Tidbits on May 26, 2016
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Photograph Set 1 About Erika's Spinal Cord Stimulator Installed in May 2016
www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/ErikaBob/ErikaPain/Set01/Set01.htm
 

 

Tidbits on May 26, 2016
Bob Jensen

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

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

Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

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

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

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

Updates from WebMD --- Click Here




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
 

String Field Theory --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_field_theory
String field theory could be the key to solving the greatest mystery in physics – explained in under 60 seconds ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-carroll-explains-string-theory-in-60-seconds-2016-5

What Are the Most Beautifully & Creatively Shot Films of All Time? Cinematographers Pick Their Favorites ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/cinematographers-pick-their-favorite-films-of-all-time.html

YouTube: Veritasium (facts in science) --- https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium

Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Football Match: The Epic Showdown Between the Greeks & Germans (1972) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/monty-pythons-philosophers-football-match-greeks-v-germans-1972.html

Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee & Other Cartoonists Create Animations to End Distracted Driving ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/mad-magazines-al-jaffee-other-cartoonists-create-animations-to-end-distracted-driving.html


Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm 

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravinsky Conduct The Firebird, the Ballet Masterpiece That First Made Him Famous (1965) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/watch-82-year-old-igor-stravinsky-conduct-the-firebird-the-ballet-masterpiece-that-first-made-him-famous-1965.html

Edward Snowden & Jean-Michel Jarre Record a Techno Protest Song, “Exit” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/edward-snowden-jean-michel-jarre-record-a-techno-protest-song-exit.html

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra: Podcasts --- http://www.laco.org/podcasts

Andre Rieu and Child ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN2SQ4m7M04

Web outfits like Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2

Pandora (my favorite online music station) --- www.pandora.com
TheRadio
(online music site) --- http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) --- http://www.slacker.com/

Gerald Trites likes this international radio site --- http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:  Search for a song or band and play the selection --- http://songza.com/
Also try Jango --- http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) --- http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live --- http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note
U.S. Army Band recordings --- http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp

Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm


Photographs and Art

Google Cultural Institute: Albertina (art history) --- https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/albertina-vienna

Colorized Photographs of Russia Before the Communist Revolution ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-before-communist-revolution-2016-5

1,000+ Haunting & Beautiful Photos of Native American Peoples, Shot by the Ethnographer Edward S. Curtis (Circa 1905) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/1000-haunting-beautiful-photos-of-native-american-peoples.html

2015: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics --- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/us/year-in-interactive-storytelling.html?_r=0

11 Photographs of Jet After Burner Fires ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/jets-using-afterburners-2016-5

India just launched a mini space shuttle on top of a rocket and the photos are amazing ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/india-space-shuttle-launch-images-2016-5

Twain was describing the city’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a massive four-wing indoor arcade that rises 126 feet to an expansive vaulted glass ceiling. Nearly 150 years after the interior’s completion, the Galleria today remains largely unchanged—a twinkling, honey-hued backdrop to La Belle Époque and an operatic stage set of luxury retailers, restaurants, cafés, decorative arts and pedestrians.
Mark Meyers
---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-city-under-glass-1463770623?mod=djemMER
See

https://www.google.com/search?q="Galleria+Vittorio+Emanuele+II"&lr=&as_qdr=all&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG-bfdquvMAhUCNj4KHWBAC9gQsAQIKQ&biw=1097&bih=502

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

Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History


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

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

Hear Robert Frost Read His Most Famous Poems: “The Road Not Taken,” “Mending Wall,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay” & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/hear-robert-frost-read-his-most-famous-poems.html

Found Poetry: Retelling History through Poetry --- http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/poetry

Five Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/5-books-bill-gates-wants-you-to-read-this-summer.html

8 Glorious Hours of Dylan Thomas Reading Poetry–His Own & Others'---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/8-glorious-hours-of-dylan-thomas-reading-poetry-his-own-others.html

Eileen Myles sent poems to The New Yorker for 30 years. Finally, one was accepted. Payment: $600 and two nights at a motel ---
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/04/times-ive-got-paid/

2015: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics --- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/us/year-in-interactive-storytelling.html?_r=0

Awful Library Books --- http://awfullibrarybooks.net

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




Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on May 26, 2016
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2016/TidbitsQuotations052616.htm       

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the booked obligation of $19+ trillion) ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2016/05/25/spring-2016-to-whom-does-the-us-government-owe-money-n2168161?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
The US Debt Clock in Real Time --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 
Remember the Jane Fonda Movie called "Rollover" --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film)

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the unbooked obligation of $100 trillion and unknown more in contracted entitlements) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/15/news/economy/entitlement-benefits/
The biggest worry of the entitlements obligations is enormous obligation for the future under the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are now deemed totally unsustainable ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

Entitlements are two-thirds of the federal budget. Entitlement spending has grown 100-fold over the past 50 years. Half of all American households now rely on government handouts. When we hear statistics like that, most of us shake our heads and mutter some sort of expletive. That’s because nobody thinks they’re the problem. Nobody ever wants to think they’re the problem. But that’s not the truth. The truth is, as long as we continue to think of the rising entitlement culture in America as someone else’s problem, someone else’s fault, we’ll never truly understand it and we’ll have absolutely zero chance...
Steve Tobak ---
http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2013/02/07/truth-behind-our-entitlement-culture/?intcmp=sem_outloud

"These Slides Show Why We Have Such A Huge Budget Deficit And Why Taxes Need To Go Up," by Rob Wile, Business Insider, April 27, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-presentation-on-the-federal-budget-2013-4
This is a slide show based on a presentation by a Harvard Economics Professor.

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

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

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




MOOC --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

The 50 Most Popular MOOCs of All time ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/learning-how-to-learn-enroll-in-the-latest-edition-of-the-most-popular-mooc.html


"This Mongolian Teenager Aced a MOOC. Now He Wants to Widen Their Impact," by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 4, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/This-Mongolian-Teenager-Aced-a/236362?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=d2d2bb431560465bbc40d7fc9fdba41a&elq=515025d323e34845a1279920e3ae34cc&elqaid=8993&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3088

Free online courses changed the life of one super-smart Mongolian teenager. His name is Battushig Myanganbayar, and four years ago, while he was still a high-school student in Ulan Bator, he took a massive open online course from MIT. It was one of the first they had ever offered, about circuits and electronics, and he was one of about a hundred and forty thousand people to take it. He not only passed, he was one of about three hundred who got a perfect score. He was only 15 years old.

He was hailed in The New York Times and other media outlets as a boy wonder, and soon he got accepted to the real MIT campus. It was a feel-good story that matched the hopeful narrative about MOOCs at the time. These free courses were touted as a way to bring top education to underserved communities around the world. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman soon wrote that "Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems." This was the peak of the MOOC hype.

Today, Mr. Myanganbayar remains a fan of MOOCs, but he also has a critique of this knowledge giveaway, and he questions how much good it’s really doing for people in the developing world.

After taking a MOOC, "What do you do?" he asks. "If you’re just learning for the sake of the learning, the knowledge alone is useless without the opportunity to build, or show, or to use it."

While at MIT, he has continued to take free online courses on the side, especially those on data science to help him with research projects that he’s worked on here. Like many students that I’ve met at MIT, he’s focused on trying to solve real-world problems with his student research — he helped build an electronic glove for the blind, for instance — and that’s his main problem with how colleges have handled MOOCS.

The courses aren’t really an end, after all, they’re a means to an end. Why don’t colleges do more to help connect students to resources, he asks, to apply their knowledge?

 

Listen to the full audio. Below is an edited and adapted transcript of the podcast.
https://soundcloud.com/relearning/episode-6-this-mongolian-teenager-aced-a-mooc-now-he-wants-to-widen-their-impact

Q. Do you think your work as a MOOC student made you more hungry to experience all the unique aspects of a campus that you can’t get by sitting at home at a computer?

A. I always try to go to office hours that professors do because it’s one of the disadvantages of the MOOC. You learn about things, but your questions, it’s really hard to get a good answer. You can post it in the forum in an online course, but having a chance to meet with the professor is an amazing thing.

After coming to MIT, the biggest thing I learned was, as one person, no matter how good you are, you can do nothing. You need a team or you need a group of people in order to really build the complex and amazing thing. Just by yourself, sitting in your room and reading a book, nothing will happen. No matter how good you are, unless you are Albert Einstein or unless you’re a theoretical mathematician then something might happen, but for engineers you need a team. I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that I learned at MIT.

Q. What do you think is missing for MOOC students, as far as support?

Continued in article

"What You Need to Know About MOOC's," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 20, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-Know-About/133475/

. . .

Who are the major players?

Several start-up companies are working with universities and professors to offer MOOC's. Meanwhile, some colleges are starting their own efforts, and some individual professors are offering their courses to the world. Right now four names are the ones to know:

edX

A nonprofit effort run jointly by MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley.

Leaders of the group say they intend to slowly add other university partners over time. edX plans to freely give away the software platform it is building to offer the free courses, so that anyone can use it to run MOOC’s.

Coursera

A for-profit company founded by two computer-science professors from Stanford.

The company’s model is to sign contracts with colleges that agree to use the platform to offer free courses and to get a percentage of any revenue. More than a dozen high-profile institutions, including Princeton and the U. of Virginia, have joined.

Udacity

Another for-profit company founded by a Stanford computer-science professor.

The company, which works with individual professors rather than institutions, has attracted a range of well-known scholars. Unlike other providers of MOOC’s, it has said it will focus all of its courses on computer science and related fields.

Udemy

A for-profit platform that lets anyone set up a course.

The company encourages its instructors to charge a small fee, with the revenue split between instructor and company. Authors themselves, more than a few of them with no academic affiliation, teach many of the courses.

Bob Jensen's threads about MOOCs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


"Distance Ed’s Second Act," by Phil Hill, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Distance-Ed-s-Second-Act/236571?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=db09c79a6b904181b6f4f6c62c2f7186&elq=a09c5c90756240e6bff2f53f58cf0f04&elqaid=9185&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3192 

The Babson Survey Research Group, which has tracked online college enrollment for the past 12 years, reports growth from 9 percent of U.S. students taking at least one course online in the fall of 2002 to more than 28 percent in the fall of 2014. The overall growth has slowed recently, but the drastic decrease in for-profit enrollment masks two very interesting numbers:

Sixty-seven percent of students taking online courses do so at public institutions.

The number of students at public and private nonprofit colleges who took at least one online course rose by 26 percent in just two years (2012-2014).

Online education is no longer the province of a small subset of colleges and professors. We are well above the 16-to-20-percent level in Everett Rogers’s technology-adoption curve that indicates a shift into the mainstream. As I described in a previous article, the characteristics of people trying out a new approach (primarily professors in this discussion) change significantly after the technology moves beyond the innovators and early adopters. You start getting people who are more cautious and even skeptical about the outcomes and who need more holistic support to make the jump. We are seeing signs that more and more professors accept that online education is inevitable, even in traditional institutions, and is appropriate for a growing number of nontraditional students and a growing number of disciplines

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on free distance education alternatives (some of the best courses in the world from prestigious universities) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on fee-based education alternatives (some of the best online degree programs from top universities) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm


Maria Popova Selects 2016 Reads tagged with “commencement” ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/commencement/?mc_cid=94b2eea625&mc_eid=4d2bd13843


Angelina Jolie has been hired as a professor at the London School of Economics ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/angelina-jolie-london-school-economics-2016-5

Jensen Comment
This could ignite a trend in hiring celebrities at prestigious universities. It's common for top executives to teach at prestigious universities, but these executives don't have the celebrity attraction of top movie stars. One day there may even be script writers, although top business schools have been writing scripts for years in their case development programs.


"Why I'm Saying Goodbye to In-Class Tests," by David Perry, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 2016 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1410-why-i-m-saying-goodbye-to-in-class-tests?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=9d175177690d4fbcb48d8012db54c024&elq=5767a867ed964fcd97a20da17e8915b3&elqaid=9199&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3202

Jensen Comment
The article misses the main purpose of examinations and testing --- motivation to learn. If instructors don't have examinations they must have some other means of making students shed blood, sweat, and tears. Papers and class discussions can be used for tough grading in small classes. Unfortunately most instructors in North America and Europe have large classes to a point where homework and class discussion (or other oral feedback) cannot be used for tough grading.

Why not use examinations in large classes and reserve alternate grading hurdles for students that are declared by the college's medical services to be officially declared eligible for alternate grading hurdles? David Perry apparently does not have large classes.


Recent incidents at DePaul and UC Irvine raise the question of what obligations a college has to make sure that protesters -- while objecting to an event -- can't shut it down or block its ideas from being heard.
Ellen Wexler
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/26/two-colleges-what-happens-when-protesters-obstruct-free-speech?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=635cd19f6e-DNU20160526&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-635cd19f6e-197565045

Jensen Comment
To say nothing about blocking emergency vehicles from doing their job or instructors from having class. And should Harvard discourage campus protesters from insulting speakers by proclaiming aloud that Jewish women have foul body odor?


Flash Storage for Dummies ---
https://redmondmag.com/whitepapers/2016/03/netapp/flash-storage-for-dummies-special-edition.aspx?pc=cr43em09&utm_source=webmktg&utm_medium=E-Mail&utm_campaign=cr43em09


Top 100 Economics Blogs of 2016 --- https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/top-economics-blogs-2016/

Bob Jensen's threads on listservs and blogs and the social media ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/listservroles.htm
The above reference contains links to the miniscule number of accounting professor blogs.


Twitter 'to stop counting photos and links in character limit'
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36305921


Chromebooks are about to take over and Apple and Microsoft should be worried ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/chromebooks-to-run-android-apps-2016-5


Philosophers once needed books, writing tools, and perhaps a glass of sherry. Now they think with the Internet. Cognition itself is connected to the web
Rethinking Knowledge in the Internet Age ---
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/rethinking-knowledge-internet-age/

The internet started out as the Information Highway, the Great Emancipator of knowledge, and as an assured tool for generating a well-informed citizenry. But, over the past 15 years, that optimism has given way to cynicism and fear — we have taught our children that the net is a swamp of lies spun by idiots and true believers, and, worse still, polluted by commercial entities whose sole aim is to have us click to the next ad-riddled page.

Perhaps our attitude to the net has changed because we now see how bad it is for knowledge. Or perhaps the net has so utterly transformed knowledge that we don’t recognize knowledge when we see it.

For philosopher Michael P. Lynch, our fears are warranted — the internet is a wrong turn in the history of knowledge. “Information technology,” Professor Lynch argues in his new book, The Internet of Us, “while expanding our ability to know in one way, is actually impeding our ability to know in other, more complex ways.” He pursues his argument with commendable seriousness, clarity, and attunement to historical context — and yet he misses where knowledge actually lives on the net, focusing instead on just one aspect of the phenomenon of knowledge. He is far from alone in this.

The net in fact exposes problems that have long lurked in our epistemology, problems that come into stark relief when knowledge is freed of paper, and we freely connect with it and through it across all boundaries of time and place. There’s something about how we’ve been thinking about knowledge — something inherent in traditional epistemology — that blinds Lynch and many others to the knowledge-enhancing aspects of what’s happening on the screens in front of us.

Knowing Beyond Google

The rhetoric of internet criticism often follows a typical pattern, such as, “Yes, but,” as in: “The internet does many wonderful things, but …,” followed by a long list of everything that’s wrong with the net. Lynch is far more thoughtful than most, but his arguments nonetheless suffer from the flaws that typically bedevil this type of criticism. His idea of what the net gets right — the “Yes” before the “but” — is itself qualified, and a good place to start. He characterizes knowing on the net as “Google-knowing,” or what we might otherwise call “looking something up.” He acknowledges that having instantaneous access to facts via Google-knowing ranges from handy to lifesaving, but his conception misses the full picture in two important ways.

First, we should include in Google-knowing more than just factual look-ups. If, in the 19th century, almanacs commoditized facts, then the net has taken the process one big step further, commoditizing the encyclopedia article. Not only can we look up when Thomas Jefferson was the United States minister to France (May 1785-September 1789), we can also get some quick context about what that meant to the Colonies, to France, and even to him. (To his credit, Lynch does not engage in the usual Wikipedia bashing.)

More important, to focus a discussion of internet knowledge on people looking things up on Google, or even in Wikipedia, is like describing libraries as places where people use the encyclopedia. Far more typically, when we’re on the net, someone or some service links us to a bit of news that’s interesting to us. It might be politics, quantum physics, or the Kardashians. Whatever it is, let’s say we want to know more. Before the era of the net, the reader’s curiosity was bounded by the physical rectangle in the newspaper within which the article sat. On the net, if the source of the tidbit — a tweet, a Facebook post, an email — doesn’t itself contain links to additional information, then we can pop some terms into a search engine and find more avenues to explore; push a comment or question back into the social medium through which we first learned of the topic; hop it over to a different social network; or, even reach out to the thinker or writer who stimulated the discussion in the first place.

Continued in article

 


The University of Cambridge is planning one of the most expensive business (Doctoral) degrees in the world ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-expensive-executive-mba-2016-5

The University of Cambridge has proposed a new business program that may cause some sticker shock.

The four-year course is a doctorate of business and will cost students $332,000, as Times Higher Education reported. Not including room and board, that makes it one of the most expensive degrees in the world.

The "Doctor of Business Degree" will be comparable to a PhD program, a representative for Cambridge told Business Insider in an email, noting that it's still subject to approval.

"The four-year programme's annual fees are comparable to leading Executive MBA programmes, while also reflecting the fact that the programme will be very small and selective, demanding substantial resources for intensive teaching and support services," the representative said. For comparison, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has a two-year executive-education program that runs students $192,900. The London Business School has a 20-month-long program that runs students 72,795 pounds, or $106,328. The University of Cambridge's massive price tag has already led some faculty members to implore the school to think through the implications of creating the new course.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In the past few decades DBA degrees are on the decline relative to Ph.D. degrees. Typically a DBA entails less specialization in a given business discipline such as accounting, finance, marketing, management, MIS, etc. Executive Ph.D. or DBA programs are more popular in Europe than the USA and typically are of much shorter duration than a North American business Ph.D. program. Usually research universities in the USA do not hire executive doctoral program graduates on tenure tracks, although this proposed Cambridge program may become more of an exception. One sign of prestige of a doctoral program is the research reputations of thesis supervisors plus the number of doctoral theses being supervised by a given thesis supervisor. Executive doctoral programs whether online or onsite tend to lack research prestige.

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of accounting (read that "accountics" doctoral programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms


MIT:  Exxon Has a Clever Way to Capture Carbon—If It Works ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601402/exxon-has-a-clever-way-to-capture-carbon-if-it-works/#/set/id/601413/


"Review of 'The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It … Every Time'," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, March 5, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/03/09/review-maria-konnikova-confidence-game-why-we-fall-it-every-time

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


USA:  The Most Under-Represented Groups In Law Teaching Are Whites, Christians, Republicans, Males
"MEASURING DIVERSITY: LAW FACULTIES IN 1997 AND 2013," by James Lindgren,  Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy ---
http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/39_1_Lindgren_F.pdf

When the white male Protestants who ran American law schools thought that women and minorities were better suited for sweeping the classrooms than for teaching in them, one did not need statistics to know which groups were underrepresented. Women and minorities were locked out, and Jews were subject to quotas in many law schools and locked out of others. By the late 1990s, which groups were the most underrepresented in legal academia?2 After twenty-five years of increasingly vigorous affirmative action hiring, there had been a few pockets of success—enough to merit the first careful comparison of the racial, gender, religious, and political makeup of law faculties with the populations from which professors are drawn. It is time to take a close look at how far we have come and how far we have left to go to reach parity with the general population—or at least with the lawyer population.3 Additionally, it would help to know which subgroups within the broad traditional diversity categories are the most underrepresented and thus most in need of redoubled efforts on their behalf.

Continued in article

Affirmative Action Favors Women, Blacks and Latinos Over Whites and Asian Males  in Science Tenure Track Hiring

"Advantage Women," by Colleen Flaherty," National Academy of Sciences via Inside Higher Ed, April 14, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/14/study-suggests-stem-faculty-hiring-favors-women-over-men

Many studies suggest that women scientists aspiring to careers in academe face roadblocks, including bias -- implicit or overt -- in hiring. But a new study is throwing a curveball into the literature, suggesting that women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. Could it be that STEM gender diversity and bias awareness efforts are working, or even creating a preference for female candidates -- or is something more nuanced going on? Experts say it’s probably both.

Wendy M. Williams, professor of human development at Cornell University, and Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology at Cornell, are no strangers to complicating research on gender bias in STEM. In a 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, they argued that women’s life choices, whether voluntary or constrained, better explain women’s underrepresentation in STEM than the usual suspects of discrimination in journal and grant reviewing and hiring. (They argued such biases were things of the past, and that efforts to address them missed the real source of the problem.)

Continued in article

38 Percent Of Women Earn More Than Their Husbands," by Mona Chalabi, NPR via Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, February 8, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/38-percent-of-women-earn-more-than-their-husbands/

Bob Jensen's threads on affirmative action in colleges and universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#AffirmativeAction


Claims of Cheating in Online Courses at Iowa ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/05/23/claims-cheating-online-courses-iowa?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3bae57df2e-DNU20160523&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3bae57df2e-197565045

Respondus and other online tools for monitoring and exam cheating monitoring ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Jensen Comment
Security video proctoring can sometimes be more preventative than onsite proctoring. For example, if there is an onsite proctor students can see when the proctor is distracted and cheat during the distraction such as pass answers or use a cell phone when the proctor is looking elsewhere. If they are being watched continuously by a proctoring camera they cannot be certain if and when their cheating will be detected if they are cheating in a way that can be detected by reviewing a video much like stores use videos to detect shoplifting. Of course not all forms of cheating can be detected by a camera.

If the facial images on camera are quite good this will also help detect when an unauthorized student is taking an exam.


"Study: Big-Time College Sports Neglect Academics, Deflect Blame." Inside Higher Ed, May 19, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/05/19/study-big-time-college-sports-neglect-academics-deflect-blame?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a475478d0c-DNU20160519&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a475478d0c-197565045

Colleges with high-profile sports programs may say they put the academic performances of their players first, but a new study suggests that the organizational culture of those programs prioritizes athletic success at the expense of academics -- and that athletes are unfairly blamed for the academic failures that result from such a system.

In the study, to be published in the Journal of Higher Education, the University of California at Riverside's Uma Jayakumar and Eddie Comeaux interviewed and observed athletes, coaches and other athletics employees at an unnamed Football Bowl Subdivision public university. The researchers found that coaches "emphasized personal control and choice, deflecting the pressure of the inherent tension on the athlete." Even athletes who came into the program wanting to focus equally on academics and athletics found that it was difficult to do so with the 40 hours per week they were devoting to their sport, and thus shifted their focus to athletics.

Continued in article


Timothy Parker, Accused Of Plagiarism, Is Out As USA Today’s Crossword Puzzle Editor ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/timothy-parker-accused-of-plagiarism-is-out-as-usa-todays-crossword-puzzle-editor/

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


Five Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Summer ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/5-books-bill-gates-wants-you-to-read-this-summer.html


A new book says you need passion and perseverance to achieve your goals in work and life. Is this a bold new idea or an old one dressed up to be the latest self-help sensation?
"Is “Grit” Really the Key to Success?" by Daniel Engber, Slate, May 2016 ---
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/05/angela_duckworth_says_grit_is_the_key_to_success_in_work_and_life_is_this.html#rt

Scientists have tried to solve this puzzle for more than 50 years, writes Duckworth in her new book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. But even the school’s best means of screening its applicants—something called the “whole candidate score,” a weighted mixture of a student’s SATs, high school ranking, leadership ability, and physical fitness—does not anticipate who will succeed and who will fail at Beast. So Duckworth designed her own way of scoring candidates, giving each a survey that tested his or her willingness to persevere in pursuit of long-term goals. She called this measure “grit.” And guess what? Grit worked. The cadets’ survey answers helped predict whether they would make it through the grueling program. Duckworth’s best-seller peddles a pair of big ideas: that grit—comprising a person’s perseverance and passion—is among the most important predictors of success and that we all have the power to increase our inner grit. These two theses, she argues, apply not just to cadets but to kids in troubled elementary schools and undergrads at top-ranked universities and to scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs. Duckworth’s book describes a wide array of  “paragons of grit,” people she’s either interviewed or studied from afar: puzzlemasters and magicians, actors and inventors, children and adults, Steve Young and Julia Child. Grit appears in all of them, sprinkled over their achievements like a magic Ajax powder. In tandem with some feisty scrubbing, it dissolves whatever obstacles might hold a person back.

While her book has only just arrived, Duckworth’s gritty tales—and the endlessly extensible ideas they represent—have already spread throughout the country, into classrooms, boardrooms, and locker rooms alike. Popularized in a viral TED talk from 2013 and validated by that year’s MacArthur “genius” grant, they’ve been inscribed into national education policy, and public school districts in California are grading kids—as well as schools themselveson grit. Duckworth’s message has been broadcast with such speed and thoroughness that other people even started selling books on grit before she published her own.

With Grit, Duckworth has now put out the definitive handbook for her theory of success. It parades from one essential topic to another on a float of common sense, tossing out scientific insights as it goes along. How to raise your kids, how to unearth your inner passion, how to find a higher purpose—like other self-help authors, Duckworth finds authoritative answers to these questions, promising to change how we see the world. And like other self-help authors, she pulls a sleight of hand by which even widely held assumptions end up looking like discoveries. It’s as important to work hard, the book contends, as it is to be a natural talent. Who would disagree with that?

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Years ago one of my psychology professors at Stanford who did a long-term (funded by the US Navy) study of predictors of success and concluded that the fundamental problem of such research was in defining and measuring "success."
He termed this "The Criterion Problem" ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Predictors 

A message from Professor XXXXX

I recently submitted an article on Assessment Outcomes for distance education (DE) to "The Technology Source". The editor suggested that I include a reference to profiling the successful DE student because he was sure some research existed on the subject. Well I have been looking for it casually for 3 years in my reading and the 3-4 conferences per year that I attend, and never have come across anything. Have spent the last week looking in InfoTrac and reviewed close to 300 abstracts, without a single good lead. You are the man. So hoping you can answer the question - is there any empirical research on the question of profiling a successful DE student and in particular any research where an institution actually has a hurdle for students to get into DE based on a pedagogically sound questionnaire? Hoping you know the answer and have time to respond.

Reply from Bob Jensen

Hi XXXXX,

I am reminded of a psychology professor, Tom Harrell, that I had years ago at Stanford University.  He had a long-term contract from the U.S. Navy to study Stanford students when they entered the MBA program and then follow them through their careers.  The overall purpose was to define predictors of success that could be used for admission to the Stanford GSB (and extended to tests for admission into careers, etc.)  Dr, Harrell's research became hung up on "The Criterion Problem   (i.e., the problem of defining and measuring "success.")  You will have the same trouble whenever you try to assess graduates of any education program whether it is onsite or online.  What is success?  What is the role any predictor apart from a myriad of confounded variables?

You might take a look at the following reference:
Harrell, T.W. (1992). "Some history of the army general classifications test," Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 875-878.

Success is a relative term.  Grades not always good criteria for assessment.  Perhaps a C student is the greatest success story of a distance education program.  Success may lie in motivating a weak student to keep trying for the rest of life to learn as much as is possible.  Success may lie in motivating a genius to channel creativity.  Success may lie in scores on a qualification examination such as the CPA examination.  However, use of "scores" is very misleading, because the impact of a course or entire college degree is confounded by other predictors such as age, intellectual ability, motivation, freedom to prepare for the examination, etc.  

Success may lie in advancement in the workforce, but promotion and opportunity are subject to widely varying and often-changing barriers and opportunities.  A program's best graduate may end up on a dead end track, and its worst graduate may be a maggot who fell in a manure pile.  For example, it used to be virtually impossible for a woman to become a partner in a large public accounting firm.  Now the way is paved with all sorts of incentives for women to hang in there and attain partnership. Success also entails being at the right place at the right time, and this is often a matter of luck as well as ability.  George Bush probably would never have had an opportunity to become one of this nation's best leaders if there had not been a terrorist attack that afforded him such an opportunity.  Certainly this should not be termed "lucky," but it is a rare "opportunity" to be a great "success."

Eileen Myles sent poems to The New Yorker for 30 years. Finally, one was accepted. Payment: $600 and two nights at a motel ---
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/04/times-ive-got-paid/

 


Here’s What You’ll Pay for Health Care In Retirement (Social Security benefits won't even cover your health care costs if you add supplemental Medicare insurance (that I recommend by the way)) ---
http://time.com/money/4340299/what-youll-pay-healthcare-in-retirement/

Forget about retiring on Social Security. Health care costs alone will devour the entire lifetime benefits—and then some—of a 45-year-old couple when they retire, according to projections released Wednesday by HealthView Services, a Danvers, Mass.- based company that provides retirement health care cost data and tools to financial advisers.

Social Security payments will stretch farther for current retirees, but the numbers are still stark: In 2016, the average 66-year-old couple will require 57% of their lifetime, pre-tax Social Security benefits to pay for health care costs, according to HealthView Services. The average 45-year-old couple, by contrast, will need 116% of lifetime Social Security payments to cover health care costs.

Total retirement health care expenses for that 45-year-old couple planning to retire at age 65 will come to $592,275 in today’s dollars and $1.6 million in future dollars, HealthView Services projects. The projection assumes the male member of the couple will live to 87 and the female to 89.

The total tab includes premiums for Medicare Part B, which covers doctors’ visits, Part D, which covers drugs, and Part F, which is the most comprehensive supplemental insurance. It also includes expenses not covered by Medicare, such as dental work and hearing aids. Notably, it does not include long-term care costs. Medicare does not pay for long-term stays in nursing homes, or for assisted living facilities.

Of course, these averages won’t reflect everyone’s experience. People’s individual health status will influence how much they pay. What’s more, not everyone will choose to buy a Part F Medigap policy. It’s a popular but expensive choice, with monthly premiums that vary widely by region but average around $200.

While expensive, Part F plans eliminate a lot of the uncertainty of medical expenses. Premiums are predictable and cover most of beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket expenses. Without a supplemental plan, beneficiaries could be on the hook for even more if they have a big medical episode, such as a stroke, or a serious diagnosis like cancer.

On Plan F, “if you never have a problem and drop dead at 110, you’ll have wasted a lot of money,” said Ron Mastrogiovanni, founder and CEO of HealthView Services. A more likely scenario, he said, is that, “We’re not going to stay healthy throughout retirement.”

Continued in article

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


Sorry, Bernie fans. His health care plan is short $17,000,000,000,000. The studies, published jointly by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute in Washington, concludes that Sanders's plans are short a total of more than $18 trillion over a decade ---
Max Ehrenfreund. Washington Post ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/09/the-17-trillion-problem-with-bernie-sanderss-health-care-plan-2/


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

"Why Does Inequality Matter? Reflections on the Political Morality of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
SSRN, December 11, 2015
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769759
Tax Law Review, Vol. 68, No. 3, 2015

Author

Liam Murphy,  New York University School of Law

Abstract

In the Conclusion to Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty issues a call for a political and historical economics. Like Marx and the political economists before him, Piketty is interested in how markets work because he is interested in the rights and wrongs of institutional, especially legal, design. His is book is guided by a clear sense that economic inequality, especially inequality of wealth, raises serious prima facie problems of social justice. This essay is a critical investigation into the political morality underlying Capital in the Twenty-First Century that unravels and evaluates the different ways in which economic inequality may or may not matter.


Bob Jensen's threads on Bob Jensen's Threads on Real Options, Option Pricing Theory, and Arbitrage Pricing Theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/realopt.htm

Real Options Valuation --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_options_valuation

Real Options
by Vladimir Antikarov and Thomas E. Copeland
ISBN: 1587991861 Hard Cover 9/1/2003
http://www.traderslibrary.com/s/Real-Options-Revised-Edition-A-Practitio-9781587991868/2097420.htm

Synopsis:
This revised edition of the highly successful book, Real Options, offers corporate decision-makers the ability to assess the profitability of their ventures and decide which avenue of expansion or investment to go down and, crucially, when to take that leap. The reader goes on a journey through real options, from the basics to more advanced topics such as options and game theory. It provides expert guidance on how to implement the theory to maximize investment opportunities by utilizing uncertainty as an asset and reducing downside risk.

Jacket Description:
Determining the feasibility and the priority of potential investments is critical in business decision making. A new method for estimating the value of investments -- real options -- is gaining ground over the traditional approach of calculating net present value (NPV). Tom Copeland and Vladimir Antikarov argue that in ten years real options will replace NPV as the central paradigm for investment decisions. This book offers the first practitioner's guide for understanding and implementing real options in everyday decision making. The authors bring years of experience with dozens of corporations in implementing real options. Copeland and Antikarov show how NPV is flawed and tends to undervalue investment opportunities. NPV is a static calculation that fails to consider the many options that management has over the lifetime of an investment project. Such options include expanding or extending the project if results are better than expected or scaling down or abandoning the project if it turns out to be worse than expected. There are chapters that deal with valuing various types of simple options, such as deferral, abandonment, expansion, and contraction of projects, and more advanced options such as compound and switching options. Chapter 2 shows how Airbus Industrie uses real options in its marketing efforts and discusses the difficulties encountered in implementing real options. Chapter 7 shows how to write an Excel spreadsheet to value simple options, combinations of them, and compound options. Chapters 9 and 10 discuss ways of modeling uncertainties. The analysis is enriched with case histories and case solutions. The end-of-chapter questions and problems provide both experience and additional insights into the application of real options. The authors also offer solutions to the questions posed in the book, as well as real option models useful to the would-be practitioner on their Web site, www.corpfinontine.com .

 

"Real option analysis of aircraft acquisition: A case study," by Qiwei Hu and Anming Zhang, Journal of Air Transport Management, Volume 46, July 2015, Pages 19–29 ---
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699715000381

This paper demonstrates that aircraft acquisition by airlines may contain a portfolio of real options (flexible strategies) embedded in the investment's life cycle, and that if airlines rely solely on the static NPV method, they are likely to underestimate the true investment value. Two real options are investigated: i) the “shutdown-restart” option (a carrier may shutdown a plane if revenues are less than costs, but restarts it if revenues are more than costs), and ii) the option to defer aircraft delivery. We quantify the values of these options in a case study of a major U.S. airline. The economic insight could help explain observed capital expenditures of airlines, and serve as a rule of thumb in evaluating capital budgeting decisions. A compound option (consisting of both the shutdown-restart and defer options) is also analyzed.

Airbus and Boeing: Superjumbo Decisions
by Samuel E BodilyKenneth C. Lichtendahl
Harvard Case
https://hbr.org/product/airbus-and-boeing-superjumbo-decisions/UV1312-PDF-ENG

Real Options Valuation Limitations --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_options_valuation#Limitations

Jensen Comment
 

Many moons ago, Stewart Myers and I were in a doctoral program together at Stanford University. After graduation, Stewart became one of the most outstanding economics and financial researchers of the world --- http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=95&co_list=F

The term "real options" can be attributed to the Stewart Myers ("Determinants of Capital Borrowing", Journal of Financial Economics, Vol..5, 1977). The theory of real options extends the concept of financial options (in particular call options) into the realm of capital budgeting under uncertainty and valuation of corporate assets or entire corporations.

The real options approach is dynamic in the sense that includes the effect of uncertainty along the time, and what/how/when the relevant real options shall be exercised. Some argue that real options do little more than can be done with dynamic programming of investment states under uncertainty, real options add a rich economic theory to capital investing under uncertainty.

The real options problem can be viewed as a problem of optimization under uncertainty of a real asset (project, firm, land, etc.) given the available options. Since I have been asked to teach a bit about real options theory while I lectured years ago at Monterrey Tech in Mexico, I thought I might share a bit of my source material that I discovered on the Web.

Real Options are mentioned in the FASB's "Special Report: Business and Financial Reporting, Challenges from the New Economy," by Wayne Upton, Financial Accounting Standards Board, Document 219-A, April 2000 --- http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/fasb/new_economy.html  (Like so many older Rutgers FASB links the link is broken and lost forever)

Wayne Upton wrote as follows on pp. 91-93:

Measurement and Real Options

Perhaps the most promising area for valuation of intangible assets is the developing literature in valuation techniques based on the concept of real options. Techniques using real options analysis are especially useful in estimating the value of intangible assets that are under development and may not prove to be commercially viable.

A real option is easier to describe than to define. A financial option is a contract that grants to the holder the right but not the obligation to buy or sell an asset at a fixed price within a fixed period (or on a fixed date). The word option in this context is consistent with its ordinary definition as “the power, right or liberty of choosing.” Real option approaches attempt to extend the intellectual rigor of option-pricing models to valuation of nonfinancial assets and liabilities. Instead of viewing an asset or project as a single set of expected cash flows, the asset is viewed as a series of compound options that, if exercised, generate another option and a cash flow. That’s a lot to pack into one sentence. In the opening pages of their recent book, consultant Martha Amram and Boston University professor Nalin Kulatilaka offer five examples of business situations that can be modeled as real options: 56

• Waiting to invest options, as in the case of a tradeoff between immediate plant expansion (and possible losses from decreased demand) and delayed expansion (and possible lost revenues)

• Growth options, as in the decision to invest in entry into a new market

• Flexibility options, as in the choice between building a single centrally located facility or building two facilities in different locations

• Exit options, as in the decision to develop a new product in an uncertain market

• Learning options, as in a staged investment in advertising.

Real-options approaches have captured the attention of both managers and consultants, but they remain unfamiliar to many.

Proponents argue that the application of option pricing to nonfinancial assets overcomes the shortfalls of traditional present value analysis, especially the subjectivity in developing risk-adjusted discount rates. They contend that a focus on the value of flexibility provides a better measure of projects in process that would otherwise appear uneconomical. A real-options approach is consistent with either fair value (as described in Concepts Statement 7) or an entity-specific value. The difference, as with more conventional present value, rests with the selection of assumptions. If a real option is available to any marketplace participant, then including it in the computation is consistent with fair value. If a real option is entity-specific, then a measurement that includes that option is not fair value, but may be a good estimate of entity-specific value.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Bob Jensen's Threads on Real Options, Option Pricing Theory, and Arbitrage Pricing Theory ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/realopt.htm

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


Jensen Comment
That should give taxpayers a concussion.




From the Scout Report on May 13, 2016

Google Photos --- https://photos.google.com/ 

When Google retired Picasa in 2015, some users bemoaned the loss of one of the web's more beloved photo services. Google Photos, however, has proven itself a more comprehensive, flexible, and advanced free service than Picasa ever was. Setup, which features easy drag and drop methods, is simple. From there Google Photos automatically organizes photos by people, places, and things, using advanced image technology, and allows readers to search their photos in a manner similar to the way they might search their Gmail account for a missing email. Google Photos also provides easy-to-learn tools for cropping, filtering, and sharing, as well as tools that allow readers to create albums, GIFs, collages, and more. Google Photos is an advanced and streamlined free photo service, and the app can be downloaded for both iOS and Android devices.  


Kahoot! --- https://getkahoot.com/ 

Kahoot! is a service that allows teachers to create educational games for their students in a matter of minutes. The games are usually built from a series of multiple choice questions, onto which teachers may add videos, images, and diagrams in order to encourage engagement. The games are designed to be played interactively, in a group setting, in which each player answers questions on his or her own device while games are displayed at the front of the room so every student can engage in the total experience of the lesson. There is also a social learning component, in that students contribute to discussion boards and chat rooms in order to deepen their understanding.


In Response to Stress, France Seeks to Protect Workers from Emailing
from Home
The plan to ban work emails out of hours
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36249647

France may give workers right to ignore emails at home
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/18/news/france-email-work-law/

Workplace stress 'a collective challenge' as work-life boundaries become
blurred
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53807

The Psychological Toll of the Smartphone: Researchers Uncover a New Form of
Social Pressure
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2014/may-june-14/the-psychological-toll-of-the-smartphone.html

Technology Use Before Bed Linked with Increased Stress
http://www.livescience.com/34807-technology-before-bed-increases-stress.html

How stress affects your health
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/stress.aspx


From the Scout Report on May 20, 2016

Fotor Collage Maker --- http://www.fotor.com/features/collage.html 

Making a collage used to be labor intensive. First the artist needed to print pictures or cut them out from magazines. Then there was the process of scissors and glue. Mistakes were often made that could not be fixed. Those days are long gone, and in their place we have Fotor's Collage Maker, which makes collaging fun, easy, and glue-free. Click "get started" on the site to begin. From there, the program shows you how to drag and drop your photos onto the working space. Borders can be shifted, different templates can be used, and color and texture can be adjusted at will. Best of all, the entire process is simple to learn and completely free.


Remember the Milk --- https://www.rememberthemilk.com 

For readers who are looking for a basic to-do app, Remember the Milk can help by breaking tasks down into smaller parts. For those who don't need the bells and whistles of more complex professional apps, it hits the sweet spot between functionality and simplicity of use. Sign up is free, and requires nothing more than an email address. From there, use the template to add tasks, enter their due date, assess their level of priority, put them on repeat when necessary, and tag them, among other tricks and tips. Then the app will remind you of what you need to be doing, wherever you are, whenever the time is right. The app also includes a subtasks category, which breaks larger tasks down into smaller, more manageable pieces, so that you can make headway on even the largest projects.


Looking Back on the History of Social Media as Twitter Adjusts its 140
Character Limit
Twitter's 140 Character Limit _ Time to Ditch It?
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/05/17/technology/ap-us-tec-twitter-character-limits.html

Twitter 'to stop counting photos and links in character limit'
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36305921

Two-Hit Wonder
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/21/two-hit-wonder

Timeline of Instagram from 2010 to Present [INFOGRAPHIC]
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/timeline-instagram-2010-present-infographic

The History of Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]
http://mashable.com/2011/01/24/the-history-of-social-media-infographic/#8m6FeUD3hkqH

Social Media: Did It Really Start With Facebook?
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/social-media-did-it-really-start-with-facebook-geek-history-lesson/


Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and Learning Centers


Education Tutorials

NEA: The 10 Best STEM Resources --- http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/stem-resources.html

The Concord Consortium: Bridges (STEM bridges for college preparation) --- https://concord.org/stem-resources/bridges

About Bioscience --- http://www.aboutbioscience.org/

YouTube: Veritasium (facts in science) --- https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

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

 


Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

String Field Theory --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_field_theory
String field theory could be the key to solving the greatest mystery in physics – explained in under 60 seconds ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-carroll-explains-string-theory-in-60-seconds-2016-5

About Bioscience --- http://www.aboutbioscience.org/

NEA: The 10 Best STEM Resources --- http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/stem-resources.html

The Concord Consortium: Bridges (STEM bridges for college preparation) --- https://concord.org/stem-resources/bridges

DNA --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

The DNA Files --- http://www.dnafiles.org/

DNA Barcoding 101 --- http://www.dnabarcoding101.org/

The Plan to Rescue Hawaii’s Birds with Genetic Engineering ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601383/the-plan-to-rescue-hawaiis-birds-with-genetic-engineering/#/set/id/601436/

American Birding Association --- http://aba.org

Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems Program (Smithsonian) --- http://naturalhistory.si.edu/ETE

YouTube: Veritasium (facts in science) --- https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium

APA: Education and Psychology --- http://www.apa.org/education

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

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


Social Science and Economics Tutorials

APA: Education and Psychology --- http://www.apa.org/education

Atlas of Emotions --- http://atlasofemotions.com

The World Bank: Annual Report 2015 --- http://www.worldbank.org/en/about/annual-report

Advances in Visualization
Mapping for Results: The World Bank --- http://maps.worldbank.org

USA First Amendment --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
First Amendment Center http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org

Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment --- http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/lesson-plan-reviews/23943

An Invitation to Dance: A History of Social Dance in America --- http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Dance

Pew Research Center: Israel's Religiously Divided Society --- http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Abhidharma (historical Buddah) --- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abhidharma/

Frontloading HQ (USA politics and elections) --- http://frontloading.blogspot.com/

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

Rebuilding Haiti --- http://apps.rue89.com/haiti/en/

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

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


Law and Legal Studies

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


Math and Statistics Tutorials

Khan Academy: Right triangles and trigonometry --- https://www.khanacademy.org/math/geometry/right-triangles-topic

PredictWise (politics and sports) --- http://predictwise.com

Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog --- http://fivethirtyeight.com/

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

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


History Tutorials

Awful Library Books --- http://awfullibrarybooks.net

An Invitation to Dance: A History of Social Dance in America --- http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Dance

Google Cultural Institute: Albertina (art history) --- https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/albertina-vienna

The World Bank: Annual Report 2015 --- http://www.worldbank.org/en/about/annual-report

George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum --- http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/

2015: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics --- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/us/year-in-interactive-storytelling.html?_r=0

Pew Research Center: Israel's Religiously Divided Society --- http://www.pewforum.org/2016/03/08/israels-religiously-divided-society/

Found Poetry: Retelling History through Poetry --- http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/poetry

USA First Amendment --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
First Amendment Center http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org

Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment --- http://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/lesson-plan-reviews/23943

Reno Historical --- http://renohistorical.org/

Rebuilding Haiti --- http://apps.rue89.com/haiti/en/

Baylor Institute for Oral History (philosophy, religion, Baptist Church, Texas history) --- http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/buioh

Texas --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas

The Portal to Texas History --- http://texashistory.unt.edu/

Texas State Library and Archives Commission --- https://www.tsl.texas.gov/arc

Dallas Museum of Art: Texas Art --- http://www.dma.org/art/texas-art

Abilene Public Library Centennial Series: Oral History Transcripts --- http://wtda.alc.org/handle/123456789/8

The Painted Churches of Texas --- http://www.klru.org/paintedchurches/history_czechs.html

Historic Houston Photographs --- http://digital.lib.uh.edu/cdm4/about_collection.php?CISOROOT=/p15195coll2

Houston Area Digital Archives --- http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/cdm/

Houston Area Digital Archives --- http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/maps

The Signal: Digital Preservation (digital historical preservation technology) ---  http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/

Texas Public Interest Research Group --- http://www.texpirg.org/

Casasola Studio Photo Database (history of El Paso) --- http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/casasola/

 

Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  

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


Language Tutorials

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


Music Tutorials

An Invitation to Dance: A History of Social Dance in America --- http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Dance

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra: Podcasts --- http://www.laco.org/podcasts

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

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


Writing Tutorials

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



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

CDC Blogs --- http://blogs.cdc.gov/

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

May 11, 2016

May 13, 2016

May 16, 2016

 

FFDA: Stronger Warnings for Class of Antibiotics

More Kids Accidentally Poisoned by Essential Oils

Booze, High Blood Pressure a Dangerous Mix

How to Manage Your Tot's Screen Time

 Inactive Women and Higher Cervical Cancer Risk

5 Warning Signs of Stroke

Puerto Rico Reports First Zika-Linked Birth Defect

Early Breast Cancer and Alternative Medicine

Is Ovary Removal Tied to Colon Cancer Risk?
Severe Childhood Asthma Linked to COPD Risk Later

May 19, 2016

May 20, 2016

  • Precision' Cancer Treatment May Extend Lives
  • FDA Approves New Drug to Treat Bladder Cancer
  • Melanoma Drug Boosting Survival for Many
  • 25M Will Struggle With Vision Problems by 2050
  • This After Mini-Stroke May Drop Major Stroke Risk
  • Public Pools, Hot Tubs Closed for Dirty Water: CDC
  • Breast Milk May Have Helped Spread Ebola in Africa
  • Many Smokers Have COPD Symptoms, Without Diagnosis
  • High HIV Rates for Gay Men in Some Southern Cities
  • Drug May Help Kids With Sickle Cell Breathe Easier
  • May 21, 2016

    May 23, 2016

    May 24, 2016

    May 25, 2016

     

     


    Scott McLemee reviews a new book by Christina Crosby, who discusses the reality of her life after a horrific accident with a candor that must be experienced to be believed ---
    https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/05/11/review-christina-crosby-body-undone-living-after-great-pain-memoir?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=bc70753926-DNU20160511&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-bc70753926-197565045

    Erika will have spine surgery Number 16 on May 13, 2016 at Dartmouth's Medical Center. The above article was especially scary to read two days before May 13, which also happens to be Friday 13. This time an electric pain stimulator will be installed in Erika's lower back in between the four rods. I will not be tending to my email mailbox for about a week or so.

    Erika is not paralyzed and has the courage to have elective surgery that could leave her paralyzed. I don't think I have that kind of courage.


    Here are pictures of our fond memories of 24 years in Texas ---
    www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/TexasMemories\Set01\Set01.htm


    The Case Against Artificial Sweeteners is Getting Stronger ---
    http://time.com/4323328/aspartame-artificial-sweeteners-sugar/?xid=newsletter-brief


    "When Doctors Stop ‘Seeing’ Patients," by Abraham M. Nussbaum, The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2016 ---
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-doctors-stop-seeing-patients-1462738682?mod=djemMER

    Physicians aptly speak of “seeing” patients. After all, medical training is a series of vision lessons. Students look closely at a nameless cadaver and disassemble it until it resembles the pictures in an anatomy text. They watch lectures in which interrelated organ systems are displayed as simple machines.

    Often, however, doctors’ vision narrows too far. We begin to see the body as a collection of parts and lose sight of the person before us. Early in my medical training, this way of seeing began intruding on the rest of my life. During movies I imagined the best surgical approach for the actress. I saw friends’ physical imperfections as signs of syndromes.

    So I took a leave of absence from med school to study history, literature and theology. The humanities taught me that the questions I was wrestling with are foundational to the history of medicine. In Platonic medicine, a physician sought to diagnose disease as a concrete fact. Hippocrates, who lived around 400 B.C., reoriented doctors toward seeking to understand the beneficial and deleterious forces in a patient’s life and then helping rebalance them in favor of health.

    For the past two centuries, physicians have been counseled to pursue something akin to Platonic medicine, to act like scientists. Remarkable technologies—antibiotics, anesthesia, antisepsis—resulted. But physicians also shifted away from the Hippocratic pursuit of understanding patients. Today’s clinics are often alienating, as when a physician spends a checkup gazing into a computer screen. Half of doctors report feeling burned out, and a majority would advise against a medical career.

    Physicians are trained to speak in numbers: prevalence rates, survival odds and remission statistics. They talk to administrators about days of uncompensated care and billing variances. But numbers are, as the historian of science Theodore Porter says, “a technology of distance.” They require us to abstract and standardize. The patient becomes a case report, a billing code, a quality metric.

    I wonder about renewing medicine through the kind of vision lessons I received when I took a break from med school. Sustained encounters with the humanities would be beneficial. So would recommitting to the Hippocratic ideal of seeking understanding of each particular patient.

    Continued in article

    So you want to have a baby. Why leave anything -- gender, intelligence, personality, propensity for disease -- to chance? Welcome to the future of sex-free reproduction
    Is This the End of Sex? --- http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2016/05/end-sex 

    A baby grown from a flake of skin or from the genes of three parents – the future of reproduction is mind-boggling

    Continued in article

    Jensen Comment
    Since the writings of Darwin we've known that evolution is the process of adaptation which, according to Darwin, leads to survival of the fittest. One of the concerns with cloning is that it will halt adaptation. But by the time this is a genuine problem we will be building robots that do the adaptation for us.

     




    Humor May 1-11, 2015

    Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Football Match: The Epic Showdown Between the Greeks & Germans (1972) ---
    http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/monty-pythons-philosophers-football-match-greeks-v-germans-1972.html


    Forwarded by Paula

    WHOREHOUSE SUES LOCAL CHURCH OVER LIGHTNING STRIKE!

    What an interesting turn of events in Pahrump, Nevada...

    Diamond D's brothel began construction on an expansion of their building to increase their ever-growing business.

    In response, the local Baptist Church started a campaign to block the business from expanding -- with morning, afternoon, and evening prayer sessions at their church.

    Work on Diamond D's progressed right up until the week before the grand re-opening when lightning struck the whorehouse and burned it to the ground!

    After the brothel burned to the ground by the lightning strike, the church folks were rather smug in their outlook, bragging about "the power of prayer."

    But late last week 'Big Jugs' Jill Diamond, the owner/madam, sued the church, the preacher and the entire congregation on the grounds that the church ... "was ultimately responsible for the demise of her building and her business -- either through direct or indirect divine actions or means."

    In its reply to the court, the church vehemently and vociferously denied any and all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise.

    The crusty old judge read through the plaintiff's complaint and the defendant's reply, and at the opening hearing he commented, "I don't know how the hell I'm going to decide this case, but it appears from the paperwork, that we now have a whorehouse owner who staunchly believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that thinks it's all bullshit."




    Humor February  2016 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q1.htm#Humor022916.htm

    Humor January  2016 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q1.htm#Humor013116.htm

    Humor December 1-31,  2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q4.htm#Humor123115.htm.htm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
    Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

    Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
    Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting educators.
    Any college may post a news item.

    Accounting  and Taxation News Sites ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

     

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

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

     

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

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

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

    I found another listserve that is exceptional -

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

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

    Scott

    Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

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

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

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

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

    Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

    If any questions let me know.

    Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
    Hemet, CA
    Moderator TaxTalk

     

     

     

     

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

     

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

    Some Accounting History Sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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