Tidbits on January 17, 2018
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Historic Photographs (Set 03)
of the Sunset Hill House Resort Shared by Gunsmith Ron Resden from Vermont
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Resden/03ResdenSSH.htm
Tidbits on January 17, 2018
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
***Year-End Closing Out of Bob Jensen's Three Long-Time Blogs
Current and past editions of my blog called Tidbits --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my accounting education, research, and teaching cases blog called New Bookmarks --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my blog called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Threads.htm
Bob Jensen's World Library --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
C-Span October 29,
2017
Q&A with Allison Stanger
https://www.c-span.org/video/?435406-2/qa-allison-stanger
Allison Stanger, professor of international
politics and economics at Middlebury College in Vermont, talks about students'
reaction to the appearance of author Charles Murray on Campus last March. Both
were attacked by students following the event.
Jensen Comment
Until I watched this interview I was not aware of the severity of Professor
Stranger's concussion in the Middlebury physical attack on her by activists.
I recently watched a rerun of this module and very impressed by Professor
Stranger. It's a module that must be watched until the very end.
What's ironic is that Charles Murry was going to speak on his new book, a book
that is in line with the views of activists that attacked him. He was attacked
on the Middlebury campus for the wrong reasons by activists blinded by hate.
After months of recovery this was the first interview by Professor Stranger. I'm
immensely impressed by how articulate she is in answered questions off the cuff.
The Towering Robot That Roams Walmart ---
https://www.wired.com/story/please-do-not-assault-the-towering-robot-that-roams-walmart/
The Crime Fighting Robot That's Stirring Up Controversy ---
https://www.wired.com/story/please-do-not-assault-the-towering-robot-that-roams-walmart/
YouTube: SciCafe --- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrfcruGtplwG0Dj6cSfmH7RVnIP7CDirG
I'm photographing my life and what surrounds me.
The Atlantic: The Quiet Exuberance of Winter ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/549518/winters-watch/
Watch the History of the World Unfold on an Animated Map: From 200,000 BCE to
Today Posted: 11 Jan 2018 01:00 AM PST ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/watch-the-history-of-the-world-unfold-on-an-animated-map-from-200000-bce-to-today.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
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 Russian Dancers Appear to Float Magically Across the
Stage: A Mesmerizing Introduction to The Berezka Ensemble ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/watch-russian-dancers-appear-to-float-magically-across-the-stage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Crying - Glen Campbell (Roy Orbison)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHmScxQopRI
BEAUTIFUL RENDITION OF AULD LANG SYNE:
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Rtajxo8d7js?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0
Watch Prince Play Jazz Piano & Coach His Band Through George Gershwin’s
“Summertime” in a Candid, Behind-the-Scenes Moment (1990) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/watch-prince-play-jazz-piano-coach-his-band-through-george-gershwins-summertime.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
A Majestic 44-Hour Chronological Playlist of Rolling Stones
Songs: Stream 613 Tracks ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/a-majestic-44-hour-chronological-playlist-of-rolling-stones-songs-stream-613-tracks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
St. Olaf College: Archived Concerts and Recitals --- www.stolaf.edu/multimedia/streams/archive.cfm?category=concerts
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
30 Terrifying Photos Before and After Climate Change ---
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/nasa-before-and-after-images-of-climate-change-12303761.php?ipid=hpctp#photo-12163127
Drone Photography of 2017 ---
https://qz.com/1168549/drone-photography-diehards-picked-their-favorite-shots-of-2017/
Also see
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/19-award-winning-photos-taken-by-drones/
MIT's Best Photographs of 2017 ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609638/our-best-photographs-of-2017/
The Atlantic: 2017 Seen Through the Lens of Mario Tama---
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/12/2017-seen-through-the-lens-of-mario-tama/549266/
The Devil's Tale: Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare
Book & Manuscript Library (includes historic photographs) ---
https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/
19-Year-Old Student Uses Early Spy Camera to Take Candid Street
Photos (Circa 1895) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/19-year-old-student-uses-early-spy-camera-to-take-candid-street-photos-circa-1895.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/the-film-posters-of-the-russian-avant-garde.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
These photos show how Southern California has been devastated by
mudslides that killed at least 13 people ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-montecito-california-mudslides-aftermath-2018-1
The Oldest Hotel in Every State ---
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/tripideas/the-oldest-hotel-in-every-state/ss-AAsuE93?ocid=spartandhp
Seattle Art Museum: Collection Highlights --- http://art.seattleartmuseum.org/collections
NASA's $1 billion Jupiter probe has
taken mind-bending new photos of the gas giant ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-jupiter-pictures-nasa-juno-perijove-orbit-ten-2017-11
Best Sports Photos of 2017 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-sports-photos-2017-2017-12
Photos show the East Coast frozen over as temperatures drop
in the wake of the 'bomb cyclone' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-photos-show-east-coast-bomb-cyclone-dangerous-wind-2018-1
The 50 most incredible photos of 2017 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-incredible-photos-of-2017-2017-12
1,600 Rare Color Photographs Depict Life in the U.S During the
Great Depression & World War II ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/1600-rare-color-photographs-depict-life-in-the-u-s-during-the-great-depression-world-war-ii.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
B-24 Liberator That Helped Bring Down the Nazis --
http://www.businessinsider.com/anniversary-of-b-24-liberator-bomber-first-flight-during-world-war-ii-2017-12/#by-the-beginning-of-1941-other-manufacturers-had-joined-the-effort-to-build-b-24s-the-ford-motor-company-made-the-audacious-promise-to-build-one-bomber-every-hour-a-claim-that-drew-derision-from-the-aircraft-industry-which-doubted-an-automobile-company-was-capable-of-such-a-feat-1
Niagara Falls in Ice ---
http://time.com/5084294/niagara-falls-frozen-2018/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018010312pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Russia gained a 'treasure trove' of intelligence on the US's
best fighter jets in Syria ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-treasure-trove-intelligence-us-fighter-jets-f-22-2018-1
Photos show the East Coast frozen over as temperatures drop in
the wake of the 'bomb cyclone' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-photos-show-east-coast-bomb-cyclone-dangerous-wind-2018-1
Haunting photographs of farm animals reveal more than initially
meets the eye ---
https://aeon.co/videos/haunting-photographs-of-farm-animals-reveal-more-than-initially-meets-the-eye?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d1dd4e3a47-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d1dd4e3a47-68951505
The Cinderella Bibliography (fairy tale images and history) --- http://d.lib.rochester.edu/cinderella
Bob Jensen's threads on art history ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#ArtHistory
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on libraries --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries
A Winter Walk with Thoreau: The Transcendentalist
Way of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold Season ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/01/05/thoreau-excusrsions-a-winter-walk/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=f0379ebb83-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-f0379ebb83-234390133&mc_cid=f0379ebb83&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
The String of Pearls (historical mystery featuring Sweeny Todd) --- www.salisburysquare.com/TSOP
500 Free Audiobooks for Teachers and Students ---
https://www.edarabia.com/free-audiobooks-teachers-students/
Overdue Podcast (literature reviews) --- http://overduepodcast.com/
What Pigeons Teach Us About Love ---
http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/what-pigeons-teach-us-about-love-rp
Jensen Comment
When I was a lad about five years old I had an old BB gun that was so low
powered the BBs just bounced off the feathers of a pigeon.
One large old bird would sit on the eve of my grandparents' house to divert my
shots away from its mate on a nest.
Without knowing it at the time I was witnessing what love is about.
The Favorite Literary Work of Every Country Visualized on a World Map ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/the-favorite-literary-work-of-every-country-visualized-on-a-world-map.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Atlantic: Yrsa Daley-Ward’s Powerful, Poetic Distillations ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/yrsa-daley-wards-powerful-poetic-distillations/549353/
Today is the first day Of the rest of it.
Of course there will be other
First days
But none exactly like this.Jensen's added line
Most will be be warmer
Bashing Thoreau Has Become Commonplace ---
https://newrepublic.com/article/123162/everybody-hates-henry-david-thoreau?elqTrackId=851fdbbc1d204037af3129e135eaf50f&elq=44486fc7b89742bdb32ac0cfffd323be&elqaid=17441&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7632
Garrison Keillor about Thoreau
A sorehead and loner whose clunky line about marching to your own drummer has
found its way into a million graduation speeches. Thoreau tried to make a virtue
out of lack of rhythm. He said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation. Okay, but how did he know? He didn’t talk to that many people. He
wrote elegantly about independence and forgot to thank his mom for doing his
laundry.
https://newrepublic.com/article/123162/everybody-hates-henry-david-thoreau?elqTrackId=851fdbbc1d204037af3129e135eaf50f&elq=44486fc7b89742bdb32ac0cfffd323be&elqaid=17441&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7632
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 January 17, 2018
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2018/TidbitsQuotations011718.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
Kiplinger's Names Trinity a 2018 Best Value ---
https://new.trinity.edu/news/kiplingers-names-trinity-2018-best-value?utm_source=Our+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=e9d8e76f52-Tower_News_January_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_00cfaca66d-e9d8e76f52-160446777
For 25 consequetive years US News ranked Trinity as Number 1 in the "Best
in the West" category ---
https://new.trinity.edu/news/kiplingers-names-trinity-2018-best-value?utm_source=Our+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=e9d8e76f52-Tower_News_January_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_00cfaca66d-e9d8e76f52-160446777
Other good news rankings of Trinity University ---
https://new.trinity.edu/about-trinity/rankings-and-value
Time Magazine: The Best Laptops at CES 2018 ---
http://time.com/5102127/best-laptops-ces-2018-dell-lenovo/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011511am&xid=newsletter-brief
Time Magazine Seven Things You Might be Buying From Amazon in 2028 ---
http://time.com/money/5085981/7-things-amazon-will-be-selling-you-by-2028/
VR Vacations
A New World of Prescription Drugs
A much "Smarter" Smart TV
Next Generation of Bitcoin
Wearable Technology You Actually Want to Wear
Synthethetic Humans To Do (almost) Everything For You
What is left out of this list?
Amazon's Possible New Rental Services
Amazon's New Home Services (e.g., lawyers, CPAs, doctors, computer technicians, home schooling tutors, physical therapists, home nurse visits, pedicures, haircuts, etc.)
Marijuana
Purchased and Leased Electric Cars and Trucks
What can you think of for Amazon?
Why Are African American Students Still Not Majoring in Accounting?
----
https://www.cpajournal.com/2018/01/08/african-american-students-still-not-majoring-accounting/
Udemy --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udemy
Udemy.com is an online learning platform. It is aimed at professional adults.[2] Unlike academic MOOC programs driven by traditional collegiate coursework, Udemy provides a platform for experts of any kind to create courses which can be offered to the public, either at no charge or for a tuition fee.[3] Udemy provides tools which enable users to create a course, promote it and earn money from student tuition charges.
No Udemy courses are currently credentialed for college credit; students take courses largely as a means of improving job-related skills.[3] Some courses generate credit toward technical certification. Udemy has made a special effort to attract corporate trainers seeking to create coursework for employees of their company.[4] For example, PayPal has used the service to train its employees to write Node.js code.[5]
You can enroll in over 55,000 online classes for $10.99 each during
Udemy's New Year's sale (sale ends on January 11, 2018) ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/udemy-new-years-sale-2018
Udemy --- https://www.udemy.com/
For example, in the "What do you want to learn" box type in accounting.
Don't confuse Udemy with Coursera that serves on a higher plane in MOOC-for-credit
education
Coursera ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coursera
170+ Courses Starting at Stanford Continuing Studies This Week: Explore
the Catalogue of Campus and Online Courses ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/170-courses-starting-at-stanford-continuing-studies-next-week.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Form a Chronicle of Higher Education Newsletter on January 16, 2018
From The Chronicle's Mitch Gerber:
Among the unsolicited brochures that cascade through the mail slot at home, the one offering “80% OFF” any of dozens of “Great Courses” from the Teaching Company, of Chantilly, Va., caught my eye. This month you can order a video download of lectures on “Understanding the Universe,” by the astronomer Alex Filippenko, of the University of California at Berkeley, for $94.95 rather than $679.95. Or “The Secrets of Mental Math,” by Arthur T. Benjamin, of Harvey Mudd College, for $17.95.
“We have identified the top 1% of professors,” the company boasts. “Only the top 1 in 5,000 college professors is chosen to be on The Great Courses faculty.” (Actually, that's the top .02 percent, but this is why there are math courses.) The chosen few then become “The World’s Greatest Professors at Your Fingertips.” Potential students can only hope that those top scholars are not miffed at being discounted by 80 percent.
Retraction Watch's Weekend reads: Why following up on fraud matters; how
many retractions in 2017?; misleading abstracts ---
http://retractionwatch.com/2018/01/06/weekend-reads-following-fraud-matters-many-retractions-2017-misleading-abstracts/
26 Books That Are Being Made Into Movies and TV Shows in 2018 ---
http://time.com/5069010/books-being-made-into-movies-tv-2018/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011314pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Bloomberg: The Economic Arctic
---
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-arctic/the-economic-arctic/
Ford Goes "All In" on Electric Cars With an $11 Billion
Investment ---
http://www.industryweek.com/leadership/ford-goes-all-electric-cars-11-billion-investment?NL=IW-07&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG03000001867917&utm_campaign=24346&utm_medium=email&elq2=8ca115fead264f71802d2033bce237bc
Jensen Comment
I recommend the name Model E Ford --- he, he
CFOs Share Their Favorite Books of 2017 ---
https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2017/12/27/cfos-share-their-favorite-books-of-2017/
The Killing Zone by Paul A. Craig
Mindset by Carol S. Dweck
Principles by Ray Dalio
Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella
Originals by Adam Grant
The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
The Self-Made Billionaire Effect by John Sviokla and Mitch Cohen
Unequaled by James A. Runde
The Captain Class by Sam Walker
CFOs share some of their favorite gadgets and apps ---
https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2017/12/28/cfos-share-their-favorite-tech-of-2017/
Waze App
Audible
ESPN App
Garmin Watch
Apple Watch
Dashlane App
Apple Ipod
Camera App
MIT: Tech Blunders of 2017 ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609626/the-biggest-technology-failures-of-2017/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2018-01-03&utm_campaign=the_download
Ukraine: Chernobyl's Transformation Into a Massive Solar Plant Is
Almost Complete ---
https://sciencealert.com/chernobyl-massive-solar-plant-almost-complete
Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out of Water ---
http://time.com/5103259/cape-town-water-crisis/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011612pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Jensen Question
As an auditor finalizing a Cape Town company's annual report how would you
disclose this contingency that possibly will affect nearly all ledger accounts?
10 Great Health and Science Books from 2017 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/10-great-health-and-science-books-from-2017-2017-12
The Most Read Wired Science Books in 2017 ---
https://www.wired.com/story/most-read-wired-science-stories-2017/
Reason's Most Engaging Stories for 2017 ---
http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/29/reasons-most-engaging-stories-of-2017-no
American Library Association: Ten Stories That Shaped 2017 ---
http://lisnews.org/ten_stories_that_shaped_2017
The Atlantic: The Best 50 Podcasts of 2017 ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-50-best-podcasts-of-2017/548165/
The Atlantic: 74 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2017 ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/the-science-facts-that-blew-our-minds-in-2017/549122/
Amazon: The Handmaid's Tale was the most read novel in 2017 ---
http://time.com/5059023/most-read-books-2017-amazon/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2017123014pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Library Science: 10 Stories That Shaped 2017 News ---
http://lisnews.org/ten_stories_that_shaped_2017
10 awesome and weird iPhone accessories you probably need ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/awesome-weird-iphone-accessories-2016-6
Liberal News Outlet Vox:
Saturday Night Live was the emptiest show of
2017
The venerable sketch comedy series has nothing of consequence to say about the
Trump era
https://www.vox.com/2017-in-review/2017/12/26/16807776/saturday-night-live-trump-empty-alec-baldwin
Some Surprises in the 2017 Equity Markets
http://www.businessinsider.com/2017-performance-of-stocks-currencies-commodities-cryptocurrencies-2017-12/#dont-miss-8
Jensen Comment
Tech's Biggest Winners and Losers in 2017 ---
https://qz.com/1163738/the-biggest-winners-and-losers-of-tech-in-2017/
Andrew Cuomo is waging an all-out assault on the GOP tax law to save New
York's higher income and very wealthy residents ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/prepaying-property-tax-in-new-york-andrew-cuomo-fights-trump-tax-law-2017-12
Is this a wonderful or terrible idea caused by the $10,000
income and property tax deduction limit in the Federal tax reform legislation?
Liberal economist Dean Baker advocates repeal state income taxes, replacing them
with payroll taxes ---
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/28/16818680/state-local-tax-deduction-income-payroll-trump-tax-reform-republican
Jensen Comment
It seems to me that states would still have to tax some types of income or let
wealthier people with lots of passive income off the hook for taxes.
Some states without income taxes (think New Hampshire) tax interest and
dividends partly but exclude interest and dividends factored into pension
incomes. Also the NH interest and dividends tax is relatively low rate with up
to a $5,000 exclusion. Also capital gains are not taxed for business income
accruals not declared as dividends. All told the NH interest and dividends tax
is more of a nuisance than a serious tax like a state income tax.
Dean Baker does propose a new state taxes on dividends and interest, but these will still be victims of the $10,000 deductibility cap on Federal 1040 returns.
One thing is likely. States, especially our liberal blue states, will probably come up with new and very complicated state taxation codes that will keep tax accountants up nights.
We can expect demand for accounting degrees to soar because of all the new jobs created in the public and private sectors within our states.
Add to this the possibility (quite likely actually) that the Democratic Party will soon take control of both the USA House of Representatives and the USA Senate along with the White House such that most or all Trump tax Reforms of 2018 will be repealed. Think of all the cost and confusion of rewriting tax codes in some of our 50 states that will have become wasted efforts in a very short period of time!
Japanese astronaut apologizes for spreading 'fake
news' after claiming to have grown 3.5 inches while in space ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/japanese-astronaut-apologizes-fake-news-of-height-growth-in-space-2018-1
Stunning bright light turned night to day over vast
swathe of Russia ---
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/stunning-bright-light-turned-night-to-day-over-vast-swathe-of-russia/
I don't know whether this is humor or not, but in Hollywood it would probably
be considered humor as long as it was not sabotage
Someone Left a Hatch Open and Crippled (for 10+ months)
India’s $2.9 Billion Submarine ---
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a14783891/someone-left-a-hatch-open-and-crippled-indias-dollar29-billion-submarine/
It might be funnier if it was an Italian sub.
Remember the joke of why the Second Italian Navy uses glass bottom boats --- to
search for the First Italian Navy
Poll: 33% of NFL fans 'purposely stopped
watching' this season (but many for reasons other than Anthem protests)---
Yahoo
https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/news/poll-33-nfl-fans-purposely-stopped-watching-season-split-trump-kaepernick-110215783.html
Jensen Comment
I don't know how to define "stopped watching." There are so many games on
television each week and so few viewers who watch entire games weekly before
2017. This study purportedly defined "stop watching" in terms of intentional
boycotting for one reason or another.
Sports Illustrated: All Four NFL Playoff
Games See Double-Digit Ratings Decrease ---
https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2018/01/08/nfl-playoff-ratings-see-big-declines
An AI-powered app to teach Chinese students English (with personalized
courses) boasts a whopping 50 million users ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/liulishuos-english-teacher-is-powered-by-artificial-intelligence.html?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2018_01_09&utm_campaign=the_algorithm
Jensen Comment
This is almost twice as many students as the number enrolled in all secondary
schools in the USA. This means about twice as many students are studying
English from this AI-powered app in China as are studying English by any means
in USA secondary schools.
Distance Education: University of Maryland University College
reports record 2017 U.S. enrollments, despite a challenging climate for online
providers ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/08/has-umuc-turned-enrollment-woes-around?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3bcc4f9c28-DNU20180108&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3bcc4f9c28-197565045&mc_cid=3bcc4f9c28&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Bob Jensen's threads on fee-based distance education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free MOOC distance education (certificates and
transcript credits cost extra) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
'Dancing
Backwards In High Heels': Study Finds
Students Set Higher
Standards For Female Profs
---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/01/dancing-backwards-in-high-heels-study-finds-students-set-higher-standards-for-female-profs.html
Bob Jensen's threads on women in the
professions ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Women
New study of economics professors' research effort
and impact says they're not exactly "swinging for the fences" after getting
tenure ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/20/new-study-economics-professors-says-their-research-declines-quality-quantity-years
Jensen Comment
Possible arguments for and against "swinging for the fences" complicates the
analysis of this data. In some ways it's easier to do research as a tenured
professor in a R1 research university because working with doctoral students
increases the odds for tenured professors to become co-authors of publications
following completion of dissertations that those professors helped inspire.
Reasons against "swinging for the fences" include possible burn out in the Hell
years leading up to tenure followed by life-changing events such as divorce,
family turmoil such as having troubled teenagers, and changed responsibilities
on the job, e.g., taking on more administrative duties relative to teaching and
research. One has to wonder whether many tenured professors track into
administrative responsibilities to ease the stress of doing research and doing
battle with journal referees.
In science tenured professors may just grow weary of constantly writing grant proposals.
Changing jobs such as moving to another university can also take its toll on a researcher and her/his family. I know I should've written "their" family.
And for some just getting older can bring on health issues that detract from productivity.
And for some getting tenure timed with temptations of outside money (consulting, textbook writing, starting an organic farm, or whatever) interfered with subsequent research efforts.
Sadly, every college and university has some lifetime associate professors who got tenure but never accomplished enough subsequent research to get promoted to a full professor ranking.
Meltdown --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability)
Spectre --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability)
Newly discovered microprocessor security flaws affect most computers
Two major security flaws, Meltdown and Spectre, have been found in
microprocessors that run most computers. Meltdown affects Intel processors and
can be patched, but processors might have to be redesigned to address Spectre.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html?WT.mc_id=SmartBriefs-Newsletter&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=smartbriefsnl
How Will Meltdown and Spectre Security Flaws Affect My PC ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/338269/a-huge-intel-security-hole-could-slow-down-your-pc-soon/
Microsoft: Patches might significantly slow some PCs ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/microsoft-says-meltdown-and-spectre-fixes-will-slow-some-pcs-down-significantly.html
Jensen Comment
Is it time to finally say goodbye to your online Windows 7 operating system?
Mac and Linux users are not immune from Meltdown and Spectre.
Homeschooling --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
Homeschooling: Requirements, Research, and Who Does It ---
https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/home-schooling/index.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1-rm&M=58339958&U=2290378
How to mislead with statistics
A new NBER paper finds an increase in male mortality immediately after
retiring at age 62 ---
http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2018/01/02/early-retirement-aligns-with-early-death-study-fin?&slreturn=1515496097
Thanks to Glen Gray for the heads up.
Jensen Comment
Although the report is pretty good about noting the limitations of its findings
it's important to note that electing to start Social Security at age 62 is not a
random event. People in their early 60s do not flip coins to decide whether or
not to take early SS payments at age 62. Many have medical issues, some
life threatening, that increase the odds of choosing early payments. Also most
individuals have some knowledge of their own life expectancy. Firstly, they know
their prior medical history such as already having had cancer or two heart
attacks. Secondly, they know something about their genetic history such as
having ancestors that live to ripe old ages.
For many taking early retirement does not mean quitting work. Some change jobs, but others stay of the same job. Note that benefits may be reduced by starting SS payments at age 62.
My main point here is that this is an illustration of where statistical findings should probably not have a major impact on individual choices because the statistical findings are misleading for particular instances --- like the particular instance of your SS timing decision.
At what age should you start your
Social Security benefits?
https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/when-should-you-take-social-security?cmp=em-QYC
Jensen Comment
For those contemplating starting up Social Security benefits before age 65, keep
in mind that Medicare is not available until age 65 except for people who
qualify for Medicare under approved disability benefits. Note that it's possible
to start SS benefits under disability at most any age. Those benefits may or may
not carry Medicare benefits. My wife got SS disability benefits and Medicare
benefits well before she was 60 years of age (she's had 17 spine surgeries). One
of our daughters got SS disability benefits without Medicare benefits when she
was much younger. Her husband, however, had family medical insurance through his
university faculty employer.
If you are legitimately disabled you should probably apply for SS disability payments whenever you are unable to work and your other disability coverage is about to expire. It's best, in my opinion, to talk to specialized lawyers who will carry the ball on your SS disability. application. Getting approval may take years.
How to Manage Your Finances When One Spouse Retires – and the Other
Doesn’t ---
http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2017-04-28/how-to-manage-your-finances-when-one-spouse-retires-and-the-other-doesnt
A Yale Psychiatrist Evaluates the Mental Health of Trump — and the Nation
by Paul Baskin
Chronicle of Higher Education
January 4, 2018
https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Yale-Psychiatrist-Evaluates/242157?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=1eee1d9770344f5099647003ee9c9ca5&elq=87dcdc3a299a4a73a7fdbc0c152548d8&elqaid=17313&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7543
. . .
Q. Given that you see policies such as the recently enacted tax bill, and the accompanying undermining of the nation’s health-insurance protections, as directly linked to income inequality and greater societal violence, why aren’t more of your professional colleagues (psychiatirsts) getting more involved in helping to shape public policy?
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Is everyone favoring the "recently enacted tax bill" or not favoring Obamacare
mentally ill?
This is the worst articles I've ever read in the Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle is now so paranoid that it will only allow readers to comment on
articles about motherhood and apple pie.
Spurious Correlation --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_relationship
Confounding Variables --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding
How to Mislead With Statistics: Spurious Correlations Have Varying
Degrees of Implications
Booze May Help or Harm the Heart, but Money Counts (at least in Norway)
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/news/20180102/booze-may-help-or-harm-the-heart-but-money_counts
How to Mislead With Testamonials
104-Year-Old Woman Says Lots of Diet Coke Is the Key to a Long Life
---
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/healthtrending/104-year-old-woman-says-lots-of-diet-coke-is-the-key-to-a-long-life/ar-BBHTE0f?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Jensen Comment
Confounding variables in spurious correlations have varying degrees of
ambiguity. For example, Yates' discovery of correlation of Danish birthrates
with the number of stork nests in Denmark probably has some confounding factors,
but the confounding relationships are quite ambiguous. On the other hand,
correlations of ice cream sales and swimming pool drowning deaths are more
directly related to increased number of people (especially young children)
swimming on hotter days.
The relationships in Norway between alcohol consumption and heart attacks and wealth, according to the article, are less ambiguous since wealthy Norwegians probably have more heart-healthy diets and life styles. However, there could be other intervening factors such as gender (wealthy women living longer due to chromosomes) or stress (being poor with two or more jobs might be more stressful). And even in nations with national health insurance, wealthy people generally are more apt to have the best physicians. A close physicist friend of ours says this is most certainly the case in Germany.
The problem attributing life's longevity to one can or more of diet coke per day is enormously problematic. How many people will commence to follow suit on this very dangerous and misleading claim? Diet sodas in general are widely known to have health risks. What is needed for a more complete statistical analysis is more data about people who drank about the same amount of Diet Coke per day and died young. My guess is that we can find millions. But those findings will probably not have nearly as much influence as this claim by a very old woman deceived by spurious correlation. The real problem is that there are so many confounding factors affecting life and death that spurious correlations for and against Diet Coke are irresponsible without scientific clinical trials on this issue.
In data analysis the main problem with correlations is that the number of confounding variables and their higher order interactions may be almost endless. Add to this the contingency factors. For example, the odds of a swimming pool death may change dramatically with the presence of a life guard or the number of swimmers per life guard or pool regulations (such requiring a young child to be swimming with an adult).
In the case of Diet Coke, the odds of living longer may change dramatically with genetic history, diet in general, life style, physical attributes, and on and on and on.
The Best of Maria's Brain Pickings in 2017 ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/12/28/best-of-brain-pickings-2017/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=393ab42e6f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_12_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-393ab42e6f-234390133&mc_cid=393ab42e6f&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Monopoly’s real inventor was Lizzie Magie, a progressive Georgist, who
believed that land should be collectively owned by all ---
https://daily.jstor.org/the-different-meanings-of-monopoly/
Jensen Comment
Which is a little surprising since players are capitalists owning property and
investing in property improvements for higher rents. Also monopoly behavior
(think railroads) increases rents. But there property taxes and rent controls
that capitalists normally don't like. The game must be expanded for better
accounting education such as the introduction of accruals like depreciation.
In Praise of Hierarchy Established, traditional order is under assault
from freewheeling, networked disrupters as never before. But society craves
centralized leadership, too.
by Nial Ferguson
The Wall Street Journal
January 5, 2018
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-praise-of-hierarchy-1515175338
It is a truth universally acknowledged that we now live in a networked world, where everyone and everything are connected. The corollary is that traditional hierarchical structures—not only states, but also churches, parties, and corporations—are in various states of crisis and decline. Disruption, disintermediation, and decentralization are the orders of the day. Hierarchy is at a discount, if not despised.
Networks rule not only in the realm of business. In politics, too, party establishments and their machines have been displaced by crowdfunded campaigns and viral messaging. Money, once a monopoly of the state, is being challenged by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which require no central banks to manage them, only consensus algorithms.
But is all this wise? In all the excitement of the age of hyper-connection, have we perhaps forgotten why hierarchies came into existence in the first place? Do we perhaps overestimate what can be achieved by ungoverned networks—and underestimate the perils of a world without any legitimate hierarchical structure?
True, few dare shed tears for yesterday’s hierarchies. Some Anglophile viewers of “The Crown” may thrill at the quaint stratification of Elizabeth II’s England, but the nearest approximations to royalty in America have lately been shorn of their gilt and glamour. Political dynasties of the recent past have been effaced, if not humiliated, by the upstart Donald Trump, while Hollywood’s elite of exploitative men is in disarray. The spirit of the age is revolutionary; the networked crowd yearns to “smack down” or “shame” each and every authority figure.
Nevertheless, recent events have called into question the notion that all will be for the best in the most networked of all possible worlds. “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Evan Williams, a co-founder of Twitter , told the New York Times last May. “I was wrong about that.”
Far from being a utopia in which we all become equally empowered “netizens,” free to tweet truth to power, cyberspace has mutated into a nightmare realm of ideological polarization, extreme views and fake news. The year 2016 was the annus horribilis of the liberal internet, the year when the network platforms built in Silicon Valley were used not only by Donald Trump’s election campaign but also by the proponents of “Brexit” in the United Kingdom to ends that appalled their creators. In 2017, research (including some by Facebook itself) revealed the psychological harm inflicted by social media on young people, who become addicted to the network platforms’ incessant, targeted stimuli.
Most alarming was the morphing of cyberspace into Cyberia, not to mention the Cyber-caliphate: a dark and lawless realm where malevolent actors ranging from Russian trolls to pro-ISIS Twitter users could work with impunity to subvert the institutional foundations of democracy. As Henry Kissinger has rightly observed, the internet has re-created the human state of nature depicted by 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, where there rages a war “of every man against every man” and life (like so many political tweets) is “nasty, brutish, and short.”
We should not be surprised. Neither history nor science predicted that everything would be awesome in a world of giant, online networks—quite the contrary. And now that it becomes clear that a networked world may be an anarchic world, we begin to see—as previous generations saw—the benefits of hierarchy.
The word hierarchy derives from ancient Greek (hierarchia, literally the “rule of a high priest”) and was first used to describe the heavenly orders of angels and, more generally, to characterize a stratified order of spiritual or temporal governance. Up until the 16th century, by contrast, the word “network” signified nothing more than a woven mesh made of interlaced thread.
Continued in article
Six TED Talks to Help You be Better With Money ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-talks-to-help-you-become-better-with-money-2018-1
Jensen Comment
Especially not the importance of financial literacy by Curtis Carroll who
learned to read and invest in prison.
Bob Jensen's financial literacy helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Some Surprises in the 2017 Equity Markets
http://www.businessinsider.com/2017-performance-of-stocks-currencies-commodities-cryptocurrencies-2017-12/#dont-miss-8
Jensen Comment
Today's College Students Aren't Who You Think (and aren't as
scholastic as you think)---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/todays-college-students-arent-who-you-think-1515240000?elqTrackId=74dba41fcf564d95bc196397a8f2bd15&elq=b1369b0df9e64594b4f192561fadd432&elqaid=17326&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7555&mg=prod/accounts-wsj
From a Chronicle of Higher Education Newsletter on January 8, 2018
They "aren't who you think," reads a headline in The Wall Street Journal. Those in higher ed are well aware that much of the public has a warped perspective on the student population at large, but the Journal piece offers some useful reminders, including:
"The vast majority of college students attend institutions that admit nearly anyone who applies."
"A larger share of students than ever before are nonwhite, with the most dramatic gains over the past 20 years coming among Hispanic students."
"Forty percent of the roughly 17.5 million undergraduate students are enrolled in two-year institutions."
Jensen Comment on Grade Inflation
Since most graduate students must have 3.0 grade averages to graduate, most
grades in graduate schools are either A or B. A rare C grade is tantamount to an
F.
At the undergraduate level, the average grade across the
USA is an outrageous A- ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
Just-In-Time Inventory --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_manufacturing
Walmart is closing 63 Sam's Club stores: Here's
where they're going down (slide show) ---
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/walmart-is-closing-63-sams-club-stores-—-heres-where-they-will-shut-down/ss-AAuBXcL?ocid=spartandhp&ffid=gz#image=1
Jensen Comment
I suspect one of the main causes is free shipping for online shopping at Walmart
and Amazon. Free shipping means no longer having to buy by the case and trying
to find storage space for home inventory. In accounting we would say it's
becoming more like "Just-In-Time" incoming and outgoing inventory when storage
space is limited and less money is tied up in unused inventory. In business
incurring lower inventory carrying costs can make a big difference on the bottom
line.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on January 9, 2018
Two suits catch Google in middle of gender debate
Former Google female employees last week sued the company, a unit of Alphabet Inc., for allegedly discriminating against women, while former male employees on Monday filed a suit for allegedly discriminating against conservative white men.
Elon Musk needs to make a bold call on Tesla's
Model 3 before it's too late
The math is simple: Tesla is spending as much as General Motors every quarter —
about $1 billion — to produce and sell a fraction of the vehicles that GM does.
GM is also turning that invested capital into steady profits, while Tesla in the
third-quarter of 2017 posted the biggest loss in its history. GM has a
$25-billion war chest. Tesla only has enough cash to operate through 2018. ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-problems-threaten-company-future-musks-job-2018-1
Jensen Comment
In my opinion the time is right for Tesla to begin to outsource production to
other automobile manufacturers in other places like Detroit and maybe even
Mexico and Brazil.
A highly classified US spy satellite is
missing due to a SpaceX mission failure ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-spy-satellite-lost-due-to-spacex-failure-2018-1
How the New Tax Law Affects Paying for K-16 Schools ---
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2018-01-08/5-ways-the-new-tax-law-affects-families-paying-for-college
A Grad Student Defended a Controversial Instructor. Now He Says He’s Being
Silenced ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Grad-Student-Defended-a/242175?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=dc6ee2cf468a454bb61377eccdf46b70&elq=fb59b2c5573240808d5317dec1e56e5e&elqaid=17325&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7554
Last June, a Ph.D. student at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote a letter supporting a lecturer whose job was in jeopardy. The lecturer was Keith A. Fink, an outspoken lawyer who had taught communication courses part time at UCLA for a decade, including a popular one on campus free speech.
The graduate student, Justin Gelzhiser, had read in the campus newspaper about Mr. Fink and his battles with administrators. Mr. Fink argues that he lost his faculty job because of his conservative views and because he often criticized the administration in his teaching.
When Mr. Gelzhiser learned that Mr. Fink was on the verge of losing his job, he felt compelled to call attention to what he saw as threats to Mr. Fink’s academic freedom. Mr. Gelzhiser was a teaching assistant in the communication department and served as a graduate-student representative on the Academic Senate’s academic-freedom committee.
But the letter, to the interim dean of social sciences, ended up putting Mr. Gelzhiser’s own job in jeopardy, he says. He has accused university administrators of threatening him with a sexual-misconduct complaint to try to force him to leave the department.
The scuffle is another twist in Mr. Fink’s case, which captured national attention last year, especially in conservative circles, and prompted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education to demand answers from the university. It also has sparked a discussion at UCLA about how, as Mr. Gelzhiser alleges, a Title IX investigation could be used as a threat — and how to prevent that from happening.
Last month Mr. Gelzhiser filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that UCLA officials had used the gender-equity law Title IX as a bargaining chip to try to silence him.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fink has undertaken a public campaign to call out what he sees as the university’s disregard for academic freedom and due process, and he’s created a nonprofit organization to provide legal help to UCLA students and faculty members. Both men are also fighting to get their jobs back.
In Mr. Gelzhiser’s view, one thing is clear: He was targeted because of his advocacy on Mr. Fink’s behalf. "Keith’s case was essentially done on campus until I brought it back into the light," he said. But as a consequence, he said, his teaching-assistant contract wasn’t renewed, and "my life has been turned upside down."
Kerri L. Johnson, chair of the communication department, said she couldn’t comment on Mr. Gelzhiser’s specific claims. She did say, though, that she had never seen the letter he wrote in support of Mr. Fink, and that the department’s staff members immediately report any sexual-misconduct issues to the Title IX office.
A university spokesman wrote in an email that "due to individual privacy rights that protect both students and university employees, we are unable to comment on this specific matter." He added that "the Title IX Office does not condone any manipulation of its investigatory processes."
A Letter of Support
Last year Mr. Fink went through an "excellence review," as all UCLA lecturers do after teaching at the university for 18 quarters.
The department’s nine tenured professors deadlocked on whether to promote him; three voted yes, three voted no, and three abstained. That left the final decision to Laura E. Gomez, who was then interim dean of social sciences.
Mr. Gelzhiser sent a letter to Ms. Gomez on June 5 discussing Mr. Fink’s popularity among students and praising his teaching. Mr. Gelzhiser also suggested that UCLA is a predominantly liberal campus and pointed to the instructor’s conservative views as an asset.
Continued in article
"The Academy’s Assault on Intellectual Diversity," by Robert
Boyers, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, March
19, 2017 ---
http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Academy-s-Assault-on/239496?key=JQfw5xpCetCwuacmaap92Bzb0ARlrgGe6ByF4T0gSt3g5KNYYPD5R-hD829-mBenc3pNcUxfZWRXQUdPOHlUcXoyLVhzSDlxanpGdEV1Ym1XWVpZZTlSa1lpTQ
The Closing of the American Mind: What Allan Bloom Got Right
---
By Todd Gitlin
Chronicle of Higher Education
October 8, 2017
http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Allan-Bloom-Got-Right/241375?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=5f4ce19f63264c9ca99a1bcc8e8dcff7&elq=3cc5401748ab40a085486b07961176fc&elqaid=15963&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6887
"You can slam its young people into universities with their classrooms and laboratories, and when they come out all they can talk about is Babe Ruth. America is a hopeless country for intellectuals and thinking people." Babe Ruth is the giveaway. These words were spoken in 1923, and the speaker was Theodore Dreiser, who had dropped out of Indiana University after one year.
So it is not a new thought that American universities are nests of self-betrayal and triviality where inquiring minds trade the nobility of their tradition for cheap trinkets and the promise of pieces of silver to come. Indeed, five years before Dreiser popped off, Thorstein Veblen was denouncing "the higher learning in America" for having surrendered to business domination, ditched the pure pursuit of knowledge, cultivated "conspicuous conformity to the popular taste," and pandered to undergraduates by teaching them "ways and means of dissipation." "The conduct of universities by business men," to borrow from Veblen’s subtitle, had rendered university life "mechanistic." Veblen anticipated that the academy would wallow in futility when it was not prostrating itself at the feet of the captains of finance. His original subtitle was A Study in Total Depravity. Veblen having dropped it, Allan Bloom should have picked it up.
Veblen thought the university had been seized by "pecuniary values." To Bloom, whose bestselling book, The Closing of the American Mind, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, something much worse had happened: The university had been seized by the absence of values. "The university now offers no distinctive visage to the young person. He finds a democracy of the disciplines. … This democracy is really an anarchy, because there are no recognized rules for citizenship and no legitimate titles to rule. In short there is no vision, nor is there a set of competing visions, of what an educated human being is."
A horde of bêtes noires had stampeded through the gates, and the resulting noise had drowned out the proper study of both nature and humanity. Nihilism had conquered. Its chief forms were cultural relativism, historicism, and shopping-mall indifference, the humanities’ lame attempts at a holding action that "flatters popular democratic tastes." Openness was the new closure; elitism had become the worst of all isms.
Just how this happened, however, Bloom was uncertain. He was not a stickler for historical causation. When in doubt, he pounded the table and ranted about his next talking point, dotted with references to Great Books. Closing read more dyspeptic than lamentational. But the lamentational note was there. Once the university had been a crucible of truth; then it had been seized by, or sold to, the utilitarians; finally, it had collapsed in the face of nihilism. (Never mind that universities were training schools before they were Platonic academies.)
Bloom, who died in 1992, pulled no punches, even those that pummeled his own argument, and the nonstop crescendo of his rant made it easy for campus leftists to dismiss the book rather casually — too casually.
For some five years after publication, Closing helpedinspire an assault on "political correctness" and the putative left-wing takeover by "tenured radicals" that roiled the campuses and flowed into the political arena via William Bennett and Lynne Cheney, among others. Most of the assault came from the right, of course, though I, among others, contributed my own variant from the left. But coiled inside Bloom’s polemic, drowned out by his own thunder, was an inconvenient truth all the more worth taking seriously30 years later.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness in colleges and
universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
The Question of Little Free Libraries ---
https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2018/01/02/question-little-free-libraries/
Jensen Comment
Our local hospital maintains a free library opposite the dining hall. It's not
required to leave a book before taking a book, but many patrons leave handfuls
of their own books. I would say that most of the books are not ones that I take
home, but occasionally there's a gem. I always return that book plus some
others.
The Favorite Literary Work of Every Country Visualized on a World Map
---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/the-favorite-literary-work-of-every-country-visualized-on-a-world-map.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Ten Fascinating Things from a January 4, 2018 MIT Newsletter
1
Don't buy an electric car
Almost 80 percent of America’s all-electric cars are leased, compared to 30 percent for the nation’s entire fleet. Here's why it's a good idea. (Bloomberg)
2
All signal, no reciever
AT&T plans to launch 5G connections in America by the end of 2018. Then you'll just need a phone that can make use of them. (Reuters)
3
Houses that float
Rising tides a worry? What you need is a home that's bouyant. (New Yorker)
4
Stats in your eyes
Your retina reveals blood pressure or age—to a computer, at least. Here’s how AI is making unexpected predictions from medical images. (Nature)
5
Get your brain in gear
Nissan is testing a brain-to-vehicle interface that allows a car to respond to a driver’s intentions before they can turn the wheel or hit the gas. (TR)
6
Underestimating e-tail
Online sales could be twice as high as the figures published by the Fed, massively underestimating the scale of e-tail in America. (Axios)
7
Shine a light
UV light kills microbes but damages human tissue. Now, a shorter wavelength may be safe enough to slow virus spread in public spaces. (Science)
8
Climate crunch time
We're calling it: 2017 was the year that the climate span out of control. (TR)
9
Cyber chaos for the feds
The DHS admits a hack lost details belonging to 240,000 staff. (Cyberscoop)
+ The NSA is hemorrhaging hackers, engineers, and data scientists. (WaPo)
10
AI Mario
Watch AI learn to play Mario in this oddly compelling livestream. (YouTube)
Angus Deaton --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Deaton
A Nobel Prize-winning economist (Princeton's Angus Deaton) thinks we’re
asking all the wrong questions about inequality ---
https://qz.com/1166356/nobel-prize-winning-economist-angus-deaton-thinks-were-asking-all-the-wrong-questions-about-inequality/
Autistic Prodigies Since “Rain Man”: Our evolving understanding of
“the engineer’s disease.” ---
http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/autistic-prodigies-since-rain-man
Final GOP Deal Would Tax Universities With Large Endowments ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/18/large-endowments-would-be-taxed-under-final-gop-tax-plan?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=39cce06ca0-DNU20171218&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-39cce06ca0-197565045&mc_cid=39cce06ca0&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Princeton University
Princeton Theological Seminary
Yale University
Harvard University
Stanford University
Pomona College
The Juilliard School
Weill Cornell Medical College
Amherst College
Swarthmore College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Grinnell College
Williams College
California Institute of Technology
Rice University
Wellesley College
Cooper Union
Medical College of Wisconsin
Dartmouth College
Washington and Lee University
Bowdoin College
University of Notre Dame
University of Richmond
Smith College
Baylor College of Medicine
Icahn School at Mt. Sinai
Emory University
Washington University in St. Louis
Bryn Mawr College
Claremont McKenna College
Trinity University (Texas)
University of Chicago
Picture a mad scramble at wealthy private colleges and universities in the days after the Republican tax reform plan passed Congress, as officials scurried to find ways to dodge or minimize the new excise tax on their endowments.
With the legislation kicking in for taxable years starting after Dec. 31, there would have been little time to lose. The tax reform package places an annual 1.4 percent excise tax on net investment income at an estimated several dozen colleges and universities. Specifically, the tax will apply to institutions with at least 500 students and net assets of $500,000 per student. That includes some of the nation's wealthiest colleges, such as Harvard, Stanford and Princeton Universities, but also some that fall under the tax in large part because they have relatively small student bodies, such as Claremont McKenna College.
It also includes colleges with unique missions and circumstances that don't fit the generic picture of a college and its endowment. Kentucky's Berea College uses its substantial per-student endowment to enable it to not charge tuition and was the center of legislative maneuvering as the bill passed. Cooper Union has a per-student endowment of more than $500,000 only because it owns the $675.6 million Chrysler Building in New York City -- which represented more than 80 percent of Cooper Union's endowment value in 2016.
Picture the chaos as money managers and business officers frantically ran simulations to determine which changes would limit their tax bills. Can portfolios be sold so that the gains on top-performing assets are realized before they are taxed? Can donations be redirected so that they will not go into funds exposed to taxation? Should colleges on the edge of the bill’s $500,000-per-student cutoff enroll a few more students to drive down the average value of their assets? Should those with slightly more than 500 students try to cut enrollment next year so as to drop below that limit?
Then ignore that scene, because it’s pure fiction.
To be sure, college and university leaders are asking their business offices what the excise tax will mean for them. Tax policy tends to distort behavior, after all. But the immediate reaction to the college investment income excise tax looks less like a movie scene depicting stock market panic and more like experts reading, squinting and scratching their heads.
Most are unsure exactly how the endowment tax will affect colleges’ and universities’ behavior, especially in the short term. There are, they say, simply too many lingering unknowns about how the letter of the law will be translated into practice.
“We are expecting the Treasury Department to have to take some steps to help with some of the definitions,” said Liz Clark, director of federal affairs at the National Association of College and University Business Officers. “A lot is going to rest on the definition of assets used directly in carrying out the educational institutions’ exempt purpose, as well as the definition of net investment income.”
Clark was referring to specific language in the bill. It says net investment income will be taxed, but it remains unclear how, specifically net investment income is to be calculated. The bill also carves out some assets from being used to calculate the $500,000-per-student limit asset trigger -- those "assets which are used directly in carrying out the institution’s exempt purpose" -- but experts don’t know exactly which assets will end up being exempt.
They’re accounting questions that seem simple at first glance. But few things are simple when it comes to accounting -- or university endowments, which are often made up of a dizzying assortment of individual funds, restricted for different uses and invested in a variety of asset classes spanning bonds, public stocks, venture capital, real estate and commodities.
The excise tax isn’t even necessarily limited to endowments. While it’s been referred to publicly as an endowment tax, the bill does not use that term. It refers to an “excise tax based on net investment income,” experts pointed out.
Definitions were fluid enough in the run-up to the bill’s passage that few were able to agree on estimates of how many institutions will be subject to the tax. A National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities list included the Weill Cornell Medical College as being subject to the tax, only for Cornell University to say that its medical college’s endowed funds have long been counted toward a unified university endowment and would not be affected by the tax.
Elsewhere, consulting firm Ithaka S&R posted a long discussion about why particular methods of tabulating enrollment can change which institutions are exempt under the bill’s 500-student limit. The bill says that the number of students "shall be based on the daily average number of full-time students attending such institution (with part-time students taken into account on a full-time student equivalent basis)." But Ithaka S&R pointed out that the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System "collects both fall FTE and 12-month FTE, but it’s unclear which method the provision recommends." It also notes that several of the institutions that appear to be subject to the tax enroll only graduate students and may consider themselves part of another campus instead of stand-alone institutions -- like Weill Cornell Medical College
Continued in article
Lawyer who once advised Martin Shkreli has been convicted of helping him
defraud a pharmaceutical company ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-shkrelis-former-attorney-was-convicted-of-aiding-fraud-scheme-2017-12
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Former Houston Community College trustee sentenced to 70 months in prison
for taking bribes ---
http://abc13.com/education/former-hcc-trustee-sentenced-to-70-months-in-prison-for-taking-bribes/2912968/?elqTrackId=ad151e2f3d3f43c1a8d2f24a41cde0b1&elq=dd6538e2c28844309da3b3cc88d6f1fc&elqaid=17362&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7569
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
New York Times: Diane Butrus, a business
executive from St. Louis, wandered the streets of Zurich, looking for a bank
that would help her keep $1.5 million hidden from America tax collectors
---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/01/ny-times-a-swiss-banker-helped-americans-dodge-taxes-was-it-a-crime.html
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Former Columbia U. Financial-Aid Director Is Accused of Taking Hundreds of
Thousands in Kickbacks ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Former-Columbia-U/242220?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=c241d9c56ae84c27a3753b3ace51b1c9&elq=f808e08456b74c22b79abf9e9b849875&elqaid=17422&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7620
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
From a Chronicle of Higher Education Newsletter on January 9, 2018
There's an old saying in journalism: Everybody needs an editor. But the adage also holds true in higher ed. Case in point: As part of its marketing campaign to celebrate its 150th anniversary, the University of California at Berkeley hung banners featuring a chemical element — berkelium — that was named for the city of Berkeley, where it was discovered. Big problem: The banners featured the wrong chemical symbol — Br, which The Chronicle's chemistry-inclined readers will quickly recognize as bromine, not berkelium.
Jensen Comment
Reminds me of the year Trinity University misspelled its own name on the cover
(along the spine) of its college catalog.
When Does an Artist’s Appropriation Become Copyright Infringement?
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artists-appropriation-theft
An open access deal between German authors in journals published by
Elsevier could be problematic, say Alex Holcombe and Bjoern Brembs ---
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/open-access-germany-best-deal-no-deal
Germany vs Elsevier: universities win temporary journal access after refusing
to pay fees ---
http://lisnews.org/germany_vs_elsevier_universities_win_temporary_journal_access_after_refusing_to_pay_fees
Crytocurrency --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Ethereum --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum
What Actually Is Bitcoin? Princeton’s Free Course “Bitcoin and Currency
Technologies” Provides Much-Needed Answers ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/what-actually-is-bitcoin-princetons-free-course-bitcoin-and-currency-technologies-provides-much-needed-answers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Sweden could be the first economy to introduce its own cryptocurrency,
called the e-krona ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-cryptocurrency-e-krona-riksbank-2018-1
Warren Buffett Just Ripped Cripto Currency to Shreds ---
http://time.com/money/5096862/warren-buffett-bitcoin-ripple-invest-cryptocurrency/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011018pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Scams & stupidities around 'blockchain stocks' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-blockchain-stocks-price-moves-2017-12
The Bitcoin Paradox ---
http://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/the-bitcoin-paradox
Tax avoidance is causing a surge in
bitcoin loans ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tax-avoidance-is-causing-a-surge-in-bitcoin-loans-2017-12
You can now rent a Kodak-branded bitcoin-mining rig —
but you'll have to hand over half of the profits you make ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/kashminer-kodak-bitcoin-mining-2018-1
Why wasn't it called Kodak's Bitcoin Brownie?
A guide to paying taxes on cryptocurrency
(e.g. bitcoin) profit ---
https://qz.com/1156706/a-guide-to-paying-taxes-on-bitcoin-investments/
A crypto expert explains the difference between the two
largest cryptocurrencies in the world: bitcoin and Ethereum ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/ethereum-price-versus-bitcoin-price-crypto-expert-lex-sokolin-2018-1
Blockchain --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
Kodak's the Latest Company Jumping on the Blockchain Bandwagon ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/kodak-launches-new-blockchain-project-for-photographers-2018-1
BankThink: Don't believe the hype: There are no good uses for blockchain
---
https://www.information-management.com/opinion/dont-believe-the-hype-there-are-no-good-uses-for-blockchain?utm_campaign=daily-jan
3
2018&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&eid=bd43d720a6c9c7750e7b8fb89f29a522
Thank you Glen Gray for the heads up
Blockchain Is Pumping New Life Into
Old-School Companies Like IBM ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-26/blockchain-pumping-new-life-into-old-school-companies-like-ibm?cmpid=BBD122617_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=171226&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily
Demand for the technology, best known for supporting bitcoin, is growing so much that it will be one of the largest users of capacity next year at about 60 data centers worldwide that IBM rents out to other companies.
December 26, 2017 reply from Bill McCarthy
Another view of blockchain accounting from a recent talk to ABC (Accounting blockchain Coalition).
Blockchain --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
Blockchain considerations for management and auditors ---
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2017/dec/blockchain-for-management-and-auditors-201717994.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=05Dec2017
The South Sea Company Bubble was a famous accounting scandal in the early
1700s ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company
Isaac Newton --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
How Isaac Newton Lost $3 Million Dollars in the “South Sea Bubble” of
1720: Even Geniuses Can’t Prevail Against the Machinations of the Markets
---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/how-isaac-newton-lost-3-million-dollars-in-the-south-sea-bubble-of-1720-even-geniuses-cant-prevail-against-the-machinations-of-the-markets.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Consultant allegedly plagiarized US Air Force officer ---
http://retractionwatch.com/2018/01/02/consultant-allegedly-plagiarized-us-air-force-officer/
Chronicle of Higher Education
A Dying Town: Here in a corner of Missouri and across America,
the lack of a college education has become a public-health crisis ---
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/public-health?cid=db&elqTrackId=8e0605106c784d40abeef68721ce03f7&elq=3f78a602f46f4ce38b89816e51756272&elqaid=17292&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7523
Drive 90 miles north on Interstate 55 from Memphis, then 20 miles west on Route 412, cutting through seemingly endless fields of cotton, rice, and soybeans. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see the sign: Welcome to Kennett. Hometown of Sheryl Crow.
This small town in southeastern Missouri used to greet visitors with a different motto: "Service. Industry. Agriculture." But the machine-parts-maker closed and the trailer manufacturer left and the aluminum smelter went under. There’s not nearly as much industry around here as there used to be. Sheryl Crow’s Grammys aren’t going anywhere.
Route 412 becomes First Street, and downtown opens up with a McDonald’s to your left and a Burger King to your right. There are just two grocery stores in town, but fast-food restaurants are everywhere. It’s easier to find a pharmacy than a salad bar.
Outside the row of medical offices that border the hospital, people pause for one last smoke. Mr. Chan’s still sells doughnuts and kolaches, and Riggs Supply is, somehow, holding on, but there are many boarded-up storefronts along First Street these days. Down the road, a branch of the local college offers programs in education, criminal justice, and agribusiness. College-going isn’t so common, though. In this area, just one adult in 10 has a four-year degree.
Recently the town tried to revitalize the area around the old county courthouse. It added new streetlights and redid the sidewalks. But few people use them.
This is the Missouri Bootheel. The counties around here are called that because if you squint at a map, it kind of looks like the heel of a boot, jutting south from the rest of the state into Arkansas and Tennessee. The name comes from its shape, but it’s something of a metaphor, too. It can sometimes seem like life is trying to grind people down.
It’s a place, one of many in America, where disadvantages pile up. Researchers are uncovering links between education — or lack of it — and health, and they don’t like what they see. It’s not clear whether a college degree leads directly to better health, or, if so, how. But the findings are alarming: Educational disparities and economic malaise and lack of opportunity are making people like those in the Bootheel sick. And maybe even killing them.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
We seem to be reverting to small towns without medical services. In Swea City,
Iowa in the early 1900s there were no doctors, dentists, or even local law
enforcement in my Grandmother Dourte's home town. She had all her teeth pulled
at one time by a traveling dentist and watched her oldest son die upstairs from
pneumonia and her young daughter die on from a burst appendix. Most babies were
born inside homes with local midwives in attendance. Going off to college was
infrequent in these small towns. Today in this town most residents are retired
farmers --- there are not many high school graduates to go college, and those
that do go to college usually don't return to their small home towns.
he New Yorker Writes About a "Small" Iowa Town: Leave
or Stay
In a small town in Iowa where the American dream lives on, residents wonder
whether to resolve conflicts or fulfill their longings by moving away or staying
put ---
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/13/where-the-small-town-american-dream-lives-on?elqTrackId=cd9222bf37db46a7802121a2eec65d16&elq=3ce84d7ba2e64ee4b0c0144246469972&elqaid=16817&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7280
Note that Orange City featured in this is a relatively large Iowa town in a
state filled with towns having less than 1,000 residents. There were many
"thriving" Iowa towns back in the days when they were surrounded by small family
farms of 80-160 acres. When I grew up in the 1950s on both a farm and later in
town farmers did not have to invest heavily in equipment, and most farmers were
still supplementing a small tractor with horses and mules. At harvest time
threshing machines moved from farm to farm, thereby making it unnecessary for
every farmer to own a threshing machine. Now making a living on 240 acres is a
marginal operation given the nearly $2 million needed for enormous tractors,
combines, sprayers. planters, tanks, etc. There's no profit in raising a few
cows, sheep, chickens, and turkeys that are now raised in enormous containment
feeding operations holding thousands or tens of thousands of animals.
When the families sold off their small farms to bigger farms there were fewer and fewer customers shopping in small Iowa farm towns. Many downtown stores were boarded up or torn down and town schools closed to become part of every larger school districts covering multiple towns. Jobs dried up in the small towns such that residents that wanted to stay either could not find and work or could only find part-time work at minimum wage --- not a living wage for a family.
One of the things that shocked me is that there was almost no market for the big two-story house my grandfather built in Swea City around 1900. The oak-paneled house had four bedrooms plus a den along with a living room, dining room, big kitchen, and den. When I returned for a visit to Swea City in the 1960s this well-maintained house with a big porch could be purchased for less than $10,000. In Des Moines such a house would be priced at well over $100,000. The thing is that Des Moines has a viable economy with over 200,000 residents and many career opportunities to work in town. Swea City has around 500 residents, most of whom are retired farmers who choose living in Swea City because of the cheap housing. But they have to drive over 30 miles to larger towns for shopping since the grocery stores, the clothing stores, the hardware stores, the drug stores, etc. are now boarded over in Swea City. There are very few jobs available today in Swea City, Iowa.
What caused the demise of small Iowa towns like Swea City?
Firstly, it was the demise of the small family farms that used to surround the
towns with a customer base. Second, it was the change in professional services
where professionals like physicians and lawyers now prefer to no longer be
sole-practitioners serving a small community. Now professionals prefer to be in
medical clinics and multiple-partner law firms located in larger towns and
serving smaller communities from a distance. What medical school graduate or law
school graduate wants to set up a one-person practice in Swea City, Iowa?
Thirdly, it was changing roads and vehicles. In the 1960s Iowa knocked the curbs
off its narrow highways and straitened out the sharp curves such that the trip
from Swea to the larger Algona now takes about 30 minutes for shopping rather
than upwards of an hour that it used to take in the 1930s. Plus in the 1930s
drivers sometimes had to stop once or twice to put patches on inner tubes of
flat tires. In the 21st Century it's relatively rare to have a flat tire driving
from Swea City to Algona.
The economic sacrifice made to raise a family in a small Iowa town is negatively correlated with the size of the town coupled with other factors such as having an area college and hospital in the town and commuting distance to a larger town for jobs. Orange City featured in the above article has over 6,000 residents making it a relatively large Iowa town. But it's also remotely located such that not many residents want to commute elsewhere for jobs. That makes the above article somewhat interesting since there are some economic opportunities in Orange City for those who want to remain and raise their families in Orange City.
Bob Jensen's threads about small and dying Iowa farm towns.
Stories About Growing Up
· Short story entitled My Glimpse of Heaven: What I learned from Max and Gwen
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
A short story about my grandfather Christian Granville Dourte
http://cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/FamilyHistory/SweaCity/Dourte.htm
Sequel: About My Grandfather Dourte with a link to Hierogliphe's ancestry
A short story about my grandfather Christian Granville Dourte
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/FamilyHistory/SweaCity/Dourte.htm
Library of Congress Will No Longer Archive All Public
Tweets ---
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-12-27/library-of-congress-will-no-longer-archive-all-public-tweets
Jensen Comment
This will be a loss to future historians wanting to write a history of President
Trump's entire term of office.
Chatbot --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot
THE CHATBOT MONETIZATION REPORT: Sizing
the market, key strategies, and how to navigate the chatbot opportunity ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/chatbot-monetization-market-business-strategies-opportunites-2016-11
QuickBooks jumps on the chatbot bandwagon ---
https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/quickbooks-jumps-on-the-chatbot-bandwagon
Jensen Comment
There's an enormous opportunity for chatbots in education and training
The Extinction of Libraries: Why the Predictions aren’t Coming True
---
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-extinction-of-libraries-why-the-predictions-arent_us_5a3d3acde4b06cd2bd03da4a
Dos & Don'ts on Designing for Accessibility---
https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/02/dos-and-donts-on-designing-for-accessibility/
Disability History Museum --- http://www.disabilitymuseum.org
Bob Jensen's links to Tools and Tricks of the Trade for students with
diasbilities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
More than 3,600 stores will close in 2018 — here's the full list ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/stores-closing-in-2018-2017-12
Walgreens tops the list with 600 closures
Extrovert Accountants In Conversation --- Those accountants who look at your shoes rather than their own shoes while having a standing conversation
K-12: Teaching Introverted Students: How a 'Quiet Revolution' Is
Changing Classroom Practice (stop talking)---
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/12/27/teaching-introverted-students-how-a-quiet-revolution.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58328559&U=2290378
. . .
Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, became a bestseller, and whose talk on making the workplace more inclusive of different personality styles became a TED Talk phenomenon. Since then, Cain has set her sights on changing the classroom, where she says teachers unconsciously reward the extroverts who dive headfirst into discussions, sometimes without much forethought.
Continued in article
Chemistry Absent From 3 in 5 Secondary Schools, Analysis Finds ---
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2017/12/chemistry_absent_in_many_secondary_schools.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2&M=58328559&U=2290378
Many schools don't offer a standalone chemistry class, and even in those that do, black and Hispanic students are less likely to take it
Jensen Comment
Guess what course is most likely to separate first-year college students from
their pre-med initial choice of majors?
The definitive, scientific answers to 20 health questions everyone has ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/health-myths-questions-2016-12/#does-sugar-make-you-hyper-1
Nine Facts You Learned in School That Are No Longer True ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-no-longer-true-2017-3
Kaplan University --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaplan_University
After being essentially "given away" by Jeff Bezo's Washington Post,
the former Kaplan University is now named Purdue Global University ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Offspring-of-Purdue-s/242213?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest&elqTrackId=770cf49d644648389c4d60f584981a5b&elq=ec436abaed344d3f9ca010248f72e80e&elqaid=17423&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=7621
The offspring of Purdue University’s purchase of Kaplan University has been christened Purdue University Global. In a news release, Purdue said the name would become official if the regional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, approves the deal.
That review is scheduled for February 22, according to the news release. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the U.S. Department of Education have already signed off on the deal.
“Our campuses are typically named after the physical locations where they hold classes. Purdue University Global can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time,” said Purdue's president, Mitch Daniels. “The name proved appealing and meaningful to our various stakeholders – most importantly prospective students.”
The new name omits mention of Kaplan University, which currently serves 29,000 students online and in person in Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Maryland, Maine, Missouri, and Wisconsin.
Betty Vandenbosch, president of Kaplan University, would become chancellor of Purdue University Global.
“The name is respectful of Purdue’s exceptional reputation, but also distinct from Purdue’s other campuses,” she said.
Purdue’s decision to buy the for-profit university has stirred debate since news of it broke in April. Faculty members and students questioned the public university’s motives, with one equating the deal to selling the university’s brand to Wall Street. Others have raised concerns that Kaplan would retain control over the institutions it currently has while receiving a facelift from the Purdue brand.
Jensen Comment
Roughly speaking, Purdue University had 30,000 undergraduate and 10,000 graduate
students before taking on Kaplan's 29,000 students. This makes the acquisition
of Kaplan University a pretty big deal for Purdue and greatly changes its
outreach mission. Online universities typically have much lower admission
standards than flagship state universities. It will be interesting to see how
Purdue maintains traditionally high admission standards and graduation
standards. in its new Purdue Global University. My guess is that the 29,000
figure will shrink for degree-seeking graduates, but nobody knows by how much at
this juncture.
Many of the PGU students may become non-traditional students seeking technical badges/certificates rather than transcript credits. That may become typical in many of our flagship universities as employers seek greater specialization skills of new employees, often technical skills not being taught in flagship universities at the moment. For example, until now employers would not recruit on flagship university campuses for accountants specialized in cross-currency swap accounting or accountants trained in derivative financial instrument valuations using Bloomberg terminal yield curves. That could change as badges and certificates become increasingly popular.
Bob Jensen's threads on learning seekers apart from degree
seekers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Surprising Frequency of Interspecies Mating ---
https://daily.jstor.org/the-surprising-frequency-of-interspecies-mating/
Jensen Comment
Even though mules are sterile, the mating of a donkeys with horses captured some
of the best qualities of both species for farm work. Mules are intelligent (like
a donkey) and strong (like a horse). Also mules can take the heat better than
most horses.
Most Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. One that Allegedly is Not Junk
Science (although debatable) ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-personality-quizzes-are-junk-science-i-found-one-that-isnt/
Jensen Comment
I still think I could deceive on this and all other personality quizzes.
Econometrics Readings for the New Year by David Giles
--
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2018/01/econometrics-readng-for-new-year.html
Another year, and lots of exciting reading!
· Davidson, R. & V. Zinde-Walsh, 2017. Advances in specification testing. Canadian Journal of Economics, online.
· Dias, G. F. & G. Kapetanios, 2018. Estimation and forecasting in vector autoregressive moving average models for rich datasets. Journal of Econometrics, 202, 75-91.
· González-Estrada, E. & J. A. Villaseñor, 2017. An R package for testing goodness of fit: goft. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, online.
· Hajria, R. B., S. Khardani, & H. Raïssi, 2017. Testing the lag length of vector autoregressive models: A power comparison between portmanteau and Lagrange multiplier tests. Working Paper 2017-03, Escuela de Negocios y EconomÍa. Pontificia Universidad Católica de ValaparaÍso.
· McNown, R., C. Y. Sam, & S. K. Goh, 2018. Bootstrapping the autoregressive distributed lag test for cointegration. Applied Economics, 50, 1509-1521.
· Pesaran, M. H. & R. P. Smith, 2017. Posterior means and precisions of the coefficients in linear models with highly collinear regressors. Working Paper BCAM 1707, Birkbeck, University of London.
· Yavuz, F. V. & M. D. Ward, 2017. Fostering undergraduate data science. American Statistician, online.
Why a paperless world still hasn't happened
Despite some of the mightiest headwinds on the planet, the paper business
actually saw consumption grow 50 percent between 1980 and 2011 ---
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/29/american-reams-why-the-paperless-world-hasnt-happened
Accountants are not generally known to be the life of a party.
Times have Changed
One of the things at parties, especially among strangers, is engaging in
meaningful conversations. !
WSJ: The Most Popular People At New Year's Eve Parties? Tax Accountants ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/12/wsj-who-will-be-the-most-popular-people-at-your-new-year-eves-party-tax-accountants.html
Jensen Comment
Three common questions accountants should bone up on before going to parties.
Are high income folks really getting the best breaks?
If so why is the liberal NY governor seeking to get them even better breaks?
This leading question is one of those "well it all depends" questions.
There aren't many tax breaks for the poor in the latest tax reform
legislation since the poor in the USA did not previously pay much in the way of
income taxes (although they pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes
factored into rent). However, much of the media leads and some professors (like
like the lying Alan Blinder of Princeton) rant that there's nothing in the way
of tax breaks for the middle class. Is this really true people will ask at
cocktail parties and wine receptions?
The New York Times answer for this one ---
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/upshot/tax-calculator.html
Accountants who put the above link on their iPhone for parties can also answer
the personal question: "Can I expect to pay more in 2018 than in 2017?"
Will the lowering of the corporate tax rate bring home trillions of corporate
cash earned in overseas transactions back into the USA?
This one is probably the most difficult to answer since its more of an economics
debate question than an accounting question.
The truth of the matter is that the timing of the passage of this tax reform
legislation means that accountants helping people and companies make financial
plans for 2018 literally do not have time to go to
parties.
They're being called out by their employer firms to work nights and days ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tax-law-makes-cpas-interesting-for-now-1514457000
Why Blue States are Blue:
Gov. Jerry Brown:Courts Must Let California Slash its Public-Sector Pensions ---
http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/11/gov-jerry-brown-courts-must-let-californ
Jensen Comment
Many of those bloated pensions resulted from various kinds of frauds frauds that
are costly to prosecute due to both cleverness of the frauds and frequency of
the frauds
Authors retract paper on psychopathic traits in bosses ---
http://retractionwatch.com/2018/01/12/authors-withdraw-paper-psychopathic-traits-bosses/
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Fire and Fury mix-up lands U of T professor back on bestseller list
---
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/fire-and-fury-mix-up-lands-u-of-t-professor-back-on-bestseller-list/article37533392/
Jensen Comment
The good news for buyers is that the older book is much more carefully researched. Even CNN's Jake Tapper says the new Fire and Fury is sloppily written with a lot of errors.
Somewhat analogously companies have increased their stock prices merely by announcing their looking into Blockchain applications even if they're not really serious about Blockchain.
These are the 10 richest women in America ---
http://time.com/money/5096770/richest-women-in-america/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011211am&xid=newsletter-brief
Jensen Comment
Rich is somewhat of a tenuous calculation since in so many instances wealth is
defined in terms of stock values that are somewhat difficult to compare in terms
of financial risk. For example a tech billionaire could be more or less secure
than a billionaire with wealth tied up in real estate (such as Wal-Mart
properties). Seldom is a billionaire's wealth highly liquid in terms of ease to
convert into cash without huge transactions losses. Decades ago some of the most
secure wealth was in oil reserves. That is not so much the case these days with
renewable energy soaring around the world. In foreign nations wealth may also be
subject to political instability such as being the very wealthy President of
Venezuela these days.
Econometrics Reading for the New Year from David Giles ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2018/01/econometrics-readng-for-new-year.html
Econometrics Reading for the New Year
Another year, and lots of exciting reading!
Davidson, R. & V. Zinde-Walsh, 2017. Advances in specification testing. Canadian Journal of Economics, online.
Dias, G. F. & G. Kapetanios, 2018. Estimation and forecasting in vector autoregressive moving average models for rich datasets. Journal of Econometrics, 202, 75-91.
González-Estrada, E. & J. A. Villaseñor, 2017. An R package for testing goodness of fit: goft. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 88, 726-751.
Hajria, R. B., S. Khardani, & H. Raïssi, 2017. Testing the lag length of vector autoregressive models: A power comparison between portmanteau and Lagrange multiplier tests. Working Paper 2017-03, Escuela de Negocios y EconomÍa. Pontificia Universidad Católica de ValaparaÍso.
McNown, R., C. Y. Sam, & S. K. Goh, 2018. Bootstrapping the autoregressive distributed lag test for cointegration. Applied Economics, 50, 1509-1521.
Pesaran, M. H. & R. P. Smith, 2017. Posterior means and precisions of the coefficients in linear models with highly collinear regressors. Working Paper BCAM 1707, Birkbeck, University of London.
Yavuz, F. V. & M. D. Ward, 2017. Fostering undergraduate data science. American Statistician, online.
From the Scout Report on January 5, 2018
Anywhere.link --- https://anywhere.link/
Anywhere.link is a one-click video conference solution. After signing up for an Anywhere.link account, users can create a video conference. The system provides a url to join the conference that can be sent to up to six participants. Recipients of this link need only click it to join the video conference - they will not need to create an account, nor will they need to download or install any additional software. Anywhere.link also supports screen sharing for presentations, software demos, remote technical support, and so on. It provides a 'website widget' that site owners can use to enable one-click video calls from their home page. Anywhere.link's free tier allows five team members, each of whom can receive ten 'website widget' calls per month and can create an unlimited number of video conferences. Anywhere.link currently supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera, with work ongoing to add support for other browsers. Companion mobile phone apps for iOS and Android are currently in beta.
11,500 Year-Old DNA from an Alaskan Child Offers New Clues about Native American Ancestry
In the Bones of a Buried Child, Signs of a Massive Human Migration to the Americas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/science/native-americans-beringia-siberia.htmlAncient Infant's DNA Reveals New Clues to How the Americas Were Peopled
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/upward-sun-river-infants-genome-peopling-americas/549572/What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/03/what-the-ancient-dna-discovery-tells-us-about-native-american-ancestryTerminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25173First Americans lived on land bridge for several thousands of years, genetics study suggests
https://theconversation.com/first-americans-lived-on-land-bridge-for-thousands-of-years-genetics-study-suggests-23747Curriculum Materials: Bering Land Bridge
https://www.nps.gov/bela/learn/education/classrooms/curriculummaterials.htm
From the Scout Report on January 12, 2018
Tampermonkey --- http://tampermonkey.net/
Userscripts are small JavaScript programs that can be run in a browser to customize a website. They are a type of augmented browsing technology, allowing users to add their own personal improvements to the sites they visit. For example, a user could add movie review information (from Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, etc) to the information displayed by their streaming services. Sites like greasyfork.org and openuserjs.org contain large catalogs of customizations that users have built. Tampermonkey is a userscript manager that can find and install userscripts, execute them, and keep them up to date. On Tampermonkey's dashboard, users can see which userscripts they've installed, which sites they apply to, and what permissions each script requires. Libraries of scripts can be exported to Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive and shared with other users. Tampermonkey is available for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and Opera as well as a number of other browsers.
Standard Notes --- https://standardnotes.org/
Standard Notes is a simple, secure, open-source note-taking application. Notes can be synchronized across devices using end-to-end industry standard AES-256 encryption. In addition to the public sync servers, more technical users may also opt to run their own. Instructions are provided for setting up such a server on Amazon EC2, Docker, or Heroku. Standard Notes provides a backup feature that allows users to download the entire content of their account. Tools are available to convert these backup files into folders of plain-text documents so that users can easily migrate to another system. Standard Notes is available on the desktop for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Mobile versions are available for iOS and Android. A web interface is also available that works in any modern browser. Source code for all the versions of Standard Notes is available on GitHub.
Amphibious Architecture Makes Buildings Flood Resilient
A Floating House to Resist the Floods of Climate Change
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-floating-house-to-resist-the-floods-of-climate-changeClimate change may lead to a rise in floating architecture
http://www.cnn.com/style/article/floating-architecture-dezeen/index.htmlWater world: floating architecture is a booming business, thanks to Dutch designers
https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/latest-floating-architecture-projectsAmphibious Houses - Elizabeth English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgT9Gxjztl0Top 10 trends towards floating cities: Koen Olthuis at TEDxVilnius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqmmuIbchvUInside Makoko: danger and ingenuity in the world's biggest floating slum
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/23/makoko-lagos-danger-ingenuity-floating-slum
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
bloggERS: The Blog of the SAA's Electronic Records Section (all about blogs)
---
https://saaers.wordpress.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on listservs, blogs, and the social media ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
Thinking Mathematics!: A Resource for Teachers and Students Mathematics (puzzles and videos) --- www.jamestanton.co
Smithsonian Science Education Center: Game Center --- https://ssec.si.edu/game-center
Desmos Classroom Activities (Mathematics) ---
https://teacher.desmos.com/
includes a Free online graphic calculator
Probably the best online computation and graphing utility is Wolfram Alpha
---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Wolfram Alpha forever changed the assigning of math homework at virtually all
levels
Other math calculators and links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
In the Past Lane: The Podcast About History and Why It Matters ---
http://inthepastlane.com/
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
Smithsonian Science Education Center: Game Center --- https://ssec.si.edu/game-center
YouTube: SciCafe --- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrfcruGtplwG0Dj6cSfmH7RVnIP7CDirG
Binge-Watch Carl Sagan’s Original Cosmos Series Free Online (Available for a
Limited Time) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/binge-watch-carl-sagans-original-cosmos-series-free-online-available-for-a-limited-time.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Super-black feathers can absorb virtually every photon of light that hits
them ---
https://theconversation.com/super-black-feathers-can-absorb-virtually-every-photon-of-light-that-hits-them-89689
This gives new meaning to the song "Strangers in the Night"
Haunting photographs of farm animals reveal more than initially meets the eye
---
https://aeon.co/videos/haunting-photographs-of-farm-animals-reveal-more-than-initially-meets-the-eye?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d1dd4e3a47-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d1dd4e3a47-68951505
Ukraine: Chernobyl's Transformation Into a Massive Solar Plant Is
Almost Complete ---
https://sciencealert.com/chernobyl-massive-solar-plant-almost-complete
YouTube: CEN Online (Chemestry videos) --- www.youtube.com/channel/UCB_zuUSmh_PVkqwkaDT-thA?sub_confirmation=1
Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance (Geology) --- www.iedadata.org
Learn.Genetics: Model Earth --- http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/earth/
Biodiversity Heritage Library: A History of Cats from 1858 to 1922 Social studies --- www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/HistoryOfCats
The Surprising Frequency of Interspecies Mating ---
https://daily.jstor.org/the-surprising-frequency-of-interspecies-mating/
The Journey of a Semipalmated Sandpiper ---
https://manometinc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=e91643ee51ee4ae2bf6cd93eb09ee30e
The Towering Robot That Roams Walmart ---
https://www.wired.com/story/please-do-not-assault-the-towering-robot-that-roams-walmart/
The Crime Fighting Robot That's Stirring Up Controversy ---
https://www.wired.com/story/please-do-not-assault-the-towering-robot-that-roams-walmart/
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
In the Past Lane: The Podcast About History and Why It Matters ---
http://inthepastlane.com/
Emerson College: The American Comedy Archives --- www.emerson.edu/library/archives/american-comedy-archives
World Wealth & Income Database --- http://wid.world/
Bloomberg: The Economic Arctic
---
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-arctic/the-economic-arctic/
Bob Jensen's links to data and statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
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
Relativity says we live in four dimensions. String theory says it’s 10. What
are ‘dimensions’ and how do they affect reality? ---
https://aeon.co/essays/how-many-dimensions-are-there-and-what-do-they-do-to-reality?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d1dd4e3a47-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d1dd4e3a47-68951505
Thinking Mathematics!: A Resource for Teachers and Students Mathematics (puzzles and videos) --- www.jamestanton.co
Interactivate (Mathematics) --- www.shodor.org/interactivate
Desmos Classroom Activities (Mathematics) ---
https://teacher.desmos.com/
includes a Free online graphic calculator
Probably the best online computation and graphing utility is Wolfram Alpha
---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Wolfram Alpha forever changed the assigning of math homework at virtually all
levels
Other math calculators and links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
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
Watch the History of the World Unfold on an Animated Map: From 200,000 BCE to
Today Posted: 11 Jan 2018 01:00 AM PST ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/watch-the-history-of-the-world-unfold-on-an-animated-map-from-200000-bce-to-today.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
In the Past Lane: The Podcast About History and Why It Matters ---
http://inthepastlane.com/
English Heritage: Story of England --- www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england
The American Revolution: Free Course from Yale University ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/12/the-american-revolution-a-free-course-from-yale-university.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Smarthistory: ARCHES (resources for teaching history) --- https://smarthistory.org/arches-intro/
CUNY Dominican Studies Institute: First Blacks in the Americas ---
http://firstblacks.org/en/
Ancient Egypt: Glowing Ink Reveals Hidden Writings on Papyrus Covering
2,000-Year-Old Mummies ---
http://www.newsweek.com/ancient-egypt-glowing-ink-reveals-hidden-writings-papyrus-mummies-768066
Remembering the 1911 Triangle Factory Fire in NYC (most of the 146 victims
were young women) ---
http://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/
The String of Pearls (historical mystery featuring Sweeny Todd) --- www.salisburysquare.com/TSOP
Association of Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums: Resources Social studies www.atalm.org/node/52
Seattle Art Museum: Collection Highlights --- http://art.seattleartmuseum.org/collections
Biodiversity Heritage Library: A History of Cats from 1858 to 1922 ---
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/HistoryOfCats
Natural History and Evolution
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#---NaturalHistory
Emerson College: The American Comedy Archives --- www.emerson.edu/library/archives/american-comedy-archives
News from Anywhere: Blog of the William Morris Society (arts and crafts) ---
http://morrissociety.blogspot.co.uk/
The Devil's Tale: Dispatches from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book &
Manuscript Library (includes historic photographs) ---
https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/
19-Year-Old Student Uses Early Spy Camera to Take Candid Street Photos (Circa
1895) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/19-year-old-student-uses-early-spy-camera-to-take-candid-street-photos-circa-1895.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/the-film-posters-of-the-russian-avant-garde.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Cinderella Bibliography (fairy tale images and history) --- http://d.lib.rochester.edu/cinderella
World Wealth & Income Database --- http://wid.world/
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
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Jim Flora Arts (jazz of the 1950s and 1960s) --- www.jimflora.com
St. Olaf College: Archived Concerts and Recitals --- www.stolaf.edu/multimedia/streams/archive.cfm?category=concerts
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/
December 30, 2017
· Legends Aside, Moon’s Health Impact More of A Myth
· 8 Small Changes for a Slimmer You in 2018
· MRIs Safe With Older Pacemakers, Study Finds
January 2, 2018
January 3, 2018
January 4, 2018
January 5, 2018
January 8, 2018
January 9, 2018
January 10, 2018
January 12, 2018
January 13, 2018
January 15, 2018
January 16, 2018
World Wealth & Income Database --- http://wid.world/
OECD Health Statistics 2016 --- http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm
Facts and statistics (Fast Facts) --- http://gwu.edu/~gprice/handbook.htm
Bob Jensen's links to data and statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
Bob Jensen's World Library ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely
culprit ---
https://theconversation.com/with-teen-mental-health-deteriorating-over-five-years-theres-a-likely-culprit-86996
Jensen Comment
The conclusions of this study are still largely in the realm of speculation.
CRISPR may not actually work in humans (in theory there may be fixes)---
There are big hopes for CRISPR-based gene-therapies curing all kinds of
diseases. Immunity could mean that those treatments won’t work.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/05/243345
Autism Rates Have Stabilized in the USA ---
http://time.com/5084331/autism-rates-us-stable/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018010312pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Rates are still lowest for females and Hispanics
January 7, 2018 Reply from Rob Pinsker
Bob,
Thank you for sharing. A lot of what appeared in the article resonated with my own situation. Raising children on the spectrum is exhausting as it necessitates hyper-vigilance in order to find “successes” wherever they are. On the one hand, I was heartened by the article to highlight what people on the spectrum are capable of. I believe that there are certainly aspects of high-functioning autism that would be beneficial to the accounting/auditing profession: especially with the proliferation of IT and analytics we now have. On the other hand, articles like this and shows like “The Good Doctor” over-emphasize the savants, which are in reality a very small part of the autism population (1 in 10 stated in the article is a bit high). The overwhelming majority of folks on the spectrum are not savants, but still go through a similar regimen of dietary supplements and therapies as what was discussed in the article. As a society, my personal belief is to focus on the other 90+% of ASD individuals and what we can do to help them help society.
Happy New Year AECMers,
Rob Pinsker
The definitive, scientific answers to 20 health questions everyone has ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/health-myths-questions-2016-12/#does-sugar-make-you-hyper-1
Time Magazine: Top 5 Diets to Try in 2018 ---
http://time.com/5085711/best-diets-for-2018/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018010714pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Surgery won't solve the obesity epidemic, but it's the best tool we have
---
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/12/7/16587316/bariatric-surgery-weight-loss-lap-band
Time Magazine: Why Saunas Are Ridiculously Good For You ---
http://time.com/5096264/sauna-health-benefits/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011112pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Humor for January 2018
Dave Barry --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Barry
I don't know whether this is humor or not, but in Hollywood it would probably
be considered humor as long as it was not sabotage
Someone Left a Hatch Open and Crippled India’s $2.9
Billion Submarine ---
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a14783891/someone-left-a-hatch-open-and-crippled-indias-dollar29-billion-submarine/
It might be funnier if it was an Italian sub.
Remember the joke of why the Second Italian Navy uses glass bottom boats --- to
search for the First Italian Navy
This is not funny until you imagine the patient trying to get through airport
security
Veteran Sues VA Hospital for Leaving a Scalpel Inside
Him After Surgery ---
http://time.com/5103408/veteran-glenford-turner-scalpel-lawsuit/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018011612pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Dave Barry’s 2017 Year in Review: Did that really happen? ---
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article192007484.html
Looking back on 2017 is like waking up after a party where you made some poor decisions, such as drinking tequila squeezed from the underpants of a person you do not really know. (At least you hope it was tequila.)
The next day finds you lying naked in a Dumpster in a different state, smeared from head to toe with a mixture of Sriracha sauce and glitter. At first you remember nothing. But then, as your throbbing brain slowly reboots, memories of the night before, disturbing memories, begin creeping into your consciousness. As the full, hideous picture comes into focus, you curl into a ball, whimpering, asking yourself over and over: Did that really happen?
That’s how we feel about 2017. It was a year so surreal, so densely populated with strange and alarming events, that you have to seriously consider the possibility that somebody — and when we say “somebody,” we mean “Russia” — was putting LSD in our water supply. A bizarre event would occur, and it would be all over the news, but before we could wrap our minds around it, another bizarre event would occur, then another and another, coming at us faster and faster, battering the nation with a Category 5 weirdness hurricane that left us hunkering down, clinging to our sanity, no longer certain what was real.
Take “covfefe.” Remember? For a little while, it was huge. Everybody was talking about it! Covfefe! But then, just like that, it was gone. What the hell WAS it? Did it even really happen?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_on_social_media#"Covfefe"
Emerson College: The American Comedy Archives --- www.emerson.edu/library/archives/american-comedy-archives
It is now physically impossible for any crime
to be committed in our great city, because we declared it a zone of peace and
harmony and criminals have no choice but to abide by our new rule.
Quote from Rob Emanuel, Chicago Mayor
http://babylonbee.com/news/mayor-declares-chicago-crime-free-zone-criminals-disperse/
Trembling in fear all criminals fled the city or commenced looking for jobs when
they discovered crime is suddenly illegal in Chicago
Why didn't anybody think of this before?
But alas, the city officials are still in place --- bribes are still welcome but
these are now gifts toward good government
THREE LITTLE BOYS were concerned because they couldn't get anyone to play with them. They decided it was because they had not been baptized and didn't go to Sunday school.
So they went to the nearest church. But only the janitor was there.
One little boy said, "We need to be baptized because no one will come out and play with us. Will you baptize us?"
Sure," said the janitor.
He took them into the bathroom and dunked their little heads in the toilet bowl, one at a time. Then he said, "You are now baptized!"
When they got outside, one of them asked, "What religion do you think we are?"
The oldest one said, "We're not Kathlick , because they pour the water on you." "We're not Babtis, because they dunk all of you in the water." "We're not Methdiss , because they just sprinkle water on you.." The littlest one said, "Didn't you smell that water?"
They all joined in asking, "Yeah! What do you think that means?"
"I think it means we're Pisskopailians!"
Humor December 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1217.htm
Humor November 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1117.htm
Humor October 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1017.htm
Humor September 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0917.htm
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
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
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
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi- 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.
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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. |
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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. |
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Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
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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
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The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts
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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