives and candidates
from religious colleges. My guess is that it's easier for a Mormon to get into
the accounting doctoral programs at Stanford and UC Berkeley than it is for
Mormons to get into those humanities doctoral programs. BYU has a masters of
accounting program in quantitative methods solely designed for getting graduates
into accounting doctoral programs. My understanding is that graduates of this
program are competitive in getting to virtually all top accounting doctoral
programs.
The point here is that skills in mathematics trump skills in accounting
beyond the minimum accounting skills required for accounting doctoral programs.
Often accounting students are admitted conditionally and cannot fully
matriculate without advanced mathematical skills. Note this requirement for the
University of Florida as summarized at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
As a result, some graduates of accounting programs are really not prepared to
teach any of the undergraduate or masters courses in accounting. Ability and
interest in teaching professional accounting, auditing, and tax varies a great
deal among those graduates. Many prefer to eventually teach only information
systems courses, economics courses, and doctoral seminars.
The Pathways Commission of the American Accounting Association is working
hard to put more accounting substance back into accounting doctoral programs
such that Ph.D. research will be more of interest to the profession and
graduates will be better able to teach accounting, auditing, and taxation ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
My point is that admission criteria vary greatly between accounting doctoral
programs versus masters programs. Masters of accounting students nearly all had
the equivalent of undergraduate accounting majors. Those admitted from top
accounting schools can get in with much lower GMAT scores than the scores
required for doctoral students. Doctoral students can be admitted with much less
accounting knowledge. Students seek accounting masters programs largely to
improve their qualifications and knowledge to pass the CPA examination. Students
seek accounting Ph.D. degrees largely to improve their knowledge for conducting
accountics research required for tenure in accounting academe ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
In science and humanities it's common for undergraduates to proceed
directly into doctoral programs. This is less common in business and accounting.
In humanities Ph.D. applicants are expected in most instances to finance
rather long (read that seven or more years) of doctoral study. Many humanities
students have spouses or significant others who financially support their long
efforts to graduate. In science and business most doctoral students pay nothing
in tuition and also receive modest living expenses. Science students can often
complete their degrees in 3-4 years. Accounting and business students take 5-6
years, which is one of the things that greatly limits the number of applicants
to Ph.D. programs, especially programs that require prior accounting and
business professional experience before applying. For example, a typical
accounting Ph.D. graduate spends 1-2 years getting a masters degree, 3-5 years
in a CPA firm, and 5-6 years in a doctoral program. Add the years up. Now you
know one of the big constraints on the number of applicants to accounting and
business doctoral programs vis-ŕ-vis science.
It's common for economics Ph.D. graduates to be 25 or 26 years old.
Accounting and business Ph.D. graduates are seldom this young.
"What Will Doctoral Education Look Like in 2025?" by Leonard Cassuto,
Chronicle of Higher Education, January 3, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Will-Doctoral-Education/234666?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elq=54bffd729445492ea3aead34292c6a2a&elqCampaignId=2145&elqaid=7367&elqat=1&elqTrackId=5b4bd8b1f95c4321866ba1ad7d6f999b
. . .
Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth argue in their new
book, The Humanities, Higher Education, & Academic Freedom (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015), that we must create a second, teaching-oriented tenure
track. Should we? My hope for the next decade is that we start that
conversation. Because we need to have it, both publicly and within
departments.
Tenured or not, more of us now teach online.
Colleges rely more and more on distance learning, and much of it is
prefabricated. The historian John Larson, of Purdue University, worries that
such courses are incompatible with graduate training. "We teach graduate
students to generate original content," he told me, but they are asked to
teach multiple online courses in all different areas. To do that, he said,
"You need off-the-shelf materials."
"You don’t need to write a dissertation" to teach
prefabricated courses, says Larson. "If you study for six years to get a
Ph.D. and your job is a continuation of graduate-school TA work, that does
not produce happiness. And if your teachers are discontented, that won’t
recruit the next generation."
A lack of coherence in teaching throughout the
university is nothing new. Even for an incompetent futurist like me, it’s a
safe bet that the incoherence will persist. But still I hope for more.
Teaching, after all, is part of the graduate-school mission. In the
humanities, observes Larson, it’s "our way of delivering scholarship."
I talk with a lot of graduate students these days,
and most of them would appreciate more focus on pedagogy in their training.
They want it integrated into the curriculum, not just as an add-on. Graduate
students also want their education to acknowledge more career paths. A
graduate student at a state university recently told me that she wished her
teachers wouldn’t make these alternatives "shameful to contemplate."
Such concerns point toward the possibility of a
more flexible dissertation requirement, which can bend to suit different
student needs. The students want it. Their teachers aren’t so sure. So, will
there be a change in the dissertation in the next decade?
(Pause. Writer clears throat, looks out window.) I
can’t predict that.
Do I hope for it? Yes, cautiously. Graduate schools
move slowly, but they’re beginning to stir. Larson points out that
foundations and grant agencies are encouraging such changes. A case in point
is the recent announcement of the National Endowment for the Humanities’
"Next Generation" grants to reconsider graduate education and "promote
greater integration of the humanities in the public sphere." Such rewards
nourish my cautious hope.
But we have a long way to go. For one thing,
graduate programs (and all of higher education, for that matter) have a bad
habit of adding features but never letting go of any. We need to say "at the
expense of" more often than we do.
Strong graduate-school leadership is another hope.
The budget of a graduate dean is typically among the most overstretched in
the university. If we want graduate schools to meet the future and not get
overwhelmed by an earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, or some other geological
disaster, we need to empower their deans in tangible ways.
Here’s the greatest cause for hope: The
conversations about changing graduate school are finally happening. The
problems I’ve described here have been with us for a long while, but for
years we weren’t ready to face them. Yes, things have gotten worse —
especially since the recession of 2008 — but we haven’t collapsed yet. Let’s
fix our house before it falls over
"What Should Graduates Know?" by Nicholas
Lemann, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Should-Graduates-Know-/234824?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elq=3b83342ead5544739f2bf2368bcdb840&elqCampaignId=2186&elqaid=7464&elqat=1&elqTrackId=94e43aab5efc4f708c70eca1f7301c89
. . .
In the better-resourced,
more-selective colleges that a lucky minority of students attend, the
curriculum is usually both less practical and less prescribed. A few, like
Columbia, the University of Chicago, and St. John’s College, have a core
curriculum required of all students; a few, like Amherst College and Brown
University, have no specific curriculum requirements; most have a fairly
light-duty distribution requirement, asking students to take a small number
of courses in whichever of the humanities, social sciences, and natural
sciences aren’t their major field of study. As a result, most selective
institutions, private and public, that emphasize an undergraduate
liberal-arts education have gotten themselves off the hook of having to do
what professional schools do: decide what all degree recipients must have
learned.
One reason that
more-structured undergraduate education is so rare is that it doesn’t have
an organized constituency. Students generally like having the freedom to
choose to study whatever they want, from a large menu of options. Faculty
members, especially in research universities, are rarely eager to take time
away from their own research to engage in the intensive work of developing
core courses; they often don’t see direct involvement in undergraduate
education as a crucial element in their work. Administrators are
increasingly caught up in the management of "student life," work that rests
on an understanding of college as a community, a site of maturation, where
purely academic questions are secondary. Significantly, the most spirited
discussion of what’s taught in college is about getting more topics about
diversity into courses, and adding more courses about diversity. In other
words, it’s occurring in response to a student movement that began in
another realm, not because what’s taught is the obvious main topic of
discussion.
Harvard University provides
an interesting example of the difficulty of establishing an undergraduate
curriculum, even in a supremely established and well-off institution that
strongly feels it needs one. Charles William Eliot, Harvard’s president from
1869 to 1909, established an elective system, which freed undergraduates to
take courses in any field, in the 1880s, as one element in a great
institutional transition to the research-university model. After the Second
World War, the college established a General Education program out of a felt
need to give more definition to what it meant to have a Harvard education,
so that a student’s learning could not be limited to one field of study.
Over the years, that system became so diffuse that, by the late 1970s, the
university replaced it with a core curriculum. But by the turn of the 21st
century, that was thought to be so loosely defined that the university began
a long, elaborate effort to replace the core with a new system, known by the
old name of General Education, which was meant to connect academic study
more vividly to the real world. It began in 2007. Last spring a faculty
committee’s highly critical review of Gen Ed reported that it "is failing on
a variety of fronts," including allowing students to fulfill the
requirements by choosing from a list so extensive — 574 courses! — that
maintaining the overall aims of the program was impossible. So another major
revision of the undergraduate curriculum is in the offing.
For colleges less fortunate
than Harvard, the impulse to avoid taking on the difficult task of
establishing a more-structured undergraduate curriculum can impose real
costs over the long term. Despite the nearly ubiquitous rhetoric about
skyrocketing tuition, the evidence seems to indicate that colleges’ pricing
power is eroding significantly. The National Association of Independent
Colleges and Universities’ annual tuition survey shows that the size of the
annual increases in stated tuition peaked in the early 1980s and has been
declining ever since; the most recent survey showed an average annual
increase of 3.9 percent, the lowest in 40 years. And that’s the stated
price, not what students actually pay. The latest annual survey conducted by
the National Association of College and University Business Officers,
released in August, shows that at the 411 participating colleges, the
average tuition-discount rate for first-year students was 48 percent, up
from 38 percent 10 years ago. Discounting is rising more rapidly than
published tuition, so tuition revenue at many private institutions may be
falling. Public colleges have their own financial woes because of budget
cuts and tuition caps imposed by state legislatures.
I f a college is presenting
itself to prospective students and their families as a living environment,
as much as or more than an academic experience, it has to try to take on the
implied cost: pleasant dormitories, athletics facilities, counseling
services. And if it is presenting itself as an institution offering a wide
variety of options from which students can select, it has to maintain a
large, expensive set of departments and courses. At many colleges, those
pressures set off a dynamic of relentless competition for students with peer
institutions that are not obviously very different; that, in turn, has
increased the importance of ratings systems and tuition discounting. The
harder it is to state your intellectual mission, the more your customers
must choose on the basis of generic price and quality comparisons.
If colleges can’t or don’t
want to clearly define what they’re about academically, they are left
unarmed against what has become the intense pressure to define undergraduate
education in terms of acquiring only those skills that have an obvious,
immediate, practical applicability and will enhance a graduate’s chances of
employment. Students, parents, many employers, and state governments tend to
push colleges in this direction. Recently the Obama administration added to
the pressure by publishing the College Scorecard, which provides data on
institutions and majors according to future earnings potential. It’s true
that some majors are associated with higher incomes than others, but the
evidence we have about what accounts for the substantial overall economic
value of a college degree over a lifetime indicates that it is a payoff for
the development of "cognitive skills" rather than for specific job skills or
credentials — a payoff that manifests itself regardless of what a student
learned.
Confidence that a college
education will pay off no matter what it provides academically seems
misplaced. Against the felt need of students and their families to get
something intellectually specific out of college, heartfelt commencement
speeches about how important a broad humanistic education is to good
citizenship and a meaningful life make for a pretty weak countervailing
force.
It would be disingenuous for
me to argue that what I believe colleges should do — move in the direction
of a more defined curriculum, with a concomitant greater emphasis on
teaching as a primary faculty responsibility — is merely an unavoidable
necessity. But I do believe that colleges will find it more and more
difficult to stay the present course, which drive costs ever higher and
revenues ever lower. Far better to go through a considered, openhearted
process of deciding what you stand for academically and where you want to be
strongest, ensure that every student’s experience encompasses that, and use
it as the way you present yourself to the world.
Spending 10 years as a
professional-school dean preoccupied with the question of what the suite of
requirements should be for students habituated me to thinking about
curriculum, and I have been noodling around with ideas about undergraduate
education. What would produce a version of what it means to be a college
graduate, regardless of one’s major, that would be as clear and strong as
stipulating what it means to be a professional-school graduate? My own
preference is to create a canon of methods rather than a canon of specific
knowledge or of great books — that is, to define, develop, and require
instruction around a set of master skills that together would make one an
educated, intellectually empowered, morally aware person.
Here is a quick list of
possibilities: Rigorous interpretation of meaning, taught mainly through
close reading of texts. Numeracy, including basic statistical literacy.
Pattern and context recognition. Developing and stating an argument, in
spoken and written form. Visual and spatial grammar and logic. Understanding
how information is produced, how to locate it, and how much faith to put in
it. Empathetic understanding of other people and other cultures. Learning to
explore rigorously the relationship between cause and effect and to draw
plausible inferences. I should emphasize that I am advocating developing
courses that are specifically aimed at creating those capabilities, rather
than declaring that existing courses that are notionally about something
else will confer them.
As a journalist, as a
teacher, and as an administrator, I’ve had a sometimes overwhelming past 10
or 15 years as I’ve watched my original profession being subjected to
changes more rapid and more pervasive than I would have thought possible.
Can that happen to colleges and universities? I don’t think so —
universities offer a far more varied suite of experiences, which they
provide mainly in person rather than as pure transmitted information — but
the lesson of my experience in journalism is that anticipating change leaves
you in much better shape than betting that it won’t ever come and then
having to react under duress. In undergraduate education, the best way to
anticipate change would be to define, state, and put in effect a clear
academic mission.
Some Business Schools No Longer Have Silo
Core Courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Silos
Jensen Comment
The big question boils down to how standardized the required content and
concepts should be in the common core. For example, a standardized curriculum
might require Shakespeare course that focuses on critical thinking as well as
content. A less standardized curriculum might require teaching critical thinking
without requiring standardized content. An even less standardized curriculum
would has about what the hell constitutes critical thinking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/higHerEdControversies.htm#CriticalThinking
Common core requirements became essential for
some discipline survival when turn wars commenced for majors. Harvard instigated
a movement of smorgasbord courses for a common undergraduate curriculum ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/higHerEdControversies.htm#CommonCurriculum
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on January 5, 2016
Yahoo ends video service
Yahoo Inc. has
shut down Screen, its online video portal. Launched in 2013 to showcase
original programming and syndicate high-profile shows, the effort was the
centerpiece of CEO Marissa Mayer’s video strategy.
"Lawsuit By 12 Graduates Against Thomas
Jefferson Law School Over Placement Data Heads To Trial In March," by Paul
Caron, TaxProf Blog, December 12, 2015 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/12/lawsuit-by-12-graduates-against-thomas-jefferson-law-school-over-placement-data-heads-to-trial-in-ma.html
Nikki Nguyen left a $50,000-a-year job at Boeing Co. in 2006 to pursue a law
degree at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, her sister's
successful career as a corporate attorney providing a glimpse of the
possibilities she imagined ahead of her.
Instead, she struggled for more than a year to find a job after she
graduated and watched her student loan debt of over $180,000 balloon.
Nguyen, 34, is among 12 former Thomas Jefferson students who are suing the
university in a California court, accusing it of inflating its graduates'
employment figures and salaries to attract students. "They weren't
transparent," said Nguyen, whose case is scheduled to go to trial in March.
"People who have a dream of law school should go into it with their eyes
wide open." ...
Nguyen's lawsuit is among more than a dozen similar ones filed in recent
years against law schools, including Golden Gate University School of Law in
San Francisco and the University of San Francisco School of Law. Though most
of the suits have been dismissed, critics say they point to a need for
greater regulation and transparency for law schools, so prospective students
know their employment prospects, the debt they will incur and even their
chances of successfully passing the bar.
"Schools are setting up a lot of people to fail," said Kyle McEntee,
executive director of Law School Transparency, a nonprofit legal education
policy group that had no involvement with the lawsuits.
Thomas Jefferson reported post-graduation employment figures that exceeded
70 percent and topped 90 percent in 2010, but did not disclose that those
figures included part-time and non-legal work such as a pool cleaner and a
sales clerk at Victoria's Secret and were based on a small sample of
graduates, according to Nguyen's lawsuit and her attorney, Brian Procel. The
lawsuit further alleges that the school routinely reported unemployed
students as employed and shredded surveys and other documents that reflected
a more accurate employment picture. ...
The lawsuits against Golden Gate University and the University of San
Francisco also alleged the schools were misrepresenting their post-graduate
employment figures. The Golden Gate lawsuit was settled, with each of the
five plaintiffs receiving $8,000, according to a May 2015 court filing. The
case against the University of San Francisco was dismissed in May. ...
Nguyen said she now owes more than $200,000. Though she works in a
paralegal-type position and lives with her sister, she said she has not been
able to touch the principal on her loan
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
After 10 Years
End of the Line for Google Books Lawsuit? ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/05/us-supreme-court-seen-unlikely-take-google-books-fair-use-case?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=bba62ad46f-DNU20160105&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-bba62ad46f-197565045
Copyright experts say U.S. Supreme Court is
unlikely to take up the Authors Guild's case against Google, a decision that
likely would end more than a decade of litigation
Continued in article
Forbes' List of Longest Lasting Cars (250,000 Miles or More) ---
http://www3.forbes.com/business/10-cars-that-can-run-for-over-250000-miles/?utm_campaign=cars-that-can-run&utm_source=yahoo-gemini&utm_medium=referral
- Toyota Sienna
- Lexis RX350
- Mazda Mazda6
- Volkswagen Passat
- Audi Allroad
- Subaru Forrester
- Toyota Prius/ Plug-in Prius
- Lexus ES350
- Toyota Camry/ Camry Hybrid
- Scion xB
Consumer Reports List of the Most Reliable
Cars and Small Trucks ---
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2015/10/top-10-most-reliable-and-least-reliable-cars.html
Note that reliability is not the same as longevity
- Lexus (most reliable)
- Toyota
- Audi
- Mazda
- Subaru
- Kia
- Buick
- Honda
- Hyundai
- MINI and GMC (tied)
Consumer Reports List of the Least Reliable
Cars and Small Trucks ---
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2015/10/top-10-most-reliable-and-least-reliable-cars.html
- Fiat (least reliable)
- Jeep
- Ram
- Cadillac
- Infiniti
- Dodge
- Chrysler
- Mercedes-Benz
- Chevrolet
- GMC
The Bug's Life: A History of the Volkswagen Beetle ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/autos-compact/the-bugs-life-a-history-of-the-volkswagen-beetle/ss-BBnDOlU?ocid=spartanntp
Jensen Comment
I wish I still had my 1955 Olds convertible that I bought in 1961 for moving
from Denver to Palo Alto.
Six years later after I got married and moved to Michigan I traded the Olds
for two VW beetles. That was a big mistake when commuting to Michigan State
University from an abandoned dairy farm in Perry, Michigan. These bugs had great
gas mileage, but gas was cheap in 1967. The bugs had lousy heaters and
defrosters. They had almost no room for carrying much of anything other than one
passenger.
VW beetles were not air conditioned when the summer days were hot. They were
air cooled with pressurized engines in those days such that they were different
from traditional USA automobiles. My two air-cooled bug engines were, however,
prone to oil pressure leaks. I eventually traded them for the family classic
station wagon. Since then I've only driven station wagons, SUVs, and tractors.
Pickup trucks never made much sense to me.
Over and over I kicked myself for not keeping my cruising 1955 Olds
convertible coed chaser. But what good was it if I was the father of a new baby
girl and was teaching accounting to coeds rather than chasing them? Sigh!
From the Scout Report on January 8, 2016
Timetoast ---
http://www.timetoast.com/
Few visual objects convey the vivacity and context
of historical events like a good timeline. Creating a visually appealing
one, however, can take hours on PowerPoint or other programs. Enter
Timetoast, an online application that allows teachers, students, and the
more general user to create snappy, stimulating timelines in minutes. The
Public timeline plan allows a single user to produce public, ad supported
timelines for free, while the Basic and Pro plans allow for more users and
restrict ads for a monthly fee. Simple instructions guide users through the
creative process to bring about unique and attractive timelines that can
accompany lesson plans of all kinds. Users may also like to review the
dozens of publicly available timelines on the homepage in order to garner
inspiration.
Canva ---
https://www.canva.com/
For readers who want to design beautiful posters,
invitations, cards, website graphics, lesson plan accoutrements, or any
number of other visuals - but who are not trained in the wily ways of
professional design programs, Canva can be a welcome boon. The service
allows users to choose from a host of templates for everything from
presentations to Facebook covers, and then offers intuitive controls and a
storehouse of beautiful images to help even nonprofessionals build beautiful
materials. While some images are only available for a cost, there are a
number of free items throughout the collection. To use the service, sign up
with email, Facebook, or your Google account. Then choose whether you would
like to use Canva for your work, personal, or educational needs. Educators
will be especially interested in the lesson plans available in the Teaching
Materials section of Canva's Design School, featuring Workshops, Lesson
Plans, and more.
Friendship, Like Exercise and Diet, Is Essential for Good Health Social
networks as important as exercise, diet across the span of our lives
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160104163210.htm
Social networks are good for your health
http://www.sciencefocus.com/news/social-networks-are-good-your-health
Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across
the human life span
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/01/02/1511085112.abstract
UNC Carolina Population Center
http://www.cpc.unc.edu/
Good friends are hard to find - and even harder to keep
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/13/why-cant-be-friends-survey-friendless
Friendship Class Clips
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/zy77hyc/resources/1
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and
Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
College Board: Community College Resources and
Publications ---
https://professionals.collegeboard.com/higher-ed/community-colleges/resources
ABPI Resources for Schools: Infectious Diseases:
Pathogens ---
http://www.abpischools.org.uk/page/modules/infectiousdiseases_pathogens/
Purdue Online Writing Lab: ESL Teacher Resources
---
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/586/1/
Society for the Teaching of Psychology ---
http://teachpsych.org
Memory: A Five-Day Unit Lesson Plan for High
School Psychology Teachers ---
http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/topss/lessons/memory.pdf
Master Organic Chemistry: Resource Guide ---
http://www.masterorganicchemistry.com/resource-guide/
Cultural Anthropology: Teaching Tools ---
http://www.culanth.org/conversations/16-teaching-tools
AVMA Tools for K-12 Educators (veterinary
medicine)
https://www.avma.org/KB/K12/Pages/AVMA-educational-resources.aspx
Teaching Resources: Archaeology ---
http://teachers.guardian.co.uk/resources.aspx?q=archaeology
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Journal of Hotel & Business Management ---
http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/hotel-business-management.php
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
A telescope under construction in the mountains of China's Pingtang county is
set to become the largest in the world when it reaches completion in September
---
https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesDaily/posts/1018495238202293
Neil DeGrasse Tyson's best quotes may make you fall in love with science all
over again---
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-inspirational-quotes-from-neil-degrasse-tyson-2015-11
Earth ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
Scientists have used groundbreaking technology to figure out how the Earth
looked a billion years ago ---
http://qz.com/577842/scientists-have-used-groundbreaking-technology-to-figure-out-how-the-earth-looked-a-billion-years-ago/
Tall Sand Dunes on Mars ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/curiosity-pictures-at-namib-dune-on-mars-2016-1
Master Organic Chemistry: Resource Guide ---
http://www.masterorganicchemistry.com/resource-guide/
Teaching Resources: Archaeology ---
http://teachers.guardian.co.uk/resources.aspx?q=archaeology
ABPI Resources for Schools: Infectious Diseases:
Pathogens ---
http://www.abpischools.org.uk/page/modules/infectiousdiseases_pathogens/
AVMA Tools for K-12 Educators (veterinary
medicine)
https://www.avma.org/KB/K12/Pages/AVMA-educational-resources.aspx
The National Human Genome Research Institute: Fact Sheets ---
http://www.genome.gov/10000202
Why Crows Hold Funerals ---
http://news.yahoo.com/why-crows-hold-funerals-164948923.html
These are the 12 largest nuclear detonations in
history ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/largest-nuclear-detonations-in-history-2015-3
Also see
http://qz.com/588519/why-its-so-difficult-to-build-a-hydrogen-bomb/
Also see
http://www.businessinsider.com/atomic-hydrogen-bombs-difference-2016-1
/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Food Politics ---
http://www.foodpolitics.com/
Society for the Teaching of Psychology ---
http://teachpsych.org
Interactive Graph of Global Population Shifts ---
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756390/gif-population-2100
Memory: A Five-Day Unit Lesson Plan for High
School Psychology Teachers ---
http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/topss/lessons/memory.pdf
Cultural Anthropology: Teaching Tools ---
http://www.culanth.org/conversations/16-teaching-tools
Teaching Resources: Archaeology ---
http://teachers.guardian.co.uk/resources.aspx?q=archaeology
Journal of Hotel & Business Management ---
http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/hotel-business-management.php
Federal Subsistence Management Program ---
https://www.doi.gov/subsistence
Heritage Burnaby (a Canadian town) ---
https://heritageburnaby.ca/
Why Crows Hold Funerals ---
http://news.yahoo.com/why-crows-hold-funerals-164948923.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math and Statistics Tutorials
Question
If X is correlated with Y, and Y is correlated with Z, does it follow that X and
Z are correlated?
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2015/12/correlation-isnt-necessarily-transitive.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
History Tutorials
These are the 12 largest nuclear detonations in
history ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/largest-nuclear-detonations-in-history-2015-3
Also see
http://qz.com/588519/why-its-so-difficult-to-build-a-hydrogen-bomb/
Also see
http://www.businessinsider.com/atomic-hydrogen-bombs-difference-2016-1
/
The Bigger Picture (Smithsonian Archives) ---
http://siarchives.si.edu/blog
New York Public Library’s release of 180,000
copyright-free materials ---
http://stereo.nypl.org/create
Interactive Graph of Global Population Shifts ---
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10756390/gif-population-2100
815 Free Art Books from World Class Museums: The Met, the Guggenheim, the
Getty & LACMA ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/815-free-art-books-from-world-class-museums-the-met-the-guggenheim-the-getty-lacma.html
The First Book Illustrated with Photographs,
Anna Atkins’ Austerely Beautiful Photographs of British Algae (1843) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/first-book-to-use-photographic-illustrations.html
The Bug's Life: A History of the Volkswagen Beetle ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/autos-compact/the-bugs-life-a-history-of-the-volkswagen-beetle/ss-BBnDOlU?ocid=spartanntp
Home Movie Registry ---
http://homemovieregistry.org/wp/
Network visualization: mapping Shakespeare’s tragedies ---
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2016/01/network-visualization-mapping-shakespeares-tragedies/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Online (historic music archive, especially folk
music) ---
http://research.culturalequity.org/home-audio.jsp
All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Complete Works Online: 100 Done, 980 to Come
---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/all-of-bach-is-putting-bachs-complete-works-online-100-done-980-to-come.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Words of the Year 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/01/10/words-of-the-year-2015/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en&elq=0bd0226da1974bb98331bc4a66995c07&elqCampaignId=2199&elqaid=7489&elqat=1&elqTrackId=0353a3f489f84dbda0c9faee811449f9
From the Scout Report on November 7, 2014
with a January 8, 2016 update for Purdue's Owl
1. National Novel Writing Month
http://nanowrimo.org
Freelance writer Chris Baty declared
November as National Novel Writing Month in the fall of 2000. Since
then, the number of participants has grown from 21 aspiring authors
hacking away at manuscripts to over 300,000. The project's "No Plot?
No problem" slogan tells it all. No perfectionistic haute culture
here. Participants are simply encouraged to put at least 50,000
words on paper between 12:00 am on November 1 and 11:59:59 on
November 30. Scout readers can explore this official website via
section subheadings such as, About, How It Works, Press Information,
and Testimonials to find out all about the process. Signing up to
participate in the challenge is easy and free, and the website will
help track your progress, link you to support in your geographical
area, and provide platforms to meet fellow writers in person and
online. NaNoWriMo, as it's called, is a great resource for
encouraging novice and veteran writers alike to work through their
writer's block and delve into their creativity. [CNH]
2. Writing and Publishing Solutions
http://www.novel-writing-help.com
Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel
will agree on at least one basic fact: it's deceptively difficult.
This site, from novelist Harvey Chapman, provides beginners with
helpful step-by-step advice. He lays it all out in simple,
digestible categories including, The Writing Process, Becoming a
Writer, Elements of Fiction, and How to Write. Each category
includes helpful, targeted articles designed to take some of the
sting out of putting words on screen or paper. For instance, How to
Write a Novel Step-by-Step breaks down the novel writing process
into eleven linear stages. Prose Writing 101, found under How to
Write, is another great feature of the site that details the
importance of writing with a clear, concise, and uncluttered style.
[CNH]
3. How Writers Write Fiction
http://courses.writinguniversity.org/course/how-writers-write-fiction
The International Writing Program at the
University of Iowa is often considered the best fiction writing
program in the United States. Not everyone can dedicate the blood,
sweat, and two years it takes to complete the program, but this new
MOOC series allows fiction writers to engages with the material over
a few short weeks. The course is free and the teachers are extremely
well known literary novelists. After signing up, access to videos,
transcripts, assignments, and tools will be at your fingertips.
Through video lectures and various writing assignments, the series
is a great way to learn about the writing process and interact with
other students/writers working on their craft. [CNH]
4. Fiction Writers Review
http://fictionwritersreview.com
If you want to write, read. And if you want
to read about fiction writing, a good place to start is the Fiction
Writers Review. Completely free and jam packed with writers writing
about writing, this continually updated online periodical will fill
you up with ideas and images. Start with the homepage, where you can
explore numerous Features, ranging from interviews to essays. Then
explore Popular Posts to see what other visitors have found
valuable. There is a lot of fantastic stuff on this site, and author
Philip Graham's praise is quite illuminating: "I no longer much
bother reading The New York Times Book Review, and your site is one
of the reasons- what great work you're doing for literature." [CNH]
5. The Official SCBWI Blog
http://scbwi.blogspot.com
There are many great resources for those
who want to write stories for adults. But what if your market is
more in the seven to twelve range? Well, then this site, the
official blog of the Society of Children's Book Writers and
Illustrators (SCBWI), is for you. Continually updated, blog entries
offer a variety of topics ranging from interviews with award winning
children's book authors, editors, and publishers to advice on
innovative marketing techniques, writing, and networking in
children's literature. It is a must for anyone looking to engage in
the wide world of writing and publishing for kids. [CNH]
===== Technical & Science Writing ===
6. Introduction to Technical Communication
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/writing-and-humanistic-studies/21w-732-5-introduction-to-technical-communication-explorations-in-scientific-and-technical-writing-fall-2006/
What if you could take a technical
communication class with a world class professor at a leading
university? What if it was all laid out for you - the readings, the
lectures, the assignments? And what if the only thing you had to pay
for was a couple of books? That's exactly what Dr. Donald N.S. Unger
and the MIT Open Courseware system are offering here. On this site,
viewers can browse the syllabus, have a look at the required
readings, and ponder the ten assignments that form the foundation of
this writing intensive class. Self-directed learners who want to
improve their technical and scientific writing need look no further
than this web-based adaptation of an MIT classic. [CNH]
7. The Purdue OWL: Conducting Research
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/8/
Good research and good writing go hand in
hand. This site from the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) introduces
students to the principles of conducting good research. The clear
and helpful information on the site is divided into six digestible
categories: Research Overview, Conducting Primary Research,
Evaluating Sources of Information, Searching the World Wide Web,
Internet References, and Archival Research. Within each of these
categories are numerous informative subcategories, such as Research
Ethics and Searching with a Search Engine. This last area is a great
tool for students learning how to conduct better searches, including
information on Boolean operators. [CNH]
Also see Purdue Online Writing
Lab: ESL Teacher Resources ---
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/586/1/
8. Scientific Reports - The Writing Center
http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/scientific-reports/
Learning to write a good scientific report
is no easy task. Thank goodness this handout from the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center provides you with
everything you need to get started. Beginning with Background and
Pre-Writing and proceeding with explanations of the Introduction,
Methods, Results, and Discussion sections of research reports, the
site answers such burning questions as, "What should I do before
drafting the lab report?" and "When should you use a figure?" In
all, students new to the art of technical science writing will be
much comforted by this detailed and user-friendly explanation of the
entire report writing process. Also of interest, the Other Resources
section links out to more useful resources around the web. [CNH]
9. National Association of Science Writers
http://www.nasw.org
Founded in 1934, the National Association
of Science Writers (NASW) has always sought to "encourage conditions
that promote good science writing." Today, the NASW boasts a roster
of over 2,000 members, almost 300 of them students. The site itself
is a panoply of bustling information. Featured articles (for
instance, "Coming soon to this planet: More of us") touch into
issues relevant to science writers and bloggers, but also will
appeal to anyone with an interest in empirical research. A Twitter
feed, ripe with science-y links and hashtags, is available on the
homepage and more than a dozen writer resources are on bold display.
If you think science writing might be in your future, look here for
the latest on how it's done. [CNH]
10. Sentence Structure of Technical Writing
http://web.mit.edu/me-ugoffice/communication/technical-writing.pdf
This visually clear treatise outlines "Good
Tech Writers Practice" in three pieces of sage advice: Plan your
project, understand good technical writing, and know that writing is
a habit that takes time to develop. Presented as lecture materials
from Nicole Kelley at MIT, this 24-page PDF leads students of
technical writing through seven steps (planning, clarity, brevity,
simplicity, word choice, active voice, committing to writing as a
process), and is ripe with graphs, charts, tables, and other
compelling visuals. Adapted from The Craft of Scientific Writing by
Michael Alley and "The Science of Scientific Writing" by Gopen and
Swan, this is a great resource providing the basics of technical
writing in an easily digestible format. [CNH]
11. LabWrite for Students
http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/
This National Science Foundation funded
site from North Carolina State University "guides you through the
entire laboratory experience, from before you walk into the lab to
after you get back your graded report." Start with How to Use
LabWrite for a comprehensive Powerpoint overview of the program.
Then, navigate slowly through the steps of PreLab, InLab, PostLab,
and LabCheck, each of which provides careful instructions on
everything from formulating a hypothesis to presenting results.
Teachers will especially recognize this tool as a welcome supplement
to in class discussions of best lab practices. [CNH]
===== Literary Greats ===
12. The Official Site for Alice Walker
http://alicewalkersgarden.com
Alice Walker, who has won the Pulitzer
Prize and the National Book Award, is one of America's best known
and well loved writers. Since publishing her first book of poems in
the late 1960s, she has been churning out books of essays, novels,
short stories, and poetry at a prodigious clip. Productivity,
however, is not her real calling card; what Walker is known for,
above all, is her compassion and clarity. This official site
contains dozens of Walker's recent blog posts on a wide range of
literary, artistic, and social issues, from her thoughts on books
and paintings to her fierce musings on the state of the
Palestine/Israel conflict. The About section provides a great
biography of Walker and her work. Additionally, Books and New Books
allows viewers to browse her ample collection of literary
achievements. [CNH]
13. Faulkner Collection
http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu
William Faulkner was born in 1897 in
Oxford, Mississippi and toiled away in relative obscurity until
unexpectedly winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. His
novels henceforth earned him two Pulitzer prizes, and several of
them are almost always listed on "best of" lists for 20th century
literature. This University of Virginia site is a Faulker treasure
trove. From the homepage, visitors can navigate to Contexts for an
overview of Faulkner and his times. Next, the Browse section
provides a list of Faulkner's recorded lectures and classes at UVA -
a rare and wonderful peek at a man from another era. Readers can
also search the site by Tapes & Transcripts and Rest of Archive.
Selected clips, organized by the author's novels, are also
available. [CNH]
14. The Official Site of Richard Feynman
http://www.richardfeynman.com
The video on the homepage of the Official
Site of Richard Feynman is reason enough to visit. It features
Feynman, the theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize winner, and best
selling author, lecturing to a group of undergraduates on the topic
of scientific and unscientific understandings of nature. The talk is
wildly entertaining, vivacious, and intellectually clear; viewers
are left with a vivid sense of who this man was and why he so deeply
impacted the popular imagination. A detailed About section provides
information on Feynman and his work, as well as quotes and a small
photo gallery. The Notable Works section lists his writings for
scientific and popular audiences, though, sadly, none of them are
available on the site. [CNH]
15. Charles Dickens at 200
http://www.themorgan.org/collection/Charles-Dickens-at-200
The Christmas Carol, which Dickens wrote in
the six weeks leading up to the Christmas of 1843, has continuously
been in print ever since, spawning adaptations into the forms of
plays, films, TV specials, mime performances, abstract performance
art, and opera. This online exhibition, hosted by the Morgan Library
& Museum in New York, features a leather bound manuscript of the
author's first draft, presented to his friend and debtor, Thomas
Mitton, just before it's publication. This excellent site allows
viewers to visit half a dozen pages of the original document,
replete with cross outs and scribbles, corrections and revisions.
The accompanying essays cover topics such as Dickens at Work, which
explains the sense of Dickens "writing at a fast pace, usually
enacting second thoughts and changes of mind in the heat of original
composition." [CNH]
16. Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No.
78, James Baldwin
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/the-art-of-fiction-no-78-james-baldwin
Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin moved to France in the late
1950s because he didn't want to be read as "merely a Negro; or,
even, merely a Negro writer." He lived the rest of his life in Paris
and the French Riviera, publishing fiction and essays that deeply
influenced American literature from afar. This interview with
Baldwin, published in the Paris Review a few years before the
author's death, touches on such topics as his choice to permanently
leave the United States for Europe, his writing process, and his
thoughts on race and racial justice. It's a rare gift to find a
freely available window into this revered writer's thoughts and
feelings in his later years.
===== Writing Tools ===
17. SelfControl
http://selfcontrolapp.com
Whether you're writing the Great American
Novel or just trying to finish a term paper by tomorrow morning, the
biggest threat to productivity is distraction. And the biggest
progenitor of distraction is the very machine you are working on to
write that novel or term paper. This open source app blocks access
to distracting websites, as well as mail servers and everything else
on the internet. Just set the timer, and write. [CNH]
18. Merriam-Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary-apps/android-ipad-iphone-windows.htm
Every writer needs a dictionary. The
Merriam-Webster app provides "America's most useful and respected
dictionary," plus synonyms, antonyms, example sentences, and many
other bonus functions. It's free, it's easy, and it's available for
iPhone and iPad (iOS 7.0+) as well as Android (2.3.3+). [CNH]
Jensen Comment
Don't Forget Wikipedia's various writing modules.
Also check on the MOOCs focused on how to improve writing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
December 30, 2015
December 31, 2015
January 2, 2016
January 4, 2016
January 5. 2015
January 6, 2016
January 7, 2016
January 8, 2016
January 9, 2016
January 11, 2016
January 12, 2016
January 13, 2016
January 14, 2016
Parents Turn to Prozac to Treat Down Syndrome ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545191/parents-turn-to-prozac-to-treat-down-syndrome/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160112
ABPI Resources for Schools: Infectious Diseases:
Pathogens ---
http://www.abpischools.org.uk/page/modules/infectiousdiseases_pathogens/
How Americans Got So Fat ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-07/how-americans-got-so-fat-in-charts?cmpid=BBD010716_BIZ
"Natural-born paedophiles: Some
paedophiles might be hard-wired to commit their abusive acts. Should that alter
their crime in the eyes of the law?" by Caren Chesler, AEON, January 8, 2016
---
https://aeon.co/essays/if-paedophilia-is-a-compulsion-is-imprisonment-the-solution?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=adcfb521a6-Weekly_Friday_January_8_20161_8_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-adcfb521a6-68951505
. . .
Now there’s a growing body
of evidence suggesting that paedophilia might not be a learned desire but
rather an in-born biological trait, like a cleft palate or a hook nose. And
lack of emotional control, a separate trait, might be biologically-based as
well.
If true, the insights raise
a host of issues, from culpability (If they’re born that way, can they help
themselves?) to prevention (Can you lock up someone simply for being a
paedophile if he hasn’t molested a child?). For now, legal experts seem
unmoved by the argument My biology made me do it. After all, we all have
urges that we control. The prevention issue, however, is more nettlesome. We
don’t detain people for simply having a capacity to engage in an unlawful
act. They must commit a crime first. Yet can the urge to abuse children
really be ignored? When it comes to paedophilic behaviour – one of the most
heinous crimes – we might be entering a frustrating period in which we have
a lot of good information and no good way of using it.
Until recently, paedophilia
was thought to result from early childhood trauma, probably sexual abuse of
some sort. But new research reveals that paedophiles tend to share unique
brain structure and some unusual physical attributes. The scientist James
Cantor and his colleagues at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health (CAMH) in Toronto published studies in 2008 and again in 2015 showing
that paedophiles had less white matter in their brains.
Reporting in the Archives of
Sexual Behavior in 2015, the team found that paedophiles were more likely to
be left-handed, a trait rooted in prenatal neural development; in fact,
paedophiles are up to three times more likely than the general population to
be left-handed, a rate similar to that observed in individuals with autism
and mental retardation. In all, the Cantor team found that paedophiles
manifest detached earlobes and misshapen ears, lesser physical height, lower
mean IQs, poorer visuospatial and verbal memory test scores, lesser
educational attainment, and an elevated propensity to have suffered head
injuries before (but not after) age 13.
Cantor said he’s not looking
for causality. He doesn’t believe there is a causal relationship between
left-handedness, detached earlobes or shortness, and paedophilia. Rather, he
studies these traits to determine when the paedophilia might have developed,
in the same way that one might cut open a tree and examine the rings to
determine its age. For most individuals, such traits are determined by genes
or an infection or even maternal stress, in utero. These traits ‘are clues
that whatever it is we’re looking for, we’re not just looking for something
in the brain’, he adds. ‘We’re looking for something in both brain and body
development. That’s the “A-ha” with this one.’ In fact, it constitutes
extraordinary evidence that some people are born paedophiles, before
environmental factors such as upbringing even come into play.
Continued in article
Fullsize GM SUVs have a vibration problem that's making owners sick ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/fullsize-gm-suvs-have-a-problem-thats-making-owners-sick/ar-BBo4ahM?ocid=spartanntp
Humor September 1-11, 2015
For me the entertainment value of a lottery chance
increases dramatically now that the Playboy Mansion is for sale. I wonder if it
comes "furnished?"
Bob Jensen
20 award-winning editorial cartoons from 2015 everyone should see ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/pulitzer-editorial-cartoons-everyone-should-see-2015-12
Jensen Comment
They had me in mind with the data mining cartoon.
Humor December 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q4.htm#Humor123115.htm.htm
Humor November 1-30, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q4.htm#Humor113015.htm
Humor October 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q4.htm#Humor103115
Humor September 1-30, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q3.htm#Humor093015
Humor August 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q3.htm#Humor081115
Humor July 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q3.htm#Humor073115
Humor June 1-30, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q2.htm#Humor043015
Humor May 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q2.htm#Humor043015
Humor April 1-30, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q2.htm#Humor043015
Humor March 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor033115
Humor February 1-28, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor022815
Humor January 1-31, 2015
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor013115
Tidbits Archives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://faculty.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://faculty.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://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.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