Tidbits on May 31, 2018
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Early Spring Photographs: Lilacs and Phlox
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Lilacs/Set01/LilacsSet03.htm

 

Tidbits on May 31, 2018
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Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

For earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 
Bookmarks for the World's Library --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm 

Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Updates from WebMD --- Click Here

Google Scholar --- https://scholar.google.com/

Wikipedia --- https://www.wikipedia.org/

Bob Jensen's search helpers --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

Bob Jensen's World Library --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio

The Map of Philosophy: See All of the Disciplines, Areas & Subdivisions of Philosophy Mapped in a Comprehensive Video ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/the-map-of-philosophy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on philosophy and philosophers (keep scrolling downward) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

Probably Better Than a TED Talk:  Dan Meyer's talk from the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics last week was called “Why Good Activities Go Bad.” ---
https://vimeo.com/267793162
Click at the top of the right-side column

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/einsteins-theory-of-relativity-explained-in-one-of-the-earliest-science-films-ever-made-1923.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Extremely Rare Technicolor Film Footage from the 1920s Discovered: Features Louise Brooks Dancing in Her First Feature Film ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/extremely-rare-technicolor-film-footage-from-the-1920s-discovered.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

PBS: Civilizations --- www.pbs.org/civilizations/home

Take a Virtual Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/take-a-virtual-tour-of-shakespeares-globe-theatre-in-london.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

TED Talk With Humor and Inspiration
Emily Levine: How I made friends with reality
https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_levine_how_i_made_friends_with_reality?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-05-26&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image

The Inn on Sunset Hill (just down from our cottage) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5cqUX0LcbU&t=9s


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 

Hear the Recently Discovered, Earliest Known Recording of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (1894) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/hear-the-recently-discovered-earliest-known-recording-of-swing-low-sweet-chariot-1894.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

BBC Radio 3: The Early Music Show (music history) --- www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tn49

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

Exploring the Manly Local Studies (photographic history of New South Wales, Australia) --- http://mtchl.net/manlyimages/ 

Dominion of the North: Literary and Print Culture in Canada (art and literary history) ---
https://omeka.vicu.utoronto.ca/dominion/

Rethinking Guernica (Bascue city bombed by Nazis in WW II) --- http://guernica.museoreinasofia.es/en#realizacion

Scientists spent three weeks exploring the Gulf of Mexico's uncharted ocean habitats — and the images they captured are fascinating ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-deep-ocean-creatures-from-the-gulf-of-mexico-2018-5

Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections: Gabriel Garcia Marquez ---
https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll51

Botanical Arts & Artists: About Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) --- www.botanicalartandartists.com/about-elizabeth-blackwell.html

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Collections --- www.mfah.org/art

A Visual History of ISIS ---
http://time.com/longform/isis-visual-history-magnum-photos/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief-special-isis-history&utm_content=2018052019pm&eminfo=%7b%22EMAIL%22%3a%22MOt2LMJiSIk%2fSjadSWyB4I9Monw61fXF%22%2c%22BRAND%22%3a%22TD%22%2c%22CONTENT%22%3a%22Newsletter%22%2c%22UID%22%3a%22TD_TBS_8037C797-E79A-4334-93DF-C69734A9E17E%22%2c%22SUBID%22%3a%22105207569%22%2c%22JOBID%22%3a%22748922%22%2c%22NEWSLETTER%22%3a%22THE_BRIEF_SPECIAL_EDITION%22%2c%22ZIP%22%3a%2235864237%22%2c%22COUNTRY%22%3a%22%22%7d

Train Graveyard in Bolivia ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/train-graveyard-bolivia-2018-5#all-you-have-to-do-is-follow-the-deserted-train-tracks-to-find-a-graveyard-of-abandoned-trains-3

What Commuting Looks Like Around the World ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-commuting-looks-like-around-the-world-2017-9

Time Magazine:  The Best Park in Every State ---
http://time.com/money/5290198/best-park-in-every-us-state/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018052810am&xid=newsletter-brief&eminfo=%7b%22EMAIL%22%3a%22MOt2LMJiSIk%2fSjadSWyB4I9Monw61fXF%22%2c%22BRAND%22%3a%22TD%22%2c%22CONTENT%22%3a%22Newsletter%22%2c%22UID%22%3a%22TD_TBR_9341E248-F74B-4FC4-8A5B-F29E5D8E9ECB%22%2c%22SUBID%22%3a%2224083557%22%2c%22JOBID%22%3a%22756291%22%2c%22NEWSLETTER%22%3a%22THE_BRIEF%22%2c%22ZIP%22%3a%22035864237%22%2c%22COUNTRY%22%3a%22%22%7d
Jensen Comment
Sometimes number of visitors can be a controversial criterion that gives leading status to Central Park in New York and Butler Park in Austin a winning outcome. It's doubtful that people come from from thousands of miles away just to visit these two parks. On the other hand, some of visitors from far away are drawn to the Grand Canyon and other leading national parks in the USA.

From the Scout Report on May

Google Arts and Culture --- https://artsandculture.google.com/
To produce their Arts and Culture service, Google collaborated with over 1,200 museums, galleries, and institutions from around the world to digitize some of their exhibits and make them available online. Exhibits can be browsed by a number of facets, including time period, artist, and color. Many exhibits were digitized in 3D and can be explored in virtual reality using Google Cardboard. Users may also take virtual tours through some of the world's most famous museums and landmarks. In addition to the online experience, the Arts and Culture app can also be used to enrich real-world enjoyment of the arts. It features an art recognizer feature that can identify artwork and provide additional context for them. It can also notify users of nearby exhibits and cultural events. Arts and Culture smartphone apps are available for iOS and Android devices. It can also be accessed on the web using any modern browser

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

At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901 --- www.victorianresearch.org/atcl

Open Content on JSTOR --- www.jstor.org/open/?cid=soc_tw_JSTOR

The Brit Lit Blog (English Literature) --- https://britlitblog.com/

Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections: Gabriel Garcia Marquez ---
https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll51

Two Hundred Years of Blue ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/05/17/two-hundred-years-of-blue/?mc_cid=03b4d30fc0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

An Open Letter to Wikipedia by Philip Roth ---
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia?elqTrackId=576d3f59c34a4119897b54db16268910&elq=8199fd0e47494950a55cdf9dbcbbfc9a&elqaid=19193&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8711

Roth Was a Harsh Critic of Colleges ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/24/philip-roths-relationship-academe-its-complicated?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a466f5284c-DNU&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a466f5284c-197565045&mc_cid=a466f5284c&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

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 May 31, 2018
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2018/TidbitsQuotations053118.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




Probably Better Than a TED Talk:  Dan Meyer's talk from the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics last week was called “Why Good Activities Go Bad.” ---
https://vimeo.com/267793162
Click at the top of the right-side column


NYT:  The for-profit-college industry continues to cheat students while the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress do nothing ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/opinion/predatory-colleges-students-devos.html?elqTrackId=5dc95869b80045dc96a6648f05c9c2bd&elq=8199fd0e47494950a55cdf9dbcbbfc9a&elqaid=19193&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8711


Stanford University:  The Future of Food

Cutting-edge technology is overhauling the traditional farm. Here, Insights by Stanford Business examines why agriculture is poised for change and introduces you to GSB alumni whose startups are driving this innovation. 

 

Technology

Future of Food

Startups that focus on these seven technologies are changing agriculture.

Read More 

 

Strategy

Towers of Kale

This vertical farming startup plans to reimagine how we grow our food.

Read More 

 

Entrepreneurship

Bringing Green to the Desert

A smarter greenhouse startup will grow fresh vegetables in inhospitable climates.

Read More 

 

Supply Chain

Creating a Sustainable Steak

PastureMap built an app to help ranchers manage their herds.

Read More

 

Personal Review of My New Electrolux Pure i9 Robotic Vacuum ---
https://purei9.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI99zfks6l2wIVG7bACh0hbQDREAAYASAAEgLXkvD_BwE 
Published reviews don't always mention the negatives ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/electrolux-pure-i9-robot-vacuum-review-2018-5

After reading about how Electrolux improved on robotic vacuums, I recently purchased the "Electrolux Pure i9 Robotic Vacuum" for $899 (plus $85 for a five-year warranty) from Amazon. In the next three weeks I can still have time to return this item to Amazon without any questions asked, but I'm going to keep it even if it is not perfect. It does vacuum floors quite well.

Unless you live in a small apartment forget about turning on a robotic vacuum when you leave your house and return to a a fully-cleaned floor later in the day. Firstly the dirt collector is only about a pint in size and fills five or more times before finishing the main floor of our 3,400 square foot cottage. And the dirt collector must be emptied by hand. Secondly, this robot sometimes gets hung up and speaks out loud to me that he (Jeeves) needs a nudge. In theory this robot will clean for 40-60 minutes, automatically return to the charging station for three hours, and begin again where he last left off. However, in reality Jeeves cannot keep usually going on its own without getting a nudge now and then. He also needs his dirt collector emptied frequently.

At a price of nearly $1,000 many of you will balk at the expense. But with all my outdoor duties of mowing four acres and maintaining our three flower gardens I'm weary of heavy vacuuming inside the cottage. During our 24 years in San Antonio Erika and I both worked full time and hired an expensive high-quality house cleaner. Here in retirement in the White Mountains of NH there seemingly are no quality house cleaners available. Erika dusts and uses a light-weight Dyson cordless vacuum for spot cleaning (each Dyson battery only lasts 5-10 minutes), but after 17 spine surgeries Erika's not up to heavy vacuuming. It's up to me each week to give the entire cottage a corded Shark attack --- at least before I purchased Jeeves. Of course I must still use the Shark to clean upholstery above the floor now and then and to get at places Jeeves cannot reach.

Our cottage has a central vacuum port in every room, but I only use this vacuum machine on carpets in our basement. It's too much work to haul the 15-foot tube around the house and move furniture to get at the ports for the central vacuum connections in the rooms.

Our cottage has mostly oriental carpets on hardwood floors. Jeeves does a great job on these floors and rugs, including getting close to the baseboards. He can lift himself up about an inch to get from the hard floor to a carpet and push himself back down to hard floors.

Erika has the house strewn with things on the floors like dolls in tiny chairs or dolls just playing on the floor. Jeeves has a 3-D eye and can see such obstacles without bumping into them. Of course he cannot lift them and vacuum underneath. But he's built low to the ground and can clean under some beds, chairs, tables, and sofas that are hard for me to get under with the Shark. Of course he cannot get under or behind every piece of furniture.

Jeeves works his way around most obstacles in our house. But on occasion he literally calls out that he's stuck and needs a nudge. Fringes on most of our rugs are no problem for him except in the master bedroom where the rugs have exceptionally long fringes. Occasionally I have to nudge him off the long fringes in that room.

When Jeeves arrived at our house the set up entailed attaching one brush in less than ten seconds. You can purchase an app separately and do a somewhat complicated installation for remote control by a smart phone --- but I wanted no part of that app.

Cleaning Jeeves' parts appears to be quite simple, although he's not yet needed a parts clean up by me.

I confine Jeeves to one room at a time. Most rooms he can finish with less than one battery charge. He just quits when he's finished with a room he cannot exit. In two larger rooms I also set up the charging station that's light weight and easy to move. Then when he does about half a big room he automatically returns to his charging station. When fully charged once again he will automatically resume where he left off and clean for almost another hour before returning to his charging station.

A neat feature is that Jeeves does not fall down stairs in our house. His electric eye senses fall-off cliffs and turns him aside while he keeps cleaning along the upper edge. I think it's not a good idea to use Jeeves in the dark or in dimly lit places. Fortunately, our cottage has lots of bright daylight.

One reviewer said he removes the spinning front brush on carpets. This seems to make no difference for cleaning my oriental carpets. I let the brush spin away on our rugs and hardwood floors. If your house is fully carpeted I would probably remove the brush which simply snaps on and off. I take off this brush for the wall-to-wall carpeting in our top floor.

Jeeves will not end my having to give our house occasional Shark attacks, but he will greatly cut back on the frequency of those chores. Jeeves would be hugely improved if I could lay out a pan on the floor and he could automatically go to that pan, lift up his dirt collector, and dump it gently into the pan. And someday Jeeves might live with his smaller son who does stairs.

I think I'll keep Jeeves in the cottage even if he can't make a good margarita, wash windows, weed the gardens, or dump his own dirt collector.

What's my next robot purchase?
Maybe a robotic tractor with a lawn mower and snow thrower.
The problem is that they've not yet invented robotic lawn/hedge trimmers and flower weeders --- in my lawn these are needed much more than robotic lawn mowers.

Cottage

Set 01 of my cottage pictures --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Set 02 inside the cottage --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/2009/Tidbits090723.htm
Set 03 inside the cottage
--- www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Cottage\Inside/Set03/Set03InteriorCottage.htm 
Set 04 inside the cottage --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Cottage\Inside/Set04/Set04InteriorCottage.htm  
Photographs of Putting a New Rubber Roof Under Our Widow's Walk
http://cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/CottageHistory/WidowsWalk/WidowsWalk.htm

Indoor  Plants --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/IndoorPlants/IndoorPlantsFavorites.htm
Amaryllis --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/2008/Tidbits080212.htm   


Bringing Wikipedia into the Library ---
https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2018/05/01/bringing-wikipedia-into-the-library/


YouTube: 3Blue1Brown (video tutorials on math, bitcoin, crypto currencies, machine learning, etc.) ---
www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw/featured


How to prevent Amazon's Alexa and Echo devices from accidentally sending private conversations to your contacts ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-disable-sending-private-conversations-to-contacts-amazon-alexa-echo-2018-5

Amazon's Alexa keeps recordings of your voice — here's how to delete them ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-alexa-recordings-how-to-delete-2018-5


Applicants to Law Schools (Downward) Versus Medical Schools (Upward)
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/05/applications-to-law-school-versus-medical-school.html

Jensen Comment
Of course these are applicants and not admissions. In a given university I suspect it's much more common for medical school applicants to be rejected. But I did not research that question. Rejection rates are misleading. For example, Harvard's first year rejection rate is not extremely high because so many possible applicants give up Harvard hopes before they apply. I'm told that if you're a good pre-med graduate and get rejected don't give up hope. Keep studying and retaking the MCAT. The same is probably true for law student rejections who are really good students.


Tech Future:  35 big tech predictions for 2018 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/35-big-tech-predictions-for-2018-2018-1


States With a Population Smaller Than Los Angeles County ---
https://twitter.com/NinjaEconomics/status/998518773417238528


Advertising:  How the Math Men Overthrew the Mad Men ---
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/how-the-math-men-overthrew-the-mad-men


Orthodontist With $1 Million in Student Debt ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/05/29/orthodontist-1-million-student-debt?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=4ca9ab3f7f-DNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-4ca9ab3f7f-197565045&mc_cid=4ca9ab3f7f&mc_eid=1e78f7c952


EFF Presents Mur Lafferty's Science Fiction Story About Our Fair Use Petition to the Copyright Office ---
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/eff-presents-mur-laffertys-science-fiction-story-about-our-fair-use-petition

Bob Jensen's threads on Fair Use in the DMCA Copyright Act are at ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright


Five Things Investors Got Wrong About the Markets This Year — and How You Can Profit From Their Mistakes
Click Here


MIT:  Does the brain store information in discrete or analog form? ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611165/does-the-brain-store-information-in-discrete-or-analog-form/


The mysterious Cambridge library tower, supposedly full of banned books, is opening to the public ---
http://lisnews.org/the_mysterious_cambridge_library_tower_supposedly_full_of_banned_books_is_opening_to_the_public

Bob Jensen's threads on banned books ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Banned


California's Governor Brown: Higher Ed Should Be Like Chipotle with only a few curriculum choices (what a lousy idea) --- |
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/05/25/jerry-brown-higher-ed-should-be-chipotle?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=0179c826e8-DNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-0179c826e8-197565045&mc_cid=0179c826e8&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Jensen Comment
Mixing the metaphor a bit, what Governor Brown wants is the Henry Ford production line model --- you only get a Model T or a Model A.

This totally defies the purpose of a university to give students a vast menu of specialties containing expert scholars in that "university"  ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University

It also adds greatly to the expense of getting a wide array of expert scholars. College graduates (think nurses versus accountants versus mathematicians versus chemical engineers versus information technologists) would instead, under Governor Brown's proposal, be required to take more years of post-graduate specialties, whereas today graduates are better prepared to hit the ground running and need fewer years of post-graduate study and experience to become experts in their specialties.

Customers may like the simple menu of Chipotle now and then, but on other days they choose from many, many other specialty restaurants and menus. Being forced to eat at Chipotle every day for four years is a lousy idea.

Governor Brown has seemingly never witnessed a turf war over the required core courses in a university. It would not be at all pretty to witness the turf-war fight over what goes into a Model A versus a Model T graduates of a university. The end result might be that  UCLA would produce F-150s, UC Irvine would produce Explorers, UC Davis would produce Jeeps, UC San Francisco would produce an electric Model S, etc.

I thought about mixing more metaphors into my comment, but I think in the spirit of Governor Brown's proposal I only needed a couple  --- restaurants and vehicles.


Competency-Based Learning --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competency-based_learning

EDUCAUSE:  Competency-Based Education (CBE) ---
https://library.educause.edu/topics/teaching-and-learning/competency-based-educati

Western Governors University is a Leading Competency-Based Learning University ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University

Here’s How Western Governors U. Aims to Enroll a Million Students ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-How-Western-Governors/243492?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=0fe6b239932845ee9da44c2fa67cdf5f&elq=885d6ac654144af5aff9430a4640932d&elqaid=19192&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8710

Bob Jensen's Threads on Competency-Based Learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge


An Open Letter to Wikipedia by Philip Roth ---
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia?elqTrackId=576d3f59c34a4119897b54db16268910&elq=8199fd0e47494950a55cdf9dbcbbfc9a&elqaid=19193&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8711


Carl Sagan Video:  100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ex__M-OwSA

We know that the universe is awash with watery moons and planets. How can we pinpoint which of them could support life?
https://aeon.co/essays/in-a-galaxy-awash-in-water-do-any-other-worlds-have-just-enough?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dd5693da31-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-dd5693da31-68951505


MIT:  California is throttling back record levels of solar—and that’s bad news for climate goals ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611188/california-is-throttling-back-record-levels-of-solarand-thats-bad-news-for-climate-goals/


Roth Was a Harsh Critic of Colleges ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/24/philip-roths-relationship-academe-its-complicated?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a466f5284c-DNU&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a466f5284c-197565045&mc_cid=a466f5284c&mc_eid=1e78f7c952


U of Akron Professor Wanted to Boost Women's Grades (to attract majors)
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/05/17/u-akron-professor-wanted-boost-womens-grades?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=6ed1c43123-DNU20180111&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-6ed1c43123-197565045&mc_cid=6ed1c43123&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Jensen Comment
Of greater concern is grade inflation in general to attract students. This is where academic professionalism is really put to the test. Fortunately, in some disciplines like engineering, nursing, medicine, law, education, and accounting there are licensing examinations that can embarrass colleges with severe grade inflation in some disciplines. The GRE and other admissions tests also serve to keep grading more professional.


The Future of Learning: How Colleges Can Transform the Educational Experience ($179) ---
https://store.chronicle.com/collections/che-reports/products/the-future-of-learning-how-colleges-can-transform-the-educational-experience?elqTrackId=46b887558a554b3782803c0b17b18bdc&elq=2890f35979e14352b7b2d6982057b9d0&elqaid=19116&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8653

Explore the latest trends, innovations, and research that could fundamentally alter teaching and learning in the decade ahead.

Widespread concern about stagnant graduation rates, along with the rise of education technology, are pressuring colleges to modernize the teaching and learning experience. The traditional sink-or-swim approach is no longer good enough. Colleges must give all students, regardless of background, a fair shot at success and prepare them for an increasingly sophisticated economy.  

This Chronicle report will show academic leaders how to remove barriers, experiment, and innovate to prepare for the future of learning. Predictive analytics, enhanced advising, core course redesign, immersive learning, adaptive courseware, open educational resources, data ethics, and active learning are just some of the topics covered.

Get your copy of the report to learn how institutions are improving the educational experience and prepare your campus for the future of learning.

Gain insights into:

·         New strategies to ensure student success

·         The latest innovations in teaching and learning

·         How institutions can overcome barriers to innovation and manage change

Jensen Comment
This is pricey for a 56-page report. Most faculty and students and staff of colleges can probably access this report and other Chronicle publications for free via the campus library.

From a Chronicle of Higher Education newsletter on May 17, 2018

The Future of Learning

Close readers of The Chronicle’s teaching coverage may have noticed that there haven’t been as many stories from Beth lately. That’s because she’s been working on a report on the future of learning. The report is out now, and for sale here. It’s written with academic leaders in mind, but Beth and I had a recent conversation about what professors and others who care about college teaching might learn from her reporting.

Beckie: You spent three months working on this report, which lays out how technology, pedagogical innovations, and the student-success movement could change teaching and learning. Much of what you cover could alter the way professors do their jobs. What are the most important takeaways for them?

Beth: One of the things I was trying to convey is that reform is both hard and necessary. If you want more students to succeed, particularly at a time when more disadvantaged students are coming into higher education, then you need to be more deliberate in figuring out what works and trying to bring it to scale. One person described it to me by saying that the artisanal approach to teaching isn’t going to work anymore. I don’t think that means we’re going to have a bunch of robots teaching students, though.

Professors should expect measurement and data and analytics to only increase (at least for those who don’t teach at small colleges). It also means they need to advocate collectively for more support to help them do their jobs better. There’s a big disconnect between what academic leaders say they want to do to support student success and what is actually offered to encourage better teaching. In my report, I really hit that point hard — don’t assume your faculty is technophobic or resistant to change. Their concerns are real, and you should pay attention to what they need.

Beckie: You describe possible ways colleges could better elevate teaching and encourage professors to try new things in the classroom. Tell us more about that.

Beth: One thing I heard is that it’s really hard to experiment when it’s on top of all your other responsibilities. Colleges have to compensate or reward faculty in some way if they want them to try new things. Changing the way teaching is evaluated is one obvious way. Grand Valley State University does that, for example, by including a detailed rubric on how it measures effective teaching, which includes a number of indicators of things like active learning techniques.

Some innovative campuses — and I don’t honestly know how many are doing this — will also pay faculty members for the time it takes to redesign a course, particularly when they’re putting some or part of it online. Or they may offer course release time. All this says to the instructor that the college recognizes that it takes time to learn how to teach more effectively.

Beckie: I have to think one challenge underneath these efforts to improve teaching is the question of who’s doing it. We know a huge chunk of the teaching work force is adjuncts, and that professors in such jobs often have less access to institutional resources, including professional development. How does that factor in?

Beth: My understanding is that this is something most colleges haven’t really figured out how to address. There’s a project underway at Achieving the Dream that focuses on helping adjuncts become more engaged in student success. They’ll be coming out with a guide in the fall. Some community colleges, which have long depended heavily on adjuncts, are getting them more involved in course design, which also brings with it a discussion on teaching.

Beckie: Throughout the report, you describe technology as a tool, not a solution. And you mention the risk colleges face of falling for ed tech’s hype. Do you have any advice for professors who want to experiment with new technology, but want to go in with their eyes open?

Beth: There are some projects out there that they may want to check out, although they may also want to collaborate with their academic technologists or instructional designers on campus to vet these tools. Two initiatives that have gotten attention recently are the new Jefferson Education Exchange, which is crowdsourcing information from K-12 teachers and college instructors to figure out what works. There’s also the Courseware in Context, or CWiC, framework, to help you think through what kind of technology you need. And there are also associations like the Online Learning Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative, which provide professional development in ed tech and teaching.

The report itself was, for me, just the beginning. I plan to dive into a lot of these issues in more detail to figure out what’s working and what’s not. And I also want to hear from readers about the challenges they’re facing on these topics. Please get in touch with me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com to share any thoughts.

Video: A Scenario of Higher Education in 2020 (or thereabouts)---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ

This Is What Georgia Tech Thinks College Will Look Like in 2040:  Continuous Learning, Subscription Fees, and Worldwide Networks of Advisers  ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/This-Is-What-Georgia-Tech/243400?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=952a8d2642d341c39d19f526d7cc2716&elq=297064fea7b148129bd00f0e351fb0c1&elqaid=19028&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8611

The Georgia Institute of Technology has a fondness for bold experiments. It created the nation’s largest online master’s program in computer science, which won praise for its quality and low cost. It is home to the Center for 21st Century Universities, a "living laboratory" for educational innovation. It introduced artificially intelligent tutors in the classrooms. And it is reimagining the campus library to focus less on books and more on teaching, research, and collaboration.

Three years ago, the university took this experimentation a step further when it established the Commission on Creating the Next in Education, asking it to imagine the public research university of 2040 and beyond. Which business and funding models will become outdated? How will Georgia Tech best serve the next generations of learners?

The commission’s report, recently released, contains a number of provocative ideas. Among them: new credentials that recognize continuous learning, a subscription fee model instead of tuition, "education stations" that bring services and experiences to students, and worldwide networks of advisers and coaches for life.

These ideas make sense, says Rafael L. Bras, Georgia Tech’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, when you consider the institute’s public mission. "A lot of our discussion is shaped by the concept of the iron triangle: affordability, accessibility, and excellence," he says. "In many ways you could say this is radical. In other ways you could say this is unavoidable. In time, if we read the world correctly, this is something that demands and need will call for."

Bras spoke with The Chronicle this week about the commission’s report and what the future may hold for public universities. Here are excerpts from that conversation, condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. In your report, one line in particular stood out to me: "The Georgia Tech Commitment imagines a future not marked by arbitrary entries on a calendar, but one with numerous entry and exit points where students associate with rather than enroll at Georgia Tech."

A. To me it is the heart of the idea, and it shapes everything else. It is quite evident to us that, after graduation, students and learners everywhere will probably have 10 jobs, 10 professions.

On our residential side, we see that many of our students are really and truly developing their own businesses. Our goal is to spin out in the reasonably near future no less than 100 companies of students a year. They are beginning to commingle their education with their work, with their job, with their profession.

So all this is blurring, and that is what the Georgia Tech Commitment is all about. It is recognizing that it is already happening and will happen more.

Q. What is the role of the traditional university in this future? Is it a question of rebalancing what you have now, to put more emphasis on a virtual university, or do you see a dismantling of the traditional undergraduate experience?

A. I don’t believe in dismantling the undergraduate experience. I believe there will still be a significant demand for high-quality residential experiences. What this says is that it will possibly be more hybrid. Not in the delivery of education, but in the activities of the students.

The campus will remain very strong, because in that age bracket you will probably still see significant interest from people maturing in that type of environment. But I do believe it will be a more porous environment, and more porous in that it will bleed more in and out in the K-to-12 arena and reach out into the older population.

Q. What’s the hypothetical student journey going to look like? Would a student take a year or semester on campus, stop out, then continue later?

A. You could imagine increasing engagement in the K-to-12 arena, where the teachers themselves are engaged with us all the time, where students in 10th, 11th, 12th grades are potentially taking some courses, if they are advanced enough, that put them in the college environment.

Then they may choose to come to Georgia Tech. Some would spend four years, others come for a couple of years, develop a company, and then may choose to stop out for a semester, while being mentored by us, and develop their business. They come back and optimally graduate and finish that period in life.

Then they go out for five years in a company, realize they want to do something else, and engage with us via other offerings. The question is what offerings are out there for them, and how do we establish a link that is beyond the digital or cyber?

Q. The report mentions something called the Georgia Tech atrium. What exactly is that? Is it an entrepreneurship lab? Or is it a place where someone could take a class?

A. We’re beginning to define it. Imagine us with a presence — not a large presence — in a shared space with entrepreneurs. That presence becomes a gathering place for individuals, some alums, some not, who are looking for a number of things. It could be access to information. It could be mentoring. It could be traditional lectures with visiting faculty. It could be a place where you participate online, but rather than doing it from your house, you sit there in a group that works together in going through this program.

We found already in many of our professional master’s degrees that students self-organize and love to be together. Just like start-ups want to be together. You could imagine self-organized cohorts that are going through a computer-science or analytics program, and that all occurs in the Georgia Tech atrium.

Q. The report also proposes a subscription model, like Netflix. Do you think higher ed might benefit from moving toward this model?

A. It’s something we need to explore seriously. You could imagine that, as you move with the Georgia Tech touchpoint throughout your life, that in essence once in, you’re in forever. Part of a possible business model for that would be a subscription basis that you pay ahead or pay as you go. I don’t know what the answer to that is yet, but how do you make it happen?

People have thought of that before, I don’t know that anybody has tried it. And maybe it’s not the perfect answer, but it has to be considered.

Q. The report also talks about the importance of artificial intelligence in executing this vision, through AI-enhanced services like advising and tutoring.

A. There is a role for AI agents for all types of things. Not to take the place of humans — in fact, we want to increase that, but in some dimensions and not in others.

We had an experiment with a teaching assistant that was an AI agent ("Jill Watson"). That was an eye-opener. It was very successful. We are increasingly doing that. The great majority of exchanges [between students and professors] are easily handled by that type of tool. Now, as you push the envelope for a more sophisticated tutor, I think there’s still work to be done. But it’s very feasible.

There are some things that an AI tutor is not going to be able to do, and that’s where we warm-blooded humans must come in. But we are moving in that direction, and that will allow better service to more people.

Public universities are public for a reason: It’s access. And we believe in that. So we need to find a way to provide excellent access information, and tutoring in a different way. Because we cannot do it with the old model.

Q. Do you expect that external partners will come along as well — accreditors, employers, government agencies? How optimistic are you that they will say, Sure, let’s try this new thing?

Continued in article

There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, but Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen says that half are bound for bankruptcy in the next few decades ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/hbs-professor-half-of-us-colleges-will-be-bankrupt-in-10-to-15-years.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain

This is related to issues of "badges" in academe
"A Future Full of Badges," by Kevin Carey, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2012 ---

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Future-Full-of-Badges/131455/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


The backlash that never happened: New data shows people actually increased their Facebook usage after the Cambridge Analytica scandal ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/people-increased-facebook-usage-after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-2018-5


Low-Income Students: More Going to College, But Few Earning Degrees ---
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/high_school_and_beyond/2018/05/college_graduation_gap_low_income_students.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2&M=58490200&U=2290378


Climate:  The Deep Time of Walden Pond ---
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/the-deep-time-of-walden-pond


New Features Coming to Excel ---
https://www.fm-magazine.com/news/2018/may/new-excel-features-office-365-201818706.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=18May2018


Your Doctor’s Visits Will Change Forever With These New Technologies ---
https://readwrite.com/2018/05/03/your-doctors-visits-will-change-forever-with-these-new-technologies/


Bid-Rigging Business as Usual in Detroit ---
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/03/09/fbi-detroit-demolition-bid-rigging/410259002/


Court filing shows Tesla wants securities-fraud lawsuit dismissed ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-securities-fraud-lawsuit-model-3-production-2018-5

Tesla settles class action lawsuit over 'dangerous' Autopilot system ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-tesla-settles-class-action-lawsuit-over-dangerous-autopilot-system-2018-5


How a $9 billion startup (Theranos) deceived Silicon Valley ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/john-carreyrou-how-theranos-deceived-silicon-valley-startup-bad-blood-sample-technology-2018-5

John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal broke the original story about how Theranos, a company that pitched a revolutionary blood-testing system, was misleading investors, patients, and business partners about how its technology worked. Carreyrou's new book, "Bad Blood," documents the history of Theranos and how its CEO Elizabeth Holmes sold a vision that was too good to be true. Carreyrou sat down with Business Insider to talk how Theranos was able to pull off this massive deception. Following is a transcript of the video.

Steve Kovach: Theranos was one of those Silicon Valley stories that sounded too good to be true. It was going to revolutionize the laboratory testing industry. And it turns out, it was too good to be true. John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal charted that story about Theranos in his new book, Bad Blood. John, thanks for joining us.

John Carreyrou: Thanks for having me.

Steve Kovach: So, let's talk about what Theranos was saying it's technology could do and what it was actually doing behind the scenes. What were they selling to the public and investors?

John Carreyrou: Right, so, when I started looking into the company in early 2015, they had already gone live with the blood test for a year and a half.

Steve Kovach: And this was in Walgreens?

John Carreyrou: In Walgreens stores, they'd rolled out in a couple Walgreens stores in Northern California and then another 40 or 45 Walgreens stores in the Phoenix area. And the claim was that they had a technology that could run the full range of laboratory tests from just a drop or two of blood pricked from the finger, get you very fast results and do it at a fraction of the cost as regular laboratories, even cheaper than Medicare. The reality was that Theranos had a prototype that was the last iteration of its device called the Mini Lab. And that was a malfunctioning prototype that it was still trying to make work. And when they had gone live in the fall of 2013, they had gone live with a previous iteration of the technology they called the Edison, so named after Thomas Edison, that was actually a very limited machine. It could only do one class of blood tests known as immunoassays. And it didn't do those tests well. It was an error-ridden machine. And so for the rest of the tests on the menu, and they had about 250 tests on the menu, they had hacked machines made by the German conglomerate, Siemens. They had modified them so that they could accommodate small blood samples. And then there was a third bucket of tests that they just did the regular, the old regular way with venous draws, drawing the same amount of blood as everyone else and running it also on commercial analyzers.

Steve Kovach: So how does this happen? This is a highly regulated industry here in the US, you would think something like this that was mostly smoke and mirrors wouldn't be able to get past regulators let alone into a major retail chain like Walgreens. What did Elizabeth Holmes and her colleagues do to sway regulators and sway Walgreens into believing that this should actually be put to use on real patients?

John Carreyrou: Right. So for one thing they exploited a, what I call a regulatory no man's land, in the laboratory space. You have on the one hand the FDA which regulates reviews and improves the laboratory instruments that labs use that they buy off the shelf and that they use in their labs. And on the other hand, you have CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is the regulator of clinical laboratories. But, then there's this category of tests known as laboratory developed tests which are fashioned by labs with their own methods that aren't really regulated by either of these entities. And Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, were able to exploit this third category and say we fall in this category, what are known as LDTs, because we're using our own proprietary machine within the walls of our own lab. Therefore, we don't have to be reviewed by the FDA or at least our machines don't have to be reviewed by the FDA. And CMS which regulates labs doesn't look closely at LDTs so that's the loophole that they were able to exploit. Theranos had been doing, had been attempting to validate its technology for years with pharmaceutical companies. All these validation studies with big pharma companies had failed and in early 2010 it was running out of options so it decided to go straight to consumers. And the way to do that was to align with a retail partner and so they started courting Walgreens. And they told Walgreens, we've got this great technology, it's portable, it can do all these tests off just a drop of blood and we want to partner with you. And Walgreens was desperate for a new way to renewed growth. And so it started meeting with Elizabeth in Palo Alto and in Chicago where Walgreens is based. And it hired a laboratory consultant, named Kevin Hunter to help it do due diligence. And this guy, Keven Hunter, as I explained in the book, very early on smelled a rat. And tried to alert Walgreens executives to his suspicions and they just wouldn't listen to him.

Steve Kovach: So these tests are being done in Walgreens, you know they're hyping the technology, cover stories on famous magazines and so forth. Why weren't we hearing much from the medical community or if we were why did it seem so diminished? Why weren't there more flags from peers in the industry?

John Carreyrou: Right. There were whispers in especially the field of laboratory science. But the bottom line is that the company was so secretive and very little if anything was filtering out of the company itself. So, while there were some skeptics in academia and in the field of laboratory testing, all they could say was that there was this company that was getting a lot of hype, whose founder was becoming a Silicon Valley celebrity, at the same time wasn't doing what you usually do in medicine, which is that you publish studies about your innovation and you publish them in peer-reviewed publications and you have your peers check what you're doing and verify it. So there were a couple laboratory scientists who actually wrote op-eds in scientific journals. One of them was Dr. Ioannidis at Stanford who came out with a gen op-ed in, I believe it was 2015. I'd already started digging into the company at that point. A couple months later, a laboratory scientist at the University of Toronto, I believe, had another op-ed in another scientific journal.

Steve Kovach: Which no one reads these by the way, it's not like The Wall Street Journal where everyone's going to see it. It's like these nerdy guys just talking about it.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
It's amazing how often Wall Street Journal reporters make seminal discoveries of huge corporate frauds such as Enron ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#WarningSigns

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


Two years after student loses PhD, the Office of Research Integrity (finally) concludes he committed misconduct ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2018/05/25/two-years-after-student-loses-phd-ori-concludes-he-committed-misconduct/


Minnesota child day care fraud cash going to terrorists? (Day Care Centers Weren't Caring For Children at All) ---
https://www.twincities.com/2018/05/15/child-daycare-fraud-cash-going-to-terrorists-lets-unpack-this/

Here’s the idea that’s freaking people out: “$100 million in Minnesota taxpayer child day care fraud is going to Islamic terrorists.”

It doesn’t look like all of that is true — but parts of it are.

There’s a lot of smoke — and a lot of fire — around this story, which KMSP-TV/Fox 9 broke this week and has sent lawmakers and bureaucrats at the state Capitol into action. And these actions and reactions have been all over the place, ranging from hunkering in echo chambers to demanding answers to pouncing on red political meat to, well, everything in between.

The main one is titled “Millions of dollars in suitcases fly out of MSP, but why?”

A second report is important, too, since it backs up some of the assertions. Both reports were led by reporter Jeff Baillon.

Here’s what the reports say: There’s child care fraud going on. It might be $100 million. Some of it might be going to terrorists. There’s $100 million in cash in suitcases leaving MSP. Some of that money heads to the Middle East or East Africa, including Somalia. Some of that money probably gets skimmed by terrorists. The reports cite a combination of sources, ranging from those with names and firsthand knowledge to anonymous sources, whose credibility can’t be judged from outside.

Here’s what the reports do NOT say: “$100 million in Minnesota taxpayer child day care fraud is going to Islamic terrorists.” Although the report does suggest that’s possible, no source involved with the report actually said that.

But that doesn’t mean this isn’t important. So let’s get into it.

Continued in Article


Five Rules of the College and Career Game: College Degrees Pay More But are Heavily Dependent on Specialties---
https://cew-7632.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/CEW-FiveRulesReport-final.pdf?elqTrackId=f1f8acb70ca2404eb4bfcef876758ac0&elq=e52acf24017046d2be026f7844d3e4a7&elqaid=19114&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8651

Jensen Comment
This study has the usual flaws by ignoring the fact that success varies with prestige of the college degree and that there is considerable standard deviation even for type of degree.

Compensation as well as job opportunities vary a great deal where success in some disciplines nearly always entails costly urban living. This can greatly increase living costs, especially for housing and private school tuition for children.

What the study ignores is that starting salaries can be misleading. For example, engineers generally start out at higher salaries than accountants but the chances down the road managerial opportunities are often better for accountants. Some lower paying jobs such as working as an agent for the FBI or IRS greatly increase opportunities later on.

New graduates should always look for things other than starting compensation, things like training, exposure to top clients, travel requirements, dependence of compensation on commissions, and stress expectations. Sometimes compensation and stress go hand and hand such as in law and public accounting where starting salaries may be relatively low and fixed at the beginning and can increase greatly depending upon ability to attract and serve clients. Often stress and compensation are highly correlated.


One of the biggest tech companies in China finally released its new laptop in the US — and it comes with a $300 Amazon gift card ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-matebook-x-pro-release-date-price-2018-5

Jensen Comment
While tucked away remotely in the mountains, Dell's in-home warranty service has meant a lot to me (for some reason one of my old laptops kept blowing motherboards for a time). Because of this in-home warranty service I'm sticking with Dell.


Tesla Model 3 fails to get recommendation from Consumer Reports because of 'big flaws' ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-fails-to-get-consumer-reports-recommendation-2018-5


The University of Kentucky is moving to fire a tenured professor after concluding that he inappropriately required students to buy a self-published book and then profited from the sale ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/05/18/ky-professor-could-be-fired-over-book-sales-students?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=7776668cda-DNU20180111&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-7776668cda-197565045&mc_cid=7776668cda&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Jensen Comment
Call in an auditor. It's common for universities and/or professors to recover costs, but in accounting "cost" can be a complicated calculation.

Professors who adopt their own books published by textbook publishers commonly return royalties to students. Returning their royalties to departments and then taking a tax deduction seems unethical to me since the students are still taking a hit.

One of the biggest ploys by publishers that used to get to me is when two or more professors make under-the-table deals to adopt each others' textbooks for large courses.


Metacognition:  This Amazingly Simple Flash Card Technique Lets You Learn Anything in 5 Minutes and Remember It Forever ---
https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/this-amazingly-simple-technique-lets-you-learn-anything-in-5-minutes-remember-it-forever.html

Jensen Comment
This works well for a short stack of flash cards, but it hardly works for a 900 page biology textbook or a 1,200 page intermediate accounting textbook.

Bob Jensen's threads on metacognition are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

Jensen Comment
The flash card technique in my opinion works well in terms of a relatively small stack of flash cards such as for learning the basics of bidding in the game contract bridge. However, for wide ranging things such as becoming a Grand Master at contract bridge the best approach for metacognitive memory is seeking out on your own to find answers (such as playing lots of games of tournament bridge).

The Business Activity Model (BAM) experiment for two sequential courses in intermediate accounting at the University of Virginia and Villanova provides a perfect example. Instructors replaced the textbook and lectures that provided correct answers with a complicated realistic case that contained all kinds of errors. Students were then turned loose to find answers on their own from any sources they chose for research. The key to better memory is to learn on your own rather than to memorize from textbooks and lectures. The BAM experiment is similar to working on the job as an accountant trying to unravel the mistakes of a lousy real-world bookkeeping system.

One of the hardest things for teachers is resisting urges to reveal answers to students. Of course after examinations teachers at last have to reveal correct answers.

 Another hard thing for teachers is the greater risk of low teaching evaluations. A typical BAM student comment was: "Everything I learned in this course I had to learn on my own."

One of the main outcomes of the experiment was that after graduation there was a marked improvement in passage rates on the CPA examination for these universities. The metacognitive benefit of learning on your own is long-term memory.

For a summary of the BAM experimental outcomes go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm


Student Teaching Evaluations Shake-Up for Promotion Decisions ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/22/most-institutions-say-they-value-teaching-how-they-assess-it-tells-different-story?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=92984764da-DNU&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-92984764da-197565045&mc_cid=92984764da&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Research is reviewed in a rigorous manner, by expert peers. Yet teaching is often reviewed only or mostly by pedagogical non-experts: students. There’s also mounting evidence of bias in student evaluations of teaching, or SETs -- against female and minority instructors in particular. And teacher ratings aren’t necessarily correlated with learning outcomes.

All that was enough for the University of Southern California to do away with SETs in tenure and promotion decisions this spring. Students will still evaluate their professors, with some adjustments -- including a new focus on students’ own engagement in a course. But those ratings will not be used in high-stakes personnel decisions.

The changes took place earlier than the university expected. But study after recent study suggesting that SETs advantage faculty members of certain genders and backgrounds (namely white men) and disadvantage others was enough for Michael Quick, provost, to call it quits, effective immediately. 

 

'I'm Done'

“He just said, ‘I’m done. I can’t continue to allow a substantial portion of the faculty to be subject to this kind of bias,” said Ginger Clark, assistant vice provost for academic and faculty affairs and director of USC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching. “We’d already been in the process of developing a peer-review model of evaluation, but we hadn’t expected to pull the Band-Aid off this fast.”

 

While Quick was praised on campus for his decision, the next, obvious question is how teaching will be assessed going forward. The long answer is through a renewed emphasis on teaching excellence in terms of training, evaluation and incentives.

“It’s big move. Everybody's nervous," Clark said. "But what we've found is that people are actually hungry for this kind of help with their teaching."

 

SETs -- one piece of the puzzle -- will continue to provide “important feedback to help faculty adjust their teaching practices, but will not be used directly as a measure in their performance review,” Clark said. The university’s evaluation instrument also was recently revised, with input from the faculty, to eliminate bias-prone questions and include more prompts about the learning experience. 

 

Umbrella questions such as, “How would you rate your professor?” and “How would you rate this course?” -- which Clark called “popularity contest” questions -- are now out. In are questions on course design, course impact and instructional, inclusive and assessment practices. Did the assignments make sense? Do students feel they learned something? 

 

Students also are now asked about what they brought to a course. How many hours did they spend on coursework outside of class? How many times did they contact the professor? What study strategies did they use? 

While such questions help professors gauge how their students learn, Clark said, they also signal to students that “your learning in this class depends as much as your input as your professor’s work.” There is also new guidance about keeping narrative comments -- which are frequently subjective and off-topic -- to course design and instructional practices.

 

Still, SETs remain important at USC. Faculty members are expected to explain how they used student feedback to improve instruction in their teaching reflection statements, which continue to be part of the tenure and promotion process, for example. But evaluation data will no longer be used in those personnel decisions. 

Schools and colleges may also use evaluations to gather aggregate data on student engagement and perceptions about the curriculum, or USC’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, Clark said. They may also use them to identify faculty members who do “an outstanding job at engaging students, faculty who may need some support in that area of their teaching, or problematic behaviors in the classroom that require further inquiry.” 

Again, however, SETs themselves will not be used as a direct measure in performance evaluations. 

 

More Than a Number

While some institutions have acknowledged the biases inherent in SETs, many cling to them as a primary teaching evaluation tool because they’re easy -- almost irresistibly so. That is, it takes a few minutes to look at professors’ student ratings on, say, a 1-5 scale, and label them strong or weak teachers. It takes hours to visit their classrooms and read over their syllabi to get a more nuanced, and ultimately more accurate, picture.

Yet that more time-consuming, comprehensive approach is what professors and pedagogical experts have been asking for, across academe, for years. A 2015 survey of 9,000 faculty members by the American Association of University Professors, for instance, found that 90 percent of respondents wanted their institutions to evaluate teaching with the same seriousness as research and scholarship. 

 

The survey gave additional insight into the questionable validity of SETs: two-thirds of respondents said these evaluations create pressure to be easy graders, a quality students reward, and many reported low rates of feedback. 

Echoing other studies and faculty accounts, responses to the AAUP survey suggested that SETs have an outsize impact on professors teaching off the tenure track, in that high student ratings can mean a renewed contract -- or not.

The AAUP committee leading the 2015 study argued that faculty members within departments and colleges -- not administrators -- should develop their own, holistic teaching evaluations. It also urged “chairs, deans, provosts and institutions to end the practice of allowing numerical rankings from student evaluations to serve as the only or the primary indicator of teaching quality, or to be interpreted as expressing the quality of the faculty member’s job performance.”

Jensen Comment
My main objection to using student teacher evaluations for promotion decisions is that, in my opinion, this is a major cause of the awful grade inflation we've seen in North America over the four decades. Studies such as those at Duke pointing to this referenced at ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor


How Seattle's Economic Illiteracy Kills Jobs ---
http://reason.com/archives/2018/05/16/how-seattles-economic-illiteracy-hurts-b

Seattle Scales Back Tax in Face of Amazon’s Revolt, but Tensions Linger ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/technology/seattle-amazon-headquarters-tax.html

SEATTLE — After intense lobbying by local businesses and a bold threat by Amazon to curtail development in its hometown, the Seattle City Council on Monday approved a smaller and more limited tax on big companies than originally envisioned.

The new tax — dubbed the “Amazon Tax” by locals — will fund affordable housing and homeless services in a city whose economic boom, driven in no small part by Amazon, has priced many residents out of the area and forced some onto the streets.

Amazon, which halted two major expansion projects in Seattle in protest over the larger tax increase, said it was disappointed even with the smaller tax package, although the company said it would restart the planning process for one of its new buildings. It was still exploring the possibility of subleasing a second building that a developer is currently building.

 

The council had originally considered an annual “head” tax of $500 per full-time employee for Amazon and other large employers, but the amended measure that passed reduced that figure to $275. Instead of the $75 million a year the tax was originally expected to raise, it will bring in less than $50 million. The council also included a sunset provision that would require the tax to be reauthorized in five years.

The compromise failed to defuse tensions between Amazon and the city it has called home for the last 24 years.

Even though the company decided to resume one of its building projects, Drew Herdener, an Amazon vice president, said in a statement, “We remain very apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here.”

But the company’s tactics in Seattle has also garnered concern among other cities bidding to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to town.

Twenty finalist locations across North America have been aggressively wooing Amazon to win up to 50,000 high-paying jobs that its second headquarters would bring. In some of those places, there is opposition growing over the tax incentives that some city and state governments have agreed to give Amazon in return for being selected. And Amazon’s hardball politics in Seattle has further soured some local leaders.

“I absolutely find it unacceptable to see politically threatening behavior as is occurring there,” said Robin Kniech, a member of the City Council in Denver, one of the finalists for Amazon’s second headquarters. “It certainly doesn’t send a message that you expect to be a part of the community.”

Continued in article


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

MIT:  How to get blockchains to talk to each other ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611187/how-to-get-blockchains-to-talk-to-each-other/

MIT:  In Blockchain We Trust ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610781/in-blockchain-we-trust/

Russian programmers have built up an outsize presence in the world of blockchain, crypto currencies, and other virtual assets ---
https://qz.com/1267356/why-are-there-so-many-russians-involved-in-crypto-and-icos/

Blockchain could be your solution to spreadsheet fatigue ---
http://blog.aicpa.org/2018/03/blockchain-could-be-your-solution-to-spreadsheet-fatigue.html#sthash.ZxLlLupt.dpbs

IBM told investors that it has over 400 blockchain clients — including Walmart, Visa, and Nestlé ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-blockchain-enterprise-customers-walmart-visa-nestl-2018-3

Deloitte’s new blockchain lab in New York anticipating make-or-break year ---
http://www.big4.com/big4-thought-leader-interviews/deloittes-new-blockchain-lab-in-new-york-anticipating-make-or-break-year/

Facebook is getting into blockchain — here's what it might be building ---
https://futurism.com/facebook-blockchain-team-what-are-they-up-to/

MIT Business of Blockchain 2018 Coverage ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/collection/business-of-blockchain-2018-coverage/

Zorba:  Blockchain ledgers are not accounting ledgers ---
https://zorba-research.blogspot.ca/2018/01/blockchain-ledgers-are-not-accounting.html


Russian information troops, disinformation, and democracy ---
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8176


Retraction Watch:  Overall, the research “contradict(s) a large body of existing literature and do(es) not provide a sufficient level of evidence to support the claims made in the paper.” Um, did the reviewers even read the paper? ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2018/05/18/caught-our-notice-hey-peer-reviewers-did-you-even-read-this-paper/#more-65786

Retraction Watch:  What took more than five years? Elsevier retracts 20 papers by world’s most prolific fraudster ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2018/05/17/what-took-more-than-five-years-elsevier-retracts-20-papers-by-worlds-most-prolific-fraudster/




From the Scout Report on May 11, 2018

OPNSense --- https://opnsense.org/
OPNSense is an open source operating system that can be used to build a firewall appliance. When installed on a dedicated computer (typically with at least two network cards), it can provide protection and monitoring for an entire network. OPNSense includes "captive portal" features that can be used to manage a public wifi network. It also incorporates network traffic monitoring using the industry-standard Netflow system. OPNSense administrators can also enable category-based web filtering (e.g. for school networks). A number of VPN options are included as well, including OpenVPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP. All of OPNSense's features are configured through a web-based interface for which extensive online documentation is available. The smallest machine that can run OPNsense will have a 500MNz intel processor with 512MB of memory and 4 GB of storage. For full functionality, the OPNSense project recommends a 1.5 GHz intel processor, 4GB of memory, and 120GB of storage.


Research Teams Sequence Hepatitis B Viruses from Ancient Skeletons

 

In Ancient Skeletons, Scientists Discover a Modern Foe: Hepatitis B
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/science/ancient-dna-bones-hepatitis.html

The Oldest Virus Ever Sequenced from a 7,000-Year-Old Tooth
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/a-7000-year-old-virus-sequenced-from-a-neolithic-mans-tooth/559862

Liver-destroying virus may have been with us since the dawn of civilization
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/liver-destroying-virus-may-have-been-us-dawn-civilization

The paradox of HBV evolution as revealed from a 16th-century mummy
http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006750

NCBI: Viruses: Structure, Function, and Uses
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21523

Khan Academy: Viruses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h5Jd7sgQWY

This past week, two separate research teams announced that they had sequenced the DNA of early strands of Hepatitis B (HBV) from the skeletons of humans who lived thousands of years ago. In doing so, the two research groups have uncovered new insights into the history of the virus that continues to have a devastating impact around the globe. One of the two research teams was headed by Ben Krause-Kyora of Kiel University and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. This team sequenced the DNA of Hepatitis B viruses found on three skeletons from individuals who lived from 1,000 to 7,000 years ago, respectively. This team reported their research on bioRxiv. On Wednesday, a second team of scientists headed by Eske Willerslev (an evolutionary geneticist who is a professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark) published an article in Nature outlining their research. This team successfully sequenced HBV DNA from 12 skeletons of individuals who lived between 4,500 and 820 years ago. University of Sydney virologist Edward C. Holmes remarked on this study: "It's a hugely important moment in our understanding of one the most important pathogens of humans." [MMB]

The first three links take readers to three summaries of these two new research studies. These summaries come from Carl Zimmer of The New York Times, Sarah Zhang of The Atlantic, and Michael Price of Science Magazine. Earlier this year, another team of scientists at Rutgers University sequenced HBV DNA from the mummy of a child who lived approximately 450 years ago and published their results in PLOS One. Readers will find that study via the fourth link. Those interested in learning (or teaching) more about the science of viruses may find the National Center for Biotechnology Information's online resource on the subject to be helpful. Finally, the last link takes visitors to Khan Academy's helpful video about viruses.


From the Scout Report on May

Google Arts and Culture --- https://artsandculture.google.com/
To produce their Arts and Culture service, Google collaborated with over 1,200 museums, galleries, and institutions from around the world to digitize some of their exhibits and make them available online. Exhibits can be browsed by a number of facets, including time period, artist, and color. Many exhibits were digitized in 3D and can be explored in virtual reality using Google Cardboard. Users may also take virtual tours through some of the world's most famous museums and landmarks. In addition to the online experience, the Arts and Culture app can also be used to enrich real-world enjoyment of the arts. It features an art recognizer feature that can identify artwork and provide additional context for them. It can also notify users of nearby exhibits and cultural events. Arts and Culture smartphone apps are available for iOS and Android devices. It can also be accessed on the web using any modern browser.


"Yanny vs. Laurel" Debate Sparks Conversation among Linguistics, Psychologists, and Other Experts

 

Yanny or Laurel explained: why do some people hear a different word?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/16/yanny-or-laurel-sound-illusion-sets-off-ear-splitting-arguments

'Yanny' or "Laurel'? Why People Hear Different Things In That Viral Clip
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/16/611701171/yanny-or-laurel-why-people-hear-different-things-in-that-viral-clip

A Linguist Explains Why 'Laurel' Sounds Like 'Yanny'
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/dont-rest-on-your-laurels/560483/

We Made a Tool So You Can Hear Both Yanny and Laurel
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html#k=-0.010

The Ling Space: How Do We Change Our Mouths to Make Waves? Formants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4zGRSYqkE

Crash Course Psychology: Sensation & Perception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unWnZvXJH2o




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


Education Tutorials

The Physics Classroom: Concept Builders --- www.physicsclassroom.com/Concept-Builders

YouTube: 3Blue1Brown (video tutorials on math, bitcoin, crypto currencies, machine learning, etc.) ---
www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw/featured

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

We know that the universe is awash with watery moons and planets. How can we pinpoint which of them could support life?
https://aeon.co/essays/in-a-galaxy-awash-in-water-do-any-other-worlds-have-just-enough?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dd5693da31-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-dd5693da31-68951505

The Physics Classroom: Concept Builders --- www.physicsclassroom.com/Concept-Builders

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/einsteins-theory-of-relativity-explained-in-one-of-the-earliest-science-films-ever-made-1923.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Climate:  The Deep Time of Walden Pond ---
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/the-deep-time-of-walden-pond

National Geographic: Seven Things to Know About Climate Change --- www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/climate-change

London Bird Records --- www.zooniverse.org/projects/gigl/london-bird-records

OncoBites: The Latest in Cancer Research, Simplified ---
https://oncobites.wordpress.com/

Botanical Arts & Artists: About Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) --- www.botanicalartandartists.com/about-elizabeth-blackwell.html

Once dismissed as quackery, medical leeches are back for blood ---
https://aeon.co/videos/once-dismissed-as-quackery-medical-leeches-are-back-for-blood?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dd5693da31-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-dd5693da31-68951505

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

What good is religion?
https://aeon.co/essays/is-there-a-role-for-religion-in-international-development?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dd5693da31-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-dd5693da31-68951505

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

YouTube: 3Blue1Brown (video tutorials on math, bitcoin, crypto currencies, machine learning, etc.) ---
www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw/featured

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

PBS: Civilizations --- www.pbs.org/civilizations/home

Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective --- http://origins.osu.edu/

Mason OER Metafinder (search multiple libraries) --- https://publishing.gmu.edu/whos-using-the-mason-oer-metafinder/

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/ancient-romes-economy-get-documented-by-pollution-traces-found-in-greenlands-ice.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Video from The Atlantic Magazine: Visual Histories (on a variety of topics) --- www.theatlantic.com/video/series/visual-histories

Archive Journal (special collections in higher education) --- www.archivejournal.net

DigiVatLib (Vatican Library) --- https://digi.vatlib.it/

Smithsonian:  Native Knowledge 360 (Native American History) --- http://nmai.si.edu/nk360

Whose Land --- www.whose.land/en

Rethinking Guernica (Bascue city bombed by Nazis in WW II) --- http://guernica.museoreinasofia.es/en#realizacion

The Brit Lit Blog (English Literature) --- https://britlitblog.com/

Harry Ransom Center Digital Collections: Gabriel Garcia Marquez ---
https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll51

Dominion of the North: Literary and Print Culture in Canada (art and literary history) ---
https://omeka.vicu.utoronto.ca/dominion/

At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901 --- www.victorianresearch.org/atcl

Take a Virtual Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/take-a-virtual-tour-of-shakespeares-globe-theatre-in-london.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection (rare books) --- www.lapl.org/collections-resources/visual-collections/menu-collection

The mysterious Cambridge library tower, supposedly full of banned books, is opening to the public ---
http://lisnews.org/the_mysterious_cambridge_library_tower_supposedly_full_of_banned_books_is_opening_to_the_public
Bob Jensen's threads on banned books ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Banned

How Women Got Dressed in the 14th & 18th Centuries: Watch the Very Painstaking Process Get Cinematically Recreated ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/how-women-got-dressed-in-the-14th-18th-centuries.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Open Content on JSTOR --- www.jstor.org/open/?cid=soc_tw_JSTOR

Exploring the Manly Local Studies (photographic history of New South Wales, Australia) --- http://mtchl.net/manlyimages/ 

Northeastern University: Boston's Latino/a Community History ---
https://latinohistory.library.northeastern.edu/?_ga=2.194860520.455601233.1526161295-440278184.1526161295

Today in the 1770s --- www.history.org/History/todayin1770s

Botanical Arts & Artists: About Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) --- www.botanicalartandartists.com/about-elizabeth-blackwell.html

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Collections --- www.mfah.org/art

Two Hundred Years of Blue ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/05/17/two-hundred-years-of-blue/?mc_cid=03b4d30fc0&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

A Visual History of ISIS ---
http://time.com/longform/isis-visual-history-magnum-photos/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief-special-isis-history&utm_content=2018052019pm&eminfo=%7b%22EMAIL%22%3a%22MOt2LMJiSIk%2fSjadSWyB4I9Monw61fXF%22%2c%22BRAND%22%3a%22TD%22%2c%22CONTENT%22%3a%22Newsletter%22%2c%22UID%22%3a%22TD_TBS_8037C797-E79A-4334-93DF-C69734A9E17E%22%2c%22SUBID%22%3a%22105207569%22%2c%22JOBID%22%3a%22748922%22%2c%22NEWSLETTER%22%3a%22THE_BRIEF_SPECIAL_EDITION%22%2c%22ZIP%22%3a%2235864237%22%2c%22COUNTRY%22%3a%22%22%7d

A Brief History of American Winemaking ---
https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-american-winemaking-97150

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

Toponymy (language history in the U.K.) --- http://toponymy.emu-analytics.net/main

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


Music Tutorials

BBC Radio 3: The Early Music Show (music history) --- www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tn49

Why Stradivarius Violins Are Worth Millions ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/why-stradivarius-violins-are-worth-millions.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

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/

May 17, 2018

May 18, 2018

May 21, 2018

May 22, 2018

May 23, 2018

May 25, 2018

May 26, 2018

May 29, 2018

View All Health News

 


 

Once dismissed as quackery, medical leeches are back for blood ---
https://aeon.co/videos/once-dismissed-as-quackery-medical-leeches-are-back-for-blood?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dd5693da31-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-dd5693da31-68951505


Why Salt Has Disappeared From Restaurant Tables ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-16/why-there-is-no-salt-on-restaurant-tables-anymore?cmpid=BBD051618_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=180516&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily


Vermont Voted to Buy Its Prescription Drugs from Canada, and the Pharmaceutical Industry Is Not Pleased ---
http://reason.com/blog/2018/05/16/vermont-voted-to-buy-its-prescription-dr


OncoBites: The Latest in Cancer Research, Simplified ---
https://oncobites.wordpress.com/


First FDA-Approved Migraine Prevention Treatment (expensive but might be worth it) ---
http://time.com/5282661/aimovig-migraine-treatment/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2018052013pm&xid=newsletter-brief&eminfo=%7b%22EMAIL%22%3a%22MOt2LMJiSIk%2fSjadSWyB4I9Monw61fXF%22%2c%22BRAND%22%3a%22TD%22%2c%22CONTENT%22%3a%22Newsletter%22%2c%22UID%22%3a%22TD_TBR_9341E248-F74B-4FC4-8A5B-F29E5D8E9ECB%22%2c%22SUBID%22%3a%2224083557%22%2c%22JOBID%22%3a%22748648%22%2c%22NEWSLETTER%22%3a%22THE_BRIEF%22%2c%22ZIP%22%3a%22035864237%22%2c%22COUNTRY%22%3a%22%22%7d




Humor for May 2018

TED Talk With Humor and Inspiration
Emily Levine: How I made friends with reality
https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_levine_how_i_made_friends_with_reality?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-05-26&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image

Bob Hope Quotes --- https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/bob_hope




Humor May 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0518.htm

Humor April 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0418.htm

Humor March 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0318.htm 

Humor February 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0218.htm

Humor January 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0118.htm 

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

Humor December 2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q4.htm#Humor1216.htm 

Humor November 2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q4.htm#Humor1116.htm 

Humor October 2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q4.htm#Humor1016.htm

Humor September 2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q3.htm#Humor0916.htm

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

Humor July  2016 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book16q3.htm#Humor0716.htm  

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

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

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

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

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

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

 




Tidbits Archives --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/

Online Distance Education Training and Education --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud  (College, Inc.) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

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

How Accountics Scientists Should Change: 
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm 

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

 

World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/

Interesting Online Clock and Calendar --- http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones --- http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) --- http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
         Also see http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
        
Facts about population growth (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth --- http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons --- http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.

Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social Networking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

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

Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting educators.
Any college may post a news item.

Accounting  and Taxation News Sites ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

 

For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to   http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators) http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.

Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing, doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics) research, publication, replication, and validity testing.

 

CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/  (Closed Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog

Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board on this financial reporting blog from Financial Executives International. The site, updated daily, compiles regulatory news, rulings and statements, comment letters on standards, and hot topics from the Web’s largest business and accounting publications and organizations. Look for continuing coverage of SOX requirements, fair value reporting and the Alternative Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such as the subprime mortgage crisis, international convergence, and rules for tax return preparers.
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv

September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as well as a practicing CPA)

I found another listserve that is exceptional -

CalCPA maintains http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/  and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.

There are several highly capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and the answers are often in depth.

Scott

Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

Yes you may mention info on your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not have access to the files and other items posted.

Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I will get the request to join.

Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.

We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in California.... ]

Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

If any questions let me know.

Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk

 

 

 

 

Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm

 

Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Some Accounting History Sites

Bob Jensen's Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
 

Accounting History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) --- http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.

MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting --- http://maaw.info/

Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/

Sage Accounting History --- http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269

A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm 

A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

From Texas A&M University
Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html

Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds

History of Fraud in America --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone:  603-823-8482 
Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu