Tidbits on September 14, 2017
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Some Recent Photographs of
Clouds Taken With My Old Sony Camera
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/CloudFavorites/Set06/Clouds06.htm
Tidbits on September 14, 2017
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
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
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
NASA released a new video of Saturn — and the images are stunning ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-nasa-video-cassini-saturn-stunning-real-images-2017-8
An Animated Introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein & His Philosophical Insights
on the Problems of Human Communication ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/an-animated-introduction-to-ludwig-wittgenstein-his-philosophical-look-at-the-problems-of-human-communication.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Macaulay Library's Vast Archive of Natural Sounds Profiled in NSF Science
Nation Video ---
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/macaulay-librarys-vast-archive-of-natural-sounds-profiled-in-nsf-science-nation-video/
The 100 Funniest Films of All Time, According to 253 Film Critics from 52
Countries ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/the-100-funniest-films-of-all-time-according-to-253-film-critics-from-52-countries.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
YouTube: Computer Chronicles Science (videos on the early days of computing)
---
www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT
YouTube: Genome TV Science ---
www.youtube.com/channel/UCUp6Pd9fx8_UX7S38Ih_JqA
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
Watch John Lennon’s Last Live Performance (1975): “Imagine,”
“Stand By Me” & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/watch-john-lennons-last-live-performance-1975-imagine-stand-by-me-more.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Scroll down and click on the video screens.
Good songs, lousy voice.
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
50 stunning drone photos that will make you look at the world
from a different angle ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/stunning-drone-photos-2017-8
From Dada to Surrealism: Jewish Avant Garde Artists From Romania, 1910-1938 ---
www.europeana.eu/portal/en/exhibitions/from-dada-to-surrealism
PsyArt Journal Social studies (psychology of the arts) ---
www.psyartjournal.com
Stunning Images of Irma and Jose from Space ---
http://time.com/4937214/hurricane-irma-hurricane-jose-space/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2017091220pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Incredible before and after images of Houston neighborhoods hit by Hurricane
Harvey ---
https://qz.com/1068571/incredible-before-and-after-images-of-houston-neighborhoods-hit-by-hurricane-harvey/
The Creative Tension Between Vitality and Fatality: Illuminating the Mystery of
Sylvia Plath Through Her Striking Never-Before-Revealed Visual Art ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/08/17/sylvia-plath-one-life-smithsonian-visual-art/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=b011384148-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-b011384148-234390133&mc_cid=b011384148&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
1,000-Year-Old Illustrated Guide to the Medicinal Use of Plants Now Digitized &
Put Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/1000-year-old-illustrated-guide-to-the-medicinal-use-of-plants-now-digitized-put-online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
New York Times Lens Blog ---
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on art history ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#ArtHistory
Life Magazine: Nancy Pelosi: Miss Lube Rack 1955 ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/3582796/posts
Home Subjects Arts (art history in England) ---
www.homesubjects.org
1843: A new kind of vehicle has
taken to the roads, and people aren’t sure what to make of it. Is it safe? Can
it cope with other road users? Will it require a radical overhaul of the
transport infrastruct…
https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/driving-lessons
Jensen Comment
A real safety hazard of the first horseless carriages was that they scared the
horses on the road.
A real frustration of the first horseless carriages is that the tires flattened
so easily that drivers carried hand pumps and tire repair kits to fix tires
alongside the road.
In the really early days drivers went to drug stores for cans of gas.
Another frustration was that the engine heads had to be taken off an carbon
scraped about every 100 miles (and now we think having to recharge batteries
every 200 miles is a pain in the tail). Here's story about my father's first
road trip (to Canada) as a young teenager. I say "road" trip loosely since the
"roads" were mostly grass paths:
My Dad's Story About His
First Trip Away from the Farm
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/vernon.htm
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
Claude McKay's Early Poetry
(1911-1922): A Digital Collection
|
Language Arts |
|
First World War Poetry Archive Social studies ---
www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
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 September 14, 2017
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2017/TidbitsQuotations091417.htm
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
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
Fall Foliage Prediction Map ---
https://smokymountains.com/fall-foliage-map/
Push the slider across dates
Jensen Comment
The leaves are starting to change colors on some of our trees in the White
Mountains of New Hampshire (the dark reds come first).
We've had cool nights a bit early this year (our furnace turned on every night
this week before Labor Day 2017)
Lynda Barry on How the Smartphone Is Endangering Three Ingredients of
Creativity: Loneliness, Uncertainty & Boredom ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/lynda-barry-on-how-the-smartphone-is-endangering-three-ingredients-of-creativity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Smartphone ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
This page needs to be updated for company sales rankings.
What two companies sell more smartphones than Apple?
http://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-second-biggest-smartphone-apple-counterpoint-research-2017-9
Jensen Comment
.My wife and I have no smartphones --- only emergency cell phones that we rarely
use.
Hence we must be more creative than if we had smartphones.
Alas we have computers and smart TV to destroy creativeness.
The Latest Thing in Cheating: Use Google Translate to Plagiarize
Google Translate ---
https://translate.google.com/
Stacey Guney, assistant vice president for academic
affairs at Aims Community College, in Fort Collins, Colo., wrote that students
may use Google Translate to avoid plagiarism-detection software. Students start
by translating the text into another language, and then back to English. After
they clean up the result a bit, the text will be different enough to evade the
software.
Chronicle of Higher Education Newsletter on September 1, 2017
Jensen Comment
Having grown up in Munich my wife speaks German. Yet whenever we went back to
Germany years later she never could explain what I did for a living to her
relatives (who don't speak English).
My point here is
that it may be easier to get a decent translation of a history article in Google
Translate than to get a translation of an accounting article. The reason is that
translation software and even human translators generally have trouble
translating articles where the vocabulary is quite technical and specialized. I
speculate that college admissions essays are more apt to be plagiarized using
Google Translate than will articles on accounting for interest rate swaps and
other hedging transactions.
As for me I have a terrible time writing a mystery novel. Today I'm going to
start translating my new novel.
Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
Are They Doing Their Own Work? ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1892-are-they-doing-their-own-work?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=3fcb1f4baeb0438dad920347e0156824&elq=7132b244c50e45faa21ffcc0a0e8493f&elqaid=15425&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6592
Rumor has it that a student at the University of Texas got an A in Chemistry
101 five times. There are divorce cases where it's been brought out that a
spouse wrote her husband's term papers in college.
I had a student who complained about a F grade for a plagiarized term paper,
because it was really the expert he hired to write the paper plagiarized the
three main components of the paper.
Technologies work better at detecting plagiarized papers than for detecting
who wrote the papers.
Examination papers could be tested for fingerprints but I doubt that
universities test for fingerprints except in rare instances. Retinas could be
scanned during examinations, but does any university perform such security
measures?
Then there's the marginal types of cheating. A student might honestly write a
paper but hire a grammar expert to clean up the writing. That student might even
graduate summa cum laude and not be able to write a decent sentence in
English.
Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers
(and took two online courses for him)
The wife of a star University of South Florida
linebacker says she wrote his academic papers and took two online classes for
him. The accusations against Ben Moffitt, who had been promoted by the
university to the news media as a family man, were made in e-mail messages to
The Tampa Tribune, and followed Mr. Moffitt’s filing for divorce. Mr. Moffitt
called the accusations “hearsay,” and a university spokesman said the matter was
a “domestic issue.” If it is found that Mr. Moffitt committed academic fraud,
the newspaper reported, the university could be subject to an NCAA
investigation.
"Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers," Chronicle of Higher Education
News Blog, January 5, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3707/linebackers-wife-says-she-wrote-his-papers?at
The New York Times. September 1, 2017
Football Favoritism (read that academic cheating) at Florida State
University: The Price One Teacher Paid (with her life)
Hospitality Courses Replace Basket Weaving
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/sports/ncaafootball/florida-state-football.html
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As the Florida State University football team was
marching to a national title in the fall of 2013, the school was
investigating allegations of academic favoritism involving a half-dozen of
its leading players, including one who scored the winning touchdown in the
championship game.
The inquiry, previously unreported,
stemmed from a complaint by a teaching assistant who said she felt pressured
to give special breaks to athletes in online hospitality courses on coffee,
tea and wine, where some handed in plagiarized work and disregarded
assignments and quizzes. The assistant, a 47-year-old doctoral student named
Christina Suggs, provided emails and other evidence in late August 2013 to
the Florida State inspector general, an independent office. But her case was
soon taken over by the university’s attorney.
The allegations were especially
sensitive for Florida State, which had been
stripped of 12 football victories four years
earlier because of improper assistance to athletes in an online music
course. The university was also at the time facing a scandal involving its
star quarterback, Jameis Winston, who was accused of rape but never charged.
It is unclear if
any of the conduct Ms. Suggs complained about resulted in athletes being
improperly eligible to play. In a statement, the university said an outside
consultant it hired to investigate found no wrongdoing. It refused to
release any more information, saying that to do so would jeopardize the
privacy of the students involved.
Even so, two things are certain: By the end of 2013, Florida State had
tightened standards for the online hospitality courses. And Ms. Suggs had
lost her job and left the school.
Continue reading the main story
The story of Ms. Suggs’s experience trying to hold
athletes to the same standards as other students, pieced together from
emails, other documents and interviews, came to light during research for a
forthcoming
book, “Champions Way: Football, Florida, and the
Lost Soul of College Sports” (W. W. Norton). It offers a case study of how
academic and legal imperatives often collide with the pressures of big-time
college sports, at a time when
academic fraud and
sexual assault scandals are roiling campuses
across the country, from Baylor University in Texas to the University of
Mississippi.
Florida State was the focus of
reporting by The New York Times in 2014 that
examined the mishandling of criminal allegations against members of the
championship football team, including Mr. Winston.
One of the players involved in Ms. Suggs’s complaint
was James Wilder Jr., who had been
arrested three times in the previous year and was
on track to get, at best, a grade of D in one course. He emailed his
professor as the summer semester was ending to say he needed a B “to keep
myself in good academic place with the school.” The professor, Mark Bonn,
who ran the hospitality courses, instructed Ms. Suggs to work with Mr.
Wilder — he referred to him as “a starting star running back,” before noting
that all students should be treated equally — and give him a chance to make
up past assignments and submit missing portions of his final project, even
though it had already been graded.
Ms. Suggs wrote that Mr. Wilder “should have done the work like everyone
else” and objected to granting him special treatment, telling a colleague,
“I am not offering this opportunity to other students.” The colleague
agreed, summing up their mutual concern about Professor Bonn: “Trying to put
a stop to his favoritism for athletes once and for all.”
Friends of Ms. Suggs said she was painfully aware of
the stakes involved in filing her complaint, including the possibility that
athletes found in violation of academic standards
might be ineligible to play under National
Collegiate Athletic Association rules. All but one of the players identified
in her emails went on to the National Football League.
“It was a huge heartache for her,” said Barbara Davis, a fellow doctoral
student and close friend of Ms. Suggs. “She told me how there had been
tremendous pressure on her to pass these football players, even though they
didn’t deserve it.”
Plagiarized Work
In June 2013, administrators at Florida State’s Dedman School of Hospitality
circulated a memo to teaching assistants. The school’s online courses in
“beverage management,” the memo noted, were popular with “a large number of
student athletes” who needed to be tracked closely.
“Like the on-ground classes, we’re asked to review athletes’ progress on a
regular basis and report how they’re doing to their academic advisers,” the
memo said.
. . .
As the 2013 fall semester came to a close and the
Seminoles were preparing for the championship game, Ms. Suggs — who already
had two master’s degrees — was informed that her job as a teaching assistant
would not be renewed because she did not have enough business school
credits. In an email to the inspector general, Ms. Suggs said that she
believed she had lost her job “due to this unfortunate circumstance with Dr.
Bonn and the investigation into the football players.”
Ms. Suggs
decided to leave Florida State, after five years, with an education
specialist degree — one step short of her doctorate. In her email to the
inspector general, she added that she was “hoping just to put all of Florida
State University behind me as I move forward with my life.”
Friends said her decision to leave
took an enormous toll.
“I can’t stress enough how important
this Ph.D. was to her,” said Melissa Isaak, another of her close friends,
adding that next to raising her son, obtaining the advanced degree “was the
single most important thing in her life.”
In the months that followed, in
deteriorating health and deeply in debt with
student loans, Ms. Suggs struggled to cobble
together a steady income from online teaching jobs. She had back surgery in
October 2014 and returned to her tiny rented condo in Panama City Beach,
Fla., to recuperate.
Not long
after, Ms. Suggs lay down for a nap while her mother took her son out to a
restaurant. They returned to find her unresponsive, a trickle of blood
seeping from her nose.
The medical examiner determined that
she had died accidentally from a toxic combination of prescription medicines
for pain, anxiety and depression.
Jensen Comment
Bob Jensen's threads on the many years of academic scandals of FSU football ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#Athletics
Nothing, however, tops the 20 years of fake courses for athletes at the
University of North Carolina ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/sports/ncaafootball/florida-state-football.html
The NCAA wnk winked in its accustomed reaction to academic scandals in the Top
20 Division 1 teams.
Why do Division 1 universities pretend that their star athletes are getting
an education?
Just pay them to play and let them out of faking their educations.
Real Challenges of Life: Third Down and 93 Yards to Go ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/louisiana-tech-fumble-third-down-and-93-2017-9
Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches to Steal Signs Against Yankees ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/sports/baseball/boston-red-sox-stealing-signs-yankees.html
Jensen Comment
This must be a horrible trick to steal some of the cheating glory that, until
now, was mostly claimed by the New England Patriots. In addition to Deflategate
don't forget that fines were paid for "Patriotic" breaking of the code of
opponents' signals across the football fields of play ---
http://yourteamcheats.com/NE
The Boston Red Sox appear to be more savvy on cheating technology than the
Patriots who probably don't even own Apple Watches.
If the Red Sox can cheat with Apple Watches, think what your students can do
this academic year with those watches.
Holland Implements the Future of Farming ---
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=cf160c9638-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-cf160c9638-153727301
How Labor Scholars Missed
the Trump Revolt::We thought we knew the white working class. Then 2016 happened
---
http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Labor-Scholars-Missed-the/241049?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=b44f5357d3404a349f448f3640956c27&elq=d5d986b392174f74b3b44e7844feda33&elqaid=15520&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6644
When
the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008, many in and out of the academy
were quick to wag a finger at economists and ask, "Why didn’t you guys see
this coming?" Economists responded that the "science" of economics is not of
the predictive kind — nor, for that matter, are a lot of the sciences. The
economy might have been in unanticipated chaos, but the discipline of
economics was still sound.
Others argued that
the problem was in the methodology itself — the assumptions and premises
that blind practitioners to even the possibility of crisis. The eight
American and European scholars who wrote the
"Dahlem report,"
a 2009 analysis of the economics profession, found it "obvious, even to the
casual observer that these models fail to account for the actual evolution
of the real-world economy." As a result, "in our hour of greatest need," we
must fumble in darkness with no explanation, no theory, and no scholarly
discipline prepared to answer the simple question: How did we get here?
I am a labor
historian — or at least one in recovery. When my colleagues and I saw the
financial crisis, our predominant response was something like an exhausted,
cynical shrug: "Of course — what did you expect in an age of rampant
deregulation and absurd economic inequality?" Yet when the next systemic
paroxysm hit our nation — the wave of white, blue-collar rage that helped
elect Donald Trump — my field seemed as ill-equipped to explain the "actual
evolution of the real-world" situation as the science of economics had been
to explain the crash in 2008. One could have polled the entire American
Political Science Association and the Organization of American Historians in
2016 and found very few who would have predicted a Trump victory — unless
Michael Moore (who nearly alone, in no uncertain terms,
predicted a "Rust Belt
Brexit,"
the last stand of the common white guy) happens to be an accidental member
of one of those professional organizations.
Richard Hofstadter, the old grandmaster of American political history, laid
clear the burdens of being a historian: "The urgency of our national
problems seems to demand, more than ever, that the historian have something
to say that will help us." The need for salient historical explanation seems
more important now than ever, yet a lot of us are coming up empty. Most of
what we seemed to know about how class works suddenly seems dated, or simply
wrong. As with the economists of the past decade, we may have been blinded
by the bedrock assumptions of our own field.
Most
labor historians, one way or another, and whether or not they concede it,
remain children of the "new labor history." The field emerged in the 1960s
and ’70s from several sources: the political vision of the New Left, civil
rights, and women’s movements; the rejection of the narrow trade-union
economism of the "old" labor history; and, perhaps most important, the 1963
publication of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class.
Thompson famously rejected an analysis that addressed class as a
"thing," arguing instead for a new analysis that approaches class as a
"happening." Smashing icons across the intellectual spectrum, his book began
a new age of rich and adventurous writing about the history of working
people. He sent historians on a mission to figure out how class worked —
without indulging the condescending, instrumental, or teleological traps of
previous intellectual models.
In
place of institutions and economics, the new breed of scholars put culture,
consciousness, community, agency, and resistance at the center of their
analyses. In rushed two generations of engaged scholarship, freeing workers
from prisons of party, union, and state. No longer intellectual pawns, the
working class could have its own voice and reveal its own rich complexity.
Liberated history, so the assumption went, would lead to liberated workers.
And liberation became the project of the new labor history.
But this paradigm never quite escaped its origins in the political
romanticism of the New Left that gave birth to it. At its best, it opened up
wide vistas of understanding of the entirety of American history; at its
worst, it looked like a cultural whirlpool of radicals writing radical
history for a radical audience
. . .
Historians need to reconcile their intellectual frameworks with a
"real-world" America that is a messy stew of populist, communitarian,
reactionary, progressive, racist, patriarchal, and nativist ingredients. Any
historical era has its own mix of these elements, which play in different
ways. We should embrace Thompson’s admonition to understand class as a
continuing, sometimes volatile happening, and not be blinded by our love
affair with dissent as a left-wing movement. Trump voters are dissenters,
after all.
My
generation’s historiographical compass is left spinning. North is gone. But
the white working class is out there. And we still really need to understand
it.
Jefferson Cowie is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His most
recent book is
The
Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics
(Princeton University Press, 2016).
Jensen Comment
In other words academic historians in ivory towers stayed aloof of the real
world much like academic accountants stayed aloof of real world contracting that
that became a messy stew of contingencies and uncertainties that bookkeepers
just ignored in the ledgers and academics ignored in their analytical modesls
and their empirical regression models. Where have business firms paid the least
bit of attention to esoteric and irrelevant academic accounting research? (Yeah
I know I'm exaggerating when I write "irrelevant," but I'm not exaggerating when
I write that the business firms ignore the esoteric research of academic (accountics
science) professors.
Nassim Talem: The Logic of Risk Taking ---
https://medium.com/incerto/the-logic-of-risk-taking-107bf41029d3
Betting on Black Swans
From
The Golden State Warriors are really, really good — like, have flirted with
perfection good. As such, the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas has them at
1-1,000 odds to make the NBA playoffs, meaning you would have to bet $100,000 to
win $100 from the bookie ---
http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/20498594/las-vegas-sportsbook-offers-1-1000-odds-golden-state-warriors-making-playoffs
Jensen Comment
It seems that somebody laying down $100 is really betting on a black swan event,
probably without calculating probabilities since there are so many black swans
with very, very, very small probabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
What We Got Wrong About Technology ---
http://timharford.com/2017/08/what-we-get-wrong-about-technology/
Three Things That Undermine Social Security Benefits ---
https://money.usnews.com/investing/investing-101/articles/2017-09-05/3-things-that-undermine-social-security-benefits
Microsoft Excel: How to link text boxes to data cells ---
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2017/sep/link-text-boxes-to-excel-data-cells.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=08Sep2017
ACT scores are up this year, but the scores of black and Latino students
and those who did not complete recommended college preparatory courses remain
far behind those of other students.---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/07/act-scores-are-gaps-remain-preparation-and-raceethnicity?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b64cd21f52-DNU20170907&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b64cd21f52-197565045&mc_cid=b64cd21f52&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
The U.S. Asian population is growing faster than any
other U.S. racial or ethnic group, climbing 72 percent between 2000 and 2015
according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. Asians Americans are
projected to eclipse Hispanic Americans in 2055 to become the largest immigrant
group in the country.
Pew Research Center ---
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/?utm_content=buffera06c0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Jensen Comment
When reading the article below keep in mind the racial mix of the USA
population---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States
72.4% White Only
12.6% Black or African American
4.8% Asian
0.9% Native American of Alaskan Natives
0.2% Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders
2.9% Two of More races
6.2% Some Other Race
16.3% Hispanic and Latino Americans (of any race): 16.3%
Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More
Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago
By JEREMY ASHKENAS, HAEYOUN PARK and ADAM PEARCE
The New York Times, AUG. 24, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/affirmative-action.html
. . .
Blacks and Hispanics remain underrepresented at other top universities,
even as the share of white students at many of these schools has dropped, in
some cases below 50 percent. The largest growth has often been among
Asian students.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The article stresses that African Americans and Hispanics are more
underrepresented today than they were in the 1980s. What is not stressed is that
whites were overrepresented in the 1980s and are now highly underrepresented in
terms of the 72.4% parameter in the USA's most prestigious universities such as
the IVY League. Some of the flagship universities of the south are still running
higher than 72.4% white. They probably defend admissions outcomes based on SAT
and ACT scores.
Please do not take this as meaning I'm shedding a tear for the under
representation of whites in prestigious universities focused on in the above
article. Nor do I want to shame Asians who have the talent and the motivation to
displace many of the white students admitted to these universities. I'm no
expert on the complications of admission trends in the USA.
One thing not mentioned in the article is that, in the highly prestigious
universities, children of families earning less than $60,000 are attending free
or nearly free such that income is not the major barrier to admission into those
universities. What is a barrier, however, are admission standards based upon
intense competition where Asians have been soaring over the past three decades.
For African Americans and Hispanics this is an enormous
problem because they are much more likely to have graduated from poorly
performing high schools in the USA, especially in outlier school districts that
are very large or very, very small.
I might note that the percentages of whites at the University of Texas is
only 44% with 23% Hispanic. This in large measure is probably due to the
10% Rule that in Texas law that requires
accepting (in all state universities) the top 10% of applicants from each public
high school in the State of Texas. This eliminates much of the discrimination
caused by having weak Hispanic and African American high schools in central urban
districts and heavily Hispanic or Black rural districts. Many (most?) of the top graduates in
Hispanic and Black high schools in Texas opt for the flagship campuses of the
University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University at College Station.
If
Louisiana and Alabama had a 10% Rule it's certain that LSU and the University of
Alabama would have many more
African Americans and Hispanics. The 10% Rule trumps
SAT and ACT scoring for admissions. I like the 10% Rule because it's
driven by motivation of applicants to learn. The President of the University of
Texas at one time complained that UT was overwhelmed by the 10% Rule in that
almost all discretion in admissions was taken out of the hands of university
officials. This led to UT imposing some restrictions on the rule ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/01/texas
Big is not always better.
My advice to top graduates of minority-dominated high schools is to apply to
some small colleges and universities where class sizes are much smaller than in
flagship universities. The surprise will be that nearly all colleges have
funding available for free rides of some African American and Hispanic students.
My daughter Lisl graduated in in biology from the University of Texas. She grew
weary of enormous classes having hundreds of students. The Jester Center
dormitory complex is so huge it has two mailing zip codes. She said the noise
level in Jester is loud or louder 24/7. It's much more peaceful and quiet in
urban zoos ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester_Center
U of Arizona professor’s Ph.D. is withdrawn (by Ohio State University)
after her findings on violent video games are questioned. Some wonder why her
mentor and co-author, a senior scholar, has not shared the blame ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/01/ohio-state-revokes-arizona-professors-phd-questioning-her-findings-video-games?mc_cid=63f0c1e942&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Ohio State University took
the extraordinary step of revoking a graduate’s doctorate last week. Now her
future at the University of Arizona, where she is an assistant professor of
communication, is unclear.
Jodi Whitaker’s problems started in 2015,
after scholars in two countries noticed irregularities in the data in her
2012 paper on video games.
The study
in Communication Research, called “‘Boom, Headshot!’ Effect of
Video Game Play and Controller Type on Firing Aim and Accuracy,” found that
playing a violent video game improved real-life shooting skills. Initially,
it was something of a boon for both Whitaker, then still a graduate student
at Ohio State, and her co-author and dissertation committee chair, Brad J.
Bushman, the Margaret Hall and Robert Randal Rinehart Chair of Mass
Communication there. That’s because Bushman served on President Obama’s
committee on gun violence and his research challenges
what he calls
myths about violence, including that violent media have a trivial effect on
aggression.
But Patrick Markey, a professor of
psychology at Villanova University -- whose
own findings on video games
clash with Bushman’s -- soon challenged the paper, as did Malte Elson, a
postdoctoral researcher in educational psychology at Ruhr University Bochum
in Germany. Together they alerted the Committee of Initial Inquiry at Ohio
State to what they called irregularities in some of the variables of the
data set. The values of questioned variables could not be confirmed because
the original research records were unavailable, according to
Communication Research, which in 2016 decided that a retraction was
warranted.
Bushman was cleared of wrongdoing by Ohio
State, but he agreed to the retraction. He also agreed to the retraction of
another paper
in which Whitaker was not involved -- one finding that watching violent
cartoons inhibits children's learning -- earlier this year, as reported by
Retraction Watch.
Data on a second 2016 paper by Whitaker and Bushman (on which Bushman was
the lead) also
have been corrected;
that study found that "catharsis beliefs" attract people to violent video
games.
But Whitaker, the 2012
paper’s lead author, was found responsible for the errors. And Ohio State’s
Board of Trustees voted unanimously last week to revoke her doctorate,
granted in 2013.
Benjamin Johnson, a
spokesman for Ohio State, said he was limited about what he could reveal
about the case, due to federal laws governing the privacy of students. In
general, though, he said via email, the university's Committee on Academic
Misconduct investigates allegations. That committee can then recommend to
the executive vice president and provost that a degree be revoked, he said.
And if the provost agrees, the recommendation goes to the Board of Trustees.
It’s impossible to know
exactly how often doctorates are revoked, but it is extremely rare. Ohio
State, for example, revokes about one degree every two years. But that’s all
degrees, not just Ph.D.s.
Bushman referred a request
for comment to another spokesperson for Ohio State, who said via email that
the university “determined that there was no evidence that Bushman
participated in, or was aware of, inappropriate data manipulation.”
Communication Research’s editorial note about “Boom, Headshot” says
that a replication of the study by Bushman is in review.
Whitaker did not respond to requests for
comment. Both her current department chair and a spokesperson for Arizona
declined comment on her status there, saying it’s a private personnel issue.
Whitaker’s
faculty profile
remains active. It includes a link to her curriculum vitae, which lists her
doctorate from Ohio State.
In a joint statement to
Retraction Watch,
Markey and Elson seemed to suggest that Whitaker had been thrown under the
bus.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
August 29, 2017 message from Dennis Huber
House flippers triggered the US housing market
crash, not poor subprime borrowers.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/house-flippers-triggered-us-housing-175705459.html
Dennis
August 30, 2017 reply from Bob Jensen
The article is suspect because it relies on fraudulent credit scoring data
in the economic boom preceding the crash of 2008. In other words the credit
scoring outfits were giving high credit scores to individuals and companies
that should have had very low scores. Credit scoring companies later paid
fines for their criminal activities, and their credit scoring databases
leading up to the crash are virtually worthless.
The article is also misleading because it plays down the huge amounts of
fraud taking place in conspiracies between mortgage brokers (most any
criminal could be a mortgage broker selling inflated mortgages to Freddie
and Fannie), unethical property value appraisers, and borrowers greedy for
cash.
A perfect example is the case of Marvene written up by the WSJ. Marvene was
a woman on welfare who owned a shack she bought for a little over $3,000 in
Phoenix. A criminal mortgage broker and a criminal appraiser teamed up with
her to get Marvene a mortgage for over $100,000 that was sold to Fannie.
Marvene then bought a $60,000 truck and some other things with the
fraudulent loan proceeds --- while never going off welfare and food stamps.
After the foreclosure neighbors bought the shack for a pittance and tore it
down. Fannie ate the loss and billions more in losses like this that were
caused by criminals teaming up with poor people like Marvene.
You can read about Marvene and similar mortgage broker frauds using poor
people like Marvene at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Garbage
articles today are politically biased and try to gloss over just how much
criminal activity was taking place around the turn of the Century. Flipped
houses were only part of a very fraudulent landscape made possible because
it was so easy to milk Freddie and Fannie.
It was so easy because the originating lender/broker bore zero percent of
the risk of fraudulent mortgages sold upstream to Freddie and Fannie.
Selling mortgages without recourse would not have been such an economic
disaster if the collageral value exceeded the loan value. In tens of
millions of instances, however, the crooked real estate appraisers allowed
inflated loan porceeds to greatly exceed genuine property values.
Bob
As college costs continue to rise, outstanding student debt has ballooned
to an all-time high of $1.4 trillion ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/student-loan-balances-jump-nearly-150-percent-in-a-decade.html
Amazon Opens Search for Amazon HQ2 – A Second Headquarters City in North
America ---
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2299039&utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=a8ea6b5aab-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-a8ea6b5aab-153727301
Jensen Comment
Now is the time for academics to begin to seriously speculate as to the reasons,
possibly reasons behind forthcoming excuses from Amazon. My best guess is
flexibility in the face of potential taxes and unfriendly legislation. Seattle
is circling its biggest and best wagons with threats of such things as a high
income surtax. The State of Washington is contemplating a gross revenue tax (for
public schools) that might catch on in Blue states. There have already been big
headquarters moves such as GE's recent move from Connecticut to Boston. I'm
amazed that there have not been more threatened moves by big companies out of
New York City and Chicago.
If Amazon has two headquarters it can virtually shut down one of them on
short notice. Compounding the incentives for two or more headquarters is that
cities, states, and labor unions will make enormous deals to retain and attract
businesses. Exhibit A is the recent tax break of $3+ billion to Foxconn by the
State of Wisconsin.
Where will Amazon build a second HQ in North America?
It's anybody's guess, but I would not count out the Dallas region for many
reasons such as the DFW airport, no income tax, large pool of high quality
employees, nearness to Mexico, and a business-friendly legislature. But who can
predict anything in the future of Jeff Bezos?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Guaranteed (Universal) Minimum Income ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income
Milton Friedman called it a negative income tax. Conservatives are often
supportive of the negative income tax if other forms of safety nets such as
welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, and unemployment benefits are
eliminated.
Liberals are sometimes opposed because when given discretionary support in place
of other benefits (like food stamps) the money may be wasted on booze, drugs,
entertainment, gambling, and other diversions from needy children and elderly
dependents.
The experimental amounts Europe are usually quite modest to date such as
in Finland ($580 per month) where only 2,000 citizens remained additionally on
other forms of public assistance due to unemployment.
From MIT
A study from the Roosevelt Institute has
concluded exactly that. It suggests that a government handout to every
American of $12,000 a year, no strings attached, would boost the U.S.
economy to the tune of 12.5-13% over eight years.
The report also says it would create more jobs. Unsurprisingly, this view
is highly controversial, as are guaranteed incomes as a whole. For more,
check out our in-depth analysis of the idea ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a-sellout-of-the-american-dream/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=05b835a50e-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-05b835a50e-153727301
The New York Times: Why Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Isn’t
Working ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/opinion/finland-universal-basic-income.html?mcubz=0
Jensen Comment
Decades ago I was supportive (in theory) of the negative income tax minimum
level of income. In theory it sounded great because of efficiencies that reduced
the bureaucracy cost and fraud in the safety nets of welfare, food stamps,
public housing, etc.
But to the extent that parents (think drug addicts and alcoholics) will waste
discretionary funds while depriving their children of basics like food, shoes,
medicine, and education perhaps the paternalistic safety nets are more likely to
benefit needy children and elderly dependents. Keeping all the safety nets plus
giving something like $12,000 per year minimum income is probably too burdensome
for taxpayers. There's also the problem of inflation. What's to keep landlords
from raising rents if tenants each have $1,000 more per month?
Plus there's the problem of incentives.
Cuba's great experiment with free housing, free education, free health care,
free transportation and relatively generous free ration books was eventually
viewed by Castro as not working for various reasons, the main one being that it
destroyed incentives to work when combined with a rather stingy maximum wage of
$20 per day. Why slave as a hotel maid or farm worker when all basic needs are
provided free without working? What happened was that an underground economy
emerged to pay workers above the maximum wage in order to get work done.
"Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work," by Paul Haven. Associated
Press, Yahoo News, September 8, 2010 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_fidel_castro_5
Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist
that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on
domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local
issues since stepping down four years ago.
The fact that things are not working efficiently on
this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul,
the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt
assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise
eyebrows.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The
Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting
to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work
for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.
He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch
following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate. The
Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg's account.
Since stepping down from power in 2006, the
ex-president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said
very little about Cuba and its politics, perhaps to limit the perception he
is stepping on his brother's toes.
Goldberg, who traveled to Cuba at Castro's
invitation last week to discuss a recent Atlantic article he wrote about
Iran's nuclear program, also reported on Tuesday that Castro questioned his
own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, including his
recommendation to Soviet leaders that they use nuclear weapons against the
United States.
Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba has
clung to its communist system.
The state controls well over 90 percent of the
economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free
health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At
least a portion of every citizen's food needs are sold to them through
ration books at heavily subsidized prices.
President Raul Castro and others have instituted a
series of limited economic reforms, and have
warned Cubans that they need to start working harder
and expecting less from the government. But
the president has also made it clear he has no desire to depart from Cuba's
socialist system or embrace capitalism.
Fidel Castro stepped down temporarily in July 2006
due to a serious illness that nearly killed him.
He resigned permanently two years later, but
remains head of the Communist Party (until he died). After staying almost
entirely out of the spotlight for four years, he re-emerged in July and now
speaks frequently about international affairs. He has been warning for weeks
of the threat of a nuclear war over Iran.
Castro's interview with Goldberg is the only one he
has given to an American journalist since he left office.
Added Jensen Comment
In the 21st Century we're seeing a combination of robots taking away jobs
combined with weakened job protection powers of labor unions. We can expect
increasing unemployment in almost every economic sector and income level.
This will increase the clamor for minimum basic income or it's equivalent in
increasingly expensive safety nets such as suspension of mortgage payments,
property tax payment relief, suspension of rent payments, suspension of car
lease payments, and free food and training between jobs.
More research is needed, and we should definitely track the existing
experiments in Europe ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income
1,600 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in September:
Enroll Today ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/1600-moocs-massive-open-online-courses-getting-started-in-september-enroll-today.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Includes six courses in financial and forensic accounting
Everything we're expecting Apple to launch on September 12 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-event-preview-iphone-8-apple-watch-apple-tv-2017-8
15 Gadgets Every Student Needs (maybe and maybe not) ---
http://time.com/4913866/best-student-gadgets/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2017090212pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Why Students (and their parents) Need Better Protections Against Loan
Fraud ---
https://theconversation.com/why-students-need-better-protection-from-loan-fraud-82723
Jensen Comment
Actually it's more than just protection against loan fraud. Students and parents
need better knowledge of finance to protect against consumer fraud in general.
This summer a supposedly respected Chevrolet dealer tried to defraud me on a
car leasing deal. The average buyer might have fallen for the shady deal.
How do car dealers commit fraud?
The most common way is to lie about the value of the car being purchased or
leased. Inflated values make leasing or borrowing rates appear lower than they
really are relative to the true value of the car. The best protection is to
pretend that you want to pay cash for the car up front and that you are shopping
around among other car sellers (especially online sellers). Say the dealer
claims the value of the car is $31,000. By the time you negotiate a cash price
it may well drop down by 10% or more --- say to $27,600. Then use Excel or a
finance calculator to compute the true financing or leasing rate based on the
$27,600 price rather than the phony $31,000 price.
There are also other ways dealers try to screw customers. The Chevy dealer in
my case tried to sell me on a 39-month lease rather than the standard 36-month
lease. Of course the lease payments are somewhat lower on a 39-month lease.
When it comes to home buying there are many ways sellers and their relaters
can be deceptive.
There are also many ways telephone companies and credit card companies are
deceptive about charges.
Stop graduating finance ignoramuses from high schools and colleges. Grab the
brass ring to promote financial literacy in our K-16 schools.
Bob Jensen's finance helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
ScienceOpen Has a Collection of Papers on How to Fix the Replicability Crisis
---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2017/08/25/fyi-science-open-has-a-collection-of-papers-on-how-to-fix-the-replicability-crisis/
Jensen Comment
Because accountant researchers are more honest and accurate than most other
researchers, accounting journal editors generally don't encourage or publish
replication reports that don't have extended research findings ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Have there been any accounting research journal retractions other than the many
retractions of the notorious James Hunton articles that allegedly contained
fabricated data?
New analysis finds the number of doctorates awarded keeps going up, even
as number of job openings is going down. ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/28/more-humanities-phds-are-awarded-job-openings-are-disappearing?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=e546a3205d-DNU20170828&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-e546a3205d-197565045&mc_cid=e546a3205d&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
. . .
One analysis released Sunday looked at
completions of doctoral degrees. Humanities programs awarded 5,891 doctoral
degrees in 2015. That is the largest number recorded back to the start of
collection of such information in 1987. The figure was only 3,110 in 1988,
then rose steadily to 4,994 in 2000, dipped to about 4,700 from 2002 to
2007, and then started going up again, year after year.
The long period of time it takes to earn
humanities doctorates (8-10 year time to completions are not uncommon) makes
it difficult for prospective graduate students to calculate job prospects
when they are likely to complete their degrees. But the period covered by
the study included the economic downturn of 2008 and the years after. And in
that period of time, there has never been a truly healthy job market for
humanities Ph.D.s seeking faculty jobs.
Jensen Comment
It's mystifying that the demand for accounting doctorates is increasing while
the annual supply is decreasing. In 2015 the number of accounting doctoral
degrees from universities having AACSB accreditation was 174 (down from 186
awarded in 2013) ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoct/XDocChrt.pdf
We may well hit a point in the future where adjuncts teaching accounting without
doctorates exceeds the number of accounting professors with doctorates. Should
we entitle this a return to the 1950s before the Ford Foundation put millions
into prestigious USA university accountancy doctoral programs? ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
I'm told there's an even bigger supply problem of doctorates in criminology.
although the job market is probably better for undergraduate majors in
accounting.
A first-time author unwittingly exposed the house of cards beneath
“bestseller” books (such as NYT "bestsellers") ---
https://qz.com/1062280/a-first-time-author-unwittingly-exposed-the-house-of-cards-beneath-bestseller-books/
Jensen Comment
Something similar has been taking place for years in academic fraud. For-profit
journal publishers commonly phony up citation counts in a number of devious
ways, including demanding that authors add unneeded citations as a condition to
getting their articles accepted for publication.
Online Colleges in the Georgia System ---
http://www.schools.com/online-colleges/georgia
The University System of Georgia (USG) is one of
the largest in the country, with a total full-time enrollment of more than
320,000 students at 29 campus locations. What's more, the National Center
for Education Statistics (NCES) counts 39 additional public and private
non-profit schools where students can earn a campus-based or online
bachelor's degree in Georgia.
Figuring out which traditional and online colleges
in Georgia might be right for you can be a daunting task. What are the
differences between the main campus of a large university and its satellite
locations? Are you looking for a school that makes it easy for students to
transfer class credits earned in a community college program? Which schools
have the state's top programs for your major? Information like this can be
hard to find, especially if you don't have time to hunt up all the facts you
need.
We gathered data on from the NCES and other U.S.
Department of Education sources on 50+ schools in Georgia and analyzed it
with our 13-point methodology. Schools that stood out in multiple categories
earned the right to be called the best campus-based and online colleges in
Georgia.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on distance higher education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
MOOCs ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
The number of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, offered worldwide
grew by more than 2,000 in the past 2016-17 academic year (most from very
prestigious universities) ---
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Cumulative-Growth-in-Number-of/240707?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=1194edeba9b24ecd8e702fd6dbedb792&elq=196b4a5a57064d3487e7f609e4f5f157&elqaid=15351&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6550
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs (MOOC courses are free by definition although
students wanting transcript credit must pay fees) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
A security flaw in keycard door locks was a nightmare for hotels—but a
dream for the criminal who used it to steal $500,000-worth of goods ---
https://www.wired.com/2017/08/the-hotel-hacker/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=7ea65602e3-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-7ea65602e3-153727301
Question
What is a publisher's formal "Expression of Concern?"
Answer
It appears to be in the gray zone expression of concern between no comment about
criticisms and retraction of a publication.
In some ways it flags attention to the need for more research.
A publisher has issued an expression of concern (EoC) about a study that
claimed children with same-sex parents were at greater risk of depression and
abuse, after posters using statistics from the paper to support a homophobic
message appeared in Australia and the US ---
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/08/25/publisher-flags-paper-sex-parenting-neo-nazi-group-cites/
Lowest Paying Jobs for College Graduates ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15e3341c00ad5fcf
The lucrative business of bail bonds ---
http://www.expressnews.com/business/business_columnists/michael_taylor/article/The-lucrative-business-of-bail-bonds-11956711.php
Jensen Warnings
These are the opinions of one newspaper columnist in San Antonio, Texas,
Don't rely on his opinions without further investigating the financial risks,
especially in other parts of Texas and the USA.
Remember if something sounds too good to be true it probably is too good to
be true.
One of the things to investigate are the databases on suspects who failed to
show up in court. San Antonio is only about three hours from where its pretty
easy to wade across the Rio Grande.
Another thing to investigate is portfolio diversification, collateral, and
competition in this business.
France, Germany, Italy, Spain seek tax on digital giants'
revenues ---
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-tax-digital/france-germany-italy-spain-seek-tax-on-digital-giants-revenues-idUSKCN1BK0HX
Jensen Comment
Revenue tax (read that sales tax) is extremely regressive --- which means poor
people bear a relatively larger proportion of the tax than they do with income
taxes. Between the sales tax and a business income tax there's a business VAT
tax that's also regressive in terms of raising the prices that consumers pay.
How much business taxes stifle economic growth depends a lot on the amount of
the taxes themselves. If sales and VAT taxes vary between states it can lead to
a lot of cheating. Exhibit A is the way residents of Vermont literally flock to
New Hampshire to avoid sales taxes on big ticket items like computers, TVs,
furniture, tires appliances, lumber, cases of liquor, etc. Wal-Mart does not
build stores in Vermont. Rather it builds stores in New Hampshire close to the
borders of Vermont and Massachusetts. Keep in mind that there are no border
checkpoints between USA states or between European nations such that nothing
prevents going to low sales tax states to spend a lot of money.
Free Business School MOOCs
One tip to keep in mind. If you want to take a course for free, select the "Full
Course, No Certificate" or "Audit" option when you enroll. If you would like an
official certificate documenting that you have successfully completed the
course, you will need to pay a fee. Here's the list:
·
Business Foundations - University
of British Columbia
·
Influencing People - University of Michigan
·
Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for
Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator - Yale University
·
Selling Ideas: How to Influence Others, and Get Your
Message to Catch On - University of Pennsylvania/Wharton Business
School
·
Effective Problem Solving and Decision Making - University
of California-Irvine
·
Design Thinking for Innovation - University
of Virginia
·
Project Management: The Basics for Success - University
of California-Irvine
·
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal
& Professional Productivity - University of California-Irvine
·
Becoming an Entrepreneur - MIT
·
Competitive Strategy - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
München (LMU)
·
Financial Markets - Yale University (taught
by Nobel Prize Winning Economist Robert Shiller)
·
Finance for Non-Financial Professionals -
University of California-Irvine
·
Introduction to Corporate Finance -
University of Pennsylvania/Wharton Business School
·
Introduction to Financial Accounting - University
of Pennsylvania/Wharton Business School
·
Introduction to Marketing - University of
Pennsylvania/Wharton Business School
·
Managing the Value of Customer Relationships -
University of Pennsylvania/Wharton Business School
·
Marketing in a Digital World - University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
·
Analytics in Python - Columbia University
·
Introduction to User Experience - University
of Michigan
Data Science Essentials - MIT & Microsoft
Redefine Statistical Significance
David Giles: Econometrics Reading List for September 2017---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2017/09/econometrics-reading-list-for-september.html
A little belatedly, here is my September reading list:
- Benjamin, D. J. et al., 2017. Redefine statistical significance. Pre-print.
- Jiang, B., G. Athanasopoulos, R. J. Hyndman, A. Panagiotelis, and F. Vahid, 2017. Macroeconomic forecasting for Australia using a large number of predictors. Working Paper 2/17, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University.
- Knaeble, D. and S. Dutter, 2017. Reversals of least-square estimates and model-invariant estimations for directions of unique effects. The American Statistician, 71, 97-105.
- Moiseev, N. A., 2017. Forecasting time series of economic processes by model averaging across data frames of various lengths. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 87, 3111-3131.
- Stewart, K. G., 2017. Normalized CES supply systems: Replication of Klump, McAdam and Willman (2007). Journal of Applied Econometrics, in press.
- Tsai, A. C., M. Liou, M. Simak, and P. E. Cheng, 2017. On hyperbolic transformations to normality. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 115, 250-266,
From the Scout Report on September 1, 2017
Bloomz Educational Technology ---
www.bloomz.net
Bloomz is a unified platform for teachers to connect,
coordinate, and communicate with the parents of their students. It can send
class updates to all parents, optionally including photos and videos. It
includes a class calendar, complete with reminders, conference scheduling,
and volunteer and item signups. And it provides real-time communication
features including one-on-one messaging, student timelines, and student
behavior tracking. Bloomz is free for teachers and invitation-only for
parents. It can be accessed on the web or using smartphone apps for Android
or iOS. Parents may also opt to receive notifications from Bloomz via text
message.
Bluefish Science --- bluefish.openoffice.nl
Bluefish is a lightweight yet powerful text editor
written for programmers and web developers. It seeks to fill the niche
between simple text editors (Notepad, Text Edit) and full-fledged integrated
development environments (Eclipse, IntelliJ). Because of its small resource
footprint, Bluefish can simultaneously work across many dozens of files even
on very modest hardware like netbooks. It has integrated support for editing
remote files using a number of protocols (FTP, SFTP, WebDav, and others).
Bluefish includes syntax highlighting and in-line language reference
information for HTML, CSS, Javascript, and many common (and not so common)
programming languages. Additionally, Bluefish allows users to define
'snippets' -- frequently repeated stanzas of text -- and connect them to
keyboard shortcuts. Bluefish is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Found: A star that last dazzled astronomers in 1437 ---
http://www.popsci.com/astronomers-find-star-nova-1437
Solving a 600-Year-Old Cosmic Mystery ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/a-cosmic-whodunit/538482
Casting Light on the Mystery of a Star that Vanished After 14 Days ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/science/nova-stars-korea.html
Proper- motion age dating of the progeny of Nova Scorpii AD 1437 ---
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7669/full/nature23644.html
YouTube: What is a Nova? How Does it Compare to a Supernova? ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZKiWGT4Za4
Digitizing the Harvard Observatory Plate Collection ---
http://tdc-www.harvard.edu/plates/presentations/DigitizingPlates3.pdf
From the Scout Report on September 8, 2017
Hugo Science ---
https://gohugo.io/
It can be difficult to create a website without
sinking into the technological ooze. Even rather spartan sites can involve
large amounts of complex CSS and Javascript. Content Management Systems
(like Drupal, Wordpress, or Joomla) simplify creation of web pages. These
CMSes also provide the ability to generate pages customized to particular
users. But, in turn, they need more expensive hosting along with ongoing
upgrades. Sites that don't need custom page generation of a CMS might
consider Hugo as an alternative. Hugo is a static website generator. A Hugo
user creates pages in a text editor using Markdown, a lightweight markup
language. They also specify a theme, either creating their own or using one
of the hundreds of themes available. When Hugo runs, it creates a set of
HTML, CSS, and Javascript files. These files can be used with any hosting
provider and do not need any special software on the web server to work.
Hugo is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Treesnap ---
https://treesnap.org/
Invasive diseases and pests threaten the health of America’s forests.
Scientists are working to understand what allows some individual trees to
survive, but they need to find healthy, resilient trees in the forest to
study. That’s where concerned foresters, landowners, and citizens (you!) can
help. Tag trees you find in your community, on your property, or out in the
wild using TreeSnap! Scientists will use the data you collect to locate
trees for research projects like studying the genetic diversity of tree
species and building better tree breeding programs.
Pluto: dwarf
planet's surface features given first official names
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/07/pluto-dwarf-planets-surface-features-given-first-official-names
Pluto's pits,
ridges, and famous plain get official names
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/pluto-pits-ridges-plain-get-official-names
Pluto
features given first official names
http://www.seti.org/Pluto-features-given-first-official-names
The Voyage of
New Horizons: Jupiter, Pluto, and Beyond
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/07/the-voyage-of-new-horizons-jupiter-pluto-and-beyond/398408
Report from
the Planetary Frontier: The Latest from New Horizons at Pluto
https://www.astrosociety.org/uncategorized/report-from-the-planetary-frontier-the-latest-from-new-horizons-at-pluto
Reflections on Clyde Tombaugh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crbi2in-PHc
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and
Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
Higher Learning Commission: Collection of Papers Educational Technology ---
http://cop.hlcommission.org/
The New Science Teacher Science ---
http://tnst.randolphcollege.edu/
Science Learning Center at Western Illinois University ---
https://sites.google.com/site/scilearncenter514/home
Association for Psychological Science: Classroom Resources Social studies ---
www.psychologicalscience.org/members/teaching/classroom-resources
Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion: Teaching
Tactics Religion ---
www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/resources/ttr/read-the-journal/teaching-tactics
Library of Congress Magazine Social studies ---
www.loc.gov/lcm
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
The 21 best science movies and shows streaming on Netflix that will make you
smarter ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-science-documentaries-movies-shows-netflix-2017-5
Think Like a Scientist ---
http://tlas.nautil.us/
NASA released a new video of Saturn — and the images are stunning ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-nasa-video-cassini-saturn-stunning-real-images-2017-8
Clear Sky Chart Science (astronomy) ---
www.cleardarksky.com/csk
YouTube: Genome TV Science ---
www.youtube.com/channel/UCUp6Pd9fx8_UX7S38Ih_JqA
Tolkien's Plant Passion Moves Botanist To Create Guide To Middle Earth ---
http://lisnews.org/tolkiens_plant_passion_moves_botanist_to_create_guide_to_middle_earth
Fire Ants Form Giant Rafts to Survive Floods ---
https://theconversation.com/how-do-fire-ants-form-giant-rafts-to-survive-floods-80717
The New Science Teacher Science ---
http://tnst.randolphcollege.edu/
MIT: A radical new natural gas power plant could capture carbon at
nearly no cost.---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608755/potential-carbon-capture-game-changer-nears-completion/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=5d3fd3be8d-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-5d3fd3be8d-153727301
Scientists have been using quantum theory for almost
a century now, but embarrassingly they still don’t know what it means. An
informal poll taken at a 2011 conference on Quantum Physics and the Nature of
Reality showed that there’s still no consensus on what quantum theory says about
reality—the participants remained deeply divided about how the theory should be
interpreted. Some physicists just shrug and say we have to live with the fact
that quantum mechanics is weird. So particles can be in two places at once, or
communicate instantaneously over vast distances.
Physicists Want to Rebuild Quantum Theory From Scratch
https://www.wired.com/story/physicists-want-to-rebuild-quantum-theory-from-scratch/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities Science ---
http://hekint.org/
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
PEW Research Center: State of the News Media ---
www.pewresearch.org/topics/state-of-the-news-media
Association for Psychological Science: Classroom Resources Social studies ---
www.psychologicalscience.org/members/teaching/classroom-resources
PsyArt Journal Social studies (psychology of the arts) ---
www.psyartjournal.com
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
Scroll down to Law
Math Tutorials
Estimation 180 Mathematics Tutorials ---
www.estimation180.com
Nassim Talem: The Logic of Risk Taking ---
https://medium.com/incerto/the-logic-of-risk-taking-107bf41029d3
Betting on Black Swans
From
The Golden State Warriors are really, really good — like, have flirted with
perfection good. As such, the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas has them at
1-1,000 odds to make the NBA playoffs, meaning you would have to bet $100,000 to
win $100 from the bookie ---
http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/20498594/las-vegas-sportsbook-offers-1-1000-odds-golden-state-warriors-making-playoffs
Jensen Comment
It seems that somebody laying down $100 is really betting on a black swan event.
With the myriad of black swans that that can keep the Warriors out of the
playoffs it would seem that the odds would not be this long amidst the black
swans ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Mathematics and Statistics
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
History Tutorials
Gauguin’s Stirring First-Hand Account of What Actually Happened the Night
Van Gogh Cut off His Own Ear ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/08/23/gauguin-van-gogh-ear/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=c9a992db9d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-c9a992db9d-234390133&mc_cid=c9a992db9d&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Erstwhile: A History Blog Social studies ---
https://erstwhileblog.com/
Wisconsin 101: Our History in Objects Social studies ---
www.wi101.org
Teaching History with 100 Objects ---
http://www.teachinghistory100.org
Home Subjects Arts (art history in England) ---
www.homesubjects.org
An Animated Introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein & His Philosophical Insights
on the Problems of Human Communication ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/an-animated-introduction-to-ludwig-wittgenstein-his-philosophical-look-at-the-problems-of-human-communication.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Society for U.S. Intellectual History ---
https://s-usih.org/
Science Friday: The Scientific Tale of Author Beatrix Potter ---
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-scientific-tale-of-author-beatrix-potter/
New York Times Lens Blog ---
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/
1,000-Year-Old Illustrated Guide to the Medicinal Use of Plants Now Digitized
& Put Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/1000-year-old-illustrated-guide-to-the-medicinal-use-of-plants-now-digitized-put-online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
YouTube: Computer Chronicles Science (videos on the early days of computing)
---
www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT
WyoHistory.org Social studies (Wyoming) ---
www.wyohistory.org
Yale University Libraries: Free Web Resources on Religion ---
http://guides.library.yale.edu/c.php?g=295851&p=1972637
First World War Poetry Archive Social studies ---
www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
Grandma's Project (recipies) ---
http://grandmasproject.org/
Claude McKay's Early Poetry
(1911-1922): A Digital Collection
|
Language Arts |
|
From Dada to Surrealism: Jewish Avant Garde Artists From Romania, 1910-1938 ---
www.europeana.eu/portal/en/exhibitions/from-dada-to-surrealism
New York Public Library Recommendations ---
www.nypl.org/collections/nypl-recommendations/lists
Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities Science ---
http://hekint.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to History
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
A Colorful Map Visualizes the Lexical Distances Between Europe’s Languages:
54 Languages Spoken by 670 Million People ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/a-colorful-map-visualizes-the-lexical-distances-between-europes-languages.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
How to Listen to Music: A Free Course from Yale University ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/how-to-listen-to-music-a-free-course-from-yale-university.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Do celebrity hero's ever stand the test of time?
The Toscanini Wars ---
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/the-toscanini-wars
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
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/
Shots: NPR Health News ---
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
August 29, 2017
August 30, 2017
August 31, 2017
September 2, 2017
September 5, 2017
September 6, 2017
September 7, 2017
September 8, 2017
September 9, 2017
September 12,2017
September 14, 2017
Drug Research ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_development
How to Mislead With Statistics
Freakonomics: Bad Medicine, Part 2: (Drug) Trials and Tribulations ---
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-2-drug-trials-tribulations-rebroadcast/
How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs
make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on
“dream patients” who aren’t representative of a larger population. On the
other hand, sometimes the only thing worse than being excluded from a drug
trial is being included. Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for
your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the
episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits
for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.
Jensen Comment
As Jagdish Gangolly pointed out to me Big Pharma does not conduct its own drug
and medical device testing trials in the USA. These are mostly conducted by
medical schools and independent research labs. Hence many flaws in clinical
testing can be traced back to either faulty medical school research or medical
schools that did not act independently regarding inadequate funding or failure
to be completely independent of restrictions placed by Big Pharma on those test.
Approval of new medicines is the responsibility of
government.
Faulty drug and medical device tests are common in other nations. Exhibit A
is Thalidomide that led to many deformed babies in Germany rather than the USA.
Of course the most unethical testing is done in poor nations where Big Pharma is
known to sometimes conduct tests to either save money or submit patients to
dangers not permitted in the USA and/'or some states within the USA. Hollywood
frequently makes villains out of big pharmaceutical companies. Some stories are
based on fact, others are pure fiction.
The classical ethical dilemma is that of sacrificing a few to save many. The
classic ethics paradox is called the Trolley Problem ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
At the suggestion of Dan Stone, I'm now reading
Why They Did It: Inside the Mind of the White Collar Criminal
by Harvard's Eugene Soltes, 2016
On Page 16 Professor Soltes refers to the Trolley Problem on Page 16. There'
not much controversy about diverting the wayward trolley to sacrifice one person
to save five persons.
With little hesitation, the vast majority of people
--- almost 90% in one large survey --- say ""yes.," they would flip the
switch. To most, saving five people, and the expense of killing one, seems
quite sensible.
But consider your judgment in another scenario.
Suppose you're the surgeon and five patients are acutely in need on one
organ each. Tow patients need a lung, two need a kidney, and one requires a
heart. Allfive will die today if they do not get these organs, but there's
little chance that matching donor organs can be found int time.
Coincidentally, your nurse calls to say that another patient has arrived at
your clinic for his routine annual checkup. The nurse's preliminary
examination shows that he's a perfect donor. (I
think you see how the scenario proceeds with almost zero percent of people
surveyed willing to make such a sacrifice.)
Helen Mirren stars in similar film entitled "Eye in the Sky: where the top
general must make a decision of whether to sacrifice an innocent child with a
bomb that will also destroy terrorists about to kill nearly 100 innocent people
in a Kenyan shopping mall ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film)
. . .
Seeking authorisation to execute
the strike, Powell orders her risk-assessment officer to find parameters
that will let him quote a lower 45% risk of civilian deaths. He re-evaluates
the strike point and assesses the probability of Alia's death at 45–65%. She
makes him confirm only the lower figure, and then reports this up the chain
of command. The strike is authorised, and Watts fires a missile. The
building is destroyed, with Alia injured but unconscious. However, Danford
also survived. Watts is ordered to fire a second missile, which strikes the
site just as Alia's parents reach her. Her parents suffer some injuries and
rush Alia to a hospital, where she dies.
In the London situation room, the
under-secretary tearfully berates Benson for killing from the safety of his
chair. Benson counters that she watched while having coffee and biscuits,
while he has been on the ground at five suicide bombings and adds: "Never
tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war."
The end credits begin rolling back
to the beginning of the movie, with Alia shown twirling her hula hoop.
1,000-Year-Old Illustrated Guide to the Medicinal Use of Plants Now Digitized
& Put Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/1000-year-old-illustrated-guide-to-the-medicinal-use-of-plants-now-digitized-put-online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Humor for September 2017
Watch Steve Martin Make His First TV Appearance: The Smothers Brothers Comedy
Hour (1968) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/watch-steve-martin-make-his-first-tv-appearance-on-the-smothers-brothers-comedy-hour-1968.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
10 Funniest Tweets About Texas A&M Blowing a 34-Point Lead to UCLA ---
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/10-funniest-tweets-about-texas-aandm-blowing-a-34-point-lead-to-ucla/ar-AAreOVa?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
The 100 Funniest Films of All Time, According to 253 Film Critics from 52
Countries ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/the-100-funniest-films-of-all-time-according-to-253-film-critics-from-52-countries.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
An old geezer became very bored in retirement
and decided to open a medical clinic. He put a sign up outside that said: "Dr.Geezer's
clinic. Get your treatment for $500, if not cured, get back $1,000."
Doctor "Young," who was positive that this old
geezer didn't know beans about medicine, thought this would be a great
opportunity to get $1,000. So he went to Dr.Geezer's clinic.
Dr. Young: "Dr.Geezer, I have lost all taste in
my mouth. Can you please help me?" Dr. Geezer: "Nurse, please bring medicine
from box 22 and put 3 drops in Dr. Young's mouth."
Dr. Young: Aaagh! -- "This is Gasoline!" Dr.
Geezer: "Congratulations! You've got your taste back.That will be $500."
Dr. Young gets annoyed and goes back after a
couple of days figuring to recover his money. Dr. Young: "I have lost my
memory, I cannot remember anything." Dr. Geezer: "Nurse, please bring
medicine from box 22 and put 3 drops in the patient's mouth." Dr. Young:
"Oh, no you don't, -- that is Gasoline!" Dr. Geezer: "Congratulations!
You've got your memory back.
That will be $500."
Dr. Young (after having lost $1000) leaves
angrily and comes back after several more days.
Dr. Young: "My eyesight has become weak --- I
can hardly see anything!"
Dr. Geezer: "Well, I don't have any medicine
for that so, " Here's your $1000 back." (giving him a $10 bill)
Dr. Young: "But this is only $10!"
Dr. Geezer: "Congratulations! You got your
vision back! That will be $500." Moral of story -- Just because you're
"Young" doesn't mean that you can outsmart an "old Geezer"
Remember: Don't make old people mad. We don't
like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.
Humor August 2017---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0817.htm
Humor July 2017---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0717.htm
Humor June 2017---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0617.htm
Humor May 2017---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0517.htm
Humor April 2017---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0417.htm
Humor March 2017---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0317.htm
Humor February
2017 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0217.htm
Humor January
2017 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0117.htm
Humor December 2016 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q4.htm#Humor1216.htm
Humor November 2016 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q4.htm#Humor1116.htm
Humor October 2016 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q4.htm#Humor1016.htm
Humor September 2016 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q3.htm#Humor0916.htm
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
Tidbits Archives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu