Tidbits on January 31, 2019
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Historic Photographs (Set 04) of the Sunset Hill House Resort Shared by Gunsmith Ron Resden from Vermont
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Resden/2019/04ResdenSSH.htm

 

 

Tidbits on January 31, 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

TED Talk: 17-year-old inventor shares a device, a wearable patch,  that warns of pending heart attacks ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/akash_manoj_a_life_saving_device_that_detects_silent_heart_attacks?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_left_button 

TED Talk:  How to Take Charge of Your Personal Finances ---
https://www.ted.com/playlists/685/how_to_take_charge_of_your_personal_finances?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-26&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=playlist_title
The above video is more inspirational and entertaining than helpful with details --- but I found it interesting
There are a lot more details to consider when taking charge of your personal finances --- and don't wait until Age 55 if at all possible
Bob Jensen's Personal Finance and Financial Literacy Helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

Why Should We Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? A New TED-Ed Animation Explains ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/why-should-we-read-ray-bradburys-fahrenheit-451.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Emotional Support Alligator Makes New Friends At Assisted-Living Facility ---
https://boston.cbslocal.com/2019/01/17/emotional-support-alligator-assisted-living-facility/

TED Talk:  An Inspirational Talk from a Gay Black Man Who Played Football for Yale and Graduated from Harvard and More ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/casey_gerald_embrace_the_strange_magic_of_your_true_self?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_right_button

An Animated History of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Minutes  ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/an-animated-history-of-cheese-10000-years-in-under-six-minutes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

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

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 

Boot Stompin':  Discovering a Great Irish Band – We Banjo 3 – Thanks to Twitter ---
https://www.jborden.com/music-monday-discovering-a-great-irish-band-we-banjo-3-thanks-to-twitter/
There are multiple videos to click on in this page!

Blue Grass (Scroll down and click on Sugar Hill)
http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/stream-35-hours-of-classic-blues-folk-bluegrass-recordings-from-smithsonian-folkways.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+OpenCulture+(Open+Culture) 

The Fabulous Gene Krupa (gets better the longer you listen) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3f377J_o7A

Hear the Sounds of the Actual Instruments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Handel Originally Composed Their Music ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/the-sounds-of-historic-instruments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Visualizing the Bass Playing Style of Motown’s Iconic Bassist James Jamerson: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/visualizing-the-bass-playing-of-motowns-iconic-bassist-james-jamerson.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Scientists just released the best photo yet of the most distant object ever visited by humanity ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-new-horizons-close-up-picture-ultima-thule-2019-1
They couldn't find the reclusive Greta Garbo's former house

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

Enter an Online Interactive Documentary on Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Learn About the Painting’s Many Hidden Secrets ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/enter-an-online-interactive-documentary-on-rembrandts-the-night-watch.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

See Niagara Falls Transform Into an Icy Wonderland Amid Bone-Chilling Cold ---
Click Here

Journal of Art Historiography --- https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/

Mind-Twisting Optical Illusion Paintings (not my kind of art) By Rob Gonsalves ---
https://www.boredpanda.com/magic-realism-paintings-rob-gonsalves/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

Disappointing photos show what living in San Francisco on a tech salary really looks like ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/living-in-san-francisco-on-tech-salary-disappointing-photos-2018-9

Falconers Compete for $7 Million in Prizes ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-east-falcons-uae-training-2019-1

How Patrick Mahomes went from a high school baseball star to the most exciting player in the NFL and future of the league ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-patrick-mahome-became-nfl-most-exciting-player-2019-1

The 1959 Project: A New Photoblog Takes a Day-By-Day Look at 1959, the Great Watershed Year in Jazz ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/the-1959-project.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

WW II Battle of the Bulge ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/battle-of-the-bulge-allies-crush-the-nazis-last-great-offensive-2017-1

Historic Old Photos ---
http://www.douglascountygensoc.org/photos004.html
Thank you Don Van Ende for the heads up
Jensen Comment
If you change the number near the end of the link you can see other pictures such as 001, 002, etc.

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

Why Should We Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451? A New TED-Ed Animation Explains ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/why-should-we-read-ray-bradburys-fahrenheit-451.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Open Culture: Hear Mary Oliver (RIP) Read Five of Her Poems: “The Summer Day,” “Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night,” “Many Miles” and “Night and the River” ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/hear-mary-oliver-rip-read-five-of-her-poems.html

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson born in England. Although a mathematics professor, he wasn't much of a mathematician. Mathematicians appreciate his Alice books, written under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll ---
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Dodgson.html

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 31, 2019
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/TidbitsQuotations013119.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.htmC Programming: Advanced Data Types





 

On January 27 CBS Sixty Minutes (it will only be free to watch for a few days)

Jerry and Marge Selbee

https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/MD3ISxVkJXgLBsH4lNDrLYsRQWmCJy_X/howard-schultz-small-satellites-big-data-jerry-and-marge-selbee/

A while back on the AECM and TigerTalk I posted a long article about Michigan's Jerry and Marge Selbee.

Jerry is a "country boy" who ran a small town convenience store for 19 years while raising six kids. He also happens to be a math whiz.
That store sells Michigan lottery tickets.
Jerry happened to notice one type of lottery game that did not keep going up and up and up. Instead, when it reached $5 million it increased the lower payouts.
In less than three minutes with a bit of simple arithmetic he figured how to win the game with certainty if you bought a sufficient number of tickets.
Nobody else figured out this strategy, and he and his friends raked in a few million of easy money.

After Michigan shut the game down as a matter of course (not because Michigan discovered Jerry), one of his friends found a similar game in Massachusetts. He and his friends pushed their winnings up to $26 million. In the meantime the law was getting suspicious. But their investigation simply revealed that Jerry's strategy was perfectly legal.

Interestingly, a MIT student doing an independent studies project independently discovered the same strategy and made some money.

The rest of the story is temporarily available for free  as the last of three segments for January 27 at
https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/MD3ISxVkJXgLBsH4lNDrLYsRQWmCJy_X/howard-schultz-small-satellites-big-data-jerry-and-marge-selbee/

On the AECM Tom Selling replied to my message that Jerry's strategy entails some ethics questions without going into detail There's nothing illegal about the strategy, and according to the video segment other players were not being screwed since their payouts also increased.

However, I do agree with Tom that there are ethical questions here.

Years and years ago I posted an article about our local skiing hero named Bode Miller who I guess has won more medals than any USA skier in history. At one point in time Bode invented a ski boot that gave him a racing edge over his competitors. Bode thought that in this case a perfectly legal clothing item that gave him an unfair edge was unethical. To his credit, he shared his invention with the world.

Bode's story is similar to that of Jerry and Marge Selbee.  However, there is possibly one slight difference. Bode could've taken advantage of his competitors. According to the 60 Minutes video, Jerry was not taking advantage of his competitors.
I will leave it up to you math whizzes to explain to us whether or not Jerry and Marge Selbee took advantage of competitors in this lottery game.

In any case, Jerry and his closest friends are entitled to keep their shared $26 million which has been used in great part to pay for college of a lot of their children and grandchildren.

The video is a good watch.

 


 

Kaiser Family Foundation:  People love Medicare-for-All until they're told it'll raise their taxes to cover the $30+ trillion cost:  Then support nosedives  ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/ap-poll-support-for-medicare-for-all-fluctuates-with-details-2019-1
Jensen Comment
Virtually all nations with national health plans raise the funds needed with taxation at all levels of income. Estimates of USA's cost run $30+ trillion over ten years, but a lot depends upon what his covered (think long-term disabilities), who is covered (severely ill or disabled immigrants crossing the border illegally for dialysis or other expensive health care), what is covered (think long-term nursing care). and capital costs (will government buy all the USA hospitals and medical clinics?).

Wealth Tax --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax

Updated
Even if wildly successful Senator Warren's wealth tax would only pay $2.75 trillion of the $30+ trillion cost ten-year cost of Medicare-for-All

Elizabeth Warren's proposed wealth tax would raise $2.75 trillion over a ten-year period from about 75,000 families, or less than 0.1 percent of U.S. households ---
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/elizabeth-warren-to-propose-new-wealth-tax-economic-advisor.html
Jensen Comment
This could have all sorts of economic consequences. One is that most of those 75,000 wealthy USA families have their wealth tied up in long-term investments like real estate (think of Trump hotels, Ted Turner's ranches in Australia, Amazon's many shares owned by Jeff Bezos), etc.  Warren's Wealth tax could force liquidation of these long-term investments to pay the $2.75 trillion wealth tax. If you want your top millionaires and billionaires to move out of the USA this is a sure-fire way to wave bye bye to them and the $2.75 trillion that becomes uncollectable.
Wealthy taxpayers are probably not worried with a conservative Supreme Court.  Arguably her proposal requires an amendment to the USA Constitution because her wealth tax proposal is extremely disproportional.---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#United_States
You can read more about wealth taxes at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty
Why did liberal Sweden axe its wealth tax while at the same time lowering its top income tax rate from 87% (1979) to 65% (1990) to 56% (2002)? ? ---
http://ftp.iza.org/dp11475.pdf
Elizabeth Warren would probably prefer that you do not study experiences of all disastrous Scandinavian wealth taxes and very high marginal income tax rates that were later greatly reduced to stimulate the economy (called supply side (Laffer Curve) economics) ---
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MarginalTaxRates.html

PS
Those 75,000 wealthy taxpayers now invest in hundreds of billions in tax-exempt bonds (called municipal bonds) that underlie the building of most schools and municipal buildings in the USA. The muni bond market would nosedive if most of those 75,000 people sold their tax-exempt bonds and moved these hundreds of billions in investments off shore on their way out of the USA. That's not a cost that the naive Elizabeth Warren factored into her proposed wealth. What's the incentive for a billionaire who moved to Switzerland to continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the USA muni market?

I suspect that Elizabeth Warren knows that her wealth tax would be an economic disaster. I think she's just trying to get votes from financially-ignorant voters. It's all politics and no sense other than she's trying to fend off the radical anti-capitalist "young" left wing of the Democratic Party.

The Young Left’s Anti-Capitalist Manifesto: Its goal is to remake our economic system — and the Democratic Party ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-young-lefts-anti-capitalist-manifesto/


Why Donald Trump is so Adamant About Building a Wall
It has to do with his ingenious theory of why Uranus is the only planet in our solar system that turned to its side (which is true) ---

http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm


NYT:  The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/technology/computer-science-courses-college.html?algo=als1&cmpid=73&module=newsletter-best-reads&nl=personalization&nlid=10527319&rank=1&recid=1GGipqzA9lMHI3lMXJ0g0fgOPOP

Lured by the prospect of high-salary, high-status jobs, college students are rushing in record numbers to study computer science.

Now, if only they could get a seat in class.

On campuses across the country, from major state universities to small private colleges, the surge in student demand for computer science courses is far outstripping the supply of professors, as the tech industry snaps up talent. At some schools, the shortage is creating an undergraduate divide of computing haves and have-nots — potentially narrowing a path for some minority and female students to an industry that has struggled with diversity.

The number of undergraduates majoring in the subject more than doubled from 2013 to 2017, to over 106,000, while tenure-track faculty ranks rose about 17 percent, according to the Computing Research Association, a nonprofit that gathers data from about 200 universities.

Economics and the promise of upward mobility are driving the student stampede. While previous generations of entrepreneurial undergraduates might have aspired to become lawyers or doctors, many students now are leery of investing the time, and incurring six-figure debts, to join those professions.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I wonder how many recent Ph.D.s in humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and even engineering wonder why they did not instead earn their degrees in computer science, criminology, and accountancy? The accrediting agency AACSB has a relatively successful Bridge Program for most non-business Ph.D.s (think psychology and economics) to bridge into business faculty jobs, although bridging is not as successful in accountancy without having some credential in accounting such as a CPA certificate or some other evidence of accounting knowledge ---
https://www.aacsb.edu/bridge/

I suspect a relatively large number of mathematics and engineering Ph.D.s who also mastered two or more computer programming languages and related technical disciplines such as artificial intelligence are now teaching in Computer Science Departments.

My point is that unemployed Ph.D.s or otherwise unsatisfied Ph.D.s can find avenues into other disciplines if they only look for alternatives to get certificates/badges such as taking MOOC courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OK


400 free Ivy League university courses you can take online in 2019 ---
https://qz.com/1514408/400-free-ivy-league-university-courses-you-can-take-online-in-2019/

Samplings (see article for course listings)

Harvard:  Introduction to Computer Science
Columbia:  Machine Learning for Data Science and Analytics
Columbia:  Artificial Intelligence
Princeton:  Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies
Dartmouth:  C Programming: Advanced Data Types
Harvard:  Statistical Inference and Modeling for High-throughput Experiments
University of Pennsylvania:  A Crash Course in Causality: Inferring Causal Effects from Observational Data
31 Courses in Computer Science
74 Courses in Accounting, Finance, Management, Marketing, and Other Business Courses like Ethics
69 Courses in Humanities
66 Courses in the Social Sciences
21 Courses in Art and Design
27 Courses in Health and Medicine
21 Courses in Data Science
18 Courses in Education and Teaching
13 Courses in Mathematics
26 Courses in Science
18 Courses in Engineering
05 Courses in Personal Development
07 Courses in Programming


Note that the courses are free, but there's a fee for certificates or transcript credits (it costs more to validate what you learned)

Bob Jensen's links to thousands of free courses from other prestigious universities around the world ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Crash Course Engineering (32 lessons) --- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtO4A_tL6DLZRotxEb114cMR

Jensen Comment
Engineering is about solving problems
Accountancy is about creating problems

I'm being serious here. When I became CPA in 1963 there were something like 540 paragraphs of standards that had to be intently studied (yeah memorized in large part). The CPA exam was narrow and deep.

In the 21st Century there are hundreds of thousands of paragraphs of accountancy standards. The CPA Exam is now shallow and wide.

Why the exponential increase in the number of accountancy standards and tax laws?

I'm serious now! 
The reason is that so many accountants (and sometimes lawyers) are paid to write increasingly complex contracts to get around existing standards. Then standard setters (FASB. IASB. government agencies, and the courts) create revised or new standards to plug the loopholes --- around and around we go.

My point is that engineers get paid to solve problems, mostly problems created in nature. 

Accountants get paid to create problems by inventing ways to circumvent standards and laws. That's how what the Codification Database created by the FASB becomes exponentially larger with each passing week. That's how a relatively simple USA tax code became a monster that nobody can possibly understand in fine detail. 

When I retired after 40 years of being on the faculties of four universities I was paid (many think overpaid) to teach how to account for enormously complicated contracts (think derivative financial instruments) that did not exist when I became a Ph.D./CPA. Many of those contracts (like interest rate swaps) were invented to keep debt and related financial risks off balance sheets. The enormously complex FAS 133 (USA) and IAS 39 (international) standards were then created to put derivative financial contracts on balance sheets.

And  scientists thought they had a monopoly on the teaching of evolution.

PS
I should add that although many accountants get paid to help write contracts for getting around accounting standards and tax laws, the
overwhelming majority of accountants get paid to enforce adherence to standards and laws. Most engineers also get paid to enforce adherence to standards and laws while solving problems.


Theranos Scandal --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theranos

John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose work exposed Theranos, published a book-length treatment in May 2018 titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.[132] As of June 2016 a film version was in the works starring Jennifer Lawrence as Elizabeth Holmes, written by Vanessa Taylor and directed by Adam McKay.[133]

In January 2019, ABC News Nightline released a podcast and documentary about the Holmes story called The Dropout. [134]

Alex Gibney created a documentary titled The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley about Holmes and Theranos, which will make its official debut at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2019

HBO Fraud and Ethics Documentary Film
The Inventor examines the $9 billion Theranos scandal, and blames Silicon Valley ---
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197713/the-inventor-review-theranos-scandal-silicon-valley-startup-elizabeth-holmes-fraud-sundance-2019

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


For Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, much of philosophy was mere nonsense. Then came Frank Ramsey’s pragmatic alternative ---
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-truth-on-ramsey-wittgenstein-and-the-vienna-circle?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b067354109-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_23_04_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b067354109-68951505


Jodie Foster Teaches Filmmaking in Her First Online Course ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/jodie-foster-teaches-filmmaking-in-her-first-online-course.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


This robot will cut your lawn for you ---
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/30/irobot-terra-robot-mower/?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=69431141&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_1q3e3TCB2GqWRqsIlDpxCsh9xGE13yrvHdr9JQAzK4mug-Av_9_ZPUNn9dm29B-DTkDzhuE3K3zJfhRbmMgxlFKM0Lg&_hsmi=69431141
Also see
http://bestreviews.com/best-robotic-lawn-mowers

Jensen Comment
Those little peanuts would take all month to cut my lawn. I'll wait for the more serious robotic lawn tractors --- that are already here in the early stages.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/262394


From the Scout Report on January 25, 2019

Open Course Library (resources for teachers) --- http://opencourselibrary.org/
We originally featured the Open Course Library in the 1-19-2017 Scout Report and it continues to be an excellent source of teaching materials for instructors in a variety of disciplines. From the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges comes the Open Course Library, an extensive collection of courses and course materials (such as syllabi, classroom handouts, readings, multimedia resources, and assignments) for use by college-level students and instructors. As the authors of this website emphasize, these materials are not intended to replace classroom instruction; rather, these materials are made available in order to provide affordable classroom materials for students and resources for faculty members to consider integrating into existing courses. A central stated goal of the Open Course Library is to reduce costs to students. All courses included here can be taught without a textbook or utilize textbooks that cost $30 or less. As of this write-up, the Open Course Library features over 80 courses, including courses in English composition, symbolic logic, mathematics, and foreign languages. All course materials can be easily accessed as Google Docs.

For example, click on Featured Courses and search for "Accounting"

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


The DAISY Consortium (access to reading and learning for disabled persons) --- http://www.daisy.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for disabled persons ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped


NYT:  The stunning success of AlphaZero, a deep-learning algorithm, heralds a new age of insight — one that, for humans, may not last long (at the top of the intelligence latter) ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/science/chess-artificial-intelligence.html
Jensen Comment
What I find the most intriguing (and more than a little scary) is that AlphaZero masters games like chess without having to be fed in more than the basic rules of the game. Human chess masters become great by feeding in an enormous number of patterns of play that they later recognize when playing opponents. Of course they learn many of these patterns during actually playing the game, but they can also read about how other grand masters have played the game. One can imagine that a deep learning machine could be fed in an equivalent number of patterns of plays in order to beat those masters. But it's not necessary to download the vast amount of chess data into AlphaZero in order to have it beat the human grand masters. It learns by playing itself.

In early December, researchers at DeepMind, the artificial-intelligence company owned by Google’s parent corporation, Alphabet Inc., filed a dispatch from the frontiers of chess.

A year earlier, on Dec. 5, 2017, the team had stunned the chess world with its announcement of AlphaZero, a machine-learning algorithm that had mastered not only chess but shogi, or Japanese chess, and Go. The algorithm started with no knowledge of the games beyond their basic rules. It then played against itself millions of times and learned from its mistakes. In a matter of hours, the algorithm became the best player, human or computer, the world has ever seen.

 

The details of AlphaZero’s achievements and inner workings have now been formally peer-reviewed and published in the journal Science this month. The new paper addresses several serious criticisms of the original claim. (Among other things, it was hard to tell whether AlphaZero was playing its chosen opponent, a computational beast named Stockfish, with total fairness.) Consider those concerns dispelled. AlphaZero has not grown stronger in the past twelve months, but the evidence of its superiority has. It clearly displays a breed of intellect that humans have not seen before, and that we will be mulling over for a long time to come.

 

Computer chess has come a long way over the past twenty years. In 1997, I.B.M.’s chess-playing program, Deep Blue, managed to beat the reigning human world champion, Garry Kasparov, in a six-game match. In retrospect, there was little mystery in this achievement. Deep Blue could evaluate 200 million positions per second. It never got tired, never blundered in a calculation and never forgot what it had been thinking a moment earlier.

 

For better and worse, it played like a machine, brutally and materialistically. It could out-compute Mr. Kasparov, but it couldn’t outthink him. In Game 1 of their match, Deep Blue greedily accepted Mr. Kasparov’s sacrifice of a rook for a bishop, but lost the game 16 moves later. The current generation of the world’s strongest chess programs, such as Stockfish and Komodo, still play in this inhuman style. They like to capture the opponent’s pieces. They defend like iron. But although they are far stronger than any human player, these chess “engines” have no real understanding of the game. They have to be tutored in the basic principles of chess.

 

These principles, which have been refined over decades of human grandmaster experience, are programmed into the engines as complex evaluation functions that indicate what to seek in a position and what to avoid: how much to value king safety, piece activity, pawn structure, control of the center, and more, and how to balance the trade-offs among them. Today’s chess engines, innately oblivious to these principles, come across as brutes: tremendously fast and strong, but utterly lacking insight.

 

All of that has changed with the rise of machine learning. By playing against itself and updating its neural network as it learned from experience, AlphaZero discovered the principles of chess on its own and quickly became the best player ever. Not only could it have easily defeated all the strongest human masters — it didn’t even bother to try — it crushed Stockfish, the reigning computer world champion of chess. In a hundred-game match against a truly formidable engine, AlphaZero scored twenty-eight wins and seventy-two draws. It didn’t lose a single game.

 

Most unnerving was that AlphaZero seemed to express insight. It played like no computer ever has, intuitively and beautifully, with a romantic, attacking style. It played gambits and took risks. In some games it paralyzed Stockfish and toyed with it. While conducting its attack in Game 10, AlphaZero retreated its queen back into the corner of the board on its own side, far from Stockfish’s king, not normally where an attacking queen should be placed.

Continued in article


The Decline of the Scholar and the Decline of Academia
by Antony P. Mueller
https://mises.org/wire/decline-scholar-and-decline-academia?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=6f70a3a1e2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-6f70a3a1e2-228708937

The academic scholar, along with the great teacher, is vanishing from the faculties of the universities. Specialists occupy the places that they leave. The first victims of this process are the students. When the professorial specialists hold a lecture, they have little else to teach that goes beyond their tiny field of expertise. About the areas other than the field of specialization, the one-dimensional expert is as ignorant as the students. When the experts teach their specialization, the content is too advanced for the students to understand and should the experts go into the wider area of the discipline, their discourse becomes amateurish. The decline of wisdom in academia that has happened over the past decades results from this change.

Scholars, Teachers, and the Specialists

Of the three ideal types of university professors — the scholar, the teacher, and the specialist — the scholar is the one who combines both a profound knowledge of a field of expertise with a solid knowledge of other areas of knowledge. Until the 1970s, many universities in Europe and the United States had scholars. While only a few of these scholars enjoyed the serendipity that is the realm of the genius, many of them excelled in the same way as the great masters. The scholars spread knowledge combined with wisdom because a great scholar is not only a researcher but always also a great teacher.

With the scholar, the great teacher is also vanishing from university faculties. Different from the scholar, the great teacher in its pure form does not excel in a specialization. Yet his strength is a broad and accurate knowledge of the subfields of his discipline and his ability to bring his insights to the students. The great teacher opens the doors to knowledge. He knows about the many entrances that exist and the many ways of finding one’s way through the labyrinth of knowledge.

When there were still scholars and great teachers at the faculties, not only the students would profit but also the experts. The scholars and the great teachers in the departments were the promoters of communication. They brought the faculty together in a common discussion.

In the past, the great teachers and scholars would hold the introductory lecture. They would compare their chosen academic discipline with other areas and would help the students to go on with confidence or choose another path. In the modern university, this has ended. Nowadays, most colleges relegate the introductory courses to substitute professors. These assistants and adjuncts are at the beginning of their career and cannot be scholars or good teachers and that they likewise are also not yet experts. There are signs that this erosion is most advanced at the so-called “elite” institutions where also the dread of political correctness is most present and the cuddling of the American mind most advanced.

Rise of the Specialist

Over time, the lump-sum funding of the university had to make way for getting outside financing. The benefits of scholarship and teaching counted less while the new criteria for academic advancement favored the specialist whose competence is limited to a tiny field of expertise. To get funding, the disciplines had to put on the “mantle of science.” Scholarship had to make room for scientism.

While the paper output has grown, their quality has declined. Across the whole range of the natural and the behavioral sciences the so-called “irreproducibility crisis” has thrown doubts on the reliability of even the most prominent results. Failing to reproduce published research afflicts a wide range of disciplines, ranging from medicine and psychology to the social sciences. Investigations have revealed that subsequent studies cannot reproduce established findings. The problem encompasses the improper application of statistics, biased research techniques, lack of accountability, and political groupthink. The pressure of “publish or perish” has led to a scientific culture toward delivering positive results even if they are unwarranted by the data basis.

As some authors claim, most published research findings in medicine are false. Another study finds that researchers failed to reproduce most of another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own results. Other investigations show that outright fraud is behind the fabricated results. After the Sokol affair of years ago, new blunt hoaxes with made-up papers have revealed the political bias of some academic journals.

The more the specialists dominate in a university, the more the original purpose of a university to educate and advance knowledge will suffer. Numerical performance measurement, which is even misplaced in the business world, becomes a scourge in areas such as education that is much less fit for numerical evaluation than business. As Jerry Z. Muller explains in his Tyranny of Metrics, applying formal yardsticks to measure academic performance does little to advance knowledge but has led to gaming, cheating, and goal diversion. The cascade of rules and regulations hampers the attainment of the original purpose of the university. Misaligned incentives work in favor of the specialist, yet they drive the efforts away from the meaning of what a university should be.

Continued in article

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

The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars".

Years ago I did a gig at Humboldt University of Berlin, claimed with its Humboldtian Model to be the first "university" in the world now covering 189 disciplines
Humboldt University of Berlin --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldt_University_of_Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin (German: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher as the University of Berlin (Universität zu Berlin) in 1809, and opened in 1810,[5] making it the oldest of Berlin's four universities. From 1810 until its closure in 1945, it was named Friedrich Wilhelm University (German: Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität).[6][7] During the Cold War the university found itself in East Berlin and was de facto split in two when the Free University of Berlin opened in West Berlin. The university received its current name in honour of Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1949.[8]

The university is divided into nine faculties, including its medical school shared with the Free University of Berlin, has a student enrollment of around 32,000 (elite) students, and offers degree programmes in some 189 disciplines from undergraduate to postdoctorate level. Its main campus is located on the Unter den Linden boulevard in central Berlin. The university is known worldwide for pioneering the Humboldtian model of higher education, which has strongly influenced other European and Western universities, and the university has been widely called "the mother of all modern universities."[10]

As of 2017, the Humboldt University of Berlin has been associated with 55 Nobel Prize winners (including former students, faculty and researchers), and is considered one of the best universities in Europe as well as one of the most prestigious universities in the world for arts and humanities. It was widely regarded as the world's preeminent university for the natural sciences during the 19th and early 20th century, and is linked to major breakthroughs in physics and other sciences by its professors such as Albert Einstein. Former faculty and notable alumni include eminent philosophers, sociologists, artists, lawyers, politicians, mathematicians, scientists, and Heads of State.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I've mixed feelings about Antony P. Mueller's  article. The purpose of a university (such as Humboldt University in Berlin) was and still is to bring specialist colleges to together in an effort to simultaneously allow students to be more rounded in multiple disciplines and at the same time allow those specialist colleges to advance their own disciplines with research. Before there were universities student learning was confined to the specialties of narrow colleges (think English Literature or Music or Engineering) where they happened to begin their higher education.  Before the days of universities students were confined to one specialized colleges where they did not have as many opportunities to integrate knowledge in subsets of "189" disciplines.

To the extent that modern universities give short shrift to general education (think the Gen Ed Core) is mostly due to a faculty reward structure for tenure and performance evaluation that values research over teaching. The problem is exacerbated public and private sector employers want graduates who are up and running in some specialty such as nursing or chemical engineering or computer science or accountancy rather than English. The general education problem may have become worse if universities were never invented.

Universities thrive on the prestige that comes from having researchers on the leading edge of knowledge creation in those "189" disciplines. Sure there are examples of noted scholars in some disciplines who were not noteworthy researchers, but for the most part reputations are built on research rather the mere scholarship. The sad thing is that as researchers narrow down to a small part of a single tree they focus more and more on on narrow specialties and cease to be knowledgeable about the rest of the forest.

A cardiologist friend of mine says if you want to contact the most well-rounded  "doctor" in a hospital go to the Emergency Room where doctors (along with pathologist coroners) still are challenged by virtually all sorts of troubles within the entire human body. You don't go to the Ophthalmology Department where doctors deal with only one very small part of the human body and probably forgot most of what they once learned about the entire human body.

What I'm saying is that if you want somebody to teach incoming first-year medical students it would be best to find teachers from the set of ER-type teachers  rather than Ophthalmology teachers. But if you are looking for advanced teachers after students become medical doctors then you go to the specialists. For reasons I need not get into here financial rewards are generally greater for the specialists. Emergency Room doctors are paid less well in money, but they do have certain aspects of medical practice that draw them into Emergency Rooms such as a 36-hour week or less with no follow-up responsibilities to patients. Erika's spine surgeons in Boston spent much longer work-weeks with huge surgeries (Erika's sometimes lasted 14 hours), weekends of hospital visits to recovering patients, and days of seeing new patients before surgeries.

An ER-type doctor can also choose most anywhere to practice (such as a small rural town) whereas the specialist usually has to join a larger medical center, most of which are in urban environments.

Universities are more like those huge medical centers with all sorts of specialists as opposed to medical practices in rural communities that examine patients more like ER doctors that recommend that special needs be transferred to the specialists located elsewhere.

What we need in universities, perhaps, is more ER-type teachers better suited for starting students in the first three years of higher education. Graduate schools need the specialists.


We're Teaching Consent All Wrong ---
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/01/09/were-teaching-consent-all-wrong.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1-rm&M=58728020&U=2290378&UUID=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f
Jensen Comment
What is needed is to play down the glory of the "score" and the false promise of "entrapment." More stress should be placed on changed lives after the K-12 years.

The Atlantic:  Why Won’t My Boyfriend Propose to Me?
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/my-boyfriend-gave-me-ring-he-didnt-propose/580768/

Idea Lab: Student Mental Health ---
https://store.chronicle.com/collections/idea-lab-colleges-solving-problems/products/idea-lab-student-mental-health?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=3e5d04e1d40848eeb6d60d8a035ea3c2&elq=8f02a0ad6800435e99d9338decea1a4d&elqaid=22018&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=10779


Eighteen Law Schools Would Fail ABA's Proposed (2019) 75% Bar Passage Within 2 Years Accreditation Standard ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/01/eighteen-law-schools-would-fail-abas-proposed-75-bar-passage-within-2-years-accreditation-standard.html

Bob Jensen's threads on law schools ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#OverstuffedLawSchools


How to Mislead With Statistics (well not exactly mislead so much as conclude the obvious)
Law School GPA Is A Much Better Predictor Of Bar Passage Than LSAT Or UGPA ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/01/anderson-law-school-gpa-is-a-much-better-predictor-of-bar-passage-than-lsat-or-ugpa.html
Jensen Comment
Why is this surprising? The LSAT and UGPA predictors were recorded before students entered law school. The data are three or more years out of date and ignore everything that transpired in three or more years of law school. Is it surprising that the Law School GPA that reflects performance in law school and is much more up to date in terms of when the BAR exam is taken? Common folks!

We could also compare this data with IQ tests taken in the first grade when students were six years old. Would it be surprising that the Law School GPA was a better predictor than IQ?

What the report does tell us is that for ultimate BAR exam passage, the LSAT is a better predictor than Undergraduate GPA. As suggested in the article this is to be expected because UGPA is derived across so many different colleges that inevitably have different grading standards and virtually all suffer from grade inflation ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor

It does somewhat counter those analysts who try to argue that standardized tests like the LSAT are worse predictors than grade --- don't believe it in terms of BAR exam performance.


How to Mislead With Statistics
Why are women better than men at the free throw line? -
--
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-women-men-free-line.html 

. . .

But, in a longitudinal study that I and engineer Chau Tran published in December, we examined men and women free-throw percentages in NCAA basketball over a 30-year period. We found that women shoot at 3 percent higher consistency than men. Men and women are very close, but the women edge out the men.

History of the free throw

Even though free throw shooting percentages vary from player to player, the average free throw shooting percentage in the NCAA has hovered at around 68 percent for both men and women for more than 30 years.

The top NBA player, Steve Nash, shot at about 90 percent, and the top WNBA player, Delle Donne, shoots at about 93 percent. But these superstars follow best practices, which is the great exception, and their shooting percentages don't significantly affect the averages. The average free throw shooting percentages in NCAA don't typically vary by more than 1 percent from year to year.

So, if the shooting percentages for men and women have been so close, then what about the physical differences? On the one hand, the man's basketball is larger than the woman's, making the free throw more difficult for men. On the other hand, the woman's ball is more bouncy and women are on average shorter than men, making the free throw more difficult for women.



Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-women-men-free-line.html#jCp

Jensen Comment
I admit that I'm a bit over my head here, but I'm always suspicious of differences between averages when sample sizes are enormous ---
The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm

Where I'm over my head is in the study of the physics of a free throw and the cited simulation study.

I'll leave it up to readers to judge if this study is misleading. What I think is suspect is that some free throws are under normal circumstances say in the first three quarters of the game when score is relatively close versus the fourth quarter when many more pressures come to bear on players, especially as the game approaches a thrilling ending. Pressures on players become much more severe, and humans react differently under severe pressure.

My point here is there is what I call non-stationarity in the study of free throws. The distributions of free throwing for most of the game may be quite unlike the distributions for individual players in times of stress. Hence, aggregating normal and stress periods in the data may distort the outcomes, and such distortions are being ignored, especially when the distortions differ for individual players.

Can we really compare NFL's Tom Brady's passing percentage outcomes most quarters with those smaller number of quarters where he played under severe stress to win the game. I might add that Tom is particularly known for his comeback win performances.

Can we get meaningful results when aggregating Tom's passing percentages across all quarters of play or aggregating his percentages with other quarterbacks across years of play?


How to Mislead With Statistics
Cost of  Living in America's Major Cities

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/01/23/cost-of-living-in-americas-major-cities/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=JAN242019a&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Jensen Comment
The major deception here is not reporting standard deviations and skewness and bifurcation of distributions. Manhattan and San Francisco are among the highest cost of living cities in the USA? But for whom? Both cities have rent controls such that people living in their rentals for decades can actually live quite reasonably in Manhattan as opposed to newcomers that get clobbered with enormously high rents. My point here is that when you are talking about cost of living the question is cost of living for whom?

This partly explains why the median incomes reported on Column 4 are so confusing. For example the median income for Manhattan is $69,211 whereas for Oakland its $85,947.  And yet housing costs in Manhattan are reported as being four times higher than in Oakland. Why can half the people who live in Manhattan afford to live in Manhattan while it might actually be more expensive to rent housing in Oakland? The answer in part is rent control for those people earning less than $69,211 in Manhattan. I don't think Oakland has rent controls, but I could be wrong about this. I know San Francisco has rent controls.

There are also other things to consider such as K-12 public education. Public schools in San Francisco are quite good such that many residents do not have to factor in private school expenses for their children in San Francisco relative to most other cities on the list such as New Orleans and Oakland and St. Louis and Chicago that have scary public schools.

Probably the most deceptive thing about this article is the difficulty of factoring in the impact of the suburbs surrounding a major city. Suburbs vary in terms of cost of living, school quality, and other factors such as large yards versus no yards. People working in San Francisco move to Oakland for lower housing costs. People in New York move to Westchester for better public schools. For example, in her 60-Minutes interview Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reports that her parents moved to nearby Westchester just so she could enroll in better public schools.  In other words her parents traded lower cost of living for higher cost of living to get better public schools for her. People working in San Francisco and living in Oakland trade off school quality for lower cost of living.

I could go on and on here. For example, in addition to public school quality differences there's the element of safety and crime. San Antonio appears to be a relatively low cost of living city. And yet many people in San Antonio live in expensive gated-neighborhoods in large part to be less fearful of burglaries and home invasions. In other words, the cost of living safer in San Antonio may be more expensive than the cost of living in a non-gated neighborhood in San Antonio or in one of its higher cost suburbs like New Braunfels. My point here is that the low cost of living for San Antonio reported in the above article is not really reflective of what it costs many people to live inside the city limits of San Antonio.


How to Mislead With Statistics ---
Homeschooling Produces Better-Educated, More-Tolerant Kids. Politicians Hate That ---
http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/22/homeschooling-produces-better-students
Jensen Comment
There are other factors involved, especially selection bias. The homeschooled kids are highly likely to also be among the best students in schools. Has anybody ever shown how kids doing poorly in schools dramatically improved with homeschooling? Chances are that they come from home environments not conducive to good homeschooling.


How to Mislead With Statistics
How many of your state's taxes leave the state (and don't come back)?
https://www.businessinsider.com/states-pay-federal-government-lose-gain-2019-1

Jensen Comment
The biggest problem with this study is virtually impossible to define what taxes leave the state and what taxes come back. The closest I could come to the definition used in this study is the referenced item at
https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/budget/2018/federal-budget-fiscal-year-2017.pdf
For example, consider the amount for "corporate taxes leaving the state." The definition appears to be whether the corporation is chartered in state. But this has almost nothing to do with what that corporation does for the state. For legal reasons many USA corporations are chartered in Delaware most of whom have no presence whatsoever in Delaware. A St Louis corporation may do 95% of its business in Minnesota while filing its Federal tax return as a chartered Missouri corporation.

There's a tremendous lag factor not accounted for in this study. For example the "social taxes and contributions" (think Social Security and Medicare deductions) sent out of New York to the IRS for a worker over 40 years may later be returned to Florida after that worker retires in Miami. Florida later benefits for income sacrificed earlier in New York and confounds the error in calculating the net tax benefits or costs each year for New York versus Florida.

Definitions of Federal Spending in states begins on Page 9 of
https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/budget/2018/federal-budget-fiscal-year-2017.pdf
These definitions are heavily based on "Direct Payments" (especially Social Security and Medicare) to each state. It also includes Federal spending for "Procurements" such as when the Air Force buys supplies in Vermont for a pilot training base. But if the USAF pays $5 million for supplies from Vermont businesses the net benefit to Vermont is not $5 million . Vermont businesses maybe paid $4+ million to other states for those supplies later sold to the Air Force base in Vermont.

Then there's the tremendous difference between capital expenditures versus annual expenses. When NASA built the Cape Canaveral launching site in Florida much of the huge expenditure was a one-time investment. Florida got a huge influx of cash for a short period of time like three years needed to build the site. This great influx of taxpayer money into Florida is not reflective of the annual influx of operating revenues thereafter.

I'm totally befuddled by the rankings of states according to net tax benefits/losses at
https://www.businessinsider.com/states-pay-federal-government-lose-gain-2019-1
For example, I'm completely confused why Missouri is at Rank 19 with a per-capita +$3,472 benefit in comparison to why Minnesota is at Rank 45 with a negative -$1,078 per-capita deficit.

I think this study is more than nonsense. It's absolutely misleading based upon lousy definitions.


People say football will never go away, but if we can’t get insurance, it will ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/01/ongoing-death-football.html
Jensen Comment
By this it means insurance that's not so limited as to be virtually no insurance at all.
An alternative would be to make it almost like touch football which neither fans nor players will likely get excited about.
Alternatives like rugby soccer never did catch on in the USA among fans, although soccer is now quite popular in high schools and colleges among players (not fans). That could change if football disappears from the scene.


Controlled Digital Lending of Scholarly Works  Is Neither Controlled nor Legal ---
https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/controlled-digital-lending-is-neither-controlled-nor-legal/
Jensen Comment
It's a little like the traditional way of putting copies of book chapters and journal articles on library reserve for students in a class. In the past it was extremely common to make enough copies available for students to check out at reserve desks in libraries. Of course many (most?) students headed for copy machines to make their own copies.

Now it's common to place digital copies of scholarly items in Blackboard or Moodle servers. Faculty sometimes justify this on grounds that such servers are password controlled and, therefore, copies are not being made available to the general public.  For example, recent articles from The New York Times or Wall Street Journal might be distributed in this manner. The Fair Use Safe Harbor provision in Section 107 in the DMCA allows for distributions of quotations from articles in this manner, but not entire articles.

There are of course a few associations that allow this type of distribution of copyrighted materials. The American Accounting Association, for example, allows controlled distribution of its many scholarly journals to students in college courses. But this is more the exception than the rule for copyrighted materials.

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


Harvard:  What PwC Learned from Its Policy of Flexible Work for Everyone ---
https://hbr.org/2019/01/what-pwc-learned-from-its-policy-of-flexible-work-for-everyone?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_not_activesubs&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM25877

Jensen Comment
Tenured college professors have perhaps the best jobs in the world in terms of flex time. K-12 teachers must meet their daily classes and generally spend much more time in classes than professors.

Distance education increased the flex time of many professors, some of whom do not even have to set foot on campus if they are teaching full time online. Sometimes, however, online students are required to travel to campus or some other meeting place such as hotel conference rooms. In that case the online professor must leave home on such occasions.

Self-employed people like writers and artists might have more flex time, but weekly time average needed to complete their work may be so large that flex time becomes a luxury. The same is true of college professors who are really into time-consuming research and scholarship, but tenured professors often have a choice regarding their dedication to research and scholarship. Some abuse freedoms given by employers.

Flex time works best when tasks can be performed independently of other workers. For example, a computer programmer may be given a task estimated to take 200 hours at home or in the office. That worker is then free to chose when and where to work as long as the job gets done. PwC consultants and auditors often had similar task assignments. Life becomes more complicated, however, when workers must collaborate on the same tasks. For example, when a team of six PwC auditors must physically test check inventory in a warehouse in Brownsville, Texas then a lot of the flex gets taken out of each worker's flex time.

Since commuting time (especially when driving a car) is exhausting and wastes time, the era of networked technology that enables more working at home greatly increased the efficiency and happiness of workers.

Some jobs are more conducive to flex time than others. In our village of Sugar Hill we have an editor who works 100% of the time at home for one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world. They send her reports that she edits and rewrites when necessary. She never needs to visit a main office. This is less likely to be the case if she was a consultant needed to meet clients face-to-face unless she was so good that clients visited her home in Sugar Hill --- which isn't the case for her.

Flex time in theory works pretty well where jobs must be covered 24/7 like is the case for nurses in emergency rooms and police on patrol. The hospital must have enough nurses to cover at all times. Flex time can create scheduling nightmares, but if the workers themselves cooperate in this scheduling flex time can work pretty well. It works pretty well when workers on flex time agree to be on call to cover emergencies. The workers simply have to cooperate to cover active duty and on call times over each week. Workers with on-call commitments aren't free to leave town, but they are free locally in other respects.

One problem with flex time in terms of working at home is that workers have considerable variability in terms of self discipline. Some are more efficient on the job at home while others are more easily distracted (think having a toddler in the house or animals in a barn).

 


London wants to treat violent crime like a disease ---
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/london-wants-to-treat-violent-crime-like-a-disease


CEO Elon Musk, with profits in his sights, is finally running Tesla like a real car company (by initially laying off 3,000 workers) ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-layoffs-are-good-for-business-2019-1

Jensen Comment
Moral of Story for CEOs:  Don't ignore your accountants.


Gig Worker --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_work
Actually this definition is incomplete for wide-ranging "gig" relationships. I have a friend from our mountain church who inherited her father's furnished house in Littleton, NH. She could rent this house out herself by the night, by the week, by the month, or by the year under a lease contract. However, she chose to use AirB&B to book her rentals and collect the revenues for varying lengths of stay. It's been quite successful. She provides the house and the maid service along with things like utilities, snow clearance, yard maintenance, and trash collection. This is a gray zone between being an entrepreneurial landlord and a gig worker. It's a little like being an Uber driver who provides his/her own car and fuel and insurance. Uber books the passengers.

Years ago I offered my part-time services as a workshop teacher for a complicated accounting standard FAS 133 on Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments and Hedging Activities. An outside outfit arranged for hotel conference rooms in major cities, audiences, and revenue collection. It invested in advertising for the audience. But for me it was more like I outsourced the services while I was really a workshop teaching entrepreneur who decided when I would offer a workshop. I never met a live person who worked for my booking service, but that company must've had contacts in large accounting firms and business corporations judging from the sources of my audiences. I might add that I also conducted these workshops for free (sometimes I got a logo sweatshirt or a other memento) on university campuses. Those were the days my friend when I was often overpaid for the hassles of travel away from home.

This is how insurance is changing for gig workers and freelancers ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/insurtech-and-the-gig-economy-2018-12


The replication crisis is killing psychologists’ theory of how the body influences the mind ---
https://qz.com/1525854/psychologys-replication-crisis-is-debunking-embodied-cognition-theory/

Jensen Comment
The problem is that psychologists are disturbed about this because so many people care about what they discover in research. They should be more like accountants where professional accountants ignore the academic accounting journals, thereby making replication of research largely a waste of time and money. Unlike engineers academic accountants don't try to solve problems that trouble practitioners. They're more into entertaining themselves. ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
In accountics research the interest is in the method (particularly the mathematics/statistics) rather than the findings themselves. Accountics researcher p-values will never go out of style.

Accountics researchers seldom study data that they cannot buy. Only study that which is for sale or can be obtained cheaply like playing surrogate artificial games with students.


Laffer Curve --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

Red-Faced OECD:  Data On Corporate Taxation Inadvertently Provides Strong Evidence For Laffer Curve ---
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2019/01/18/data-on-corporate-taxation-inadvertently-provides-strong-evidence-for-laffer-curve-n2539278?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f

So tax rates have dramatically fallen but tax revenue has actually increased

Jensen Comment
One of my favorite bloggers is a long-time University of Michigan economist (now at the University of Colorado) named Miles Kimball. The title of his blog is "Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal." ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/

Two problems with the Laffer Curve is that, if it works according to theory, there are often long lags that opponents jump on too soon as being evidence of failure. The classic example here is that the Reagan tax cuts benefited Bill Clinton years later rather than Ronald Reagan.

And supporters of the Laffer curve are stupid if they claim it always works. Tax rate reductions are greatly affected by amounts of change and economic circumstances at the time of reducing the rates.


The ultimate political correctness
The last major search engine (Bing) blocked out in China following the banning of Google in 2010 ---

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/24/688101860/china-appears-to-block-microsofts-bing-search-engine
That's one way to restrain plagiarism

But China still loves its 5,000+ KFC fried chicken outlets ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFC_in_China


Important article for faculty teaching most anything related to statistics and data science
Common Data Science Pitfalls to Avoid ---

https://www.datascience.com/blog/common-data-science-pitfalls
Thank you David Giles for the heads up

Making unrealistic assumptions

The most common mistake, in my opinion, is assuming stationary distributions that are not stationary (those horrid curses of political polling when voters change their minds back and forth and economic time series that change with the times)

Measuring the wrong thing

Spurious correlation due to poorly constructed questions (among other reasons)

Spurious correlation due to bad math (among other reasons)

Failing to consider grouping and clustering effects (Simpson’s paradox)

Forgetting about distribution theory (yes the average American is a millionaire)

Forgetting statistical fundamentals (the common failures due to hetheroscedasticiy, multicollinearity, etc.)

The most common mistake, in my opinion, is assuming stationarity data that are not stationary (those horrid curses of political polling when voters change their minds back and forth and economic time series that change with the times)

Mathiness (I'd wish some journal referees would learn about this)

Overfitting

Making a metric a target (great dead cobra illustration)

NYT:  Graphs, maps and charts from The Times -- and an invitation to students to discuss them live.---
https://www.nytimes.com/column/whats-going-on-in-this-graph

Jensen Comment
In economics, accounting, and finance the most common mistake, in my opinion, is the killer assumptions of stationarity across time periods.

From Two Former Presidents of the AAA
"Some Methodological Deficiencies in Empirical Research Articles in Accounting." by Thomas R. Dyckman and Stephen A. Zeff , Accounting Horizons: September 2014, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 695-712 ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/acch-50818   (not free)

This paper uses a sample of the regression and behavioral papers published in The Accounting Review and the Journal of Accounting Research from September 2012 through May 2013. We argue first that the current research results reported in empirical regression papers fail adequately to justify the time period adopted for the study. Second, we maintain that the statistical analyses used in these papers as well as in the behavioral papers have produced flawed results. We further maintain that their tests of statistical significance are not appropriate and, more importantly, that these studies do not�and cannot�properly address the economic significance of the work. In other words, significance tests are not tests of the economic meaningfulness of the results. We suggest ways to avoid some but not all of these problems. We also argue that replication studies, which have been essentially abandoned by accounting researchers, can contribute to our search for truth, but few will be forthcoming unless the academic reward system is modified.

The free SSRN version of this paper is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324266

Add to this the die-hard analysts who ignore the fall from grace of p-values
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong


How to Mislead With Statistics:  Ranking Nations Based Upon Teachers' Salaries
 https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-2017-5#high-school-teachers-best-and-worst-2

Jensen Comment
This article makes no mention of adjusting salaries for fringe benefits and cost of living and contract durations. Fringe benefits include medical insurance, free time (think summers and holidays), parental leaves, day-care, tenure security, and pensions. In the USA most teachers supplement their annual salaries with summer work such as working on organic farms, summer teaching, park service work, etc. Is this also the case in Luxembourg and Switzerland?

A good example of the nonsense of this ranking is that New Zealand is in among the worst 10 nations ranked on teacher salaries. And yet New Zealand is one of the top nations in terms of fringe benefits to teachers.

Cost of living differences are monumental. Sure Luxembourg and Switzerland pay relatively high salaries, but their costs of living are enormous compared with virtually all other nations of the world.
A mathematics teacher I know in Algona, Iowa owns a relatively nice four-bedroom house on a five-acre lot with a barn. Try matching that in Luxembourg City, Tokyo, Zurich, Palo Alto, or Munich.

Both within and between nations cost of living varies greatly. Consider USA housing costs in the Silicon Valley versus the Rio Grande Valley.

Many nations are mysteriously left out of the rankings in this article. Cuba, for example, pays teachers almost nothing but provides marginal rations given to all citizens, including the lazy and unemployed.

Where is Finland?
Finland generally is at or near the top of the world in terms of teaching quality. And yet Finland did not make the Top 10 in terms of teacher salaries.

How does the study distinguish between teachers and administrators (think principals)? For example, one possible explanation in gender salary differences might be the tendency to have more male administrators than female administrators. And if they are lumped together in this study are 12-month salaries of administrators being lumped in with 9-month salaries of most teachers? This could account for some of the gender differences in salary.

Are salaries adjusted for union dues? For example, in the USA have union dues deducted from paychecks. Do teachers in Luxembourg, Korea, and Switzerland also pay union dues?

By the way, the need for highly-paid teachers varies somewhat between nations. For example, nearly all Finland's children come from two-parent homes where a lot of learning takes place within the homes. We certainly can't say this for Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit where teachers play a much greater role in the learning process and should, accordingly, be paid more.

I think this is a highly misleading (think garbage) article.


Question
What was the first programmable calculator and when was it invented?
Hint:  It was invented January 17, 1974

Answer
Click Here

Jensen Comment
For math teachers the first programmable calculator was not nearly as controversial as the graphing calculator ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphing_calculator
Both programmable and graphing calculators led up to the really wonderful and controversial free Website called Wolfram Alpha ---
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
This site is amazing in how it can compute and graph complicated functions and even print them in a way that can be put in academic papers with effortless cut and paste.
Meanwhile complex software evolved like MATLAB ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB

See
https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282791&p=1888115

Bob Jensen's links to mathematics and statistics resources ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics


What People Actually Say Before They Die ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/how-do-people-communicate-before-death/580303/

Also see
https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?search=Deathbed&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go
or search for "Deathbed" at
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page

Also click on Deaths at
https://www.azquotes.com/#

Art Buchwald was great at one-liners!
Many would be good to plagiarize on a deathbed.

"I have no idea where I'm going but here's the real question: What am I doing here in the first place? Art Buchwald."

"People who live in glass houses have to wash their windows all the time."

"An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn't know any women.".

"I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team."


 

Seeing Data --- http://seeingdata.org/

Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2018 (data visualization)  --- 
www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase?award=2018&pcategory=winner&type=awards

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

The Pudding Cup (data and story visualization) --- https://pudding.cool/process/pudding-awards-2018/

Why the world's flight paths are such a mess ---
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/flight-paths/

FiveThirtyEight Blog's Data Visualization Highlights of 2018 ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-45-best-and-weirdest-charts-we-made-in-2018/

Refugee Flow 2010 --- http://refugeeflow.world/

Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2018 (data visualization)  --- 
www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase?award=2018&pcategory=winner&type=awards

The Atlas of Economic Complexity --- http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/

Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate data visualization ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

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


The Argument for Expanding Nuclear Power ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/2/21/joshua-s-goldstein-and-staffan-a-qvist-only-nuclear-energy-can-save-the-planet



RETRACTED ARTICLE: Facilitating debugging of web applications through recording reduction --
-
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-017-9519-z


 

RETRACTED ARTICLE: After more than a year of back and forth, The Accounting Review retracts a paper on tax avoidance ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/01/15/after-more-than-a-year-of-back-and-forth-an-accounting-journal-retracts-a-paper-on-tax-avoidance/
Attempted Replications Fail

A pair of business researchers in Pittsburgh has lost a controversial 2017 paper on how institutional stock holdings affect tax strategies amid concerns about the validity of the data.

The article, “Governance and taxes: evidence from regression discontinuity,” which appeared in The Accounting Review, was written by Andrew Bird and Stephen Karolyi, of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.

According to the abstract:

We implement a regression discontinuity design to examine the effect of institutional ownership on tax avoidance. Positive shocks to institutional ownership around Russell index reconstitutions lead, on average, to significant decreases in effective tax rates (ETRs) and greater use of international tax planning using tax haven subsidiaries. These effects are smaller for firms with initially strong governance and high executive equity compensation, suggesting poor governance as an explanation for the undersheltering puzzle, and appear to come about as a result of improved managerial incentives and increased monitoring by institutional investors. Furthermore, we observe the largest decreases among high ETR firms, and increases for low ETR firms, consistent with institutional ownership pushing firms towards a common level of tax avoidance.  

The article triggered a 100-plus page long thread on Economics Job Market Rumors poking holes in the analysis, as well as an entry on PubPeer.

It also prompted a lengthy analysis in the January 2018 issue of Econ Journal Watch by Alex Young, then of North Dakota State University and now of Hofstra, who attempted to replicate both the 2017 article and 2015 version of the work:

Jensen Comment
If this had been a plagiarism issue we might have called the authors the Pittsburgh Stealers. However, it appears to be more of a problem of data fabrication.

The most sensational accounting research cheating scandal in history also entailed data fabrication with 30+ papers eventually refracted wherever Jim Hunton was a co-author ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Scroll down to Hunton


Harvard:  Remembering Jack Bogle and Herb Kelleher, Two Great Strategists ---
https://hbr.org/2019/01/remembering-jack-bogle-and-herb-kelleher-two-great-strategists


Check if Your Address is on this List;  773 million email addresses have been leaked ---
Click Here


Predictions for the Global Economy in 2019 from 13 Experts ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/1/24/focuseconomics-predictions-for-the-global-economy-in-2019-from-13-experts



Automakers may have completely overestimated how many people want electric cars ---
https://qz.com/1533976/automakers-may-overproduce-14-million-electric-cars-by-2030/
 

Jensen Comment
The market may not grow to respectable numbers until battery recharging times get closer to times needed to refill fuel tanks of gas guzzlers or electric car ranges grow by leaps and bounds.

Optimism seems to dominate expectations of better technology, but so far alternatives to lithium batteries disappoint, and lithium batteries take too long to recharge for impatient USA drivers who see no alternative other than owning second cars that are gas guzzlers.
Optimism possibly runs highest in China where air pollution is more troublesome and in Norway where taxpayers pay for recharging electric cars.


Why Wikipedia’s Medical Content Is Superior ---
https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/wikipedia-doctors-medical-knowledge-study.html

Jensen Comment
I've long thought that Wikipedia's content on most technical issues is quite good (albeit not perfect). However, biographical data obtained for names of people gets pretty whitewashed these days, especially living people who can either whitewash a wiki themselves or hire expert wiki whitewashers.
See below.


MIT:  France has handed Google a $57 million fine for breaking EU privacy laws ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612809/france-has-handed-google-a-50-million-fine-for-breaking-eu-privacy-laws/?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=69185384&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--y1g5BQuLMZarpfKJW-HPvXIT9tY3kc-5FXLG5ja28yGzbR18V4Ap1KEh78ctUJCRxSuT72tisD23lpIEx26ZcD-dRXw&_hsmi=69185384

Burning the Links But Not the Archives
Google forced to remove search results in EU 'right to be forgotten' case
---
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-reportedly-forced-to-remove-links-in-right-to-be-forgotten-case/

Jensen Comment
Why isn't the media also required to burn the historical record?
Newspapers and magazines and books are not required to delete print and online archives of news items whereas Google is forced to not reference historical literature.
It's like keeping Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") in the stacks while adopting a policy while banning reference to it in the card catalog.

I might add that I favor the right to be forgotten in extreme cases such as where the literature being referenced by Google is blatant fake news (which it was not in the case of the Dutch surgeon).

Censorship is complicated. I think the person wanting to be forgotten should have to make a case that the published news was fake or highly cherry picked. Wikipedia is better than Google in this regard since the person implicated or somebody else can edit the Wikipedia module to correct the record. Unfortunately, there's more whitewashing than publishing a case for why news was fake or in error.

I've seen  instances of whitewashing in Wikipedia. For example, at one time Wikipedia documented instances where Paul Krugman allegedly fabricated data or is widely accused of being wrong with correct data. Now all links to those allegations (the allegations are still in media archives) have been removed from Paul Krugman's Wikipedia entry. Companies celebrities are notorious for deleting negatives on Wikipedia.

The Guardian:  Illustration of Where Krugman Was Wrong ---
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/paul-krugman-mistake-white-working-class-voters-republicans

Forbes:  What Krugman Gets Wrong ---
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/07/31/nope-paul-krugmans-still-wrong-about-supply-side-economics/#7a2645516348 

My point is that Paul Krugman is only one of millions of examples where the negatives have been removed from Wikipedia but not from the media archives.

Another example of whitewashing is the Wikipedia site for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
Reference to the devastating Washington Post criticism of her claim that accounting errors at the Pentagon could pay for 2/3 of the $30 trillion Medicare-for-All cost. The WaPo gave her four Pinocchios on that one:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's $21 trillion mistake - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/.../alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-trillion-mistake/ 
Reference to this mistake was whitewashed from Wikipedia.


BBC:  Google Maps inaccuracies are putting tourists off, says Australian authority Errors mean some journey times look like more than double what they really are ---
Click Here


McKinsey Consulting: Applying Behavioral Science in the Office ---
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/lessons-from-the-front-line-of-corporate-nudging

Executives setting up a behavioral-science unit should start by challenging themselves with six questions.

Continued in article


Remember that seedling growing on the moon? It’s dead The cotton sprouts could not survive -170°C temperatures at night ---
Click Here

Also see
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-china-moon-cotton-lunar-night.html


Overcome Your Smartphone Addiction With an Economics Lesson ---
Click Here


A Potential Discovery of Civilizations Beyond Earth ---
Click Here


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

The Rise and Demise of RSS ---
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3mm4z/the-rise-and-demise-of-rss?mbid=nl_hps_5c422a18a358ac6e49188e50&CNDID=31837029


How broken is YouTube’s copyright system? This dude’s voice just got claimed [The Daily Dot] ---
https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/smellyoctopus-youtube-copyright-claim/
Jensen Question
Do Elvis impersonators need to worry?

Here's a good resource from Duke University for scholars interested in copyright law and the public domain ---
Center for the Study of the Public Domain --- https://law.duke.edu/cspd/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright


Project Gutenberg --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg

Distributed Proofreaders (for bringing historic manuscripts into the public domain) --- www.pgdp.net/c

Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through a third proofreading round and two formatting rounds using the same web interface.

Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.

Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


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

MIT:  Will people ditch cash for cryptocurrency? Japan is about to find out ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611656/will-people-ditch-cash-for-cryptocurrency-japan-is-about-to-find-out/?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=69185384&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--y1g5BQuLMZarpfKJW-HPvXIT9tY3kc-5FXLG5ja28yGzbR18V4Ap1KEh78ctUJCRxSuT72tisD23lpIEx26ZcD-dRXw&_hsmi=69185384


Nouriel Roubini:  Why Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Destroy Cryptocurrencies ---
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/central-banks-take-over-digital-payments-no-cryptocurrencies-by-nouriel-roubini-2018-11
Jensen Comment
Perhaps Professor Roubini is underestimating the power of organized crime (think giant drug cartels and Venezuela) to keep cryptocurrency moving.


My biggest lament is the unwillingness of accountics scientists to debate (those three who did so for a while on the AECM went silent).

TED Talk:  An Inspirational Talk from a Gay Black Man Who Played Football for Yale and Graduated from Harvard and More ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/casey_gerald_embrace_the_strange_magic_of_your_true_self?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_right_button

January 23, 2019 reply from Paul Williams

Bob, thank you.

It is an interesting juxtaposition with your other post about EY forming an independent group to help it do its audits "better." Maybe all they need to do is watch this video. When we were both at FSU we had a student who was (I hope still is) whip smart. She would ask questions in class not because she wanted an answer but to see if you knew the answer. She lasted about 6 months working for one of the big 8 (still one of the big 4) because she was "too aggressive" with clients in seeking the information she needed to do a thorough audit. She couldn't conform so away she had to go.

This is a problem that inflicts every aspect of accounting -- both practice and academe. The highest virtue is conformity. Success in practice and in academe requires conformity. We have been debating the banality of accounting research for decades (it's accountics or nothing!) and the solution has been re-iterated over and over. Judy Rayburn, Shyam Sunder, and Greg Waymire made the themes of their AAA presidencies diversity, imagining, and innovation. Horizons ran a series of musings by people who supposedly are our intellectual superiors that concluded we need to be more passionate, more diverse, a population with more Casey's and fewer Babbitts. Your posting from the MIses people yesterday was ironic. The financial reporting revolution in accounting successfully carried out by a cohort of Chicago PhDs in the late 60s and early 70s has its ideological origins in the philosophy of the Austrian School. The irony is that it has produced a rigidly formulaic approach to knowledge production -- specialists in what Abe Briloff called low level financial statement analysis -- an approach to scholarship antithetical to the Austrian approach (Philip Morowski has written extensively about the conundrum for economics of creating a "science" out of "faith" in markets).

Against our better judgments Joni Young and I submitted a paper to The Accounting Review and waited six months for a reply. The reply was simply, "This is a thought piece and doesn't belong in TAR." Think (if you dare) about that: the so-called flagship journal of the AAA has no room for thinking. Given the homogeneity of doctoral education in the US today, I would bet it never will. We train PhDs to be specialists in publishing papers acceptable to the premier US journals. Such specialization is so institutionalized now that it is hard to see how it can be changed other than for it to run its course and for Greg Waymire's prediction to come true. A profession that economists now label as part of the wealth defense industry would seem to be ripe for some introspection about what it is.

January 23, 2019 reply from Bob Jensen

My biggest lament is the unwillingness of accountics scientists to debate (those two who did so for a while on the AECM went silent).

Are there any accountics scientists who blog? Actually there are almost no accounting professors who blog other than retired old farts Bob Jensen and Jim Martin.

In comparison academic economists blog like crazy. Economics Blogs --- https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/top-economics-blogs-2016/ 


Requirement That Women Constitute 40% Of Faculty Search Committees Resulted In 38% Reduction In Female Hires ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/17/male-backlash-blamed-failure-effort-france-hire-more-female-academics?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=f9f4d9af9e-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-f9f4d9af9e-197546105&mc_cid=f9f4d9af9e&mc_eid=2603803487




From the Scout Report on January 18, 2019

Hammerspoon --- www.hammerspoon.org 
Hammerspoon is a tool for automating macOS computers, allowing users to write Lua scripts that control applications, windows, the mouse, the keyboard, the screen, wifi and networking, and more. For example, a user could automatically start a set of applications when connecting to a work wifi network and could quit then when connecting to a personal wifi network. Hammerspoon's Getting Started Guide provides a walk-through of creating a basic "Hello World" script. A repository of official modules (called Spoons) can be found at Hammerspoon.org/Spoons. These modules include informational overlays for the desktop or menu bar, modules that manage window layout, application launchers, integrations with various applications, and various others. In addition to the getting started guide, the Hammerspoon wiki on GitHub contains several dozen sample configuration files that new users may examine for inspiration. Hammerspoon is a free software, distributed under the MIT license, with source code available on GitHub


AutoHotkey --- www.autohotkey.com 
AutoHotkey is a tool for controlling Windows computers, allowing users to automate a wide range of tasks and customize how their mouse and keyboard behave. Examples on their front page include "form fillers, auto-clicking, macros, etc." It can even be used for software remapping of keyboard layouts. AHK uses its own built-in scripting language that is designed for ease of learning and use. A number of examples of the syntax are provided on the AHK front page, with more available via RosettaCode. In the documentation section, users can locate a tutorial and comprehensive reference for the AutoHotkey language. In addition to the official tutorial, the footer of the site links to a number of community-provided tutorials including video tutorials via YouTube. AutoHotkey is a free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License, with source code available on GitHub.


From the Scout Report on January 25, 2019

Open Course Library (resources for teachers) --- http://opencourselibrary.org/
We originally featured the Open Course Library in the 1-19-2017 Scout Report and it continues to be an excellent source of teaching materials for instructors in a variety of disciplines. From the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges comes the Open Course Library, an extensive collection of courses and course materials (such as syllabi, classroom handouts, readings, multimedia resources, and assignments) for use by college-level students and instructors. As the authors of this website emphasize, these materials are not intended to replace classroom instruction; rather, these materials are made available in order to provide affordable classroom materials for students and resources for faculty members to consider integrating into existing courses. A central stated goal of the Open Course Library is to reduce costs to students. All courses included here can be taught without a textbook or utilize textbooks that cost $30 or less. As of this write-up, the Open Course Library features over 80 courses, including courses in English composition, symbolic logic, mathematics, and foreign languages. All course materials can be easily accessed as Google Docs.

For example, click on Featured Courses and search for "Accounting"

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm




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


Education Tutorials

Crash Course Engineering (32 lessons) --- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtO4A_tL6DLZRotxEb114cMR

Young Minds Inspired --- http://ymiclassroom.com/

Debating Matters --- www.debatingmatters.com

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

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


Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

2018 Nobel Prize winner, a 96-year-old physicist, says his new invention will give everyone in the world clean, cheap energy ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/oldest-nobel-prize-winner-arthur-ashkin-optical-tweezers-levitation-2019-1

The Strangeness of Black Holes --- http://nautil.us/issue/68/context/the-strangeness-of-black-holes

How did Uranus end up on its side? We've been finding out --- https://phys.org/news/2019-01-uranus-side-weve.html
Or should we say bottoms up?

Why are women better than men at the free throw line? --- https://phys.org/news/2019-01-women-men-free-line.html

Saturn’s rings are a lot younger than we thought It’s likely they formed while dinosaurs roamed our planet ---
Click Here

Undark: Breathtaking (air pollution) --- https://undark.org/breathtaking/

Crash Course Engineering (32 lessons) --- www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtO4A_tL6DLZRotxEb114cMR

From the Scout Report on January 25, 2019

Researchers 'Hack' Photosynthesis to Improve Plant Efficiency

 

Scientists Have 'Hacked Photosynthesis' In Search Of More Productive Crops
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/03/681941779/scientists-have-hacked-photosynthesis-in-search-of-more-productive-crops

Plants botch photosynthesis 20% of the time. Fixing that could change agriculture
https://qz.com/1519141/scientists-have-found-a-way-to-help-plants-photosynthesize-better/

Fixing photosynthesis by engineering it to recycle a toxic mistake
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/re-engineering-photosynthesis-gives-plants-a-40-growth-boost/

Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6422/eaat9077

Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE)
https://ripe.illinois.edu/

Lesson plan: Modeling Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration
https://www.calacademy.org/educators/lesson-plans/modelling-photosynthesis-and-cellular-respiration

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

Debating Matters --- www.debatingmatters.com

Greening with jobs - World Employment and Social Outlook 2018 ---
https://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/greening-with-jobs/lang--en/index.htm
In the search box type in "Accounting"

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

Center for the Study of the Public Domain --- https://law.duke.edu/cspd/

The DAISY Consortium (access to reading and learning for disabled persons) --- http://www.daisy.org/

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


Math and Statistics Tutorials

Important article for faculty teaching most anything related to statistics and data science
Common Data Science Pitfalls to Avoid ---

https://www.datascience.com/blog/common-data-science-pitfalls
Thank you David Giles for the heads up

Mathematics Brain Exercises: Problems from Another Time Mathematics ---  www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/problems-another-time
So many of things that used to be taught in mathematics are now an elegant brain exercises (think calculus integrations of complicated functions). But such brain exercises are no longer essential after computers, simulation advances, AI, etc. became better than humans in solving so many complicated math problems. For example, carrying the irrational number Pi to 35 decimal points was such an accomplishment in the 1500s that a mathematician had Pi named after him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

Mathematical Association of America: On This Day --- www.maa.org/news/on-this-day

Pi Through the Ages
1540:  Ludolph van Ceulen, who computed the value of pi to 35 decimal places, born in Hildesheim, Germany. Pi is still sometimes referred to as Ludolph's number---

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Pi_through_the_ages.html
Jensen Comment
This is an illustration about how computers changed what it takes to be famous/relevant in mathematics --- I hesitate to say Apple Pi

1855:  William Burroughs, inventor of a "calculating machine," born in Rochester, NY. ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Seward_Burroughs_I

Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards 2018 (data visualization)  ---  www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase?award=2018&pcategory=winner&type=awards

Bob Jensen's threads on multivariate data visualization ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm

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

An Animated History of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Minutes  ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/an-animated-history-of-cheese-10000-years-in-under-six-minutes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

For Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, much of philosophy was mere nonsense. Then came Frank Ramsey’s pragmatic alternative ---
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-truth-on-ramsey-wittgenstein-and-the-vienna-circle?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b067354109-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_23_04_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b067354109-68951505

Journal of Art Historiography --- https://arthistoriography.wordpress.com/

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

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


Language Tutorials

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


Music Tutorials

Hear the Sounds of the Actual Instruments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Handel Originally Composed Their Music ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/the-sounds-of-historic-instruments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The 1959 Project: A New Photoblog Takes a Day-By-Day Look at 1959, the Great Watershed Year in Jazz ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/the-1959-project.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Music

Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm


Writing Tutorials

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries



Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine

CDC Blogs --- http://blogs.cdc.gov/

Shots: NPR Health News --- http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots

Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

January 16, 2019

January 17, 2019

January , 2019

January 19, 2019

January 22, 2019

January 24, 2019

January 26, 2019

January 29, 2019

January 30, 2019

View All Health News


What’s Causing the Rise of Hoarding Disorder?
https://daily.jstor.org/whats-causing-the-rise-of-hoarding-disorder/


Scientists at Edith Cowan University develop a blood test to diagnose a deadly skin cancer—melanoma—at its earliest stage
https://www.chronicle.com/paid-article/stalking-a-stealthy-killer/200?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=a16b207edc2149ed90d55d466e3fa382&elq=5238c87294704e378d365f51d269dbe4&elqaid=22063&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=10805


Nutritional Psychiatry: Why Diet May Play an Essential Role in Treating Mental Health Conditions, Including Depression, Anxiety & Beyond  ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/nutritional-psychiatry-why-diet-may-play-an-essential-role-in-treating-mental-health-conditions-including-depression-anxiety-beyond.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


CNN:  Is fasting the fountain of youth?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/01/health/fasting-longevity-food-drayer/index.html


TED Talk:  17-year-old inventor shares a device, a wearable patch,  that warns of pending heart attacks ---
https://www.ted.com/talks/akash_manoj_a_life_saving_device_that_detects_silent_heart_attacks?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-01-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=top_left_button 


In “Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon”  ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/1/15/after-gastric-bypass-surgery-insulin-goes-down-before-weight-loss-has-time-to-happen


Experimental drug could be new option for type 2 diabetes ---
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-01-experimental-drug-option-diabetes.html


Do sweet potatoes help you live longer?
The answer on Okinawa seems to be yes, but a lot of other factors are involved
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047637416302202#bib0060
Click on the "Show More" option

Jensen Comment
When I was in Sweden on a gig, a Swedish expert on diet told me that breads and regular potatoes are bad relative to complex carbohydrate foods like pasta that do not break down into sugar as quickly in the bowel. He never mentioned sweet potatoes.


How The Stigma Against Obesity Harms People’s Health ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-stigma-against-obesity-harms-peoples-health/




Humor for January 2019

Why Donald Trump is so Adamant About Building a Wall
It has to do with his ingenious theory of why Uranus is the only planet in our solar system that turned to its side (which is true) ---

http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

Forwarded by Paula

Divorce Lawyers:  Ditcher, Quick, and Hyde

Every woman dream is that a man will take her in his arms, throw her into bed, and clean the house while she sleeps.

Laughing at your own mistakes lengthens life
Laughing at your wife's mistakes shortens it

The biggest lie I tell myself:
"I don't need to write this one down, I'll remember it."

Why is it that when I push "1" for English I still can't understand the person on the other end of the line.

Alzheimers vs. Some-Timers:  Sometimes I remember and sometimes I don't

The secret to happiness is a good sense of humor and a bad memory

OMG, I almost went to the toilet without my phone

It’s been more than 30 years since states started trying to achieve “potty parity,” but many queues are still unequal with longer lines for women.
One thing that would help is to make all trans people use the men's rooms
.

 

Video:  Funny Pun Signs --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3A9wc2ZKtg




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 

 




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

I found another listserve that is exceptional -

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

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

Scott

Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

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

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

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

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

Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

If any questions let me know.

Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

Some Accounting History Sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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