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 May August 30, 2016
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Set 2 of my Hydrangea Photographs in Late Summer
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Hydrangeas/02/Hydrangeas02.htm 
 

 

Tidbits on August 30, 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

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

 




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
 

New Yorker Videos --- http://video.newyorker.com

YouTube: Computer History --- https://www.youtube.com/user/computerhistory/video

The History of Civilization Mapped in 13 Minutes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-history-of-civilization-mapped-in-13-minutes-5000-bc-to-2014-ad.html

This Republican mayor has an incredibly simple idea to help the homeless. And it seems to be working ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/08/11/this-republican-mayor-has-an-incredibly-simple-idea-to-help-the-homeless-and-it-seems-to-be-working/

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Course from Brandeis & Harvard ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/learn-ancient-greek-in-64-free-lessons-from-brandeis-harvard.html

Robin Williams Delivers a Hastings College of Law Commencement Speech in 1983 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/robin-williams-uses-his-stand-up-comedy-genius-to-deliver-a-law-school-commencement-speech-1983.html


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

Mashup Weaves Together 57 Famous Classical Pieces by 33 Composers: From Bach to Wagner ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/mashup-weaves-together-57-famous-classical-pieces-by-33-composers.html

When Sun Ra & John Cage Played Together in Concert: Hear an Extraordinary, One-Time Only Concert from 1986 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/when-sun-ra-john-cage-played-together-in-concert.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Watch What Happens When 100 Metronomes Perform György Ligeti’s Controversial Poème Symphonique ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/watch-what-happens-when-100-metronomes-perform-gyorgy-ligetis-controversial-poeme-symphonique.html

The Juilliard Manuscript Collection --- http://juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/hear-the-music-of-david-lynchs-twin-peaks-played-by-the-danish-national-symphony-orchestra.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Trap Set (drum music) --- http://www.thetrapset.net

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

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

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

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


Photographs and Art

The History of Photography in Five Animated Minutes: From Camera Obscura to Camera Phone ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-history-of-photography-in-five-animated-minutes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-very-first-color-photograph-1861.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Rome in 1890 (color) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/rome-comes-to-life-in-photochrom-color-photos-taken-in-1890.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Take a Virtual Reality Tour of the World’s Stolen Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/take-a-virtual-reality-tour-of-the-worlds-stolen-art.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection --- http://usdawatercolors.nal.usda.gov/pom/home.xhtml

The 47 best photographs of the Rio Olympics so far ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-photos-rios-opening-weekend-of-olympics-2016-8
Also see
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-photos-rios-opening-weekend-of-olympics-2016-8

The Best Panoramic Drone Pictures of 2016 ---
http://time.com/best-drone-photography-2016-panorama/?xid=newsletter-brief

Earth from Above ---
http://justpaste.it/3ky

Art of Science --- http://artofsci.princeton.edu

Dark Site Finder (astronomy photographs) --- http://darksitefinder.com

Lake Winnipesaukee and Alston Bay ---
http://www.weirsbeach.com/newmedia/12views/view12.html

Take a Tour of the Most Expensive Home in Europe ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-inside-the-most-expensive-home-in-europe-2016-8

32,000+ Bauhaus Art Objects Available Through the Harvard Art Museums Website ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/32000-bauhaus-art-objects-available-through-the-harvard-art-museums-website.html

Incredible color photos show how Americans prepared for World War II on the home front ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/color-photos-of-us-world-war-ii-2016-8

The Chirurgeon's Apprentice (history of medicine) --- https://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com

Images from the History of Medicine --- http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/servlet/view/all

Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice --- http://crivelli.gardnermuseum.org

Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum (African American Artists) --- https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this

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

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


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

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

Dissertation Reviews (science and humanities) --- http://dissertationreviews.org

#FolkloreThursday (British witches and fairy tales) --- http://folklorethursday.com/#sthash.BVTzPjN7.dpbs

How Dorothy Parker Changed Lyric Love Poetry Forever ---
http://daily.jstor.org/dorothy-parker/

Free: Hear Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Read by Hans Conried (1958) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/stream-robert-louis-stevensons-treasure-island-read-by-hans-conried-1958.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

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 30, 2016
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2016/TidbitsQuotations083016.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




What’s On the Other Side of a Black Hole? ---
http://daily.jstor.org/whats-side-black-hole/

20 Big Questions About the Future of Humanity ---
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/20-big-questions-about-the-future-of-humanity/

Jensen Comment
It's not hard to write really, really big questions in a few words. What's hard is to write answers to really, really big questions in a few words.

I like the questions in the above article although I think I would have focused more on one standout problem --- overpopulation of the planet. The answers to the 20 questions that were listed are very limited and debatable. For example, the answer to the gender equality question suggests that we will have more gender equality in science if we have more and more women going into science relative to numbers of men. I beg to differ. When I started out as a CPA decades ago there was one woman in our relatively large Big Eight firm office, and we kept her doing tax returns in the back office.

In the 21st Century there are more women graduating in accountancy than men, and the largest CPA firms are hiring more women than men. Women are expected to carry their load on every CPA client engagement, including travel. However, times have changed so that more and more CPA client work can be performed from home such that work scheduling is much more flexible for parents. However, there's still a glass ceiling in terms of number of women partners in CPA firms. Is this gender discrimination when admitting partners? In reality this question is much too complicated to answer outside of each specific case, although there is a huge lawsuit pending in KPMG that claims discrimination.

I don't intend to take up the very complicated issue of the gender glass ceiling (or lack thereof) in our largest CPA firms. The point I do want to make is having a higher proportion of women to men entering a given discipline like physics, mathematics, engineering, accounting, law, etc. does not necessarily translate to having a higher proportion of women to men retiring after 40-50 full-time years in those disciplines. I think the answer to that particular "big question" in this article overlooks the complexity of the "gender issue" in science and elsewhere between the beginnings and endings of careers in those disciplines.

My threads on gender issues are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women

I guess I was disappointed in the answers to the 20 "Big Questions." Maybe I was just expecting too much from Scientific American this time.

"Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?" by Susan S. Silbey, Harvard Business Review, August 24, 2016 ---
https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date 

Bob Jensen's threads on gender issues are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women


Noam Chomsky --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

Politics Versus Scholarship:  Two New Books Take Noam Chomsky Down ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Chomsky-Puzzle-Piecing/237558?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=22fbbef4122e4d7896373103cda5bfcb&elq=3d98a3770933465380d0c789537e8a88&elqaid=10415&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3902


Libraries of the Future --- http://lisnews.org/node/44560/


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

"The Chicago School of Free Speech," The Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2016 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chicago-school-of-free-speech-1472168075?mod=djemMER

For a change, we come not to bury a college president but to praise him. His name is Robert Zimmer, and nearby the University of Chicago president defends the educational and societal virtues of free speech on college campuses. Let’s hope he wears body armor to the next faculty meeting.

Mr. Zimmer’s public coming out is all the more notable because it appears to be part of a university-wide message. The school’s dean of students, Jay Ellison, has written a letter to incoming freshmen noting that the desire for “safe spaces” from discomfiting speech or ideas will not override

But the latest predictable outrage is that DePaul University has banned Ben Shapiro from appearing on campus, under the ludicrous and specious pretense of "security concerns." If there are security concerns, neither Shapiro nor his admirers are causing them. As Shapiro's sponsor, Young America's Foundation said, "Make no mistake, any security concerns we face on campuses are 100 percent incited by the censorious, intolerant left."
http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2016/08/05/censorial-depaul-bans-conservative-ben-shapiro-n2201935?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
 

Jensen Comment on Depaul University
The :intolerant left" includes most of Depaul's faculty as well as students.
Ben Shapiro is just not politically correct for campuses in the USA.

Stanley Fish --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Fish

For many years, Stanley Fish has been one of my heroes and role models ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Solitary-Thinker/127464/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
The world needs more Fish tales.

Professor Fish is sometimes incorrectly given credit for the phrase "political correctness." Perhaps he should be given credit, however, for a willingness to stand up against the tide of politcal correctness that swamped our academy.

August 5, 2016 reply from Tom Selling

Use of “politically correct” is a pet peeve of mine.

The irony of using “politically correct” as a code word is that it was coined (to the best of my knowledge) by Lenin to indicate correspondence with communist orthodoxy. It’s popularity in U.S. discourse was probably fueled by radio shock jocks who, rather than deal with facts, stirred up resentment from the listening audience via coarse analogies to communism in response to any “liberal” suggestion that government might participate in solving a socio-economic problem. I don’t think users today realize how deeply the term should be regarded as an insult.

This is somewhat of an aside, but a recent personal experience: I spent a lot of time last week (on RAGBRAI — www.ragbrai.com) with a native German speaker who preferred conversing with me in German, even though he was fluent in English. During one discussion, I used the word “Lebensraum,” a perfectly ordinary word, in a perfectly ordinary sense. But, my German friend was aghast. Since “Lebensraum” was a central concept of naziism, the term is no longer acceptable in polite conversation.

That is the way I feel about “politically correct.” Notwithstanding whether Stanley Fish, whom I admire greatly for his principles and his intellect, used the term, I do not regard “politically correct” as acceptable in polite conversation.

Also see
http://www.wsj.com/articles/free-speech-is-the-basis-of-a-true-education-1472164801?mod=djemMER


August 6. 2016 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Tom,

Allan Bloom --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Bloom

Sometimes a term like "political correctness" is deemed more acceptable after there is frequent use of it in the academic literature. For example this phrase is extensively used in Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind

The banning of conservative writers from college campuses but not liberal/progressive writers is an example of just what Allan Bloom was referring to over and over in his classic book.

I repeat:
Is there currently a liberal/progressive speaker that would be banned from the campus of Depaul University because of the possibility that liberal/progressive viewpoints would be advocated?

I always admired Trinity University because of the spectrum of speakers that came to campus from Milton Friedman to Michael Moore. During Milton Friedman's speech his very tiny wife Rose walked down the aisle and tapped a heckler lightly with her shoe. Even Trinity's most liberal scholars left with their heads shaking in dismay after Michael Moore's inflammatory speech. But in my 24 years on that campus I cannot remember an incident where the audience was not polite. Yeah there were a few occasions where security had to remove a heckler from the audience, but this was infrequent. Once a small heckler group had to be removed during a speech by Henry Kissinger. But these were not local hecklers. There was a group of stalkers that followed Kissinger to heckle wherever he went in life. .

Thanks<
Bob

the academic community’s interest in rigorous debate

“Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn, without fear of censorship,” Mr. Ellison wrote for tender millennial ears. “You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

This is so refreshing we want to keep going. Mr. Ellison’s letter adds that Chicago’s “commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

The letter comes with a monograph by dean John Boyer discussing the university’s “history of debate, and even scandal, resulting from our commitment to academic freedom.” Maybe Chicago’s example will inspire spinal infusions at the likes of Rutgers, the University of Missouri, and even the timorous souls at Yale.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Political Correctness ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness

SUNY Binghamton Hosts a "Stop the White Guy" Workshop ---
http://www.toddstarnes.com/column/university-hosts-stop-white-people-workshop
This site is politically biased and probably exaggerated the political correctness of this workshop.
Binghamton University's Apology ---
http://www.binghamtonreview.com/2016/08/binghamton-u-apologizes-for-controversial-stopwhitepeople2k16-ra-training-event-title/


Will the largest for-profit training school (with 130 campuses) be thrown under the bus?

ITT --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on August 26, 2016

This could be it for ITT
The Obama administration took steps Thursday that could effectively force the closure of one of the nation’s largest for-profit college chains, banning ITT Technical Institute from enrolling new students who receive federal aid. ITT, which has about 43,000 students nationwide, is facing accusations from its accreditor of chronic mismanagement of its finances and using questionable recruiting tactics. The company is also under investigation by state and federal authorities. Parent ITT Educational Services Inc.’s stock plunged.

Education Dept. Cuts Off Federal Aid to New Students at For-Profit ITT ---
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/education-department-cuts-off-federal-aid-to-new-students-at-for-profit-itt/113742?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=ae1413149f5241daa3ab65edd6ef67e6&elq=d334bc6d28ef4f6393a2a09921f52c98&elqaid=10432&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3912

Bob Jensen's threads on fee-based training alternatives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm


Customer Service Hall of Fame/Shame:  the companies with the highest and lowest customer satisfaction ratings ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/23/customer-service-hall-of-fame-4/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AUG242016A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Jensen Comment
Note that some companies that advertise a lot (read that as Progressive Insurance, BofA, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Dish Network, Direct TV, and the big cable companies) have lousy customer service reputations. The bad customer service seems to worse for companies that provide continuous service such as mobile phone and cable companies. The sad thing is that their prices seem to be going up faster than price increases on other things we buy.

My favorite customer service story was one that Jay Leno told during a gig at Trinity University. It seems that his father bought a toilet with a 20-year warranty. During one of Jay's visits home his dad asked for help getting that toilet disconnected and returned to the hardware store after 19+ years of use. At the time Jay was very famous and recognizable with that huge chin. Jay Leno felt more than a little embarrassed carrying a 19+ year old toilet into the hardware store for a new replacement in front of the other customers in the store. He got the new toilet and took it home. Jay is rich and could easily have ordered a new toilet installed without returning the old toilet. But his father insisted that the store must honor its warranty. Jay had some other cute stories about his modest and plain-living parents.

Bob Jensen's Customer Service Preferences When Living in the Boondocks
Personally I like the ease and convenience of Amazon's customer service, especially regarding how easy it is to return merchandise with free return shipping when you live 10-100 miles from stores where you customarily shop. With Amazon I can return it in the same shipping box (that I don't get from an in-store purchase) and drop it off at a UPS or Postal Service counter less than three miles from our cottage. The drawback is that I may have to wait a couple of days for the credit to appear on my credit card, but who cares about such a short wait?

And when I return something to Amazon I don't have to wait in a customer service line even on the day after Christmas. I can't say that for an in-store return to Wal-Mart.

Personally I like the in-home service contract coverage from Sears on larger items like snow throwers, air conditioners, dehumidifiers, microwaves, stoves, and refrigerators. It sometimes takes 10-20 days for the Sears truck to roll up my driveway but what a convenience of not having to take these heavy items to a drop off point myself.

The Sears in-home service contract comes with a "free" annual maintenance service. Refrigerators don't take much service other than a little cleaning, but air conditioners and snow throwers take a bit more maintenance.

I had a very old pair of LL Bean's famous gumshoes that literally wore out with holes in the bottom even though they came with a lifetime warranty. I sent them back to LL Bean where the boots were skillfully repaired for free. This was a better long-term deal than for most any warranty on a product you can buy at Amazon or the big box stores. I felt a bit like Jay Leno when I returned those boots after so many, many years of faithful service. But I wanted to test out that lifetime warranty. Maybe I will be buried in those boots. I don't know if LL Bean changed this warranty policy since the time I purchased those boots while living in Maine decades and decades ago.

 


Monty Hall Problem --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

Monty Hall paradoxes also arise in contract bridge ---
https://www.larryco.com/bridge-learning-center/detail/103
Thank you Richard Sansing for the heads up

I can't remember when I read a more fascinating article
The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman
---
https://priceonomics.com/the-time-everyone-corrected-the-worlds-smartest/

August 23, 2016 Reply from David Johnstone in Australia

In general in Bayesian logic, information carried by E is reflected entirely in the likelihood function, which is p(E|q) where q is the unknown parameter. If Monte Hall has a way of selecting that gives the game away, and it is known, the likelihood function will equal 1 for the true q (here the true box) and zero for the others.

In the original Bayesian solution to the Monte Hall problem, which is written up in many places, and appeared in “Herd on the Street” which was a book of likely interview questions in investment banking, it is assumed on the “principle of insufficient reason” that Monte chooses randomly from the two boxes that don’t have a prize.

When I first saw this problem as an undergrad, I got it very wrong, and a guy who had been recruited out of physics and had just been learning the new spreadsheet program that was coming out for PCs (I can’t remember its name but it was an early competitor for Excel) sat me down in exasperation and wrote a simulation of the game that was to prove me wrong (and prove the standard solution that you double your chances by switching).


See if you can solve these 6 fiendish brain-teasers written by NSA employees ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/6-tough-brain-teasers-written-by-nsa-employees-puzzle-periodical-2016-8/#heres-a-relatively-easy-one-to-start-off-with-from-july-2016-1
My aging brain was only good for the first teaser.


The 5 Books on President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-5-books-on-president-obamas-2016-summer-reading-list.html

Jensen Comment
H is for Hawk, the only one of the five I read thus far, is a bit depressing about depression. It would not be on my top five list. I did learn more about hawk training than I ever wanted to know. I'm now a bit more interested in the hawk counters who sometimes ask to sit in my front yard to count hawks flying above the valley below. When they tell me they've spotted over 100 in less than a day I think there's error from double counting. I occasionally see a hawk up close from my desk. Our aggressive crows sometimes dive bomb the hawks and eagles --- proving that there's strength in large families. Hawks usually fly solo while crows almost never fly solo.

There's a big rock beside my well head in the front yard. One time a magnificent golden eagle became so exhausted from crow harassment that he(or she) landed in the yard and wisely put its butt against that rock for protection from dive bombing crows (that never attack from the front). After about a half hour it flew off over the valley with the persistent crows on its tail. A family of crows (so big they might be ravens) hangs around our cottage all day long because Erika feeds them twice a day. She supplements table scraps with packages of dog food. The crows also kill the frogs in our pond. Sigh1

Some of my pictures of birds up here:

Set 01 of my favorite bird pictures --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Birds/Set01/BirdsSet01.htm 
Ducks on the Golf Course --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090714.htm
Also see --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2009/tidbits090526.htm\

PS
I'm now reading a 1987 great book I bought used from Amazon last week:

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind:  How Education has Failed Democracy ahd Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, pp. 25-260

The above book was one of the first highly respectable books by a renowned  philosophy professor (University of Chicago) to frequently use the term "politically correct."


Nine popular online classes from top US universities anyone can enroll in late August 2016 and probably at future dates ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/coursera-online-classes-top-us-universities-2016-8/#1-john-hopkins-universitys-html-css-and-javascript-for-web-developers-1


The Pill That Made Northwestern University Rich ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-18/the-pill-that-made-northwestern-rich

Jensen Comment
In the 1950s the invention of Crest Tootpaste helped make Indiana University relatively rich ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-18/the-pill-that-made-northwestern-rich


Time Magazine:  Why People Love Dogs ---
http://time.com/4459684/national-dog-day-history-domestic-dogs-wolves/?xid=newsletter-brief

Jensen Comment
Except in most Muslim nations where dogs are banned (like in Iran and Saudi Arabia)


 

OneNote --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote

Switching from Evernote to OneNote, part 2 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/switching-from-evernote-to-onenote-part-2/62621?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=4f5dcfbb54e84d2081bfbe1a9db81423&elq=1f69d115eefd4271b7587f212191aec5&elqaid=10366&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3881

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

"Using Evernote in the Classroom," by Amy Cavender, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 20, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/using-evernote-in-the-classroom/58347?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

"A Brief Word from an Evernote Convert," by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 6, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/A-Brief-Word-from-an-Evernote/25291/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en 

"Evernote and Markdown: Two Tools that Work Great Together," by Amy Cavender, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/evernote-and-markdown-two-tools-that-work-great-together/58457?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


These are Not Your Average Business Cards ---
https://www.moo.com/us/products/business-cards.html?cvosrc=ppc content.bidtellect.bid-4054-How To Geek LLC-393367-jul16&cvo_campaign=28259&utm_source=bidtellect&utm_medium=native&utm_campaign=us_soho_bidtellect_camp28259_4054_How To Geek LLC_393367_jul16&utm_content=393367&utm_term=4054


Is it Safe to Delete Everything With Windows' Disk Cleanup? ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/266337/what-should-i-remove-in-disk-cleanup-on-windows/


Identity Theft:  Here's What to Do if Your Identity is Stolen (in various countries) ---
https://www.comparitech.com/identity-theft-protection/guides/identity-theft-heres-what-to-do-if-your-identity-is-stolen/


Study Finds More Faculty Diversity at Public Institutions Than at Private Ones ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/study-finds-more-faculty-diversity-at-public-institutions-than-at-private-ones/113590?elqTrackId=529198b4809a4b4c94aef2691f5400ce&elq=5143e52a871447e490549039c015d42e&elqaid=10331&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3869
Jensen Comment
There are two types of private colleges and universities. The first type includes the prestigious universities where tenure is very, very hard to attain for minorities and non-minorities. The second type includes the private colleges and universities struggling to meet payroll who cannot afford to hire minority faculty now demanding premiums since they are in such short supply if they have respectable Ph.D. diplomas. Some public institutions will stretch diploma requirements such as accepting minority applicants who either do not have Ph.D. diplomas (think of now-infamous native American former tenured faculty member at the University of Colorado) or those who earned Ph.D.s online mills or some of the questionable doctoral programs outside the USA.


Ransomware --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware
Ransoms for stolen data are now most often paid in bitcoin.

Ransomware attacks have risen sharply this year and are targeting entire networks of computers at hospitals, universities and businesses ---
 http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-the-bitcoin-era-ransomware-attacks-surge-1471616632?tesla=y

Digital currency, better software help hackers hold data hostage

One evening in April, Dave Winston stood in a convenience store in suburban Charlotte, N.C., uneasily shoving $20 bills into a slim automated-teller machine unlike any he had ever seen. He was buying bitcoin, a digital currency unknown to him a few hours earlier, before hackers took over his computer.

Mr. Winston, crew chief with the Circle Sport-Leavine Family Nascar race team, is among a growing number of victims of a pernicious type of malicious software called ransomware, which has earned millions of dollars for cybercriminals by encrypting computer files and holding them hostage.

Ransomware dates to the late 1980s, but attacks spiked this year amid the growing use of bitcoin and improved encryption software. Malicious code turned Mr. Winston’s Excel spreadsheets and Word documents into unreadable gobbledygook, and hackers told him to pay $500 in bitcoin to unscramble them.

Mr. Winston doesn’t know how the software infected his computer, but security experts say attacks often start with an email message containing an attachment or a link to a website that quietly installs the software.

Once considered a consumer problem, ransomware has morphed to target entire networks of computers at hospitals, universities and businesses. That has made it a far more serious and costly threat. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, ransomware attacks have quadrupled this year from a year ago, averaging 4,000 a day. Typical ransomware payments range from $500 to $1,000, according to cyberrisk data firm Cyence Inc., but some hackers have demanded as much as $30,000an attack that crippled a large portion of the hospital’s computer systems.

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles paid roughly $17,000 to unlock files in February, following an attack that crippled a large portion of the hospital’s computer systems.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said ransomware attacks cost victims $209 million in the first three months of the year, including costs, such as lost productivity and staff time to recover files, that is an average of about $333,000 an incident, based on complaints that it has received. The total is up from $24 million for all of 2015, or about $10,000 an infection, the FBI said.

Continued in article

The best protection is to have data backed up off line. But when the data contains privacy information like medical records and credit card numbers this is not a total solution. Experts are recommending that victims not pay these crooks, usually crooks from outside the USA. Leading suspects are Chinese or Russian hackers.

Unlike data thieves the ransomware hackers do not necessarily offload your data. They usually encrypt your files or use more simple data locks so that you cannot read your own stored data without an encryption key. If you have everything backed up and move the encrypted data offline the hackers may no longer have access to the data.


Academe by the Numbers:  Data From the 2016 Almanac ---
http://chronicle.com/interactives/almanac-2016?cid=cp51#id=2_101

Explore 120 tables on faculty and presidential salaries, fastest-growing colleges, major gifts to higher education, cumulative student-loan debt, starting salaries for recent graduates, college enrollment by state, and more. Choose your state and compare its data on higher education with national figures. For a deeper analysis, read articles on the impact African-American presidents have had on diversity at primarily white institutions, efforts to increase enrollment at Roman Catholic colleges, generous donations to colleges by presidents and professors, and the effect of required college-entrance exams on the pursuit of higher education in several states.

Read More
http://chronicle.com/specialreport/The-Almanac-of-Higher/51?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=4e9ae8418a8847638211c87fc2100314&elq=42075c87864a455b82ddcc4338a15d7f&elqaid=10236&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3824

How to Mislead With Statistics
Explore, Compare, and Share Higher-Ed Salaries (4,700 AAUP Colleges and Universities)

http://data.chronicle.com/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=21d214392851464f80e2885ae43946d6&elq=5f2c8b7dabd944e687de3efcd4cdad01&elqaid=8582&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2862

After choosing "College" in the middle box enter the name of a college or university in the third box. Be patient. It takes quite a while for this page to load.
The data will probably have a lot of comparison limitations, especially regarding summer salary opportunities for teaching and research, housing subsidies (if any), expense funding (including travel. research, and teaching assistance), computers and tech services, paid leave opportunities, and medical coverage. For example, I think Michigan State University still provides one term of paid leave every other year like it did decades ago when I joined the faculty of MSU. That's a huge fringe benefit.

The biggest limitation in this database is variation between departments. For example, in the universities that I sampled the average for the university is less than the starting salaries for tenure-track accounting professors being hired this year. Of course accounting departments in those universities probably have salary compression with means or medians that are still higher than most other departments within the universities. Variations between departments are primarily due to new Ph.D. supply and demand. I understand that shortage of Ph.D. supply in criminology is among biggest hiring problems of some universities.

Departmental variation accounts for much of the lower salaries of women versus men (that can be found for combined departments by clicking on women versus men in the graphs of this study). Even when there is no gender bias in compensation within any given department there probably are higher proportions of women in the lower-paying departments across the entire university. Anecdotally, I am aware of some accounting departments where the women have higher salaries than the men largely because they are more recent hires. But in the university averages for their universities the women are paid less than the men when averaged over all departments.

Medical schools generally cannot be compared in terms of compensation because there are such widespread differences in how medical professors are compensated. For example, some but not all medical schools provide huge bonuses from profits of the medical schools' medical services that are billed to patients and third parties like Medicare and Medicaid.

One of the most informative boxes to check on the top of each graph in this database is the box that reads "Adjust for Inflation." In nearly all universities inflation adjustment takes out the slope of the compensation over time indicating that faculty have not really done much better than keep up with inflation if indeed they were even able to keep up with inflation.

Higher Education Controversies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


Dissertation Reviews (science and humanities) --- http://dissertationreviews.org


Mexico’s President (Enrique Peña Nieto) Is Said to Have Plagiarized Law Thesis ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/mexicos-president-is-said-to-have-plagiarized-law-thesis/113652?elqTrackId=acc84e8bbba549008c1f362af2c164e8&elq=a8e9ea2372fe418882ef792d3a667f3b&elqaid=10365&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3880

Bob Jensen's threads on celebrity plagiarism, including Vladimir Putin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jane Goodall, Arianna Huffington, Fareed Zakaria, Seinfeld's wife, and others ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Celebrities


Why the USA Will Lose the 21st Century

Cheaper and cleaner nuclear plants could finally become reality—but not in the United States, where the technology was invented more than 50 years ago.
"Fail-Safe Nuclear Power," MIT's Technology Review, August 2, 2016 ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/

. . .

Given unprecedented access to the inner workings of China’s advanced nuclear R&D program, I was witnessing a new nuclear technology being born. Through the virtual reactor snaked an intricate system of pipes carrying the fluid that makes this system special: a molten salt that cools the reactor and carries heat to drive a turbine and make electricity. At least in theory, this type of reactor can’t suffer the kind of catastrophic failure that happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima, making unnecessary the expensive and redundant safety systems that have driven up the cost of conventional reactors. What’s more, the new plants should produce little waste and might even eat up existing nuclear waste. They could run on uranium, which powers 99 percent of the nuclear power plants in the world, or they could eventually run on thorium, which is cleaner and more abundant. The ultimate goal of the Shanghai Institute: to build a molten-salt reactor that could replace the 1970s-era technology in today’s nuclear power plants and help wean China off the coal that fouls the air of Shanghai and Beijing, ushering in an era of cheap, abundant, zero-carbon energy.

Over the next two decades China hopes to build the world’s largest nuclear power industry. Plans include as many as 30 new conventional nuclear plants (in addition to the 34 reactors operating today) as well as a variety of next-generation reactors, including thorium molten-salt reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (which, like molten-salt reactors, are both highly efficient and inherently safe), and sodium-cooled fast reactors (which can consume spent fuel from conventional reactors to make electricity). Chinese planners want not only to dramatically expand the country’s domestic nuclear capacity but also to become the world’s leading supplier of nuclear reactors and components, a prospect that many Western observers find alarming.

Continued in article

"China Is Building a Robot Army of Model Workers," by Will Knight, MIT's Technology Review, April 26, 2016 ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601215/china-is-building-a-robot-army-of-model-workers/

Homework in the USA? Forget it!
"How WeChat Is Extending China’s School Days Well into the Night," by Yiting Sun, MIT's Technology Review, March 8, 2016 ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600943/how-wechat-is-extending-chinas-school-days-well-into-the-night/

New homework assignments at 7 p.m., corrections due by midnight: how teachers, parents, and students in some schools in China are using WeChat to perpetuate round-the-clock pressure.by

With the help of Mitt Romney's Bain Capital
"A Chinese Internet Giant Starts to Dream," by Robert D. Hoff, MIT's Technology Review, August 14, 2016 ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530016/a-chinese-internet-giant-starts-to-dream/

Jensen Comment
These are some of the ways the USA will fall way behind in terms of technology. We're too busy fighting wars inside and outside the USA.


Accounting Again Leads as Most Profitable Industry ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/practice/growth/accounting-tops-list-of-most-profitable-industries

Jensen Comment
This may be one of those ways to mislead with statistics.
For example, I think an orthopedics surgeon corporation down the road in our Alpine Clinic has a much higher percentage of return to owners than any accounting firm in the State of New Hampshire. This is probably true for most every MD specialty corporation in the State.
Much depends upon what you call an "industry."

One thing that helps accounting firms have high returns is relatively cheap labor. For example, we have a granddaughter who graduated in pharmacy and then interned with the Veterans Administration in Boston. She's now returning to Maine (Portland) for her first real job at a starting salary of $125,000 plus fringe benefits. Are there any accounting firms in New England with starting salaries of entry level graduates of $125,000? There might be some who specialize in computer and IT services, but I doubt that this salary is offered to accounting graduates.

Having said this, I still recommend in many instances going to work for an accounting firm at less than half this starting pharmacist salary. The reason is that accountancy offers so many alternative tracks for advancement into much higher paying careers. And believe it or not I think an auditor traveling from client to client has more interesting and varied work. I watch those high paid pharmacists in our Wal-Mart pharmacy working intently day-to-day and year-to-year and thank my lucky stars that I never became a Wal-Mart pharmacist.


Deep Linking Explained: The differences between basic deep links, deferred deep links and contextual deep links ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-deep-linking-deferred-deep-links-vs-contextual-deep-links-2016-7

. . .

What Are Deep Links?

Deep links are mobile links that operate much like hyperlinks, but instead of directing users to a web page, deep links send them to a specific screen within a mobile application. There are three types of deep linking technology in use today: basic deep links, deferred links, and contextual deep links.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's Search Helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm


Excel 2016 Forecasting Tool --- "
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2016/aug/excel-forecast-sheet.html?utm_source=mnl:globalcpa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=17Aug2016

Clinton, Trump Tax Return News --- http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/08/more-on-trumps-tax-returns.html
Note the links to many media reports following the release of the Clinton tax returns


Miracle of Michigan
Ontario vs. Michigan: Policy Lessons from the Wolverine State

Canada's Fraser Institute
August 11, 2016

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/ontario-vs-michigan-policy-lessons-from-the-wolverine-state

Michigan’s strong economic performance since 2011 stands in contrast to Ontario, a jurisdiction that also has a large manufacturing base as a central feature of its economy but one that has not experienced an economic resurgence comparable to Michigan’s in recent years. Between 2010 and 2014, Michigan’s real economic output has increased slightly faster than Ontario’s, despite slower population growth. Michigan’s manufacturing output growth exceeded Ontario’s significantly between 2011 and 2014. Furthermore, while Ontario has experienced a dramatic and economically harmful run-up in public debt since 2011, Michigan has actually seen a slight decline in net public debt as a share of its economy. These results stand in stark contrast to the situation in the early years of this century, when Ontario consistently outperformed Michigan on most measures of economic performance.

In the early and mid-2000s, Michigan suffered a steep economic decline, such that it actually lost population, as many Michigan residents left the state in search of greater economic opportunity in jurisdictions like Texas and Florida that were flourishing economically. Yet a series of bold policy reforms would revitalize the Michigan economy. This amazing turnaround story offers lessons for Ontario.

In the early and mid-2000s, Michigan suffered a steep economic decline, such that it actually lost population, as many Michigan residents left the state in search of greater economic opportunity in jurisdictions like Texas and Florida that were flourishing economically. Yet a series of bold policy reforms would revitalize the Michigan economy. This amazing turnaround story offers lessons for Ontario.

In the early and mid-2000s, Michigan suffered a steep economic decline, such that it actually lost population, as many Michigan residents left the state in search of greater economic opportunity in jurisdictions like Texas and Florida that were flourishing economically. Yet a series of bold policy reforms would revitalize the Michigan economy. This amazing turnaround story offers lessons for Ontario.

The introduction of right-to-work legislation (signed in 2012 and taking effect in March 2013);

     The replacement of the complex and onerous Michigan Business Tax (MBT) with a simpler and lighter flat corporate income tax of 6 percent, effective January 1, 2012;

     Sharp budget cuts, which were undertaken in fiscal year 2012, followed by a period of spending restraint during which state spending increased only modestly.

If Ontario policymakers seek to generate a comparable boost to their overall economy, labour market, and manufacturing sector, they should carefully study Michigan’s reform experience and determine which policies could be similarly helpful here. Given the severity of the fiscal problems facing Ontario, provincial policymakers should learn from the Michigan example and move quickly to reform and reduce provincial spending in order to finally begin reducing the province’s daunting debt load. Ontario continues to perform below its full economic potential and remains burdened by substantial public debt. This comparison with the American state of Michigan provides

Look at the graph

Continued in Report

Jensen Comment
The Flint water crisis is perhaps a huge setback on what otherwise might be called the Miracle of Michigan


Thanks in large part to Obama policies, only 37% of student borrowers are paying down their student loans ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/writing-off-student-loans-is-only-a-matter-of-time-1471303339?mod=djemMER

In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton exclaimed, “ Bernie Sanders and I will work together to make college tuition-free for the middle class and debt-free for all!” How she intends to do that remains something of a mystery, beyond higher taxes on “Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich.” But it’s hard to imagine the student-loan industry and the burden of student debt getting any worse for taxpayers and borrowers than it is now.

A largely overlooked report released in February by the Government Accountability Office suggests that the Obama administration’s policies have exacerbated student debt, which equals nearly a quarter of annual federal borrowing. With only 37% of borrowers actually paying down their loans, the federal student-loan program more closely resembles the payday-lending industry than a benevolent source of funds for college.

As this newspaper (WSJ) reported in April, “43% of the roughly 22 million Americans with federal student loans weren’t making payments as of Jan. 1,” and a staggering “1 in 6 borrowers, or 3.6 million, were in default on $56 billion in student debt.” If student debt continues to skyrocket, the federal government may have to deal with as much as a $500 billion write-down when future defaults and loan-forgiveness programs are factored in.

In 2010, the Obama administration dispensed with the private intermediaries that had administered federal loans since the 1960s. It put in their place Direct Lending, a program administered by the Education Department. At the time, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Direct Lending would save $62 billion from 2010 to 2020. That didn’t happen. The program’s advocates failed to anticipate how two other Obama-backed college affordability initiatives—Income-Driven Repayment and loan forgiveness—would create a cataclysmic hit to the federal student-loan program’s finances.

There are more than 20 Income-Driven Repayment programs, but they all work essentially the same way. Students struggling financially can defer their payments. When no or limited payments are made, their balances grow. Today, over 20 million borrowers are watching their loan balances increase thanks to these programs. The average balance ballooned to approximately $25,000 in 2014 from $15,000 in 2004, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and has grown still larger since then.

But the most significant explosion in student debt might still come. In 2007 Congress passed the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which allows borrowers who work for nonprofit organizations or government agencies to have their loans forgiven after 10 years. Students will be able to take advantage of this program for the first time in 2017. Yet no mechanism to evaluate who qualifies exists. Virtually every teacher, firefighter, social worker, police officer, doctor, or nurse who meets “their employer’s definition of full time” could have their loans forgiven.

The law will cost about $5 billion each year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But very few close to the student-loan industry believe that the CBO’s assumption will pan out. The total student-loan portfolio is now $1.3 trillion, and the program grows by approximately $100 billion annually. If only 20% more borrowers default than the CBO expects, the Education Department could face at least a $100 billion loss on its existing pool of loans.

What can Congress do? First, it should demand that the CBO appropriately score the Income-Driven Repayment options. The federal government should at least use the same nonperforming loan standards they require of banks. Specifically, the Education Department should be required to “reserve” funds in anticipation of foreseeable and significant write-offs. Assuming 20% of current loans end up being written off, the department will end up writing off more than $20 billion annually.

The Direct Lending program should also start leveraging its immense power to price loans differently based on the success of students. It may also be necessary to change the model by which colleges and universities receive loan proceeds. Today, schools receive Title IV funds at the start of the semester and only have to return them if students drop out before completing 60% of a course. Instead, schools should receive a portion of loan proceeds to start and only receive additional funds if students graduate and pay down their loans.

Continued in article

Tertiary education --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education

Tertiary education, also referred to as third stage, third level, and post-secondary education, is the educational level following the completion of a school providing a secondary education. The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and distance learning centers.[1] Higher education is taken to include undergraduate and postgraduate education, while vocational education and training beyond secondary education is known as further education in the United Kingdom, or continuing education in the United States.

Tertiary education generally culminates in the receipt of certificates, diplomas, or academic degrees.

The USA already ranks high in terms of college graduates
Countries with the highest proportions of  college graduates ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/22/countries-with-the-most-c_n_655393.html#s117378&title=Russian_Federation_54
|

  1. Russian Federation 54.0% (quality varies due to rampant cheating and corruption where students can buy course grades and admission)
  2. Canada 48.3% (shares grade inflation problems with the USA)
  3. Israel 43.6%
  4. Japan 41.0%
  5. New Zealand 41.0%
  6. United States 40.3% (colleges vary greatly in terms of admissions standards and rigor for graduation)
  7. Finland 36.4%
  8. South Korea 34.3%
  9. Norway 34.2%
  10. Australia 33.7%

Germany college education is free by Germany is still under the OECD average in terms of proportions of college graduates at 23.9% ---
http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2010/09/education-governments-should-expand-tertiary-studies-to-boost-jobs-and-tax-revenues.html .


One of the major reasons admission to German schools is elitist is that free education is expensive to taxpayers. In 2009 the Berlin Senate decided that Berlin's universities should no longer be allowed to pick all of their students. It was ruled that while they would be able to pick approximately 70% of their students with the remaining 30% allocated by lottery. Every child is able to enter the lottery, no matter how he or she performed in primary school. It is hoped that this policy will increase the number of working class students attending a university.


A common myth is that nations that tightly restrict free college to the intellectual elite provide other forms (learning vocational trades) of free tertiary education.
OECD Study Published in 2014:  List of countries by 25- to 34-year-olds having a tertiary education degree ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_25-_to_34-year-olds_having_a_tertiary_education_degree
No nation provides more than Israel's 49% of free tertiary (trade training or college education) to more than Israel's 49% funded by taxpayers.
 

The USA, in my opinion, offers the most opportunity to the highest proportion of Tier 2 graduates to go to college. Even small towns across the USA have community college campuses and branch campuses with almost no admission standards for people who want to work toward a college degree or training certificate. Sadly, ACT testing results show that less than half of the USA's high school graduates are prepared to go to colllege. Compounding the felony is the fact that college degrees in the USA vary widely in terms of learning quality. Many of the USA's  graduates are no better or worse than Tier 2 (high school) graduates in Europe. In some cases the diplomas aren't worth the paper their written on let alone the thousands of dollars borrowed to get these useless diplomas.

Across the board from the worst to our most prestigious universities grade inflation is rampant to where the median grade across the USA is an A-
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
I fear that when college is free for all in the USA the median grade across the USA will climb to A+ and admission standards will fall to zero as colleges of poor quality compete to suck up the taxpayer subsidies that make college free for everybody.

What the USA lacks relative to Europe are networks of apprentice programs in the skilled trades where companies rather than taxpayers foot the bill for the training.

"What Can the U.S. Learn From Switzerland, a World Leader in Apprenticeships? by Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 02, 2016 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Can-the-US-Learn-From/236323?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=ed4c1ab9aec74f92be12624885801484&elq=0ce71537bc894cb8a3f7ee33b218ead9&elqaid=8888&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3032

 


Why is statistical significance often so misleading? Recent Findings

One of the most misleading things is that even the most unimportant differences being studied become "statistically significant" when sample sizes increase. For example who cares if there's a statistical significance in the finding that 246,312 people who prefer bran flakes to corn flakes when 246,153 people prefer corn flakes to bran flakes.

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

What Went Wrong With P-Value Reporting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong 

Here are some more recent findings about the insignificance of statistical significance ---
https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2016/08/null-hypothesis-statistical-significance/


Metered Poetry --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_(poetry)

For Better For Verse (for scanning the metering of verse) ---  http://prosody.lib.virginia.edu


That it is a moral issue for students is revealed by the character of their response when challenged --- a combination of disbelief and indignation. "Are you an absolutist?," the only alternative they know, uttered in the same tone as "Are you a monarchist?" or "Do you really believe in witches?" This latter leads into the indignation, for someone who believes in witches might well be a witch hunter or a Salem judge. The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance." Relativism is necessary to openness and this is the virtue, the only virtue ...
Allan Bloom,
The Closing of the American Mind:  How Education has Failed Democracy ahd Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, pp. 25-260

 

Exercises in Critical Thinking for Students
The hard task for faculty is keeping the debates on an academic plane above the roar of partisan shouting matches and closed-minded campus protests

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

Exercise 1 --- Black Lives Matter Proposed Tax Reforms
So often we see tax plans proposed by presidential candidates or other candidates for political office including mayors. So often arguments for or against are highly partisan without being cooly academic.

What I would like professors to think about is to make an assignment where students or teams of students would write papers about and academically debate both sides of a tax reform package.

Take, for example, the recent Black Lives Matter Tax Reform Proposals ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/08/black-lives-matter-tax-reform-plan.html

Without simply jumping on the band wagon for or against these proposals from a partisan perspective think about assigning students to find academic arguments for and against each of the proposals listed above. Among other things have students do comparative analyses of taxation in other nations such as the Scandinavian nations versus the USA. Also make students aware that in the USA the top 50% of taxpayers pay 97% of the income taxes and the bottom 50% pay 3% of the income tax collected. There can be arguments for making income taxes and other taxes more progressive, but don't let students ignore the fact that taxation in the USA is not as regressive as naive students tend to think.

In the process help students realize that comparisons between nations are truly difficult when what taxes pay for are different. For example, in Scandinavia the marginal tax rates are higher than in the USA but those taxes pay for national health insurance. Hence to compare the USA with Scandinavia the costs of health care must be factored into or out of the analysis.

Similarly, tertiary education at Tier 3 is paid for by taxes in some nations like Finland and but not in other nations like Sweden and the USA. But, very big "but," Tier 3 "free" education in Europe is limited to less than half the Tier 2 graduates where college education is limited to only the top Tier 2 achievers. In the USA college is not free to most Tier 2 graduates but is highly subsidized to a much greater proportion of Tier 2 graduates since there are so many colleges and community college branches is so many towns across the USA and so many distance education low-cost opportunities relative to other parts of the world.

In Europe less than half 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_degree

Why won't Europe allow more Tier 2 graduates into college?

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Exercise 2 --- Analyze the Interim $15 Seattle Miniumum Wage Report Submitted by U. of Washington Economists in 2016
So often we see miinimum wages proposed by presidential candidates or other candidates for political office including mayors. So often arguments for or against are highly partisan without being cooly academic.

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

 

Let students debate the above report and/or write critical thinking analyses about the report before you share the following articles.

 

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!

See if your students have the same problems in one-sided critical thinking that professional economists have with regard to minimum wages.


Wilt Chamberlain --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilt_Chamberlain

"I'm very proud of this (USA Olympic Soccer) team. But I also think we played a bunch of cowards. The best team did not win today. I think you saw American heart. You saw us give everything we had today," she told reporters. "Sweden dropped off. They didn't want to open play.
USA Soccer Goalie Hope Solo after Sweden defeated the USA in Rio ---
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2016/08/12/489844686/after-u-s-defeat-goalie-hope-solo-calls-the-swedes-cowards
Jensen Comment
Back when I was in high school, before I attended Iowa State University, ISU beat the heavily favored University of Kansas. I can't recall the score but it was a low-scoring outcome like 38 to 35, which is absurdly low for a collegiate basketball game. It was historically significant as the first basketball game where the 7'1" Wilt Chamberlain experienced a defeat. ISU played aggressive defense to squelch most scoring attempts by the Kansas team. After the game ISU was accused on not really playing to win. ISU only played not to lose. Say what?

I think this was one of the many reasons that the shot clock was introduced into basketball to prevent the other team from skillfully controlling the ball for most of the game --- thereby preventing the other team (like the University of Kansas and its awesome Wilt Chamberlain) from having scoring opportunities. Before the shot clock "stalling" in this way was popular near the end of basketball games where a team tried to protect its lead. But in the ISU-KU game the entire game was an ISU stall.


18 Jobs Being Replaced by Robots/Technology ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/25/18-jobs-being-replaced-by-robots/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AUG272016A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Jensen Comment
Warehouses like those of Wal-Mart, Amazon, and automobile parts distributors are almost all automatic now from order processing, picking of orders, boxing of orders, shipping, and billing. Medical and automobile diagnostics are heavily automated. I would not recognize my GP physician without a computer in his left hand. To be honest if I'm simply going in for a routine checkup think he could turn everything over to his knowledgeable nurse putting in my answers to computer questions.

Today my son returned home to Lewiston, Maine where he works in a hospital. He says there are now some robot surgeons in that hospital.


Target Expanding Bathroom Options After Criticism of Transgender Policy ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2016/08/18/target-expanding-bathroom-options-after-criticism-of-transgender-policy-n2206936?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=

Target Corporation probably didn’t expect their stocks to fall after it decided to allow customers to use whichever restroom corresponds to their “gender identity.”

The American Family Association, who charged that Target’s new policy would make women and children vulnerable to sexual predators, led a boycott effort that has now garnered almost 1.5 million signatures.

In the month following the “inclusivity” announcement, Target's stock took a noticeable hit.

When Target announced its policy on April 19, its stock was valued at $83.50 per share.  Now, one month later and after a massive outcry from the public which included over 1.2 million people signing AFA's petition, Target stock is $67.17 per share.  

Families’ fears came to fruition this summer when a man who identifies as transgender was caught snapping pictures of a female customer in a Target women’s fitting room.

Now, however, Target thinks it has a solution – they’re adding an extra bathroom to most of its stores.

Target(TGT)CFO Cathy Smith said Wednesday that the company has heard objections to the transgender bathroom policy from some customers, though she said other customers had voiced support. In response, Target has decided to expand its use of a third, single-toilet bathroom at all of its stores, which can be locked by users.

That bathroom can be used by any customer who needs some privacy, including parents with small children of a different gender or those who are uncomfortable with a public bathroom in which a transgender person is allowed.

Most of Target’s stores already have this single occupancy restroom, but all will be equipped with one by 2017. The project is set to cost about $20 million.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This does not seem like much of a solution unless virtually all bathrooms are single-occupancy --- as they are in many hospitals like our small regional hospital near our cottage and the huge Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Target's new policy does not prevent people from using multiple occupancy bathrooms of choice. It does allow Target customers wanting privacy to have privacy, but it's no solution when most men and women wanting such privacy have to stand in long lines for the only privacy bathroom in a Target store.

A complicating issue arises when a disgruntled customer decides to hog the only privacy bathroom for the better part of a day while watching movies on a smart phone or reading Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Actually the problem can be solved if Target observes waiting lines and installs enough single occupancy bathrooms to meet demand. The bigger problem is in school locker rooms where it would be extremely costly to have enough privacy showers and lockers to meet the needs of every participant in a gym class. For example, for teams having 30 or more students in a gym class either there would have to be a one dressing room locker for each student or students might have to take turns using fewer privacy rooms with one shower and multiple lockers ---
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/what-really-happens-when-a-transgender-person-uses-a-locker-room/

For example, some gym student might have to wait for four of her teammates to finish showering and changing before she gets her turn. She and four of her friends might crowd into one room. But this would be discriminatory if the repeatedly left out student identifies as transgender ---
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/what-really-happens-when-a-transgender-person-uses-a-locker-room/

There are very few bathroom problems that cannot be solved with lots of money.
Colleges will eventually come up with the money, but K-12 changing rooms are going to have more trouble coming up with funding for re-construction of locker rooms.
This will keep ACLU lawyers busy for decades --- which might be a good thing if it takes them from more controversial issues ---
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-transgender-bathrooms-aclu-palatine-met-20160510-story.html


Social-science researchers don’t need to be nearly as afraid of the Institutional Review Board process as they usually are ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Does-This-Have-to-Go/237476?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=523b59dd1962441f8a807798fce2666d&elq=f9442a4087aa4f53a76e0cd63bed7868&elqaid=10288&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3852

Jensen Comment
The IRB reviews also apply to disciplines other than the the social sciences. For example, accounting researchers using human subjects generally face IRB reviews as well.


Study: Most Ontario Adjuncts Are Would-Be Full-Timers ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/08/18/study-most-ontario-adjuncts-are-would-be-full-timers?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=1ca5311033-DNU201608018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-1ca5311033-197565045&mc_cid=1ca5311033&mc_eid=1e78f7c952


Should You Use Retirement Savings to Fund Your Child's College Education?
Possibly not!
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/articles/2016-08-17/should-you-use-retirement-savings-to-fund-your-childs-college-education


Miracle of Michigan
Ontario vs. Michigan: Policy Lessons from the Wolverine State

Canada's Fraser Institute
August 11, 2016

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/ontario-vs-michigan-policy-lessons-from-the-wolverine-state

Michigan’s strong economic performance since 2011 stands in contrast to Ontario, a jurisdiction that also has a large manufacturing base as a central feature of its economy but one that has not experienced an economic resurgence comparable to Michigan’s in recent years. Between 2010 and 2014, Michigan’s real economic output has increased slightly faster than Ontario’s, despite slower population growth. Michigan’s manufacturing output growth exceeded Ontario’s significantly between 2011 and 2014. Furthermore, while Ontario has experienced a dramatic and economically harmful run-up in public debt since 2011, Michigan has actually seen a slight decline in net public debt as a share of its economy. These results stand in stark contrast to the situation in the early years of this century, when Ontario consistently outperformed Michigan on most measures of economic performance.

In the early and mid-2000s, Michigan suffered a steep economic decline, such that it actually lost population, as many Michigan residents left the state in search of greater economic opportunity in jurisdictions like Texas and Florida that were flourishing economically. Yet a series of bold policy reforms would revitalize the Michigan economy. This amazing turnaround story offers lessons for Ontario.

In the early and mid-2000s, Michigan suffered a steep economic decline, such that it actually lost population, as many Michigan residents left the state in search of greater economic opportunity in jurisdictions like Texas and Florida that were flourishing economically. Yet a series of bold policy reforms would revitalize the Michigan economy. This amazing turnaround story offers lessons for Ontario.

In the early and mid-2000s, Michigan suffered a steep economic decline, such that it actually lost population, as many Michigan residents left the state in search of greater economic opportunity in jurisdictions like Texas and Florida that were flourishing economically. Yet a series of bold policy reforms would revitalize the Michigan economy. This amazing turnaround story offers lessons for Ontario.

The introduction of right-to-work legislation (signed in 2012 and taking effect in March 2013);

     The replacement of the complex and onerous Michigan Business Tax (MBT) with a simpler and lighter flat corporate income tax of 6 percent, effective January 1, 2012;

     Sharp budget cuts, which were undertaken in fiscal year 2012, followed by a period of spending restraint during which state spending increased only modestly.

If Ontario policymakers seek to generate a comparable boost to their overall economy, labour market, and manufacturing sector, they should carefully study Michigan’s reform experience and determine which policies could be similarly helpful here. Given the severity of the fiscal problems facing Ontario, provincial policymakers should learn from the Michigan example and move quickly to reform and reduce provincial spending in order to finally begin reducing the province’s daunting debt load. Ontario continues to perform below its full economic potential and remains burdened by substantial public debt. This comparison with the American state of Michigan provides

Look at the graph

Continued in Report

Jensen Comment
The Flint water crisis is perhaps a huge setback on what otherwise might be called the Miracle of Michigan


"Germany’s Midsize Manufacturers Outperform Its Industrial Giants," by Winfried W. Weber, Harvard Business Review, August 12, 2016 ---
https://hbr.org/2016/08/germanys-midsize-manufacturers-outperform-its-industrial-giants?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

Stop for a minute and think of some of the most successful German companies. BMW and Siemens and Bayer might come to mind. But if you really want to learn from the best of German business, you’d be smart to turn your attention to companies named Rimowa, Jungbunzlauer, and Strama-MPS. They belong to a class of small-to-medium German enterprises that are outperforming the country’s top public companies.

Most of these companies are private and don’t publish their balance sheets. But a new analysis from the German Savings Banks Association shows that, in the last fiscal year, its midsize company clients managed, on average, profit margins of 7.3%. By contrast, the 110 largest German companies had margins of just 6.3%. This success is no blip. The 300,000 companies in the association’s data set have more than doubled their profits from operations over the past 13 years, outpacing their corporate counterparts in the country.

Called the Mittelstand in German, this class of highly specialized, often family-owned businesses makes up the backbone of the national economy. Germany is ranked fourth in the global economy, but it’s home to only 28 companies in the Fortune 500. Great Britain and France each have more. But when it comes to little-known leaders in their market, Germany has 1,307 “hidden champions,” nine times as many as those two countries combined.

These midsize manufacturers make adhesives for mobile phones, food for ornamental fish, and the world’s most expensive set of headphones. What makes the companies so successful? They vary in export orientation, organizational structure, and ownership, but their highly specialized nature has led many analysts to say they’re all following a niche strategy.

I believe the model is much more than a niche strategy. The German Mittelstand is at the forefront of a modern management model that builds flatter, more-innovative, and more-networked enterprises.

In my work at the Mannheim Institute of Applied Management Research, I have identified five success factors that characterize Mittelstand champions.

They possess an extreme focus on the wishes of global customers. Talk to these midsize firms and you will hear the same thing: “We want to be the best in our field” and “We want long-term commitment to this field.” At the company Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, you can still order replacement parts for a 100-year-old printing machine, which sends a message of strong commitment to their customers.

These companies are dedicated to mutual technological leadership with their customers. Joachim Kreuzburg, CEO of Sartorius, a cell cultivation company, says, “We are not in the gold seeker business. We sell shovels to gold seekers.” Mittelstand companies strive for nothing less than to work with the state-of-the-art in their sector.

This level of dedication to their mostly B2B customers demands especially strong investment in innovations and R&D. Mittelstand champions have five times more patents per employee than large companies — but their costs per patent are one-fifth of large companies’.

They believe short-term profit isn’t everything. It’s not a coincidence that only a small minority of Mittelstand companies are listed on the stock exchange. Those that are often leave a controlling stake in the hands of the family. The persistent goal is long-term value. For example, Andreas and Daniel Sennheiser, the co-CEOs of audio equipment manufacturer Sennheiser, told me:

It’s important to us to retain a high equity ratio and not to bounce from one financial quarter to the next. Some might say that we have an aversion to taking risks. Our philosophy is that the only risks worth taking are those which won’t endanger the stability of the company, and this strategy has worked well for us throughout Sennheiser’s history. Since its founding our company has achieved growth every year, and only once, in 2009, did we experience a drop in revenue, of one percent.

Other family-owned businesses in this class have demonstrated the ability to keep the principle of long-term orientation and a sustainable customer relationship even as they recruit top managers from outside the family (which tends to happen in the fourth or fifth generation).

They pay major attention to the workplace. Mittelstand managers give their workers a great deal of their time. I’ve observed them wandering around the factory floor in order to deeply understand their knowledge workers. A manager takes to heart that it is their job to reach out to their employees and help them grow. These personal relationships last and support a collaborative spirit and a shared culture of trust and commitment. One measure of this focus on people is employee retention: Mittelstand companies have a turnover rate of less than 2%. Long-term employment relationships are the key to high performance and enduring levels of employee motivation.

This attention is not just focused at the factory. The Friedhelm Loh Group is a good example, working with the Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences to combine theoretical and practical teaching in a cooperative degree program. Outside of the school term, students apply their academic knowledge directly to real-world projects.

The company also looks outward for global management development and recruits and deploys up-and-coming managers abroad. These efforts to cultivate students and managers for the international stage are one reason the Friedhelm Loh Group has been named one of Germany’s top employers for the eighth straight year.

They set ambitious goals. The management of Mittelstand companies sets ambitious goals that orient each worker and fuel a unique collaborative spirit. Martin Herrenknecht, CEO of Herrenknecht AG, believes that ambitious goals give his workers the drive to persistently pull in the same direction and eventually reach the objective.

The company has the obsession to be the worldwide market leader in mechanized tunneling technology, having just finished the 35-mile-long Gotthard Base Tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the world. Such entrepreneurs don’t have interests; they carry out a mission. Herrenknecht started his business 40 years ago as a one-person engineering company. His persistence and enthusiasm are legendary, his workforce has quadrupled over the past decades, and he counts on his team of 5,000 “reliable specialists” to achieve the company’s ambitious goals.

They draw strength from their tradition of family business. Mittelstand companies have excelled by taking advantage of some of the enduring traits of family businesses: equity built up over decades, long-term orientation, a familial atmosphere, and a willingness to allow entrepreneurial space.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Most importantly Germany has the good sense not to tax its mid-sized family businesses out of business with high marginal tax rates. Sure tax rates are higher in Germany than the USA but those higher tax rates are not comparable with USA tax rates since German taxes buy more things such as national health care. In the USA most similar firms pay for health insurance of employees without having such payments included in the tax rates.

Egalitarian Mentality

Heavy Poole only had a dying mule
His neighbor Texas Levy had a Chevy

When government lowered the Levys' tax levies
Peter Poole got a job from his neighbor the snob

Now Heavy could buy the Levy Chevy
While his boss and neighbor Texas bought a sleek new Lexis

Heavy Poole being a fool
Voted for higher Texas taxes
Stupid Peter then lost his job from that neighbor snob

Now Texas Levy repossessed his old Chevy
And the unemployed Peter Poole can't even afford a mule

But Heavy Poole, being a fool
Gloated when his haughty neighbor Texas lost his Lexis

I won, I won, I won shouted Heavy Poole, the fool

The Miracle of Chile --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile
The miracle was how Chile rose up from poverty with tax cuts. The miracle ended with tax increases.
Now the poorer poor yell We won! We won! We won!

While yelling we won these poor people seem unable to learn from Venezuela or Germany.


Personal Finance
Possible Student Project on Deciding Who Should Take Out Long-Term Care Insurance and What Coverage to Choose

Less is more: The dilemma over long term care insurance ---
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/24/less-is-more-the-dilemma-over-long-term-care-insurance.html

Jensen Comment
Unless you're already on Medicaid or commit unethical/illegal effort to shed assets in you're estate to qualify for Medicaid long-term care can become a very expensive proposition with or without long-term care insurance since Medicare does not pay for long-term care except under very restrictive rules of hospital confinement (rather than nursing home confinement and home care). Bad things are happening in the long-term care insurance industry. About 90% of the insurers in the 1990s dropped their coverage. And the deals are worse for more expensive for more limited coverage.

This is not those "cheap" burial insurance policies advertised ad nauseam on television. These are very expensive policies with possibly high payouts. The real problem is uncertainly over how long a patient will need long-term care outside a hospital combined with the explosion in the costs of providing long-term care, especially in nursing homes. Regulations increased the quality of care, but those regulations also added greatly to the coverage costs.

Jensen Comment
I know of a case in the 1990s where a son (of one of my cousins) sold this type of insurance for a time. I sighed when I thought he sort of conned his grandmother into taking out an expensive policy. But it turned out to be a darn good deal when she was covered for nearly 10 years in an Iowa nursing home.

Having said this, I'm still pretty negative about this type of insurance. Part of the reason is the increased cost of the insurance combined with the newer coverage limitations that make the insurance less exciting in recent years --- when the only thing "exciting" about going to a nursing home is the huge cost involved one way or another. What some heirs need to learn is that one purpose of building up a nest egg for old age is being able to pay for long-term care coverage in addition to providing an estate to inherit. This is no longer an era where it's expected that children almost always care for their elderly parents by moving them into the homes of those children (like the Amish continue to do in this era). Most children these days want to put the old folks into nursing homes.


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

What Makes a Good Life: Revelatory Learnings from Harvard’s 75-Year Study of Human Happiness ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/08/23/harvard-grant-study-robert-waldinger-ted/?mc_cid=24aa1ea22b&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Also see
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/08/23/harvard-grant-study-robert-waldinger-ted/?mc_cid=24aa1ea22b&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Jensen Comments
Life has its seasons, including childhood, mating, parenthood, grandparenthood, and senior living. Things that make you happy vary with the seasons. Beginning around the time of parenthood you become your resume where things that matter a lot (not necessarily the most but near the top) are quality lines on your resume. By the time of senior living you are well beyond your resume, and what were chores in the parenthood season become happiness habits in the senior living season. I read where in senior years it becomes much easier for addicts (including alcoholics) to free themselves of addictions --- except for pain killers for pains that may increase with age and diseases.

Being healthy is something younger people tend to take for granted. Seniors are a lot more grateful for good health.


Forbes:  5 Retirement Mistakes To Avoid For Pre-Retirees And Retirees ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2016/08/12/5-retirement-mistakes-to-avoid-for-pre-retirees-and-retirees/#1b27a1c634ec

Jensen Comment
Here are some I might add.

  1. Don't try to be all things to financial needs of grandchildren. You got your kids through college. In most cases you will have many more grandchildren than children --- Erika and I have 12 grandchildren. Seeing grandchildren through college is perhaps more than your budget should bear, especially since you have to be responsible to yourselves. Remember Medicare does not pay for nursing care or even all your medical expenses along the way. I was not prepared for the fact that Medicare fees (just for being entitled to Medicare) plus the expensive Medicare Supplemental Insurance pretty well annihilate our total Social Security checks. In other words don't count on Social Security income for much of anything other than Medicare outlays.
     
  2. The above Forbes article recommends being somewhat aggressive with your portfolio. I went the opposite route. When I retired I purchased six TIAA lifetime (for both our lives) fixed-rate annuities with my TIAA-CREF portfolio. It turned out to be a great deal since I got in on the high lifetime interest rates before the Fed clobbered interest rates in 2007. Fixed-rate annuities may no longer be such a good deal. They seldom are a good deal when there is inflation risk. But if you are over 65 when your retire inflation risks are a whole lot less than when you have 50 or more years to live. I mostly put the rest of my savings into an insured Vanguard Long-term Tax Exempt Fund which as been absolutely great, although it would be not so great if I faced high inflation in my retirement.
     
  3. Be very careful about such things that are heavily advertised on TV like reverse mortgages. Fortunately I don't have a need for such deals.
     
  4. Stay active with such things as the social media and volunteer work (if you're physically able to do so). Dreams of reading most of the day, sailing, golfing, traveling in a motor home, etc. can become very boring in a hurry. And if chasing wild women is an option that too may just a dream that fizzles along with your hormones.
     
  5. And there are what seem like little things. Don't neglect your hygiene just because you no longer drive into work each day. Shave and shower like you still have to commute each day to work. You can give away most of your neckties and dark socks and most suits to charities. Save one suit, one necktie, and one pair of dark socks for weddings and funerals.
     
  6. If you enjoyed research and writing before you retired you will probably enjoy research and writing more after you retire.
     
  7. If you loved parties before you retired you will probably enjoy them less in retirement. If you enjoyed multiple cocktails and glasses of wine your physician will convince you that more than one drink a day is suicide. Parties are less fun when you're only allowed one trip to the bar.
     
  8. You will probably subscribe to both streaming and mailed-disk Netflix, discover the BBC mystery movie series, and watch some series (like Touch of Frost) more than once because you forgot the endings and most things between the beginning and end of a movies you watched last year or the year before. No you don't have to be senile to forget most mystery movies after a year or two.
     
  9. You can now enjoy the more expensive entrees on the menu but somehow they don't seem as flavorable as they were when they were more of a luxury you couldn't afford regularly.
     
  10. If you enjoyed your pets before you retired you will probably enjoy them even more in retirement. But if you never did particularly enjoy having to towel down your dog drenched with snow and mud six times a day and having to put a pet in a kennel every time you take a trip then you probably will be happier pet-free. Happiness began when I sold my horses and the dog died. I never did like cats. Now I feed chipmunks and woodchucks, but they can do without me when I'm away from home. And I don't have vet bills because of these little friends of mine.
     
  11. Some things you did not particularly enjoy before you retired may become a necessity after you retire. I never enjoyed gardening before I retired. Sure I mowed the lawn, raked the leaves, and cleaned the swimming pool before I retired, but these things I did out of necessity rather than enjoyment. They've become even more of a necessity now that I've retired (happily without a swimming pool but with an enormous yard). Erika's health makes her unable to help with the gardening, but she desperately still wants to live among flowers. An so I maintain three flower gardens plus mowing grass and raking leaves ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/pictures.htm
    A big tractor helps a lot in retirement, especially one with a mower, chipper, snow thrower, and bucket loader. Actually all this gardening and yard work has a fringe benefit --- it gets my butt away from the computer and helps me stay alive with exercise since I despise boring routine exercising for the sake of exercising.
     
  12. Don't expect to do the things you could do before you retired. I no longer can walk for miles and miles, climb mountains, and ride a bike up steep hills. Your knees and hips and lungs do really deteriorate in those so-called "golden years."
     
  13. Expect to become more affectionate and loving with your spouse when you spend much more togetherness in retirement. That is a two-way street. I never felt so loved in my entire life as I feel now in retirement. Losing a spouse seems to be a variable crisis from what I've observed but never experienced. Some survivors carry on in their homes alone surrounded by nearby family and friends. Some go crazy with travel in search of new relationships. One of my close friends, who is a young 93 years old, lost his spouse a couple months ago (after 67 years of marriage). He's not senile but he's lost in many ways. He refuses to stay in his house alone. Instead he's moved in with his daughter and is a wet blanket on her unmarried life. Most of us hope that he will once again move back into his house as long as he's able to drive, do the chores, and carry on much the same way as he did when he was taking care of his invalid wife. I have another friend at age 99 who has been a widower for 12 years. He lives alone and still drives a car. He and his 90-year old woman friend (who herself never ever had a boyfriend) take day-long trips together (often to Canada) and are companions even though they each still live apart on opposite sides of the Connecticut River that separates New Hampshire from Vermont.

A great deal of philosophy doesn’t really deserve much of a place of the world,” he says. “Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum that’s not dealing of problems of any intrinsic interest."
Daniel Dennett
http://qz.com/768450/one-of-the-most-famous-living-philosophers-says-much-of-philosophy-today-is-self-indulgent/

Jensen Comment
The clever play in a vacuum also applies research in mathematics, although in my opinion there have been more breakthroughs into the real world during the history of mathematics ---
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/mathchat/mathchat019.shtml
There are a lot of links like this in mathematics and very few in philosophy as far as I can tell. Philosophers seem to promote philosophy studies in terms of ways of thinking rather than applications. In the crowded world of setting general education requirements having reality applications increasingly appeals to millennials. On the other side of the coin millenials often find study of philosophy easier than mathematics as witnessed by the increasing trend of dropping algebra and calculus from general education curriculum requirements.

What we are seeing is declining interest in majoring in philosophy among millenials, especially women but not restricted to women ---
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-women-tend-to-be-less-interested-in-philosophy


Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/?cmpid=BBD081716_BIZ
Jensen Question
In this era on not wanting to incarcerate non-violent people, how do you stop the hard core of shop lifters who repeatedly defy the law?
There are gangs of shoplifters, many of them teenagers, that now attack fast and furiously.


Teaching Case
From The Wall Street Journal Weekly Accounting Review on August 19 2016

Good News for M.B.A. Students: Tuition Is Now More Deductible
by: Laura Saunders
Aug 13, 2016
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com

TOPICS: Deduction, Individual Taxation, Tax Court

SUMMARY: A specialized court's decision should embolden more students enrolled in M.B.A. programs across the country to deduct their tuition - especially if they are getting an executive M.B.A. A married couple deducted $18,879 for tuition, commuting and other expenses on their 2011 tax return that the IRS disallowed, in part because he was unemployed for several months of the year. But the judge disagreed with the IRS, saving the taxpayers $2,111 in taxes - and providing more ammunition to M.B.A. students who want to deduct education expenses in the future. The decision was released earlier this month by the Tax Court, a specialized tribunal. Although the case is of a type that can't be appealed or formally cited as precedent, experts say such cases often are influential both inside and outside the IRS. Many M.B.A. students qualify for a deduction, however, because they have worked before enrolling in a program and are seeking to "maintain or improve" their skills, as the law requires. In addition, the degree doesn't lead to a license.

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: This is an excellent article to use in individual tax classes, and also for the information it provides our students who may be in graduate school or considering graduate school in the future.

QUESTIONS: 
1. (Introductory) What is Tax Court? How does it differ from other courts?

2. (Advanced) What was the ruling in this case? What is the reasoning behind that decision? What tax rules support the decision?

3. (Advanced) Why did the IRS fight the deduction in this case? What was the reasoning the IRS was asserting? What are the merits of the IRS's position?

4. (Advanced) What is precedent? How is the decision treated for precedent purposes? Why? How will that impact tax planning for other taxpayers?

5. (Advanced) What makes earning an MBA different from earning other degrees? Does the graduate vs. undergraduate distinction make a difference? For what programs or courses is a taxpayer most likely to deduct the costs? For what courses or programs are education expenses are not allowed? In what situations would MBA expenses be less likely to be deductible?

Reviewed By: Linda Christiansen, Indiana University Southeast

RELATED ARTICLES: 
Nurse Outduels IRS Over M.B.A. Tuition
by Laura Sauders
Jan 10, 2010
Online Exclusive

 

"Good News for M.B.A. Students: Tuition Is Now More Deductible," by Laura Saunders,The Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2016 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/good-news-for-m-b-a-students-tuition-is-now-more-deductible-1471013805?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

A specialized tax court’s decision seen as a win for M.B.A. students.

A specialized court’s decision should embolden more students enrolled in M.B.A. programs across the country to deduct their tuition—especially if they are getting an executive M.B.A.

In the case, Kopaigora v. Commissioner, the Internal Revenue Service had hoped to collect thousands of dollars from Alex Kopaigora, a 42-year-old who came to the U.S. from Ukraine in 1994 on a Mormon mission and later became a citizen. In 2011, he was employed at a hotel in Los Angeles and commuted to Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, for its executive M.B.A. program.

Mr. Kopaigora and his wife, Elizabeth, deducted $18,879 for tuition, commuting and other expenses on their 2011 tax return that the IRS disallowed, in part because he was unemployed for several months of the year.

But the judge disagreed with the IRS, saving the Kopaigoras $2,111 in taxes—and providing more ammunition to M.B.A. students who want to deduct education expenses in the future.

“This case is a big win for all M.B.A. students,” says Robert Willens, a tax expert who teaches at Columbia University’s business school and has advised hundreds of M.B.A. students on the ins and outs of deducting tuition.

The decision was released earlier this month by the Tax Court, a specialized tribunal. Although the case is of a type that can’t be appealed or formally cited as precedent, experts say such cases often are influential both inside and outside the IRS.

According to the Department of Education’s most recent data, about 110,000 students were pursuing graduate degrees in business in 2014. About 12,000 students were enrolled in executive M.B.A. programs in the U.S. in 2015, according to the Executive MBA Council, and three-quarters of them paid all or part of their own expenses.

To see why the case has broad implications, it is necessary to grapple with intricacies in the tax law. The rules allow deductions for education costs as “unreimbursed business expenses” on Schedule A (for employees) and on Schedule C (for the self-employed)—but not if the courses prepare the student for a new type of business or license, such as for law or nursing.

In practice, this requirement often precludes taxpayers from taking deductions for both undergraduate and graduate education expenses, although other tax benefits may help with these costs.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Most students in other graduate programs will find this MBA student favoritism by the IRS to be discriminatory.


Magna Carta --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

One of the open access journals I track is called Palgrave Communications
Palgrave Communications (open access humanities, including business, law, and economics) --- http://www.palgrave-journals.com/palcomms

800 years on can Magna Carta still disrupt the executive?
by Michael Moss
Palgrave Communications 2, Article number: 16049 (2016) ​doi:10.1057/palcomms.2016.49
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/articles/palcomms201649

In June 1215 King John put his seal to Magna Carta, which over the centuries has become an icon of English (British) liberties. Clause 40 about not selling, denying or delaying justice, and Clause 39, that no free man is to be imprisoned or dispossessed “save by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” are still in force today. For these reasons Lord Denning described Magna Carta as “the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”. In other words the executive can never be above the law, but for this principle to be enforced the state must disclose evidence by due process to the public by which it can be held to account. This essay explores the threats to openness of government in the digital age, which runs the risk of undermining this fundamental principle of the British constitution. These range from the intrusiveness of our surveillance society, ill-considered notions of a post-privacy world, misconceived concepts of open data to the immense difficulty of scrutinizing born-digital data released under due process for sensitive content. Such threats are balanced by a much more assertive judiciary under the supreme court, which like its American counterpart strikes down legislation, an unelected second chamber willing to challenge the executive and House of Commons select committees that are increasingly baring their teeth. This article is published as part of a collection entitled ‘IT as a utility’.

Speaking at Oxford on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta (Danziger and Gillingham, 2004), Lord Dyson, the then Master of the Rolls—the second most senior member of the judiciary, supported the opinion of his predecessor Lord Denning in more measured terms: “One tenet of Magna Carta that remains as valid now as it was in 1215 is its statement that justice shall be done by ‘the law of the land’. It is not surprising that our view of what the law of the land should be today differs markedly from what the barons thought it should be in 1215. But the principle that justice should be done according to the law of the land is as important today as it was in 1215. Establishing and preserving the rule of law is a vital pillar of our democratic system. To use the language of a later version of Magna Carta, justice must be determined according to ‘the due process of law’ ” (Dyson, 2015, para 8). The rule of law extends to everything and everybody from the legality of the declaration of war on Iraq, which another of Lord Dyson’s predecessors Lord Bingham considered illegal (Bingham, 2010: 120–129, 158), to a woman from Paisley complaining that she had been poisoned by a snail in a ginger beer bottle in 1932 (cited in Dyson, 2015, para 11; Chapman, 2010). No one can be above the rule of law as Lord Denning declared: “the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”, whether that be a democratically elected president or prime minister, an hereditary monarch or an autocrat. The Chinese authorities were so concerned about the implications of the charter that they blocked its display at Remnin University and the exhibition had to be moved to the British Residence (Middlehurst, 2015). This fundamental constitutional principle was taken seriously by Lord Neuberger, president of the Supreme Court, in his recent judgement in the case of the disclosure of the Prince of Wales letters that had been blocked by the Attorney General: “there is no clear or specific suggestion anywhere in the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act, 2000] that it is intended that a section 53 certificate [used by the Attorney General to block disclosure] should enable a member of the executive to override a judicial decision” (Neuberger, 2015a, para 90). The recent report of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information has confirmed, despite fears to the contrary, that Section 53 be used sparingly and should remain open to judicial review—“Where a veto is exercised appeal rights [to the Information Commissioner] would fall away and a challenge to the exercise of the veto would be by way of judicial review to the High Court” [Independent Commission, 2016, recommendation 15: 40].

For the rule of law to operate there must be evidence, which can be corroborated and has not been obtained unfairly, for example, by bribes or torture in judicial processes, or fabricated by government or simply never recorded (Bingham, 2010). Record-keeping by government has always been in Lord Panmure’s words in a memorandum of 1855 “The great desiderata for the easy and efficient discharge of the duty of a public office is a simple and efficient system of registration of the papers of the department” (cited in Moss, 2012: 866). It has always had another function to draw a clear line between the back and front office and in so doing give essential protection to civil servants (Foster, 2005: 26). When the current Lord Chancellor, Michael Gove, in the Conservative Administration protests that the government has a duty of care to civil servants to protect them from vexatious Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, he overlooks this fundamental aspect of good record-keeping (Graham, 2015). If information requested under FOIA is difficult to find and places an undue burden on civil servants then it can only mean it was not recorded effectively in the first place. As Sir Alan Beith, MP, Chairman of the Westminster Justice Committee puts it in 2012:

Continued in article

 


Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Course from Brandeis & Harvard ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/learn-ancient-greek-in-64-free-lessons-from-brandeis-harvard.html


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

I'm a great admirer of Steven Levitt (Freakonomics), but this one puzzles me

Freakonomics economist asked people to flip 20,000 virtual coins to make big life decisions — here’s what he found ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/economist-asked-people-to-flip-20000-coins-to-make-big-life-decisions-2016-8

Jensen Comment
One of Levitt's more controversial research findings is the negative correlation between crime rates and abortion rates ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics#The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime




From the Scout Report on August 12, 2016

Voyant --- http://voyant-tools.org 

Created by Stefan Sinclair at McGill University and Geoffrey Rockwell at the University of Alberta, Voyant is an online tool for analyzing texts. On this website, users can enter text in a variety of forms, including URL links, plain text, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format (RTF), and Portable Document Format (PDF). Voyant will then produce a word cloud to represent the frequency that each word appears in the text. By clicking on a single word, users can view an analysis of where in the text that word appears in the Trends box. To analyze or compare multiple documents, users can select Modify under the Documents tab to add additional texts. One notable strength of Voyant, is the various ways it allows visitors to examine written material. While the Trends visualization tool helps visitors analyze where certain words and phrases appear in texts, the Bubble Lines feature allows visitors to compare words across two different texts. A more detailed explanation of how to use and make use of Voyant can be found at http://docs.voyant-tools.org


Pearltrees --- http://www.pearltrees.com 

Pearltrees is an organizational tool that allows user to clip and save websites, documents, images, and files of interest. Users can group saved items into categories and share their lists with other users. With this resource, instructors can easily share educational resources, group project members can share ideas and resources, or families can plan a vacation. Pearltrees will also suggest additional resources based on web pages you have already listed. Pearltrees can be used online, on any iOS mobile device, or on Android phones. For a monthly fee, users can create a private account with additional features.


Creating a Smoother Ride in 1000 AD: A New Study Suggests a Link
between Vikings and Ambling Horses
Viking traders spread comfy-to-ride horses around the world, DNA suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/08/viking-traders-took-easy-to-ride-horses-around-the-world-dna-suggests

DNA shows that horse's 'funny walk' originated in York
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37009300

Vikings Possibly Spread Smooth-Riding Horses Around the World
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/science/horses-gaits-ambling-vikings.html?hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

American Museum of Natural History: Horse
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/horse

Archeology Magazine: The Story of the Horse
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/180-features/3345-the-horse-through-history

The Field Museum: Vikings
https://www.fieldmuseum.org/discover/on-exhibit/vikings


From the Scout Report on August 19, 2016

GoConqr --- https://www.goconqr.com 

GoConqr (formerly known as Exam Time) is a learning and networking tool for students and educators. GoConqr allows users to make flashcards, mindmaps, quizzes, notes, and slides to review concepts. Users can then choose to keep these resources private for their own use (or for their class's use), or opt to share these resources to the larger GoConqr community. By sharing resources, other CoConqr users can search and use these resources for their own purposes. GoConqr is designed to help users prepare for standardized tests (such as the SAT, ACT, and GRE) or to study subject-specific facts and content. This web-based tool is also available as a free application for iOS and android devices. 


Twitter Dashboard --- https://dashboard.twitter.com/i/landing 

Twitter users, take note: Twitter Dashboard is a new tool designed to help users manage accounts and engage with audiences. With this tool, users can view all mentions of their organization, business, or product on Twitter. Because Twitter Dashboard allows one to search for text and keywords, the dashboard includes mentions that are not tagged with the 'at' sign [@]. Twitter Dashboard also provides analytics about tweet views to help users strategically schedule posts in order to reach wider audiences. Tweets may also be scheduled ahead of time to plan for the most impact. Twitter Dashboard is currently only available as a mobile application for iOS devices, but any Twitter user may activate the dashboard from their home computer or laptop.


What Happens to Olympic Cities After the Olympics?
How to Pack Up After Your Olympic Games
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/rio-olympics-brazil-stadium-school/496190

What happens when the Olympics leave? Six former host cities offer
examples.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/08/05/what-happens-when-the-olympics-leave-six-former-host-cities-offer-examples

The Olympic City Project
http://www.olympiccityproject.com

Abandoned Athens Olympic 2004 venues, 10 years on - in pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/aug/13/abandoned-athens-olympic-2004-venues-10-years-on-in-pictures

Here's an Idea: Hold the Olympics in Multiple Cities at Once
http://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-cities-everywhere

An Olympic Event Where 1st Prize Is the Chance to Lose Billions
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/business/dealbook/an-olympic-event-where-1st-prize-is-the-chance-to-lose-billions.html

 




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


Education Tutorials

Dissertation Reviews (science and humanities) --- http://dissertationreviews.org

Mathplanet (K-12 Helpers) --- http://www.mathplanet.com

MathPapa (learn algebra) --- http://www.mathpapa.com

YouTube: The Problem with Math is English --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf62mAUAKmo

John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist --- http://www.steinbeckinstitute.org

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

20 Big Questions About the Future of Humanity ---
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/20-big-questions-about-the-future-of-humanity/

What’s On the Other Side of a Black Hole? ---
http://daily.jstor.org/whats-side-black-hole/

Dissertation Reviews (science and humanities) --- http://dissertationreviews.org

The Open Notebook (science stories) --- http://www.theopennotebook.com

Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria --- http://www.pnwherbaria

Flora Delaterre: The Plant Detective --- http://floradelaterre.com

The Chirurgeon's Apprentice (history of medicine) --- https://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com

Images from the History of Medicine --- http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/servlet/view/all

NOVA Labs: Evolution --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/evolution

Art of Science --- http://artofsci.princeton.edu

National Park Service: Pollinators --- https://www.nps.gov/subjects/pollinators

UNAIDS (AIDS) --- http://www.unaids.org/en

UNAIDS: Key Population Atlas --- http://www.aidsinfoonline.org/kpatlas

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

Dissertation Reviews (science and humanities) --- http://dissertationreviews.org

New Yorker Videos --- http://video.newyorker.com

This Republican mayor has an incredibly simple idea to help the homeless. And it seems to be working ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/08/11/this-republican-mayor-has-an-incredibly-simple-idea-to-help-the-homeless-and-it-seems-to-be-working/

USGS: Estimating the economic impacts of ecosystem restoration - Methods and case studies (PDF) ---
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2016/1016/ofr20161016.pdf

Is There Really A Link Between Mental Illness and Homelessness?
http://daily.jstor.org/is-there-really-a-link-between-mental-illness-and-homelessness/

Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum (African American Artists) --- https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this

UNAIDS (AIDS) --- http://www.unaids.org/en

UNAIDS: Key Population Atlas --- http://www.aidsinfoonline.org/kpatlas

15 Fascinating Facts About North Korea ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/strange-facts-about-north-korea-2016-8/#north-koreans-born-after-the-korean-war-are-about-2-inches-shorter-than-south-koreans-on-average-1

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

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


Law and Legal Studies

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


Math Tutorials

I can't remember when I read a more fascinating article
The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman
---
https://priceonomics.com/the-time-everyone-corrected-the-worlds-smartest/

MathPapa (learn algebra) --- http://www.mathpapa.com

Mathplanet (K-12 Helpers) --- http://www.mathplanet.com

YouTube: The Problem with Math is English --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf62mAUAKmo

How a mathematics textbook author became a hero in high schools across the USA
How A War Hero Launched A War On Bad Math Instruction ---
http://thefederalist.com/2016/08/15/how-a-war-hero-launched-a-war-on-bad-math-instruction/

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

The History of Photography in Five Animated Minutes: From Camera Obscura to Camera Phone ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-history-of-photography-in-five-animated-minutes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-very-first-color-photograph-1861.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The History of Civilization Mapped in 13 Minutes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-history-of-civilization-mapped-in-13-minutes-5000-bc-to-2014-ad.html

Rome in 1890 (color) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/rome-comes-to-life-in-photochrom-color-photos-taken-in-1890.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Take a Virtual Reality Tour of the World’s Stolen Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/take-a-virtual-reality-tour-of-the-worlds-stolen-art.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Dissertation Reviews (science and humanities) --- http://dissertationreviews.org

New Yorker Videos --- http://video.newyorker.com

YouTube: ComputerHistory --- https://www.youtube.com/user/computerhistory/video

A New Way of Seeing Indian Independence and the Brutal ‘Great Migration’ ---
http://time.com/4421746/margaret-bourke-white-great-migration/?xid=newsletter-brief

USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection --- http://usdawatercolors.nal.usda.gov/pom/home.xhtml

Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice --- http://crivelli.gardnermuseum.org

Free: National Geographic Lets You Download Thousands of Maps from the United States Geological Survey ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/free-national-geographic-lets-you-download-thousands-of-maps-from-the-united-states-geological-survey.html

The Chirurgeon's Apprentice (history of medicine) --- https://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com

#FolkloreThursday (British witches and fairy tales) --- http://folklorethursday.com/#sthash.BVTzPjN7.dpbs

Images from the History of Medicine --- http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov/luna/servlet/view/all

The Memory Palace (interesting people) --- http://thememorypalace.us

CF&I Women of World War II (women in factories) --- http://scalar.usc.edu/works/cfi-women-of-wwii/index

The Real Rosie the Riveter Project (labor, women, feminist, gender) --- http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/

A Brief History of USA Drinking --- http://daily.jstor.org/a-brief-history-of-drinking-alcohol/

Dynamic Dialects (English) --- http://www.dynamicdialects.ac.uk

American Languages: Our Nation's Many Voices --- http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AmerLangs

Women Leaders on the International Front --- http://daily.jstor.org/women-leaders/

The History Harvest (Nebraska) --- http://historyharvest.unl.edu

Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum (African American Artists) --- https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this

15 Fascinating Facts About North Korea ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/strange-facts-about-north-korea-2016-8/#north-koreans-born-after-the-korean-war-are-about-2-inches-shorter-than-south-koreans-on-average-1

Palgrave Communications (open access humanities, including business, law, and economics) --- http://www.palgrave-journals.com/palcomms

From the Scout Report on August 12, 2016

Creating a Smoother Ride in 1000 AD: A New Study Suggests a Link
between Vikings and Ambling Horses
Viking traders spread comfy-to-ride horses around the world, DNA suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/08/viking-traders-took-easy-to-ride-horses-around-the-world-dna-suggests

DNA shows that horse's 'funny walk' originated in York
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37009300

Vikings Possibly Spread Smooth-Riding Horses Around the World
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/science/horses-gaits-ambling-vikings.html?hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

American Museum of Natural History: Horse
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/horse

Archeology Magazine: The Story of the Horse
http://www.archaeology.org/issues/180-features/3345-the-horse-through-history

The Field Museum: Vikings
https://www.fieldmuseum.org/discover/on-exhibit/vikings

 

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

Dynamic Dialects (English) --- http://www.dynamicdialects.ac.uk

American Languages: Our Nation's Many Voices --- http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AmerLangs

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


Music Tutorials

The Juilliard Manuscript Collection --- http://juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org

Mashup Weaves Together 57 Famous Classical Pieces by 33 Composers: From Bach to Wagner ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/mashup-weaves-together-57-famous-classical-pieces-by-33-composers.html

The Trap Set (drum music) --- http://www.thetrapset.net

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

Standup comedians will have a field day with this new political correctness edict from Princeton University!
Princeton University now recommends elimination of "man," "layman," "mankind," and "wife" from the English language dictionary. The word "woman" and its derivatives are still allowed ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/08/20/insanity-the-word-man-is-banned-at-princeton-n2207565?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
I suspect that the phrase "when a woman dates a man" might now read "when a woman dates a "non-woman" although something gets lost in the translation since a "non-woman" need not be a human being. Please avoid phrases that are not sufficiently specific. The phrase "when a woman dates a human being with a penis" does not distinguish sufficiently between a transgender person with a penis versus a non-transgender person with a penis. This all can become very cumbersome in anatomy, physicality, and medicine disciplines. It also eliminates a lot of rhyming alternatives in poetry.

The Neuroscience & Psychology of Procrastination, and How to Overcome It ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-neuroscience-psychology-of-procrastination-and-how-to-overcome-it.html

8 Writers on How to Face Writer’s Block and the Blank Page: Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Carol Oates & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/8-writers-on-how-to-face-the-blank-page.html

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/

August 15, 2016

August 17, 2016

August 18, 2016

August 20, 2016

August 22, 2016

August 23, 2016

August 27, 2016

 

 

 


Nine Simple Ways to Get the Protein You Need ---
http://time.com/4386215/best-protein-foods/?xid=newsletter-brief

Jensen Comment
Of course these are only general guidelines that must be modified at the recommendation of your physician.

The other day I read where hair is mostly protein. That, of course, does not mean that you or your cat should be eating hair balls.


Neuroscientist studies long-term effects of medical marijuana ---
https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/15/medical-marijuana-study-staci-gruber/
Thank you Dennis Huber for the heads up


The Cold Hard Truth About Flintstones Vitamins ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/the-cold-hard-truth-about-flintstones-vitamins/ar-BBvwzG6?ocid=spartanntp


Cupping Can Do More Harm Than Good ---
http://nautil.us/blog/cupping-the-rio-olympics-health-trend-can-do-more-harm-than-good


UNAIDS (AIDS) --- http://www.unaids.org/en

UNAIDS: Key Population Atlas --- http://www.aidsinfoonline.org/kpatlas


The Neuroscience & Psychology of Procrastination, and How to Overcome It ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-neuroscience-psychology-of-procrastination-and-how-to-overcome-it.html


Biotech Innovations From MIT's Technology Review on August 27, 2016

Biotech innovations might extend our lives, but what if not enough people can pay for them? And can we develop new business models to unlock more medical innovations? This weekend we revisit stories that examine the new economics of medical breakthroughs.

 

 
   

A Tale of Two Drugs
Kalydeco and Zaltrap appeared to be promising new drugs for cystic fibrosis and colorectal cancer. Then doctors saw the price tags.

 

 
   

The World’s Most Expensive Medicine Is a Bust
The first gene therapy in the Western world is rarely used because it costs $1 million …

 

 

 

Gene-Therapy Cure Has Money-Back Guarantee
… leading other gene-therapy providers to offer some reassurance.

 

 
   

A Tale of Do-It-Yourself Gene Therapy
From 2015: the CEO of a small biotech company gets herself injected with purported anti-aging treatments. Is it quackery or “shifting the balance of power to patients”?

 

 

 
   

23andMe Sells Data for Drug Search
From this summer’s 50 Smartest Companies package: how a genetic-testing startup plans to capitalize on one of the world’s largest databases of DNA.

 

 
   

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2016: DNA App Store
A new business model for DNA screening could finally compel you to have your genome sequenced.

 


Humor for August 2015

 

A Big Super Cut of Saturday Night Live Cast Members Breaking Character and Cracking Up ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/a-big-super-cut-of-saturday-night-live-cast-members-breaking-character-and-cracking-up.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Robin Williams Delivers a Hastings College of Law Commencement Speech in 1983 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/robin-williams-uses-his-stand-up-comedy-genius-to-deliver-a-law-school-commencement-speech-1983.html
Poking fun at lawyers


You can get a free flight to Iceland if you agree to stay ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/wow-air-is-offering-free-flights-to-iceland-2016-8
Jensen Question
Wonder if that same idea would succeed in the USA?


Forwarded by Paula

One day, shortly after joining the PGA tour in 1965, Lee Trevino, a professional golfer and married man, was at his home in Dallas, Texas mowing his front lawn, as he always did.

A lady driving by in a big, shiny Cadillac stopped in front of his house, lowered the window and asked, “Excuse me, do you speak English?"

Lee responded, “Yes Ma'am, I do."

The lady then asked, “What do you charge to do yard work?”

Lee said, "Well, the woman in this house lets me sleep with her."

The lady hurriedly put the car into gear and sped off.


Forwarded by Dr. Woolff

NO !

IN RESPONSE TO ALL THE RECENT E-MAILS ABOUT OUR DOG: I AM SICK AND TIRED OF ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT HIM.

YES, HE BIT 6 PEOPLE WEARING OBAMA T-SHIRTS...

4 PEOPLE WEARING HILLARY T-SHIRTS...

2 CAR DRIVERS WITH BERNIE SANDERS BUMPER STICKERS...

9 TEENAGERS WITH PANTS HANGING PAST THEIR BUTT CRACKS...

AND 2 FLAG BURNERS.

SO FOR THE LAST TIME

THE DOG IS NOT FOR SALE !

AND NO, I DO NOT APPROVE OF HIS SMOKING, BUT HE SAYS IT HELPS GET THE "BAD TASTE" OUT OF HIS MOUTH.


Forwarded by Paula

Two guys grow up together but after college one moves to Michigan, the other to Florida. They agree to meet every ten years in Vero Beach and play golf.

At age 30, they finish their round of golf and go to lunch.

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“Well, you know, they got the broads, with the big racks, and the tight shorts, and the legs …”

“OK.”

Ten years later at age 40 they play.

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.

“Why?”

“Well, you know, they got cold beer and the big screen TVs and everybody has a little action on the games.”

“OK.”

Ten years later at age 50 they play

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“The food is pretty good and there is plenty of parking.”

”OK.”

At age 60 they play

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“Wings are half price.”

“OK”

At age 70 they play

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“They have 6 handicapped spaces right by the door.”

“OK.”

At age 80 they play

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“We’ve never been there before.” (think about this one)


Forwarded by Paula

A Girl Potato and a Boy Potato had eyes for each other,

And finally they got married, and had a little sweet Potato, which they called ' Yam. '

Of course, they wanted the best for Yam.

When it was time, they told her about the facts of life.

They warned her about going out and getting half-baked, so she wouldn't get accidentally mashed,

and get a bad name for herself like 'Hot Potato', and end up with a bunch of tater tots

Yam said not to worry, no Spud would get her into the sack

and make a rotten potato out of her!

But on the other hand she wouldn't stay home

and become a Couch Potato either.

She would get plenty of exercise so as not to be skinny

like her shoestring cousins.

When she went off to Europe , Mr. and Mrs. Potato told Yam to watch out

for the hard-boiled guys from Ireland and the

greasy guys from France called the French fries.

And when she went out West, to watch out for the Indians so she wouldn't get scalloped...

Yam said she would stay on the straight and narrow and wouldn't associate with

those high class Yukon Golds, or the ones from the other side of the tracks who advertise their trade on all the trucks that say, ' Frito Lay. '

Mr. and Mrs. Potato sent Yam to Idaho P.U. (that's Potato University) so that when she graduated she'd really be in the chips.

But in spite of all they did for her, one-day Yam came home and announced she was going to marry Tom Brokaw.

Tom Brokaw!

Mr. and Mrs. Potato were very upset.

They told Yam she couldn't possibly marry Tom Brokaw because he's just.......

Are you ready for this?

Are

You sure?

OK!

Here it is!

* * * *

A COMMONTATER

 


 




Humor August  2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q3.htm#Humor083116.htm

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

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