Tidbits on January 17, 2019
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 1 of Pictures from Paula
Who's Now Retired in Roanoke, Virginia
http://cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Mountains/Paula/Set01.htm
Tidbits on January 17, 2019
Scroll Down This Page
Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For
earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Bookmarks for the World's Library ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Updates from WebMD
--- Click Here
Google Scholar ---
https://scholar.google.com/
Wikipedia ---
https://www.wikipedia.org/
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm
Bob Jensen's World Library ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
Mathematical Association of America: On This Day ---
www.maa.org/news/on-this-day
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
Complex Math Made Simple With Engaging Animations: Fourier Transform,
Calculus, Linear Algebra, Neural Networks & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/complex-math-made-simple-with-engaging-animations.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's math and stat links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
The Most-Discussed TED Talks in 2018 ---
https://www.ted.com/playlists/684/curator_s_picks_top_10_ted_talks_of_2018?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-12-29&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=playlist_title
TED Talk (10 min.):
A quantum computer isn't just a more powerful version of the computers we use
today; it's something else entirely, based on emerging scientific understanding
-- and more than a bit of uncertainty ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/shohini_ghose_quantum_computing_explained_in_10_minutes?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-12&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_button
TED Talk: Fascinating Physics of Everyday Life: Perhaps you have
to read her book to learn the physics, but I liked her enthusiasm (there's not
much physics in this video) ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_czerski_fun_home_experiments_that_teach_you_physics?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-05&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=bottom_right_button
A 3D Animated History of Paris ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/a-3d-animated-history-of-paris.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Video: 3D Scanning and Printing of a Museum Object ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ztzrxeat5s8
Video: The Great (Failed) Nara Coin Experiment in Japan 735-900 ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/17/the-great-nara-money-experiment
Makes me think about bitcoin
Watch an Art Conservator Bring Classic Paintings Back to Life in Intriguingly
Narrated Videos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/watch-an-art-conservator-bring-classic-paintings-back-to-life-in-intriguingly-narrated-videos.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
An Illustrated and Interactive Dante’s Inferno: Explore a New Digital
Companion to the Great 14th-Century Epic Poem ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/an-illustrated-and-interactive-dantes-inferno-explore-a-new-digital-companion-to-the-great-14th-century-epic-poem.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Watch the Painstaking and Nerve-Racking Process of Restoring a Drawing by
Michelangelo ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/watch-the-painstaking-and-nerve-racking-process-of-restoring-a-drawing-by-michelangelo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Dance seems to be the ultimate frivolity. How did it become a human
necessity?
https://aeon.co/videos/dance-seems-to-be-the-ultimate-frivolity-how-did-it-become-a-human-necessity?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0380dd4726-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_02_04_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-0380dd4726-68951505
Click on the arrow in the large graphic
There's today's technology and then there's 240-year old craftsmanship
A 240 year old doll that can write, a clockwork creation by Pierre
Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker. The doll is able to write any custom text up to
40 letters long, and it uses a goose feather ---
https://www.chonday.com/15454/the-writer-automaton/
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild
Predator to Sofa Sidekick ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/an-animated-history-of-cats.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
World's Most Dangerous Ride ---
http://www.drdavehouseoffun.com/ride.html
An F-35 demo team pilot was caught on video showing off some awesome new
moves ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-pilot-shows-off-new-moves-in-demo-team-practice-videos-2019-1
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
"One Voice": A Holiday Presentation by The USAF Band ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q41ctPLDHvU
Thank you Glen Gray for the heads up
Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q41ctPLDHvU
Thank you Glen Gray for the heads up
Haruki Murakami Day: Stream Seven Hours of Mixes Collecting All
the Jazz, Classical & Classic American Pop Music from His Novels ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/stream-seven-hours-of-mixes-collecting-all-the-jazz-classical-classic-american-pop-music-from-his-novels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Flashmob Stockholm Arlanda Airport - I Believe I Can Fly ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCucos4qGQw
Thank you Glen Gray for the heads up
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
This 116-year-old luxury resort may look like a European castle,
but it's actually tucked away in the mountains of New Hampshire ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/luxury-hotel-new-hampshire-mount-washington-photos-2018-9
Some other hotels near our cottage ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Hotels/Hotels.htm
Breathtaking photos of the highest points in 31 different
countries, from Denali to Everest ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/highest-point-tallest-mountain-every-country-photos-2019-1
The Library of Congress Makes Thousands of Fabulous Photos,
Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/11/library-congress-makes-thousands-fabulous-photos-posters-images-free-use-reuse.html
The Beauty of Jupiter ---
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/21/17353110/jupiter-photos-juno-high-res-clouds-great-red-spot
An American explorer just became the first person to cross
Antarctica alone: Photos show his spectacular 932-mile journey ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/colin-obrady-first-to-cross-antarctica-alone-unaided-2018-12
The Wall Street Journal: 2018 in Photos ---
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/2018-the-year-in-photos/
Photos of the playful sleepy life on Japan's 'Cat Island,' where
cats outnumber humans 8 to 1 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-japans-cat-island-2016-7
Jensen Comment
I would miss the song birds.
Free: Download Thousands of Ottoman-Era Photographs That Have
Been Digitized and Put Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/free-download-thousands-of-ottoman-era-photographs-that-have-been-digitized-and-put-online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Download Vincent van Gogh’s Collection of 500 Japanese Prints,
Which Inspired Him to Create “the Art of the Future” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/download-vincent-van-goghs-collection-of-japanese-prints.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
A Luxury Resort in the Middle of the Jungle (Bali) ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-most-stunning-views-hotel-hanging-gardens-bali-jungle-pool-2018-11
Botanical Art & Artists Arts ---
www.botanicalartandartists.com
School Gardening 101 ---
www.nybg.org/learn/schools-teachers/resources/school-gardening-101
79 years ago, the B-24 Liberator took its first flight — here's
how it helped cripple the Nazi war machine ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/anniversary-of-b-24-liberator-bomber-first-flight-during-world-war-ii-2017-12
Watch an Art Conservator Bring Classic Paintings Back to Life in
Intriguingly Narrated Videos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/watch-an-art-conservator-bring-classic-paintings-back-to-life-in-intriguingly-narrated-videos.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Through the Photographer's Eyes: The Diana Mara Henry Collection
---
http://exhibits.library.umass.edu/scua/s/diana-mara-henry/page/overview
The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to
the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/the-largest-j-r-r-tolkien-exhibit-in-generations-is-coming-to-the-u-s.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
17 of the wackiest photos from the biggest tech convention (CES)
of the year ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/ces-2019-wackiest-best-photos-2019-1
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
Wikisource Free Library ---
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet
Archive ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/11000-digitized-books-from-1923-are-now-available-online-at-the-internet-archive.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Haunting Last Letters of Sylvia Plath ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/sylvia-plath-final-letters/576400/
The Universe as an Infinite Storm of Beauty: John Muir on the Transcendent
Interconnectedness of Nature ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/05/10/john-muir-nature-writings/?mc_cid=817d9d9cb8&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
The Best of 2018 Brain Pickings ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/12/27/best-of-brain-pickings-2018/?mc_cid=a499f42fca&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
John Steinbeck on Good and Evil, the Necessary Contradictions of the Human
Nature, and Our Grounds for Lucid Hope ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/30/john-steinbeck-new-year/?mc_cid=2a3d408e7e&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Major Stories from The Atlantic 50-150 Years Ago ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/best-atlantic-1968-1918-and-1868/578971/
Confidence Through Criticism: A Lesson in Self-Esteem from Walt Whitman ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/01/03/whitman-emerson-criticism/?mc_cid=5b19f859ff&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.:
Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/the-largest-j-r-r-tolkien-exhibit-in-generations-is-coming-to-the-u-s.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in
Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on January 17, 2019
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/TidbitsQuotations011719.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
Tax Foundation: Tax Trends Heading Into 2019
https://taxfoundation.org/state-tax-trends-2019/
If your earnings are less than $66,000 with no taxable investment income
you can file free with the IRS (or leading tax commercial tax software) ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/free-tax-filing-online-tax-day-2019-1
Since tax software companies have been known to be hacked (think Turbo Tax) it
might be best to file directly with the IRS.
If you have taxable investment income Turbo Tax is a bad deal since even the
Turbo Tax Deluxe version won't do investments. I like more economical H&R Block
(Tax Act) software, although I'm not impressed with the expertise in Block's
physical offices. Law firms often outsource tax returns to CPA firms without
telling you they've done so. CPA firms and some law firms usually use very
expensive tax software that can handle very complicated tax returns.
It would not be fun to be the firm that handles Trump's tax returns,
especially since back taxes are likely to be involved. It could also be
very embarrassing to the IRS if Trump cheated big time since the IRS has had
ample warning to investigate Trump's returns before and after he became
President.
For all of us, hiding income is the biggest no no. However, in the $2
trillion underground economy lots of folks get away with hiding income. I
strongly advise against such risks. Even if you get away with hiding income the
stress of doing so can be bad for health.
By the way, the IRS Website historically is one of the very best and most
helpful of all government Websites ---
https://www.irs.gov/
Hang up if you get a phone call claiming to be from the IRS. The IRS does not
phone taxpayers or send emails out of the blue. If the IRS wants to communicate
with you it will do so by snail mail. or face-to-face in an IRS office.
After you file you can check your refund status at the above IRS site.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
Last night on CBS Sixty Minutes I witnessed the emotional caring and
economics ignorance of the charming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (when interviewed
by Andersen Cooper) ---
https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/SRMCs3QSphj4GK_HrJ6AgSLcWtH5BTEg/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-president-el-sisi-an-unlikely-inventor/
Also at
https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/BliwsdzYc7HdG554i8u1y4Z8Z9bBby1L/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-the-rookie-congresswoman-challenging-the-democratic-establishment/
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on January 6, 2019
“But once you get to the tippie tops In the
1960s, on your $10 millionth (dollar of income), sometimes you saw tax
rates as high as 60% or 70%.
Jensen Comment
Yes indeed many nations taxed the highest income ("tippie tops") taxpayers 70%
or higher in the 1960s. What Alexandria
seems to be ignorant about is the economic reason
virtually all nations later lowered their top rates
by 20%-50%, including the USA, Canada, Iran, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark,
England, France, and all other European nations. She does not seem to know that
they all lowered those top tax rates and the reason for lowering the Tippie Top
tax rates. They did so because taxing the tippie tops at
such high rates proved counterproductive to a point where their nations'
economies were worse off in the 1960s ---
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MarginalTaxRates.html
For more details see
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Below is January 6, 2019 blog posting by a Stanford
professor that you will never see cited by Paul Krugman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.,
or Bernie Sanders.
What do Paul Krugman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Both Get Wrong About
"Optimal Taxes?"
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/01/krugman-on-optimal-taxes.html
. . .
As you may have noticed, I try very hard not to
get in to the business of rebutting Paul Krugman's various outrages. The
article "The
economics of soaking the rich" merits an exception.
I will ignore the snark, the... distoritions, the ... untruths, the attack
by inventing evil motive, the demonization of anything starting with the
letter R, and focus on the central economic points.
Paul correctly cites recent work by Diamond and Saez, estimating the
optimal top marginal tax rate at 70%, and Christina Romer's concurring
opinion.
The howlers are well epitomized by
"Why do Republicans adhere to a tax theory that has no support from
nonpartisan economists and is refuted by all available data? Well, ask who
benefits from low taxes on the rich, and it’s obvious.
And because the party’s coffers demand adherence to nonsense economics, the
party prefers “economists” who are obvious frauds and can’t even fake their
numbers effectively."
1) 70% is not carved in stone.
. . .
The other margin is avoidance. Throwing around high statutory
tax rates in the 1950s as if anyone actually paid them is past disingenuous
at this point, as often as the opposite has been pointed out. (Diamond
and Saez engaged at
least recognized that nobody paid 90%, but engage in a subtle .. sleight of
hand. They assume that all corporate taxes were paid by wealthy people in
the 1950s -- the one and only burden or indirect calculation in the paper,
and contrary to the usual assumption that capital supply curves are flatter
than labor or product demand.)
[Jensen note: One means of tax avoidance is to shift to the USA's
$2 trillion underground cash economy such as when Erika's former dentist
gaveus a really, really huge discount if we paid $8,500 in cash]
The one thing we should learn from the New York Times and others' probes in
to Trump Tax Land is just how far very wealthy people will go to avoid
paying taxes. Especially estate taxes -- there is nothing like the
government coming for nearly half your wealth to concentrate the mind. I
venture that we would have gotten a lot more out of the Trump family with a
20% VAT and no income tax or estate tax!
A 70% or 80% marginal federal income tax would be first and foremost a boon
for tax lawyers and accountants. If one were in the mood to match Krugman's
attacks of which party has which dark motives to serve which evil interest,
the direction would be easy.
Moreover, Krugman gets the benefit of labor to society wrong in an
astonishing econ 1 way
If a rich man [or woman, Paul, please!] works an extra hour, adding $1000 to
the economy, but gets paid $1000 for his efforts, the combined income of
everyone else doesn’t change, does it? Ah, but it does — because he pays
taxes on that extra $1000. So the social benefit from getting high-income
individuals to work a bit harder is the tax revenue generated by that extra
effort — and conversely the cost of their working less is the reduction in
the taxes they pay.
If you are paid your marginal product, as you are in a
competitive market, then you are paid how much revenue your efforts add to
your employer's bottom line. But society benefits by the consumer surplus,
the area under the demand curve, and loses that consumer surplus when taxes
put a wedge between your effort and your wage. When Steve Jobs worked hard
and sold us all Iphones, he made a ton of money, and apple made a huge
profit. But we all benefitted by far more than we paid Apple.
No, the world is not a static, zero-sum game.
I think it's time to reactivate my no-Krugman new year's pledge.
John Cochrane
Stanford University
Jensen Added Comment
Alexandria brushed off (in front of Andersen Cooper last night) her getting
caught by the liberal media for her economics mistakes such as the time
the Washington Post gave her four Pinocchio's
when she made a $21 trillion mistake (small change among her radical
spending intentions).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's $21 trillion mistake - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/.../alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-trillion-mistake/
Claim: "$21T in Pentagon
accounting errors. Medicare for All costs ~$32T. That means 66% of
Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon."
Claimed by: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Whoopi Goldberg Advises Ocasio-Cortez to 'Sit
Still for a Minute and Learn the Job' Before 'Pooping on People' ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2019/01/07/whoopi-goldberg-advises-ocasiocortez-to-sit-still-and-learn-the-job-before-pooping-on-people-n2538634?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
Don’t Be Fooled: Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’ Is
About Socialism, Not Global Warming ---
Click Here
Jensen Added Comment
I think the naive Alexandra is bright and will learn a lot during her four or
more years is Congress. She's already learned not to mess with Nancy Pelosi.
Andersen Cooper pointed out in the Sixty Minutes interview how Pelosi outwitted
this publicity-seeking new House member during Alexandra's first few days in
vicious Washington DC. An old dog taught the new dog a totally unexpected trick.
The not-so-bright aging Bernie never learned economics, but I think Alexandra
maybe has the gray matter to learn her lessons if
she would only avoid reading Paul Krugman's fantasy blog.
In some ways I'm hypocritical about Paul Krugman. I fully agree with him that
free trade and multinational exploitation of low wages is probably a good
thing for developing nations ---
"In Praise of Cheap Labor," by Paul Krugman, Slate, March 21, 1997
---
https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor.html
After all, global poverty is not something recently
invented for the benefit of multinational corporations. Let’s turn the clock
back to the Third World as it was only two decades ago (and still is, in
many countries). In those days, although the rapid economic growth of a
handful of small Asian nations had started to attract attention, developing
countries like Indonesia or Bangladesh were still mainly what they had
always been: exporters of raw materials, importers of manufactures.
Inefficient manufacturing sectors served their domestic markets, sheltered
behind import quotas, but generated few jobs. Meanwhile, population pressure
pushed desperate peasants into cultivating ever more marginal land or
seeking a livelihood in any way possible–such as homesteading on a mountain
of garbage.
Given this lack of other opportunities, you could
hire workers in Jakarta or Manila for a pittance. But in the mid-’70s, cheap
labor was not enough to allow a developing country to compete in world
markets for manufactured goods. The entrenched advantages of advanced
nations–their infrastructure and technical know-how, the vastly larger size
of their markets and their proximity to suppliers of key components, their
political stability and the subtle-but-crucial social adaptations that are
necessary to operate an efficient economy–seemed to outweigh even a tenfold
or twentyfold disparity in wage rates.
And
then something changed. Some combination of factors that
we still don’t fully understand–lower tariff
barriers, improved telecommunications, cheaper air transport–reduced the
disadvantages of producing in developing countries. (Other things being the
same, it is still better to produce in the First World–stories of companies
that moved production to Mexico or East Asia, then moved back after
experiencing the disadvantages of the Third World environment, are common.)
In a substantial number of industries, low wages allowed developing
countries to break into world markets. And so countries that had previously
made a living selling jute or coffee started producing shirts and sneakers
instead.
Workers in those shirt and sneaker factories are,
inevitably, paid very little and expected to endure terrible working
conditions. I say “inevitably” because their employers are not in business
for their (or their workers’) health; they pay as little as possible, and
that minimum is determined by the other opportunities available to workers.
And these are still extremely poor countries, where living on a garbage heap
is attractive compared with the alternatives.
And yet, wherever the
new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in
the lives of ordinary people. Partly this is
because a growing industry must offer a somewhat higher wage than workers
could get elsewhere in order to get them to move. More importantly, however,
the growth of manufacturing–and of the penumbra of other jobs that the new
export sector creates–has a ripple effect throughout the economy. The
pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of
unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories
start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to
rise. Where the process has gone on long enough–say, in South Korea or
Taiwan–average wages start to approach what an American teen-ager can earn
at McDonald’s. And eventually people are no longer eager to live on garbage
dumps. (Smokey Mountain persisted because the Philippines, until recently,
did not share in the export-led growth of its neighbors. Jobs that pay
better than scavenging are still few and far between.)
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Where I disagree with him is his willingness impose high taxes (think 70+%) on
the developed nations who are in a convoluted way are probably doing more for
the third world than all of its corrupt dictators combined (unless tax rates go
so high that capitalist incentives and innovations are destroyed).
How to Mislead With Statistics
How past income tax rate cuts on the wealthy affected the economy ---
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/gop-tax-rate-cut-wealthy/
Jensen Comment
This article makes three huge statistical mistakes and one huge economic
mistake. The economic mistake is that it assumes that the purpose of tax
decreases or increases is importantly analyzed in GDP correlations. The GDP is
only one of many statistics of importance in the economy, and the GDP index has
many, many dangers ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product#Limitations_and_criticisms
Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth,
between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for
more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.
Secondly, the article pretends that correlation is causation --- a Statistics
101 enormous error.
Thirdly, it ignores the lags in impact of most any measures used to stimulate
the economic exist and can be quite variable in terms of whether the stimulus
impacts take months versus years. For example, it is speculated that Clinton
benefited far more from the Reagan tax cuts than Reagan.
Thirdly, the relationship between economic performance (however measured on the
y-axis) is a multivariate process with enormous multicollinearity,
heteroscedasticity, non-stationarity, and most everything you can think of that
can go wrong about multivariate analysis in terms of regression and graphics.
Rather than do regression-graphic time series analysis like you see in this
article I would rather do a crowd-sourcing analysis.
There must be some reason why virtually all developed nations reduced their tax
cuts on the wealthy over three decades following the early 1970s.
Were all nations, including all of Scandinavia, badly mistaken in choosing to
hugely reduce tax rates on the wealthy?
For example, lot's of bad things happened in Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s when
the Swedes were trying to confiscate almost everything from it's highest income
earners.
Especially look at
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MarginalTaxRates.html
For more details see
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Most certainly the benefit of these tax cuts on the wealthy were not all
identical across so many nations and across such a long period of time.
And most certainly the above Politico analysis is
superficial in looking at only one nation (rather than a hundred) and one
predictor (the highest tax rate) variable of GDP.
Shame on Politico (a very biased outfit to say the least).
Seven charts that show the world is actually becoming a better
place: Including how global income inequality is declining dramatically
(especially in the huge nations of China and India experimenting with
capitalism) ---
Click Here
1. Life expectancy continues to rise
2. Child mortality continues to fall
3. Fertility rates are falling (exceptions in Africa and parts of the Middle
East)
Pass the cursor over each nation
4. GDP growth has accelerated in developed countries (and some lesser
developed countries like China and India)
5. Global income inequality has gone down (are you
listening Jagdish?)
6. More people are living in democracies (with questions about voting
integrity in lots and lots of places)
7. Conflicts are on the decline
Jensen Comment
To these I might add promising advances in energy technology including "cheap"
nuclear fusion.
Of course
there's lot's of bad news as well commencing with
global warming and rising oceans,
starving children,
vicious drug wars (think Afghanistan and Latin America),
unwanted hordes of immigrants,
droughts (think Africa and Australia),
naval arms race in the South Pacific,
North Korea's threats of Armageddon,
Donald Trump's deteriorating mental health,
hugely unfunded entitlements caused by wishful thinking and economics
ignorance,
scary advances in military technology,
and
world corruption in the public and private sectors.
And
then there's the fall of p-values from grace in statistical inference.
But who wants to
hear about bad news today when there's some good news to celebrate?
Cash was the best-performing asset of 2018. Here's what 'going to cash'
means (it doesn't mean stored greenbacks) ---
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/going-to-cash-pull-money-from-stocks-2019-1-1027854592
Jensen Comment
The definition of cash in this article is a "cash equivalent" for which there is
a market, e.g, short-term government bonds.
Note that phrase "best-performing" is misleading. You could've invested in a
portfolio with only a few items such as stocks and or land parcels as done much
better as long as they were the right items that are usually hard to pick in
advance.
Cash equivalents are usually not the "best performing" unless there's a market
crash for riskier portfolios. But they are the safest investments.
MIT: Google Assistant now comes with a real-time translator for 27
languages ---
Click Here
Why Is English So Hard to Learn?: The Ingenious Poem, “The Chaos,” Documents
800 Irregularities in English Spelling and Pronunciation ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/why-is-english-so-hard-to-learn-the-ingenious-poem-the-chaos-documents-800-irregularities-in-english-spelling-and-pronunciation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Harvard's business school rebranded its online platform from HBX to
Harvard Business School Online on Tuesday ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-business-school-online-hbx-2019-1
"Harvard Business School
Online has allowed us to extend the reach of the school to people wherever
they are in the world," Nohria said in a statement. "Through this innovation
we have brought much of what is special about the HBS experience to life
online, helping us to achieve our educational mission in an entirely new
medium."
Since its launch, the online platform has
served
more than 33,000 students,
most of whom
participated in the pre-MBA
Credential of Readiness, or CORe, program.
The platform also offers certificates in finance, accounting, and other
subjects. Courses run for four to 12 weeks and cost between $950 to $4,500.
The platform's original name of HBX aligned itself with other X-branded
online course providers such as edX and MITx, an approach
Inside Higher Ed
described as "conservative." But Tuesday's
rebrand, linking the online platform with Harvard Business School's name,
suggests "that online education has well and truly arrived," Inside Higher
Ed blogger Joshua Kim said.
Students of Harvard's
online business classes are satisfied with the change as well. According to
a survey of nearly 1,000 students by market research firm City Square
Associates, about 80% said taking a Harvard business course online improved
their professional lives for the better, and one in four said they earned a
promotion or title change after taking a course.
The Harvard Business School Online link is at
https://online.hbs.edu/?utm_source=hbs&utm_campaign=hbs_web_programs&utm_medium=affiliate
Jensen Advice --- look to edX and MITx and Coursera
before signing up for an expensive online course from Harvard Business School
Online
Although edX and MITx have certificate programs available, there are huge
differences between edX and MITx to be aware of before paying the rather steep
Harvard Business Online prices. Firstly, edX and MITx have wide ranging
certificates (outside of business school courses) that that are delivered
from humanities, science, engineering, and other divisions of multiple
prestigious universities.
Although edX and MITx charge fees for certificates the
prestigious MOOC courses are usually free for students who want to learn
and are not seeking certificates or transcript credits. The certificates
from edX and MITx will be cheaper.
One of the important options from edX and MITx is that in addition to
certificates students may pay for transcript credits that are more valuable for
students working toward undergraduate or graduate degrees.
The certificates and/or credits from edX and MITx can be for undergraduate
courses as well as graduate courses.
In my opinion students paying for certificates from the Harvard Business School
Online are seeking "Harvard" on the names of those certificates when in fact the
edX and MITx courses are usually more complete courses and come from what I feel
are equally prestigious universities like MIT, Rice, Oxford, etc.
The edX and MITx and other MOOC courses are filmed from the actual courses
prestigious universities deliver to their on-campus students. The Harvard
Business School Courses are usually shorter courses that are for online students
only.
Bob Jensen's threads on edx and MITx MOOC
alternatives (thousands of complet courses from prestigious universities) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
150 Courses Starting at Stanford Continuing Studies Next Week: Explore the
Catalogue of Campus and Online Courses (some courses are already closed) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/stanford-continuing-studies-winter-2019.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Courses listed at
https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/online-courses/courses-by-category
1,700 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in January: Enroll
Today ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/1700-moocs-massive-open-online-courses-getting-started-in-january-enroll-today.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on edx and MITx MOOC
alternatives (thousands of complet courses from prestigious universities) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
That some bankers have ended up in prison is not a
matter of scandal, but what is outrageous is the fact that all the others are
free.
Honoré de Balzac
Banks Screw Us in Many Ways: Here's One Way It's Done
Selgin on IOER and TNB ---
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/01/selgin-on-ioer-and-tnb.html
George
Selgin has
a nice piece
on
TNB and IOER, which I missed when it came out in September, but it's still
relevant.
(HT a correspondent. TNB is "The Narrow Bank" which
I wrote about
here;
IOER is interest on excess reserves. The Fed pays banks interest on
reserves, which are accounts that banks hold at the Fed.)
As George points out, TNB's model is to take money from, large corporations
or money market funds, invest that money at the Fed as interest-paying
reserves, and give as large an interest rate back to the depositors as
possible. (Well, that's what their model will be if their suit against the
Fed winds through the US legal system before the next crash, which is
unlikely, These customers can't get large enough insured deposits at regular
banks; that TNB invests entirely in reserves make it impossible for TNB to
fail so its customers don't need insurance. TNB doesn't want to let you or
me give them money because that opens them to an immense amount of costly
regulation.
The puzzling question is, how can TNB make money at that.?TNB takes money,
invests it with the Fed, and the Fed in turn buys US treasuries. How is that
better than TNB simply operating a money market mutual fund that invests
directly in Treasurys?
The answer is, that for most of the last decade, the Fed has paid more interest
on reserves than comparable treasury rates. Yes, "money" pays higher
interest than "bonds," an inversion of classic monetary theory. Since money
is more liquid, how can this survive? The answer is, because only banks can
access this kind of "money." TNB was going to upend that.
Just why does the Fed pay more interest on reserves than comparable
treasuries? This is, like it or not, a nice little subsidy to banks, who
get about 0.2% more on their reserves than anyone else can get.
Where does that 0.2% come from?
You and me. George explains vividly
Just how is it
that the Fed's IOER payments could allow MMMFs to earn more than they might
by investing money directly into securities themselves? Because the Fed has
less overhead? Don't make me laugh. Because Fed bureaucrats are more astute
investors? I told you not to make me laugh! No, sir: it's because the Fed
can fob-off risk — like the duration risk it assumed by investing in so many
longer-term securities — on third parties, meaning taxpayers, who bear it in
the form of reduced Fed remittances to the Treasury. That means in turn that
any gain the MMMFs would realize by having a bank that's basically nothing
but a shell operation designed to let them bank with the Fed would really
amount to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free
Lunch... As it stands, of course, ordinary banks are already taking
advantage of that same subsidy.
This
is good, and I conclude that the Fed should keep a large balance sheet,
flood the economy with liquidity as Friedman said it should, and run a tight
corridor system paying no more on excess reserves than comparable Treasury
rates. Here we part company.
George seems to agree with the Fed though, that this subsidy is an integral
part of the interest on reserves scheme, and that TNB will undermine the
whole project of a large balance sheet and targeting interest rates directly
via interest on reserves and later, the discount rate. I disagree.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on "Rotten to the Core" ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
TIAA Helpers in Personal Finance (a blog) ---
https://www.tiaa.org/public/index.html?tc_mcid=se_b2cbau19_bing_71700000031942727_58700003826134503_76347400716128_personal+finance_c&gclid=CPn3zamd2t8CFY-zswodRtwLcg&gclsrc=ds
Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Global MBA Rankings Compared ---
https://www.discoverbusiness.us/education/mba-degree-rankings/
Jensen Comment
I think rankings can be highly misleading ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Universities Fabricating Data to Improve Media Rankings ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/01/rankings-scandal-unfolds-at-temple-business-school.html
Challenge to
B-School Rankings: 21 scholars publish call to reject popular measures and
ordinal rankings -- and to replace them with more meaningful tools for
comparisons
---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/12/business-scholars-and-adminsitrators-pubilsh-call-move-away-current-rankings-systems?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=7c7662c4c7-DNU20170512&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-7c7662c4c7-197565045&mc_cid=7c7662c4c7&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Abstract of the
Study ---
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/deci.12274/full
I've not read the full article.
Jensen Comment
One possible erroneous conclusion is that the proposed alternate set of rankings
will make the rankings less subjective. Since others' opinions (such as opinions
of B-School deans, alumni, recruiters, etc.) nearly always play a major role in
popular B-School rankings (such as US News, the WSJ, and Bloomberg rankings) the
traditional rankings are aggregations of highly subjective opinions.
It appears that
the proposed alternative rankings will focus on a larger number of specific
criteria than the popular traditional rankings that tend to be heavily
influenced by broad criteria such as "research reputation" and "admission
standards."
The biggest
problem when it comes to subjective rankings is that the rater (say a business
school dean at a state university) may be very familiar with a peer set of 20
state universities but have very little knowledge of other sets of B-school
programs like those of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Oxford, Cambridge,
Dartmouth, Wharton, Rice, etc. that are assumed to be near the top of the
rankings because of the halo-effects of the prestige reputations of the entire
university where each assumed prestigious B-School resides. Dean X at California
State University may know almost nothing about business studies at Oxford
University, but since it's at Oxford the Oxford business program has to be
great.
I'm dubious about
having raters (like business school deans) ranking over 200+ B-School programs
on 20 or more criteria about which they know almost nothing for most of the
schools they are ranking. For example, it's one thing to rate the the a Dean at
California State rank Harvard Business School higher than the Tuck Business
School on the broad criterion of "research" but it's quite another matter to
compare Harvard with Tuck in more detailed dimensions if the rater knows very
little about relative performance of those programs on those criteria.
Reducing rankings
to numerical scores on criteria can be even more nonsensical. For example,
comparing the rejection rate as a percentage of total number applications to a
program is complete nonsense. Most potential applicants to a highly prestigious
MBA program don't take the time and trouble to even bother to apply to such a
program feeling that there is almost zero chance of being accepted. If the
University of Texas MBA Program has a higher rejection rate than the Tuck
Business School rejection rate it would not surprise me because hundreds of
applicants to UT's MBA program did not even apply to the Tuck Business School.
Teaching Case
from The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on May 12, 2017
Business Schools Take a Stand Against Academic Rankings
by: Kelsey Gee
May 09, 2017
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: Accounting
SUMMARY: A
research paper to be published in the May 2017 edition of the Decision
Sciences Journal has sparked a renewed effort on the part of business
schools to thwart the annual ranking process conducted by Bloomberg
Businessweek, the Financial Times, the Economist and others. The article
currently is available for early view and download on the Decision Sciences
web page at
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/deci.12274/full The
paper's 21 authors "weigh in on the issues," by discussing costs imposed on
schools by the ranking procedure, shifts evident in institutional data used
for rankings, and arguments for re-consideration of the entire process.
Shortcomings in the ranking process, they say, stem "...from the
conceptualization and the architecture of comparisons, and are evident in
survey designs, data collection methods, and data aggregation
procedures...." The authors propose minimum requirements for "...a socially
responsible, transparent, flexible, and highly representative rating (vs.
ranking) approach...." (Bachrach et al. 2017) Citation Bachrach, D. G.,
Bendoly, E., Beu Ammeter, D., Blackburn, R., Brown, K. G., Burke, G.,
Callahan, T., Chen, K. Y., Day, V. H., Ellstrand, A. E., Erekson, O. H.,
Gomez, J. A., Greenlee, T., Handfield, R., Loudder, M. L., Malhotra, M.,
Petroni, K. R., Sevilla, A., Shafer, S., Shih, M. and Voss, D. (2017), On
Academic Rankings, Unacceptable Methods, and the Social Obligations of
Business Schools. Decision Sciences, forthcoming. doi:10.1111/deci.12274
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: The
article may be used in any class to discuss graduate school options.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory) What entities rank business schools?
2. (Advanced) What factors are considered in ranking business
schools? Cite your source for this information.
3. (Introductory) What are the arguments in favor of ranking business
schools, effectively distilling a lot information in to one number (the
school's rank)?
4. (Introductory) What are the arguments against the ranking
procedure?
5. (Advanced) Are you considering a graduate program? Would rankings
influence the schools that you consider applying to?
Reviewed
By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
"Business Schools
Take a Stand Against Academic Rankings," by Kelsey Gee, The Wall Street
Journal, May 9, 2017 ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/business-school-rankings-stir-new-rancor-1494331202?mod=djem_jiewr_AC_domainid
Deans and faculty at more than 20 universities urge others not to
participate in the process
Business-school deans and research faculty at more than 20 universities are
taking a stand against the academic rankings published by media outlets such
as Bloomberg Businessweek, Nikkei Inc.’s Financial Times and the Economist
Group.
Rather than “acquiesce to methods of comparison we know to be fundamentally
misleading,” the administrators are urging their peers at other schools to
stop participating in a process they say rates programs on an overly narrow
set of criteria.
The plea, issued by deans and faculty from institutions including University
of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, University of Iowa’s
Tippie College of Business and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler
Business School, comes in the form of a research paper to be published in
the May edition of the Decision Sciences Journal.
The researchers examine the approaches used by media outlets to aggregate
different factors like admitted students’ test scores and tenured faculty on
a school’s payroll into a single number, arguing that the process
oversimplifies the array of reasons students pursue business degrees.
The debate over rankings is hardly new, but the recent rancor comes as
schools battle declining enrollment in two-year M.B.A. programs, compounding
pressure on the institutions to tout the benefits of one of America’s
priciest degrees.
Business-school deans and research faculty at more than 20 universities are
taking a stand against the academic rankings published by media outlets such
as Bloomberg Businessweek, Nikkei Inc.’s Financial Times and the Economist
Group.
Rather than “acquiesce to methods of comparison we know to be fundamentally
misleading,” the administrators are urging their peers at other schools to
stop participating in a process they say rates programs on an overly narrow
set of criteria.
The plea, issued by deans and faculty from institutions including University
of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, University of Iowa’s
Tippie College of Business and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler
Business School, comes in the form of a research paper to be published in
the May edition of the Decision Sciences Journal.
The researchers examine the approaches used by media outlets to aggregate
different factors like admitted students’ test scores and tenured faculty on
a school’s payroll into a single number, arguing that the process
oversimplifies the array of reasons students pursue business degrees.
The debate over rankings is hardly new, but the recent rancor comes as
schools battle declining enrollment in two-year M.B.A. programs, compounding
pressure on the institutions to tout the benefits of one of America’s
priciest degrees.
With sticker prices as high as $200,000 in tuition, an M.B.A. is “likely
among the most expensive purchases these students will make in their lives,”
says Francesca Levy, an editor at Bloomberg who oversees business-school
coverage. “There’s big value in holding schools to the same standard and
measuring them against the same, transparent criteria so students can make a
better informed decision.”
Co-author of the research paper Elliot Bendoly, an associate dean at Ohio
State University’s Fisher College of Business, disagrees. “If the goal is to
help inform [students] about how to make the best decision about business
schools, let’s give them the raw information, and not take numbers—which may
or may not be relevant to the student—and bungle them together into a ranked
list,” Mr. Bendoly says.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's
threads on ranking controversies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Wikisource Free Library ---
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Wikipedia also has a free dictionary called Wiktionary ---
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
Jensen Comment
For many words Wikipedia itself is quite different than Wikitionary. For
example look up the word "underlying" in Wiktionary using the link above. Then
look up the same word in Wikipedia at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underlying
Jensen Comment
I suspect that the reason is that Wiktionary definitions are intended to conform
more closely with traditional dictionaries, whereas Wikipedia depends more on
the activism of scholars who write Wikipedia entries to suit their specialized
interests such as finance interests.
False Advertising for College is Pretty Much the Norm ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/27/bloomberg-2gtfalse-advertising-for-college-is-pretty-much-the-norm
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies Parts 1
and 2 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Department of Education
College Scorecard ---
https://www.ed.gov/category/keyword/college-scorecard
College
Scorecards in the U.S. Department of Education’s College
Affordability and Transparency Center make it easier for you to
search for a college that is a good fit for you. You can use the
College Scorecard to find out more about a college’s affordability
and value so you can make more informed decisions about which
college to attend.
To start,
enter the name of a college of interest to you or select factors
that are important in your college search. You can find scorecards
for colleges based on factors such as programs or majors offered,
location, and enrollment size
Jensen Comment
Note that at the above site you can also search for a college by name. Some
data like average earnings of graduates is still being compiled by the
Department of Education. Average earnings of graduates will probably be a
misleading number. Firstly, the most successful graduates might track into
other colleges to complete their undergraduate and/or graduate degrees.
Hence feeder colleges may be given too much or too little credit in terms of
earnings success.
Secondly, I think earnings "averages" are misleading statistics unless
they are accompanied by analysis of standard deviations and kurtosis.
Thirdly, high earnings averages cannot all be attributed to where a
degree is earned. For example, students with stellar SAT scores on average
are more likely to have higher earnings no matter where they got their
undergraduate engineering, science, business or whatever baccalaureate
degrees. Students with low SAT scores may be likely to earn less in lower
paying jobs like elementary school teaching because of lower academic
abilities as opposed to their particular alma maters. And yes I know that
some high SAT graduates who might have made it to medical school teach first
graders because they are dedicated to teaching and/or want summers free to
raise their own children.
Fourthly, a high percentage of college graduates become parents and
full-time homemakers. This might distort earnings statistics unless somehow
factored out of the calculation of averages. However, it's difficult to
factor out in many instances. For example, CPA firms now hire more female
than male graduates from accounting masters degree programs (undergraduates
are not allowed to take the CPA examination). This will raise a college's
average earnings for graduates before a significant number of those women
drop out of the workforce --- often for only a decade or two before somehow
returning to their accounting careers. In other instances the male spouses
they married in college drop out of their jobs to be homemakers so their
traveling wives can carry on as auditors and tax accountants and accounting
information systems experts. My point is that those starting salaries are
not necessarily for lifelong continuous careers for many mothers or
sometimes fathers.
And there's the problem of debt burdens. Last night our furnace quit when
the temperature was headed toward an 10 degree night. We recently changed
plumbing companies, and a very nice and very skilled young man arrived on a
Sunday night (right after the Patriots clobbered the Steelers) to instantly
identify the part (the controller) that failed on our furnace. He had a
replacement part in his truck.
In the meantime our conversation drifted to the topic of student loans.
We mentioned how our son and his wife both amassed over $60,000 in debt and
had to remain at their old jobs after graduating from college --- meaning
their college degrees burdened with debt did not help them in the least to
find better jobs.
Our new plumber then explained how his wife amassed a student debt of
$88,000 which he's now paying off. She has two masters degrees and cannot
find a job. One of these degrees is in political science and the other is in
international relations. If she moved to Boston she could possibly find
work, but the last thing either of them want is to leave the White Mountains
to live in Boston or any other mega city.
I think what he was saying is that before taking
on such heavy student debt she should perhaps have done better planning
about where she wanted to live --- or more importantly where she did not
want to live.
"Prospective Adult Students Miss Key Data on College Options, Report
Says," by Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education,
November 4, 2013 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Prospective-Adult-Students/142815/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Most adults who are
considering college—either completing a degree or starting one
for the first time—aren't tapping into the wealth of information
about costs, graduation rates, and job prospects, and as a
result they aren't finding the right fit, according to a report
released on Monday by Public Agenda, a nonprofit research group.
The
report, "Is College Worth It for Me?
How Adults Without Degrees Think About Going (Back) to School,"
says that most prospective adult students worry about the cost
of college and how to balance studies with families and careers.
They're looking for colleges with practical programs that will
help them land jobs, as well as personalized support from caring
faculty members and advisers.
The report,
which was financially supported by the Kresge Foundation, was
based on a survey this past spring of 803 adults, ages 18 to 55,
who lack college degrees but expect to start earning a
certificate or degree in the next two years. The group, which
excludes students coming straight from high school, accounts for
about a third of first-time college students in the United
States, according to the report.
The survey found
that adults ages 25 to 55 have more doubts about going to
college and are less likely to have concrete plans. Those under
25 worry more about whether they can succeed at college and land
a job afterward.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's career helpers (and yes I know education is important for
reasons other than a career) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
5G ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G
5G Is Coming This Year. Here’s What You Need to Know ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/technology/personaltech/5g-what-you-need-to-know.html
Fact Sheet About USA Schools in 2018 ---
https://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/education-statistics/index.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58712887&U=2290378&UUID=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f
Bob Jensen's threads on economic and social data sources ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
Food for Thought: Let's not emphasize behavioral economics
---
https://www.econlib.org/lets-not-emphasize-behavioral-economics/
Jensen Question
Does this extrapolate to behavioral accounting?
Experimental Pitfalls Are Generally Dumber Than We Imagine ---
http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com/2018/07/11/experimental-pitfalls-are-generally-dumber-than-we-imagine-now-with-more-dogs/
. . .
The discussion with my students makes me think that
we need to be more critical regarding whether our experiments give
sufficient incentives to elicit true behaviors and preferences. In addition,
economists could probably do more to assess both during and after the
experiments how seriously the subjects took their assigned task. In any
case, the bottom line is that the success of an experiment depends crucially
on subjects taking the task seriously and behaving as expected in a
logistical sense, and these characteristics can’t be taken for granted.
Or, put more succinctly, here’s a helpful warning:
Continued in article
Judith Rich Harris: 1938 - 2018
https://www.edge.org/conversation/judith_rich_harris-judith-rich-harris-1938-2018
January 14, 2019
The resignations of the Journal of Informetrics editorial team comes at a
time of considerable scrutiny for Elsevier. Last month the publisher lost two
large European customers ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/14/elsevier-journal-editors-resign-start-rival-open-access-journal
Jensen Comment
One comment following the article reads "Capitalism vs.
education-as-intellectual-exploration." This is misleading since operations with
monopoly or oligopoly powers are abuses of capitalism that destroy capitalism.
It's analogous to when Standard Oil owned all the gas stations in town. The
concentration of scholarly publishers, especially in prestigious science
journals, has been an oligopoly for years for years that ripped off research
libraries with outrageous prices for decades. It's long past the time when this
cartel should've been broken up. The best way to break up the cartel is for
those who fund research (think governments and business firms) to insist that
research results be shared freely or at truly competitive lower prices. I opt
for free open sharing in this day of electronic publishing and distribution.
How Elsevier and other for-profit
publishers extort research libraries ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals
Inverted Yield Curve ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_curve#Inverted_yield_curve
An Inverted Yield Curve Predicts Recessions in the USA ---
https://investing.curiouscatblog.net/2018/12/04/an-inverted-yield-curve-predicts-recessions-in-the-usa/
Jensen Comment
Take this with a grain of salt. Recession forecasting is not always so simple.
The Seattle metro area spends nearly $100,000 for every homeless man,
woman and child in King County, yet the crisis seems only to have deepened ---
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/12/homeless.html
Jensen Comment
Homelessness is a societal problem that's enormously complicated and
controversial. It's complicated by such things what Karl Marx called the
industrial reserve army (that's is comprised in great part by people who won't
or can't work long-term at most any wage rate). In other words economics alone
can't solve the homelessness problem.
Homelessness is a bit like undocumented immigration. If you really solve the
problem in Seattle the highways might be overcrowded with a 50 million people in
caravans headed for Seattle.
If you solve the homeless problem in the USA the dirt paths might be crowded
with a billion people in caravans headed toward the USA from south of the
border.
The bottom line is that the long-term problem of homelessness really ends up
being a world problem, and nobody yet has a solution for the world problem
except Rev. Malthus ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
And we really don't want a Malthusian solution until there's no other choice.
Don't expect me to provide an answer!
I'm selfishly glad I'm not young anymore.
If forced to visit Seattle or San Francisco I'll pack my LL Bean rubber boots.
How Taco Bell is helping employees avoid student debt (like McDonalds,
Starbucks, Walmart, and various other companies) ---
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-taco-bell-is-helping-employees-avoid-student-debt-2018-03-29
Taco Bell announced in 2018 that it was partnering
with Guild Education to provide financial support for schooling to all of
its 210,000 employees across 7,000 restaurants in the U.S. Now Taco Bell
team members will have access to personalized college advisors, plus tuition
discounts of up to $5,250 per calendar year - and paid up front so that
employees don’t have to swallow any out-of-pocket costs.
The program is available for employees on the first
day they start work at Taco Bell.
Bob Jensen's threads on fee-based and free
distance education training and education alternatives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
Is There Too Much Mathematics and Esoteric Theory in Economics Education?
Sumner on teaching economics to Overcome Economics Myths ---
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2018/12/sumner-on-teaching-economics.html
. . .
The article (in The Atlantic) suggests that behavioral economics
could be very useful to policymakers. I see little evidence for this
claim. The author mentions the housing bubble, but how would behavioral
economics have helped policymakers in that scenario? If even the “masters
of the universe” on Wall Street struggle to come up with behavioral finance
theories capable of beating the market, does anyone seriously believe that
bureaucrats in Washington will be able to “market time” well enough to spot
asset price bubbles and regulate accordingly? If so, we should provide them
with a nest egg to invest and tell them that from now on they’ll earn no
salary, rather they’ll have to survive on their profits from shorting asset
price bubbles.
Seriously, the problems in 2008 were due to things like moral hazard in the
financial system and unstable NGDP growth, which are well covered by
conventional, non-behavioral economics. And even if housing prices in 2006
were a bubble, it certainly didn’t cause the 2008 recession. The Fed could
have offset the effects of the housing slump with easier money in 2007 and
2008.
Politicians already tend to believe behavioral economic theories. Indeed
there are many public policies that are almost entirely based on behavioral
economics, most notably the war on drugs. Politicians believe that people
foolishly consume addictive drugs, which is why they have enacted laws that
led to the imprisonment of 400,000 Americans in an attempt to stop this
“irrational behavior”. Has it worked?
Behavioral theories are sometimes used to justify policies that encourage
saving. And indeed some companies now make the adoption of a company
pension the default option for newly hired employees. Unfortunately, our
government actually has a policy of discouraging saving. Behavioral
economics tells us that public policy should be more pro-saving,
but then so does
conventional economics.
Whenever I speak with non-economists, they almost always seem more
enthusiastic when the discussion comes around to behavioral economics.
“That’s what economists should focus on!” They all seem to think that
economists assume too much rationality, and that we should switch to a more
behavioral approach. But here’s the problem. Non-economists also tend to
reject the central ideas of basic economics, and for reasons that are not
well justified. For the economics profession, our “value added” comes not
from spoon feeding behavioral theories that the public is already inclined
to accept, rather it is in teaching well-established basic principles of
which the public is
highly skeptical.
Thus we should try to discourage people from believing in the following
popular myths:
1. People don’t respond very strongly to economic incentives. (I.e., the
demand for life-saving drugs is very inelastic.)
2. Imported goods, immigrant labor, and automation all tend to increase
the unemployment rate.
3. Most companies have a lot of control over prices. (I.e. oil companies
set prices, not “the market”.)
4. Policy disputes over taxes and regulations are best thought of in
terms of who gains and who loses.
5. Experts are smarter than the crowd.
6. Speculators make market prices more unstable.
7. Price gouging hurts consumers.
8. Rent controls help tenants.
These
myths
are all widely believed by the general public. Teaching behavioral
economics is not a good way to get people to “think like an economist”,
indeed it gets in the way. Our primary goal should not be to add new
information, it should be to have people
unlearn false ideas about the
world. I’m not knowledgeable enough to have a good overview of the utility
of behavioral economics. But even if it is useful it doesn’t really belong
in a principles of economics course, except as a way of briefly
acknowledging that the rational choice model is a useful fiction and not a
perfect description of human behavior. We first need to teach basic
economic principles.
That doesn’t mean that I agree with the way that economics majors are
currently being taught. Our intermediate level courses are far too
theoretical; they waste students’ time on lots of minor theories that would
only be useful for people planning to do graduate work in economics. (Most
students do not.) Too many homework problems with Cobb-Douglas utility,
Hicksian demand, marginal rates of substitution, Giffen goods, gross
substitutes, indifference curves, etc. Some of that is appropriate, but all
economics courses should focus heavily on applied economics. Outside of
grad school, every course should be taught as if it’s the last time students
will ever encounter those theories,
because it usually
is. Just teach enough theory for students to handle the applied
courses in their major.
When I was
young, an
intermediate micro textbook by Deirdre McCloskey
was less mathematical than many current books, and did a nice job of
providing an interesting set of applications. When I look at what young
economics students are forced to learn today, I feel sorry for the
millennials.
Indeed
we’d probably be better off using principles texts for our intermediate
economics courses. Teach out of the exact same book as in the principles
courses, but do so at a higher intellectual level. Just as a literary
scholar might re-read Hamlet 50 times, each time gaining a deeper
understanding.
Jensen Comment
I whole heartedly agree with Scott's major points, especially about too much
mathematics and unrealistic esoteric theory in many undergraduate economics
courses.
However, I might take issue with some of Scott's characterization of "myths."
Some of these are too complicated to conclude they are myths.
1. People
don’t respond very strongly to economic incentives. (I.e., the demand for
life-saving drugs is very inelastic).
This a myth in many instances.
Interstates do become more crowded when gas prices are significantly reduced
(especially motor homes on the highways).
And people
will forego lifesaving drugs when no way can be found to obtain them at
affordable prices (what's the alternative?).
But putting a
$100 price on an air conditioner at a yard sale may draw in customers who
will not haul it home for $5 (not necessarily because suspicious buyers are
irrational).
And demand
for some online courses (think Sanskrit) may not increase notably when they
are given away for free as MOOCs or can be audited for free on campus.
My point here
is that price change impacts often depend upon a raft of circumstances that
determine how people "respond" to those price changes.
2.
Imported goods, immigrant labor, and automation all tend to increase the
unemployment rate.
There
are examples where automation increases employment opportunities.
And there are
examples where the aggregate unemployment rate did not drop significantly in
a year where some automation was increased in the USA.
There are
many, many variables that affect the USA's unemployment rate, and under
future circumstances automation will eventually increase unemployment
rates.
A recent rape
and murder in Iowa highlighted how hiring of undocumented immigrants by
dairy farms is increasingly popular. I can't think this does not affect
hiring of citizens on those farms at higher pay rates.
3. Most
companies have a lot of control over prices. (I.e. oil companies set
prices, not “the market”.)
Much depends upon the definition of "lot of
control." A farmer is a almost always a price taker unless he/she (they)
also sells produce at negotiated prices in roadside markets.
It's also a
myth that farmers in Iowa mostly sell at corn prices set by the commodities
exchanges in Chicago on a particular high-grade of corn. The fact of the
matter is that an Iowa farmer often does not
sell corn in far away Chicago, and the farmer's grade may be lower than the
grade of corn being sold on the CBOT in Chicago. That farmer often
negotiates the price of corn with a nearby ethanol plant
or the negotiated price obtainable from a nearby containment animal-feeding
company.
And Tesla has
considerable control over prices as witnessed by the company's recent price
reductions in China to finance a new manufacturing plant being built in
China.
And local
vehicle dealers in the USA do negotiate different prices for different
buyers, although this may not meet the above definition of "lot" of control.
4. Policy
disputes over taxes and regulations are best thought of in terms of who
gains and who loses.
This is a myth when voters are more
impacted by long-term power issues (and think the 2020 election) and not
short-term affected parties (like school teachers).
But there are
countless instances where taxes and regulations are thought of in terms of
who gains and who loses locally (such as resolutions of a local teacher's
union dispute).
5.
Experts are smarter than the crowd.
I
mostly lean toward crowd-sourcing answers, but much depends on how you
define a "crowd" such as a highly biased crowd versus a town hall meeting
where not everybody is on the same side.
And
experts are smarter than the crowd on highly technical issues like risks or
benefits of inoculations against polio.
6.
Speculators make market prices more unstable.
Speculators are indeed often arbitraging to
make prices more equitable and stable.
But I
don't think sub-prime investors intent on sales turnovers who could never
afford 12% mortgage rates (after after their sub-prime loans kicked up to
12%) made real estate prices more stable. Exhibit A is 2008 when
the
sub-prime market burst the housing price bubble nationwide.
7. Price
gouging hurts consumers.
Much depends on how you define "consumers."
Suppose a hurricane is imminent and a local gas station increases prices by
a factor of 10. All the gas is going to be sold. You've maybe hurt consumers
low on
cash, but the fat cats who buy the gas at higher prices are also
"consumers."
8. Rent
controls help tenants
There's ample evidence that rent
controls discourage the long-term supply of housing and the maintenance of
existing housing. However, I have a friend whose son in a chef in San
Francisco.
This chef
lives across from his job and walks across the street at late hours only
because he still pays much lower rent on his apartment than if SF did not
have rent controls. He's very grateful.
Hence much
depends upon whether we're talking about current tenants or long-term future
tenants who won't be able to find apartments.
Yale University is Above the Law ---
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2019/01/03/khan-expelled-uwc-finds-him-responsible-for-sexual-assault/?elqTrackId=5507cd86c5f44115a0c43f4ec880a9bb&elq=189c5690be19499588fa572335e3aa2c&elqaid=21884&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=10666
A Yale University student was found responsible for
sexual assault by the university and expelled, even though he had been
acquitted in a criminal trial, the Yale Daily News reports.
Diploma Mill: The Rise and Fall of Dr. John Buchanan and the Eclectic
Medical College of Pennsylvania ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/01/04/review-david-alan-johnson-diploma-mill-rise-and-fall-dr-john-buchanan-and-eclectic?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=cffd2bf518-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-cffd2bf518-197565045&mc_cid=cffd2bf518&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
"A
Degree of Fraud," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, July 2, 2014
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/07/02/essay-diploma-mills#sthash.8YfosLC9.dpbs
Jensen Comment
Sadly, states vary with respect to how diligently they protect against
fraudulent diploma mills.
At the Federal level under President Trump and his own former mill, protections
have been weakened.
Bob Jensen's threads on diploma mills ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
Harvard: The Legacy of Herb Kelleher, Cofounder of Southwest
Airlines ---
https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-legacy-of-herb-kelleher-cofounder-of-southwest-airlines?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_not_activesubs&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM23315
Jensen Comment
During my first few months at Trinity University I joined the regional
(Southwest) chapter of the Financial Executive Institute (FEI). Herb Kelleher
was the speaker at the first dinner meeting I attended. I will never forget him
or his inspiring talk. His message was that running a business is so much more
than trying to make a buck. He really, really, really cared about his employees
and his customers. His personality was so warm. How could you not like Herb
Kelleher? And he showed all the prior airlines that there was indeed a better
way of doing business. Interestingly, however, no other airline became as
successful as Southwest Airlines in implementing the Southwest Airlines business
model. It helps when the employees of a great business truly love their boss.
Herb Kelleher is Exhibit A as far as being loved even by employee labor
unions.
But life is complicated. I've also seen successful universities and
businesses where employees really fear their boss having a low tolerance for
nonsense. Go figure! There's no magic bullet for managing every organization.
I do admire the manager of a nearby "99" (great food) restaurant here in the
mountains. When every worker is busy (as is usually the case) Moe helps clear
tables and cleans the surrounding floors. Herb Kelleher
would've done that if he managed a busy restaurant.
False Positives and False Negatives ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positives_and_false_negatives
Example of a False Positive:
A
cough is the sign of a terminal illness.
Example of a False Negative: A cough
isn't the sign of a terminal illness
Forwarded by Paula
Things I Learned From The Movies
1.
All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.
2.
Medieval peasants had perfect teeth. (and wore tennis shoes when running in
mobs)
3.
The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one
will ever think of looking for you in there, and you can travel to any other
part of the building you want without difficulty.
4.
Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and
pant.
5. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are
visiting.
6. A cough is usually the
sign of a terminal illness.
7. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will
know all the steps.
8. No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system
is never damaged.
9. The more a man and a woman hate each other, the more likely they will
fall in love.
10. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red
readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
11. Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.
12. A cup of black coffee or a splash of cold water in the face is enough to
render the most inebriated person stone cold sober.
13. If you try hard enough, you can outrun an explosion.
14. If you stick your head out of cover during a gun fight, it will never be
hit, especially if you look backwards to hold a conversation with someone
behind you.
15. Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure
they are assigned partners who are their total opposite.
16. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three
days before their retirement.
17. You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the
mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
18. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
19. Computers never display a cursor on screen but always say: Enter
Password Now.
20. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off — even while scuba diving.
21. All watches and clocks are synchronized to the second.
22. No matter how fuzzy the photograph, it can be enlarged and enhanced to
show the finest detail.
23. Nearly everyone speaks English, no matter where they are from. Even
aliens from outer space, despite the fact they have never been to Earth,
seen an Earthling, or even heard of Earth or Earthlings.
24. No matter how catastrophic the disaster, pets will always survive it.
25. There will always be a doctor in a plane or building with the right
medical supplies.
The minimum wage is set to increase in 21 states and DC in 2019 — here's
what it will be in every state ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/minimum-wage-2019-state-map-2018-12
Jensen Comment
Mountains and uninhabited timberlands are barriers to Mainers (Maniacs) seeking
cheaper goods and services in New Hampshire. But on the western and southern
borders of NH there are more out-of-state shoppers than in-state shoppers. We
can tell by looking at the license plates. Of course the main NH attraction is
sales tax avoidance while lower minimum wages add frostings to the cakes. Most
days I see more green (Vermont) license plates on the road than NH (Live Free or
Die) license plates on the road. We also attract Canadian shoppers ---
especially at our notoriously cheap NH liquor stores.
My point here is that lower wages are only part of the attractions for
shoppers in NH.
A bigger NH-living attraction is income tax avoidance. That does not phase
minimum-wage workers, but it sure attracts artists, writers, and physicians.
Best Movies of 2018 (From a Behavioral Economics Point of View) ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-28/becon-power-behavioral-economics-movie-awards-for-2018
Jensen Comment
I'm not in a rush to see these except I am interested in the 2018 movie called
"Searching." My reason is not so much to learn behavioral economics as it is to
watch movies with clever plot twists ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_(film)
The BBC mystery series are often good at plot twists, series like A Touch of
Frost, Foyle's War, Inspectors Lewis/Morse/Lynley/Dagleish, Midsomer Murders,
and Prime Suspect as well as some (not all) of the Agatha Christie BBC
series. I purchased about 20 of these boxed sets and watch one movie daily. It
helps us endure our long and dark winters. NetFlix is a bit unreliable for BBC
series (long waits), and rather than shift to Acorn I started buy my favorite
boxed sets from Amazon. If I wait long enough (think years) we generally enjoy
watching BBC reruns. British comedies that we used to enjoy now seem sort of
silly, although I can see some behavioral economics lessons in both the BBC
mysteries and comedies. My favorites are the mysteries.
I think it's really tough to write either a plot-twisting mystery or a
side-splitting comedy that's uniquely clever. My hat is off to RD Wingfield,
Anthony Horowitz, Caroline Graham, Elizabeth George, PD James, Agatha Christie,
and the others that have written so many good BBC movie plots.
Stanford: What Can We Learn from the Downfall of Theranos (an
enormous fraud)? ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's
Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Merry Mathematical Christmas (Keynes & Samuelson) ---
https://www.econlib.org/merry-mathematical-christmas/
Hugely Negative Expected Value ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/24750165271/supplysideliberalcom-takes-on-a-math-columnist
This physicist’s ideas of time will blow your mind ---
https://qz.com/1279371/this-physicists-ideas-of-time-will-blow-your-mind/
Jensen Comment
Physicist Carlos Rovelli's idea of time will be especially troublesome for
accountants. The entire basis of bookkeeping lies in recording transactions over
time. Interest is computed over lapsed time intervals. We assess income taxes in
one period based upon taxable income of the previous period. We juggle the books
in one period to save butts in the next period time.
My body tells me that time as I know it is a very real phenomenon even if I
view my entire life as a succession of nano seconds. Whenever I flew from Asia
back to the USA I did not feel younger because I crossed the international date
line. Mostly I just wanted to get to bed and sleep for 24 hours. Then when I
woke up I still felt older.
But wouldn't it be great if we could see the jackpot machine outcome before
we inserted the coins or knew the Super Bowl outcome with certainty on New
Year's Day?
A broken clock is perfectly accurate twice a day. Tell me that is so!
Why doesn't Carlo Rovelli have more wealth than Jeff Bezos?
Will Carlo Rovelli live forever? Or is he repeatedly dying and then being
reborn?
A Digital Age Book Burning ---
https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=16662
A homework app in China that instantly solves problems for students with
the snap of a photo is now worth $3 billion ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/yuanfudao-homework-assistant-app-funding-2018-12
17 of the wackiest photos from the biggest tech convention (CES) of the
year ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/ces-2019-wackiest-best-photos-2019-1
A short list of the dumbest “smart” gadgets at CES 2019 ---
https://qz.com/1514805/ces-2019-connecting-literally-everything-to-the-internet/
Jensen Comment
Some like the command bed don't seem quite so dumb if you're alone in the room.
However, it might be dangerous to wake up your partner's deep sleep with a bed
command.
MIT: The 10 most intriguing inventions of 2018 ---
Click Here
Phyorg: 19 Insanely Cool 2018 Gadgets ---
https://prime8.com/stocking18/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIv5vv3dTN3wIVNhfTCh2frA0dEAEYASAAEgKrPvD_BwE
Seven of the coolest gadgets announced at Europe's biggest tech show
of 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/ifa-2018-coolest-gadgets-announcements-2018-8
Time Magazine: The Top 10 Gadgets of 2017 ---
http://time.com/5029999/top-10-gadgets-2017/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=2017112112pm&xid=newsletter-brief
Cool Gadgets From the CES 2017 ---
http://time.com/4626654/ces-2017-best-gadgets/?xid=newsletter-brief
Nine Must-Have Gadgets for Under $100 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-tech-gadgets-under-100-dollars-2016-6
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
Jim Borden discusses the book "Educated" by Tara Westover (learning such
things as not to piss on your hands) ---
https://www.jborden.com/i-teach-them-not-to-piss-on-their-hands/
The Most-Discussed TED Talks in 2018 ---
https://www.ted.com/playlists/684/curator_s_picks_top_10_ted_talks_of_2018?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-12-29&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=playlist_title
The Atlantic: The 19 Best Books of 2018 ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/the-19-best-books-2018/578134/
Jstor's Best in 2018 ----
https://daily.jstor.org/editors-picks-best-of-2018/
These are Bill Gates's 2018 must-read books ---
Click Here
Dismal Science Cartel: Economists and its main association face
criticism that the field's power centers are a small number of top departments.
Grad students, meanwhile, push for standards of conduct. ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
Unlike business disciplines like accounting, economists are at long last
promoting and publishing research replications ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-17/economics-gets-it-wrong-because-research-is-hard-to-replicate
Also see
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-refereeing-process-in-economics.html
Issues of lack of replication in accounting research ---
Allegedly accounting researchers are always truthful and painstakingly accurate
there's no need for replication and validity research ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
In truth the reason is that there are so few readers of academic accounting
research who care about validity.
January 3, 2019 reply from Paul Williams
Bob, This is also how the AAA is organized. A spin
off from the AEA, it mimics the same hierarchical structure (what Whitley
labels a patterned bureaucracy). Speaking of replication: There is no more
consistently reproduced result in all of accounting research than the one
showing the domination of the U.S. academy by graduates of a set of "elite"
schools and by a dominating methodology that repeatedly "tests" theories
that are constructed to resist refutation. As Mike Royko famously noted that
he finally understood economics" "Economics is a theory that says almost
anything can happen, and it usually does." Past presidents, e.g., Sunder,
Waymire, Rayburn, et al have acknowledged the stagnant nature of accounting
scholarship. Horizons ran a series of papers by the "leading lights" about
this problem (famously short Joel Demski said "Where's the passion?") An
interesting comment for sure.
How does one get passionate about constructing
another 50 variable linear model out of a mishmash of "proxies", unreliable
expectation models (abnormal accruals, e.g.), accounting data constructed
for purposes decidedly unscientific only to "prove" that what we already
believe about the world is "true?" Recall the AAA Centennial meeting with a
plenary about becoming a learned profession by 2036. Even though the AAA had
had a century to make accounting a learned profession, it would still take
20 more years to accomplish that. That is an astonishing admission of
failure on the part of those who manage the academy. Little wonder there is
the practice/academy schism. The academy no longer speaks a learned language
relevant to practice (does law or medicine confine themselves to talk of
Pareto optimality?). Because this language is largely irrelevant to
practice, practice has lost something, too. That may be why the profession
is increasingly being described as merely part of the wealth defense
industry. Among all the social sciences economics has led the "flight from
reality" that Ian Shapiro laments about his discipline of political science.
We still call it figure skating because many years ago competing for an
olympic medal required one do the compulsories, which were literally skating
figures. Great for creating perfection of conformity, but not very conducive
to creativity and innovation. The meaninglessness of compulsories became
apparent and it was discontinued.
Doctoral education in accounting today seems to
have taken the opposite course and regressed (pun intended) to where the
focus in most of them are the compulsories. We educate them to do well the
rituals that the so-called elite journals require of them and make sure
their figures are absolutely precise before we let the public see what they
have done (no natural science journal takes 3 to 5 iterations and 4 to 5
years to let the world know what a scientist has learned; whatever it is
that gets one a "hit" in the elite journals can't be all that important).
And then we lament the lack of passion and creativity?
Bayesian Statistics ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_statistics
Replication ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility
Using Bayesian Reanalysis to Decide Which Studies to Replicate ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2019/01/03/using-bayesian-reanalysis-to-decide-which-studies-to-replicate/
Allegedly accounting researchers are always truthful and painstakingly
accurate there's no need for replication and validity research ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the
Public Domain ---
https://lisnews.org/for_the_first_time_in_more_than_20_years_copyrighted_works_will_enter_the_public_domain
Quantitative Easing ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
The ECB’s Quantitative Easing Was a Failure — Here Is What It Actually Did
---
https://mises.org/wire/ecb’s-quantitative-easing-was-failure-—-here-what-it-actually-did?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=e5ebe3354d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-e5ebe3354d-228708937
The best data visualization in 2018, according to data visualization
experts ---
https://qz.com/1513260/the-best-data-visualization-in-2018-according-to-data-visualization-experts/
FiveThirtyEight Blog's Data Visualization Highlights of 2018 ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-45-best-and-weirdest-charts-we-made-in-2018/
Bob Jensen's threads on Data Visualization ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
The Best Outlets With USB-C For All Of Your New Devices ---
https://www.reviewgeek.com/11015/the-best-outlets-with-usb-c-for-all-of-your-new-devices/
When Bach was in his mid-40s and at the height of his creative powers, he
suddenly began recycling old material instead of composing original material ---
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/bach-master-recycler/
Cut and Paste Non-cited Plagiarism of His Own Undisputed Work Leads to an
Embarrassing Retraction ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2018/05/02/a-new-data-thug-is-born/
"A model for ethical reasoning": Retraction of Sternberg (2012) ---
http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-65591-002
Retraction Watch (cheating in research) ---
http://retractionwatch.com
The Retraction Watch Database ---
http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx?
For example, put Accounting into the subject box and view the hit list (not all
are accounting research retractions)
Bob Jensen's threads on professor cheating are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
A 16-year-old Kansas boy will soon earn his high school diploma - and a
few days later he'll travel to Harvard to collect his bachelor's degree ---
http://amp.fox32chicago.com/news/kansas-teen-to-receive-high-school-harvard-diplomas-in-same-month
How to Mislead With Statistics
The Most and Least Expensive Places to Live in the USA ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/america-most-expensive-places-to-live-2018-5
Jensen Comment
The article is misleading in terms of the definition of "places." The population
of the most expensive "place" (San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara) is much more
populated (over three million) with a wide range of real estate prices
relative to the least expensive "place" (Beckley, WV) that has a population of
17,000 people.
Real estate prices in The Hamptons (population over 100,000) are higher than
those in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara "place."
Real estate prices in Beckley, WV are higher than those in the clusters of
small and decaying farm towns of Iowa. The problem with "places" like Lone Rock,
Iowa and nearby towns is that the farm prices are very high for homes and lands
surrounding those decaying towns. An even in those decaying "places" real estate
prices can vary greatly. Beckley has some relatively high priced houses ---
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Beckley-WV/37340_rid/globalrelevanceex_sort/37.91793,-80.982285,37.459325,-81.720429_rect/10_zm/
I'm sure there are also some old clapboard houses costing less than $25,000. The
same is true with Lone Rock, Iowa.
My point is that if you you're retiring on just your Social Security income
youhave to worry about income taxes and there are lots of inexpensive "places"
to live that are probably and cheap or cheaper than than Beckley.
If you need welfare supplements you can cut far better deals in Vermont than you
can in most any other USA state. I'm amazed millions of people on welfare have
not discovered Vermont.
If you are doing quite well but can only afford a $2 million house, you're
better off looking in San Jose than in The Hamptons.
The problem with this study is that it has a lousy
definition of "places." Another problem is that
within a "place" like Beckley, WV or Lone Rock, IA or Burlington, VT is
that the "living costs" vary a great deal depending on what you can afford.
How to Mislead With Statistics
Cutting out bacon and booze could reduce your risk of cancer by up to 40%,
according to a major new study of over 50 million people ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/cutting-out-bacon-and-booze-could-drastically-reduce-risk-of-cancer-2018-5
Jensen Comment
The phrase "cutting out" typically means eliminating or reducing to zero.,
First, there are many causes of cancer, and for some
people booze and bacon risks are relatively minor compared to other more serious
interacting causes (think genetics) of cancer. Second, people who eat bacon
and/or drink in moderation are not likely to experience
the "up to 40%" reduced cancer risk. I eat three thick slices of bacon on
average each week --- when I meet with friends at Polly's Pancake Parlor. I
average about three cocktails per week. Somehow, I don't think "cutting out" my
bacon and booze will significantly impact my risk of cancer. And my bacon and
booze significantly reduce my risk of depression.
More seriously, this is problem of defining "cutting out" in this and related
studies. Our bodies are usually built to handle small amounts of many types of
toxins. There are of course exceptions such as for people who have really severe
peanut allergies. And sometimes we can build up tolerance for toxins such as the
way snake handlers (and dogs) can build up tolerances for rattlesnake poison.
But I doubt that this is how it works for being able to eat more and more and
more fat or sugar.
My point is that when there are so many relevant variables (like causes for
cancer and dosages of things like bacon and booze) studies like this can be very
misleading. In fairness, the study does seem to give a little on moderate
alcohol consumption.
By the way, any study of over 50 million subjects runs the risk of misleading
statistical inference where non-substantive differences become statistically
significant.
The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error
Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
Loving Your Craft
Leonard Eugene Dickson married Susan Davis. Later, he often said of his
honeymoon: "It was a great success, except that I only got two research papers
written ---
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Dickson.html
Jensen Comment
What really drives scholars like Dickson?
Collegiality Concerns ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/02/fresno-state-adopt-controversial-set-principles-community?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b1f5bdde86-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b1f5bdde86-197565045&mc_cid=b1f5bdde86&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
A Long Article About How Truth is Stranger Than Fiction
The Lottery Hackers: Jerry and Marge Go Large ---
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/
How Times Change
In 1610: Ludolph van Ceulen, fencing master and
mathematics instructor, died in Leiden, Holland. On his tombstone is inscribed
his greatest accomplishment, the value of pi to 35 decimal places. Pi is still
sometimes referred to as Ludolph's number ---
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Van_Ceulen.html
History of the number Pi ---
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Pi_through_the_ages.html
Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1983 What the World Will
Look Like in 2019: Computerization, Global Co-operation, Leisure Time & Moon
Mining ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/isaac-asimov-predicts-in-1983-what-the-world-will-look-like-in-2019.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Jensen Comment
What did Dick Tracy get right that Isaac Asimov did not get right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Tracy '
Answer
Cell phones, although Dick Tracy did not not get it right about smart phones.
Journal retracts paper (from PhD thesis) by controversial Australian
journalist ---
http://retractionwatch.com/2018/12/29/journal-retracts-paper-by-controversial-australian-journalist/
Video: The Great (Failed) Nara Coin Experiment in Japan 735-900
---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/17/the-great-nara-money-experiment
Makes me think about bitcoin
Pew Research: 18 striking findings from 2018 ---
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/13/18-striking-findings-from-2018/
Jensen Comment
Having lived in San Antonio for 24 years, it's my opinion that the lease
reliable statistics in the above document concern the count of undocumented
immigrants. I suspect that the number greatly exceeds the Pew Research count.
University Of Illinois Pays $424,000 For $61 Million Lloyd’s Of London
Policy To Hedge Against Decline In Chinese Students ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/12/wsj-us-grip-on-higher-education-market-is-slipping-university-of-illinois-pays-424000-for-61-million.html
Chinese students miss out on early places at MIT but what’s to blame for
the change in fortune? ---
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2179977/chinese-students-miss-out-early-places-mit-whats-blame-change
Adam Smith ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy: A Ph.D. Dissertation
in the English Department of UC Berkeley ---
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Chamberlain_berkeley_0028E_17503.pdf
Why we are fascinated by miniature books ---
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/03/why-we-are-fascinated-by-miniature-books
Jensen Comment
Such books are hard to read without readers like microfilm readers.
The 'Future Book' Is Here, but It's Not What We Expected ---
https://www.wired.com/story/future-book-is-here-but-not-what-we-expected/
Wikisource Free Library ---
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
Major Stories from The Atlantic 50-150 Years Ago ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/best-atlantic-1968-1918-and-1868/578971/
The Hunt for the Nazi Loot Still Sitting on Library Shelves ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/arts/nazi-loot-on-library-shelves.html
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
UK Police Struggle To Stop Flow Of Guns That Laws Did Nothing To Stop ---
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/01/01/british-police-struggle-stop-flow-guns-laws-nothing-stop/?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=01/02/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
A man fired his handgun at a Taco Bell dive-thru at 1am after 'not getting
enough sauce,' police say ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/man-fires-handgun-taco-bell-sauce-police-2019-1
Jensen Comment
Firstly, I've never seen a Taco Bell with a "dive" through. This is probably
good exercise before picking up Tacos.
Secondly, it shows how guns should not be in the hands of people having blinding
tempers.
How to Mislead With Statistics: Definition of "Gun Violence"
NYT: Nearly 40,000 People Died From Guns in U.S. Last Year (2017),
Highest in 50 Years ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html
Gun Violence Archive: Nearly 16,000 People Died From Gun Violence in
2017 ---
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls
Jensen Comment
Apparently this huge difference is due mostly to the definition of "violence."
Of the 40,000 gun deaths the NYT asserts that approximately 2/3 of the gun
deaths were suicides. What is misleading is that probably most of those
gun-death suicides would not have been prevented if
those victims did not have access to guns. Those really bent on suicide would've
found other means such as drug overdoses, jumping from balconies, intentional
vehicle crashes, etc. It's probably impossible to know how many vehicle crashes
were suicides or how many drug overdose deaths were intentional suicides.
We'll never know!
Of the 15,658 non-suicide "violent" gun deaths in 2017 only 2,035 were
classified as "unintentional." This is a relatively small proportion of the
40,000 who died from guns. In 2018 the number of unintentional gun deaths
dropped to 1,593 out of which less than 10% were "children."
I discovered that statistics for gun deaths of children reported in the media
differ mostly due to how you define "children." The Gun Violence Archive defines
children as being aged 1-11. The New England Journal of Medicine defines
children as being aged 1-19 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2018/tidbits122718.htm
The Gun Violence Archive is an amazing data source. I'm writing this
early in the morning on January 2, 2019. Already the GVA Archive published data
for 2019 (yesterday) ---
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
Tennis bad boy Nick Kyrgios was knocked out of the Brisbane International
after he was bitten by a spider over Christmas ---
https://www.businessinsider.co/nick-kyrgios-knocked-out-of-brisbane-international-after-spider-bite-2019-1
Also see
https://www.foxsports.com.au/tennis/nick-kyrgios-was-hospitalised-with-a-spider-bite-over-christmas/news-story/ef7349c4c36c0d3c5d926d40ab57bf4c?nk=9adef082d6b495362b11cc6baf7bee72-1546428855
How to mislead with statistics
Australia's horses and cows are killing more people than its snakes and spiders
https://www.businessinsider.com/australias-horses-and-cows-are-deadlier-than-its-snakes-and-spiders-2018-12
Jensen Comment
Big deal! Between 2008 and 2017, nine years, horses and cows killed 77 people in
Australia. Does that make them a serious death threat? In most instances the
cause of death is carelessness in handling the big animals.
Australia does have some of the most venomous snakes in the world. Apparently
they don't kill many people --- most likely because they seldom come in contact
with people ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venomous_snake
Spider bites are more apt to make you sick more than dead. In Australia the
poisonous spiders are limited to certain regions ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_bite#Australia
Like everybody else in the world, Australians should worry more about heart
disease and cancer.
Boston Symphony Sued for "Equal Pay" for Female Flute Player ---
https://mises.org/wire/boston-symphony-sued-equal-pay-female-flute-player?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=469a928312-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-469a928312-228708937
How to Add Music to Your PowerPoint presentation ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/398769/how-to-add-music-to-your-powerpoint-presentation/
Cronyism, 'Wasteful' Spending Accusations Roil Government Publishing
Office ---
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/31/676559496/cronyism-wasteful-spending-accusations-roil-government-publishing-office
Why They Can't Write ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/03/author-discusses-his-new-book-how-writing-and-should-be-taught?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=05ec395b2d-WNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-05ec395b2d-197565045&mc_cid=05ec395b2d&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Jensen Comment
One advantage of essay examinations versus homework assignments is that more
cheating controls are usually available during examinations.
January 4, 2019 reply from Tom Amlie
I've
seen student come through the "Business Writing" course - with an "A" grade
- who submit written work which is absolutely appalling. As with most
things, there are numerous culprits:
1.
English departments no longer assign much grading weight to technical
competence in writing...grammar, etc. When I was first told this by a
colleague I was incredulous; when I queried my students they confirmed it.
2.
Most
assessments in English (and other writing intensive courses) are based on
work done outside of class. This means that the work which a student
submits as evidence of their writing skill has been through spell- and
grammar-checks, has been massaged perhaps by the "learning center" or
writing tutors on campus, or is lifted in whole or in part from on-line
sources.
3.
Faculty in non-English courses are often hesitant to refuse or penalize
poorly written work.
The
problem isn't so much a wholesale and widespread lack of writing skills;
it's that those without good/decent/acceptable/minimal writing skills aren't
detected or remediated. I've been on the warpath about this for years, and
have convinced my colleagues in the capstone business strategy course (where
writing is assessed for AACSB purposes) to assign an extemporaneous in-class
writing assignment so that we can get a better grasp of what students can
actually produce through their own abilities. This isn't so much about the
students' grades as it is about documenting that there are fundamental flaws
in the system.
Dance seems to be the ultimate frivolity. How did it become a human
necessity?
https://aeon.co/videos/dance-seems-to-be-the-ultimate-frivolity-how-did-it-become-a-human-necessity?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0380dd4726-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_02_04_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-0380dd4726-68951505
Click on the arrow in the large graphic
Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell (dancing at its best) ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's second-favorite dance video (you gotta like Silvan Zingg) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QQzbCmlZM4
You're really a fudd if your feet don't move listening to this clip.
Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/business/china-internet-censor.html
Details You May Not Know About Walmart ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-facts-ceo-doug-mcmillon-walton-family-2019-1
Jensen Comment
Walmart is still struggling to compete with Amazon in terms of online sales.
Amazon's biggest advantage is lies in carrying millions more products and
product alternatives such as sizes, colors, and styles. I played around with the
growing gorilla in online retailing --- Alibaba. I found that Amazon is even
ahead of Alibaba in terms of numbers of products and product alternatives. Of
course Alibaba leads in the vast Chinese online market ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group
But in terms of in-store shopping in the USA,
Walmart is where America shops daily in spite of crowded parking lots ---
sometimes in competition with the Walton Family Sam's Clubs down the road. Labor
union power centers (like Boston and Vermont) ban Walmart stores, but here in
New Hampshire our Walmart stores sell more to out-of-state shoppers than
in-state shoppers. New England customers will drive for miles and miles and
miles to get to a Walmart store or a Sam's Club --- especially since there's no
sales tax in NH to go along with low prices at enormous Walmart and Sam's Club
stores.
15 Stunning University Libraries Around the World You Need to See ---
https://news.yahoo.com/15-stunning-university-libraries-around-164027617.html
Libraries aren't just for books. They're often spaces that transform into
what you need them to be: a classroom, a cyber café, a place to find answers, a
quiet spot to be alone. It's actually kind of magical ---
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/664/the-room-of-requirement
Jensen Comment
In retirement those of you who follow my posts are aware that I wander all over
the Web. What you may not know is that when I was both a student and a faculty
member for over 50 years I wandered the college library stacks at least once per
week. I love the smells of books and the magic of eye balling books randomly
chosen on virtually every topic in the card catalog.
These days random walks on the Web are better in the sense that much of the
material is usually more current and the findings are not quite as random ---
hundreds of other bloggers that I follow to point me where
to look and download. But in retirement I do miss my weekly random walks
through the musty-smelling stacks in campus libraries.
High-Tax State Exodus ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-tax-state-exodus-11546037709?mod=itp_wsj&ru=yahoo
U.S.
population growth fell to an 80-year low last year amid declining birth
rates, a new Census report shows. But it’s also telling that some states are
booming while others are suffering a European-style sclerosis of population
loss and slow economic growth.
One side
effect of a strengthening national economy has been a widening disparity in
state growth rates. The eight fastest-growing states by population last year
were located in the West or South (Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Florida,
Washington, Colorado and Texas).
And what do you know? These states have also experienced rapid employment
and GDP growth spurred by low tax rates and policies generally friendly to
business and job creation. Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Washington, Utah, Florida
and Colorado ranked among the eight states with the fastest job growth this
past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nevada, Texas,
Washington and Florida have no income tax.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I think net flows of moving vans (data provided by big-rig movers) are
misleading, but this article about economic growth is a little more convincing
that high taxes are not conducive to economic growth. However, the article omits
details about what some supposed high-tax states do to offset their many taxes
and high rates of taxation on incomes and property and sales transactions. For
example, New York is a high-tax state that that also has some tremendous tax
breaks that startup companies and their high-paid employees can take advantage
of to avoid or delay state taxation. New York gave Amazon some tremendous deals
before Amazon decided to build HQ2 in NYC.
Also there are many other variables that affect "exodus" decisions. For
example, Connecticut is a very high tax state that took a heavy blow when GE
moved, but GE moved to Massachusetts (another very high-tax state). In other
words. GE did not exactly choose a state with low taxes.
Here's why GE claims it moved:
https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/09/why-ge-moved-from-bridgeport-to-boston-atlantic-ideas-forum/502061/
Both Connecticut and Massachusetts are noted for fiscal irresponsibility and
badly underfunded state-worker pensions.
We could view Apple's decision to invest over $1 billion in a new
headquarters in Austin, TX as a tax decision, but I think the move was more
influenced by the quality and quantity of faculty and students of the high-tech
University of Texas at Austin, and the engineering flagship Texas A&M is not all
that distant from Austin.
But the above article makes a pretty convincing case that low state taxation
is very important in spite of the tax breaks given by high-tax states. Believe
it or not there's a a high-taxation reason why the entire state of Vermont only
has around 600,000 men, women, and children combined. Any Vermont growth may
look pretty good on a percentage basis, but the truth is that economic growth in
Vermont is pretty dismal. One of the least-popular tax decisions in Vermont is
the Robin Hood decision to soak the highest home-value regions in Vermont with
added property taxes to be distributed to relatively large (too large) number of
poorer (mostly rural) school districts in the State. Other states like New
Hampshire also do this Robin Hood thing but not to the extreme of Vermont.
Perhaps this is the reason so many physicians live and practice just across the
border into New Hampshire.
Sometimes low individual taxation is not accompanied by low business
taxation. New Hampshire is noted for low individual taxation because it has
neither a sales tax nor a general income tax. However, NH is not particularly
noted for additionally having low business taxes and tax breaks for new
businesses or real estate give-aways. Another factor that hurts NH and Vermont
and Maine is the relatively high cost of energy. Pipelines are few and far
between, and winter nights are long for solar. There are economies of scale in
energy pricing, and low populations of Vermont, NH, and Maine are not conducive
to economies of scale.
A Simple Lesson About Money and Models (well maybe not so simple after
all) ---
https://everydayecon.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/a-simple-lesson-about-money-and-models/
How Academics Measure the Value of Their Books ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/2146-how-academics-measure-the-value-of-their-books?cid=VTEVPMSED1
Jensen Comment
The first thing needed is a definition of "value." Value typically is defined in
terms of economics. This article, however, takes a much broader definition of
value such as how two people living together "value" their partners or what peer
reviewers say about a book you've written that isn't selling worth a damn.
One of the problems is those who value the your work the most may often be
quite critical of what you've done. I think the people who value my blogs the
most are sometimes the ones who criticize my contributions. It's a little like
when Coach Graham more vigorously chews out the players he values the most ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Randy
My point is that, somewhat inconsistent with
what the author of the above posting concludes, is that what matters the most
may not be what how you value your work.
Sometimes self-evaluation can be misleading. For example, Tolstoy had very
little respect for his enduring blockbuster that he wrote entitled Anna
Karenina. It would be a huge loss if, like many (most?) authors, he
destroyed the manuscript before it was ever published.
Perhaps what's more important than the value you place on your work is the
list of reasons that you and others have for placing a particular value on your
work. Value is also somewhat interactive in context. Your book or course notes
may be of more value to students because of how you or other teachers use this
work in a way that makes your work more valuable to particular students --- a
value that many other teachers cannot or do not capture for their students when
using your work. For example, one of the things I produced in a Camtasia video
is how to value interest rate swaps for balance sheets. This video worked great
for me, but if used for teachers or students who really do not understand
interest rate swaps in the first place my video would be very confusing.
Will the world embrace Plan S, the radical proposal to mandate open access
to science papers?
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/will-world-embrace-plan-s-radical-proposal-mandate-open-access-science-papers
Jensen Comment
Knowledge yearns to be free. The problem lies more in creating what we call
knowledge. Would particular knowledge be created without some inspiration and/or
funding from a publishing house, lab, or authors that expect a financial return?
Are there better ways to fund these returns than by selling the articles or
books?
At the moment we're still rooted in obsolete times where knowledge could
not be widely distributed by some type of expensive
publishing and distribution (postage and book store selling) process. However,
today electronic publishing and distribution can be almost costless. But there's
still that problem of inspiring and funding the researchers/writers themselves,
especially those who might otherwise have no funding. It's one thing for
professors to be rewarded with tenure, promotions, and salary. It's quite
another for free lance researchers and writers.
Chicago State University ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_State_University
The low graduation rate amounts to more than $2.5
million spent per year per graduate. Most of that money is paid for by
Illinois taxpayers. According to an audit of the University by the Illinois
Auditor General. Chicago State University also owes $356.5 million in debt,
the majority of which is owed to the state university retirement system
pension plan.
Chicago State Settles Suit Over Critical Blog ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/01/08/chicago-state-settles-suit-over-critical-blog?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=f7da6e366c-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-f7da6e366c-197565045&mc_cid=f7da6e366c&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
This robot can sit down and play the piano with its hands as well as do
other human activities ---
UBTECH Shows Off Massive Upgrades to Walker Humanoid Robot ---
Click Here
A Treadmill for Cats and Other Pets Needing Exercise---
Click Here
NPR: 'Going To Office Hours Is Terrifying' And Other Tales Of Rural
Students In College ---
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/668530699/-going-to-office-hours-is-terrifying-and-other-hurdles-for-rural-students-in-col
MIT: When Chinese Hackers Declared War on the Rest of US ---
Click Here
Chronicle of Higher Education: Keep Cross-Examination Out of College
Sexual-Assault Cases ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Keep-Cross-Examination-Out-of/245448?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=8743660bd8bf4084b5ce21f58d0e68eb&elq=cb95c2e632cf4cde8055b19b44959c6f&elqaid=21934&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=10714
Requiring cross-examination in campus
sexual-misconduct proceedings is among the key features of the Department
of Education’s proposed Title IX reforms currently open for public comment.
The department, relying on an oft-cited 1904 legal treatise, calls
cross-examination "the greatest legal engine ever invented for the
discovery of truth." Although this new mandate might seem at first like a
good idea, a closer look shows otherwise.
. . .
More broadly, it is a serious question whether
cross-examination is even effective in this setting. Many scholars say that
aggressive, adversarial questioning is more likely to distort reality than
enable truth-telling. Research shows, for example, that a witness’s nervous
or stumbling response to adversarial questioning is more likely an ordinary
human reaction to stress than an indicator of false testimony.
Since the Department of Education has stressed its
respect for colleges’ expertise, it might consider commissioning a study to
test the effectiveness and risks of campus cross-examination. But to
override current, experience-based procedures and impose a national
cross-examination rule across all higher-education institutions in the
United States would undermine, not enhance, the fair and impartial treatment
that all students deserve.
Jensen Comment
It's more interesting, at least to me, to read how other professors commented on
the above article. The fact that the Chronicle allowed comments on this
article surprised me. Increasingly the Chronicle
won't allow comments.
schultzjc • a day ago I guess the author has never
been falsely accused of misbehavior. I have, and can tell you that the
accused must have some way of defending themselves beyond 'he/she said
she/he said'. As it is, the process itself is punishing and the impact on
reputation can be severe. In today's charged environment accusation alone is
too often taken as an indication of bad behavior, and there is no such thing
as a 'neutral administrator'. Accusations can and are used to harm
individuals for reasons that have nothing to do with the allegations. The
DOE plan may not be the way to do it, but something needs to be done to give
the accused some way of defending themselves.
• Share ›
Richard Gardner • a day ago If there has been a
sexual assault, or an accusation of one, the police and court system ought
to handle that. Not the school. Just like would happen if those involved
were not students.
• Share ›
Valcour • a day ago I could not disagree more. Time
after time federal courts are throwing out cases for lack of due process
protections for the accused, including the inability of the accused (or
his/her representative) to question those making accusations. These federal
judges are making the proper determination that questioning the accused is
an important part of a fair and impartial hearing. Professor Goldberg argues
that "it is one thing for a faculty or staff member to inform and support a
student, as many currently do, and quite another to adversarially
cross-examine a student who is also part of his or her own institution." An
accusation of a serious offense is, itself, adversarial. Indeed, the
adversarial nature the the process was guaranteed when one student (i.e.,
the alleged victim) accuses another student (i.e., the alleged perpetrator)
of having committed sexual assault. The faculty or staff member member
enters into an adverserial cross-examination in order to defend another
member of the university community who stands accused of a terrible offense.
Faculty and staff members have an obligation to "inform and support" all
members of the university community, including those who have been charged
with a serious offense but who have yet to be found responsible for the
charges against them. The failure to permit questioning of alleged victims
stacks the deck unfairly in favor of one party over another. I am no
supporter of the Trump administration, but this is one area where the
administration is getting it right. The revised DOE regulations are wholly
appropriate in order to protect both the accuser and the accused and to
create fairness of process. Rather than creating a show trial in which the
accused is not afforded the full range of reasonable defenses that are part
of our system of fair and impartial determinations of responsibility, it is
crucial that those accused of serious offenses be given the opportunity to
defend themselves, including having their representatives question the
person who has leveled a serious accusation against them.
• Share ›
David • a day ago Sure, throw students out of
school and ruin their reputations without due process. There are so many
reasons that it's the easiest, cheapest and smoothest way for almost
everyone!
• Share ›
princeton67 • a day ago "I have heard some
advocates propose that colleges provide students with lawyers when charges
are serious even if they do not do so for other serious misconduct cases.
Even the Department of Education has not gone that far, however, perhaps
recognizing that most American colleges could not do this without diverting
funds from financial aid, faculty hiring, and other core educational needs."
Colleges came up with funds for Diversity Officers and for Title IX
Compliance officers. Of course, these are politically correct issues aimed
at justly empowering women. Affording accused (predominantly) males equal
power in a sexual-assault hearing counters this agenda. Fortunately, the
courts, sometimes with harsh criticism, are reversing college's handling of
"sexual-assault cases." Go to the article "Out of Balance": Colleges lose
series of rulings in suits brought by male students accused of sex assault.
In stinging decisions, judges fault lack of due process. https://www.insidehighered....
To whet your appetite, some excerpts: The federal court concluded that the
student was not given an opportunity to defend himself when the university
failed to notify the student of all the charges against him, and that an
assistant dean had “made up his mind so definitively that nothing [the
accused student] might have said could have altered his decision.” Earlier
this month, a federal judge in Boston rejected Brandeis University’s attempt
to dismiss a lawsuit by a student disciplined over sexual assault
allegations there. The Brandeis student was accused of sexually assaulting
his long-term partner. After the two broke up, according to court records,
the former partner "attended two sessions of university-sponsored sexual
assault training, which began (in his words) to change his 'thinking' about
his relationship." He then reported his partner for sometimes awakening him
with a kiss and persisting even when told to stop, for performing unwanted
oral sex on him and for touching his groin while the two watched a movie. In
his harshly worded opinion, the judge, F. Dennis Saylor, wrote that the
university failed to provide sufficient notice of the charges against the
student and did not allow him to cross-examine the complainant or his
witnesses. The judge expressed concern that the university allowed the same
official, a former lawyer for the U.S. Department of Education's Office for
Civil Rights, who investigated the complaint to also serve “as prosecutor,
judge and jury” in the case. “Brandeis appears to have substantially
impaired, if not eliminated, an accused student’s right to a fair and
impartial process,” Saylor wrote. “And it is not enough simply to say that
such changes are appropriate because victims of sexual assault have not
always achieved justice in the past. Whether someone is a ‘victim’ is a
conclusion to be reached at the end of a fair process, not an assumption to
be made at the beginning.” Also this month, a judge ruled that a similar
lawsuit against James Madison University can proceed. In that case,
according to the judge’s decision, the accused student was not allowed to
receive a copy of the charges against him or to make copies of his own.
Instead, he was only allowed to take notes as he read the complaint. A
three-person panel ruled in favor of the accused student, but the student
was suspended for five years after an appeal. During the appeal process,
according to the decision, the accused student was again unable to make
copies of any file materials involving his case. The student was given no
prior notice of the appeal board’s meeting date, nor was he allowed to
appear before the board. He was suspended without any explanation as to what
led the appeal board to reverse the hearing board’s original decision.
see more
• Share ›
Marc Domash • a day ago The author states: To be
sure, some students will hire lawyers or find a family friend to help. For
many, though, that option will be unaffordable or unavailable. This
disparity between students may not be as significant when advisers play a
quiet, supporting role, but it almost certainly will amplify inequities and
increase the risk of obscuring efforts to learn the truth of what happened
when a lawyer questions one student and a nonlawyer questions the other. I
will just point out that our current system of criminal jurisprudence has
created exactly these disparities the author is concerned about--low income
individuals, disproportionately minority, are represented (at best) by an
overworked and underpaid public defender who cannot even begin to handle his
or her caseload and provide effective counsel. The author's solution is to
import (or rather, continue) this unfair situation into the university but
to apply it to all the accused, a reverse parody of Antoile France's remark
on the law on rich and poor and sleeping under bridges. Goldberg also states
that "Nearly all courts to consider the issue have found fairness can be
fully achieved through questioning by a neutral college administrator." She
is surely aware that there are now hundreds of cases where colleges have not
found that. First, the are innumerable examples of biased administrators who
have been struck down, and a growing number of cases where cross-examination
is deemed necessary due to there being no evidence aside from the testimony
of the accuser and accused. The central issue that Goldberg does not even
address (and if discourse analysis has taught us anything, it is that the
questions not asked are as or more important than the ones that are) is the
consequences of a conviction on the accused. At a minimum, it is expulsion
from an institution to which hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition
have been paid and the potential loss of years out of the life. Moreover,
the current societal trend is to remove these individuals from the middle
class permanently. Such severe punishments require a more stringent set of
procedures than most university conduct violations. It is ironic that those
who support ban the box on most transgressions view this entirely
differently.
see more
• Share ›
FaithInAmerica • 2 days ago It's not clear to me
from reading this: Is the accused the only person who should be questioned?
• Share ›
Pr_Hank_Devereaux_JR • 2 days ago Two points: To
elaborate on the author's comments above: A frightening scenario is the
angry father, uncle, or older brother of a female complainant cross
examining a male student respondent, while the angry mother, aunt or
grandmother of a male respondent cross examines a female complainant. How
quickly is that likely to get emotional and out of control -- as compared to
a court-room scenario with trained attorneys and a trained judge and rules
on court room procedure? Second, how is it NOT sex discrimination to have
different investigation and adjudication procedures for student code of
conduct violations (either criminal or civil) that involve sex vs. those
that don't. Suppose student A is accused of violating the code of student
conduct by sexually assaulting another student. And student B is accused of
violating the code of student code of conduct by selling fentanyl to other
students on campus. Both acts are criminal and one might argue that the
student accused of selling fentanyl poses a more serious threat to other
students (i.e., death). All of the criminal code of conduct violations that
occur on college campuses cannot be "out-sourced" to police departments
because despite assertions to the contrary the police do not have the
resources to investigate and the courts do not have the resources to
adjudicate all of them. The criminal legal system utilizes triage to decide
which cases to prosecute. Likewise, despite assertions to the contrary
colleges investigate and adjudicate a wide variety of *criminal* student
code of conduct violations (grand larceny, battery, passing bad checks,
using or selling illegal drugs, purchasing alcohol for minors, vandalism,
hazing, etc.) and have been doing so for decades, regardless of whether or
not the police are involved. As a philosophical question why are policy
makers especially worried about a student being suspended or expelled for a
sexual assault charge adjudicated by the college disciplinary system, but
they have demonstrated very little (no?) concern about students being
suspended or expelled for other felony crimes adjudicated by the college
disciplinary system (e.g., selling drugs, etc.)? Don't both situations merit
equal levels of concern??? Isn't the sale of an illegal drug, or purchasing
alcohol for a minor, or hazing, a "he/she said -- he/she said" crime?
see more
• Share ›
antiutopia • 2 days ago I was prepared to disagree
with this article, but I find I agree with most of it once I get into the
details. We don't need faculty, students, or even campus administration to
be involved in cross-examination, and we never need that cross-examination
to be adversarial. The one exception might be a Title IX coordinator with
extensive training, but that person should be engaged in non-adversarial
questioning from a neutral position. I would still assert that both sides
need to be questioned in a neutral, non-adversarial way, but preferably by
an outside party with expertise in this area. The consultant in the
Kavanaugh hearings serves I think as a very good model. On larger campuses,
of course, this might well be a full time position. And in the cases of
actual sexual assault? Why aren't the police being brought in?
• Share ›
average_joe • 2 days ago You write, “Many scholars
say that aggressive, adversarial questioning is more likely to distort
reality than enable truth-telling.” Many scholars will say just the opposite
and will uphold the dictum of defendant’s right to aggressively protect his
integrity and honor. Only through fact-checking and verifying
inconsistencies through cross examination, truth can be flushed out beyond a
reasonable doubt. The current climate is so toxic and one-sided that
allegations of a sexual nature will ruin the career, legacy, family, and
even the opportunity to make a living of the accused. The American system of
justice allows the accused to confront the accuser. The American
jurisprudence has until recently relied on the sacred principle of “innocent
until proven guilty.” The Kavanaugh circus played out recently in
Washington, DC made many of us feel that powerful elected officials, many of
them lawyers, can apply double standards in public view and continue with
impunity. Most legal scholars will agree that 30-year old alcohol fueled
vague memories will be shredded by competent defense attorneys. Yet, the US
Senators were soft on the accusers to score political points. The good name
of a person was destroyed in spite of being appointed to the SCOTUS by a
determined President. Universities are also bastions of political
correctness, petty tiffs, jealousy, vendetta and a whole lot more, eager to
settle scores without due process. Without an opportunity to cross examine
the accusers, the accused will not get justice. And, many innocent people
will be ruined forever. I am appalled that a law professor would feel that
yet another study is needed “to test the effectiveness and risks of campus
cross-examination.”
• Share ›
12069838 • 2 days ago That's all very reasonable
Suzanne...except how would you ensure that a male accusee receive a fair
hearing? It is not enough to say that colleges are not courtrooms (granted)
or that it's not right to take resources away from financial aid to ensure
accused students are properly defended. Ask Duke, who paid tens of millions,
some say $50 million, over the Lacrosse scandal. Or Amherst about what one
student who didn't get a fair hearing cost them. And that's all before one
considers the reputational damage done to an individual who has not received
complete representation, including provision for the accuser the to be fully
questioned. Ultimately there is no escaping the fact that these cases are
adversarial proceedings and that both parties are entitled to a full
examination of what took place.
• Share ›
apache78 • 2 days ago There are reasons for
retaining cross-examination as the best way to get at the truth. Accusations
should never equate to guilt, outside of revolutionary France or the Salem
witch trials. Defendants should never be put into a position of having to
prove their own innocence. "and even fewer (just over 200) have accredited
law schools with faculty members or students who might pitch in." Would it
matter? In the Duke lacrosse case, the university had a nationally ranked
law school on the premises, with a couple of its professors considered as
possible SCOTUS picks. But despite that, the school expelled its
falsely-accused students without any process at all (despite what was
promised in the school handbook); not a single law professor or law student
joined their defense; the president of the university refused repeatedly to
examine evidence of their innocence; while the District Attorney conduced
one of the most blatant attempts at railroading ( the defendants were
cleared by DNA testing before any arrests were made) in recent history. But
all that mattered was that the defendants were accused of a sensational
crime (much touted by the sensantionalist media) They could never garner
support for a fair and unbiased examination of the charges. Which shows why
need more, not less,protections for defendants, in order to prevent future
such abuses and miscarriages of justice.
• Share ›
Gregory Smith • 2 days ago Universities cannot have
it both ways. Either they have the authority to impose life-shattering
consequences and accept the burden of responsibility that comes with that
authority or they do not. What we have currently is a system where an
accusation is enough to have a student expelled and their transcripts
permanently marked with a notation marking them as a sexual predator, whilst
the institution has no obligation to make the process fair, transparent or
reliable. If they don't want to be burdened with the need to establish
procedures that are fair to all involved, then they can simply put in place
a policy framework that says "we are not in the business of being finders of
fact. If a student is charged with a crime of violence, we will suspend them
pending the outcome of the case. If they plead guilty or are convicted, we
will expel them permanently". If on the other hand, they want to establish
an independent, parallel system, then they cannot complain about the
administrative and financial burden of doing so fairly and transparently.
• Share ›
−
KiteFlyer89 • 2 days ago “But campuses are not
courtrooms” Agreed completely. Have the police handle all of this instead of
kangaroo court adjudication boards.
Continued in article
Professors Worry About the Cost of Textbooks, but Free Alternatives Pose
Their Own Problems ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Professors-Worry-About-the/245435
Jensen Comment
I think the "best" textbook available should be adopted without respect to
price. The textbook is probably more important for the technical part of the
course than the teacher. Usually what I define as "best" is a combination of
recent trbidiond and changing end-of-chapter material. Great graphics also add a
lot.
In my accounting theory course I was never happy with the published textbooks
so I added a lot of supplementary material on newer types of contracts from a
theory perspective, especially material on financial structures and derivative
financial instruments. I had propositions to write textbooks, but the authors I
know who wrote successful textbooks sold their academic souls to those books.
It's hard to write great end-of-chapter material, and publishers get what they
pay for if they outsource that material to writers other than the textbook
authors. Publishers almost always go cheap when outsourcing supplemental
material.
January 13, 2019 reply from Barbara Scofield
The emergence and growth of Cambridge Business
Publishers, in my opinion, is based on its use of the author's in all
supplementary materials and a well-structured homework manager. I have much
more confidence in its supplemental products than Wiley's WileyPLUS or
McGraw Hill's CONNECT.
Return of the Outhouse ---
A $350 toilet powered by worms may be the ingenious
future of sanitation that Bill Gates has been dreaming about ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-foundation-helps-invent-tiger-toilets-powered-by-worms-2019-1
Jensen Comment
This is a marvelous invention the environment and people living in warm
climates. I'm not so sure about about walking to a privy this morning when it's
-6F outdoors. Of course it's possible to have a short heated walkway to the
privy.
The savings of precious water alone makes this an intriguing idea.
This could also be an answer to homeless concentrations on the streets.
The worms may be fat and healthy while longing to be free.
From the Scout Report on January 4, 2019
BitCurator ---
https://bitcurator.net/bitcurator/
BitCurator is a toolkit for digital forensics,
archiving, and digital curation. It assembles best-of-breed open source
tools for data triage, forensic disk imaging, file system analysis, location
of PII (private and individually identifying information), and export of
metadata. Libraries and archives can use this toolkit to support an
ingestion workflow for new digital content. BitCurator also includes tools
for rescuing data from failing media and can be used for data recovery. A
detailed walk-through of BitCurator's functionality can be located in the
quickstart guide under the support menu. Under the "use cases" category,
users will find real-world examples of how BitCurator has been used in
practice. BitCurator is distributed either as a bootable CD image or as a
VirtualBox machine image. It can run with as little as 4G of memory, but for
data-intensive tasks, the BitCurator team recommends at least an Intel Core
i7 or AMD Ryzen 1700, and at least 16G of memory.
Thonny ---
https://thonny.org/
Thonny is an integrated development environment for
Python designed specifically for beginning programmers. It presents a simple
user interface that was designed to be easy to explore and learn. The
built-in debugger features several ways to visualize the execution of code.
Particularly useful for beginners is Thonny's "faithful representation of
function calls" where each function's context is displayed in a separate
window, visually illustrating how recursive functions work. It also includes
a step-by-step evaluation mode where the debugger shows how subexpressions
are computed one piece at a time. The editor includes familiar features like
code completion and highlighting of syntax errors, but also special
highlighting of variables to distinguish variables with the same name in
different scopes (e.g., inside different functions). Installers are
available for Windows, macOS, and Linux computers. Thonny is a free software
with code available from Bitbucket under the MIT license.
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and
Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
Humanities for All ---
https://humanitiesforall.org/
School Gardening 101 ---
www.nybg.org/learn/schools-teachers/resources/school-gardening-101
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Animal Teeth, Wood, and Porcelain: How the First Dentures Were Made ---
https://gizmodo.com/animal-teeth-wood-and-porcelain-how-the-first-dentur-1831338161
That George Washington had wooden teeth was only a false legend.
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
This physicist’s ideas of time will blow your mind ---
https://qz.com/1279371/this-physicists-ideas-of-time-will-blow-your-mind/
Ted Talk: Fascinating Physics of Everyday Life: Perhaps you have
to read her book to learn the physics, but I liked her enthusisam ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_czerski_fun_home_experiments_that_teach_you_physics?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-05&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=bottom_right_button
Deep Carbon Observatory ---
https://deepcarbon.net/
Teddy Roosevelt’s Critique of Ostrich Science ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/best-atlantic-1968-1918-and-1868/578971/
Plants of the World Online ---
www.plantsoftheworldonline.org
Botany Depot ---
https://botanydepot.com/
Botanical Art & Artists Arts ---
www.botanicalartandartists.com
School Gardening 101 ---
www.nybg.org/learn/schools-teachers/resources/school-gardening-101
Native American Ethnobotany ---
http://naeb.brit.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Changes in Open Science Practices Over Time in Economics, Political Science,
Psychology, and Sociology ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2019/01/05/changes-in-open-science-practices-over-time-in-economics-political-science-psychology-and-sociology/
A Most Interesting Economics Blog: What are arguably the "best
economics debates on the Web" ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/
Book Review: The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/01/european-guilds-economic-analysis.html
Does Economic Growth Need to End?
http://timharford.com/2018/11/endofgrowth/
Humanities for All ---
https://humanitiesforall.org/
Through the Photographer's Eyes: The Diana Mara Henry Collection ---
http://exhibits.library.umass.edu/scua/s/diana-mara-henry/page/overview
Native American Ethnobotany ---
http://naeb.brit.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Law
Math Tutorials
Merry Mathematical Christmas (Keynes & Samuelson) ---
https://www.econlib.org/merry-mathematical-christmas/
Hugely Negative Expected Value ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/24750165271/supplysideliberalcom-takes-on-a-math-columnist
Maria Gaëtana Agnesi died on January 9, 1799. She was an early pioneer in
mathematics (calculus), philosophy, and natural science as well as being gifted
in languages.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Agnesi.html
Agnesi spent all her money on this charitable work and she died in total poverty
in the poorhouse of which she had been the director.
This is the kind of heroism worth noting in the 21st Century.
Bob Jensen's threads on women pioneers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Women
Mathematical Association of America: On This Day ---
www.maa.org/news/on-this-day
Complex Math Made Simple With Engaging Animations: Fourier Transform,
Calculus, Linear Algebra, Neural Networks & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/complex-math-made-simple-with-engaging-animations.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
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
Smithsonian Profiles ---
https://profiles.si.edu/
ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World (features
transportation modes and costs and times) ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwBTshdvGhrMfgLlRRFMRfljfTh
Judith Rich Harris: 1938 - 2018
https://www.edge.org/conversation/judith_rich_harris-judith-rich-harris-1938-2018
Major Stories from The Atlantic 50-150 Years Ago ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/best-atlantic-1968-1918-and-1868/578971/
79 years ago, the B-24 Liberator took its first flight — here's how it helped
cripple the Nazi war machine ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/anniversary-of-b-24-liberator-bomber-first-flight-during-world-war-ii-2017-12
Adam Smith ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
Adam Smith's Moral Philosophy: A Ph.D. Dissertation in
the English Department of UC Berkeley ---
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Chamberlain_berkeley_0028E_17503.pdf
John Locke ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
John Locke's Argument for Limited Government ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/1/13/john-lockes-argument-for-limited-government
Watch the Painstaking and Nerve-Racking Process of Restoring a Drawing by
Michelangelo ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/watch-the-painstaking-and-nerve-racking-process-of-restoring-a-drawing-by-michelangelo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Watch an Art Conservator Bring Classic Paintings Back to Life in Intriguingly
Narrated Videos ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/watch-an-art-conservator-bring-classic-paintings-back-to-life-in-intriguingly-narrated-videos.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
An Illustrated and Interactive Dante’s Inferno: Explore a New Digital
Companion to the Great 14th-Century Epic Poem ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/an-illustrated-and-interactive-dantes-inferno-explore-a-new-digital-companion-to-the-great-14th-century-epic-poem.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet
Archive ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/11000-digitized-books-from-1923-are-now-available-online-at-the-internet-archive.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Humanities for All ---
https://humanitiesforall.org/
Through the Photographer's Eyes: The Diana Mara Henry Collection ---
http://exhibits.library.umass.edu/scua/s/diana-mara-henry/page/overview
Animal Teeth, Wood, and Porcelain: How the First Dentures Were Made ---
https://gizmodo.com/animal-teeth-wood-and-porcelain-how-the-first-dentur-1831338161
That George Washington had wooden teeth was only a false legend.
An Animated History of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild
Predator to Sofa Sidekick ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/an-animated-history-of-cats.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
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
MIT: Google Assistant now comes with a real-time translator for 27
languages ---
Click Here
Smart Hearing Aids With Language Translation ---
Click Here
Why Is English So Hard to Learn?: The Ingenious Poem, “The Chaos,” Documents
800 Irregularities in English Spelling and Pronunciation ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/why-is-english-so-hard-to-learn-the-ingenious-poem-the-chaos-documents-800-irregularities-in-english-spelling-and-pronunciation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Dance seems to be the ultimate frivolity. How did it become a human
necessity?
https://aeon.co/videos/dance-seems-to-be-the-ultimate-frivolity-how-did-it-become-a-human-necessity?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0380dd4726-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_02_04_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-0380dd4726-68951505
Click on the arrow in the large graphic
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine
CDC Blogs ---
http://blogs.cdc.gov/
Shots: NPR Health News ---
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
December 27, 2018
December 28, 2018
December 30, 2018
December 31, 2018
January 2, 2019
January 4, 2019
January 5, 2019
January 8, 2019
January 9, 2019
January 10, 2019
January 11, 2019
January 13, 2019
January 14, 2019
January 15, 2019
Cannabis doesn't just lower men's sperm counts — it may also alter their
sperm's genetic makeup ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/cannabis-may-lower-your-sperm-count-and-alter-its-genetic-makeup-2019-1
Listening to Estrogen Hormones have always been a third rail in female
mental health. They may also be a skeleton key ---
https://www.thecut.com/2018/12/is-estrogen-the-key-to-understanding-womens-mental-health.html?mbid=nl_hps_5c2697186770b82ce065e051&CNDID=31837029
Donors often forgo wages for a couple weeks to save a life. That can be
fixed.
One simple change the government could make to encourage kidney donation ---
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/22/18151377/kidney-transplant-waiting-list-national-kidney-foundation
Humor for December 2018
Dave Barry's 2018 Year in Review ---
https://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article223204095.html
A Cincinnati-area police officer making a traffic stop Wednesday night on
Interstate 71 discovered the driver had a kangaroo riding the back seat ---
https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state--regional/ohio-police-officer-meets-kangaroo-during-traffic-stop/i152HLEsj9Mp08LtctgRKL/
Boy calls 911 after receiving snow pants as Christmas gift ---
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/boy-911-snow-pants-1.4959307
Knock Knock. Who’s There? Kids. Kids Who? Kids Tell Terrible Jokes --
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/why-kids-tell-weird-jokes/579472/
Forwarded by Paula
Things I Learned From The Movies
1.
All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.
2.
Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
3.
The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No one
will ever think of looking for you in there, and you can travel to any other
part of the building you want without difficulty.
4.
Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and
pant.
5. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are
visiting.
6. A cough is usually the sign of a terminal illness.
7. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will
know all the steps.
8. No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system
is never damaged.
9. The more a man and a woman hate each other, the more likely they will
fall in love.
10. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red
readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
11. Cars that crash will almost always burst into flames.
12. A cup of black coffee or a splash of cold water in the face is enough to
render the most inebriated person stone cold sober.
13. If you try hard enough, you can outrun an explosion.
14. If you stick your head out of cover during a gun fight, it will never be
hit, especially if you look backwards to hold a conversation with someone
behind you.
15. Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure
they are assigned partners who are their total opposite.
16. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three
days before their retirement.
17. You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the
mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
18. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
19. Computers never display a cursor on screen but always say: Enter
Password Now.
20. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off — even while scuba diving.
21. All watches and clocks are synchronized to the second.
22. No matter how fuzzy the photograph, it can be enlarged and enhanced to
show the finest detail.
23. Nearly everyone speaks English, no matter where they are from. Even
aliens from outer space, despite the fact they have never been to Earth,
seen an Earthling, or even heard of Earth or Earthlings.
24. No matter how catastrophic the disaster, pets will always survive it.
25. There will always be a doctor in a plane or building with the right
medical supplies.
Humor December 2018---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1218.htm
Humor November 2018---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1118.htm
Humor October 2018---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1118.htm
Humor October 2018---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1018.htm
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
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult of Statistical Significance:
How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for
free) go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for
accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting
education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial
accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing,
doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics)
research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
CPAS-L
(Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ (Closed
Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 ---
http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog
Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB
and the International Accounting
Standards Board on this financial
reporting blog from Financial Executives
International. The site, updated daily,
compiles regulatory news, rulings and
statements, comment letters on
standards, and hot topics from the Web’s
largest business and accounting
publications and organizations. Look for
continuing coverage of SOX requirements,
fair value reporting and the Alternative
Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such
as the subprime mortgage crisis,
international convergence, and rules for
tax return preparers. |
|
|
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as
well as a practicing CPA)
I found another listserve
that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.
There are several highly
capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and
the answers are often in depth.
Scott
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim
Counts
Yes you may mention info on
your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any
CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is
possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not
have access to the files and other items posted.
Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in
top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and
in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I
will get the request to join.
Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage
people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then
via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in
your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the
inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.
We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in
California.... ]
Please encourage your members
to join our listserve.
If any questions let me know.
Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu