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 August 16, 2016
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Pictorial of a Wedding at the Wentworth
Country Club Resort, New Hampshire
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Hotels/Jackson/WentworthCC/Wentworth.htm
Tidbits on August 16, 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
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/Hotels/Jackson/WentworthCC/Wentworth.htm
Michio Kaku on Why Immigrants Are America’s Secret
Weapon: They Compensate for Our Mediocre STEM Education & Keep Prosperity Going
---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/michio-kaku-on-why-immigrants-are-americas-secret-weapon.html
Jensen Comment
Michio ignores the recent higher proportions of documented and undocumented
immigrants have no labor skills. He also fails to note job openings in the USA
are scarce in most STEM fields even for candidates with Ph.D. credentials.
Medical field STEM work is an exception, especially for clinical experts.
Immigrants in non-stem fields often like law, tax accounting, and auditing face
enormous barriers due to lack of education and experience in USA technical
rules and standards. For example, a Chinese auditor might be better off living
in China and working for a Big Four firm in China rather than the USA.
Edward Wright Creates a List of His 1,000 Favorite Movies: Watch 10 of Them
Free Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/edward-wright-creates-a-list-of-his-1000-favorite-movies-watch-10-of-them-free-online.html
How Did Hitler Rise to Power? : New TED-ED Animation Provides a Case Study in
How Fascists Get Democratically Elected ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/how-did-hitler-rise-to-power.html
A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyramids of Egypt, Sudan & Mexico ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/a-drones-eye-view-of-the-ancient-pyramids-of-egypt-sudan-mexico.html
TED: Talks by Brilliant Women in STEM ---
https://www.ted.com/playlists/253/11_ted_talks_by_brilliant_wome
Bookworm (interviews with authors) ---
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/bookworm
James Joyce: An Animated Introduction to His Life and Literary Works ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/james-joyce-an-animated-introduction-to-his-life-and-literary-works.html
22 of the most hilariously bad movies on Netflix ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/22-netflix-movies-hilariously-bad-2016-8
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
A Funny Brass Band ---
http://www.wimp.com/brassband/
Thank you Auntie Bev
The (allegedly according to a psychologist) Best Songs to Wake
Up to in the Morning ---
http://time.com/4422049/these-are-the-best-songs-to-wake-up-to-in-the-morning-according-to-a-psychologist/?xid=newsletter-brief
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
Making of the Hudson River School (landscape art) ---
http://www.albanyinstitute.org/introduction.html
Picturing US History ---
http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu
55 Buildings in NYC You Need to See in Your Lifetime ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/55-buildings-in-new-york-city-you-need-to-see-2016-7
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
The Most Spectacular Moments from the Rio Olympics So Far ---
http://time.com/4447421/rio-2016-olympics-best-photos/
Hiroshima 71 Years Ago ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-us-nuked-hiroshima-71-years-ago-2016-8
NASA's New Images of Mars ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-mars-reconnaissance-orbiter-hirise-photos-2016-8
Time Magazine: Best Asbronomy Photographs of 2016 ---
http://time.com/4428772/the-best-astronomy-photos-of-2016/?xid=newsletter-brief
This photojournalist visited a remote arctic research town —
here are her stunning photos ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-remote-arctic-research-town-ny-alesund
Gothic Past (Irish history and architecture) ---
http://gothicpast.com
The 100 Best Historical Photos of the American Cowboy ---
http://www.truewestmagazine.com/the-100-best-historical-photos-of-the-american-cowboy/
USA Coast Guard on Its Birthday ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-coast-guard-226-birthday-2016-8
The Kiss to the Whole World: Klimt and the Vienna Secession
(art history) ---
http://secession.nyarc.org/omeka
An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women in Science ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/28/women-in-science-rachel-ignotofsky/?mc_cid=0412440b33&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
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
Bible Odyssey ---
http://www.bibleodyssey.org
Remembering the Real Winnie: The World's Most Famous Bear Turns 100 ---
http://therealwinnie.ryerson.ca/collection
James Joyce: An Animated Introduction to His Life and Literary Works ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/james-joyce-an-animated-introduction-to-his-life-and-literary-works.html
Yes, Rudyard Kipling was a racist, misogynist, and
imperialist. He was also a wonderful writer. To simply dismiss him for his
prejudices reveals little but cultural ignorance ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-defense-of-rudyard-kipling-and-the-jungle-books/2016/08/02/86f5cb38-559c-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.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 August 16, 2016
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2016/TidbitsQuotations081616.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
These are the 20
best-selling online Udemy classes of 2016 so far ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-online-classes-udemy-2016-8
Bob Jensen's threads on
fee-based distance education and training programs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free
distance education courses taught in prestigious universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Microsoft just made it way
easier to write a research paper with Word ---
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/26/12283814/microsoft-word-researcher-editor-features
Bob Jensen's Helpers for
Writers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Thieves have figured out a crafty way to break into locked iPhones after
stealing them ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/thieves-hackers-stolen-iphones-find-my-phone-spoof-apple-email-2016-8
Jensen Comment
You can be clever about blocking them off at the pass.
The students aren’t working all that hard, either. The
average college student spends just
2.76 hours a day on schoolwork, for a total of 19.3
hours a week. By contrast, they spend 31 hours a week on socializing and
recreation
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/08/04/college-tuition-enrollment-debt-graduate-unemployment-bubble-sykes-column/87995576/
A Useful Excel Reporting Feature ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/link-your-reports-to-excel-word-powerpoint-2016-8
How to Use Excel 2016 for Forecasting ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2016/aug/excel-forecast-sheet.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=08Aug2016
Friends, Partners, or Dummies on the Inside
Are More Important Than Hacking Skills
A new study suggests many data breaches are caused by insider threats --
whether through malice or accident ---
http://www.zdnet.com/article/data-theft-rises-sharply-insiders-to-blame/
Jensen Comment
The enormous problem is a disgruntled employee with a key to the kingdom.
From Barry Ritholtz on August 12, 2016
Hermits and
Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists
(Scientific
American)
See
also Martin
Gardner’s Signs of a Crank
(Skepticblog)
Home Equity Loan ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_equity_loan
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on August 12, 2016
Home equity loans come
back to haunt borrowers, banks
The bill is coming due for
many homeowners on a type of loan that was widely popular in the run-up to
the housing bust, causing a rise in delinquencies at banks. More homeowners
are missing payments on their home-equity lines of credit, or Helocs, a type
of loan that allows borrowers to withdraw cash from their house to pay for
renovations, college tuition or almost any other expense. These loans
typically require interest-only payments for the first 10 years, but then
principal payments kick in for the next 15 or 20 years. Borrowers who signed
up for Helocs in early 2006 were at least 30 days late on $2.8 billion of
balances four months after principal payments kicked in this year, according
to Equifax Roughly 840,000 Helocs taken
out in 2006 are resetting this year, with principal payments on an
additional nearly one million loans expected to hit in 2017.
Reverse Mortgage Calculator ---
http://reversemortgageguides.org/?leadint_source=BingPPC
Yipes! I'm not tax deductible.
Tax Court Denies Deduction For Professor's DirecTV, Internet & Cell Phone
As Part Of His 'Lifelong Burden Of Developing Knowledge' ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/08/tax-court-denies-deduction-for-professors-directv-internet-cell-phone-as-part-of-his-lifelong-burden.html
According to the Washington Post one out of every 20 physicians in the USA
is Muslim ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/08/10/muslim-doctor-my-patient-refused-to-let-me-treat-her-because-of-my-religion/
Beta Coefficient ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_asset_pricing_model
Also see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance)
"Do Portfolio Managers Underestimate Risk by Overanalyzing Data? New
research questions whether “smart” beta is always smart," by Louise Lee,
Insights from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, July 25,
2016 ---
Criticism of Beta ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance)#Criticism
Best States for Rooftop Solar ---
http://ritholtz.com/2016/07/best-states-rooftop-solar/
Jensen Comment
There may be some seasonal complications. For example, Alaska is not a good
place for solar across the entire year due in part to months without sun in the
winter. However, the days with sun are longer in the summer than in other parts
of the USA.
Erika and I once stayed at a ski resort in late summer in Alaska. At first we
were puzzled by the light poles on the ski slopes. Then the reason why dawned on
us. In late summer it did not yet get fully dark at night. But it was way to
early for ski season.
Best States for Taxpayer Burdens ---
http://www.statedatalab.org/
Jensen Comment
This map does not reflect the changing times in some states like Alaska and
North Dakota where the plunge in oil prices will soon clobber taxpayers,
especially in Alaska.
For the Wealthiest Colleges, How Many Low-Income Students Are Enough?
---
http://chronicle.com/article/For-the-Wealthiest-Colleges/237440?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=13e4d415e84944728b9b91100fce71bf&elq=3c2a3e231e574370a6e0780f8b9ad14c&elqaid=10213&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3816
Jensen Comment
The bad news is that most of the universities supportive of low-income students
also do not have programs for majoring in accounting, finance, marketing, and
other business disciplines offering great careers. Sure it's possible to major
in these fields in graduate school, but getting financing for graduate school is
a whole new ball game.
At 3,100 Colleges and Universities
Tuition and Fees, 1998-99 Through 2013-14 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/TuitionFees-1998-99/142511/
What is the Price of College? Total, Net, and Out-of-Pocket Prices by Type
of Institution in 2011-12 ---
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2015165
This report describes three measures of the price
of undergraduate education in the 2011–12 academic year: total price of
attendance (tuition and living expenses), net price of attendance after all
grants, and out-of-pocket net price after all financial aid. It is based on
the 2011–12 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:12), a
nationally representative study of students enrolled in postsecondary
institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Students are
grouped into four institution types: public 2-year institutions, public
4-year institutions, private nonprofit 4-year institutions, and for-profit
institutions at all levels (less-than-2-year, 2-year, and 4-year).
Jensen Comment
Understandably there are wide margins of error. For example, many institutions
now offer multiple sections of the same course --- some onsite sections, some
online sections, and some hybrid sections with both online and onsite
components. Various universities charge the same for all sections. Some charge
less for the online sections. Some charge more for the online sections, because
due to higher demand the online sections are cash cows.
Although the numbers are still small some universities like the University of
Wisconsin and the University of Akron are now offering less expensive
competency-based credits where students no longer have to take courses.
And there are wide ranging alternatives for room and board. Almost all
campuses now offer various meal plan options that vary in price, choice, and
quantities. Students often live off campus at widely varying housing and meal
costs. Even on campus there may be varying room and apartment costs.
And financial aid deals are sometimes so complicated that I'm not certain how
financial aid could be factored into this study. For example, colleges vary with
respect to work study alternatives. Education in free at the
University of the Ozarks but all students must work at least 15 hours per
week. Most other colleges have work study for some but not all students.
More and more Ivy League-type universities are charging zero tuition for
students from families earning less than $125,000 per year. Hence the cost
varies considerably based upon family income.
Some students receive financial aid covering all or part of their room and
board costs.
But the data in this study are interesting as broad guidelines of college
costs in the USA. College is free in some other countries, but in those nations
only a small proportion of students are admitted into the colleges. For example,
in Germany taxpayer costs are controlled by only admitting less than 25% of the
the students into the German universities. There's an enormous tradeoff
between providing free higher education of great quality (as in Germany) versus
free or nearly-free higher education of lesser quality to the masses (as in the
USA).
I think the USA is unique in that initiatives are underway in some states
like Tennessee to provide universal college education for at least two years.
California has had to back down somewhat from its nearly-free community college
tuition.
The most misleading statistics in the USA are those that conclude that going
to college greatly increases lifetime income. Of course there are numerous and
obvious instances where this is true, especially in lucrative professions
where only college graduates are admitted. But the studies that imply going to
college increase income for most everybody are highly misleading. The main
problem is that such studies confuse correlation with causation. They also
confound ability, work ethic, and college degrees.
Many college graduates would earn more income than high school graduates even
if those college graduates did earn college degrees. The reason is ability and
work ethic combined, in many instances, with family support. Many families have
the finances to help their children become entrepreneurs or get job skills such
as becoming master mechanics, plumbers, and electricians. For many students
college is only a transition period before returning to join the family business
such as taking over the family farm or dealership.
Net-Price Calculators Get the Kayak Treatment," by Beckie Supiano,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 9, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/net-price-calculators-get-the-kayak-treatment/32238?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Remember when
net-price calculators were going to be the
next U.S. News & World Report rankings? That’s the comparison
that staff members at Maguire Associates, a consulting firm, made a
couple of years ago in a paper
explaining what the
calculators could mean for admissions.
But the calculators, which allow students
to estimate what they would pay at a particular college after grants and
scholarships, don’t seem to have gained much traction yet. While
colleges have been required to post the calculators on their Web sites
for nearly a year now,
early evidence shows that only
about a third of prospective students have tried one out.
The Maguire Associates paper predicted
that online aggregators would spring up to allow students to compare
their net prices at different colleges, much as Kayak.com lets travelers
compare air fares. The prediction has come true: A new Web site,
College Abacus, lets students
do just that.
Whether this
new comparison tool will encourage more prospective students to use the
calculators, though, remains to be seen.
Bob Jensen's threads on financial aid in higher education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NetPriceCalculators
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Scholarpedia (a cross between Wikipedia and Google Scholar) ---
http://www.scholarpedia.org
Google Scholar ---
https://scholar.google.com/
Wikipedia ---
https://www.wikipedia.org/
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm
Bob Jensen's World Library ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Here's An Illustration of Grade Inflation
"Nearly Half Of Detroit’s Adults Are
Functionally Illiterate, Report Finds,"
Huffington Post, July 8, 2013 ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/detroit-illiteracy-nearly-half-education_n_858307.html
Detroit’s population
fell by 25 percent in the last decade. And of those that stuck around,
nearly half of them are functionally illiterate, a new report finds.
According to estimates
by The National Institute for Literacy, roughly 47 percent of adults in
Detroit, Michigan — 200,000 total — are “functionally illiterate,” meaning
they have trouble with reading, speaking, writing and computational skills.
Even more surprisingly, the Detroit Regional Workforce
finds half of that
illiterate population has obtained a high school degree.
The DRWF report places
particular focus on the lack of resources available to those hoping to
better educate themselves, with fewer than 10 percent of those in need of
help actually receiving it. Only 18 percent of the programs surveyed serve
English-language learners, despite 10 percent of the adult population of
Detroit speaking English “less than very well.”
Additionally,
the report finds, one in three workers in the state of Michigan lack the
skills or credentials to pursue additional education beyond high school.
In March, the Detroit
unemployment rate hit 11.8 percent, one of the highest in the nation, the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month. There is a glimmer of
hope, however: Detroit’s unemployment rate dropped by 3.3 percent in the
last year alone.
Continued in article
Jensen Question
Will nearly all the illiterate high school graduates in Detroit get a free
college diploma under the proposed "free college" proposal?
My guess is that they will get their college diplomas even though they will
still be illiterate, because colleges will graduate them in order to sop up the
free taxpayer gravy for their college "education."
Everybody will get a college diploma tied in a blue ribbon.
I doubt that illiteracy is much worse in Detroit than in other large USA
cities like Chicago and St Louis.
In Europe less than have the Tier 2 (high school) graduates are even allowed
to to to college or free trade schools ---
OECD Study Published in 2014: List of countries
by 25- to 34-year-olds having a tertiary education degree ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_25-_to_34-year-olds_having_a_tertiary_education_degre
College Readiness Based on ACT College Admission Scores for 2015 by State
--
New Hampshire
http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2015_CCRR_New_Hampshire.pdf
Michigan
http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2015_CCRR_Michigan.pdf
For other states simply replace the state name in the above URL with the name
of the state
Note that often the better students opt for SAT testing rather than ACT
testing such that in states that provide an option for SAT or ACT the ACT scores
may be biased by not including top students.
Also see
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/890821-should-the-sat-and-act-be-treated-equally.html
ACT to SAT Conversion ---
https://magoosh.com/hs/act/2015/act-to-sat-score-conversion/
Conversion Calculator ---
http://www.calcunation.com/calculator/act-sat-conversion.php
Jensen Comment
By most any standard imaginable public high schools in the USA are not doing a
great job in preparing students for college when college might soon be more than
affordable to all students. Community colleges have lowered the admissions bar
for almost all students. Do for-profit-universities ever reject any applicant?
I attribute much of the low readiness of Michigan high school graduates to
Michigan having the largest average class size in the USA ---
http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2014-2015.html
Harvard Business Review: How Amazon Adapted Its Business Model to
India ---
https://hbr.org/2016/07/how-amazon-adapted-its-business-model-to-india?referral=00202&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-weekly_hotlist-_-hotlist_date&utm_source=newsletter_weekly_hotlist&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hotlist_date
UNC Questions NCAA's Authority in Academic Fraud Case ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/08/03/unc-questions-ncaas-authority-academic-fraud-case?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=56be543194-DNU20160803&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-56be543194-197565045
Jensen Comment
This line of defense makes no sense to me. Other universities were punished,
sometimes severely, by the NCAA when only one staff member (a coach or a faculty
member) cheated for an athlete.
Now UNC wants to avoid any NCAA sanctions when multiple staff members cheated
in favor of 1,500 athletes on the grounds that another 1,500 non-athletes took
advantage of the fake courses and/or unauthorized grade increases in legitimate
courses.
What UNC is saying is telling all other universities
is that the best way to let athletes cheat in courses is to make sure that an
equal number of non-athletes are also allowed to cheat.
Say what? If UNC wins on this one the NCAA rules on cheating become a joke.
The really, really sad thing is that UNC has not
already severely punished its own system for 18 years of fraud and unauthorized
grade changes.
Let me pull a Donald Trump here. I hope the affected 3,000 cheaters settle in
or out of court for $100 million to be coughed up by UNC.
UNC has to pay to the point of severe pain for 18 years
of egregious academic fraud!
Bob Jensen's threads on academic fraud in college athletics are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Athletics
"How Clinton’s ‘Free College’ Could Cause a Cascade of Problems," by
Scott Carlson and Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 27, 2016
---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-Clinton-s-Free/237266?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=540716cdf3ff45f08495099c4878e1cf&elq=6b72dd53e7344969a190db614c0b9756&elqaid=10009&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3697
Jensen Comment
In Europe only the motivated intellectuals are allowed to go to college. Over
half are not given a chance to get a college diploma ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_25-_to_34-year-olds_having_a_tertiary_education_degree
America is the land of opportunity for all where everybody should get a blue
ribbon diploma witn an A+ gpa. It should be unconstitutional to discriminate on
the basis of intellectual ability. We should not even demand a photo ID for a
free diploma.
How to Lie With Statistics
Lies Politicians Tell Us ---
http://ritholtz.com/2016/08/lies-politicians-tell-us/
. . .
Hillary Clinton proclaims almost daily that women
receive only 78 percent of the income that men receive. Her message is so
misleading as to be dishonest. The 78 percent number is the ratio of women’s
to men’s median pay. It does not adjust for occupational and other
differences in the work that men and women do. For example, skilled
neurosurgeons and football, baseball, and basketball stars are men. Domestic
workers and hospital cleaning crews are mainly women. A recent paper by
Diana Furchtgott-Roth summarized studies at Cornell and other quality
economic departments. When adjustment for occupational differences are
considered, the ratio is 92 or 94 percent, not the advertised 78 percent.
And the remaining difference may not be due to discrimination. Differences
in time in the work force, hours worked, and other factors may play a role.
Two striking facts stand out. The first is that
laws require equal pay for equal work. Clinton’s claim that there is great
discrimination means that many employers violate the law with impunity.
That’s very implausible. Even journalists should be able to understand that.
Second, the difference between 78 percent and 92 percent is well known to
labor economists and almost certainly to some economists on Clinton’s staff.
Do they not tell her? Or does she not want to correct this central message
of her campaign?
Economic growth is a major issue in this
presidential campaign. Research has done much to uncover the factors that
contribute to growth. Secure property rights, rule of law, open markets, and
limited trade restrictions all play important roles. But the Trump and
Clinton campaign messages are all critical of freer trade. It is false—a
lie—to claim that freer trade has hurt us as a nation, as my Hoover
colleague David Henderson has pointed out.
It has always been true that some lose as a result
of trade agreements. We gave up textile jobs to gain jobs elsewhere, in
services for example. Trade agreements including NAFTA raised income in the
aggregate and provided some of the funding for retraining displaced workers.
Trump is wrong or badly advised to oppose trade agreements and Clinton was
badly advised when she shifted her position on the Pacific trade agreement.
Of course, the agreements are complicated, so it is always possible to claim
that a better agreement for the United States is possible—but it’s not
accurate to claim that trade restrictions will benefit Americans.
These are just a few examples of lies and
misleading statements that we encounter every day. Clinton lies frequently
and Trump shouts a falsehood a day—and probably more—as a major part of his
campaign. This is not what citizens of a free country should expect and
demand. And these examples are part of a much larger set.
At one time, citizens could count on their
officials and candidates to either tell the truth or say nothing. Not any
more. Clinton has a long record of neglecting truth. Trump seems not to care
about the veracity of his statements. And the media is so much on one side
that it mainly looks at the Trump gaffes and does its best to ignore
Clinton’s. And most serious of all, it allows the Obama administration to
tell the public lies like Americans can keep their health insurance or that
global warming is a coming disaster.
No less serious is the failure of politicians to
tell us the truth about the promises that they have made that cannot be
honored. Careful studies put the cost of government promises for pensions
and future healthcare benefits at more than $100 trillion. There is no way
that anything close to that amount will be available.
Continued in article
Hillary Clinton slapped
with dreaded Washington Post 'Four Pinocchios' rating for false claim about FBI
director ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3718137/Hillary-Clinton-slapped-dreaded-Four-Pinocchios-rating-false-claim-FBI-director-said-told-truth-classified-emails.html
Also see
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/statements/byruling/false/
101 of Donald Trump's Greatest Lies
---
http://www.dailywire.com/news/4834/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien
...
Salon: The Iran Deal Is A
Disaster–And Obama Is To Blame ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/08/05/salon-the-iran-deal-is-a-disasterand-obama-is-to-blame-n2202170?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
Jensen Comment
What makes this significant is that Salon is one of the most liberal,
anti-capitalist Websites in the world.
House Task Force Confirms:
ISIS Threat Was Altered in Intelligence Reports For Political Purposes
---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2016/08/10/house-task-force-confirms-isis-threat-was-downplayed-for-political-purposes-n2203772?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
Jensen Comment
What makes this significant is that the Daily
Beast is one of the most liberal,
anti-capitalist Websites in the world.
How to Lie With Statistics
"The Great Productivity Puzzle," by John Cassady, The New Yorker,
August 10, 2016 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-great-productivity-puzzle
How to Mislead With Statistics
The following two articles show how economists can put two different spins
on the same data (something that seems to be taught in social sciences in
general whenever politics gets involved).
The City of Seattle hired a group of economists to study the transitory
impact of minimum wage hikes on labor and business firms in Seattle. I say
"transitory" because the wage hikes are being phased in and won't reach the $15
level until
The Study
REPORT ON THE IMPACT OF SEATTLE’S MINIMUM WAGE ORDINANCE ON WAGES, WORKERS,
JOBS, AND ESTABLISHMENTS THROUGH 2015 The Seattle Minimum Wage Study Team1
University of Washington
July 2016
http://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/MinWageReport-July2016_Final.pdf
This report presents the short-run effects of the
Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance on the Seattle labor market. The Seattle
Minimum Wage study team at the University of Washington analyzed
administrative records on employment, hours, and earnings from the
Washington Employment Security Department to address two fundamental
questions: 1) How has Seattle’s labor market performed since the City passed
the Minimum Wage Ordinance, and particularly since the first wage increase
phased in on April 1, 2015? 2) What are the short-run effects of the Minimum
Wage Ordinance on Seattle’s labor market? While quite similar at first
glance, these two questions address very different issues and require very
different methods to answer. The first question can be studied with a simple
before/after comparison. Although the comparison is simple, it risks
conflating the impact of the minimum wage with other local trends. Many
things have happened in Seattle’s labor market since June 2014, most of them
having little or nothing to do with the minimum wage itself. The City has
enjoyed steady expansion in tech sector employment, and a construction boom
fueled by rising residential and commercial property prices. Even the
weather – a key determinant of economic activity in the Puget Sound region –
was favorable in 2015, with record-low precipitation in the early months of
the $11 minimum wage. The before-after comparison can tell us the net impact
of all these simultaneous trends, but this comparison cannot distinguish
among them. Our second question – the more important one for purposes of
evaluating the policy – aims to isolate the impact of the minimum wage from
all the other regional trends seen over the same time period. Whereas the
first question asks “are we better off than we were when Seattle raised the
minimum wage” and requires only a simple comparison of yesterday to today,
the second asks “are we better off than we would have been if Seattle had
not adopted a higher minimum wage?” To answer it requires imagining how the
local economy would look in absence of a Minimum Wage Ordinance. While it is
impossible to directly observe what would have happened if no wage ordinance
had been implemented, this report uses widely accepted statistical
techniques to compare Seattle in its current state—with the presence of the
Minimum Wage Ordinance—to an image of what Seattle might have looked like
today if not for the Minimum Wage Ordinance. We take advantage of data going
back to 2005 to build a model of the way Seattle’s labor market typically
works. We also take advantage of data on nearby regions that did not
increase the minimum wage to better understand how other factors might have
influenced what we observe in the City itself.
3 In this report, we present findings on wages,
workers, jobs, and establishments. Our findings can be summarized as
follows: Wages: The distribution of wages shifted as expected. The share
of workers earning less than $11 per hour declined sharply. This decline
began shortly after the ordinance was passed. However, similar declines
were seen outside of Seattle, suggesting an improving economy may be the
cause of the change in the distribution of wages. Low-Wage Workers: In the
18 months after the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance passed, the City of
Seattle’s lowest-paid workers experienced a significant increase in wages.
The typical worker earning under $11/hour in Seattle when the City Council
voted to raise the minimum wage in June 2014 (“low-wage workers”) earned
$11.14 per hour by the end of 2015, an increase from $9.96/hour at the time
of passage. The minimum wage contributed to this effect, but the strong
economy did as well. We estimate that the minimum wage itself is responsible
for a $0.73/hour average increase for low-wage workers. In a region where
all low-wage workers, including those in Seattle, have enjoyed access to
more jobs and more hours, Seattle’s low-wage workers show some preliminary
signs of lagging behind similar workers in comparison regions. The minimum
wage appears to have slightly reduced the employment rate of low-wage
workers by about one percentage point. It appears that the Minimum Wage
Ordinance modestly held back Seattle’s employment of low-wage workers
relative to the level we could have expected. Hours worked among low-wage
Seattle workers have lagged behind regional trends, by roughly four hours
per quarter (nineteen minutes per week), on average. Low-wage individuals
working in Seattle when the ordinance passed transitioned to jobs outside
Seattle at an elevated rate compared to historical patterns. Seattle’s
low-wage workers did see larger-than-usual paychecks (i.e., quarterly
earnings) in late 2015, but most— if not all—of that increase was due to a
strong local economy. Increased wages were offset by modest reductions in
employment and hours, thereby limiting the extent to which higher wages
directly translated into higher average earnings. At most, 25% of the
observed earnings gains—around a few dollars a week, on average—can be
attributed to the minimum wage. Seattle’s low-wage workers who kept
working were modestly better off as a result of the Minimum Wage Ordinance,
having $13 more per week in earnings and working 15 minutes less per week.
4 Jobs: Overall, the Seattle labor market was
exceptionally strong over the 18 months from mid2014 to the end of 2015.
Seattle’s job growth rate tripled the national average between mid-2014 and
late 2015. This job growth rate outpaced Seattle’s own robust performance
in recent years. Surrounding portions of King County also had a very good
year; the boom appears to fade with geographic distance. Job growth is
clearly driven by increased opportunities for higher-wage workers, but
businesses relying on low-wage labor showed better-than-average growth as
well. For businesses that rely heavily on low-wage labor, our estimates of
the impact of the Ordinance on the number of persistent jobs are small and
sensitive to modeling choices. Our estimates of the impact of the Ordinance
on hours per employee more consistently indicate a reduction of roughly one
hour per week. Fewer hours per employee could reflect higher turnover
rather than cutbacks in staffing. Reductions in hours are consistent with
the experiences of low-wage workers. Establishments: We do not find
compelling evidence that the minimum wage has caused significant increases
in business failure rates. Moreover, if there has been any increase in
business closings caused by the Minimum Wage Ordinance, it has been more
than offset by an increase in business openings. In sum, Seattle’s
experience shows that the City’s low-wage workers did relatively well after
the minimum wage increased, but largely because of the strong regional
economy. Seattle’s low wage workers would have experienced almost equally
positive trends if the minimum wage had not increased. Although the minimum
wage clearly increased wages for this group, offsetting effects on low-wage
worker hours and employment muted the impact on labor earnings. We strongly
caution that these results show only the short-run impact of Seattle’s
increase to a wage of $11/hour, and that they do not reflect the full range
of experiences for tens of thousands of individual workers in the City
economy. These are “average” effects which could mask critical distinctions
between workers in different categories. Our future work will extend
analysis to 2016, when Seattle’s minimum wage increased a second time and
began to distinguish between businesses of different sizes and industries.
It will also incorporate more detailed information about workers by linking
employment records to other state databases. This will give us a greater
capacity to answer key questions, such as whether the workers benefiting
most from higher minimum wages are more likely to be living in poverty. We
are also in the process of collecting additional survey information from
Seattle businesses and conducting interviews with a worker sample tracked
since early 2015. The next report, expected in September, will focus
specifically on how the minimum wage has affected nonprofit organizations.
Continued in article
Spin From Investors Business Daily
The Bitter Lesson From Seattle's Minimum Wage Hike
August 10, 2016
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/the-bitter-lesson-from-seattles-minimum-wage-hike/
Spin From a Respected, Albeit Very Liberal Economist --- Jared Bernsten
So far, the Seattle minimum-wage increase is doing what it’s supposed to
do
August 10, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/so-far-the-seattle-minimum-wage-increase-is-doing-what-its-supposed-to-do/?utm_term=.d5bf0bcad438
Jensen Comment
The issue of minimum wage became an enormous political issue when the workers
receiving the wage changed. When I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and those
McJobs having low pay were primarily intended to be temporary jobs where
students could earn a little outside the classroom and where younger people in
general could get a start in the work place. Nobody with normal capabilities
intended to make careers out of those very low paying McJobs. Somewhere along
the way things changed to where now those McJobs became careers for many folks
who are not destined for bigger and better careers in the economy. With that
change came increasing demands to increase the minimum wage to a more suitable
wage for longer-term careers.
The real question that the Seattle study is trying to answer is whether
raising the minimum wage in Seattle had a positive or negative impact on
employers, employees, and low-skilled unemployed. The answer seems to be varied
(depending upon what economist and what workers you consult.) Impact on is hard
to isolate statistically because Seattle is a relative boom town due to the high
tech economic sector. Thus just because a lot of McJob employers are still
thriving is confounded by the boom times apart from the minimum wage increase.
McJob employers are likely to be hit harder in communities having less boom
success in general. Also the wage increases are being phased in over time (until
2021)such that there is not one big boom to study.
It's hard judge impact on some McJob employers in very large or otherwise
isolated communities relative to those surrounded by competition not required to
raise minimum wage. For example, restaurant customers in in Seattle are not
likely to go elsewhere because their favorite restaurant had to raise prices
slightly. Restaurant customers on the very edge of Seattle might drive a bit
further for better prices.
Thus the impact of the Seattle's minimum wage hike focuses more on
labor/employment impact than on employer impact. And herein commences the lying
or possible lying with statistics. I would dwell on all the issues since you can
read them for your self in the above links.
Personally, I think the $15 minimum wage eventually is a good idea in a high
cost city like Seattle.
But I would like to conclude with what I think is trickery in Jared
Bernstein's rejoinder. He skirts important issues like how entry level employees
without skills (like students in need of part-time jobs and employees who messed
up their early years (e.g., with drugs and crime) get a start without higher
turnover in the minimum wage jobs that open up entry-level jobs.
At times he totally ignores the study's findings such as:
Wages:
The distribution of wages shifted as expected.
The share of workers earning less than $11 per hour declined sharply.
This decline began shortly after the ordinance was passed.
However, similar declines were seen outside of Seattle, suggesting an
improving economy may be the cause of the change in the distribution of
wages.
Second he seems to imply without more data or foresight that in larger firms
the minimum wage is an even better idea than it is at fast-food restaurants.
What he fails to note that it is in the larger firms where robotics alternatives
to low-paying jobs are exploding. :
Wal-Mart Has An Army Of Robots That Pick, Pack, and Send in Their 130
Distribution Centers ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-mart-warehouse-robots-2013-12
McJobs in those Wal-Mart distribution centers have already disappeared with
advances in robotics. Perhaps this was inevitable but eliminating McJobs with
higher minimum wages will speed up job sacrices to robots and drive more and
more low skilled workers to welfare rolls and crime.
Also see
The Automated Wal-Mart: A Thought Experiment
http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep/automated/walmart.pdf
The Seattle experiment is hard to extrapolate to every town and city in the
USA. I think higher minimum wages where the cost of living is very high is
probably a good idea. For example, the cost of living is even high in the
suburbs of Seattle and San Francisco. But the same minimum wage successes for
those metropolitan areas can be a disaster in rural America where the job losses
are likely to be enormous, For example, down the road from our mountain cottage
is an old fashioned hardware store that is already struggling to compete with
stores 10 miles away (in Littleton, NH), stores like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and
Lowes. A $15 minimum wage might close the doors on my favorite and struggling
little hardware store that now makes almost zero profit. The workers in this
store are typically part-time spouses who supplement the family income with a
bit of added wage within walking distance of the store.
The main conclusion from this illustration is that professional economists
cannot agree on much of anything!
PS
Cleveland just rejected a $15 miniumum wage ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/08/12/good-call-cleveland-rejects-15-minimum-wage-proposal-n2204064?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
Law School Deans in Australia Are Running and Bait and Switch Operation
---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/08/law-prof-law-school-deans-are-running-a-bait-and-switch-operation.html
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"How Hard Is It to Get Tenure?" by Karen Kelsky, Chronicle of
Higher Education, July 26, 2016 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1482-how-hard-is-it-to-get-tenure?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=0e903512ecc741079eda65f2cb8f84c6&elq=6b72dd53e7344969a190db614c0b9756&elqaid=10009&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3697
Jensen Comment
Two things make getting tenure at an R1 prestigious university somewhat unique.
Firstly, there has to be an opening. Some prestigious universities near
capacity in terms of tenure. In an ideal world the university would not even
hire new tenure track faculty unless an opening was assured. However, in the
real world predicting future openings is more difficult because of uncertainties
regarding resignations and dates of retirement.
Secondly in R1 universities there are usually stars having worldwide
reputations. In many instances getting tenure means having one of these stars
pulling a tenure candidate up the tenure track and using star power to influence
other tenured faculty to vote for that star's choice.
At an R1 university we should not attempt to assess probability on the basis
of the number of tenure track candidates who seeming "did not make it." Many
such tenure track candidates never intended to make tenure on their first jobs
at R1 universities. There are many reasons. Sometimes the cost of living in the
vicinity of an R1 university restrains hoped for lifestyles. A family hoping for
rural living with a couple horses, some goats, and a few acres of yard best not
choose Stanford University. That sort of living begins at a real estate price of
$50 million in the vicinity of Stanford University.
Sometimes working at an R1 university is just too much of a pressure cooker.
After getting tenure the pressure gets worse to maintain reputation in terms of
obtaining grants, publishing in top research journals, generating top doctoral
students, constantly giving presentations around the world, and many other
expectations that are bad for health.
Tenure track faculty are aware of these issues and many of them never intend
to stay. However, starting out at a prestigious university increases the odds
for publication in a variety of ways including low teaching loads, stellar
colleagues to work with, and powerful alumni connections. Many hope to build a
dream resume and then have a fast-track shot at that endowed chair in rural USA
where farms and ranches are affordable.
"Two Good Men," Larry Summers Blog, July 25, 2016 ---
http://larrysummers.com/2016/07/25/two-good-men/
MIT: The Promise and Perils of Manipulating Memory ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/528156/the-promise-and-perils-of-manipulating-memory/
Teaching Case
Cost Accounting and Inventory Valuation
by Bob Jensen:
Differences Between Mark-to-Market Accounting for Derivative Contracts Versus
Commodity Inventories ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Mark-to-MarketCorn.htm
Why bother teaching our students not to cheat when professors can get away
with it? ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Price-of-Plagiarism/237250?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=aa0428dcd9704cb59cb9f6331eb68705&elq=052eb8c4832c4a2e985e0c6a61a014f8&elqaid=9985&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3686
Jensen Comment
Professors are allowed to cheat in subtle ways. For example, four professors
(usually in different universities) agree to conduct research and write papers
in pairs. They play the odds game in journal acceptance. Suppose they put all
four names on eight papers that were written by different pairs. They put all
four names on eight papers playing the game that two of the eight papers might
be accepted by the top research journals of their discipline.
If students might play this game in a slightly different way only each paper
may only have one author. We would call it cheating when students write papers
for one another. In higher education we call it just trying to get a publication
hit in a top journal.
Professors who plagiarized or otherwise cheated ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoFabricate
Professors who let students cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward
Economist Magazine, July 30, 2016
Minsky's Moment
The second article in our series on seminal economic ideas looks at Hyman
Minsky’s hypothesis that booms sow the seeds of busts
http://www.economist.com/news/economics-brief/21702740-second-article-our-series-seminal-economic-ideas-looks-hyman-minskys?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/20160728n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/n
Economist Magazine: July 22, 2016
The Market for Lemons
The first in our series on seminal
economic ideas looks at George Akerlof’s 1970 paper, a foundation stone of
information economics ---
http://www.economist.com/news/economics-brief/21702428-george-akerlofs-1970-paper-market-lemons-foundation-stone-information?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/20160721n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/NA/n
"GDP Is a Wildly Flawed Measure for the Digital Age," by Barry Libert
and Megan Beck, Harvard Business Review Blog, July 28, 2016 ---
https://hbr.org/2016/07/gdp-is-a-wildly-flawed-measure-for-the-digital-age?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Time-Series Non-Stationarity ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary
In my opinion this is the biggest hurdle in statistical analysis in general and
time-series analysis in particular
Time Series Co-Integration ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointegration
Especially note the illustration in the Introduction
"The Forecasting Performance of Models for Cointegrated Data," by
David Giles, Econometrics Beat, July 26, 2016 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-forecasting-performance-of-models.html
Senate Bill Proposes Shot in Arm for Career and Technical Education
---
https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/07/27/senate-bill-proposes-shot-in-arm-for-cte.aspx
"Science Isn’t Broken." By Christie Aschwanden, Nate Silver's 5:38
Blog, August 19, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1
If you follow the headlines, your confidence in science may have taken a hit
lately. Peer review? More like self-review. An investigation in November
uncovered a scam in which
researchers were
researchers were rubber-stamping their own work,
circumventing peer review at five high-profile
publishers. Scientific journals? Not exactly a badge of legitimacy, given
that the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology recently
accepted for publication
a paper titled “Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List,”
whose text was nothing more than those seven words,
repeated over and over
for
10 pages.
Two other journalsallowed
an engineer posing as Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel to publish a paper,
“Fuzzy, Homogeneous Configurations.” Revolutionary findings? Possibly
fabricated. In May, a couple of University of California, Berkeley, grad
students discovered irregularities in
Michael LaCour’s influential paper
suggesting that an in-person conversation with a gay person could change how
people felt about same-sex marriage. The journal Science retracted the paper
shortly after, when LaCour’s co-author could find no record of the
data.Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a
shady enterprise that spits out a bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve
spent months investigating the problems hounding science, and I’ve learned
that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere
distractions. The state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a
universal problem: Science is hard . . .
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Accounting researchers have a bit easier since it's almost certain their
research will never be subjected to replication ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTaR.htm
Property taxes are soaring in some neighborhoods of Chicago ---
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20160728/CRED0701/160729844/property-taxes-jump-and-jaws-drop
The property tax bill on Jeff and Roberta Price's
Lincoln Park home was about $400 in 1977, the first year they lived there.
It's been going up ever since, but rarely with the jolt of this year's 63
percent increase.
The increase, from $8,652 to $14,104, has the
couple reconsidering their plan to retire in the Kenmore Avenue home where
they raised their kids. They're looking at homes in Indiana "as a backup
plan" for the time when Roberta retires in a few years, said Jeff Price, who
is already retired.
"We have lived in our home for almost 39 years with
the hope that we could remain here in our golden years," Jeff Price said.
The increase in their tax bill amounts to about $454 a month, an amount they
can squeak out, he said, but he's aware that for homeowners who struggle
financially, it won't be easy.
"I don't know how anyone can plan their life with
these unconscionable increases," Price said.
The Prices are among about 1.4 million residential
property owners in Cook County facing an Aug. 1 deadline to pay the second
installment of their 2015 property taxes. The tax bills, mailed out by the
Cook County Clerk in June, are the first to reflect both the higher
assessments of city properties' value that were released last fall and the
city upping the pension part of its tax levy by $318 million.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
This type of increase is happening in many parts of the USA. But it could not
happen Jeff and Roberta Price in California because of the infamous Proposition
13 (as long as they remained in the same house) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978
)
“The
Unraveling of Harvard’s Star Trading Desk,”
by Michael McDonald, Bloomberg, July 28, 2016 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-28/behind-harvard-shakeup-a-star-trading-desk-that-unraveled-fast?cmpid=BBD072916_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=
. . .
After years of missteps, controversy and even crisis, Harvard Management
Corp., which oversees the university’s $37.6 billion endowment, began
assembling a new corps of equity traders and analysts in 2014, in hopes of
recapturing a part of the investment magic that had once made the fund the
envy of the world.
Only now, just two years later, that plan has collapsed. Stephen Blyth,
48, the former bond trader behind that effort, stepped down as HMC’s chief
executive Wednesday for personal reasons after just 18 months on the job.
His
resignation
follows the departure in June of Michael Ryan and Robert Howard, the two
former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partners he had brought in to guide the new
equity strategy.
Pulled Plug
While Blyth’s exit was said to be unrelated to those of his star hires, the
talk inside HMC’s offices at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston centered on
why management had pulled the plug on the team so quickly amid a volatile
equities market.
According to people familiar with the matter, some traders in Ryan’s group
posted losses in 2015 significant enough to trigger internal temporary
stop-loss orders. Ryan also lost money in a portfolio he managed. The extent
of the losses is unclear, however, and came at a time when most hedge funds
were struggling to beat market indexes.
But now, Harvard is once again confronting the same, uncomfortable question
that has dogged it for years: why can’t the world’s richest university, for
all its brains, make smarter investments?
Stanley Fish ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Fish
"Professors, Stop Opining About Trump," by Stanley Fish, The New
York Times, July 15, 2016 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/opinion/sunday/professors-stop-opining-about-trump.html?_r=1
PROFESSORS are
at it again, demonstrating in public how little they understand the
responsibilities and limits of their profession.
On Monday a group calling itself Historians Against
Trump published an “Open
Letter to the American People.” The purpose
of the letter, the historians tell us, is to warn against “Donald J. Trump’s
candidacy and the exceptional challenges it poses to civil society.” They
suggest that they are uniquely qualified to issue this warning because they
“have a professional obligation as historians to share an understanding of
the past upon which a better future may be built.”
Or in other
words: We’re historians and you’re not, and “historians understand the
impact these phenomena have upon society’s most vulnerable.” Therefore we
can’t keep silent, for “the lessons of history compel us to speak out
against Trump.”
I would say
that the hubris of these statements was extraordinary were it not so
commonplace for professors (not all but many) to regularly equate the
possession of an advanced degree with virtue. The claim is not simply that
disciplinary expertise confers moral and political superiority, but that
historians, because of their training, are uniquely objective observers: “As
historians, we consider diverse viewpoints while acknowledging our own
limitations and subjectivity.”
But there’s
very little acknowledgment of limitations and subjectivity in what follows,
only a rehearsal of the now standard criticisms of Mr. Trump, offered not as
political opinions, which they surely are, but as indisputable, impartially
arrived at truths: “Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a campaign of
violence: violence against individuals and groups; against memory and
accountability, against historical analysis and fact.” How’s that for cool,
temperate and disinterested analysis?
Now, don’t get
me wrong. I’m not saying that this view of Mr. Trump is incorrect; nor am I
saying that it is on target: only that it is a view, like anyone else’s. By
dressing up their obviously partisan views as “the lessons of history,” the
signatories to the letter present themselves as the impersonal transmitters
of a truth that just happens to flow through them. In fact they are merely
people with history degrees, which means that they have read certain books,
taken and taught certain courses and written scholarly essays, often on
topics of interest only to other practitioners in the field.
While this
disciplinary experience qualifies them to ask and answer discipline-specific
questions, it does not qualify them to be our leaders and guides as we
prepare to exercise our franchise in a general election. Academic expertise
is not a qualification for delivering political wisdom.
Nor is it
their job, although they seem to think it is: “It is all of our jobs to fill
the voids exploited by the Trump campaign.” (I’m not sure that I understand
what that grandiose sentence means.) No, it’s their job to teach students
how to handle archival materials, how to distinguish between reliable and
unreliable evidence, how to build a persuasive account of a disputed event,
in short, how to perform as historians, not as seers or political gurus.
I would have
no problem with individuals, who also happened to be historians,
disseminating their political conclusions in an op-ed or letter to the
editor; but I do have a problem when a bunch of individuals claim for
themselves a corporate identity and more than imply that they speak for the
profession of history.
There are at
least two things wrong with this claim. First, it couldn’t possibly be true
unless it were the case that no credentialed historian is a Trump supporter;
even one or two (and I bet there are a lot more than that) would spoil the
broth. Second, and more important, the profession of history shouldn’t be
making political pronouncements of any kind. Its competence lies elsewhere,
in the discipline-specific acts I identified above.
Were an
academic organization to declare a political position, it would at that
moment cease to be an academic organization and would have turned itself —
as the Historians Against Trump turn themselves — into a political
organization whose arguments must make their way without the supposed
endorsement and enhancement of an academic pedigree. Its members would be
political actors who share the accidental feature of having advanced
degrees. But it’s not the degrees, which are finally inessential, but the
strength or weakness of the arguments that will tell in the end.
If academics
are wrong to insert themselves into the political process under the banner
of academic expertise, is Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrong when she makes
unflattering remarks about Mr. Trump at a conference and in an interview?
Maybe so (indeed, she herself has expressed regret for the comments), but
she has not committed the same transgression as the historians. Justice
Ginsburg was speaking off the cuff, offering her opinion on a matter
currently in the news, as any citizen has a right to do. She did not cite or
trade on the trappings of her office; she did not proclaim from the bench.
Continued in article
We can blame democracy for the high risk of public-sector pension plans
The Economist Magazine
July 26, 2016
http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21702623-rules-encourage-public-sector-pension-plans-take-more-risk-putting-it-all
Jensen Comment
It turns out that pension investing risk relies heavily on investment and
accounting rules where public-sector pension fund managers
are allowed to get their funds into riskier investments, including junk bonds.
The enormous TIAA/CREF and some other pension funds give investors risk
choices. TIAA bond funds are doing worse due to the Fed's low-interest policy
such that teachers in TIAA/CREF are choosing more risky funds. Deals are no
longer as good for fixed-annuity plans relative to when I retired in 2006 (blind
luck rather than strategy).
Sadly, riskier public-sector pension plans increases the risk of future
taxpayer bailouts. Public-sector pension plans would probably not be as risky if
government declared there was zero chance of future bailouts. But then what
legislators seeking office are going to promise zero chance of a public-sector
pension bailout. Hence we can blame democracy for the high risk of public-sector
pension plans.
One definition of democracy is gambling with taxpayer dollars.
The bankers as well as K-12 teachers helped to invent the bailout idea along
with municipal workers. Public-sector workers opposed to gambling probably don't
even know they are gambling with taxpayer dollars.
From the Scout Report on July 29, 2016
Duolingo ---
https://www.duolingo.com
Duolingo is a mobile app designed to help people
learn and practice a new language. Users can select any one of 36 languages
and practice reading, listening, and speaking this language. The app works
by introducing users to new vocabulary and grammar rules through a series of
short levels. The goal? Users will learn by seeing words and grammar
modeled. Next, users can try their hand at interpreting written and spoken
sentences and then speaking them out loud, allowing for pronunciation
practice. When users are able to successfully complete these tasks they move
onto higher levels with new vocabulary. Duolingo is designed to be of use to
individuals brand new to a language as well those looking to brush up an
already familiar one, as users can chose to test out of levels. Best of all,
Duolingo is free. Users can also "compete" against friends using the app if
they wish, providing additional motivation and accountability.
Simple.Savr---
https://www.ssavr.com
Simple.Savr is a new file-sharing device that
allows users to quickly and easily share files with anyone in their wifi
network. Simply type and edit text into a Share box or upload files for
others to download. Shared files are available to anyone in the network for
one week. At this time, there is a 25MB limit to files that can be shared
-thus, while this tool is useful for sharing text documents, it is not ideal
for larger downloads. That said, Simple.Savr provides an easy way for
coworkers or family members to share files and ideas with ease. Perhaps best
of all, this site is incredibly accessible: no sign-in or download is
required so anyone can start sharing files right away
To Make a Lichen, It Takes Three:
Scientists Discover a Second Fungi in
Lichen
Two's Company, Three's a Lichen?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/science/lichen-symbiotic-relationship.html?_r=0
Lichen is a famous biological partnership, but it may actually be a
threesome
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/07/22/lichen-is-a-famous-biological-partnership-but-it-might-actually-be-a-threesome
How a Guy from a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of History
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702
Basidiomycete yeasts in the cortex of ascomycete macro-lichens
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/07/20/science.aaf8287
Mix and Match Ecology: Symbiosis Lesson Plan
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4769
USDA: Lichens
http://fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/lichens
From the Scout Report on August 5, 2016
Venngage --- https://venngage.com
Venngage is an online tool that facilitates visual
story-telling via eye-catching charts, maps, icons, and visuals that can be
used on infographics, reports, or posters. There are dozens of templates for
users to explore, all sorted into categories such as statistics, timelines,
geography, and comparison. After signing up for a free account, users can
create templates for reporting budget projections (in the Reports tab) or
informational posters to describe procedures (in the Posters tab). The
Posters section may be of special interest to anyone looking to sleekly
incorporate graphs and charts into a poster presentation for the classroom
or at a conference. While some of the templates require a monthly
subscription, others are free and available for anyone to use.
Dials ---
http://dialsapp.com
This free calendar application for Apple and
Android mobile devices may appeal most to users who live by the motto, "one
day at a time." Daily schedules are presented on a 12-hour clock face
accompanied by a smaller weekly calendar at the bottom of the screen. When
users add daily agenda items, a timer indicates the amount of time until the
next agenda item begins. Users can quickly add agenda items for any point in
the future. Dials syncs with Google Calendars, so users can easily update
appointments and reminders from their Google accounts. For the aesthetically
inclined user looking for an alternative to the more traditional calendar
applications, Dials' unique interface may be the solution. Available for
Apple devices running iOS 9.0 and up and on Android devices 4.2+.
"Zombie"
Anthrax Wreak Havoc in Rapidly Warming Siberia
Anthrax sickens 13 in western Siberia, and a thawed-out reindeer corpse may
be to blame
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/28/anthrax-sickens-13-in-western-siberia-and-a-thawed-out-reindeer-corpse-may-be-to-blame
Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change kills boy in Arctic Circle
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/anthrax-outbreak-climate-change-arctic-circle-russia
"Zombie" Anthrax Goes on Killing Spree in Siberia--How?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/zombie-anthrax-goes-on-a-killing-spree-in-siberia-how
Thawing of permafrost may disturb historic cattle burial grounds in East
Siberia
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222928
Sinkholes in Siberia Raise and Climate Change
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/c1bc7749-1145-45be-9640-4e606023eb9d/mystery-holes-in-siberia-raise-climate-change-concerns
The Nenets of Siberia
http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/04/the-nenets-of-siberia/100277
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and
Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
Underground Mathematics ---
https://undergroundmathematics.org
Minnesota Literacy Council: Curriculum and Lesson Plans ---
https://mnliteracy.org/curriculum-lesson-plans
Journal of Research in Rural Education ---
http://jrre.psu.edu
From Michigan State University: The Celebrity Lecture Series ---
http://cls.matrix.msu.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
Sciblogs (blogs in science and medicine)---
http://sciblogs.co.nz
F1000Research (life science, ecology, medicine) ---
http://f1000research.com
To Save New Zealand's Magnificent and Unique Birds
New Zealand vows to kill every weasel, rat and feral cat on its soil ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/07/25/new-zealand-plans-to-kill-every-weasel-rat-and-feral-cat-on-its-soil/
The Animal Rights Controversy
Animals, Predators, The Right to Life, and the Duty to Save Lives ---
http://www.stafforini.com/txt/Simmons - Animals, predators, the
right to life, and the duty to save lives.pdf
The Remarkable Story of the World's First Atomic Bomb ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-a-photo-of-the-worlds-first-atomic-bomb-2015-5
Scholarpedia (a cross between Wikipedia and Google Scholar) ---
http://www.scholarpedia.org
An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women in Science ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/28/women-in-science-rachel-ignotofsky/?mc_cid=0412440b33&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
TED: Talks by Brilliant Women in STEM ---
https://www.ted.com/playlists/253/11_ted_talks_by_brilliant_wome
PBS Space Time ---
http://www.pbs.org/show/pbs-space-time
Papers in Physics ---
http://www.papersinphysics.org
NIH News in Health ---
https://newsinhealth.nih.gov
Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine (medical history) ---
http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones
Methods for Protein Purification ---
https://blossoms.mit.edu/videos/lessons/methods_protein_purification
Gothic Past (Irish history and architecture) ---
http://gothicpast.com
Pew Research Center: U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to 'Enhance'
Human Abilities ---
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/07/26/u-s-public-wary-of-biomedical-technologies-to-enhance-human-abilities
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
Global Open Data Index (international government data) ---
http://index.okfn.org
The Women's Library @ LSE ---
http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/thewomenslibrary
Scholarpedia (a cross between Wikipedia and Google Scholar) ---
http://www.scholarpedia.org
How Did Hitler Rise to Power? : New TED-ED Animation Provides a Case Study in
How Fascists Get Democratically Elected ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/how-did-hitler-rise-to-power.htm
The Leo Strauss Center: Hegel: The Philosophy of History, Winter 1965 ---
http://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/course/hegel-philosophy-history-winter-quarter-1965
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
The Women's Library @ LSE ---
http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/thewomenslibrary
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math Tutorials
Underground Mathematics ---
https://undergroundmathematics.org
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
Scholarpedia (a cross between Wikipedia and Google Scholar) ---
http://www.scholarpedia.org
Jensen Comment
So far I'm disappointed in Scholarpedia --- it has a long way to go
The Leo Strauss Center: Hegel: The Philosophy of History, Winter 1965 ---
http://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/course/hegel-philosophy-history-winter-quarter-1965
From Michigan State University: The Celebrity Lecture Series ---
http://cls.matrix.msu.edu
How Did Hitler Rise to Power? : New TED-ED Animation Provides a Case Study in
How Fascists Get Democratically Elected ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/how-did-hitler-rise-to-power.htm
Edward Wright Creates a List of His 1,000 Favorite Movies: Watch 10 of Them
Free Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/edward-wright-creates-a-list-of-his-1000-favorite-movies-watch-10-of-them-free-online.html
KateChopin.org (stories about daring woment) ---
http://www.katechopin.org
Picturing US History ---
http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu
Bible Odyssey ---
http://www.bibleodyssey.org
Gothic Past (Irish history and architecture) ---
http://gothicpast.com
The Kiss to the Whole World: Klimt and the Vienna Secession (art history) ---
http://secession.nyarc.org/omeka
Making of the Hudson River School (landscape art) ---
http://www.albanyinstitute.org/introduction.html
The Remarkable Story of the World's First Atomic Bomb ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-a-photo-of-the-worlds-first-atomic-bomb-2015-5
An Illustrated Celebration of Trailblazing Women in Science ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/28/women-in-science-rachel-ignotofsky/?mc_cid=0412440b33&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
The Women's Library @ LSE ---
http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/thewomenslibrary
TED: Talks by Brilliant Women in STEM ---
https://www.ted.com/playlists/253/11_ted_talks_by_brilliant_wome
A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyramids of Egypt, Sudan & Mexico ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/a-drones-eye-view-of-the-ancient-pyramids-of-egypt-sudan-mexico.html
Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine (medical history) ---
http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones
VOCES Oral History Project (Latinos in WWII) ---
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/voces
Remembering the Real Winnie: The World's Most Famous Bear Turns 100 ---
http://therealwinnie.ryerson.ca/collection
Villanova University Falvey Memorial Library: Rambles,
Travels, and Maps ---
https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:2954
Mattapoisett Historical Society: Data Stories (Massachusetts History) ---
http://mattapoisetthistoricalsociety.org/datastories
Bookworm (interviews with authors) ---
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/bookworm
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
From the Scout Report on July 29, 2016
Duolingo ---
https://www.duolingo.com
Duolingo is a mobile app designed to help people
learn and practice a new language. Users can select any one of 36 languages
and practice reading, listening, and speaking this language. The app works
by introducing users to new vocabulary and grammar rules through a series of
short levels. The goal? Users will learn by seeing words and grammar
modeled. Next, users can try their hand at interpreting written and spoken
sentences and then speaking them out loud, allowing for pronunciation
practice. When users are able to successfully complete these tasks they move
onto higher levels with new vocabulary. Duolingo is designed to be of use to
individuals brand new to a language as well those looking to brush up an
already familiar one, as users can chose to test out of levels. Best of all,
Duolingo is free. Users can also "compete" against friends using the app if
they wish, providing additional motivation and accountability.
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
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
Bookworm (interviews with authors) ---
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/bookworm
Picturing US History ---
http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu
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/
July 27, 2016
July 28, 2016
July 29, 2016
July 30, 2016
August 1, 2016
August 2, 2016
August 3, 2016
August 4, 2016
August 5, 2016
August 6, 2016
August 8, 2016
August 9, 2016
August 10, 2016
August 11, 2016
August 12, 2016
August 13, 2016
Blue-Blocking Glasses May Help Treat Bipolar
Disorder, Promote Sleep ---
http://www.newsweek.com/blue-blocking-glasses-may-help-treat-bipolar-disorder-promote-sleep-484065
Jensen Comment
Note the word "may." Scientific evidence is still pretty sparse. However, it
would seem that this is a relatively low cost and non-invasive thing to try.
NIH News in Health ---
https://newsinhealth.nih.gov
Stephen Fry on Coping With Depression ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/stephen-fry-on-coping-with-depression.html
Americans may not be getting taller on average but other things are tipping
the scales
Average American 15 Pounds Heavier in Two Decades
http://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/news/20160803/average-american-15-pounds-heavier-than-20-years-ago
Jensen Comment
I did my share
Humor for June 2015
Harvard Business Review Blog Cartoons ---
https://hbr.org/2016/08/strategic-humor-cartoons-from-the-september-2016-issue?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date
Forwarded by Paula
BAGPIPES
I love this story. Lay down what's bothering you, breath in the fresh air and
LISTEN to this story.
Time is like a river. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that
has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.
As a bagpiper,I play many gigs.
Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for
a homeless man. He had no family or friends,
so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the
Nova Scotia back country.
As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost and, being a typical
man, I didn't stop for directions.
I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and
the hearse was nowhere in sight.
There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating
lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.
I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already
in place. I didn't know
what else to do, so I started to play.
The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out
my
heart and soul for this man with no family and friends.
I played like I've never played before for this homeless man.
And as I played "Amazing Grace", the workers began to weep. They wept, I
wept, we all wept together.
When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car.
Though my head was hung low, my heart was full.
As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen
anything like that before,
and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."
Apparently, I'm still lost....it's a man thing.
Humor
July 2016
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q3.htm#Humor0716.htm
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
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu