Tidbits on October 17, 2018, 2018
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Set 13 of My Favorite Foliage Photographs (with gliders) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Foliage/Set22/FoliageSet13.htm   

 

Tidbits on October 17,, 2018
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Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio

The History of Philosophy Visualized in an Interactive Timeline ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/history-philosophy-visualized-interactive-timeline.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Jim Borden:  I Don’t Get Bitcoin – but This Video Explains It Really Well ---
https://www.jborden.com/i-dont-get-bitcoin-but-this-video-explains-it-really-well/

Ted Talk:  Many African countries are poor for a simple reason, says entrepreneur Magatte Wade: governments have created far too many obstacles to starting and running a business. ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/magatte_wade_small_business_solutions_for_a_more_robust_economy?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-10-06&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=bottom_right_button
They're also poor because of government corruption, incessant revolution, and far too many AK 47s.

Want to Find Alien Life? Look at Older, Hotter Earths ---
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news-alien-life-exoplanets-plants-infrared-light-evolution-space/

Watch a massive C-17 Globemaster buzz below rooftop level in one of Australia's biggest cities ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-c-17-globemaster-low-altitude-flyby-in-brisbane-australia-2018-10

Videos of Tiger Woods golfing as a kid show he's always been destined for greatness ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/tiger-woods-childhood-golfing-videos-2018-9

Ted Talk: The simple genius of a good graphic ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/tommy_mccall_the_simple_genius_of_a_good_graphic?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-09-29&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image

Serial (criminal justice podcasts) --- https://serialpodcast.org/

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 

The Joy of Experiencing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reaction Videos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/relive-experience-hearing-queens-bohemian-rhapsody-first-time-thanks-virgin-reaction-videos.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Blondie Drummer Clem Burke and Scientific Researchers Show That Drumming Can Help Kids with Autism Learn More Effectively in School ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/blondie-drummer-clem-burke-scientific-researchers-show-drumming-can-help-kids-autism-learn-effectively-school.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

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

Where to see the best fall foliage across the country ---
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/09/29/where-to-see-best-fall-foliage-across-country.html
But you have to time it right ---
Fall Foliage Map 2018: When Is the Best Time to See Leaves Change Across U.S.? ---
https://www.newsweek.com/fall-foliage-predictor-map-leaves-change-1093628

My friend Wes Lavin's 2017 foliage shots in New Hampshire and Vermont ---
http://cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Lavin/2017Autumn/2017Autumn.htm

Harvard World Map --- https://worldmap.harvard.edu/

The Louvre: Tales of the Museum --- www.louvre.fr/en/tales-of-the-museum

Recollection: Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library ---
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/recollection/index.html

Cambridge Shahnama Project (Persia) --- http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/page/

Majestic Photos Capture the 1980s Golden Age of the Space Shuttle Program ---
https://www.wired.com/story/photo-gallery-space-shuttle-program/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=f8f4419138-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_02_11_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-f8f4419138-153727301

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Masterpiece?
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/makes-night-watch-rembrandts-masterpiece.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The USA Navy at Age 243 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/check-out-these-great-photos-of-the-us-navy-on-the-services-birthday-2018-10

The Mesmerizing Microscopy of Trees: Otherworldly Images Revealing the Cellular Structure of Wood Specimens ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/10/11/archie-f-wilson-wood-specimens/?mc_cid=5b81159704&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

A closed Macy's store in a dead mall was turned into a homeless shelter — this is what it looks like inside now ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/macys-store-turned-homeless-shelter-phoos-2018-9

The ugliest building in every US state, according to people who live there ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/ugliest-buildings-in-the-us-2018-1

Military photos show a US Air Force B-52 bomber and Japanese fighter jets putting on a show of force in China's backyard ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-us-b52-putting-on-a-show-of-force-in-chinas-backyard-2018-9

130,000 Photographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Available Online, Courtesy of Stanford University ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/130000-photographs-andy-warhol-now-available-online-courtesy-stanford-university.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

How the CIA helped land a mortal blow to the Soviets in Afghanistan 32 years ago ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/32-year-anniversary-of-first-stinger-missile-use-in-afghanistan-2018-9

Apartments are now available inside the world's skinniest skyscraper — take a look ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/listings-go-live-for-worlds-skinniest-skyscraper-in-new-york-city-2018-10

A spacecraft that orbited Mars for four years just returned incredible photos of the red planet ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-orbiter-mission-caught-photos-of-solar-systems-largest-volcano-2018-9

Step inside the newly commissioned USS Indiana, one of the US Navy's most lethal submarines ever built ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/step-aboard-uss-indiana-one-of-us-navys-most-lethal-submarines-built-2018-10#the-indiana-is-377-feet-long-34-feet-wide-about-7800-tons-when-submerged-and-has-a-140-person-crew-it-also-has-a-top-speed-of-about-28-mph-2

9 skyscrapers that will transform the London skyline by 2020 --- 
https://www.businessinsider.com/skyscrapers-that-will-transform-the-london-skyline-by-2020-2018-9 

These Images of Cities Across the World Reveal Things the Human Eye Can’t See ---
Click Here

University College Dublin Digital Library (art history) --- http://digital.ucd.ie/

American Numismatic Association: Money Museum (coin collections) --- www.money.org/money-museum

A Giant Mural of Robin Williams Goes Up in Chicago ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/giant-mural-robin-williams-goes-chicago.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
I wonder if Robin's eyes are looking out at the Marilyn Monroe statue ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Marilyn
Not really since that statue was later moved.

Google Doodle Archive --- www.google.com/doodles#archive

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

Mark Judge’s Out-of-Print Memoir, Wasted, Gets Digitized and Put Online, Courtesy of The Boston Public Library ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/mark-judges-print-memoir-wasted-gets-digitized-put-online-courtesy-boston-public-library.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Talmud Is Finally Now Available Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/09/talmud-finally-now-available-online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Price One Penny: A Database of Cheap Literature, 1837-1860 --- www.priceonepenny.info

The Keats Letters Project --- http://keatslettersproject.com/

The Recipes Project --- https://recipes.hypotheses.org/

The story of Sgt. York, the man who killed or captured more than 100 Germans in a WWI battle ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sgt-york-killed-or-captured-more-than-100-germans-in-a-wwi-battle-2018-10

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
There's a good reason why Meditations is one of Mattis' favorites. In the world of politics and back-stabbing that is Washington, D.C., the stoic ideals shine through as philosophical armor against the daily bulls-t. Like, for example, this: "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
Generak Mattis says every American should read this one book -
--
https://www.businessinsider.com/mattis-says-every-american-should-read-this-one-book-2018-9

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 October 17, 2018
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2018/TidbitsQuotations101718.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




MIT Plans $1-Billion Project to Develop Artificial Intelligence — and to Tackle (Interdisciplinary) Challenges the Technology Will Create ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/MIT-Plans-1-Billion-Project/244806?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=03d9cbdd96b646fc9e312374e55ec0e5&elq=0231201dc0954275ae9c5f66a7dff4e9&elqaid=20984&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9943

Jensen Comment
I imagine a significant part of the MIT AI Project will be development of AI chatbots for training and education

Chatbots --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

I think chatbot technology is perhaps the most important learning technology ever.
Here's a good place to start learning about their use in education ---
http://results.chronicle.com/AIChatbotsHE18  

When I was still teaching (now I'm retired) I made over 100 Camtasia short videos to teach technical modules in my courses. If I were still teaching my next move would be to develop chatbots.
Bob Jensen


Mathematical ideas are some of the most transformative and beautiful in history. So why do they get so little attention?
https://aeon.co/essays/the-secret-intellectual-history-of-mathematics?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=291bfc97a3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_10_03_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-291bfc97a3-68951505


The Atlantic Crossword Language ---  www.theatlantic.com/free-daily-crossword-puzzle


2018 Nobel Prize in Economics:  Integrating innovation and climate with economic growth ---
https://www.nobelprize.org/?elqTrackId=bf98976021c946c8bb4d8d4a58e35c1d&elq=e9269a1c956842e38d2ad2553a44248f&elqaid=20862&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9864

William D. Nordhaus, the father of climate-change economics, says good policies must lie somewhere between wrecking the economy and wrecking the world ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Cool-Head-on-Global-Warming/142713?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=dbee1a9c08d4451fa36916beaebe3226&elq=aa5ad0ea3af94d969ad6c397c9e77a41&elqaid=20969&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9934

 


MIT Newsletter:  Wind Power Could Cause Significant Warming

The study finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming (at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead.)

The news: The study by a pair of Harvard researchers and published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental US by 0.24 ˚C. That could exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation’s electricity sector this century.

How does it do that
: Turbines generate electricity by extracting energy out of the air, slowing down wind and otherwise altering “the exchange of heat, moisture, and momentum between the surface and the atmosphere,” the study explains. That can produce some level of warming.

 Continued in article

More information: Y. Li el al., "Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aar5629

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-large-solar-farms-sahara-vegetation.html#jCp
More information: Y. Li el al., "Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aar5629

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-large-solar-farms-sahara-vegetation.html#jCp
More information: Y. Li el al., "Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aar5629

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-large-solar-farms-sahara-vegetation.html#jCp
More information: Y. Li el al., "Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aar5629

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-large-solar-farms-sahara-vegetation.html#jCp
More information: Y. Li el al., "Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aar5629

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-large-solar-farms-sahara-vegetation.html#jCp

More information: Y. Li el al., "Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation," Science (2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aar5629
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-large-solar-farms-sahara-vegetation.html#jCp


Meditations by Marcus Aurelius --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations
There's a good reason why Meditations is one of Mattis' favorites. In the world of politics and back-stabbing that is Washington, D.C., the stoic ideals shine through as philosophical armor against the daily bulls-t. Like, for example, this: "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
General Mattis says every American should read this one book -
--
https://www.businessinsider.com/mattis-says-every-american-should-read-this-one-book-2018-9


How Online Learning Compares to the Traditional Classroom ---
https://www.cpajournal.com/2018/09/27/icymi-how-online-learning-compares-to-the-traditional-classroom/

Jensen Comment
I suspect if we try hard enough we can find all sorts of things that are controversial when comparing online versus traditional pedagogy. This begins with defining what "learning" means and what the purposes and goals of education and training. What follows are the many and varied types of students and well as alternative approaches to either online or learning education. For example a MOOC may have 50,000 students and zero personal communications between the teacher and students.  An online tutorial can have one-on-one intense personal communications. A traditional lecture course might have over 1,000 students or it might have less than 20 students.

In the very modern online courses students may have face-to-face communications between themselves and with their teacher. Students may have informal online communications that resemble in many ways online communications inside a library or in a dorm lounge.

Thus there is a very gray zone these days between "online" versus "traditional."

And it's very shaky to say online is more cost-efficient. Residential campuses do shift living costs from the outside world to a campus. But after that a traditional course can be much cheaper or much more expensive than an online course. For example, it's often possible to have a scientific lab experience online, but it may be costly. On the other hand when very expensive expensive equipment is needed or very dangerous chemicals are being used, the only alternative may be onsite. There are certainly limits to online learning. Pilot training, for example, can be taught online, but at some point the student has to get into a real airplane. We can think of all sorts of medical school settings that must be onsite.

Hence when we are comparing we must be very careful regarding just what it is we are comparing. Also these days traditional courses are hybrid with some online learning components. And online students may have to assemble sometime for traditional learning experiences.

In any case, I don't want to detract from your reading of the above well-intended article, especially reading of the last portions of the article.


Volkswagen is bringing back the iconic microbus in two new electric models and they look awesome (340 mile range give or take) ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/vw-bringing-back-iconic-microbus-in-two-new-electric-models-2018-10

. . .

According to Volkswagen, the I.D. Buzz Cargo will have a battery with range of up to 340 miles per charge, with a large solar roof panel that can extend the daily range an additional nine miles. The van will have the ability to charge to almost 80 percent capacity in only 15 minutes, and is a fully-connected vehicle with a cargo tracking system that makes it possible to track orders and manage online supply networks from inside the cockpit.

Continued in article

How to Mislead With Statistics
Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-03/tesla-s-model-3-is-becoming-one-of-america-s-best-selling-sedans

Jensen Comment
This article makes you think Tesla and maybe other electric cars are moving up to top selling automobiles in America in 2018. First note that the graph is for only sedan sales in one quarter. And look again at what statisticians call the abscissa on the graph. That's right. These are quarterly sales numbers in the thousands while vehicle sales in the USA for the same quarter are in the millions. It's estimated that by 2020 sales of all sedans will be less than 10% of total automotive sales ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-03/tesla-s-model-3-is-becoming-one-of-america-s-best-selling-sedans

In 2017 total electric vehicle sales amounted to less than 200,000 electric vehicles ---
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/01/2017-was-the-best-year-ever-for-electric-vehicle-sales-in-the-us/
Divide that by 17.25 million total vehicle sales in 2017 in the USA alone
https://www.automobilemag.com/news/u-s-auto-sales-totaled-17-25-million-calendar-2017/
Electric vehicle sales rates are climbing really fast, but there are many reasons why the electric car market is in its infancy. Huge advances in range and battery technology are needed for the electric market to grow up. At the moment in the USA electric vehicles are mostly purchased by high income families that also can afford one or more gas guzzlers. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may possibly beat out battery powered cars.

Tesla is becoming a popular sedan in the USA but sedans are a dying breed that Ford dropped completely from its product line. Other large-scale vehicle manufacturers will soon follow Ford's lead in cutting back on unpopular sedans. USA buyers want SUVs and pickup trucks.


How to Mislead With Statistics
Why the US needs better crime reporting statistics ---
https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-needs-better-crime-reporting-statistics-104731


How to View Websites on Mac that Require Internet Explorer (or a PC) ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/368817/how-to-view-websites-on-mac-that-require-internet-explorer-or-a-pc/


How three countries are creating the roadmap to a cashless society ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/global-payments-landscape-b-2018-9


Is the for real or just a hoax?
Civil War gold treasure hunters, lawyer say FBI acting ‘suspicious’ in wake of dig at Pennsylvania site ---
https://www.foxnews.com/us/civil-war-gold-treasure-hunters-lawyer-say-fbi-acting-suspicious-in-wake-of-dig-at-pennsylvania-site


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

Arthur Cecil Pigou --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Cecil_Pigou

Scharff: The Challenge Of Pricing Externalities Under State Law ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/10/-scharff-the-challenge-of-pricing-externalities-under-state-law.html


The Refereeing Process in Economics Journals ---
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-refereeing-process-in-economics.html
Thank you Tom Dyckman for the heads up

Jensen Comment
Readers might note the Dan Stone's "10 reasons why peer review, as is often constructed, frequently fails to improve manuscripts, and often diminishes their contribution," ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm#Referees
Scroll down to "Dan Stone."

This led to the then Editor (Steve Kacheimeir) of The Accounting Review (TAR)  to present counterpoints on each of Dan Stone's "10 reasons" quoted in the above link.

Steve goes on to blame the (then) 574 referees of TAR for the virtual lack of commentaries in TAR, particularly commentaries on recently published papers in TAR. Steve's contention is that as TAR Editor he does not block commentaries from being published.

However, I think Steve is wrong on two grounds. The policy of a number of editors that preceded Steve was to not publish commentaries or replication studies. This led to the virtual absence of submissions of commentaries under Steve's editorship, and if there were any submissions of commentaries his remarks lead me to believe that they were all rejected by the referees.

The same can be said for replication studies. Publishing of a replication study or even mention of it is a very rare event in TAR. Replications that are mentioned in new research submissions are usually years and years overdue.

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

David Giles:  October 2018 Update on the A Shout-Out for The Replication Network (in economics)
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/2018/10/a-shout-out-for-replication-network.html


Good and Bad:  The United Nations General Assembly in 2018 ---
https://qz.com/se/united-nations-general-assembly-2018/

The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control, U.N. scientists say ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/10/08/world-has-only-years-get-climate-change-under-control-un-scientists-say/?elq=e9269a1c956842e38d2ad2553a44248f&elqCampaignId=9864&elqTrackId=c13318a6b34347a1924b7b34b0404ba7&elqaid=20862&elqat=1&utm_term=.1ccea15ea282

2018 Nobel Prize in Economics:  Integrating innovation and climate with economic growth ---
https://www.nobelprize.org/?elqTrackId=bf98976021c946c8bb4d8d4a58e35c1d&elq=e9269a1c956842e38d2ad2553a44248f&elqaid=20862&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9864


The Romantic Age of Milkmaids is Long Gone --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkmaid
The Cow-Milking Robots Keeping Small Farms in Business ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/10/young-dairy-farmers/567937/

Jensen Copy
Cost accounting textbooks using direct labor as a basis of overhead allocation are obsolete.
We can expect more and more robots displacing labor in almost every industry as minimum wages climb to $15 per hour for human labor.
Robots, however, will be still be competing with humans in the underground (shadow) economy that pays less than minimum wage with no benefits.
People wonder why Medicare-for-All will cost so much more --- the major reason is that tens of millions of non-Medicaid workers in the underground economy will become covered.
Interestingly most analysts proposing Medicare-for-All underestimate its cost by overlooking workers in the $2+ trillion underground economy ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market


A supervolcano that could destroy humanity is ready to erupt — and NASA is trying to figure out how to contain it ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-is-looking-at-how-to-contain-a-volcano-that-may-wipe-out-humanity-2018-10


China Seeks to Buy USA Colleges
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/15/chinese-companies-seek-buy-american-campuses?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=8ead95f6d7-DNU20181015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-8ead95f6d7-197565045


Getting Started with the Marrakesh Treaty - a Guide for Librarians
https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/71175

The Marrakesh Treaty entered into force in September 2016, faster than any other international copyright text in the last 40 years. It promises to remove some of the key barriers to access to information by people with print disabilities.

Yet the Treaty will only be effective, where it has been incorporated into national law, when libraries and others are using it. Not all librarians feel confident in dealing with copyright law, potentially leaving users without the access they need.

This guide, edited by Victoria Owen, and with the welcome support of the World Blind Union, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Electronic Information for Libraries, and the Unviersity of Toronto, offers answers to frequently asked questions. It can also be adapted by national actors to their own laws - IFLA encourages this, in order to get the largest possible number of libraries involved. 

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Technology Helpers for Disabled Persons ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


Rob Gronkowski has saved all of his $54 million in NFL earnings and has simple advice for young players entering the league ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/rob-gronkowski-contract-earnings-saved-advice-nfl-rookies-2018-10

Jensen Comment
Players should first of all be wary of financial managers, especially those willing to take on risky investments. My advice to guys like Gronkowski is to be more hands on in choosing their own portfolios.
Players should diversify their investments. Be wary of real estate for various reasons, especially those annual property taxes that can eat investors alive. 
Get a good tax advisor apart from a financial advisor.
Don't use Michael Jordan as a role model even though he's very, very wealthy. Michael is too much of a gambler and spendthrift.
Use Rob Gronkowski as a role model.
Players should consider putting a considerable portion, certainly not all, into tax exempt mutual funds that have fairly high after-tax cash yields (e.g., those of Vanguard or Fidelity)
As they age to say over sixty they should consider putting even larger portions into tax exempt mutual funds. As you age inflation risk is less of a concern.
Players should resist temptations of luxury houses, yachts, private jets, cars, and gold diggers (if you catch my drift). High life memories are probably great, but memories of downfalls are nightmares.
Beware of old "friends" that can become leeches like the ones that brought down Aaron Hernandez ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Hernandez

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers


A New Academic Hoax–Complete with Fake Articles Published in Academic Journals–Ventures to Show the “Corruption” of Cultural Studies ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/sokal-squared.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

What the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-the-Grievance/244753?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=65d7368ce3254071827212d2d47d50c6&elq=e1aae58ec75f4be6af1afed28335cad1&elqaid=20902&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9889

Over the summer, the Wall Street Journal’s Jillian Kay Melchior became suspicious of a bizarre-sounding academic journal article, "Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon," published in the journal Gender, Place & Culture. She started investigating, and discovered that the article’s author, "Helen Wilson," did not exist. The article was part of an elaborate hoax cooked up by Helen Pluckrose, the editor of the online magazine Areo, James A. Lindsay, a Ph.D. in math, and Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University. "Sokal Squared," Yascha Mounk called it, and the label stuck.

The trio of hoaxers, Melchior discovered, had written 20 fake papers and managed to get seven of them accepted at peer-reviewed journals, including "Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism," composed of passages of Hitler’s Mein Kampf rewritten so as to appear to be a theoretical argument about social justice. As the hoaxers explained in Areo, they targeted fields they pejoratively dub "grievance studies" — "gender studies, masculinities studies, queer studies, sexuality studies, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, critical whiteness theory, fat studies, sociology, and educational philosophy" — which they consider peculiarly susceptible to fashionable nonsense.

Does the hoax identify something uniquely rotten in gender and sexuality studies, or could it just as easily have targeted other fields? Is it a salutary correction or a reactionary hit job? And what does it portend for already imperiled fields? The Chronicle Review asked scholars from a variety of disciplines. Here are their responses.

 Continued in article

Sokal Squared’: Is Huge Publishing Hoax ‘Hilarious and Delightful’ or an Ugly Example of Dishonesty and Bad Faith? ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Sokal-Squared-Is-Huge/244714?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=7cc5342b3e0f465794a8df9e130815b3&elq=e1aae58ec75f4be6af1afed28335cad1&elqaid=20902&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9889

Reactions to an elaborate academic-journal hoax, dubbed "Sokal Squared" by one observer, came fast and furious on Wednesday. Some scholars applauded the hoax for unmasking what they called academe’s leftist, victim-obsessed ideological slant and low publishing standards. Others said it had proved nothing beyond the bad faith and dishonesty of its authors.

Three scholars — Helen Pluckrose, a self-described "exile from the humanities" who studies medieval religious writings about women; James A. Lindsay, an author and mathematician; and Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University — spent 10 months writing 20 hoax papers that illustrate and parody what they call "grievance studies," and submitted them to "the best journals in the relevant fields." Of the 20, seven papers were accepted, four were published online, and three were in process when the authors "had to take the project public prematurely and thus stop the study, before it could be properly concluded." A skeptical Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Jillian Kay Melchior, began raising questions about some of the papers over the summer.

Beyond the acceptances, the authors said, they also received four requests to peer-review other papers "as a result of our own exemplary scholarship." And one paper — about canine rape culture in dog parks in Portland, Ore. — "gained special recognition for excellence from its journal, Gender, Place, and Culture … as one of 12 leading pieces in feminist geography as a part of the journal’s 25th anniversary celebration."

 Continued in article

‘Journalologists’ use scientific methods to study academic publishing. Is their work improving science? ---
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/journalologists-use-scientific-methods-study-academic-publishing-their-work-improving

5 Complaints Academics Have About Their Editors ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/5-Complaints-Academics-Have/244733?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=acb615ae0edc49c594ef7edb008bc9a8&elq=e1aae58ec75f4be6af1afed28335cad1&elqaid=20902&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9889

"I got no editing."

"They made me cut it."

"It’s taking too long."

"My book didn’t get enough attention." (read that publicity and promotion)

"They’re getting rich off me; I should have self-published."


The Atlantic:  Elite-College Admissions Are Broken ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/elite-college-admissions-broken/572962/

The Atlantic:  The Supreme Court Has Always Been Politicized ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2018/10/readers-respond-partisanship-supreme-court/572653/


Tall Tales: Secrets of the Tower (pornography) ---
https://www.cam.ac.uk/TallTales

Jensen Comment
What always amazes me is publishers these days will allow almost any pornography in text as long as it does not have pictures. Well maybe there's an exception for child pornography even in words. Of course in olden days (think Victorian times) publishers had to be much more cautious even with words.

Things really got out of control after the Internet was invented. It got even more out of control when the Internet went global to a point where nations faced enormous jurisdictional issues over legal censorship.

I suspect the pornography in the Cambridge Tower is relatively tame compared to what's on the Internet today, especially in terms of pictures and video.


How Genealogy Websites Make It Easier to Catch Killers ---
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/ethics/criminals-getting-easier-to-find-thanks-to-genealogy-websites


A $1 billion Gates Foundation-backed education initiative failed to help students — here’s how the foundation's next $450 million project will look ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/gates-foundation-education-initiative-2018-9

Jensen Comment
I wonder if an equal amount of money or more should be spent on an initiative for parents to help their children learn, something that's done quite well in Finland. If only their weren't more two-parent homes where two parents are needed the most.


Microsoft Explains Why Windows 10’s October 2018 Update Was Deleting People’s Files ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/microsoft-explains-why-windows-10s-october-2018-update-was-deleting-peoples-files/


A huge challenge to opposition to GMO crops
The banana is dying. The race is on to reinvent it before it's too late -
--
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/cavendish-banana-extinction-gene-editing

Jensen Comment
This also is a challenge to accounting for companies dependent upon bananas and other products threatened for one reason or another like sugar-dependent products.

How should companies report future risks in financial statements?

Bob Jensen's threads on contingency reporting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#TheoryDisputes


Larry Summers:  Bringing accountability to powerful, unelected officials ---
http://larrysummers.com/2018/10/03/bringing-accountability-to-powerful-unelected-officials/#more-36210

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

The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. Other EU states (except for Denmark and the United Kingdom) are obliged to join once they meet the criteria to do so. No state has left, and there are no provisions to do so or to be expelled. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City have formal agreements with the EU to use the euro as their official currency and issue their own coins

Question
Why did the United Kingdom not join the Eurozone?

Quote from the above Larry Summers article

Tucker has been at the center of the global financial system for decades as George Soros broke the pound, Britain decided to stay out of the euro zone, the Bank of England became independent and, most important, as it confronted the great financial crisis of 2008.

Some Eurozone nations regretted joining after having to pay to bailout Greece and huge worries about pending bailouts (especially for some nations along the Mediterranean Sea like Spain and Italy). A huge problem for some Eurozone nations is that they formerly met financial crises by defaluing their national currencies. They become more dependent upon bailouts from their Eurozone partners when they can no longer devalue their own currencies.

Sweden is not yet in the Eurozone but Finland is in the Eurozone:  Why is the following relevant?
Sweden to Finland:  A Mega Bank Just Joined the Euro Zone; It's Too Big to Fail ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-30/a-mega-bank-just-joined-the-euro-zone-and-it-s-too-big-to-fail F


If US wages are stagnant, why are Americans’ incomes rising?---
https://qz.com/1415403/us-incomes-are-rising-because-people-are-working-more-hours/


How to Mislead With Statistics
PBS Nova:  How did the polls get it so wrong?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/why-did-the-polls-get-it-wrong/

Forbes:  The Science Of Error: How Polling Botched The 2016 Election ---
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/11/09/the-science-of-error-how-polling-botched-the-2016-election/#6deb3b337959

Scientific American:  Where Are the Real Errors in Political Polls?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/where-are-the-real-errors-in-political-polls/

Examples of misleading statistics and polls ---
https://www.datapine.com/blog/misleading-statistics-and-data/

NYT:  Affirmative Action Is an Example of How Polls Can Mislead
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/affirmative-action-and-why-polls-on-issues-are-often-misleading.html

Misleading Charts ---
https://qz.com/580859/the-most-misleading-charts-of-2015-fixed/

The Top 10 Ways to Get Misleading Poll Results (many times these are intentional mistakes for political purposes) ---
http://www.charneyresearch.com/resources/the-top-10-ways-to-get-misleading-poll-results/

Fake Polls are the Real Problem ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fake-polls-are-a-real-problem/


Video:  Sunset Hill Golf Course's 85-year Greens-keeper (the video won't last long for free)
https://www.wmur.com/article/tuesday-october-9th-the-85-year-old-greens-keeper/23611447

Jensen Comment
This is sort of personal since I know Sam Kerr quite well. Our property borders on two sides on the Sunset Hill Golf Course.
This video is inspirational in that it shows how retirees can benefit from really, really hard work. Sam not only is a retired dentist, but he also is a former owner of his own (failed) B&B in Stowe, Vermont.
The video is a bit misleading. Sam claims to work mornings and play golf in the afternoons. This is not the case. For about six months each year Sam works mornings (before 6:00 am) and afternoons seven days a week.
He's a crusty old guy, and a bit of a curmudgeon who likes to talk about anything and everything.
And Sam works really, really hard with the help of another old guy Al Locke who's good keeping old equipment running.
Two years ago Sam had a hernia surgery and was back on the job three days later.

Here are some of my pictures of the golf course (which is not a great course but is a very scenic and historic course that's the first nine-hole course in New Hampshire). The club house is an unused wreck. But the views are terrific, especially in spring and fall.
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/GolfCourse/GolfCourseSet01.htm


How companies in various industries are taking advantage of drones to bolster efficiency and cut costs ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/drones-enterprise-report-2018-5


AICPA:  Microsoft Excel: How to insert an image into a cell ---
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2018/oct/insert-image-into-an-excel-cell.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=11Oct2018

AICPA:  Tips for Teaching Excel
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/newsletters/extra-credit/tips-for-teaching-excel.html?utm_source=mnl:extracredit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=09Oct2018

Harvard:  Ten Excel Functions Everyone Should Know ---
https://hbr.org/2018/10/10-excel-functions-everyone-should-know?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_not_activesubs&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM15990

If you’re an Excel expert, don’t tell your colleagues (or they will hound you everyday for help) ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-first-rule-of-microsoft-exceldont-tell-anyone-youre-good-at-it-1538754380?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=439359aa6f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_09_11_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-439359aa6f-153727301
Jensen Comment
In the very earliest days of PCs a faculty colleague was the only one who understood the mysteries of these machines, including such things as adding memory to hardware or using the DOS. He was hounded constantly by all of us in the department. Fortunately he did not seem to mind sharing his time with us (he really didn't care for research anyway). In time those of us more heavy into research passed him by, and eventually the university put in an Information Technology Service that became very sophisticated. After that Fred's office next to mine was very quiet for a change.


Math Puzzles To End Your Year Right ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-history-of-math-puzzles-from-ancient-egypt-to-fivethirtyeights-first-book/


U.S. language One of the World's 7,000 Languages Dies Every Three Months. Can Apps Help Save Them? ---
Click Here


How to mislead with statistics
Forget braces and babysitters: American parents say their children are most expensive when they're all grown up ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/adulthood-most-expensive-for-parents-merrill-lynch-report-2018-10

The average cost of raising a child until age 18 today is more than $230,000— but that number only gets higher when children leave the nest. In fact, many parents consider it to be the most expensive stage of parenting, according to Merrill Lynch's new "The Financial Journey of Modern Parenting: Joy, Complexity, and Sacrifice" report.

The bank surveyed more than 2,500 American parents and found that 79% of parents continue to provide financial support to their adult children — contributing to an estimated $500 billion annually. That's twice the amount they save for retirement — $250 billion annually — according to the report. There are 173 million parents in the US, according to Merrill Lynch.

"When emotions and money become intertwined, parents risk making financial decisions that can compromise their financial futures," states the report.

Seventy-two percent of parents revealed they put their children's interests ahead of their own need to save for retirement. On top of that, 63% of parents reported sacrificing their own financial security for their children's sake. Specifically, Asian, Latino, and African American parents are more likely to give up financial security for their children, the report found.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
It's misleading to say that 79% of parents provide financial support without going into more detail about the sampling outcome distribution for things like variance and kurtosis. I would doubt that this distribution of support is as that say Gaussian. ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Carl_Friedrich_Gauss
My guess is that the level of financial support is bimodal in that there are a lot of parents providing their own basements versus smaller number of parents who paying off their children's car loans and mortgages.
Things that can cause skewness include disabilities of the children (think autism, obesity, drug addiction, and disease) and a non-normal distribution of parental ability to provide financial support. Remember, the majority of the households have only one parent. Such households are less likely to provide much support unless the "outside" parent is financially responsible in a way that's not usually the case. We sometimes think that the "kid" living in the basement just chose the wrong major in college, but that's neither accurate nor politically correct. It may also be politically incorrect to blame adult child financial dependence on the high divorce rate in the USA but many "kids" returning home with your grandkids recently got a divorce.

There's an old saying that happiness begins when the dog dies and your kid is pulling a U-Haul out of the driveway instead of into the driveway.


Guilty Until Proven Innocent:  Making a Political Farce Out of a Well-Intended Law
Harvard Students Filed Multiple Title IX ComplajENints Against Brett Kavanaugh To Get Him Fired ---

http://reason.com/blog/2018/10/02/brett-kavanaugh-harvard-title-ix


Newsweek:  Americans Spread More Fake News in 2016 Than Russians ---
https://www.newsweek.com/americans-russians-fake-news-2016-election-1152568


Francine:  Nine reasons to beware of high-flying cannabis product company (India Globalization Capital, IBC) ---
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-potential-red-flags-for-investors-in-india-globalization-capital-the-pot-stock-that-jumped-1000-in-three-months-2018-10-04

Reason Number 10 to Watch Out for IBC
Chief scientific officer of a high-flying cannabis product company faked data at the NIH ---

http://retractionwatch.com/2018/10/05/chief-scientific-officer-of-a-high-flying-cannabis-product-company-faked-data-at-the-nih/


How to Mislead a Little Less With Statistics --- those Black Swans
October 16, 2016 Prior to the 2016 November Trump Win
Election Update: Why Our Model Is More Bullish Than Others On Trump ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-why-our-model-is-more-bullish-than-others-on-trump/
Nate Silver also predicted a Clinton victory but with a little less gusto than the rest of the media

Jensen Comment
In particular note Assumption 3 regarding "Fat Tails" (known as Black Swans in financial forecasting)

Black Swans --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable


Something good to say for the 1%
The University of Michigan
announced Thursday that it has become the first public university to raise $5 billion in a fund-raising campaign ---
https://news.umich.edu/u-michigan-raises-5b-shattering-records-for-public-universities/
The WSJ analyzed the sources of the funding and found that Michigan is increasingly reliant of wealthy donors, much like the case for private universities ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-michigan-raises-5-billion-others-close-behind-1538658001

. . .

Michigan’s development office, for instance, now employs 550 people and coordinates 1,600 volunteers, and the school spent half a million dollars throwing parties to bring alumni together.

Fundraising was baked into the business model of most private colleges and universities more than a century ago, but until around 1980 it was generally accepted that the costs of public institutions would be covered mostly by taxpayers—with the rest picked up by tuition and research dollars.

But a cycle of funding cuts eroded that model. Recessions prompted cut backs by lawmakers who asked schools to make up the difference by raising tuition. When the economy sprang back, the state generally didn’t return as much to schools. As tuition grew, so did budgets.

For the first time this year, students in more than half of all U.S. states are paying more in tuition to attend public colleges or universities than the government contributes. The average tuition for a four-year public college or university was $6,572 in 2017, up from $4,784 in 2008, adjusted for inflation in 2017 dollars.

The most prescient public schools began to build development offices starting around 40 years ago when they saw these trends taking shape. The seeds of those early efforts are now bearing fruit as the stock market hits record highs and baby boomers begin what is estimated to be a $30 trillion intergenerational transfer of wealth.

A greater percentage of the money is coming from fewer, wealthier people.
In 2015, the top 1% of donors gave 79% of total campaign funds raised, up from 64% in 2006, according to CASE. Over that same span, the amount the top 10% of donors gave increased to 92% from 87%. At Michigan, the percentage of gifts over $5 million has climbed to 54% of the campaign from 34% of the campaign that raised $1.5 billion in 1997.

This concentration of wealth among donors is echoed among recipients. Flagship universities with long traditions of fundraising are enjoying boom times. Many smaller regional publics don’t even have fundraising operations, said Kevin McClure, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Continued in article


In studies of children and historical figures, IQ falls short as a measure of success ---
http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/your-iq-matters-less-than-you-think

Jensen Comment
I don't think this means that school systems should not have special schools for high IQ students. Early on high IQ students are so quick that the slower pace of traditional schools forces them to waste most of their time. In math and some other courses they can learn everything in the course in much less time and then may be dysfunctionally bored the rest of the time. Prodigies may truly be ready scholastically (not necessarily socially) for college by age 15 or thereabouts. But that does not mean at some point a few of  their slower peers in K-12 schools eventually catch up or even overtake the high IQ prodigies in adult life. Prodigies are notorious for burning out early for many of the serendipitous things (think Mozart) that happen in life. The tortoise really does sometimes win the race against the hare.

The key to success in most any career is determination coupled with patience. That never-give-up attitude cannot make everybody a math professor, but it can sometimes make better math professors than the prodigies when hair turns to gray. As the study concludes, IQ falls short as a measure of success. But that does not mean we throw away IQ tests or stop considering special schools for our prodigies. What we would really like are better measures of motivation and innovation. The truth of the matter is that some of our prodigies (not all) are exceptional in life with innovative skills (and luck). Exhibit A is Norbert Weiner ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener


Publication Bias:  Publish the Positives and Bury the Negatives --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/upshot/publication-bias-threat-to-science.html

Jensen Comment
Since some top academic accounting research journals will not publish replications they even discourage validity testing altogether ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm


Jim Borden:  A Real Life Will Hunting ---
https://www.jborden.com/a-real-life-will-hunting/

Jim Borden:  This Is Why We Need a Free Press ---
https://www.jborden.com/this-is-why-we-need-a-free-press/

Jensen Comment
Time and time again both small towns and big towns tend to be led by corrupt politicians prone to accepting bribes, nepotism, and extortion. In countless instances the first line of defense in the USA has been investigative reporters for the free press. This is what saddens me so about taking so much revenue away from local newspapers  It's not NBC, CBS, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News investigative reporters muckraking on the streets of Chicago and Detroit. The muckrakers time and time again are reporters from the Chicago Tribune and the Detroit Free Press. Television networks and Internet blogs aren't paying the salaries of the investigative reporters. Those reporters are being supported by town and city newspapers.

When the town and city newspapers can no longer afford the investigative reporters criminals seeking to run our towns and cities will breathe a sigh of relief and the television networks and Internet blogs will run out of material to comment about. I don't know that there's any way to save investigative reporters for newspapers. They will no longer be "free" if the government tries to pay their salaries. One solution will be for government to instead greatly expand its whistle blowing rewards programs. Those are not salaries for investigative reporters, but those are rewards for insiders to dig out and report corruption to authorities. The problem, however, will be to keep the "authorities" from becoming corrupt.

This is why we need a free press. But we're probably not going to keep the free press.

Jim Borden:  Coach Jay Wright and the Stonecutter ---
https://www.jborden.com/coach-jay-wright-and-the-stonecutter/

Jensen Comment
This reminded me, in an indirect way, of Randy Pausch's great story about how Coach Graham chose some players to yell out and others to ignore when he had the most hope for players he yelled out  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Randy


MIT Student Exercise Leads to a Novel design could help shed excess heat in next-generation fusion power plants ---
http://news.mit.edu/2018/solving-excess-heat-fusion-power-plants-1009


Blondie Drummer Clem Burke and Scientific Researchers Show That Drumming Can Help Kids with Autism Learn More Effectively in School ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/blondie-drummer-clem-burke-scientific-researchers-show-drumming-can-help-kids-autism-learn-effectively-school.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


Selected (not all) Online Masters Degrees from Top Universities ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/online-masters-degree-programs-2018-10

Master of Computer and Information Technology (University of Pennsylvania)

Master of Computer Science in Data Science (University of Illinois)

Master's Degree in Analytics (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Master in Business Administration (University of Illinois)
There are quite a few online MBA programs from top universities

Master in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HEC Paris)

Master in Computer Science (University of Illinois)

Master of Science in Accountancy (University of Illinois)
There are quite a few online masters of accounting programs

Master of Public Health (University of Michigan)

U. of Pennsylvania Says It Will Be First Ivy to Offer Online Bachelor’s Degree ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-Pennsylvania-Says-It/244558?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=d141a36a95284a0f8e5fa5c808dc009f&elq=be1b8a830c1c44719720db8b11599117&elqaid=20575&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9689
Jensen Comment
Penn has also been among the leaders in offering free MOOCs to global students

US News:  The Best Accredited Online Degrees ---
https://www.usnews.com/education/online-education

Bob Jensen's threads on fee-based online distance education and training programs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free online education and training programs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


How to Mislead With Statistics --- Hire a Public Relations Firm
San Francisco paid $400,000 for questionable research that says its filthy streets are clean ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-paid-400000-for-claims-that-its-streets-are-clean-2018-9

Jensen Comment
San Francisco is paying a heck of a lot to clean its streets including paying the poop patrols $180,000+ per worker per year (including benefits). But it's a little like street safety in New Orleans. The police heavily patrol New Orleans tourist centers (think the French Quarter) but freedom from muggers and panhandlers is not so great outside the tourist districts in New Orleans and other big cities.

In San Francisco I suspect the same can be said for the Poop Patrol.

Cities dependent upon conventions and tourist dollars will use stratified spending like auditors use stratified sampling. The problem with freedom to roam in the USA is that the homeless will do just that such as moving into the tourist areas by day and then sleeping in the residential areas, maybe near the Pelosi mansion.

For San Francisco there's a Catch 22. The better you treat the homeless the more of them you're going to get . When I was a little kid it was a time when hobos still rode the rails. When they hit Swea City they knew which homes were most likely to give out free dinners. My Grandmother Dourte's house was probably the favorite to hit. Every day around noon time we had several hobos sitting on the back porch eating dinner off her china ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
You can guess why they always headed for the Dourte house when they hit town on the rails. God bless her soul!


Tax Deductions for Medical Expenses:  In 2019 what jumps from 7.5% to 10%?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/28/how-to-maximize-your-tax-benefit-from-medical-expenses-this-year.html

Jensen Comment
Before retirement Erika and I always stayed well below the limit for medical expense deductions. After retirement the major things that bump us well over the limit are the surprising high amount we have to pay for both Medicare (including Medicare D) and the Blue Cross Anthem supplements for Medicare. Especially expensive are our supplemental Medicare premiums that bump us well over the tax break limit. Another thing that really helps get us a tax break was to continue to carry a big mortgage. We could easily pay the mortgage off, but by keeping those funds in an insured tax-exempt mutual fund we get a rather sizeable net break after taxes by continuing to make monthly payments at 3.8%. I certainly don't advise a big mortgage for every retiree, but we come out ahead with the highest price Medicare supplemental insurance and a big mortgage.

 In spite of tax considerations the highest price Medicare supplemental insurance certainly would not pay off unless Erika did not incur such steep medical expenses every year. Luckily to date I'm probably paying too much for my own highest price Medicare supplement.


The first of three criminal trials (including Kansas and Louisville) on alleged corruption  (bribary) in college basketball begins next week ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/criminal-trial-to-cap-off-tumultuous-year-in-ncaa-basketball-1538040600?elqTrackId=1f925fcd490b4ac9bbf1d8e03627a755&elq=957b455e7e11453e8fb1a013b776c4ce&elqaid=20703&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9767


Google gets hands-on with its new online IT certificate, as a growing number of community colleges and Northeastern University create credit pathways with the curriculum.---
http://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/09/26/growing-number-colleges-partner-google-offer-credit-its-new-it?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=fc7056b8e8-WNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-fc7056b8e8-197565045&mc_cid=fc7056b8e8&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Closing the Skills Gap With Digital Badges ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/09/26/closing-skills-gap-digital-badges?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b77e93d3f8-DNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b77e93d3f8-197565045&mc_cid=b77e93d3f8&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Seven colleges and universities are working with industry partners to develop digital badges to help underserved students display their skills and gain employment as part of a pilot project called #TeeUpTheSkills.

The yearlong initiative is being led by the Educational Design Lab, a nonprofit that specializes in designing and implementing new learning models. Ed-tech companies Credly and Checkster will be providing pro bono services to the pilot, which will run this academic year.

The project aims to identify skills required by employers to fill in-demand entry-level positions, and to help minority students gain and display these skills with digital badges. The name #TeeUpTheSkills refers to the concept of "T-shaped workers" -- employees who have technical skills as well as "horizontal" skills that help them successfully collaborate, problem solve, communicate and empathize with and lead others. “Microcredentials have gained a lot of traction quickly,” said Kathleen deLaski, founder and president of the Education Design Lab. “But to fulfill the promise that they will help students articulate hireability skills and make them digitally visible to employers, we need hiring managers to give us clearer ‘market signals’ to validate these as credentials.”

Employers participating in the project have agreed to look at the résumé of any student who acquires the badges deemed necessary for different job pathways. The employers will also track short-term hiring outcomes.

The following universities and employers are participating:

§  Alamo Colleges District (Employer partner: San Antonio Works)

§  American Public University System (Employer partner: MVM, Inc.)

§  Central New Mexico Community College (Employer partner: TLC Plumbing, Jaynes Corporation)

§  Langston University (Employer partner: ONEOK)

§  San José State University (Employer partner: Cisco)

§  University of Maine (Employer partner: Bangor Bank, Northern Light Health)

§  University at Albany, State University of New York (Employer partner: Startup NY, Branch VFX)

 

Video: A Scenario of Higher Education in 2020 (or thereabouts closer to 2040)---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ


Denver Law School Pays Up Big-Time Over Gender Pay Disparity ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/09/denver-law-school-pays-up-big-time-over-gender-pay-disparity.html


University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wharton_School_of_the_University_of_Pennsylvania

New $50 million Gift to Wharton (earmarked heavily for hiring and training faculty) ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/10/03/50-million-gift-wharton-school?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=71c51f6de9-DNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-71c51f6de9-197565045&mc_cid=71c51f6de9&mc_eid=1e78f7c952


Women Ask Fewer Questions Than Men ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/10/01/women-ask-fewer-questions-men?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=125518c0cf-DNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-125518c0cf-197565045&mc_cid=125518c0cf&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

Jensen Comment
Throughout my 40 years of faculty experience in four universities I don't recollect this phenomenon among my colleagues in faculty meetings. By the way I was one of the professors who listened far more than I ever spoke at faculty meetings. Mostly I was impatient just to get the darn things over with.

I most definitely noted a gender difference among students in my classes. Women students were less likely to ask questions in class but much more likely to seek out help during my office hours. I really don't think I'm just imagining this after retirement. Maybe its that old "men don't like to ask for directions" type of thing. I also found that on average women were better students in my courses, but there were always exceptions where some of my standout students were male.

In latter years where I produced Camtasia videos about most of the technical content of my courses I tended to feel like the proverbial Maytag repairman during office hours. This is because with home-play videos students could keep replaying tough content of my courses until they saw the light.

 Late in life it deflated my balloon to learn that it was not my magnetic personality that previously drew students to my office hours.


Stanford's Carta versus the abandoned Cornell University Grade Distribution Experiment

Stanford University:
 Launched in August 2016, Carta aggregates information from recent student evaluations and 15 years of registrar records, including each course’s workload and grade distribution. Students can visualize a weekly schedule and compare the intensity of their planned course load with that of previous quarters. More than 90 percent of undergraduates have used Carta since it launched.
https://medium.com/stanford-magazine/choosing-classes-with-a-little-help-from-big-data-e87a35463341

Jensen Comment
Carta at Stanford is very similar to a similar experiment conducted and eventually (after several years) abandoned at Cornell University. The main purpose appears to differ somewhat, and Stanford uses more data than course grade distributions. Whereas the Cornell experiment was largely motivated to combat grade inflation, Stanford's Carta purportedly is designed to help students choose courses. In some respect the outcome may be the same as students flock to the easy courses and easy-grading professors. Grade inflation at both universities is a huge problem exacerbated by teaching evaluations ---

http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor

Cornell's faculty senate elected to stop revealing grade distributions of courses and individual faculty ---
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/05/faculty-senate-vote-may-help-stop-grade-inflation

It just got harder to shop around for good grades at Cornell.

The Faculty Senate voted May 11 to stop posting course median grades on a university website. The resolution, aimed at ending grade inflation, passed by a margin of about 3-to-1, according Dean of the University Faculty William Fry.

The resolution states that students have been using online information on course median grades -- halfway between the lowest and highest -- to sign up for classes in which higher grades are awarded, contributing to grade inflation at Cornell. The Office of the University Registrar's website has reported median grades since 1998.

Research by two Cornell professors provided the resolution's rationale. Assistant professor of economics Talia Bar, professor of marketing and economics Vrinda Kadiyali and an Israeli colleague of the two showed in a 2009 paper that the availability of "grade information online induced students to select leniently graded courses -- or in other words, to opt out of courses they would have selected absent considerations of grades."

The paper, "Grade Information and Grade Inflation: The Cornell Experiment," was published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. "It seemed like a very thorough evaluation, a very rational approach," said associate professor of nutritional sciences Charles McCormick, who presented the resolution on behalf of the senate's Educational Policy Committee.

The Office of the University Registrar will continue to record median grades offline but make them available only to deans, department chairs and those needing the data for research.

The Faculty Senate has asked Vice President for Student and Academic Services Susan Murphy, who oversees the Office of the University Registrar, to implement the ruling.

The May 11 resolution reverses part of the senate's 1996 decision to post course median grades online and to include them on students' transcripts. The stated rationale at that time was that students, faculty and others trying to evaluate transcripts would benefit from information enabling them to interpret course grades. And the presence of median grades on transcripts, the senate reasoned, might encourage students to take courses with relatively low median grades. Median grades appeared online immediately after the 1996 resolution, but technological obstacles precluded their appearance on transcripts until fall 2008.

In May 2009, the senate tabled a resolution essentially identical to the one it passed May 11. "Since median grades had just begun appearing on transcripts, some senators felt that we hadn't had time to see how the intent of the 1996 resolution would play out -- that is, perhaps now that median grades were also on transcripts, students wouldn't be so quick to choose courses with high medians," said associate professor of electrical engineering David Delchamps.

But in fact, McCormick said, the policy has "had the opposite effect."

Continued in article

Former Duke University geology professor Stuart Rojstaczer collected more data from more universities than any other individual in history ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Rojstaczer
NYT opinion article by Professor Rojstaczer:  Student Evaluations Lead to Bad Data and That Leads to Bad Decisions ---
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/17/professors-and-the-students-who-grade-them/student-evaluations-offer-bad-data-that-leads-to-the-wrong-answer


Book Review by Larry Summers
“A Crisis of Beliefs: Investor Psychology and Financial Fragility," by Nicola Gennaioli ---
http://larrysummers.com/2018/09/13/the-financial-crisis-and-the-foundations-for-macroeconomics/#more-36149

Jensen Comment
In my opinion it's too tempting to get bogged down in economic/finance theory when trying to explain the recession commencing around 2008. That recession was more the work of criminal mortgage lenders, greedy property appraisers, and government do-gooders (think Rep. Barnie Frank) making it easier for low-income people to afford homes who really could not afford home ownership. The classic example of the criminal nature of the 2008 real estate bubble is the story of Marvene, a woman on welfare who got spendable cash of over $100,000 by taking out a mortgage on her $3,500 shack ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze  (Search for Marvene)

Of course subprime fever contributed a lot to the real estate bubble. Subprime mortgage rates commence ridiculously low and then very high rates kick in a few years later. With expectations of steadily soaring real estate prices buyers speculate by taking out huge mortgages at low subprime rates and then profiting from real estate resales before the higher rates kick in under their contracts. This works great as long as real estate prices go up, up, and up like a hot air balloon. But if and when prices crash the speculators cannot afford to make mortgage payments when their subprime rates jump up and real estate values crash down.

What I'm saying is that the 2008 recession was no great economic mystery. It was an age-old real estate speculation bubble that hinged entirely on horrible government policy of letting both legitimate and criminal mortgage lenders issue mortgages way above property values and then sell those poisoned mortgages upstream to government lenders like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mach and stupid Wall street investment banks who got left holding bags of poisoned mortgages when the real estate bubble burst in 2007 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
The frauds got compounded when investment bankers tried to bundle the poisoned mortgages with solid mortgages in collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bonds. Those sales were to made with recourse such that when the real estate bubble burst and the poisoned mortgages went bad investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., and Merrill Lynch encountered a liquidity crisis when having to buy back the CDO bonds. The US Treasury Dept. under Hank Paulson then bailed out some like his former Goldman bank and let others like Lehman Bros. go bankrupt.

In my opinion the entire real estate bubble and 2008 recession could've been avoided by making originators of mortgages bear a significant part of the default risk when they sold mortgages upstream. By not bearing any default risk mortgage lenders were tempted to lend money to speculators who had no hope of making mortgage payments when higher mortgage rates kicked in under subprime contracts. Also mortgages were being issued to people who had no hope of repaying those mortgages.


How to Mislead With Statistics
Data Set 1 (2010-2017)
Business Insider:  50
Cities Americans Have Been Abandoning in the Last Decade (or more) ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/50-cities-americans-have-been-abandoning-in-the-last-decade-2018-9

When I forwarded Data Set 1 a former colleague rightly chewed me out by pointing out that the rankings of cities with vastly differing populations was a "garbage ranking." I agree and was then inspired to attempt to find the USA Census data upon which Data Set 1 was based. I failed to find this data, but I agree with my colleague that you cannot compare numbers of outgoing migrants from NYC with outgoing migrants from Anchorage, Alaska.

In my search I did find Data Set 2 from the USA Census Bureau in a table that seems to make the same garbage rankings (in a bigger way).

How to Mislead With Statistics
Data Set 2
USA Census Bureau:  Metropolitan Statistical Areas Sorted by Net Migration (Year 2000)

https://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/migration/metxmet/indexn.html

I think my colleague would contend that the rankings in Data Set 2 should've been made on the basis of the last column in the table rather than the second-to-last column. I agree entirely!

Furthermore the size of the numbers in Data Set 2 suggest that there may be many more problems with the numbers in Data Set 1.


How to Mislead With Statistics
This hidden car cost will set you back $3,000 a year
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/ownership/this-hidden-car-cost-will-set-you-back-dollar3000-a-year/ar-AAAufqL?ocid=spartandhp

Considering insurance, gas, maintenance and repairs, most drivers are well aware of how expensive cars are to buy and maintain.

In fact, the average cost to own and operate a new vehicle is $8,849 a year, according to an annual study by AAA, or just under 59 cents a mile if you average 15,000 miles of driving a year.

However, the largest expense that comes with buying a new car largely falls under the radar, the automotive group said.

"Depreciation accounts for almost 40 percent of the cost of owning a new vehicle, more than $3,000 per year," said Robert Sinclair, a spokesman for AAA Northeast.

Read on for more interesting ownership tips on MSN Autos

New cars typically depreciate the minute you drive off the lot. By the time it's a year old, the vehicle has lost nearly one-third of its value, according to Edmunds data.

The secret to minimizing depreciation costs: "Keep your car for a long time and keep it well-maintained or even consider buying a quality, pre-owned vehicle," Sinclair said.

Why you should buy instead of leasing a car

For those currently car shopping, in addition to the purchase price and the rate you'll pay to finance a car, consider the length of time you plan to own your car, Sinclair advised. By driving a pre-owned vehicle in good condition, you can keep your costs way down over that time.

That idea has already caught on. About 39.3 million used cars were purchased in 2017, up 1.8 percent from 2016, according to Cox Automotive. Alternatively, new car sales were down 2 percent to 17.1 million.

Certified pre-owned car sales, specifically, rose 1.6 percent year over year. (A certified pre-owned vehicle, usually one coming off a lease, often includes warranty coverage, which greatly reduces the worry that can also come with buying a used car.)

While President Donald Trump's tariffs on new car sales haven't been enacted yet, just the threat of higher prices on new cars could boost demand for used cars even more.

For this year, 39.5 million used cars are expected to be bought in the U.S., up even more from last year, while new vehicle sales are expected to decline to 16.7 million, Cox Automotive said.

"On the Money" airs on CNBC Saturdays at 5:30 a.m. ET, or check listings for air times in local markets.

More from Personal Finance:

 Continued in article

Jensen Comment

All my life I've driven pre-owned cars, because I was aware of the tremendous loss of value (depreciation)  in the first few years when owning a new car. And usually the cost of leasing was very high for similar reasons plus financing costs. But after 2008, when dealers themselves could borrow money for close to zero interest rates, they tended to pass on much of the savings to lessees such that leasing became a better deal than before 2008.

I leased a car for the first time in 2017. I think I actually saved money.

What the article above fails to recognize is that there's still opportunity value when leasing a car as long as you make money on the opportunity to invest the money saved by not buying the car. In 2017 the interest rates on CDs and most other safe investments was almost zero. However, for years I've done very well investing in a Vanguard long-term insured tax exempt bond fund. It actually works out, after-tax, that I'm better off keeping the price of a new car in that fund and leasing a new car. I warn you that investing in tax-exempt bonds in not entirely risk free and values of the bonds can go up and down (usually only slightly). However, I don't ever plan to cash in most of my tax-exempt investments to a point where I don't really care whether their values go up or down as long as they pay a relatively generous after-tax cash flow every month. They are also not good inflation hedges for young folks. But I'm an old fart not much worried about inflation for the remainder of my life.

Suppose that the monthly lease payments sum to $3,000 per year for three years. Further assume that if I had instead purchased the car for cash the drop in value (depreciation) would be $3,000 per year. That seems like a wash for me give or take while at the same time my after-tax return on the price of the car (say $25,000) in my tax exempt fund is gravy on top of my pretty good leasing deal. And at the end of the lease I don't have to either find a buyer for the car or take a lousy trade-in deal offered by a dealer.

And at the end of the leasing period I have the option to buy the car I've been leasing for three years. One advantage of this is after three years I really know the car well --- it's not quite the same as buying a pre-owned car that someone else drove for three years.

What I'm saying is that leasing may or may not be a good deal for you, but I think it was a good deal for me.
 It all depends upon the leasing deal you can make and the timing of when you make it. Leasing rates are better when you drive very little each year. And timing when you lease can be important. I leased a new 2016 model just when the new 2017 models were coming out. Leasing a 2017 model was expensive compared to leasing the new 2016 model for me because the dealer adjusted the lease rate for the first year depreciation on a new 2016 car that had never been driven.

And if you're a gambler at heart you can take the $25,000 that you do not spend on a new car and by Tesla stock at the moment --- not that I'm recommending that you gamble on Tesla rather than invest in a tax-exempt mutual fund. I'm not buying any Tesla stock. But then I didn't buy Apple stock 20 years ago. Sigh!

Warning 1:  Depreciation per year is higher in the north than than south. Due to winter's road salt it's almost impossible to find a good pre-owned car in New Hampshire relative to Texas and Arizona.

Warning 2: Both leasing and ownership financing will become worse deals is interest rates continue to rise in the USA economy.


Your computer and/or phone may refuse to recognize you
From The Wall Street Journal on September 26, 2018

When Karen Cumming's new Microsoft Surface computer captured her image for its facial recognition system, her blond hair was curled and her eyes were accentuated by mascara and green eyeliner.

Early the next morning --- her hair scraggly, make-up off, glasses on --- the computer looked again. It refused to unlock.

Continued in article


Four great reasons to switch your career and become an accountant ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/accounting-career-switch-reasons-2018-9

Jensen Comment
The "Pay is Great" Reason 2 is misleading. Except where accountants own their own firms they are not likely to receive high-end compensation as spectacular as many other professionals like physicians, architects, etc. The incomes of lawyers are difficult to compare, because there is such variance in lawyer earnings.

And starting salaries of accounting graduates are generally lower than those of actuaries, engineers, computer scientists, and pharmacists. Students are drawn to accounting by the availability of entry-level jobs not requiring prior experience. More importantly they are drawn into those jobs because of the valuable training and experience received and the ability to then branch off into so many, many specialties in both the private and public sectors. Years ago I read where, due to an increase in white-collar crime, the FBI hired more experienced accountants than experienced lawyers. That may have changed today due to the FBI's needs for experienced technology experts.

Accounting is also one of the best tracks to the executive suites. CEOs and CFOs often rose up from accounting degrees. In many of these instances, however, accountants took on other specialties, especially finance and marketing, along the way up.

Accounting, like law and medicine, is attractive due to both rural and urban opportunities. Graduates in computer science and engineering may find slim pickings for careers in small rural communities. However, those communities still need teachers, nurses, physicians, lawyers, tax accountants, and small business accountants.

And because of supply versus demand new accounting Ph.Ds are often the highest-paid $125,000+ new faculty on college campuses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#AccountingFaculty

Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers


How to Mislead With Statistics
50 million Americans live below the official poverty income — here are the poorest towns in every US state
https://www.businessinsider.com/poorest-towns-in-every-us-state-2018-9

Jensen Comment
This is highly misleading for a number of reasons. Firstly the poverty line in the USA is upper middle class in the majority of other nations, especially when things like the safety nets of earned income credits, Medicaid, SS disability income, food stamps, housing subsidies, and welfare are factored into the equation.

Secondly there's an enormous $2+ trillion underground economy where supposedly USA's "poor people" are collecting substantial tax-free cash earnings that are never reported by employers or employees. Often those unreported earnings are supplemented by food stamps, housing subsidies, and welfare. The types of underground economy earnings alternatives are listed at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/SunsetHillHouse/SunsetHillHouse.htm

And remember that crime often pays in America. Some of the fattest cats in the luxury penthouses that drive the most expensive cars are drug dealers, legislators, and City Hall executives.


Trump's family used tax loopholes to game the system — here's how his tax cuts might help others do the same ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-fred-trump-family-profited-tax-loopholes-cuts-new-york-times-2018-10

. . .

Trump supporters have cast doubt on the Times's reporting of the Trump family's tax maneuvers, arguing that such a high-profile figure would have received lots of IRS tax scrutiny. According to Trump's lawyers, his tax returns from 2009 on are still being audited by the agency. So how could reporters detect something the IRS missed?

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The liberal press likes to call the legal tax loopholes used by Trump fraudulent tax evasions. In my opinion, if Trump got away with tax loophole fraud it's as much a reflection of IRS incompetence as it is a reflection on Trump. At these amounts of money Trump had to be under close IRS scrutiny in those days, and I don't believe the IRS is incompetent when it comes to investigating billionaires' use of tax loopholes. Note that the reporters allegations of fraud are all speculative. This appears to me to be a hatchet job for political purposes. The good thing is that because of the publicity Congress and the IRS may be pressured by the publicity to close some of the loopholes.

I'm not a defender of what Trump did, but there's a huge difference between using legal tax loopholes and fraudulent tax evasion. Trump certainly is not the first billionaire to use tax loopholes. How about billionaire Carlos Slim who owns the largest stake in The New York Times? Let's see the NYT investigate his use of tax loopholes.

By the way Trump is not a genius on tax loopholes. The geniuses are his CPAs and lawyers. Trump is more of an expert on beauty contestants.

The IRS does miss a lot of tax evasion fraud in part because the agency is underfunded and overwhelmed by the number of tax returns. But the majority of the tax evasion it misses is among lower profile and less wealthy taxpayers.

So where's the biggest fraud missed by the IRS?
It's in the $2+ trillion underground economy characterized by cash transactions that go unreported. These transactions range from paying a maid $50 cash to clean your house to $10,000 for a new roof in Texas to $8,000 to a dentist in New Hampshire who infrequently gives huge discounts for cash payments on expensive dental work. Investigate the tens of millions of football pools in private homes and bars on Super Bowl Sunday.
 

If you are going to investigate Trump's actual frauds look for instances when his companies paid cash under the table to contractors who worked on parts of his buildings or paid cash for cleaning and maintenance work.

Case Studies in Gaming the Income Tax Laws
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm


How to mislead with statistics
The Top Fifty Colleges and Universities in the USA

https://www.businessinsider.com/best-colleges-in-america-ranked-2018-9#1-harvard-university-50

Jensen Comment
Probably the least happy universities are the Ivy League universities that did not make the Top 10.

It's a lot like comparing apples versus oranges when you compare narrow-focused and tiny Swarthmore (Rank 31) with a mega university like Ohio State (not in the top 50).

I won't go into my usual rant about why such rankings are misleading. Probably the major complaint I have is the "halo" effect of historic reputation and greatness in some disciplines (think science and literature) spills over into some not-so-great specialties. For example, both Brown and Princeton have finance majors, but I would not rank those majors nearly as high as finance majors in some other universities like Bentley. Jagdish Gangolly will probably argue that UC San Diego has a better medical school than many of the medical schools in the Top 40 universities. Texas A&M and Harvey Mudd probably have better engineering schools than most universities in the Top 50.

BYU, Texas, and Wisconsin have a better schools of accountancy than any of the schools of accountancy in the Top 50 other than maybe Notre Dame and Illinois.

Texas can hold its own in computer science against any of the Top 50.

My point here is that some of the Top 50 are ranked in terms of historic greatness as opposed to current greatness.


Bitcoin (a costly electric power hog) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

To lower the costs, bitcoin miners have set up in places like Iceland where geothermal energy is cheap and cooling Arctic air is free.[204] Bitcoin miners are known to use hydroelectric power in Tibet, Quebec, Washington (state), and Austria to reduce electricity costs.[203][205][206][207] Miners are attracted to suppliers such as Hydro Quebec that have energy surpluses.[208] According to a University of Cambridge study, much of bitcoin mining is done in China, where electricity is subsidized by the government.

Jim Borden:  I Don’t Get Bitcoin – but This Video Explains It Really Well ---
https://www.jborden.com/i-dont-get-bitcoin-but-this-video-explains-it-really-well/


Tim Berners-Lee has a plan to fix the web (who did not invent the Internet in the 1960s but did invent the web 20 years later)  ---
https://medium.com/@timberners_lee/one-small-step-for-the-web-87f92217d085

Jensen Comment
This seems to be a little far-fetched to me. If I'm buying products (or services) from Amazon on a weekly basis it's inconceivable that Amazon cannot easily know my buying habits. Amazon has to keep track of my history of orders for a variety of legitimate reasons such as for purposes of verifying my refund requests. Also Amazon cannot be paid by my credit card unless I give them my credit card number. Laws can be passed to prevent Amazon from sharing my buying information with outsiders. However, laws should not be passed to keep Amazon from knowing my buying information or from fining Amazon if hackers manage to steal my information from Amazon.

Does anybody else see the moral hazard in this EU privacy law?
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on October 1, 201

A European Union privacy watchdog could fine Facebook Inc. as much as $1.63 billion for a data breach announced Friday in which hackers compromised the accounts of more than 50 million users, if regulators find the company violated the bloc’s strict new privacy law.

Jensen Comment
It's a little like making a law where the government fines a bank billions just because it got robbed. Isn't this an incentive to train and equip bank robbers for the purpose of robbing banks?


Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and other influential billionaires are investing in 9 startups that are solving the trickiest problems with energy and water — here's the list
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-jeff-bezos-breakthrough-energy-ventures-investments-2018-9

Jensen Comment
Some seem way, way off into the distant future --- which is probably why taxpayer funds and less-wealthy investors are not being used directly for those projects.


GAO Report:  IRS could do more to stop fraud (especially identity thefts)
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/irs-can-do-more-to-protect-against-tax-fraudsters-watchdog-says/

Jensen Comment
The knee jerk reaction is that the IRS is already operating on a bare-bones budget. But identity theft is directly costing the IRS. For example, in 2016 after a Turbo Tax data breach, my Social Security number and IRS PIN number were stolen and used to file a phony tax return in my name. It wasn't me who dole out a huge refund to the thieves. It was the IRS that bore the loss in addition to eventually paying the miniscule refund that I requested later on when I filed my legitimate tax return. The same thing happens to the IRS millions of times every year.

What can be done by the IRS? I think one way is to do a better job tracking down who receives and spends refunds. Make it more risky to receive and spend illegal tax refunds.


Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable fast-food chains in the US — here's why they're so successful ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-chick-fil-a-is-successful-2018-9
I think better food is the key. My worry is the tendency toward being in malls at a time when being in malls is not looking good.

A closed Macy's store in a dead mall was turned into a homeless shelter — this is what it looks like inside now ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/macys-store-turned-homeless-shelter-phoos-2018-9


How to Possibly Mislead With Statistics ---
“And 1” More Piece of Evidence of Discrimination Against Black Basketball Players ---
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10646175.2018.1491434

Jensen Comment
I did not study the methodology of this study in enough detail to conclude that the conclusions are misleading or at least somewhat misleading.

However, some of the things I would look for in a more detailed analysis include the following:

Apart from controversies of z-score normalization, I wonder if the "statistical significances" are substantially significant given the sample sizes.

Assuming that half the games are home games for the black schools I wonder what proportion of the referees in those schools were black referees? This suggests the possibility that most fouling differences were real rather than prejudicial for half the games. .

The article does not reference the new challenges to statistical inference testing in science ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

Based upon my cursory scanning of this article I cannot conclude that the article is misleading. The references to the article suggest that there are a variety of prejudices to black players that are very real phenomena. There is a possibility that this study does not really show what it intends to show.


One of the first NFL players to protest alongside Colin Kaepernick is back in the NFL despite an ongoing collusion lawsuit ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-reid-carolina-panthers-2018-9

Before earnings were announced Nike was trading at all-time highs ---
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nike-stock-price-near-all-time-highs-ahead-of-earnings-2018-9-1027564004

Stock prices took a nose dive after disappointing earnings were announced ---
https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/nke-stock

Jensen Comment
I'm not implying that the drop in earning was caused by the Colin Kaepernick advertising promotion. A whole lot of other factors impact earnings. The Kaepernick promotion may have helped earnings in the short-term.

It is somewhat interesting that the 49ers are now seeking a new quarterback after their top quarterback was injured (pesky ACL tear) for the season. Several top quarterbacks were invited for tryouts. This was an opportunity for the 49ers to seek a Kaepernick boost, but that seems to not be what the 49ers want this season. Years ago when he left the 49ers he was not playing all that well.


The humble lettuce is revealing the power of future farm automation ---
https://qz.com/1403017/a-new-robot-can-peel-lettuce-as-well-as-a-human/

Jensen Comment
With driverless combines in the field with driverless trucks at their sides and automated processing plants awaiting, one wonders how close we are to the day when the lettuce will appear in a market without ever having to be touched by human hands. It's been decades since it was possible for an automobile dealer to to place an order for a part and never have that part be touched by a human hand before it arrives at the dealership.

At this point in time automobile assembly lines are showing us that totally automated lines are not as cost effective as hybrid labor-machine lines. However, the days may be numbered for the labor part of the line as the machines get cheaper and better.


Insider Trading’s Odd Couple: The Goldman Banker and the NFL Linebacker ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-28/insider-trading-s-odd-couple-the-goldman-banker-and-the-nfl-linebacker?mbid=nl_hps_5bae9ed7e5ae6a094d00191c&CNDID=31837029


Bayesian Average --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_average

David Giles:  Controlling My Heating Bill Using Bayesian Model Averaging ---
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/2018/09/controlling-my-heating-bill-using.html


Can empirical data about human behavior make the “soft” sciences more like the “hard” ones? New interdisciplinary fields are voting yes. ---
https://daily.jstor.org/sociophysics-and-econophysics-the-future-of-social-science/

Jensen Comment
There's one enormous difference between hard and soft sciences. When Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion the planets did not change their behavior. In other words discovery of how things work in the hard sciences does not change how they work, although humans may change because of that discovery such as cutting back on sugar after discovering what sugar does to the human body.

The soft science discovery of behavior may change that behavior merely because of a soft science research discovery. For example, research discovery of an arbitrage trading strategy that can earn abnormal riskless returns in a market will be destroyed once the public becomes aware of the strategy and changes market behavior. In other words discovery of a profitable strategy may permanently change market behavior, unlike discovery of planetary behavior.

But there's an enormous gray area between soft versus hard sciences ---
https://www.nature.com/articles/487271a
An illustration is how psychologists approach memory research versus how biologists, physicians, and chemists approach brain research. In many instances these hard scientists are trying to find physical explanations for what was previously discovered by psychologists.

One thing that makes soft versus hard sciences similar is that research discoveries are often built upon underlying assumptions. My favorite example is the Pythagorean Theorem that concludes the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a triangle. The assumption is that the right angle is a perfect 90.00+ degrees carried out to an infinite number of decimal points. It's pretty safe to assume that there's never been a perfect right angle except in our imaginations. In the real world right angles are never perfect. And yet we can build bridges and do all sorts of other things because the Pythagorean Theorem is quite robust to "slight" error in the rightness of the angle.

Much of the debate in softness of science arises in funding debates where soft scientists frequently have a "harder" time finding research ---
https://www.nature.com/articles/487271a 


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

US Navy Launches Blockchain Research in Mission to Improve Tracking System (for lifetime of each major part) ---
https://www.coindesk.com/us-navy-launches-blockchain-research-in-mission-to-improve-tracking-system/

Lawmaker plans 3 bills on blockchain development ---
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/us-congressman-drafts-blockchain-development-bills/

The required step before AI and blockchain ---
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/newsletters/2018/sep/required-step-ai-blockchain.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20Sep2018

How financial institutions are using distributed ledgers & blockchain technology to transform businesses in 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/beyond-bitcoin-report-2018-3

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

The crypto world is going wild for 'stablecoins' — here's everything you need to know about them ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/crypto-stablecoins-explained-bitcoin-ethereum-fintech-2018-9

Bitcoin, the Regression Theorem, and the Emergence of a New Medium of Exchange ---
https://mises.org/library/bitcoin-regression-theorem-and-emergence-new-medium-exchange

Jim Borden:  I Don’t Get Bitcoin – but This Video Explains It Really Well ---
https://www.jborden.com/i-dont-get-bitcoin-but-this-video-explains-it-really-well/

CPAs’ top 5 questions about blockchain, cryptocurrencies ---
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/newsletters/2018/jul/5-questions-blockchain-cryptocurrencies.html?utm_source=mnl:globalcpa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=26Sep2018

What Will Cryptocurrency Be Like in 10 Years? ---

https://readwrite.com/2018/09/18/what-will-cryptocurrency-be-like-in-10-years/

A glimpse into the dark underbelly of cryptocurrency markets ---
https://medium.com/@nic__carter/a-glimpse-into-the-dark-underbelly-of-cryptocurrency-markets-d1690b761eaf



Blockchain Implications for Tax (expensive AICPA Webcast) ---
https://www.aicpastore.com/Tax/blockchain-implications-for-tax/PRDOVR~PC-WC1820339/PC-WC1820339.jsp?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20Sep2018

Risks and returns of cryptocurrencies ---

https://voxeu.org/article/risks-and-returns-cryptocurrencies

Blockchain and Bitcoins – Notes From the Sidelines
http://www.jamesrpeterson.com/home/2018/09/blockchain-and-bitcoins-notes-from-the-sidelines.html

The US SEC has suspended two trading products, one Bitcoin-related and the other Ethereum-related, that are listed as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the Stockholm Stock Exchange ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/sec-suspends-trading-in-cryptocurrency-products-over-etf-confusion.html?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=7d7b27327d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-7d7b27327d-153727301

Hackers are illegally generating Monero, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by exploiting a software flaw that was leaked from the U.S. government ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/hackers-target-bitcoin-with-leaked-nsa-software-tip-report-says?cmpid=BBD091918_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=180919&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

The Great Cryptocurrency Crash of 2018 ---
https://mises.org/power-market/great-cryptocurrency-crash-2018


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

What Is a Meme (and How Did They Originate)? ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/356232/what-is-a-meme/


A liberal Blog (run by Nate Silver) questions:   Can Conservatives Ever Trust A Tech Industry Staffed Mostly By Liberals (form California)?
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-conservatives-ever-trust-a-tech-industry-staffed-mostly-by-liberals/

. . .

Tech companies aggressively deny that they have a systemic bias against conservatives. (And I think the facts are with them — as I will explain later.) But this bias charge seems unlikely to go away. Most of all: I suspect this is really an argument about political identity, not the details of algorithms or how stories are promoted. Conservatives are implying that Big Tech (think Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Twitter) is inherently anti-conservative because the tech industry is dominated by liberals. It’s the same concern conservatives have about colleges and universities, the entertainment industry and the news media. As this argument goes, an industry dominated by liberals is likely to make decisions that favor liberals.

Continued in article


Newsweek:  Antifa Compares ICE With Gestapo, Calls for 'Slaying' Agents With 'Revolutionary Fire and Justice' ---
https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-compares-ice-gestapo-fighting-fire-fire-1134607

C. Christine Fair --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Christine_Fair
A politically correct professor who tweeted for somebody to kill Republican Senators

Political Correctness:  One current Georgetown student said others who see the professor's tweet might feel "threatened" if they hold different opinions.
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11369
Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
 

It's especially informative to read the three student evaluations at RateMyProfessors.com ---
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=2220270

Student 1
There is no discussion, questioning, or debate in her class. You must simply sit and listen to her opinions which are frequently incoherent and disjointed. Worse, her lectures are never supported, just presented as unvarnished dogma. This is not what Georgetown is about. This is not even what a marginal college education is about. AVOID.

Student 2
It's a little hard to get past the professor's POV to focus on material related to class. She takes a "my way or the highway" approach toward opinions. If you take this class, please pretend to be a politically correct liberal. Otherwise, you are in big trouble with this uncritical, unfair hothead.

Student 3
Tends to go off on tangents and rant. As a student from the Middle East I sometimes felt uncomfortable with some of her views and discussions. Do NOT challenge her point of view as I did -- I wound up dropping the class because of it. Would have been a good class if she stuck to the course material.

No other students came to her defense

Yeah, I know that this is a self-selecting very small number of her students. However, none of her other students wrote in to counter the negativism. The numerical ratings on RMP should not be statistically analyzed. However, the subjective evaluations can be informative, especially in her case. I found this especially interesting since she teaches women's studies. Usually students choose such courses because they have prior positive feelings about women's studies.
It would seem that Professor Fair is intolerant of varied opinions in her courses.


How to Mislead With Statistics
NYT: Brett Kavanaugh lacks the temperament and commitment to judicious inquiry needed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court say 1,000+ law professors
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/03/opinion/kavanaugh-law-professors-letter.html?elqTrackId=675135454ba64fa7b23327a9dca91b76&elq=346a31250cd3460fbda7441f772cf36d&elqaid=20815&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9842

Jensen Comment
We could complain that this was not a random sampling of USA law professors. However, random sampling would not change the outcomes much because there are so few conservative law professors in the USA (less than 10%) ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/03/lindgren-the-most-under-represented-groups-in-law-teaching-.html
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias

Most liberal law school professors are so opposed to any conservative being appointed to the Supreme Court they would answer any questions about conservative candidate unfavorably,  It has little or nothing to do with Kavanaugh.

I follow some leading academic journals daily (such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, etc.). The articles to date that I've seen about conservatives are 100% negative.

This reveals to me how out of touch the Academy is with half (give or take) of the electorate in the USA. Subjective evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com reveal that professors are out of touch with a significant percentage of their students who are often not as overwhelmingly liberal as their professors.

Just in case you're wondering I'm a liberal on such matters as gay rights, abortion, birth control, and eventual national health coverage. However, I'm a conservative on most economic issues and border control. I favor a German-style limited national health care plan and oppose England's national health care. I waiver a lot about affirmative action. That is very contingent upon circumstances.


Supreme Court of the United States --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

How to mislead with statistics
Physics and Math Predict Supreme Court Votes
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/plus/supreme-court.cfm
Opinions of the Supreme Court
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/18

Jensen Comment
I'm not taking issue with the records of the supreme court or models used to predict judicial decision outcomes. What I do take issue with is how incomplete these records are in judging the partisanship power of the Court or individual members of the court based upon voting records. The power of the Supreme Court is vast due to it's power to intimidate.

It's a lot like the trouble analysts have in trying to place fraud prevention values on IRS tax audits or financial statement audits. We can examine the records of actual audits in detecting fraud until the cows come home, but we can never analyze frauds that never happened because of fear of being detected in audits. The same thing happens when trying to judge the Supreme Court and its members on the basis of their voting records. What we cannot analyze is the the vast set of all cases or possible cases that never came to the court out of fear of what the Court would decide.

I would contend that the more the Supreme Court is viewed as partisan the larger the set of cases or potential cases that never will reach the court. For example, after his decision on Obamacare and some other cases the current Justice John Roberts is not viewed as horrifically conservative as many progressives once feared. Justice Elena Kagan is not viewed as liberal as many conservatives once feared. But these opinions are based upon a relatively few number of cases that reached the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court can be far more biased in selection of cases than in deciding cases.

Furthermore, fear of a politicized court may prevent business firms, colleges, states, etc. from even filing lawsuits initially out of fear of what might happen on what is viewed as a "politicized" supreme court. For example, California's new law favoring net neutrality is being challenged by the Federal government. If California loses in a lower court decision will California be afraid to carry the fight up to the current (post-Kavanaugh) Supreme Court? Personally I think California might be foolish to appeal to the present USA Supreme Court. California should fear that the Supreme Court's decision might forever make it more difficult to fight for net neutrality --- net neutrality is something I want badly. It may be better to wait until liberals have more power to reinstate net neutrality in Congress and the White House.

My point here is that voting records per se are potentially misleading in judging our Supreme Court or its individual members.

There is some evidence of Supreme Court bias on other grounds, particularly the Harvard/Yale bias ---
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/12/opinion/la-oe-turley-supreme-court-20100512
I don't dispute this argument, although it is somewhat ironic that both Justices Thomas and Sotomayor graduated from the Yale law school. I suspect that these days the Yale Law School would like to disbar Justice Thomas even if he is African American.


Over the past few years, a North Korean hacking group called APT38 has attempted to steal more than $1 billion from banks around the world and gotten away with hundreds of millions ---
https://apnews.com/f6822f1313e2499883348a5615d2dbed/NKorea-said-to-have-stolen-a-fortune-in-online-bank-heists


The average cost of health coverage offered by U.S. employers rose to nearly $20,000 for a family plan this year
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on October 4, 2018

Good day. Health insurance is key to attracting and retaining talent, but finance chiefs are battling the ever-rising price of such employee benefits. The average cost of health coverage offered by U.S. employers rose to nearly $20,000 for a family plan this year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Ballooning price tags: Annual premiums rose 5% to $19,616 for an employer family plan in 2018, according to the yearly poll of employers by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Employers also continued to boost the deductibles that workers must pay out of their pockets to help blunt the premium increases.

 

Sharing the burden: Companies are rejiggering how much they pay in premium contributions versus employees, as well as the size of employee deductibles, to spread out the rising costs. Nationwide, employees paid on average $5,547 a year, or 29%, of the premiums for a family plan in 2018, according to the Kaiser employer survey.

 

Merger trouble: A recent study linked rising health-care prices to mergers in large hospital systems. While insurers and employers pay for health care, the prices are typically set in negotiations between health insurers and hospitals, doctors and other health-care providers.

 

Deloitte:  To Innovate on Controlling Health Care Costs: Follow the Money ---
https://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/2018/10/03/to-innovate-on-controlling-health-care-costs-follow-the-money/?mod=WSJBlog

 

The annual fall open-enrollment period is just around the corner for many employers. Workers who receive health coverage through their jobs will choose a new health insurance plan or will re-enroll in existing coverage for the year ahead. For the 2019 plan year, annual coverage costs are expected to increase to nearly $15,000 per employee, according to estimates from the National Business Group on Health.

There seems to be a resurgence of interest among employers in using innovative approaches to manage benefits. Just a few years ago, the lion’s share of activity was on shifting more costs to employees. That strategy appears to have run its course, and employers and other stakeholders are looking for new ways to reduce coverage costs while adding value to their employee benefits.

When thinking about how to get more value from the health care system, employers should follow the money. A recent analysis of commercial claims data conducted by Deloitte determined that more than half of commercial health care dollars are spent on just 5 percent of the insured population. Moreover, just 1 percent of the insured population consumes 27 percent of the health care dollars. This finding has been consistent over time. It suggests that programs designed to improve care — such as chronic-care management for this typically very sick part of the population — might have a significant return.

Consider putting innovation opportunities for employers into two buckets: The first, improving care for people who are sick (where most of the money is spent), and the second, keeping healthy people from getting sick.

Bucket One: Improve Care Management for the Sickest

Employers, health plans, physicians, and health systems should target the small percentage of employees (and dependents) who consume the most health care resources. Technology, such as predictive modeling, could help health plans identify people who are most at risk for using expensive services. Data related to practice patterns could help identify the physicians and hospitals that have the best results for treating certain conditions. Apps can give employers a way to help their workers find lower-cost services, remind them to take their medicine, and connect them to coaches and counselors.

Employers also could help manage their sickest insured populations by partnering with efficient providers who are willing to innovate their clinical model. Both self-insured employers and those that purchase insurance from at-risk health plans can learn from other employers, as well as from the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The challenge facing many employers is how to replicate innovations. Not all employers have leverage in their markets or maintain relationships with health plans or health systems that want to be transformative.

Strategies some employers have used to reduce costs for their sickest members include:

— Transition to value-based insurance designs. The overall trend in benefit design has been to increase employee cost sharing, but some employers are recognizing the limitations of this strategy. While research supports the idea that people use less care (both necessary and unnecessary care) when they have higher cost sharing, this might not have much of an effect on people after they exceed their deductibles. Moreover, higher cost sharing could promote non-adherence to drug regimens.

A recent study in the journal Health Affairs found that value-based insurance design — which reduces cost-sharing for high-value services — can improve medication adherence without increasing overall spending. But the value in value-based care has to go beyond cost. A patient recently diagnosed with cancer, for example, might be more concerned with outcomes than with cost. Employers can help their workers navigate care with tools that identify high-quality providers and offer comparable information about prices.

— Forge health system partnerships with innovative providers. At the Boeing Company, lower-back pain among workers accounted for a significant share of the company’s health care spending. The manufacturer launched an initiative with local health systems that helped to reduce spending (reportedly 20 percent), lowered absenteeism, and improved outcomes for lower-back pain by referring patients directly to physical therapy and avoiding often unnecessary surgery. Similarly, one major retailer has been directing its employees to high-value health systems — even the Mayo Clinic — to get medical care.

— Consider accountable care organizations (ACOs) for certain conditions. Some employers have partnered with health systems that operate as ACOs and take risk for the total cost of care. Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System, for example, participates in The Employers Centers of Excellence Network. The employers involved make bundled payments for the treatment of spine, bariatric, and cardiac surgeries, which shifts the risk of additional costs related to complications onto network providers. To encourage their workers to use this program, participating employers cover copayments, deductibles, and travel expenses.

Bucket Two: Keep the Healthy, Healthy

Preventing people from becoming sick not only lowers health care spending for employers, it also helps to keep workers more productive. Employers continue to support wellness programs, and some employers are working with health plans and others to encourage employees and dependents to exercise and eat healthily. Adoption of apps and fitness trackers is on the rise, according to the results of our health care consumer survey. The number of consumers who track their health data with wearables has more than doubled since 2013. While such programs can help to improve employee health, they tend to attract people who would have been healthy anyway.

Continued in article


Some faculty members simply decide not to pursue being promoted to full professor  — most notably, one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, Associate Professor Donna Strickland ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/For-Some-Scholars-a-Full/244742?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=84046185396544b9b33cfe8ff73784ee&elq=6d678e17d2d749af80eaa4c126717aa1&elqaid=20861&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9863

Jensen Comment
There are two extremes among career associate professors. There are those who don't publish much, if anything, but are team players in their departments in terms of internal service, external service, and teaching. Then there are those who do little else but meet their classes and hold some office hours. Whether or not they are earning their keep depends entirely on their value to students. Some are lackluster in the classroom and teach on automatic pilot as underperforming tenured faculty. Others still give their all to students.

Sadly, career associate professors sometimes pursue parenthood to a fault and/or second careers that take more and more of their time. When I was on the faculty at the University of Maine one of my colleagues purchased a lobster boat. What started out as a summer business soon became an extended career in fall and spring semesters. He moved his family about 50+ miles away to an island and commuted for days he had classes. He became an example of why tenure is not always a good thing as he fell further and further behind in academics and team playing.

Some are expert enough to start out consulting and then spend more and more of their earning money from consulting. Accountancy is also great for starting up part-time tax practices or accounting system practices. Sometimes these outside businesses end up taking more time each week than does teaching at the college.

I've had other associate professor colleagues that are totally committed to their students and to keeping up with happenings in their disciplines that were important to the relevancy of course content. They did not have an interest in the esoteric research of their disciplines. Some of them provided a lot of service to the department in other duties. Some even became department heads. Others did not provide much service.

Distance education teaching allows some faculty at all ranks to almost disappear from campus.

If you wonder about somebody who's been an associate professor for more than 10 years you can sometimes find out a bit from reading student comments on RateMyProfessors.com. You might be surprised about how much students respect their associate professor teachers. Students don't usually don't care a whit about the academic rank of a teacher.


Teaching Case From The Wall Street Journal Weekly Accounting Review on September 28, 2018

Sears Chief Proposes Revamp

By Suzanne Kapner and Andrew Scurria | Sep 25, 2018

TOPICS: Bankruptcy, Going Concern

SUMMARY: Sears Holdings Corp. CEO Edward Lampert "...who is also Sears's chairman, controlling shareholder and biggest creditor, wants creditors to restructure about $1.1 billion of debt coming due in 2019 and 2020, according to a proposal made public on Monday." The article discusses terms of a proposed debt restructuring and issues related to asset sales while Sears is a going concern rather than in bankruptcy liquidation.

CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The article may be used when discussing bankruptcy or the concept of going concern in a financial reporting class.

QUESTIONS: 

 

1. (Introductory) Besides falling sales and growing losses, what pressing issue is Sears facing?

 

2. (Introductory) What does Sears CEO Lampert mean when he says he wants to "restructure Sears's debt without filing for bankruptcy protection"? According to the article, what terms might be changed in Sears' debt?

 

3. (Advanced) What does it mean to say that a retailer might re-structure a business rather than liquidate the business? Is this use of the term "restructuring" the same as in question 2? Explain.

 

4. (Advanced) What is "bankruptcy protection"? Why does the Sears CEO feel this "protection" poses a risk of liquidation rather than restructuring?

 

5. (Introductory) Mr. Lampert "...believes Sears can get more value for its assets by selling them while it is a going concern" than through a bankruptcy liquidation. Define the term "going concern" and state your source for that definition.

 

6. (Advanced) Why do you think that Sears might receive more for its assets as a going concern than through a bankruptcy liquidation?

READ THE ARTICLE



 

RELATED ARTICLES: 
Sears Reports Widening Losses and Tumbling Sales
by Suzanne Kapner
Sep 13, 2018
Online Exclusive

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island

 

"Sears Chief Proposes Revamp," by Suzanne Kapner and Andrew Scurria, The Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2018
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sears-ceo-pushes-a-rescue-plan-to-avoid-bankruptcy-1537795118?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid

With cash running low, Lampert wants creditors to refinance debts and Sears board to sell more assets

Warning that Sears Holdings Corp. is running out of time and money, CEO Edward Lampert is making his biggest push yet to restructure the retailer to avoid a bankruptcy filing, as a debt payment looms next month.

Mr. Lampert, who is also Sears’s chairman, controlling shareholder and biggest creditor, wants creditors to restructure about $1.1 billion of debt coming due in 2019 and 2020, according to a proposal made public on Monday.

The proposal also calls on the Sears board to sell another $1.5 billion of real estate and divest some $1.75 billion of assets, including Sears Home Services and the Kenmore appliance brand, which he has offered $400 million to buy himself.

The restructuring plan, if approved by the board and creditors, would reduce Sears’s roughly $5.5 billion in debt to about $1.24 billion, if all proceeds were spent on paying down debts, according a securities filing Monday by ESL Investments Inc., Mr. Lampert’s hedge fund.

“Sears now faces significant near-term liquidity constraints,” the filing states, including a $134 million payment due Oct. 15, which isn’t part of the proposed restructuring.

Sears said it had received ESL’s proposal and the board had asked its legal and financial advisers to work closely with ESL and other stakeholders to pursue “liability management transactions” similar what ESL has proposed. Sears said any such move, or real estate deal, would require approval of its advisers and independent board members.

The proposal is designed to give Sears enough time to return to profitability, said Kunal Kamlani, ESL’s president. “We would welcome broad participation from investors and encourage the Sears board and other interested parties to work with us as quickly as possible,” he continued.

Analysts said that while the plan would help put Sears on firmer financial footing, it doesn’t solve the retailer’s underlying problems.

“As usual, Sears is focusing on financial maneuvers and missing the wider point that sales remain on a downward trajectory,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, although he credits Mr. Lampert with keeping the retailer afloat. “Had Sears been owned by anyone else it would have likely long since gone under,” Mr. Saunders said.

Since rescuing Kmart from bankruptcy and combining it with Sears in 2005, Mr. Lampert has closed hundreds of stores and sold off divisions as the business faltered. The hedge-fund manager personally took over as CEO in 2013, but the 125-year-old chain’s woes have worsened in recent years.

The company has lost more than $11 billion since 2011, and its sales have shrunk nearly 60% in that period to $16.7 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Analysts say it needs to raise about $1.5 billion a year to stay afloat.

Continued in article

Here's what will happen to your Sears warranty if the company goes bankrupt ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/sears-warranties-could-be-dissolved-in-bankruptcy-2017-3
Jensen Comment
When WT Grant shuttered up my live warranties on a stereo and freezer went dead while I was living in Maine. When Montgomery Ward shuttered up my live warranties on a microwave and TV set went dead while we were living in Texas. Needless to say I'm a bit worried about renewing my 12 warranties on Sears products while living here in New Hampshire. Because we retired remotely in the White Mountains I've especially liked the in-home warranty services of Sears. Sears has been great about honoring in-home warranty contracts and providing free annual maintenance. The price of an extended in-home warranty is expensive. It's certainly not for everybody, but when you live far, far away from service centers these in-home warranties are terrific.

The manager of our closest (small and rural) Sears store assures me that the warranty service operation is independent and will continue to service the products, but I'm not sure I will continue to renew my warranties if Sears declares bankruptcy. By the way, that particular small-town Sears store is independently owned and managed. However, I don't know how a Sears bankruptcy will affect this store's continued supply of Sears products. It's really a great little store at the moment. My guess is that the product lines will be eventually bought out if Sears stops operations altogether. However, bankruptcy does not mean that Sears will necessarily shutter up like Toys or Us stores recently shuttered up.


Sometimes the best research centers go astray
Harvard and the Brigham Hospital recommend 31 retractions for cardiac stem cell work ---
http://retractionwatch.com/2018/10/14/harvard-and-the-brigham-recommend-31-retractions-for-cardiac-stem-cell-work/


 

 

 

 

 




From the Scout Report on September 28, 2018

Rclone Educational Technology --- https://rclone.org/
Rclone is a file synchronization tool that features built-in support for several dozen cloud storage providers. These include both large providers like Amazon S3 and Microsoft OneDrive, as well as self-hosted solutions like ownCloud and NextCloud. Rclone can operate in one of three modes. In copy mode, any new or changed files are uploaded. In sync mode, Rclone makes a destination folder identical to a source folder, deleting files if necessary to do so. Finally, in check mode, Rclone will report the differences between two folders. Rclone is able to operate entirely over the network, without the need for a local folder. For example, it can synchronize an Amazon S3 bucket with a Box.com folder. The optional crypt plugin allows users to transparently encrypt data before uploading it and can be used as part of an encrypted offsite backup strategy. Extensive usage information is available on the docs section of the Rclone website. Rclone executables can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, Linux, and several other types of UNIX. Rclone is free software, distributed under the MIT license, with source code available on GitHub.


Drawpile --- https://drawpile.net/
Drawpile is a network-enabled drawing program that allows multiple users to simultaneously edit the same image. In the servers section, users can find a list of active public sessions and may create their own drawing sessions (either fully open or password protected) on the public Drawpile server. The Drawpile application also includes a built-in server that can host collaborative drawing sessions that are accessible to other users on the same network. A number of functions for managing sessions are provided (for example, kicking/banning problematic users); the full list is described in Collaboration and User Management in the about section of Drawpile's website. Drawpile can also create animations, either by recording a whole drawing session as a video file or by using image layers as frames. Images are exported in OpenRaster format, which can be imported by applications like MyPaint, Krita, or GIMP. Drawpile executables can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Drawpile is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3, with source code available on GitHub.


Long-lost Galileo Letter Found, Resolving Historical Puzzle

 

Discovery of Galileo's long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06769-4

Newly discovered letter by Galileo resolves puzzling historical mystery
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/historians-find-long-lost-galileo-letter-hiding-in-plain-site-at-royal-society

Galileo's damage control
https://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/science-supplements/galileos-damage-control-1502689319.html

History Teaching Institute: The Trial of Galileo
https://hti.osu.edu/scientificrevolution/lesson_plans/galileo_trial

University of Oklahoma: The Galileo Affair
https://youtu.be/IBvZfkvjbfo

Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Educational Resources
https://www.astrosociety.org/education/educational-resources


From the Scout Report on October 5, 2018

Wireshark --- www.wireshark.org 
Wireshark is a network traffic capture and analysis tool. With it, users can capture, inspect, and explore the network data sent and received by their computer. For computer networking professionals, Wireshark is an invaluable tool in debugging network connection issues. A Wireshark traffic recording captures the exact network packets sent and received. Wireshark includes a large library of network protocol decoders, called traffic dissectors, that parse and interpret the captured data, displaying it in a form more suited to human consumption. Users can also use the built-in filtering language to select only a specific subset of the recorded traffic that they wish to inspect. Wireshark is also able to read and analyze packet captures recorded by a number of commercial firewalls and routers. Wireshark executables can be downloaded for Windows and macOS. Most Linux distributions include a Wireshark package in their repositories. Wireshark is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License, with source code available for download alongside the pre-built executables.


gPodder ---  https://gpodder.github.io/
gPodder is a minimalist, cross-platform podcast client. Unlike other, larger alternatives, gPodder does not provide a podcast player and library manager. It simply downloads new episodes from a list of subscriptions, then allows the user to manage the rest of the process. The gPodder manual located in the documentation menu provides a guide to everyday use that covers subscribing to new podcasts, downloading new episodes, and synchronizing episodes to MP3 players. More technical users may be interested in the command-line interface to gPodder covered under advanced topics. gPodder installers are provided for Windows and macOS. Many Linux distributions include gPodder packages. For those that do not, build and installation instructions are provided. gPodder is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License, with source code available on GitHub.

 




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


Education Tutorials

Harvard World Map --- https://worldmap.harvard.edu/

Statistics in Schools: Math Activities --- www.census.gov/schools/activities/math.html

The Journal of Problem Solving --- https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jps/

Digital Library for Earth System Education --- www.dlese.org/lib/index.html

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

A supervolcano that could destroy humanity is ready to erupt — and NASA is trying to figure out how to contain it ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-is-looking-at-how-to-contain-a-volcano-that-may-wipe-out-humanity-2018-10

Hubble Space Telescope Apparently in 'Safe Mode' After Gyroscope Failure ---
https://www.space.com/42057-hubble-space-telescope-safe-mode-gyroscope-failure.html?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=1bd54ace9c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_08_10_53&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-1bd54ace9c-153727301

Digital Library for Earth System Education --- www.dlese.org/lib/index.html

A woman just won the physics Nobel for the first time in 55 years ---
https://www.theguardian.com/science/live/2018/oct/02/nobel-prize-in-physics-2018-live?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=f8f4419138-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_02_11_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-f8f4419138-153727301

Want to Find Alien Life? Look at Older, Hotter Earths ---
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news-alien-life-exoplanets-plants-infrared-light-evolution-space/

The Fourth Copernican Revolution ---
http://nautil.us/issue/64/the-unseen/the-fourth-copernican-revolution

The humble lettuce is revealing the power of future farm automation ---
https://qz.com/1403017/a-new-robot-can-peel-lettuce-as-well-as-a-human/

WeDigBio (Natural History) --- https://wedigbio.org/

Plants & Planter (botany) --- http://ollasopukerfda.tk/?number=855-330-7228

PeliTrack (pelicans) --- https://wildlife.utah.gov/pelican_webmap/

JOIDES Resolution (geology and oceanography) --- http://joidesresolution.org/

Environmental Research Letters --- http://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1748-9326

Xerces Society: Pollinator Conservation Resource Center (bees) --- https://xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/

From the Scout Report on September 28, 2018

Long-lost Galileo Letter Found, Resolving Historical Puzzle

 

Discovery of Galileo's long-lost letter shows he edited his heretical ideas to fool the Inquisition
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06769-4

Newly discovered letter by Galileo resolves puzzling historical mystery
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/historians-find-long-lost-galileo-letter-hiding-in-plain-site-at-royal-society

Galileo's damage control
https://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/science-supplements/galileos-damage-control-1502689319.html

History Teaching Institute: The Trial of Galileo
https://hti.osu.edu/scientificrevolution/lesson_plans/galileo_trial

University of Oklahoma: The Galileo Affair
https://youtu.be/IBvZfkvjbfo

Astronomical Society of the Pacific: Educational Resources
https://www.astrosociety.org/education/educational-resources

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

Community Tool Box --- https://ctb.ku.edu/en

This Anthro Life (crowdsourcing of human condition) --- www.thisanthrolife.com

Serial (criminal justice podcasts) --- https://serialpodcast.org/

Beyond Curie (women in science) --- www.beyondcurie.com

Documenting the African American Experience in Las Vegas --- http://digital.library.unlv.edu/aae

American Numismatic Association: Money Museum (coin collections) --- www.money.org/money-museum

Romantic London Social --- www.romanticlondon.org

Cambridge Shahnama Project (Persia) --- http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/page/

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

Serial (criminal justice podcasts) --- https://serialpodcast.org/

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


Math Tutorials

Mathematical ideas are some of the most transformative and beautiful in history. So why do they get so little attention?
https://aeon.co/essays/the-secret-intellectual-history-of-mathematics?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=291bfc97a3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_10_03_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-291bfc97a3-68951505

Statistics in Schools: Math Activities --- www.census.gov/schools/activities/math.html

The Journal of Problem Solving (heavy on mathematical programming and operations research) --- https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jps/

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

The Louvre: Tales of the Museum --- www.louvre.fr/en/tales-of-the-museum

The History of Philosophy Visualized in an Interactive Timeline ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/history-philosophy-visualized-interactive-timeline.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Gospel of John
Europe’s Oldest Intact Book Was Preserved and Found in the Coffin of a Saint ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/09/europes-oldest-intact-book-preserved-found-coffin-saint.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Keats Letters Project --- http://keatslettersproject.com/

John Foxe's The Acts and Monuments Online (religion and British History) --- www.johnfoxe.org

Beyond Curie (women in science) --- www.beyondcurie.com

University College Dublin Digital Library (art history) --- http://digital.ucd.ie/

Documenting the African American Experience in Las Vegas --- http://digital.library.unlv.edu/aae

American Numismatic Association: Money Museum (coin collections) --- www.money.org/money-museum

The Recipes Project --- https://recipes.hypotheses.org/

Cambridge Shahnama Project (Persia) --- http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/page/

Recollection: Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library ---
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/recollection/index.html

Romantic London Social --- www.romanticlondon.org

The story of Sgt. York, the man who killed or captured more than 100 Germans in a WWI battle ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sgt-york-killed-or-captured-more-than-100-germans-in-a-wwi-battle-2018-10

Google Doodle Archive --- www.google.com/doodles#archive

From the Scout Report on October 5, 2018

Exhibition of Native American Art Opens in the Met's American Wing

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art reclassifies status of Native American art for new exhibition
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/preview/met-reclassifies-status-of-native-american-art

'Conventional Narratives of History Are Being Expanded': Native Art Is Now Appearing in the Met's American Wing
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/met-native-american-art-diker-collection-american-wing-1362274

Native American Treasures Head to the Met, This Time as American Art
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/arts/design/native-american-treasures-head-to-the-met-this-time-as-american-art.html

Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/art-of-native-america-diker-collection

Infinity of Nations
https://americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations

Oklahoma State Dept. of Education: Indian Education Lesson Plans
https://sde.ok.gov/indian-education-lesson-plans-high-school

Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to History
Also see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  

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


Language Tutorials

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


Music Tutorials

Blondie Drummer Clem Burke and Scientific Researchers Show That Drumming Can Help Kids with Autism Learn More Effectively in School ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/blondie-drummer-clem-burke-scientific-researchers-show-drumming-can-help-kids-autism-learn-effectively-school.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/

September 27, 2018

September 28, 2018

September 29, 2018

October 2, 2018

October 3, 2018

October 4, 2018

October 5, 2018

October 6, 2018

October 9, 2018

October 11, 2018

October 12, 2018

October 13, 2018

October 15, 2018

October 16, 2018

 


You’re Only As Old As You Feel: Harvard Psychologist Ellen Langer Shows How Mental Attitude Can Potentially Reverse the Effects of Aging ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/10/youre-old-feel-research-harvard-psychologist-ellen-langer-shows-age-may-mindset.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


A fatty, sugary diet can damage your memory, attention and mood in just four days, according to new research ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/research-says-fatty-sugary-diets-damage-your-brain-in-just-four-days-2018-10


When CEO Satya Nadella took over Microsoft, he started defusing its toxic culture by handing each of his execs a 15-year-old book by a psychologist ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-satya-nadella-nonviolent-communication-2018-10


WHO: Global status report on alcohol and health 2018 ---
www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/gsr_2018/en 


Passive Voice, Middle Voice, and Active Voice Sentences ---
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/middle-voice-sentences


The Google+ Bug Is More About The Cover-Up Than The Crime ---
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/google-bug-more-about-cover-crime

Here's how to quickly check if you have a Google+ account — and delete it ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-check-if-you-have-a-google-plus-account-and-delete-2018-10


80,000 people died from the flu last winter — the highest number in over 40 years ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/80000-people-died-from-flu-last-winter-when-to-get-shot-2018-9
Jensen Comment
Maybe th, is is partly due to better record keeping and better cause-of-death diagnostics. Also the population has grown by almost 100 million since 1980 plus the substantial number who are not included in the USA census.


There are many types of obesity – which one matters to your health?
https://theconversation.com/there-are-many-types-of-obesity-which-one-matters-to-your-health-104689

 




Humor for July 26 2018

Accounting Overdraft Cartoons ---  https://goingconcern.com/exposure-drafts-orange-new-gaap/


Forwarded by Bob Overn

On one of his trips to England the president was a guest of the queen. She wanted to impress the president so when Air Force One landed

he was not surprised to see a red carpet extending from the airplane to a magnificent coach drawn by six beautiful white horses to take him to

Buckingham palace. He was welcomed into the coach by the queen herself while the rest of his entourage went by motorcade.

 

The queen sat on the front seat with her back to the front of the coach while the president sat on the back seat facing her. He had never 

seen such a beautiful coach which was decorated to the hilt with expensive flowers and two attendants/drivers sitting on top in full regalia 

holding the reigns for the horses.

 

They seemed to enjoy the ride, the beautiful scenery, and the small talk as they headed through the countryside. All of a sudden the rear 

horse on the right raised his tail and cut loose a record breaking flatulence that reverberated through the whole neighborhood. The explosion 

shattered the right front window and produced a haze inside the coach. Both the queen and the president tried to ignore the rather unusual

happenstance by changing the subject. But they couldn't ignore the coughing, the candles on the wall started to droop, the flowers all wilted, 

the paint on the doors peeled off, the rear windows fogged up, two pictures fell off the wall , and the window of the left door dropped open.

 

The queen decided she couldn't ignore the situation any longer and said, "Well, you know how it is when the pressure gets too great 

and you just have to look for an opportunity to relieve yourself."

 

The president was very cordial and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was the horse!"


 

 

 

 




Humor September 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0918.htm 

Humor August 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0818.htm   

Humor July 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0718.htm 

Humor June 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0618.htm

Humor May 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0518.htm

Humor April 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.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

 




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