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 July 14, 2016
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Set 3 of My Favorite Animal Pictures
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Animals/Set03/Set03.htm
 

 

Tidbits on June 14, 2016
Scroll Down This Page

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
 

Warning to Some USA Academics:  This is a Patriotism Video ---
KUDOS to Gary Sinise!
Https://www.youtube.com/embed/l3P15s4zWNQ

God Bless America --- https://www.youtube.com/embed/daqwGRdRIsk?feature=player_detailpage

2016 Olympic Trials: Simone Biles' Floor Routine ---
https://www.facebook.com/nbcolympics/videos/10154775019040329/

32 Animated Videos by Wireless Philosophy Teach You the Essentials of Critical Thinking ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/wireless-philosophy-critical-thinking.html

World Record Eagle Flight From World's Tallest Building ---
http://www.flixxy.com/world-record-eagle-flight-from-worlds-tallest-building.htm?utm_source=nl

These cool dancing animations are modelled on real people ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/dancing-animations-avatars-real-people-motion-capture-2016-7

EUscreen (European History in Video) --- http://euscreen.eu

Museum of the Moving Image: Silent Film Era --- http://collection.movingimage.us/silent_film_era.php

Carry the One Radio (interviews with scientists) --- http://www.carrytheoneradio.com

How Did Hannibal Cross the Alps?: A Short Course from Stanford on the Ancient Mystery ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/how-did-hannibal-cross-the-alps-a-short-course-on-the-ancient-mystery.html


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 

Wynton Marsalis Takes Louis Armstrong’s Trumpet Out of the Museum & Plays It Again ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/wynton-marsalis-takes-louis-armstrongs-trumpet-out-of-the-museum-plays-it-again.html

Top 40 Philosophy (music) --- http://www.top40philosophy.com

These cool dancing animations are modeled on real people ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/dancing-animations-avatars-real-people-motion-capture-2016-7

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

The stunning work that got an amateur crowned Nat Geo’s travel photographer of the year ---
http://qz.com/722318/stunning-photo-of-mongolian-horseman-wins-hong-kong-photographer-nat-geo-award-of-the-year/

Pearls of Wisdom: The Arts of Islam at the University of Michigan --- http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/kelsey/pearls/index.html

The Story of the Beautiful: The Peacock Room --- http://peacockroom.wayne.edu

This is what ISIS' longest-held city looks like after years of occupation ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/fallujah-after-isis-2016-7

An Eye-Popping Collection of 400+ Japanese Matchbox Covers: From 1920 through the 1940s ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/an-eye-popping-collection-of-400-japanese-matchbox-covers.html

Visualizing Isaiah (religion) ---  http://www.imj.org.il/isaiah

Visualizing 19th-Century New York --- http://visualizingnyc.org

22 of the most beautiful pictures of the world ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/beautiful-photos-of-world-from-instagram-2016-6

Time Magazine:  Drone Photographs ---
http://time.com/4402695/best-drone-photos-2016/?xid=newsletter-brief

Time Magazine:  The Best iPhone Photos of 2016 ---
http://time.com/4393576/iphone-photo-awards-2016/?xid=newsletter-brief

National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year ---
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/gallery/2016/jul/01/national-geographic-travel-photographer-of-the-year-pictures

Old Rotten Tree Trunk --- http://www.davidwolfe.com/it-looks-like-an-old-rotten-tree-trunk-from-here-but-up-close-it-is-something-epic/

Olivia de Havilland at 100: See Classic Photos of the Star ---
http://time.com/4375422/olivia-de-havilland-photos-100/?xid=newsletter-brief
Jensen Comment
On a very hot Fourth of July we stayed in a B&B in Boerne, Texas that was at one time her ranch. She and her famous sister Joan Fontaine were not on speaking terms ,much of their lives.

Destination Indiana --- http://www.destination-indiana.com

National Archives: Ansel Adams Photographs: Records of the National Park Service ---
http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv_TVXxWe_A

The Creative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Documentary ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/the_creative_process_of_ansel_adams_revealed_in_1958_documentary.html

The Creative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Documentary ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/the_creative_process_of_ansel_adams_revealed_in_1958_documentary.html

Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea - at the National Maritime Museum, London until 28 April 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20304829
Thank you Roger Collins for the heads up

From the Scout Report on July 1, 2016

Exhibiting the Singular and Spectacular Hieronymus Bosch, 500 Years
After His Death
Hieronymus Bosch Died 500 Years Ago, But His Art Will Still Creep You Out
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/26/483225865/hieronymus-bosch-died-500-years-ago-but-his-art-will-still-creep-you-out

Hieronymus Bosch's Five-Hundredth-Anniversary Homecoming
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/hieronymus-boschs-five-hundredth-anniversary-homecoming

The Impious Delights of Hieronymus Bosch
https://newrepublic.com/article/132024/impious-delights-hieronymus-bosch

Bosch. The 5th Centenary Exhibition
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/exhibition/bosch-the-centenary-exhibition/f049c260-888a-4ff1-8911-b320f587324a?searchMeta=bosch

Jheronimus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights
https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en

Bosch Research and Conservation Project
http://boschproject.org

 

20 Tourist Attractions Worth the Money (and 5 That Aren’t) ---
http://time.com/money/4386356/summer-tourist-attractions-worth-money/?xid=newsletter-brief
Jensen Comment
Although I do like the San Antonio River Walk as a tourist center in some seasons, I think The Alamo Historic Site is disappointing as a tourist site. To make matters worse there's a lot of traffic in downtown San Antonio and parking can be difficult. The River Walk is best at night with all the colored lights. It's also a pretty good run or walk for exercise in the early morning.
It's difficult to compare tourist centers because different things attract different tourists. Disneyworld is a no-brainer for the young and old, but it's very expensive and very crowded. The USA National Parks are scenic but in my opinion they're too crowded. Washington DC has the most to offer for history buffs, but hotels are very expensive within walking distance of the major attractions. NYC has many things for many types of tourists, but everything is expensive in NYC. NYC is also very crowded. Hikers and climbers are the easiest to please. Beaches are hot and boring except for the bikinis. The Canadian Pacific Railroad is on my bucket list with stopovers in some of the old luxury CP hotels. As you get older in retirement there's no place like home.

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

Belfast Group Poetry: Networks --- http://belfastgroup.digitalscholarship.emory.edu

A Bloomsday Remembrance of James Joyce --- http://daily.jstor.org/bloomsday-remembrance-of-james-joyce/

James Joyce Centre --- http://jamesjoyce.ie 

ABC Books (alphabet books) --- https://etc.princeton.edu/abcbooks

Letters of Note --- http://lettersofnote.com

Shelf Awareness (books and libraries) --- http://shelf-awareness.com

Montague Rhoades James: A Thin Ghost (ghost stories) --- http://www.thin-ghost.org

The Steamy Love Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (1925-1929) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/the-steamy-love-letters-of-virginia-woolf-and-vita-sackville-west-1925-1929.html

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 July 14, 2016
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2016/TidbitsQuotations071416.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://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

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




Spread the Word
Fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service ring up college students and demand payment for something they call the “Federal Student Tax.” It’s a variation on a common scam that tries to convince victims that they’re in trouble with the government.
IRS Phone Scam Threatens Students ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/irs-a-new-phone-scam-threatens-college-students/2016/07/06/0ff6fb7a-4380-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html

Bob Jensen's Threads on Scams ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm


The Brexit Vote Was Advisory Only and Can Be Undone by Invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty
Article 50 TEU: Withdrawalofa Member State from the EU ---
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/577971/EPRS_BRI%282016%29577971_EN.pdf


The 10 Most Popular MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in July ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/the-10-most-popular-moocs-massive-open-online-courses-getting-started-in-july.html

The best free online business courses starting in July ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-free-online-business-courses-starting-in-july-2016-7
The courses are free but transcript credits for taking them are not free

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)--- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

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

Bob Jensen's threads on free online courses from prestigious universities---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


Learning & the Brain blog --- http://learningandthebrain.com/blog 

Bob Jensen's threads on blogs, listservs, and the social media ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Listservroles.htm

Classic Bridge Riddle (not contract bridge in cards) ---
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/can-you-solve-the-bridge-riddle-alex-gendler
Video --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yDmGnA8Hw0


Critical Thinking --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

32 Animated Videos by Wireless Philosophy Teach You the Essentials of Critical Thinking ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/wireless-philosophy-critical-thinking.html

Bob Jensen's threads on critical thinking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge


Executive Compensation at Private and Public Colleges ---
http://chronicle.com/interactives/executive-compensation?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=866ca3b4b77e4ffa88ee05a4b94baf0b&elq=9132efa809fe409db5791e2f335e8fe2&elqaid=9863&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3617#id=table_public_2015


Texas professor claims concealed carry will force her to give A’s or get shot
http://www.thecoachsteam.com/2016/07/texas-professor-claims-concealed-carry.html
Jensen Question
With the median grade in the USA being A- giving all A grades won't matter much
This merely eliminates the need to give examinations or assign term papers
Just show her any kind of bulge under an armpit to get an A


Drum Roll
What Every Business School Graduate Should Know

Mary Bara, CEO of General Motors
Click Here


Nine Low-Cost Ideas from College Students (Number seven is bookkeeping)
http://www.businessinsider.com/9-low-cost-business-ideas-for-college-students-2016-7

Jensen Comment
Some of these are questionable. In some parts of the world like Texas, California, and Florida the first three student ideas will encounter stiff price competition from undocumented workers who mostly already have a monopoly on those services.

Bookkeeping is done by computer apps these days and there might be some market for students good at running these apps. The problem is that most customers want a longer-term commitment and do not like to change bookkeepers every time a good bookkeeper graduates and moves onward and upward. It might be good experience for a student who, as an expected future stay-at-home parent, wants to earn added money working at home with small children running about. This can often be extended to a small tax return preparation practice and even tax/financial consulting.

Tutoring is a good idea, but there is growing competition from online services and computer apps that are getting cheaper and cheaper and better and better. Think wonderful and free online Khan Academy.

A widow down the road from our cottage has been a jewelry maker for decades. She says profits are down due to changing priorities of customers regarding spending on jewelry versus such other newer types of products like tech gadgets. She tells me making money making jewelry profits for her entails having to travel following the jewelry and craft shows. She pulls a small trailer to keep travel expenses down.

I think a somewhat better idea is lawn service that the bigger outfits prefer to avoid like pulling weeds by hand. Lawn services providers prefer riding on equipment and blowing debris with powerful blowers, but these workers seldom like the chore getting down on their knees to pull weeds and edge by hand.

Another service that falls somewhat under house cleaning is window washing, and this service is not restricted to residential houses. Of course college students are not likely to land jobs requiring scaffolding, but there are a lot windows these days that can be cleaned inside and out from the inside. Our new bedroom windows flip like to a horizontal position. For most of the cottage, however, we hire a professional window washing service that does a great job and keeps me off ladders.

When you think of the explosion of baby boomers retiring you can imagine the growth of eldercare services such as my wife wanting  woman to come in now and then to help her with bathing and hair care. The problem for students doing this is that I think such home care services now requires licensing in many parts of the USA. I think child care runs into the same issues of licensing plus the cost of insurance.


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

Take a broad look at current trends ---
http://www.educause.edu/research-and-publications

EDUCAUSE publications explore current issues, emerging trends, and the management of information technology, as well as how IT affects institutions, higher education and society.

EDUCAUSE Review—Award-winning magazine for the higher education IT community


eBooks—Thought leadership on the impact of information technology in higher education


Multimedia—Conversations with community experts on effective practices


7 Things You Should Know About—Essential information on emerging technologies and practices


Students at Michigan State University will no longer have to take college-level algebra, thanks to a revision of the general-education math requirement ---
"Algebra No More," Inside Higher Ed, July 6, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/06/michigan-state-drops-college-algebra-requirement?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d5cb16d025-DNU20160706&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d5cb16d025-197565045

Jensen Questions
Will college-level algebra requirements fall like dominos in the common core requirements of higher education?
Wayne State University dropped algebra and is considering replacing it with a diversity course.
Michigan State will still have a math requirement that does not have formulas and equations..

What the universities dropping algebra are not revealing, at least to my knowledge. of whether they are still requiring remedial math and algebra for students deemed exceptionally weak in middle-school algebra on SAT/ACT admission tests. My guess is no since the dropping of algebra seems to be an effort to make it easier for those students to graduate.there will be no remedial algebra.

In terms of math requirements for GRE, GMAT, MCAT, and other graduate school admissions requirements undergraduates will now fall into two classifications. The math dummies who graduate versus the the graduates required to take math and algebra and statistics in their majors like engineering students, science students, and business students. Humanities majors who might want to go to graduate school are are advised to take college-level algebra as an elective course, especially if they had lousy SAT/ACT scores in high school.

Maybe SAT and ACT exam preparers will yield to pressures and drop algebra from college admissions tests.

It all sounds like dumbing down to me to make up for the lousy high schools in the USA relative to those in Asia and Europe. But in Asia and Europe less than half the Tier 2 graduates are even allowed to go to college.

July 6, 2016 reply from Jagdish

I think this debasement of curriculum is deplorable, and in my opinion is the equivalent of affirmative action for the math challenged. Unfortunately these educational experiments will ruin millions of lives. I refuse to believe that one should graduate from college with no algebra and no calculus.

If use of something determines what must be taught in college, then why not get rid of English requirements in colleges? Isn't high school English sufficient for most people? The simple fact is that most people detest anything that requires discipline and flexing the brain muscle. And tragically, the educationists are more than willing to oblige. Unfortunately, in the long run they also will ensure that we do not have an informed citizenry.

Regards,

Jagdish

Jagdish S. Gangolly Department of Information Science College Engineering & Applied Sciences State University of New York at Albany 1400 Washington Ave Albany, NY 12222

 

 


Chronicle of Higher Education:  Selected List of "Juicy" Academic Novels ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Novels-for-Real/236981?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=b705e106bef6476fadd9b79b255d721a&elq=96bb18dee51c40c0a82dd15d75d73b32&elqaid=9713&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3473

Bob Jensen's neglected threads on accounting novels and plays (frequently focused on frauds) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNovels.htm


"Amazon’s Quiet Dominance of Higher-Ed Learning Platforms," by Phil Hill, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 1, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Amazon-s-Quiet-Dominance-of/236991?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=08238386e4fb47ca9bd1d9242c81d9eb&elq=34901e53567741fba0eb6cf30a8b9516&elqaid=9714&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3474

At the International Society for Technology in Education conference in Denver this week — attended by more than 15,000 K-12 teachers, school officials, vendors, and reporters — the biggest news was Amazon’s release of Inspire. This platform looks like the Amazon consumer shopping site, but it is targeted at helping teachers find, organize, and share freely available course materials. While the system could easily be adopted for higher-education usage, the default content organization is built on K-12 grade levels. There is an area, however, where Amazon has already come to dominate the educational technology market for colleges and universities.

In the past five years or so, more and more software that colleges use for online teaching and classroom management has moved to "the cloud," meaning it is run from some far-off data center via the web rather than from servers controlled by a college. And these days most of those cloud systems are hosted by Amazon, through its Amazon Web Services, or AWS.

How did this sea change occur, and what are the implications for faculty and staff?

Cloud-based learning platforms are not new, but as recently as 10 years ago they were the exception. The norm for a learning-management system in higher education was for the institution to run the application in its own data center. In fact, colleges initially pushed back against the cloud trend, insisting that academic data never leave the campus for privacy reasons (Ferpa in particular) and for the concern about big tech companies using personal data in ways the colleges could not control.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


The Innovative Instructor (higher education innovation from Johns Hopkins University) ---  http://ii.library.jhu.edu

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


Our World in Data (many graphics and links to databases) --- https://ourworldindata.org

Bob Jensen's links to economic and social statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics


Eight  books that America's most prestigious private (high) schools love to assign for summer reading ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-are-students-reading-this-summer-2016-7

Jensen Comment
Maybe I'm too out of touch with modern times, but these are not even on my Top 50 books young people need to read.

It seems that the teachers assigning these books are not being very current with newer books coming out
Here are my possible Top 8 books for young people.


Reason Versus Statistical Analysis

MIT Facebook ---
https://www.facebook.com/technologyreview/?utm_source=MIT+TR+Newsletters&utm_campaign=c8a8af1ccd-The_Download_July_07_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-c8a8af1ccd-153727301&goal=0_997ed6f472-c8a8af1ccd-153727301&mc_cid=c8a8af1ccd&mc_eid=fe7f400ea3

Tesla’s Dubious Autopilot Safety Numbers
Since news broke about the first fatal crash of a Tesla using its autonomous Autopilot system, the car manufacturer has been providing numbers to defend itself. The system, it says, has driven people over 130 million miles, more than the 94 million on average between fatalities on U.S. roads. Elon Musk has asserted that "of the over 1 million auto deaths per year worldwide, approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available." But those comparisons are questionable, according to experts. Autopilot only drives on highways, so it can’t be directly compared with U.S.-wide statistics. And Tesla’s cars are bigger and safer than many on the road, so you’d expect fewer fatalities. A recent report suggested that automated cars may have to drive hundreds of billions of miles before their performance can be fairly compared with statistics from human drivers. Tesla seems to disagree.

Jensen Comment
I think MIT is being a bit misleading here. Sometimes reasoning makes more sense than statistical analysis.

Statistical outcomes, even from very large databases, can be misleading. In Tesla's case the outcome might be misleading unless geography is taken into account. Electric cars are more apt to be used for urban commutes in large cities than out in the boondocks like where I live. Rush hour on Interstate 93 near where I live entails seeing three three other cars on my drive to Littleton, NH. Naturally there are going to be more accidents on commutes with electric cars because those commutes are mostly taking place in congested traffic.

It makes sense that, if "autopilot" is used on any car according to instructions and warnings, it doesn't take steering and braking away from a human driver. Hence autopilot only adds to safety except in one instance --- neglect of instructions. It is probably easier to lose concentration when the autopilot is doing the driving. But in the future there will be new technologies for maintaining concentration and alertness.

Beware of statistical inference with data over "billions of miles." Time and time again statistics professors warn students that with large samples insignificant differences are declared statistically significant such as when 831,261 consumers prefer bran flakes versus 831,258 consumers who prefer corn flakes.

In the future autopilot hardware and software will be improved such as automatic braking with approaching collisions much like there is now technology for diverting airliners that are in danger of colliding. Of course no technology is fool proof when optimal braking will not totally prevent some collisions on the road such as when a deer leaps out of nowhere in front of a fast-moving car.

Six "Fascinating Things" Noted by MIT on Facebook

01. Setting up a cellular network is an expensive business. So Facebook has created an open source platform—hardware, software, and all—to help improve connectivity in remote areas of the world.

02. Are facial recognition systems accurate? Sadly, because of the data that’s used to train artificial intelligence, the answer seems to depend on your race
.

03. Kurt Vonnegut famously described the shapes of narratives using graphs. Now computer scientists have used sentiment analysis to analyze the emotional arcs of over 1,700 stories—and the results are surprisingly familiar.

04. Snapchat is best known for its self-destructive photo sharing, but its latest party trick actually allows users to save memories instead.

05. With Britain leaving the EU and Donald Trump’s provocative foreign policy a potential presidential reality, the world’s political situation is changing. Nick Bilton wonders whether we might be on the brink of a technological world war.

06. A new microfluidic device passes grape juice through its channels, exposing it to yeast via a series of nanopores along the way. The result: a constant, if modest, stream of wine.


"Manipulated Journal Rankings?" by Jerry A. Jacobs, Inside Higher Ed, July 1, 2016 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/07/01/examination-whether-academic-journal-rankings-are-being-manipulated-essay?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=e7c759e754-WNU20160701&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-e7c759e754-197565045

Are editors manipulating citation scores in order to inflate the status of their publications? Are they corrupting the rankings of scholarly journals?

While any allegations about cheating or other academic chicanery are cause for concern, journal rankings to date continue to offer one rough but useful source of information to a wide variety of audiences.

Journal rankings help authors to answer the omnipresent question “Where to publish?” Tenure review committees also use rankings as evidence for visibility, recognition and even quality in the academic review process, especially for junior candidates. For them, journal ranking becomes a proxy when other, more direct measures of recognition and quality are not available. Given that many candidates for tenure have recent publications, journal rankings become a surrogate measure for the eventual visibility of that research.

Yet it is easy to rely unduly on quantitative rating scores. The trouble arises when journal rankings becomes a stand-in for the quality of the research. In many fields, research quality is a multifaceted concept that is not reducible to a single quantitative metric. For example, imposing a single rule -- for example, that top-quartile journals count as “high-quality” journals while others do not -- assigns more weight to journal rankings than they deserve and generates the temptation to inflate journals’ scores.

In an editorial in the journal Research Policy, editor Ben R. Martin voiced his concern that the manipulation of journal impact factors undermines the validity of Thompson/Reuters Journal Citation Reports (JCR). He concludes that “… in light of the ever more devious ruses of editors, the JIF [journal impact factor] indicator has lost most of its credibility.” A journal’s impact factor represents the average number of citations per article. The standard, one-year impact factor is calculated by summing up citations to articles published in a journal within the last year, divided by the number of articles published.

Continued in article

One way journals manipulate their rankings and reputations is to actively organize in ways such that their authors are nominated for awards

Bob Jensen's Recommendations for Change on the American Accounting Association's
Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award

http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryNotable.htm

March 28, 2016 reply from Paul Williams

Bob, Hurray for you!! The AAA is still the last remaining Politburo on earth. Like Russian generals with medal strewn chests, the Notable awards process is truly a farce. The same applies to the Seminal Contribution award; does anyone know how that process works? It mustn't work very well because if we are to believe in the wisdom of the process nothing of any worth was written before 1968. The two Notable exceptions were the result of selection committees that were put together by the AAA to create the appearance that it was taking diversity seriously. For the Notable Contribution why do we need a Nominating Committee and a Selection Committee? Because the nominating committee is a way to let the peons participate but deny them any power to actually decide what is or is not noteworthy (as if within a five year period that is possible). Here is a study for someone to do. Two awards, the Horizons and Issues best papers, are by a vote of the membership. All of the others are by a committee whose members are selected, I assume, by the "Board. My sense is that there is a dramatic contrast between who wins by vote and who wins by committee. Tony Tinker and Tony Puxty published a book a number of years ago titled Policing Accounting Knowledge, which documents with actual cases of how the review and awards process at AAA worked in the past. Until the bylaws are changed to allow a more democratic selection of directors of research and publication nothing is going to happen. In former AAA president Gregory Waymire's white paper "Seeds of Innovation" he made the following assessment of the status of the U.S. academy's premier research: "As a result, I believe our discipline is evolving towards irrelevance within the academy and the broader society with the ultimate result being intellectual irrelevance and eventually extinction." That assessment is spot on, but when a leader of the academy apparently is powerless to alter the course, it indicates how firmly entrenched and institutionalized the intellectual mindset of the AAA is. Until it takes the view that the purpose of research and writing is not to garner politically correct academic reputations but to address serious and interesting questions then we will become extinct and no one will even notice. Our plenary speaker the last time our meeting was in Anaheim was Diedre McCloskey whose message was the message that Bob has been harping on for years -- the mindlessness of regressions and obsession with p values. Did it have any effect? Just look at the content of our so-called U.S. based premier journals. One huge linear model after another utilizing data completely ill-suited to the task. Bob: Guess when we get old the Don Quixote in us comes out. I wish you well.

Bob, Addenda to my previous rant. Your point about replication is more significant than some seem to appreciate. No archival study that I know of has ever been literally replicated. Even worse none of those studies can be replicated because the people who did them violate one of the fundamental "ethics" of science. Every laboratory scientist must maintain a log book which describes in great detail how the result of a particular experiment was produced, i.e., a complete recipe that permits an independent scientist to actually replicate the study in its entirety to simply validate the knowledge claim being made by the scientist. Without that capacity, the claim being made is merely an anecdote (think of the Jim Hunton affair). It should be sobering to an academy to realize that the corpus of its knowledge is simply a collection of anecdotes. "Anecdotal evidence"-- the ultimate put-down, yet most of our evidence is little more than anecdotes.

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm


Time Magazine:  The 25 Weirdest Gadgets of All Time ---
http://time.com/4387701/weirdest-gadgets-ever/?xid=newsletter-brief


US Rep. Corrine Brown indicted after fraud investigation ---
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-rep-corrine-brown-indicted-fraud-investigation-151201102.html?nhp=1

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida and her chief of staff pleaded not guilty Friday to multiple fraud charges and other federal offenses in a grand jury indictment unsealed after an investigation into what prosecutors call a phony charity turned into a personal slush fund.

Brown, a 69-year-old Democrat, and Chief of Staff Elias "Ronnie" Simmons, 50, entered pleas in Jacksonville federal court on charges of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, obstruction and filing of false tax returns.

She has represented a Jacksonville-based congressional district since 1993 — one of the first three African-Americans elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction

Continued in article

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


When the Coaches Pass the Courses Instead of College Players
Georgia Southern U. Staff Members Helped Athletes Cheat, NCAA Rules ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/georgia-southern-u-staff-members-helped-athletes-cheat-ncaa-rules/112712?elqTrackId=a1026a29777340c083601d5162be9744&elq=7378f786eb3748d5a44644b992d1716e&elqaid=9769&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3508

Former U. of Southern Mississippi Coach Directed Cheating Ring, NCAA Says ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/former-u-of-southern-mississippi-coach-directed-cheating-ring-ncaa-says/110171?elqTrackId=9d30a63574cb44dc94a698eac5a736a6&elq=ecde872b4ec84565b7b560ec97cde1ff&elqaid=8605&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2882

"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

Jensen Comment
For many schools the cheating is more likely to be prevalent in basketball and baseball. One problem is that both basketball and baseball players have five times or more out-of-town games in a season that keeping up with academics on campus is nearly impossible relative to less travel for football players.

What NCAA Division 1 university has never been caught up in an academic cheating scandal? I can't name one university. Most have been caught multiple times, and the ones that got caught are probably the tip of the iceberg.

What is really sad is how common place it is for coaches and alumni to encourage cheating for the sake of winning games.

Many of those Division 1 cheating scandals are documented here ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Athletics


Big Data Analysis Versus Cluster Analysis

Big Data --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data

. . .

Analysis of data sets can find new correlations to "spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on."[2] Scientists, business executives, practitioners of medicine, advertising and governments alike regularly meet difficulties with large data sets in areas including Internet search, finance and business informatics. Scientists encounter limitations in e-Science work, including meteorology, genomics,[3] connectomics, complex physics simulations, biology and environmental research.[

"As Big Data Comes to College, Officials Wrestle to Set New Ethical Norms," by By Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 28, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/As-Big-Data-Comes-to-College/236934?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=21fea4cb4e564b27a086d1b0bac37d20&elq=f0600a68e23f4857bca9ccc0913c2eae&elqaid=9631&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3438

Cluster Analysis --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis

Jensen Comment
In the prime of my research years I devoted many, many hours seeking to improve cluster analysis. I think there is an interesting similarity between Big Data Analysis and Cluster Analysis. That similarity is what is tantamount to stirring the pot of a data set to look for lumps. Traditional empirical research entails forming hypotheses in advance, building testing models (often regression models of some type or time series models), and then testing these models in a database.

Big Data Analysis and Cluster Analysis take a different tack. Instead of forming hypotheses and building testing models in advance, BD and CA analyses stir the pot searching for hypotheses to test. For example, at a conference I listened to a speaker who had a child diagnosed with a rare disease. The doctors though this was one disease. The speaker went around the world and collected all sorts of data on the small number diagnosed with this disease.

The speaker then used cluster analysis on the data he'd collected. What he found is that the patients tended to cluster into three groups. This suggested two hypetheses that might be tested. Hypothesis 1 is that what doctors were calling one disease was really three separate diseases. Hypothesis 2 was that this was one disease with three distinct sub-types.

The begs the question of whether cluster analysis can become a type of Big Data Analysis in the 21st Century.
My opinion is negative. In my research years cluster analysis was never practical for large databases due to computer limitations. Computers have greatly improved but not to a point, in my opinion, where cluster analysis is practical for Big Data. Of course in retirement I've not tracked advances in cluster analysis. But cluster analysis faded from the scene largely due to computing nightmares.

Here are some of Bob Jensen's earlier papers on cluster analysis ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm

"A Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Cluster Analysis," The Journal of Operations Research,
Vol. 17, No. 6, November-December 1969.

"A Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Cluster Analysis," Mathematical Programming in Statistics,
Edited by Arthanari and Dodge, New York, John Wiley & Sons.

"A Cluster Analysis Study of Financial Performance of Selected Business Firms," The Accounting Review,
Vol. XLVI, No. 1, January 1971, 36-56.

"Isotropic Scaling of the Interior Components Inside Joiner Scaler Block Clusterings of Entities (Cases) and Variates (Attributes): An Application to United Nations Voting Records,"
University of Manchester, England
, October 3, 1988.

Seminar on cluster analysis, sponsored by The Institute for Advanced Technology,
January 10 and 11, 1972, New York City.

COMPARISONS OF EIGENVECTOR, LEAST SQUARES, CHI SQUARE, AND LOGARITHMIC LEAST SQUARES
METHODS OF SCALING A RECIPROCAL MATRIX ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/127wp/127wp.htm

Added Jensen Comment
I said I spent many, many hours of time in cluster analysis. including one summer on a research grant at the University of Waterloo in Canada.  Much of this became wasted time looking for more efficient ways to perform cluster analysis on larger databases.
Sigh!


"4 Big Economic Questions Now Facing the EU,' by Fernando Fernandez, Harvard Business Review Blog, June 28, 2016 ---
https://hbr.org/2016/06/4-big-economic-questions-now-facing-the-eu?referral=00209&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-finance-_-finance_date&utm_source=newsletter_finance&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=finance_date


David Pogue Review:  Review: Eero is a pricey but effective fix for Wi-Fi dead spots ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/eero-the-hero-a-pricey-end-to-wi-fi-dead-spots-192537160.html


From David Giles:  Econometrics Readings for July 2016
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2016/07/recommended-reading-for-july.html

Recommended Reading for July

Now that the Canada Day and Independence Day celebrations are behind (some of) us, it's time for some serious reading at the cottage. Here are some suggestions for you:

Farmer, R. E. A., 2015. The stock market crash really did cause the great recession. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 77, 617-633.

Franses, P. H., R. Legerstee, and R. Paap, 2016. Estimating loss functions of experts. Applied Economics, in press.

Hartigan, L., 2016. Alternative HAC covariance matrix estimators with improved finite sample properties. Mimeo., School of Economics, University of New South Wales.

Harvey, D. I. and S. J. Leybourne, 2016. Improving the length of confidence sets for the date of a break in level and trend when the order of integration is unknown. Economics Letters, in press.

Noguchi, K. and F. Marmalejo-Ramos, 2016. Assessing the equality of means using the overlap of range-preserving confidence intervals. American Statistician, in press.

Studer, R. and R. Winkelmann, 2016. Econometric analysis of ratings - With an application to health and wellbeing. SOEP Papers 846.

Jensen Comment
Farmer's paper is very interesting given the zillions of illustrations (often humorous) about how correlation is not causation., Farmer hedges a bit by claiming his is a "plausible causal explanation." Certainly Yates correlation of the number of stork nests in Denmark with Danish birth rates was not a "plausible causal explanation" except for die hards that believe storks really do deliver babies to households.


"How to Fix Psychology’s Replication Crisis," by Brian D. Earp and Jim A.C. Everett, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 25, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Fix-Psychology-s/233857?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=5260de11ef714813a4003f5dc2eede4e&elq=fadcc1747dcb40cb836385262f29afe5&elqaid=9619&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3428

Jensen Comment
Academic accounting research has a worse flaw --- replication in accounting research is a rare event due largely to the fact that leading accounting research journals will not publish reports of replication efforts and outcomes. One thing we can say about hypothesis testing in accounting research is that the first test constitutes TRUTH!
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm 


"The Flaw at the Heart of Psychological Research," the Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, June 26, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Flaw-at-the-Heart-of/236916?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=724bd7450b2a480cb14b37b02d872fcf&elq=fadcc1747dcb40cb836385262f29afe5&elqaid=9619&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3428

Jensen Comment
Academic accounting research has this same flaw plus a boatload of other flaws.
What went wrong?
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
 


"No Cookie Cutting in My Classroom," by Rebecca Eggenschwiler, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 21, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/No-Cookie-Cutting-in-My/236878?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=76f6827232cb4daaa96e2dcf719e14aa&elq=07e77e934e0a4468beb7e04c103514fd&elqaid=9632&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3439 

Jensen Comment,

Much depends upon the objectives for the particular course. Courses vary to the extent that creativity should be allowed and encouraged in in the course. Sometimes creativity wastes time in terms of course objectives. For example, instructors in linear algebra have vary narrow objectives relative to instructors in creative writing. Instructors of tax law really want their students to learn portions of the tax law. Instructors of brain surgery must demand that their students understand the surgical procedures and risks.

Colleges can encourage creativity and experimentation in pedagogy. But sometimes creativity in content and performance evaluation is dysfunctional.


Gov. Maggie Hassan signed H.B. 1547 into law to ban sexual assault on animals in New Hampshire. This bipartisan effort was initiated to address the disturbing and prevalent issue of animal sexual assault in the Granite State.
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news_briefs/2016/06/nh-animal-sexual-assault-ban-062416.html
Jensen Comment
Time to move back to Texas where A&M sheep approach a fence backwards.
What do you call an Aggie with a sheep under each arm?  A pimp!
This is a joke I first herd when I was on leave in New Zealand.


"The Rise of Bayesian Econometrics," by David Giles, Econometrics Beat, November 19, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-rise-of-bayesian-econometrics.html

Logit Regression --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_regression

Probit Model --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probit_model

"Choosing Between the Logit and Probit Models," by David Giles, Econometrics Beat, June 25, 2016 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2016/06/choosing-between-logit-and-probit-models.html

I've had quite a bit say about Logit and Probit models, and the Linear Probability Model (LPM), in various posts in recent years. (For instance, see here.) I'm not going to bore you by going over old ground again.

However, an important question came up recently in the comments section of one of those posts. Essentially, the question was, "How can I choose between the Logit and Probit models in practice?"

I responded to that question by referring to a study by Chen and Tsurumi (2010), and I think it's worth elaborating on that response here, rather than leaving the answer buried in the comments of an old post.

So, let's take a look.

Putting the LPM entirely to one side (where,as far as I'm concerned, it rightly belongs!), the issue is whether a standard normal distribution, or a logistic distribution, is the better choice when it comes to modelling the link between our discrete dependent variable and the regressors (covariates). If we choose the normal distribution we end up with the so-called Probit model; and if we choose the logistic distribution we end up with the Logistic model.

Let's begin by asking, "how much are the results likely to differ when we make one of these choices or the other?"

The short answer is, "not very much, in general." So, this may seem to suggest that we can basically flip a coin when it comes to deciding whether to go the Logit route or the Probit route. However, it's not quite that simple.


Why not?

First,  the answer given above relates to the simple case where we have a binomial Logit or Probit model. That is, there are only two discrete choices for our qualitative variable. As soon as we move to the multinomial case, where there are three or more choices, the story changes fundamentally. In particular, the multinomial Logit  model is computationally simpler to implement than is the multinomial Probit model, and this may factor into our choice. On the other hand, there is the well-known problem associated with the "Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives" that arises with the multinomial Logit model, but not with the multinomial Probit model. So there are pros and cons when it comes to making this choice in the multinomial case.

Second, even when we restrict ourselves to the standard binomial (zero-one) case, there can be some marked differences between Logit and Probit results when we focus on the tails of the underlying distributions (e.g., Cox, 1966) 

So, it's still interesting to think about whether we can come up with some formal statistical procedure to help us to decide between the Logit and Probit models, when we have the same (limited) dependent variable.

These two models are "non-nested", so a natural way to proceed is to use some information criterion or other to discriminate between them. This applies whether we're talking about a binomial model or a multinomial model. Note that this is not an example of hypothesis testing. Rather, we're effectively "ranking" the Probit and Logit models. (For some general comments about the use of information criteria in other contexts, see my earlier posts here and here.)

One of the few studies to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative information criteria to discriminate between Logit and Probit models is that by Chen and Tsurumi (2010). They consider five different criteria, namely:

  1. The deviance information criterion (DIC).
  2. The predictive deviance information criterion (PDIC).
  3. The unweighted sum of squared errors (USSE).
  4. The weighted sum of squared errors (WSSE).
  5. Akaike's information criterion (AIC).

The main conclusions emerging from the Chen-Tsurumi paper are as follows, and they aren't all that encouraging:

If the binary data that are being modelled are "balanced" (i.e., there is roughly a 50-50 split between the zero and one values), then none of the above information criteria are very effective at discriminating properly between the Logit and Probit models.

If the data are "unbalanced", then only the DIC and AIC criteria are effective.

The more information that is available about the higher moments of the underlying distribution of the binary data, the more effective are these criteria in the "unbalanced" case.

Sample sizes of at least 1,000 or more are needed to be able to discriminate between the Logit and Probit models using this approach.

If these information criteria don't help us very much, is there some other way to choose between the Logit and Probit specifications?

Continued in article

 


Why San Francisco stopped teaching algebra in middle school ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-san-francisco-stopped-teaching-algebra-in-middle-school-2016-6

San Francisco has bigger education problems than algebra ---
http://educationanddemocracy.org/SF/SFUSD_status.htm

. . .

GPA trends:

improvement – Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans and Whites

no improvement – Other non white, Filipino Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and African Americans  [African American remaining below 2.0] p. 40

Particularly troubling are African American GPA’s at Burton, Mission, O’Connell and Washington p. 41

Number of AP classes offered

While the number of AP classes at Lowell continues to increase dramatically  (from 54 to 74 from 2001 to 2004) the picture is not as positive in many of the other District high Schools.  Most have remained about the same, gaining a few classes or losing a few classes. P.42

Credit should be given in this context, however, to Mission High School, for its thorough and ongoing efforts to create new, top quality AP programs . . .since 2001 from 6 to 10.

BUT . . . Marshall has gone form 16 to 6. . .

Every time we visit  Washington, we observe that its AP classes are comprised almost entirely of Asian Pacific American students, while its special education classes are comprised disproportionately of very large percentages of African American students. P. 43

Continued in article

 

Jensen Comment
San Francisco is more multicultural than most major cities in the USA due to higher proportions of Asian students relative to African Americans.
Algebra in middle school may not be so troubling for the top Asian students since parents probably have them learning algebra before middle school.
African Americans have so much trouble with GPAs that maybe delays in requiring algebra is a good thing so long as they get a good shot at algebra before it becomes time to seriously study for SAT and ACT keys to college admissions.

It is true that one-size-fits-all is probably not a good curriculum idea at all levels of K-12. It's not a good idea for me to comment futher on this since teachers in urban schools have a lot more sensible things to say about this problem than me.

I'm not in favor of dumming down the curricula. But perhaps it is time to consider other alternatives, especially for students who early on seem unable to stay on track in a pre-college curriculum and are at high risk of dropping out.

The fact of the matter is that learning in the home is often more important than learning in school, especially in this era where K-12 students are not getting much more than four hours per day in the classrooms. What school systems should do is provide more guidance and online helpers for parents to both motivate and educate their children in the homes. Online learning is not a magic bullet, but it sure beats less five hours per school day in a classroom and ten hours a day of stupid television and teen texting and sexting.


Data Recovery --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery

One company to consider for data recovery ---
File Savers
www.filesaversdatarecovery.com

Picture File Recovery
Enter "Picture File Recovery" at
https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Bob Jensen's Technology Helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm


Now it's discriminatory in schools for teachers to try to stop minorities from cheating

School leaders allow cheating ‘to boost the numbers’: staffers ---
http://nypost.com/2016/07/03/school-leaders-allow-cheating-to-boost-the-numbers-staffers/

Cheating is in the lesson plan at a Brooklyn high school, where grade-fixing is so blatant, even intellectually disabled students pass rigorous state tests, faculty members charge.

At Urban Action Academy in Canarsie, an 18-year-old girl with the reading skills of a kindergartner had a passing grade of 65 on the Regents US history exam, a whistleblower told The Post.

The girl scored a 73 on the algebra exam, despite calculation skills at the level of a second-grader.

Teachers suspect the student’s tests were taken by an educational aide.

Inflated scores will eventually backfire on disabled students, a school staffer said: “It raises false hopes.”

Urban Action Academy administrators promote a cheating culture, staffers say.

When the Regents Global History exam was given at the school on June 14, students stashed review materials in toilet stalls so they could sneak information during bathroom breaks.

Alert teachers tried to thwart the cheating. But Assistant Principal Jordan Barnett slammed their “discriminatory” treatment of students and ordered them to back off, teachers say.

Continued in article

Professors and Teachers Who Let Students Cheat

Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management Accused of Letting Students Cheat
"Northwestern's business school is being rocked by cheating allegations," by Abbie Jackson, Business Insider, November 6, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cheating-scandal-at-northwesterns-kellogg-school-2015-11

Students at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management have claimed that six peers blatantly cheated on a final and that the administration is trying to cover it up, according to a detailed article by Ethan Baron of Poets and Quants, which covers business schools.

Six male students in the MS in Management Studies program engaged in blatant cheating while taking their account and statistics finals, Baron reported, citing three students who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The anonymous sources claimed that the students were passing notes, drawing charts in the air, and sharing answers on their exams when proctors left the room.

The three anonymous students claim the administration is complicit in the cheating because it doesn't want the school's reputation ruined.

"Everybody in the class knows what is happening and everyone in the class knows that the sole goal of the administration is to silence the witnesses," one source told Baron.

The students also say that they fear retribution from the school over discussing the cheating allegations because the honor code forbids students from discussing possible violations of the honor code.

The witnesses also claim that they have been threatened over the phone with physical harm by the cheaters, Baron reports.

"The day I come to know who reported me, I will f------ kill him or her,” one of the cheaters pledged, according to a witness.

Of the six students accused of cheating, two told Poets and Quants that they did not cheat, two would not address the allegations against them, and two did not speak to the news publication.

Poets and Quants got an email response from Kellogg saying that it takes any cheating allegations seriously and "all Honor Code issues that are reported are investigated thoroughly and, if necessary and appropriate, include hearings and sanctions."

Continued in article

"Cheating in Atlanta: A Teachable Moment When unions attack testing and ensure that bad teachers stay hired, it’s no wonder some of them broke the rules," by Jason L. Riley,  The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cheating-in-atlanta-a-teachable-moment-1428521500?tesla=y

. . .

The state decided to investigate cheating in the public schools after an analysis of test results by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found suspiciously high gains in math and reading proficiency. “A miracle occurred at Atherton Elementary this summer, if its standardized math test scores are to be believed,” the paper reported in 2008. “Half of the DeKalb County school’s fifth-graders failed a yearly state test in the spring. When the 32 students took retests, not only did every one of them pass—26 scored at the highest level.”

The suspicion was warranted. A subsequent 400-page report issued by the state in 2011 found that 44 of 56 investigated schools had falsified results on state exams. The cheating was “widespread and organized” and conducted “with the tacit knowledge and even approval of high-level administrators.” According to investigators, Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall and her aides allowed “cheating—at all levels—to go unchecked for years.” Teachers would gather at so-called “erasure” parties to correct answers on exams and inflate scores. Some 178 public-school employees, including 34 principals, were implicated. Thirty-five of them were eventually indicted by a grand jury, and 21 reached plea agreements. Hall maintained her innocence but died before she could stand trial.

The reaction to these shenanigans from defenders of the public-education status quo has been sad but not at all surprising. Yes, the teachers were wrong to falsify scores and set up students to fail by promoting them to the next grade unprepared. But if you are Randi Weingarten, who heads the powerful American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the real victims are your union members. For Ms. Weingarten, a strong opponent of the testing requirements included in the No Child Left Behind education law signed by President Bush, the Atlanta scandal “crystallizes the unintended consequences of our test-crazed policies.”

Lily Eskelsen García, who is president of the AFT’s sister union, the National Education Association (NEA), wrote in a Journal-Constitution op-ed at the start of the trial that “too often, and in too many places, we have turned the time-tested practice of teach, learn and test into a system of test, blame and punish.” She added: “We are using these tests to punish schools, teachers, students and school districts. This simply isn’t right. It is toxic.”

. . .

In 2011 an investigation by a local television station in Atlanta, WSB-TV, revealed that more than 700 teachers in Georgia had repeatedly failed at least one portion of a test they must pass before receiving a teaching certificate. Nearly 60 teachers failed the test at least 10 times, and “there were 297 teachers on the payrolls of metro Atlanta school systems in the past three years after having failed the state certification test five times or more.”

Would you want your child taught by someone who flunked the certification test five times, let alone 10? And would that instructor be more or less likely to resort to changing student test scores to hide his own incompetence?

The eagerness to blame No Child Left Behind’s accountability provisions for these cheating scandals is off-base. The law has its flaws, including an overly stringent method of judging a school’s performance, but those flaws aren’t fatal. The much bigger problem is the one exposed by WSB-TV. Long before Mr. Bush signed NCLB, public-school teaching was attracting the least-qualified students from universities. For decades, the test scores of people who enter teaching have trailed those of people entering other professions, and research by Stanford economist Eric Hanushek and others shows that the trend has worsened in recent years.

Moreover, brighter college students who do want to teach for a few years after graduation, via highly selective programs such as Teach for America, are scorned by the education establishment as insufficiently committed to the profession. Among other things, Atlanta’s cheating scandal is a byproduct of who goes into teaching.

"Schoolteacher Cheating," Walter E. Williams, Townhall, February 5, 2014 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2014/02/05/schoolteacher-cheating-n1788915?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Philadelphia's public school system has joined several other big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and Washington, D.C., in widespread teacher-led cheating on standardized academic achievement tests. So far, the city has fired three school principals, and The Wall Street Journal reports, "Nearly 140 teachers and administrators in Philadelphia public schools have been implicated in one of the nation's largest cheating scandals." (1/23/14) (http://tinyurl.com/q5makm3). Investigators found that teachers got together after tests to erase the students' incorrect answers and replace them with correct answers. In some cases, they went as far as to give or show students answers during the test.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, identifies the problem as district officials focusing too heavily on test scores to judge teacher performance, and they've converted low-performing schools to charters run by independent groups that typically hire nonunion teachers. But William Hite, superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, said cheating by adults harms students because schools use test scores to determine which students need remedial help, saying, "There is no circumstance, no matter how pressured the cooker, that adults should be cheating students."

While there's widespread teacher test cheating to conceal education failure, most notably among black children, it's just the tip of the iceberg. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, published by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and sometimes referred to as the Nation's Report Card, measures student performance in the fourth and eighth grades. In 2013, 46 percent of Philadelphia eighth-graders scored below basic, and 35 percent scored basic. Below basic is a score meaning that a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery. It's a similar story in reading, with 42 percent below basic and 41 percent basic. With this kind of performance, no one should be surprised that of the state of Pennsylvania's 27 most poorly performing schools on the SAT, 25 are in Philadelphia.

Continued in article

 

Bob Jensen's threads on professors and teachers who allow students to cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward
 


 

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on July 5, 2016

Italian banks reeling after Brexit
Britain’s vote to leave the EU has produced dire predictions for the U.K. economy. The damage to the rest of Europe could be more immediate and potentially more serious. Nowhere is the risk concentrated more heavily than in the Italian banking sector. In Italy, 17% of banks’ loans have gone bad. That is nearly 10 times the level in the U.S. Among publicly traded banks in the eurozone, Italian lenders account for nearly half of total bad loans. Years of lax lending standards left Italian banks ill-prepared when an economic slump sent bankruptcies soaring a few years ago.

From the Former Chief Economic Advisor to President Obama and Former President of Harvard University
"Why Brexit is worse for Europe than Britain," Larry Summer's Blog, June 24, 2016 ---
http://larrysummers.com/2016/06/24/why-brexit-is-worse-for-europe-than-britain/

. . .

Economics

For Britain, the economic effects are two sided. On the one hand, a major jolt has been delivered to confidence, to future unity and down the road to trade. On the other, the currency has become more competitive, and liquidity will be in very ample supply. I would expect that a significant deterioration in growth and a recession beginning in the next 12 months has to be a substantial risk though short of an odds on bet.

As suggested by the fact that stock markets in Italy and Spain are down almost twice as much as in the UK, the prospects for Europe may in some ways be worse than for the UK. There is the real risk of “populist exit contagion” in a number of countries. A credit crunch is a serious risk. Unlike in Britain, the trade weighted exchange rate is unlikely to decline very much. The central bank has less room for incremental policy measures.

The effects on the rest of the world will depend heavily on psychology. I continue to be alarmed as I wrote in this space a few days ago that this unexpected outcome in the UK will raise the spectre of “Trump risk”. If the UK can vote for Brexit perhaps the U.S. can vote for Donald Trump. I fear this possibility will lead to a freezing up of spending decisions particularly on the part of internationally oriented businesses. The odds of U.S. recession beginning within the next 12 months are I think now in the 30 percent range. Also noteworthy is that an environment of increased risk aversion and flight to quality will complicate Japan’s problem of generating inflation, and China’s challenge of attaining currency stability.

To an extent that is underestimated in some quarters and understated in others, the world economy is far more brittle than usual because of the inability almost everywhere to lower interest rates substantially. Normally in response to incipient downturns central banks lower rates by 400 basis points or more. Nowhere do they have that kind of room. Nor is there large scope for reducing term and credit spreads given their very low levels. This is no time for austerity. Greater use of fiscal policy should be on the agenda almost everywhere and certainly with the change of government in the UK.

Brexit will rightly be taken as a signal that the political support for global integration is at best waning and at worst collapsing. Dramatic exchange rate fluctuations tend to portend upswings in protectionist pressure. And problems in European banks could as in 2009 lead to a drying up of trade finance. Already global trade has lagged global growth in recent years. A clear sense of commitment to avoid backsliding towards protection from the G20 will be essential going forward. Specific efforts with respect to trade finance may be appropriate.

Broader Observations

After Brexit, Trump, Sanders and the misforecast British and Canadian general elections, it should be clear that the term political science is an oxymoron. Political events cannot be reliably predicted by pollsters, pundits or punters. All three groups should have humility going forward. In particular no one should be confident about the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

The political challenge in many countries going forward is to develop a “responsible nationalism”. It is clear that there is a hunger on the part of electorates, if not the Davos set within countries, for approaches to policy that privilege local interests and local people over more cosmopolitan concerns. Channeling this hunger constructively rather than destructively is the challenge for the next decade. We now know that neither denying the hunger, or explaining that it is based on fallacy is a viable strategy.

 

 


MIT:  The All American iPhone (Dream)
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601491/the-all-american-iphone/

Political candidates opposed to free trade say Apple should make phones in the United States. Let’s see what that would look like.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In addition the USA is increasingly dependent upon rare earth metals (notably lithium) to power our electric vehicles and other needs such as back up power for home solar panels. The two main sources of lithium are China and Chile. It could get very Ch...Ch..Chilly in the USA if China and Chile raise prices using their oligopoly economic hold on the USA. Maybe they're just waiting until we turn the lights off on the last oil refinery in the USA before they exercise their oligopoly pricing power on rare earth minerals. The USA produces some of the rare earth metals at the moment, but the domestic capacity falls way short of our needs.


From MIT on April 6, 2016

Tech Slowdown Threatens the American Dream
Economist Robert Gordon has a surprising message for techno-optimists: American innovation just isn’t what it used to be. Earlier this year we took a critical look at claims that productivity is stagnant, and that the inventions of the past few decades pale in comparison to those of the previous century.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601199/tech-slowdown-threatens-the-american-dream/

 

 




From the Scout Report on July 1, 2016

History Here --- http://www.history.com/history-here 

The History Channel's History Here app allows users to learn about historic sites both near and far. Once users download this application, they can discover historical sites in their proximity through GPS, or investigate any place in the the world by searching for a new address or using the app's "explore" option. Historic sites are marked with drop pins; by tapping a pin, users can read about each selected historic site. At this point, most featured sites are in the United States, but the application is continually being updated to include more locations. In addition, the application features a handful of virtual tours of select locations, including a Los Angeles Culinary Tour, a Mississippi Civil Rights Tour, and a Nashville Music History Tour. The History Here application is free and currently compatible on Apple devices with iOS 5 or higher and Android devices running 4.0 and up. ]


Giphy --- http://giphy.com/create/gifmaker 

GIFs (Graphical Interchange Format) are a great way to add some character and sass to an email, website, or blog post. Giphy allows anyone to easily make their own custom GIFs using either a link to an online video or by uploading their own media. Next, users can select the portion and duration of the video they would like to use in the GIF, then select a font and color in order to write a caption. You now have a GIF to embed anywhere you chose. You can choose to make your GIFs private or public, store them on your account for as long as you'd like, and also browse through other public GIFs.


Exhibiting the Singular and Spectacular Hieronymus Bosch, 500 Years
After His Death
Hieronymus Bosch Died 500 Years Ago, But His Art Will Still Creep You Out
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/26/483225865/hieronymus-bosch-died-500-years-ago-but-his-art-will-still-creep-you-out

Hieronymus Bosch's Five-Hundredth-Anniversary Homecoming
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/hieronymus-boschs-five-hundredth-anniversary-homecoming

The Impious Delights of Hieronymus Bosch
https://newrepublic.com/article/132024/impious-delights-hieronymus-bosch

Bosch. The 5th Centenary Exhibition
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/whats-on/exhibition/bosch-the-centenary-exhibition/f049c260-888a-4ff1-8911-b320f587324a?searchMeta=bosch

Jheronimus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights
https://tuinderlusten-jheronimusbosch.ntr.nl/en

Bosch Research and Conservation Project
http://boschproject.org

From the Scout Report

Consensus on Dietary Guidelines May Be Long In Coming
Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes - WHO
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/26/bacon-ham-sausages-processed-meats-cancer-risk-smoking-says-who

Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed
meat
http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

What the New Dietary Guidelines Mean for You
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/03/04/what-the-new-dietary-guidelines-mean-for-you

How strong is the science behind the U.S. Dietary Guidelines?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/24/health/dietary-guidelines-science/

Why the new, proposed U.S. dietary guidelines are provoking controversy and
ire
http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/dietary-guidelines-usda/

Health.gov: Dietary Guidelines
http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/qanda.asp
 


From the Scout Report on July 8, 2016

30/30 --- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/30-30/id505863977

30/30 is a free productivity app for iPhones and iPad with iOS 4.3 or higher. On this app, users can write their own to-do list and allot an amount of time of their choice to complete each task. At the end of this time, an alarm will go off to signal that it is time to move to the next activity. Users can also schedule timed breaks into their to-do list, making this app especially appealing for Pomodoro Technique aficionados. Users can easily edit their to-do list, set the list to automatically loop, and email their lists to others.  


Noisli --- http://noisli.com 

If you are someone who needs "white noise" to work, relax, or block out the chatter of an office or coffee shop, Noisli may be the website for you. On this site, users can select to listen to a variety of noises, including rain, leaves, and railroad tracks. Alternatively, users can search for a previously composed collection of sounds, designed for either productivity or relaxing. By creating a free account, users can also save their favorite white noise medleys for future use.


What Foods are "Healthy"?
Is Sushi 'Healthy? What About Granola? Where Americans and Nutritionists
Disagree.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/05/upshot/is-sushi-healthy-what-about-granola-where-americans-and-nutritionists-disagree.html

FDA Targets Sugar in New Labeling Rules
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fda-targets-sugar-in-new-labeling-rules

Why the FDA is Re-Evaluating the Nutty Definition of "Healthy" Food
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/10/477514200/why-the-fda-is-reevaluating-the-nutty-definition-of-healthy-food

Why you shouldn't always listen to dietary guidelines
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/why-you-shouldn-t-always-listen-dietary-guidelines

Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Response
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415014816

A Short History of Nutritional Sciences
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/133/3/638.full


 




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


Education Tutorials

KQED: Education (resources for teachers) --- http://kqed.org/education

American Journal of Play --- http://www.journalofplay.org 

Open Syllabus Project --- http://opensyllabusproject.org
I find it better to use more than one filter simultaneously
For example, it's better to filter on the University of Texas at Austin and Business rather than just the University of Texas

The Innovative Instructor (higher education innovation from Johns Hopkins University) ---  http://ii.library.jhu.edu

Learning & the Brain blog --- http://learningandthebrain.com/blog

Sounding Out! (English, music, and communications) --- https://soundstudiesblog.com

Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education --- http://greenfield.brynmawr.edu

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

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

Undark (misc. science) --- http://undark.org

Carry the One Radio (interviews with scientists) --- http://www.carrytheoneradio.com

LANL: Periodic Table of Elements --- http://periodic.lanl.gov

The Periodic Table of Videos --- http://www.periodicvideos.com/ 

The Sourcebook for Teaching Science: Periodic Tables --- http://www.csun.edu/science/chemistry/periodic_table/

NOVA: Hunting the Elements
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/hunting-elements.html

Physics & Caffeine: Stop Motion Film Uses a Cup of Coffee to Explain Key Concepts in Physics ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/stop-motion-film-uses-a-cup-of-coffee-to-explain-key-concepts-in-physics.html

On This Day in Chemistry --- http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/collections/chemistry-calendar 

Jackson Laboratory (genetics) --- https://www.jax.org

Archaeology of the Great War --- http://archeologie1418.culture.fr/en

Virology Down Under (epidemiciology in Australia) --- http://virologydownunder.blogspot.com

Edge Effects (ecology) --- http://edgeeffects.net

The History of Vaccines --- http://historyofvaccines.org

TIME Magazine: Health --- http://time.com/health

From the Scout Report on July 15, 2016

A New Dwarf Planet Identified in Pluto's Neighborhood
New Dwarf Planet Discovered Far Beyond Pluto's Orbit
http://www.space.com/33387-dwarf-planet-discovery-2015-rr245.html

Astronomers Discover Distant Dwarf Planet Beyond Neptune
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/11/astronomers-discover-distant-dwarf-planet-beyond-neptune-2015-rr245

What is a Dwarf Planet?
http://www.universetoday.com/72717/what-is-a-dwarf-planet

How many dwarf planets are there in the outer solar system?
http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/dps.html

NOVA: Chasing Pluto
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365527017

New Dwarf Planet Beyond Pluto Hints At No Planet Nine
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/07/12/new-dwarf-planet-beyond-pluto-hints-at-no-planet-nine/#6035f49b945b

 

 

Online Structural Engineering Library --- http://thestructuralengineer.info/online-library

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

Our World in Data (many graphics and links to databases) --- https://ourworldindata.org

Carry the One Radio (interviews with scientists) --- http://www.carrytheoneradio.com

Kitsap Regional Library: Kitsap History (Japanese-American Internment Camps in WWII) --- http://www.krl.org/kitsap-history

Borderlands History (of the USA) --- https://borderlandshistory.org

Identities: Understanding Islam in Cross-Cultural Contexts --- http://marb.kennesaw.edu/identities

Sounding Out! (English, music, and communications) --- https://soundstudiesblog.com

American Journal of Play --- http://www.journalofplay.org 

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

Life of the Law --- http://www.lifeofthelaw.org

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


Math Tutorials

Chalkdust (mathematics magazine, including puzzles and humor) --- http://chalkdustmagazine.com

"The Rise of Bayesian Econometrics," by David Giles, Econometrics Beat, November 19, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-rise-of-bayesian-econometrics.html

Backchannel (tech tales) --- https://backchannel.com

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

How Did Hannibal Cross the Alps?: A Short Course from Stanford on the Ancient Mystery ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/how-did-hannibal-cross-the-alps-a-short-course-on-the-ancient-mystery.html

Digital Humanities Quarterly --- http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq

Pearls of Wisdom: The Arts of Islam at the University of Michigan --- http://lw.lsa.umich.edu/kelsey/pearls/index.html

Museum of the Moving Image: Silent Film Era --- http://collection.movingimage.us/silent_film_era.php

Persian Carpets --- http://daily.jstor.org/object-history-persian-carpet/

Borderlands History (of the USA) --- https://borderlandshistory.org

Belfast Group Poetry: Networks --- http://belfastgroup.digitalscholarship.emory.edu

Letters of Note --- http://lettersofnote.com

EUscreen (European History in Video) --- http://euscreen.eu

ABC Books (alphabet books) --- https://etc.princeton.edu/abcbooks

Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education --- http://greenfield.brynmawr.edu

Visualizing Isaiah (religion) ---  http://www.imj.org.il/isaiah

Montague Rhoades James: A Thin Ghost (ghost stories) --- http://www.thin-ghost.org

Identities: Understanding Islam in Cross-Cultural Contexts http://marb.kennesaw.edu/identities

Visualizing 19th-Century New York --- http://visualizingnyc.org

A Bloomsday Remembrance of James Joyce --- http://daily.jstor.org/bloomsday-remembrance-of-james-joyce/

The Steamy Love Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (1925-1929) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/the-steamy-love-letters-of-virginia-woolf-and-vita-sackville-west-1925-1929.html

James Joyce Centre --- http://jamesjoyce.ie 

The History of Vaccines --- http://historyofvaccines.org

Archaeology of the Great War --- http://archeologie1418.culture.fr/en

The Great War: A Visual History --- http://www.abmc.gov/sites/default/files/interactive/interactive_files/WW1/index.html

Kitsap Regional Library: Kitsap History (Japanese-American Internment Camps in WWII) --- http://www.krl.org/kitsap-history

Shelf Awareness (books and libraries) --- http://shelf-awareness.com

The Story of the Beautiful: The Peacock Room --- http://peacockroom.wayne.edu

Destination Indiana --- http://www.destination-indiana.com

National Archives: Ansel Adams Photographs: Records of the National Park Service ---
http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv_TVXxWe_A

The Creative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Documentary ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/the_creative_process_of_ansel_adams_revealed_in_1958_documentary.html

The Creative Process of Ansel Adams Revealed in 1958 Documentary ---
http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/the_creative_process_of_ansel_adams_revealed_in_1958_documentary.html

An 1585 Recipe for Making Pancakes: Make It Your Saturday Morning Breakfast ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/an-1585-recipe-for-making-pancakes-make-it-your-saturday-morning-breakfast.html

An Archive of 3,000 Vintage Cookbooks Lets You Travel Back Through Culinary Time ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/an-archive-of-3000-vintage-cookbooks-lets-you-travel-back-through-culinary-time.html

Cooking in the Archives: Updating Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen --- https://rarecooking.com

Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea - at the National Maritime Museum, London until 28 April 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20304829
Thank you Roger Collins for the heads up

History Here Free App:  Select your current location with GPS or choose any location across the country
History Here --- http://www.history.com/history-here 

HISTORY HERE is a Webby Award-winning interactive travel guide to thousands of historic locations across the United States.Use the app to learn the history around your neighborhood, when you visit someplace new or if you're just feeling curious while sitting on the couch!

Get the facts about the history that's hidden all around you, including architecture, museums, battlefields, monuments, famous homes and much more! And now, you can explore TOURS, a new feature that use locations as a way to learn about historical themes and topics, such as Marilyn Monroe's Hollywood, Civil War Atlanta and Al Capone's Chicago. WE ARE ADDING MORE POINTS OF INTEREST ALL THE TIME. Know a place that's not listed in the app? Use the Suggest a Place feature to submit it to the HISTORY editorial team.

Features: Select your current location with GPS or choose any location across the country. Explore thousands of exclusive points of interest, written by the history experts at HISTORY. Tap Surprise Me! to see a random location somewhere in the U.S. Display historic locations in a zoomable, map-based view or in a scrolling list. Swipe the top panel on the map to browse. Pinch out and watch the pins cluster. Share the locations you find with friends via Facebook, Twitter and email. Get distances and driving or walking directions to points of interest.

 

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

Top 40 Philosophy (music) --- http://www.top40philosophy.com

Sounding Out! (English, music, and communications) --- https://soundstudiesblog.com

Jane Austen’s Music Collection, Now Digitized and Available Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/jane-austens-music-collection-now-digitized-and-available-online.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

9 Tools for the Accidental Writing Teacher ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1460-9-tools-for-the-accidental-writing-teacher?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=c02935b437544e33aec1dd60ec6b609b&elq=120fbf25b20343698b941ab37c7e8aca&elqaid=9702&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3464

Sounding Out! (English, music, and communications) --- https://soundstudiesblog.com

Shelf Awareness (books and libraries) --- http://shelf-awareness.com

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

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

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

 

June 27, 2016

June 28, 2016

June 29, 2016

July 1, 2016

July 2, 2016

July 5, 2016

July 6, 2016

July 7, 2016

July 8, 2016

July 9, 2016

July 11, 2016

July 13, 2016

 

 


The History of Vaccines --- http://historyofvaccines.org


TIME Magazine: Health --- http://time.com/health


How Cataract Surgery Went From $500 to Under $2 ---
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a21478/open-your-eyes-hbo-documentary/
Thank you Rick Elam for the heads up


Getting Medicare While Traveling or Living Overseas ---
http://www.elderlawanswers.com/getting-medicare-while-traveling-or-living-overseas-8229

Many retirees look forward to traveling in their retirement, and more and more are actually retiring overseas, in part as a way to stretch savings. But what happens to retirees' federal benefits while they are out of the country? The short answer is that although Social Security benefits are available to retirees in other countries, Medicare generally is not. In this installment we look at Medicare.

Traditional Medicare does not provide coverage for hospital or medical costs outside the United States (although Medicare does cover residents of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands). In rare cases, Medicare may pay for inpatient hospital services in Canada or Mexico. (For details, click here.)

Some Medicare Advantage (private Medicare) plans may provide coverage benefits for health care needs when enrollees travel outside the United States. (Check with your plan before traveling.) But those retiring overseas -- or travelers enrolled in the traditional Medicare program or whose Medicare Advantage plan does not cover foreign travel -- will need to purchase health insurance from another source.

Medicare beneficiaries who are traveling and who have no other coverage must either buy short-term travel insurance or a Medigap policy that covers foreign emergencies. Medigap plans C through J offer travel emergency coverage, but the benefit applies only during the first 60 days of any trip. This Medigap benefit covers 80 percent of emergency care administered outside the country. A $250 deductible and $50,000 lifetime maximum apply. In addition, many travel agents and private companies offer insurance plans that will cover health care expenses incurred overseas, including evacuations. The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs provides information on medical insurance while overseas, including a list of companies that offer travel medical insurance, at its Web site.

Retirees who are moving to a foreign country cannot use Medicare to pay for health care while they are living overseas. The options for retirees are to buy private coverage, to pay into a government-sponsored system in their new country of residence, or to go without coverage. If the retiree is moving to a country with a strong national plan, he or she may be able to pay into the plan and receive coverage similar to that accorded residents of the country. If national insurance isn't an option, many companies offer "expatriate" health insurance plans. Choosing the right plan depends on where the retiree is moving. For example, if a retiree is traveling somewhere remote or with poor local health care, evacuation coverage may be important. Another country may offer excellent health care, but each doctor visit may cost a lot of money, so a plan that covers outpatient doctor visits may be necessary there. No matter where the retiree is moving, another consideration is whether the plan covers pre-existing conditions.

Whatever option retirees choose while abroad, if they return to the United States they will still be covered by Medicare Part A. Medicare Part A covers institutional care in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, as well as certain care given by home health agencies and care provided in hospices. There are no premiums for this part of the Medicare program and anyone who is 65 or older and is eligible for Social Security automatically qualifies.

Medicare Part B, which covers outpatient services, charges a monthly premium. Unless retirees continue to pay the premiums while they are overseas, they will not automatically be covered by Medicare Part B when they return to the United States. Retirees who drop Part B and then move back to the United States will have to pay an enrollment penalty. Premiums increase by 10 percent for each year that an individual is not enrolled in Part B. Therefore, retirees who think they may return to the United States may find it worthwhile to continue paying Part B premiums while they live abroad. 

U.S. citizens who were living abroad when they turned 65 and who are not eligible for Social Security, do not have to pay higher Part B premiums when they return to the United States. These retireees won't have to pay a higher premium if they enroll in Part B within 3 months of returning and establishing residence. For information on living outside the United States and Part B, go here: https://www.medicare.gov/people-like-me/outside-us/signing-up-for-part-b-outside-us.html

For more about the Medicare program, click here.


From the Scout Report on July 8, 2016

What Foods are "Healthy"?
Is Sushi 'Healthy? What About Granola? Where Americans and Nutritionists
Disagree.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/05/upshot/is-sushi-healthy-what-about-granola-where-americans-and-nutritionists-disagree.html

FDA Targets Sugar in New Labeling Rules
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fda-targets-sugar-in-new-labeling-rules

Why the FDA is Re-Evaluating the Nutty Definition of "Healthy" Food
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/10/477514200/why-the-fda-is-reevaluating-the-nutty-definition-of-healthy-food

Why you shouldn't always listen to dietary guidelines
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/why-you-shouldn-t-always-listen-dietary-guidelines

Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Response
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415014816

A Short History of Nutritional Sciences
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/133/3/638.full

From the Scout Report

Consensus on Dietary Guidelines May Be Long In Coming
Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes - WHO
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/26/bacon-ham-sausages-processed-meats-cancer-risk-smoking-says-who

Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed
meat
http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

What the New Dietary Guidelines Mean for You
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/03/04/what-the-new-dietary-guidelines-mean-for-you

How strong is the science behind the U.S. Dietary Guidelines?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/24/health/dietary-guidelines-science/

Why the new, proposed U.S. dietary guidelines are provoking controversy and
ire
http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/dietary-guidelines-usda/

Health.gov: Dietary Guidelines
http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/qanda.asp
 

 




Humor for July 2016

Gov. Maggie Hassan signed H.B. 1547 into law to ban sexual assault on animals in New Hampshire. This bipartisan effort was initiated to address the disturbing and prevalent issue of animal sexual assault in the Granite State.
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news_briefs/2016/06/nh-animal-sexual-assault-ban-062416.html
Jensen Comment
Time to move back to Texas where A&M sheep approach a fence backwards.
What do you call an Aggie with a sheep under each arm?  A pimp!
This is a joke I first herd when I was on leave in New Zealand.


The great Al Hirschfeld had been supplying his much-loved caricatures to the New York Times for 37 years when, in 1962, tipped over the edge by the newspaper's accounting department, he sent the following amusing letter to the Sunday editor, Lester Markel.
(Keep scrolling down here)
http://www.lettersofnote.com/search?q=+accounting

Letters of Note --- http://lettersofnote.com


NTSB says Delta plane landed at wrong airport in Sout---
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ntsb-says-delta-plane-landed-wrong-airport-185643679.html?nhp=1
Jensen Comment
This is not humorous per se, but a lot of comedians will use it for comic material. For example, GPS on Delta means Good Pilots Snoring or Gawking Pilots Sightseeing pr Gppfu Pilots Surprise.


Forwarded by Paula

WHY SENIORS STILL NEED NEWSPAPERS

I was visiting my daughter last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.

"This is the 21st century" she said. "We don't waste money on newspapers. Here… use my iPad."

I can tell you this….. that friggin fly never knew what hit him..


Forwarded by Auntie Bev

LOST WORDS OF OUR YOUTH

Heavens to Murgatroyd! Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word murgatroyd? Lost Words from our childhood: Words gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad really!

The other day a not so elderly (65) (I say 75) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy and he looked at her quizzically and said "What the heck is a Jalopy? OMG (new) phrase! He never heard of the word jalopy!! She knew she was old but not that old.

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included "Don't touch that dial," "Carbon copy," "You sound like a broken record" and "Hung out to dry."

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our best bib and tucker to straighten up and fly right.

Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell?

Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, well I'll be a monkey's uncle! or, This is a fine kettle of fish! we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind We blink, and they're gone. Where have all those phrases gone?

Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It's your nickel.

Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper.

Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff !

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It's one of the greatest advantages of aging.

See ya later, alligator!

 


Forwarded by Paula

A blonde lady motorist was about two hours from San Diego when she was flagged down by a man whose truck had broken down......

The man walked up to the car and asked, "Are you going to San Diego?"

"Sure," answered the blonde, "do you need a lift?"

"Not for me.

I'll be spending the next three hours fixing my truck. My problem is I've got two chimpanzees in the back that have to be taken to the San Diego Zoo. They're a bit stressed already so I don't want to keep them on the road all day.

Could you possibly take them to the zoo for me? I'll give you $200 for your trouble”

"I'd be happy to," said the blonde.

So the two chimpanzees were ushered into the back seat of the blonde's car and carefully strapped into their seat belts, and off they went.

Five hours later, the truck driver was driving through the heart of San Diego when suddenly he was horrified!

There was the blonde walking down the street, holding hands with the two chimps, much to the amusement of a big crowd.

With a screech of brakes he pulled off the road and ran over to the blonde. "What are you doing here?" he demanded,

"I gave you $200 to take these chimpanzees to the zoo!

"Yes, I know you did," said the blonde.

"But we had money left over so now we're going to Sea World."


Some new and some old forwarded by Paula

 

A distraught senior citizen 

phoned her doctor's office.

"Is it true," she wanted to know, 

"that the medication 

you prescribed has to be taken 

for the rest of my life?"

 

"'Yes, I'm afraid so,"' the doctor told her. 

There was a moment of silence 

before the senior lady replied,

 "I'm wondering, then,

 just how serious is my condition

because this prescription is marked

'NO REFILLS'.."


 

***********************

 

An older gentleman was 

on the operating table 

awaiting surgery 

and he insisted that his son, 

a renowned surgeon,

perform the operation. 

As he was about to get the anesthesia, 

he asked to speak to his son.

"Yes, Dad , what is it?"

"Don't be nervous, son;

do your best, 

and just remember, 

if it doesn't go well,

 if something happens to me, 

your mother

 is going to come and

 live with you and your wife...." 

(I LOVE IT!)


 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


 

Aging: 

Eventually you will reach a point

 when you stop lying about your age

 and start bragging about it. This is so true. I love 

to hear them say "you don't look that old."

 

 ---------------------------------

 

The older we get,

 the fewer things

 seem worth waiting in line for.


 
---------------------------------

 

Some people

 try to turn back their odometers. 

Not me! 

I want people to know why

I look this way. 

I've traveled a long way 

and some of the roads weren't paved.


 
********************

 

When you are dissatisfied 

and would like to go back to youth,

think of Algebra.


  
-------------------------------

 

One of the many things 

no one tells you about aging

is that it is such a nice change 

from being young.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Ah, being young is beautiful,

 but being old is comfortable.

*********

 

First you forget names, 

then you forget faces. 

Then you forget to pull up your zipper... 

it's worse when 

you forget to pull it down.


```````````````

 Two guys, one old, one young, 

are pushing their carts around- WalMart 

when they collide. 

The old guy says to the young guy, 

"Sorry about that. I'm looking for my wife,

 and I guess I wasn't paying attention 

to where I was going."

 The young guy says, "That's OK, it's a coincidence.

 I'm looking for my wife, too...

 I can't find her and I'm getting a little desperate."

 The old guy says, "Well,

 maybe I can help you find her...

 what does she look like?" 

The young guy says,

 "Well, she is 27 years old, tall, 

with red hair,

blue eyes, is buxom...wearing no bra, 

long legs, 

and is wearing short shorts. 

What does your wife look like?'

 To which the old guy says, “Doesn't matter, 
Let's look for yours."

 

 

 

 




Humor June  2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q2.htm#Humor063016.htm

Humor May  2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q2.htm#Humor053116.htm

Humor April  2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q2.htm#Humor043016.htm

Humor March  2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q1.htm#Humor033116.htm

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

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

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

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