Tidbits on October 30 2019
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 1 of Wes Lavin's 2019 Autumn Foliage Pictures ---
http://cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Lavin/2019Foliage/Set01.htm
Tidbits on October 30, 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
My Latest Web Document
Over 400 Examples of Critical Thinking and Illustrations of How to Mislead With
Statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
Excellent, Cross-Disciplinary Overview of Scientific
Reproducibility in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2018/12/15/excellent-cross-disciplinary-overview-of-scientific-reproducibility-in-the-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/
[Researchers] are rewarded for
being productive rather than being right, for building ever upward instead of
checking the foundations.---
Decades of early research on the genetics of depression were built on
nonexistent foundations. How did that happen?
Bob Jensen: My take on research validation or lack
thereof is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
You must watch this to the ending to appreciate it.
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
Animated Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth
Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010) ---
A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years
(1790 – 2010)
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
In September 2017 the USA National Debt exceeded $20 trillion for the first time
---
http://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/national-debt-surpasses-20-trillion-for-the-first-time-in-us-history
Human Population Over Time on Earth ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
Ted Talk: After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up
---
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_after_billions_of_years_of_monotony_the_universe_is_waking_up?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-10-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image
Watch a Newly-Created “Epilogue” For Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey ---
http://www.openculture.com/
Watch 700 Videos Nostalgia-Inducing Videos from the Early Days of MTV ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/watch-700-videos-nostalgia-inducing-videos-from-the-early-days-of-mtv.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Sunset Hill House Hotel (near our cottage)
---
https://www.thesunsethillhouse.com/
Watch the video
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
Meet Viola Smith, the World’s Oldest Drummer: Her Career Started
in the 1930s, and She’s Still Playing at 106 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/meet-viola-smith-the-worlds-oldest-drummer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
An Eclectic List of Musical Firsts ---
https://jborden.com/2019/10/
The Quintessential Jazz Tune of All Time ---
https://jborden.com/2019/10/21/music-monday-the-quintessential-jazz-tune-of-all-time/
Peaceful, Uplifting Sounds of Church Music ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwDrvDcgKWLvgvSFrPwfRzzHVKp
Bob Jensen's Links to Free Music
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
The Atlantic: Winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019
---
https://www.theatlantic.com/
The Atlantic: Photos of the Week: Swirling Embers,
Solar Challenge, Manhattan Moonrise ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/10/photos-of-the-week-swirling-embers-solar-challenge-manhattan-moonrise/600277/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20191020&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0
How to Paint Like Willem De Kooning: Watch Visual Primers from
the Museum of Modern Art ---
http://www.openculture.com/
The First Faked Photograph (1840) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/the-first-faked-photograph-1840.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Explore 1400 Paintings & Drawings by Vincent van Gogh–and Much
More–at the Van Gogh Museum’s Online Collection ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/explore-1400-paintings-drawings-by-vincent-van-gogh.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820 ---
https://vistas.ace.fordham.
Charleston: "New Gardens Are Ever Appearing": Loutrel Briggs and the Charleston
Horticultural Tradition ---
https://speccoll.cofc.edu/new-
The Atlantic: Sandra Boynton’s picture books have sold 75 million copies,
captivating children and the adults who read to them. What’s the secret to her
popularity?
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/
North Korea's John Wayne ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-kim-jong-un-on-horseback-meaning-2019-10
Do ya think he saddled his own horse?
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
F. Scott Fitzgerald Creates a List of 22 Essential Books (1936) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/f-scott-fitzgerald-creates-a-list-of-22-essential-books.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
A Flowchart of Philosophical Novels: Reading Recommendations from Haruki
Murakami to Don DeLillo ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/a-flowchart-of-philosophical-novels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Map of Philosophy: See All of the Disciplines, Areas &
Subdivisions of Philosophy Mapped in a Comprehensive Video ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/the-map-of-philosophy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on philosophy ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Academy of American Poets: Poem-a-Day --- https://poets.org/poem-a-day
Joni Mitchell Publishes a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paintings &
Poetry ---
http://www.openculture.com/
Ten Poems by Sylvia Plath --- https://daily.jstor.org/ten-poems-by-sylvia-plath/
Moving Poems --- http://movingpoems.com/
Poetry River: Documentary Poetry ---
www.poetryriver.org/
The Cortland Review: Poets In Person ---
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=
The Atlantic: Sandra Boynton’s picture books have sold 75 million copies,
captivating children and the adults who read to them. What’s the secret to her
popularity?
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/
Miles Kimball on John Locke's Second Treatise ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/10/20/miles-kimball-on-john-lockes-second-treatise
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in
Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on October 30, 2019
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/TidbitsQuotations103019.htm
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the booked
obligation of $19+ trillion) ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2016/05/25/spring-2016-to-whom-does-the-us-government-owe-money-n2168161?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
The US Debt Clock in Real Time ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Remember the Jane Fonda Movie called "Rollover" ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film)
To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the
unbooked obligation of $100 trillion and unknown more in contracted
entitlements) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/15/news/economy/entitlement-benefits/
The biggest worry of the entitlements obligations is enormous obligation for the
future under the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are now deemed totally
unsustainable ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Entitlements are two-thirds of the federal budget.
Entitlement spending has grown 100-fold over the past 50 years. Half of all
American households now rely on government handouts. When we hear statistics
like that, most of us shake our heads and mutter some sort of expletive. That’s
because nobody thinks they’re the problem. Nobody ever wants to think they’re
the problem. But that’s not the truth. The truth is, as long as we continue to
think of the rising entitlement culture in America as someone else’s problem,
someone else’s fault, we’ll never truly understand it and we’ll have absolutely
zero chance...
Steve Tobak ---
http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2013/02/07/truth-behind-our-entitlement-culture/?intcmp=sem_outloud
"These Slides Show Why We Have Such A Huge Budget Deficit And Why Taxes
Need To Go Up," by Rob Wile, Business Insider, April 27, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-presentation-on-the-federal-budget-2013-4
This is a slide show based on a presentation by a Harvard Economics Professor.
Peter G. Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen: I renewed by annual donation to keep Wikipedia ad free --- Did
You?
https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=donate&utm_campaign=C13_en.wikipedia.org
Endowment Tax: $50 Million Tax Bill for Harvard ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/10/25/50-million-tax-bill-harvard?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=751b5217d8-DNU_2019_COPY_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-751b5217d8-197565045&mc_cid=751b5217d8&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
From an Atlantic Magazine newsletter on October 23, 2019
Science gone wrong
It’s tempting to view scientific progress as linear, with each year bringing new discoveries that build on the last. But what happens when big studies are disputed, and the foundation on which decades of research are built crumbles?
Today, we’re exploring three cases where a major finding was called into question.
One is from the field of psychology, famously reckoning with an astonishing replication crisis. We’ll also look at examples from genetics and the animal kingdom (and offer some bonus reading for the science nerd in you).
Why is there so much shaky research? Partly to blame is an academic world that prioritizes buzzy, new findings published in fancy journals. As our science reporter Ed Yong, who’s covered many of these kinds of developments, explains:
Beyond a few cases of outright misconduct, these practices are rarely done to deceive … People are rewarded for being productive rather than being right, for building ever upward instead of checking the foundations.
Case one: The moth-bat problem
The old theory: Open a biology textbook, and you might see this classic evolution story: Bats got echolocation first, and then moths figured out how to decode it in order to evade them.
Now: A brand new study suggests moths evolved their ears first.
I think it’s going to be a bit of a bombshell for the field.
Akito Kawahara, the University of Florida
Case two: The marshmallow test
The old theory: Put a marshmallow in front of a preschooler. Give her a choice: She can eat it now or in 15 minutes, but if she waits, she’ll get a second treat. Kids that wait demonstrate a promising sense of self-control, signaling they'll be more successful later in life.
Now: According to a study released last year, the kids that wait might just be richer. Growing up in a wealthy household makes kids less familiar with scarcity and, therefore, able to trust that more is coming.
For poor children, indulging in a small bit of joy today can make life feel more bearable, especially when there’s no guarantee of more joy tomorrow.
Jessica McCrory Calarco, writer and professor at Indiana University
Case three: The depression gene
The old theory: A single gene, SLC6A4, is linked to depression.
Now: A massive study released this year “didn’t find a smidge of evidence” connecting any of 18 different genes, including SLC6A4, to the mood disorder. That would mean scientists wasted over 1,000 research papers pursuing that particular thread.
How on Earth could we have spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars studying pure noise?
Matthew Keller, the University of Colorado at Boulder
Further Reading
These sorts of scientific upsets are everywhere. Explore:
· The struggle to reproduce cancer papers
· The popular myth that Oxytocin is a "hug hormone"
· The perhaps fictional finding that fiction helps us better understand each other
Added Jensen Tidbit
Excellent, Cross-Disciplinary Overview of Scientific
Reproducibility in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2018/12/15/excellent-cross-disciplinary-overview-of-scientific-reproducibility-in-the-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/
[Researchers] are rewarded for being
productive rather than being right, for building ever upward instead of checking
the foundations.---
Decades of early research on the genetics of depression were built on
nonexistent foundations. How did that happen?
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
You must watch this to the ending to appreciate it.
Bob Jensen: My take on research validation or lack
thereof is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
Graphing Lessons
Kids Zone: Create a Graph ---
https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createAgraph/Beautiful, Editable PowerPoint Graphics & Shapes (Free Library) ---
https://www.pptpop.com/powerpoint-graphics/How to Make a Chart or Graph in Excel ---
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-build-excel-graphMathematics and Graphing Calculators Go Beyond What Most of Us Think of as "Calculators" ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphing_calculatorThis is relatively high level, but academics love Wofram Alpha (especially for graphing functions) ---
https://www.wolframalpha.com/
Getting Wise About Online Safety --- https://www.cyberwise.org/
Family Online Safety Institute --- https://www.fosi.org/
Starbucks and Transfer Pricing for Tax Advantage ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/10/byrnes-starbucks-and-transfer-pricing.html
Enthused About UVA's New Approach to Gen Ed ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/enthused-about-uvas-new-approach-gen-ed?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=85166397fc-WNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-85166397fc-197565045&mc_cid=85166397fc&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
The link to "Comments" about the above article appears just beneath the "John Warner" name. When it comes to a Gen Ed curriculum it's hard to be unique in all things, although the UVA new curriculum is somewhat unique in terms of packaging. To me it tries to added more content while at the same time being more superficial in coverage (e.g., half-semester courses).
A Flowchart of Philosophical Novels: Reading Recommendations from Haruki
Murakami to Don DeLillo ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/a-flowchart-of-philosophical-novels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Map of Philosophy: See All of the Disciplines, Areas &
Subdivisions of Philosophy Mapped in a Comprehensive Video ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/05/the-map-of-philosophy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on philosophy ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
The Harvard Crimson student newspaper forced to take a stand on free
speech ---
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/22/note-to-readers-ice-comment/?cid=db&source=ams&sourceId=296279
Jensen Comment
I'm reminded of the sad way the Chronicle of Higher Education took a
negative stand on free speech by no longer publishing comments on it's articles.
Yeah you can still send a letter to the Editor of the Chronicle, but for that
letter to be published it must be refereed so as to conform to the Chronicle's
political stances. All my letters to that Editor have been rejected to date
(sigh).
For comparison, Inside Higher Education (a competitor to the Chronicle)
still publishes comments following each article. What you will discover is that
all academics do not march lock step with the liberal politics of the
Chronicle ---
http://www.insidehighered.com
Just a reminder: When President of the USA, Barack Obama deported over a
million undocumented residents. Under President Trump there are now over a
million backlogged Immigration Court applications to not be deported ---
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/536/
The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth ---
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25388/the-promise-of-adolescence-realizing-opportunity-for-all-youth
Is there anything more enthralling than a writer of supreme intelligence
covering topics she understands deeply?
https://marginalrevolution.
Publishers Weekly: The Top 10 Essays Since 1950 ---
https://www.publishersweekly.
Excerpts from College Admission Essays ---
https://www.admitsee.com/read-
Bookmarks Reviews --- https://bookmarks.reviews/
Ten Best American novels of the past half century ---
https://notesonliberty.com/
. . .
Yes I know there are a lot of good books written by Americans. If your favorite American novel from the past 50 years is not on this list, it’s because it’s too American (too provincial) or not quite up to the Christensen Snuff (whatever that is?).
Yes I know there’s no science fiction or fantasy on this list, and that science fiction and fantasy are just as intellectually stimulating as traditional literature.
Now, back to Feyerabend!
Jensen Comment
I'm always dubious of "best" rankings of most anything since "best" of most
anything is like "best" of beauty --- it varies in the eyes of the beholder.
My own taste in novels tends more toward entertainment, and entertainment leads me more to mysteries. My rankings of mysteries comes often before I read the books --- thank you Acorn Videos for leading me to Anthony Horowitz (English) and special thanks for Foylel's War. Denny Beresford put me onto American novelist John Sandford (real name John Roswell Camp).
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/
Bob Jensen's threads on American History ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/
Miles Kimball on John Locke's Second Treatise ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/10/20/miles-kimball-on-john-lockes-second-treatise
Why is Capitalist Finland so Rich (sort of)?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/why-is-finland-so-rich.html
Read the comments --- Finland encourages wealth incentives
Education in Finland, recipe for success?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/04/education_in_fi.html
Jensen Comment
One of the key differences between Finland and the USA, in my opinion, is that
Finland has a greater proportion of two-parent homes --- sounds so old fashioned
Honest Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
The USA is dragged down by so much corruption in city, state, and federal
government, although business firms are often partners in this corruption
Demographics in Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland
Low on racial diversity and immigration
Healthcare in Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Finland
The Dark Side (funding and sustainability) ---
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/15/world/finland-health-care-intl/index.html
Religion in Finland ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Finland#targetText=Finland is a
predominantly Christian,, Judaism, folk religion etc.
On the decline following a general trend in Europe
Sex in Finland ---
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/study_more_finns_opting_for_solo_sexual_satisfaction/9090220
Is this a trend among all developed nations?
The Sad History Of American Business Schools ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/
Jensen Comment
There are so many things distorted and wrong about this analysis that I don't
quite know where to begin before reading the book. I think its most obvious
biased failing will be in judging business schools for failing to stand out
using humanities criteria. The same failings arise in schools of physics,
schools of chemistry, schools of mathematics, etc.
The book’s greatest failing lies in its high-mindedness, as it never justifies the contention that MBAs should be primarily concerned with social change, rather than business best practices.
It would be the same for mathematics.
A similar book about mathematics greatest failing lies in its high-mindedness,
as it never justifies the contention that mathematicians
should be primarily concerned with social change, rather than mathematics best
theories and practices.
Hypothesis: My guess is that Steven Conn takes a very narrow view of "social
change" that he uses to judge business schools.
Perhaps he's blind to important "social changes."
Did he ever dig deep into what business schools did to improve supermarkets?
Did he ever dig deep into how supermarkets helped the
USA win the Cold War?
Freakonomics: How the
Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War ---
http://freakonomics.com/
Mother Hubbard had a bare cupboard in wannabe communist nations where people
were equal in their hunger (no food stamps or food).
Come on Steven
Did business schools really fail us when it came to winning the Cold War?
Business may only be a one of the engines in the world of social change, but it may well be the most important engine of change!
Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors ---
https://www.washingtonpost.
Jensen Comment
Here's a question for students to ponder?
Is there a philosophical and/or economic difference between using solar energy
versus natural gas when air conditioning the outdoors?
Hint: Economics is a science of how to allocate scarce resources
Natural gas is a scarce resource in the sense that worldwide there's limited
supply that's being depleted on earth. Cooling the outdoors with gas-fired air
conditioning uses up "scarce" natural gas. It may be an insignificant loss to
cool a sporting event in Qatar, but it would be a more serious loss if we tried
to cool the oceans on earth with natural gas.
Can the same be said about solar energy?
Seems like how much we use solar energy on earth does not impact the energy
supply of the sun.
Of course there can be other costs/externalities when fooling with Mother
Nature.
And the materials we use to transform energy of the sun into cold air requires
use of limited resources (think of the hardware in a solar panel and the
transmission lines)
You May Not Even Have to be a Full-Time Employee: Here are 15 major
companies that will help you pay for college ---
https://www.businessinsider.
Chipottle
UPS
Wells Fargo
Smuckers
Starbucks
Walmart and Sam's Club
Verizon
Bank of America
Fidelity Investments
Comcast
Disney
Best Buy
AT&T
Oracle
British Petroleum
There are many others ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/
It's also becoming increasingly common for companies to help employees repay student loans.
How to Mislead With Statistics
Ranking of Cities Where Your Car is Most Likely to Be Stolen ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/10/17/your-car-is-most-likely-to-be-stolen-in-these-cities/2/
Ranking of States Where Your Car is Most Likely to be Stolen ---
https://247wallst.com/autos/2016/11/08/states-where-your-car-is-most-and-least-likely-to-be-stolen/
Jensen Comment
It's not that the rankings of car theft by cities and states are not similar;
It's just that there are some inconsistencies. First is that all states along
the border with Mexico are in the Top 10 states most likely to have your car
stolen, including Texas. And yet none ot the largest cities in Texas (Dallas,
Houston, and San Antonio) even made the ranking of cities high in car thefts.
This is surprising after I lived for 24 years in San Antonio. I know that car
theft is very high in San Antonio and that stolen cars are often in Mexico
before owners even know their cars are missing. Stolen cars often either end up
on Mexico or they pass through Mexico on the way to Belize that has an economy
built on stolen cars.
Why is car theft more likely in Denver, Seattle, Billings, and Wichita than it is in Dallas, Houston, or San Antonio?
Of course there are some similarities in these rankings of states and cities. Many California cities are high car theft cities, and California is on the Mexico border. And the Number 1 car theft city, Albuquerque, is in New Mexico that's on the border with Mexico.
The rankings also raise unanswered questions. Why is car theft so high in Utah and Washington State? Is this a statistical quirk that makes theft rate differences between ranked cities somewhat insignificant.
I do realize that there are many reasons cars stolen, including for temporary car theft for joy rides and get-away cars connected to crimes. Cars are also permanently stolen stolen for export (think Mexico) and chop shops (for parts).
I would expect some poverty states (think Mississippi) to rank higher in car theft rates.
During economic downturns owners sometimes encourage thefts for the insurance money. During an economic downturn in San Antonio when some high income people lost their jobs and could no longer make payments on their loans for luxury cars. Their expensive cars were sometimes parked on the south side of town with the keys left in the ignition by owners hoping to recover more insurance money than the balance due on their car loans.
How to Mislead With Statistics
The world’s top 100 economies: 31 countries; 69 corporations ---
http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01603/WEB/WORLD_S_.HTM
Thank you Jagdish Gangolly for the heads up
There are many things wrong with this ranking. Clearly there's lots of double counting. For example, revenue flowing into Walmart is counted again as revenue flowing into a number of nations worldwide, particular revenue of the USA. In fact revenue gets counted over and over. When the USS supplies cotton to India to make cloth that is sent to China to make clothing that that is sent to Walmart stores worldwide the revenue is counted over and over and over and over.
Bill Gates earns more revenue than the majority of towns and counties in the USA. So what? Comparing the revenue of Bill Gates with the revenue budget of Redmond, Washington is like comparing shoes with rhubarb. So what?
Corporations and national governments often serve the same people such as when Walmart provides everything in Walmart stores and governments provide public services not provided by Walmart. Walmart, in turn, provides revenues directly toward those public services (think corporate income taxes and property taxes) and indirectly (think of the taxes paid by employees and the contributions of products toward taxes paid by other businesses). Everything is entangled to a point where comparing Walmart with Mexico is a meaningless comparison. It's not a linear world,
How to Mislead With Statistics
How Higher Education’s Data Obsession Leads Us Astray ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Higher-Education-s-Data/247409?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&cid=cr&source=ams&sourceId=296279
Has there ever been an enterprise that produced so much data to so little effect as higher education? We are drowning in data, awash in analytics. Yet, critics demand even more data, contending that higher education remains persistently opaque and lacking true accountability.
Here’s a heretical thought: Perhaps the problem is not a lack of data, but rather, that metrics alone are a poor measure of accountability. Our critics prefer lists over paragraphs, but sometimes words are important to interpret statistics.
The data industry is huge, including magazine rankings and credit-rating agencies; accreditors; and the mother of all data collections, housed at the U.S. Department of Education: Ipeds, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Easy access to voluminous data allows just about anyone to extract random factoids as evidence to assail or affirm collegiate value. Politicians assail high-tuition rates as bad for consumers, but Moody’s rewards them for generating ever-higher net-tuition revenues. Critics pummel elite universities for failing to enroll enough low-income students, while berating colleges that enroll majorities of Pell grantees for low graduation rates. More nuanced analyses of the relationships among high-net tuition, volume of Pell grantees, and graduation rates rarely make it into a public discussion that fixates on the numbers, not the narrative.
Big data is helpful to understand megatrends like the impact of student-debt burdens by race and ethnicity, the alarming growth in discount rates, or changes in demand for majors. But statistics are no substitute for professional judgment about the meaning of data for a specific institution. Unfortunately, magazine rankings and the federal College Scorecard choose to present isolated data points as institutional quality measures without interpretation.
Qualitative measures are also important for accountability analysis. Rankings are silent on the ways in which the first-year faculty members help students discover that they really can learn statistics, write laboratory reports, analyze complex texts, conduct research, or engage in professional work through internships. The College Scorecard does not provide data on the campus climate for women or students of color, or the scope of services for students with disabilities, or food pantries and support for students who are also parents.
Accreditation has always been the place where both quantitative and qualitative evidence is presented within the larger institutional context; interpretation of performance data through the lens of mission and student-body characteristics is essential to level-set the basis for continuous quality improvement. Even more important are the collegial conversations among visiting teams, institutional leaders, and faculty to focus on challenges needing serious repair and opportunities to move forward constructively. Those conversations, summarized in team reports, often remain private, a fact that frustrates critics craving public shaming of institutions that fall outside of traditional benchmarks.
In recent years, pushed by the critics who push Congress and the U.S. Department of Education, accreditation has inexorably moved toward even more data-driven assessment processes in both regional and specialized accreditation. Whether this migration has produced more accountability is unclear. While the idea of self-study and collegial peer review continues, the hegemony of data analytics threatens to diminish the most useful parts of the accreditation process in the collegial discussions that honor mission and institutional context while also challenging institutions to improve.
Some elite universities lobbied for this change on the theory that if they surpass some normative benchmarks, they should not have to bear the burden of the more onerous hands-on accreditation processes beyond, perhaps, cursory reviews. Aside from the arrogance of insisting that some universities are above collegial scrutiny (the climate that fostered the Varsity Blues scandal notwithstanding), the use of data to exonerate wealthy elite schools also perpetuates higher education’s caste system. Institutions serving large numbers of at-risk students will probably not qualify for lesser scrutiny since their students move through college at variance from traditional norms; the more variance, the deeper the scrutiny.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
There's a difference between having too much data versus conducting studies that
mislead with that data. The main argument about having too much data is that too
much is being spent (in time and money) collecting it. The main argument about
misleading data can be found in the many examples of how it is misleading us ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
People are flocking to free e-books and streaming movies at their public
libraries, but in the age of digital media, it’s hard to own and lend a digital
book ---
https://www.fastcompany.com/
How to Mislead With Statistics
David Giles: I think that R2 is one of the least
important statistics to include in our results, but we all do it
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/2019/10/reporting-r-squared-measure-for-count.html
(R2) - or its "adjusted" counterpart - when reporting the results of a least squares regression. Personally, I think that R2 is one of the least important statistics to include in our results, but we all do it. (See this previous post.)
If the regression model in question is linear (in the parameters) and includes an intercept, and if the parameters are estimated by Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), then R2 has a number of well-known properties. These include:
1. 0 ≤ R2 ≤ 1.
2. The value of R2 cannot decrease if we add regressors to the model.
3. The value of R2 is the same, whether we define this measure as the ratio of the "explained sum of squares" to the "total sum of squares" (RE2); or as one minus the ratio of the "residual sum of squares" to the "total sum of squares" (RR2).
4. There is a correspondence between R2 and a significance test on all slope parameters; and there is a correspondence between changes in (the adjusted) R2 as regressors are added, and significance tests on the added regressors' coefficients. (See here and here.)
5. R2 has an interpretation in terms of information content of the data.
6. R2 is the square of the (Pearson) correlation (RC2) between actual and "fitted" values of the model's dependent variable.
However, as soon as we're dealing with a model that excludes an intercept or is non-linear in the parameters, or we use an estimator other than OLS, none of the above properties are guaranteed.
For example, when reporting a linear model that's been estimated by Instrumental Variables, we get different R2 values depending on which of the two definitions noted in property 3 above is adopted. Similarly, when estimating Logit and Probit models (for instance), most econometrics packages report several "pseudo-R2" statistics, because there's no single measure that has all of the desirable features that we're used to in the linear model/OLS case.
So-called "count" data arise frequently in empirical economics. These are data that take values that are only non-negative integers, namely 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ........ Models for such data are often based on the Poisson or negative binomial distributions, although other distributions may also be used. Regressors enter the model by equating the mean of the chosen distribution to a positive function of these variables and their coefficients.
For instance, if the yi data (i = 1, 2, ...., n) are being modelled using a Poisson distribution with a mean of μ, then we typically assign μi = exp[xi'β], using familiar regression notation. The resulting non-linear model is then estimated by MLE (or quasi-MLE).Continued in article
Those Big Pickup Trucks and Cars: The Most Unsafe Vehicles on the Road
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/10/24/most-unsafe-cars-on-the-road/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter&utm_content=OCT282019a
Jensen
Comment
Last evening I watched a news clip of a big pickup truck crashing through the
wall of a store. Well inside the store the driver easily opened the truck door
and removed the license plates before briskly leaving the scene. It made me
wonder if he could've done the same had he similarly crashed lightweight car not
included in the above listing of unsafe vehicles. I've no basis to dispute the
above listing of unsafe heavy iron vehicles for passengers in those vehicles,
but it seems to me that most of the heavy versions are more unsafe for
passengers in other vehicles.
What might be more unsafe are the inebriated drivers of those big trucks.
Ransomware ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware
Also see
https://www.us-cert.gov/Ransomware
MIT:
Ransomware Hackers shut down Johannesburg’s networks once again;
In the United States, at least 80 state and local governments have been hit.
---
https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614630/hackers-shut-down-johannesburgs-networks-once-again/?utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement
Jensen
Comment
My neighbor down the road is a retired military officer. He and his wife only
use a computer now and then for online shopping and email. When they got hit
with a ransomware attack it was decided they did not have enough value lost to
pay the extortion fee.
My point here is that even the smallest of online users are vulnerable.
My neighbors' experience made me double my efforts to back up files and keep the backups offline. Fortunately, huge-capacity storage devices are relatively cheap these days. Backup gets easier if you avoid very long file names.
Yeah, I know that backing up to offline devices seems like a waste of time. But it's not really a waste of time.
Of course there's a problem with having to re-install software when you totally wipe your hard drive or replace your computer. My neighbors took the expensive route and replaced their computer --- and re-installed software. Heavier users may want two or more computers with their favorite software installed on each computer. This allows continued computing and networking in conjunction with backup files. However, I don't know any way to avoid the agony of installing software on a new computer.
I'm told that ransom fees for encryption keys are "relatively" low to entice paying the bad guys, although what is "low" Johannesburg is not what is a "low" $1,000 or so for a single family. I'm told the bad guys sometimes negotiate fees.
PC
World Says: "Don't negotiate with e-terrorists. Be a hero and rescue your
hostage PC"
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2084002/how-to-rescue-your-pc-from-ransomware.html
Jensen Comment
Easier said than done. although some invasions are much easier to remove than
others.
Viruses come and go, but ransomware attacks are probably here to stay for a long, long time.
Some
inexpensive defenses for ransomware attacks ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware#File_system_defenses_against_ransomware
Of course there are much more expensive and effective defenses that are used by concerned heavy users of computing systems. That's one reason they have expensive redundant hardware and why they pay for competent tech support staff.
Perils of Valuation: A unicorn massacre of the bursting of
the Not-Com Bubble today is exactly the opposite of what happened in 2000 (to
the Tech Bubble of the 1990s)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-dot-com-bubble/600232/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20191018&silverid-ref=NTk4MzY1OTg0MzY5S0
It is easy to look at today’s crop of sinking IPOs—like Uber, Lyft, and Peloton—or scuttled public offerings, like WeWork, and see an eerie resemblance to the dot-com bubble that popped in 2000.
· Both then and now, consumer-tech companies spent lavishly on advertising and struggled to find a path to profit.
· Both then and now, companies that bragged about their ability to change the world admitted suddenly that they were running out of money.
· Both then and now, the valuations of once-heralded tech enterprises were halved in a matter of weeks.
· Both then and now, there was a widespread sense of euphoria curdling into soberness, washed down with the realization that thousands of workers in once-promising firms were poised to lose their jobs.
But if you look closer, today’s correction isn’t much like the dot-com bubble at all. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that what’s happening today is the very opposite of the dot-com bubble.
Let’s first understand what exactly that bubble was: a mania of stock speculation, in which ordinary investors—from taxi drivers to Laundromat owners to shoe-shiners—bid up the price of internet-related companies for no good reason other than “because, internet.” Companies realized that they could boost their stock price by simply adding the prefix e- (as in “e-Bay”) or the suffix com (as in Amazon.com) to their corporate names to entice, and arguably fool, nonprofessionals. “Americans could hardly run an errand without picking up a stock tip,” The New York Times reported in its postmortem
As prices became untethered from reality, the Nasdaq index doubled in value between 1999 and 2000 without “any plausible candidate for fundamental news to support such a large revaluation,” as the economists J. Bradford DeLong and Konstantin Magin wrote in a paper on the bubble. The crash was equally swift and arbitrary. Between February 2000 and February 2002, the NASDAQ lost three-quarters of its value “again without substantial negative fundamental news,” DeLong and Magin wrote. By late 2000, more than $5 trillion in wealth had been wiped out. This sudden rise and sudden collapse in asset prices—without much change in information about the underlying assets—is the very definition of a bubble.
The current situation is different, in at least two important ways.
Continued in article
MIT: Cybercurrency is Not as Anonymous as Criminals Think
From a MIT Newsletter on October 17, 2019
Bitcoin surveillance helped feds take down a massive child abuse site
Law enforcement officials say tracked Bitcoin transactions to take down “the largest child sexual exploitation market by volume of content.” It’s a reminder that criminals who think Bitcoin is a foolproof way to cover their tracks are mistaken.
The news: US federal prosecutors have indicted 23-year-old Jong Woo Son of South Korea for operating a child sexual abuse site called Welcome To Video. In addition to Son, 337 of the site’s users—residing in the US and 11 other countries—have been arrested and charged.
Crypto-sleuthing: Users of the site traded Bitcoin for illicit content. Each new user would get a unique Bitcoin address. Special agents from the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit used Bitcoin surveillance techniques to track down the site’s server’s physical location in South Korea. An analysis of the server found that more than one million addresses were associated with the operation, according to the DOJ.
Bitcoin is not anonymous. It’s long been possible to track the flow of illicit crypto-money by applying sophisticated analytical tools to public blockchain data. Law enforcement officials can combine these with real-world clues to connect dots and even de-anonymize users.
October 18, 2019 reply from Eric Cohen
I may have mentioned on this list that, in my discussions about cyptocurrency and its
ERIC E. COHEN/Cohen Computer Consulting <eric@computercpa.com>
Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo Share Fiction's Prestigious Booker Prize
---
https://time.com/5700393/
Ranking of States According To State Worker Pension Crises ---
https://247wallst.com/special-
50 Wisconsin Funded Ratio 102.6% (best)
49 South Dakota Funded Ratio 100.1%
48 Tennessee Funded Ratio 96.5%
47 New York Funded Ratio 94.5%
46 Idaho Funded Ratio 91.3%
45 North Carolina Funded Ratio 91.7%
44 Utah Funded Ratio 90.3%
43 Nebraska Funded Ratio 90.3%
42 Washington Funded Ratio 89.6%
41 Oregon Funded Ratio 83.1%
. . .
10 Massachusetts Funded Ratio 59.9%
09 Pennsylvania Funded Ratio 55.3%
08 Hawaii Funded Ratio 54..8%
07 South Carolina Funded Ratio 54.3%
06 Rhode Island Funded Ratio 53.7%
05 Colorado Funded Ratio 47.1%
04 Connecticut Funded Ratio 45.7%
03 Illinois Funded Ratio 38.4%
02 New Jersey Funded Ratio35.8%
01 Kentucky Funded Ratio 33.9% (Worst)
Causes of shortfall range from overgenerous benefits (think
fraud) to poor investment performance --
https://247wallst.com/special-
One common type of fraud is to outrageously bump salaries just before retirement to boost pensions
USA Cities With High Rates of Vacant Homes (sort of ghost
towns) ---
How to Mislead With Statistics
Ranking 46 States by in a Different Kind of Way in Terms of Numbers of
Regulatory Restrictions (enough red tape to reach the moon and back)
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/government-regulation-new-numerical-measure-ranks-states/
Jensen
Comment
This is an innovative attempt to rank states on the complicated topic of
regulation. The problem is that a given regulation can be long and complicated
or short and sweet. Further more a a relatively short regulation (e.g., Thou
shall not kill) can be extremely complicated in terms of legal, religious, and
ethical complications that more complicated regulations (e.g., the Federal Tax
Code) seek to clarify.
The main take away is that the most populated states have the most regulatory red tape --- which is hardly surprising. For example, it's not surprising that New York has very complicated regulations regarding securities transaction. Is it surprising in a state that contains the New York Stock Exchange? It's not surprising that those states also have by far the most lawyers, accountants, police enforcers, and state regulators.
Some states (think California) have made voting extremely complicated by putting so many complex regulatory referendums on ballots. Both people who can and cannot read are led like lemmings by biased media outlets and wealthy lobbyists. Often regulations are exact opposites of theire written titles.
A friend (now deceased) living in Dallas became relatively
wealthy by veering from an accounting career to a career in regulation
compliance ---
http://www.willyancey.com/
He claimed that this was a better career path for him than accountancy. His
specialty was a niche in stratified sampling.
Compliance Training --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_training
LeBron
James weighed in on the NBA’s China controversy. Now it seems like everyone’s
mad at him.---
Walter E. Williams: Intolerance in Academia
---
Car Ownership Just Keeps on Increasing ---
TurboTax spent 20 years fighting to stop
Americans from filing taxes for free ---
Jensen Comment
This irritated me so much that I abandoned TurboTax years ago and use equivalent
software ---
https://www.hrblock.com/tax-software/
Tools Across Areas of Digital Life ---
Parents changing pleas as prosecutors threaten more charges in college
admissions case ---
. . .
In all, more than 50 people have been charged in the case, which prosecutors have said is the largest ever of its kind.
The stable of defendants includes nearly three dozen parents, as well as college athletic coaches and others accused of working with William "Rick" Singer, a Newport Beach consultant who has admitted to running a wide-ranging scheme in which he paid off accomplices to rig test scores for the children of his wealthy clients or outright bought them spots at elite schools. Singer has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
Many of the parents and other alleged accomplices pleaded guilty early on in the case, which won them more favorable treatment from prosecutors, who minimized the number of charges and agreed to seek lenient sentences. By contrast, the government has played hardball against those who maintained their innocence, adding the money laundering conspiracy charge and, now, threatening to up the ante even more with a bribery charge.
The charge of federal program bribery can be brought against someone who is accused of paying a bribe and receiving in exchange something valued at $5,000 or more from an organization or agency that receives $10,000 or more in funding from the federal government. A parent who paid Singer for either the test cheating or the athletic recruit schemes would meet the standard.
The reversal of Henriquez, formerly the chairman and chief executive of Hercules Capital, who is accused of paying nearly half a million dollars to rig college entrance exams for two daughters and have one of them admitted to Georgetown as a fake tennis recruit, is notable given the scope of his alleged misdeeds.
A federal judge who has sentenced 10 of Singer's former clients has indicated that parents such as Henriquez who exploited the testing and athletic recruitment scams should expect considerable prison terms.
Agustin Huneeus Jr., a Napa vintner, was sentenced to five months in prison, the longest sentence handed down in the case so far. He admitted conspiring to fix his daughter's SAT score and to have her admitted to the University of Southern California as a bogus water polo player. Huneeus, however, accepted an early deal offered by prosecutors in Boston and avoided being indicted on an additional charge of money laundering conspiracy.
Henriquez, a resident of Atherton, Calif., was charged along with his wife, Elizabeth. There is no indication in court records that Elizabeth Henriquez intends to change her not guilty plea, and her attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, Janavs announced her plan to plead guilty. The Newport Beach woman once served as an executive at her family's food manufacturing company. She is also accused of paying Singer for the test cheating and athletic recruit aspects of the scam, in which she sought to have her daughter admitted to USC as a purported beach volleyball recruit.
Their moves came a day after Douglas Hodge, the former chief executive of bond manager Pimco, said he would plead guilty.
A spokesman for the law firm representing Manuel Henriquez said his attorneys weren't available for comment. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Boston declined to comment.
Beginning in fall 2015 and continuing through summer 2016, the Henriquezes paid Singer a total of $450,000, and Manuel Henriquez used his influence at his alma mater, Northeastern University, to ensure the child of another of Singer's clients was admitted to the school, prosecutors alleged in the indictment to which Manuel Henriquez will plead guilty.
In return, Singer rigged ACT, SAT and SAT subject tests for the couple's daughters. Singer's accomplice, Mark Riddell, a Harvard-educated administrator at IMG Academy, told prosecutors he sat alongside the older daughter in October 2015 and told her the answers to her SAT; afterward, Riddell said he "gloated" with the girl and her mother, court papers say.
Singer also arranged with Gordon Ernst, Georgetown's former head tennis coach, to misrepresent the couple's older daughter to the school as a promising tennis recruit, according to the indictment. Ernst, who left Georgetown in 2017 after the school said it discovered "irregularities" in his recruiting practices, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering.
The girl submitted an essay to Georgetown that, according to an affidavit for her parents' arrest, read, in part, "Being a part of Georgetown women's tennis team has always been a dream of mine. For years I have spent three - four hours a day grinding out on and off court workouts with the hopes of becoming successful enough to play college tennis especially at Georgetown."
While she told the school she was ranked among the top 50 players in her class by the United States Tennis Association, prosecutors said in court papers that "at her best, she appears to have ranked 207th in Northern California in the under-12 girls division, with an overall win/loss record of 2-8."
After she was admitted to Georgetown in 2016, her parents wired from the Henriquez Family Trust a purported charitable gift of $400,000 to Singer's foundation, which prosecutors say had little, if any, charitable purpose and was used instead to funnel money from his clients to corrupt coaches, test administrators and proctors.
After Singer arranged to fix an ACT exam for the Henriquezes' younger child, he initially intended to charge the couple $75,000, prosecutors said. Instead, they allege, Manuel Henriquez used his pull at Northeastern University - where he is a prominent alumnus and former member of a governing board - to usher the child of another of Singer's clients into the school.
After the applicant was admitted, his family paid Singer $250,000, court papers say.
Singer was apprehended in September 2018 and began cooperating with law enforcement. He met with the Henriquezes in their Atherton home in January, wearing a wire. He told them, falsely, that one of his accomplices had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.
The grand jury, Singer told the couple, was hearing evidence about students from out of state taking their standardized tests at the Houston high school where the Henriquezes' younger daughter allegedly took her ACT. Singer said he wanted to be sure all former clients had their stories straight if anyone inquired about the school.
"Anybody calls me," Manuel Henriquez assured him, according to a transcript of the recorded conversation filed in federal court, "the response is that, 'I'm not gonna comment regarding my daughter's Houston issue.'"
"I'm not gonna comment," he added. "We gotta be very careful on just getting an inbound call from somebody. 'I have no idea who you are. So I'm not responding to an inbound call from anybody.'"
Amid the flurry of activity, the 10th parent among those who pleaded guilty early on in the case was sentenced Friday.
Robert Flaxman, a Beverly Hills real estate developer, was sentenced to a month in prison for paying Singer $75,000 to rig his daughter's entrance test score.
Chronicle of Higher Education: How a Rotten System Enabled Rick
Singer’s Fraud ---
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/2019-10-17-singer?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&cid=cr&source=ams&sourceId=296279
Jensen Question
I can understand how admissions officials (think coaches admitting non-athletes)
were manipulated, but I do not understand how SAT and ACT scores were altered. I
suspect that the 50 cases are just the tip of the iceberg of admissions fraud.
My respect for Northeastern went up a lot. Until now I didn't think it was all that hard to get into Northeastern that resides in the shadows of Harvard, MIT, and Boston's other better-known universities.
How to Mislead With Statistics
Do Most Academics Fib on Their Resumes?
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Do-Most-Academics-Fib-on-Their/247376?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&cid=at&source=ams&sourceId=296279
Maybe it’s a tiny embellishment — say, turning yourself into a first author rather than the second. You might list an article that hasn’t yet been accepted by a journal as “in press.” Or maybe it’s a bigger lie, like inventing a paper that doesn’t exist.
A recent study of 180 academic curricula vitae found that 56 percent that claimed to have at least one publication contained at least one unverifiable or inaccurate publication, and it suggests that CV falsification could be much more common than scholars committed to professional integrity might hope. The study is small — the 56 percent reflects only 79 CVs, of 141 that claimed to have at least one publication. The researchers behind the study make no presumption as to whether the errors were intentional.
While it has popped up in a few high-profile cases, CV falsification is an instance of academic misconduct that might not make as many headlines as fudging data or plagiarism. But the difficulty of detecting it could make it all the more insidious.
The findings “are concerning enough that they would warrant a larger, more comprehensive look at what’s going on,” said Trisha Phillips, a co-author of a paper describing the study and an associate professor of political science at West Virginia University who studies research ethics. She and her colleagues write in the paper that in the “increasingly social world of science, researchers need to trust their collaborators,” but if what they’ve found is any indication, “this trust might not be well placed.”
‘Inaccurate in a Self-Promoting Way’
One high-profile case of CV falsification occurred at Phillips’s home institution in 2014. West Virginia University had been poised to promote Anoop Shankar, a rising star in epidemiology, to department chair when officials found that Shankar had crafted more than a few of his credentials. Turns out he didn’t have a Ph.D., nor was he the author of many of the papers listed on his CV. After the Shankar incident, and a few of their own encounters with CV falsification, Phillips and her co-authors — R. Kyle Saunders, Jeralynn Cossman, and Elizabeth Heitman — were spurred to explore the prevalence of such misrepresentation.
A literature review turned up plenty of findings on falsification in health sciences, including that an average of 22 percent of applicants to medical residency and fellowship programs had falsified research citations. There didn’t seem to be any research in other areas of academe, so Phillips’s team decided to run their pilot study.
With permission from the institution in question — an unnamed land-grant doctoral university — they collected 1,837 unsuccessful applicants’ CVs from the 2015-16 academic year and reviewed a randomly selected 180. Of those, 141 claimed to have published at least one work — a journal article, book, or book chapter — and 79 of those were deemed “unverifiable or inaccurate in a self-promoting way.”
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I don't disagree that a relatively high proportion of academics cheat on their
resumes. But sample size of 180 means that many disciplines had two or less test
cases. This is important, because I think cheating varies somewhat by
discipline. For example, in disciplines like medical science where outside
research funds are readily available, there's "gold in them thar hills." We need
a much larger sample possibly with stratified sampling.
It's much more common for academics to cheat in other ways. One of the most common ways these days is for a given publication with multiple authors to have highly variable academic contribution to that particular article. Much more common is for these authors to write multiple articles where the academic contributions vary between articles to more evenly spread workloads while increasing the odds that at least one of the papers will get published and to lengthen the publication record for all authors if more than one of the papers gets published. Sometimes a senior author wanting to help a non-tenured colleague get tenure will tack that colleagues name to a paper where the colleague contributed very little other than proof reading.
It's also common for one or more joint authors to contribute to a paper in a questionable academic way. One of the joint authors may have provided funding and little else to the academic contents of a particular paper. One of the joint authors may have a stellar reputation that helps a paper get published when that author actually contributed little else to the paper. One of the joint authors may have had access to the data or statistical testing/programming while contributing little else to the paper.
Suitcase Paper
And there are ways of cheating other than publishing. An extreme case is to have
authored a pretty good paper with no intent of publishing the paper. Instead it
is a suitcase paper. Then that paper can be presented at multiple conferences
over time, especially conferences in popular tourist sites in Europe, Canada,
New Zealand, Australia, etc. I know one professor who had a suitcase paper that
he dusted off every time he wanted to buy a new Mercedes. He would then get his
university to pay for his participation in an obscure European conference where
he bought a new car, tooled around Europe for a bit, and then had the car
shipped back to the USA when he could save money relative to what a new Mercedes
costs in the USA.
Bob Jensen's threads on academic cheating are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm
NYT: Naomi Wolf’s Publisher Cancels U.S. Release of ‘Outrages’ ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/books/naomi-wolf-outrages.html?cid=db&source=ams&sourceId=296279
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has canceled the publication of Naomi Wolf’s book “Outrages” in the United States, months after errors were uncovered during a radio interview.
In “Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” Ms. Wolf examined how Victorian laws criminalized same-sex relations. In May, during a radio interview with the BBC host Matthew Sweet, she told him that she had found evidence of “several dozen executions” of men accused of having sex with other men. But Mr. Sweet pointed out that Ms. Wolf was misunderstanding the legal term “death recorded,” saying it meant that the men had been pardoned. “I don’t think any of the executions you’ve identified here actually happened,” he told her.
. . .
Ms. Wolf confirmed the parting but said in an email that “Outrages” would come out in the United States “in due course” and that she was preparing it for paperback publication in Britain.
Publishers generally rely on authors to fact-check their work, but instances like these — one of several this year in which high-profile books like “Merchants of Truth,” by the former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, and “Siege: Trump Under Fire,” by the journalist Michael Wolff, have been criticized for inaccuracies — have ignited a debate about whether publishers should be held accountable for these errors.
How to Mislead With Statistics
U.S. Funding for University Research Continues to Slide ---
https://itif.org/publications/2019/10/21/us-funding-university-research-continues-slide
The United States continues to fall further behind world leaders in funding for university research. To reverse course, it should increase support by $45 billion per year and provide stronger incentives for businesses to increase their investments.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Research universities play a critical role in generating innovation-based economic growth and driving U.S. global innovation leadership.
According to the most recent OECD data, the United States has slid to 28th of 39 nations in government funding for university research as a share of GDP, with the 12 leading governments investing more than double the U.S. investment.
Between 2011 and 2017, U.S. government funding for university research as a share of GDP fell by nearly a quarter—0.06 percentage points. On average, nations decreased 0.03 percent of GDP during that time.
Congress should commit to increasing university research support by $45 billion per year, which would place the United States among the top seven nations in the world in funding for university research.
Congress should also expand the energy-related collaborative research and experimentation tax credit to apply to any field of university research investment—not just energy research—made by businesses.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
How can these statistics possibly be misleading? One huge way is in failing to count much of the research funding. For example, in the USA universities have undergraduate and graduate business programs to a much larger extent than colleges and universities in the rest of the world. Indeed the business college on a USA campus is often the largest college on a university campus, especially in most state-supported universities. There are also large humanities programs such as modern languages. Whereas science and engineering colleges on campus rely heavily on government and business research grants, the colleges of business and humanities have few such grants counted in the above study as "research." However, in colleges of business and humanities the tenure and performances of faculty are heavily weighted on research performance. Over the years teaching loads of upwards of five courses per semester dropped to two or three courses per semester to support the research mission. In graduate schools of business it is now common to only require one or two course preparations per year. Plus most universities fund sabbatical leaves and summer research.
My point here is that in the USA much of the funding for business and humanities research did not get counted in the above study. Faculty instead get teaching relief and other university stipends that were overlooked in the above study. In other parts of the world business education programs, if they exist at all on campus, are part of science divisions (think economics) where government research grants are more readily available than they are for business colleges in the USA.
If research funding is so great in Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark why don't the Chinese and Russians spend billions more trying to steal their research relative to what is spent trying to steal the research of the USA?
Apart from university campuses, the above study ignores much of the research taking place in business and government in the USA. The problem is that research funding is confounded with funding of other job duties. The best example here is product development in business firms where research is only part of the entire heavily-funded total operation of product development. It's virtually impossible to separate what part of product funding is development and what part is comprised of other aspects of product development.
The above study ignores output volumes in terms of research publications of the largest countries like the USA, China, and India. My hunch (strictly a guess at this point) is that the USA, China, and India produce more research publications than the rest of the world combined, although counting home countries of authors gets complicated because of the rise in joint authorships between USA authors and foreign authors.
Thirdly, the above study ignores funding of research facilities (link science and computing laboratories in universities and business firms) where the USA dominates.
If the other nations of the world are doing such a great job funding research where are their new patents?
New Drug Patents by Country ---
https://www.americanactionforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016-05-17-Drug-Patents-Checkup.pdf
Over the past half century, the United States has been the birthplace of the majority of the world’s biomedical innovations.1 Despite a global slowdown in the development of new medical interventions, due to the scientific shift towards more complex biologic treatments, innovation in the U.S. has remained relatively steady thanks to strong financial incentives to invest in research and development (R&D). In fact, the below chart may underrepresent American contributions to pharmacological breakthroughs in the past two decades as a result of U.S. corporations relocating their headquarters to Switzerland and the U.K. to take advantage of those countries’ lower corporate tax rates.
Jensen Comment
This does not justify some of the evil pricing schemes of big pharma in the USA,
especially pricing by patent trolls. But it does illustrate how complicated the
invention of biomedical innovations (that includes more than drugs) becomes,
especially when comparing the USA with the more highly populated European Union.
Why doesn't the EU lead in discovery of biomedical innovations? Why aren't
Russia and China inventing new biomedical innovations as fast as they are
inventing technology innovations?
I think that the highly defective and misleading ranking of nations on the basis of research funding is secretly political in an effort to get lawmakers to greatly increase federal funding of research in the USA. It would be more meaningful if it did not leave out so much data on the actual funding of research in the USA.
A Tale of Two Plagiarists: "As it turns out, at least a couple
passages weren’t written by Rieff or by Sontag" ---
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191011-Gutkin-Sontag?cid=db&source=ams&sourceId=296279
A more common form of cheating is to have a spouse or significant other do
the academic work.
Linebacker's
Wife Says She Wrote His Papers (and took two online courses for him)
The wife of a star University of South Florida linebacker says she wrote his
academic papers and took two online classes for him. The accusations against Ben
Moffitt, who had been promoted by the university to the news media as a family
man, were made in e-mail messages to The Tampa Tribune, and followed Mr.
Moffitt’s filing for divorce. Mr. Moffitt called the accusations “hearsay,” and
a university spokesman said the matter was a “domestic issue.” If it is found
that Mr. Moffitt committed academic fraud, the newspaper reported, the
university could be subject to an NCAA investigation.
"Linebacker's Wife Says She Wrote His Papers," Chronicle
of Higher Education News
Blog, January 5, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3707/linebackers-wife-says-she-wrote-his-papers?at
Jensen Comment
If Florida investigates this and discovers it was true, I wonder if Moffitt's
diploma will be revoked. Somehow I doubt it.
Bob Jensen's threads on celebrities who plagiarize or otherwise cheat
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Celebrities
San Jose State University and IBM to Collaborate (on curriculum content)
---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/10/21/san-jose-state-university-and-ibm-collaborate?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a161f4175c-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a161f4175c-197565045&mc_cid=a161f4175c&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Do women managers keep firms out of trouble? Evidence from corporate
litigation and policies ---
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165410118301095
Chronicle of Higher Education: Dipping Our Knives Into Harold
Bloom’s Body ---
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191015-SiderBloom?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&cid=cr&source=ams&sourceId=296279
From a MIT Newsletter on October 21, 2019
AI warfare is beginning to dominate military strategy in the US and China, but in an article for the latest issue of MIT Technology Review, Will Knight questions whether the technology is ready.
“Last March, Chinese researchers announced an ingenious and potentially devastating attack against one of America’s most prized technological assets—a Tesla electric car,” writes Knight. The team had found several ways to fool the car’s AI algorithms. “By subtly altering the data fed to the car’s sensors, the researchers were able to bamboozle and bewilder the artificial intelligence that runs the vehicle.” In one example, “lane markings on the road were ever-so-slightly modified to confuse the autonomous driving system so that it drove over them and into the lane for oncoming traffic.”
The moral of the story? “Deep learning” algorithms are surprisingly easy to fool if you find their weak points. AI is seen as the next big military advantage around the world, powering such things as attack drones and systems for analyzing satellite imagery or intercepted communications. Yet as the Tesla hack shows, an enemy that knows how an AI algorithm works could render it useless or even turn it against its owners. Read the full story here.
Larry Summers --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers
Summers on the Wealth Tax ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/10/summers-on-the-wealth-tax.html
Larry Summers is my favorite liberal economist because even while maintaining his liberal values he never stops thinking like an economist. That makes him suspect among the left but it means that he is always worth listening to. The video below with Saez, Summers and Mankiw (with Rampell moderating) is excellent throughout. I cribbed a number of points from Summers:
“I have studied last week’s twitter war very carefully and I have to say that I am 98.5% convinced by the critics that the Zucman-Saez data are substantially inaccurate and misleading.”
The arguments around political power are not persuasive. Most of what is wrong with politics is because that is what the people want (I’m filling in a bit here from comments throughout). A wealth tax does nothing about corporate lobbying and would increase the incentive to give to political organizations. If you cut wealth at the top by 30% that wouldn’t change relative political power in the slightest.
Wealth is up in large part because interest rates are down which means that permanent income hasn’t increased.
Forced savings programs like social security and unemployment insurance mean that people at the bottom need to save less and thus their wealth falls even as their welfare increases.
A wealth tax increases the incentive to consume instead of save and invest.
On employee stock ownership plans: “When you put workers in control of firms and you give them substantial control–see Israeli kibbutz’s, see Yugoslav cooperatives, see universities where faculties have a powerful voice–the one thing you do not get is expansion. You get more for the people who are already there. That does not seem to be an attractive position for progressives.”
In the Q&A Summers just goes to town on Saez when Saez claims 90% tax rates are a great American invention. “The people who were around in the Kennedy administration who were at least as progressive as you are were united in the belief that 90% tax rates were a bad idea….The number of people who paid those 90% tax rates was trivial and it wasn’t because there weren’t a lot of rich people.” Greg Mankiw, who gives a nice parable in his remarks, has to stifle a laugh as Summers lets rip.
Salesforce --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salesforce.com
How Salesforce (with lots of computer coders) Closed the Pay Gap Between
Men and Women ---
https://www.wired.com/story/how-salesforce-closed-pay-gap-between-men-women/?bxid=5c7498e024c17c67f89ebcae&cndid=31837029&utm_brand=biz&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=Thematic_Business_10212019&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_term=Thematic_Business
Jensen Comment
One way to reduce the pay/work gap is to create jobs that are friendly to
working mothers who can do certain types of professional work from their homes
(think computer coding, accounting, tax return preparation, report
editing/writing, etc.). The problem is that many (most?) jobs require physical
presence on site (think restaurant jobs, hotel jobs, construction jobs, vehicle
driving, and most jobs in the military).
Studies show that in some careers (think physicians) men earn more than women due to willingness to work more overtime hours.
One thing that is unfair is regulation (think a minimum wage) that increases the pay for workers but sometimes eliminates jobs such as the minimum wage for cafes and taxi companies in small town restaurants that simply can't continue when having to pay higher minimum wages. The phrase "pay gap" is not ipso facto a bad thing in all circumstances, especially when the alternative is high employment.
Sure Salesforce closed the gender pay gap, but many of its workers needed in Salesforce Tower in San Francisco cannot afford to live in San Francisco. And generally it's safer for men to live in substandard urban housing (think the back of a parking lot van) than women. Hence the gender "pay gap" takes on many forms.
Major Public Library System Will Boycott Macmillan E-books ---
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/81475-this-major-public-library-system-will-boycott-macmillan-e-books-will-others-follow.html
From the Scout Report on October 17, 2019
Kakoune --- http://kakoune.org/
Kakoune is a source code editor for the console inspired by the venerable Vim editor. As with many similar tools, Kakoune is modal, featuring an "insert" mode where text is entered and a "command" mode that allows users to make bulk changes to files. In command mode, Kakoune works using multiple selections on which commands can be performed. Users enter a series of filtering and narrowing commands...
DD-WRT --- https://dd-wrt.com/
DD-WRT is a Linux-based open source firmware for a wide variety of wireless routers. This firmware supports hundreds of devices from dozens of vendors. For many devices, DD-WRT provides updates after the original, vendor-supplied firmware ceases to receive such updates. Often, DD-WRT also includes features not present in the vendor-supplied firmware. Some examples of features include: traffic...
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth ---
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25388/the-promise-of-adolescence-realizing-opportunity-for-all-youth
Getting Wise About Online Safety --- https://www.cyberwise.org/
Family Online Safety Institute --- https://www.fosi.org/
Tools Across Areas of Digital Life ---
https://dcrp.berkman.harvard.edu/
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
Ted Talk: After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up
---
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_after_billions_of_years_of_monotony_the_universe_is_waking_up?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-10-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image
International Barcode of Life (Biodiversity) --- https://ibol.org/
Binary, Pixels, And Data, Oh My! Studying How Computers
Store Information ---
https://www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/how-computers-store-information/
IPCC: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a
Changing Climate ---
https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/
Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/
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
Miles Kimball on John Locke's Second Treatise ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/10/20/miles-kimball-on-john-lockes-second-treatise
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Law
Math Tutorials
Binary, Pixels, And Data, Oh My! Studying How Computers Store Information ---
https://www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/how-computers-store-information/
With Category Theory, Mathematics Escapes From Equality ---
https://www.quantamagazine.org/with-category-theory-mathematics-escapes-from-equality-20191010/
Soon after I started reading this article I decided my brain is full.
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
Disability History Association --- http://dishist.org/
Disability History Museum --- http://www.disabilitymuseum.org
VISUAL CULTURE IN SPANISH AMERICA, 1520-1820 --- https://vistas.ace.fordham.edu/
Miles Kimball on John Locke's Second Treatise ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2019/10/20/miles-kimball-on-john-lockes-second-treatise
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
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/
October 19, 2019
· Recall: FDA Sees Trace Asbestos in J&J Baby Powder
· Juul Halts Sale of Fruit, Dessert Vape Flavors
· Deaths Due to Suicide, Homicide on the Rise Among U.S. Youth
· Why Maintaining a Healthy Weight Is Important in Adulthood
· Certain Blood Pressure Meds Tied to Suicide Risk in Study
October 21, 2019
· Teal Pumpkins Offer Allergy Safe Halloween Stops
· Mercury, Feces Found in Cheap, Bogus Cosmetics
· Vaccine Exemptions for Kindergartners Still Rising
October 22, 2019
· Good News for Parents: Many Preemie Babies Grow Up Fine
· Many Parents Not Following Safe-Sleep Advice for Babies
· Recall: Walmart Frozen Sausage for Salmonella Risk
October 24, 2019
· Disneyland Visitors May Have Been Exposed to Measles
· Banned Trans Fats Linked to Higher Dementia Risk: Study
· New Drug on the Horizon for Flu's Ills?
· Obesity May Be Upping Rates of Pancreatic Cancer Worldwide
· FDA May Put Strong Warning on Breast Implants
October 25, 2019
· Exercise Can Lower Older Women's Fracture Risk
· Kids' Trampoline Injuries Take Another Bounce Upwards
· Always Removes Female Symbol From Pad Wrapper
October 28, 2019
· FDA: Plant Closings Could Cause Device Shortages
· Could More Coffee Bring a Healthier Microbiome?
· Most Popular BP Drugs Might Not Be the Best
Ten Ways to Increase Your Social Security Payments ---
https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/social-security/slideshows/ways-to-increase-your-social-security-payments
Six Frequently Asked Social Security Disability Benefit Questions ---
https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/social-security/articles/frequently-asked-social-security-disability-benefit-questions
Jensen Comment
Most (not all) people who receive Social Security disability benefits are also
eligible for Medicare irrespective of their ages.
Medical Tests Every Man Should Have and When ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/10/21/medical-tests-every-man-should-have-and-when/2/
Then again maybe and maybe not
Medical Tests Every Woman Should Have and When ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/10/21/medical-tests-every-woman-should-have-and-when/2/
Then again maybe and maybe not
Too many medical tests may harm, not help, older patients ---
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/health/medical-screening-older-patients-partner/index.html
Too Many Medical Tests, Too Little Care?
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/opinion/too-many-medical-tests-too-little-care.html
Jensen Comment
In my non-expert opinion, the lawyers are causing too many medical tests as
doctors become more and more paranoid about being sued for medical malpractice
coupled with thinking by patients that they want their doctors to cover all
bases as long as third party insurance will foot the bill. And yet most of us
are not expert enough to know when tests are not needed versus really needed. .
It all becomes hopelessly complicated, and it can be very expensive to seek out
second and third opinions. I think some (not all) patients pressure their
doctors into prescribing expensive medications that are advertised in the media.
The problem is that conditional "not all" which is where the experts come into
the equation.
In any case don't listen to me if and when it seems like I'm offering medical advice. Offering medical advice is something I try to avoid even though I encounter a lot of medical advice in my Web surfing.and pass along medical "tidbits."
I just had my flu shot today. It's probably a good idea to get a flu shot for most people, but never make decisions on my advice about most anything, including financial advice.
My best advice is to behave like our best academics. Seek out information on all sides before making decisions on most anything. And when it comes to medical advice, your physician is probably the one to listen to a the first level of protecting your body. But surf the Web and seek added information beyond what you hear from your doctor. But don't just jump on everything you learn on television.
And be skeptical of anecdotal evidence --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
And be skeptical about statistical evidence ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
The Guardian: Video Game Addiction is Real ---
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/22/mozart-video-game-music-composer-eimear-noone
Disability History Association --- http://dishist.org/
Disability History Museum --- http://www.disabilitymuseum.org
MIT: Meet the wounded veteran who got a (fully functional)
penis transplant ---
https://www.technologyreview.
Acting changes the brain: it’s how actors get lost in a role ---
https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-changes-the-brain-its-how-actors-get-lost-in-a-role?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0b29a9b655-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_24_03_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-0b29a9b655-68951505
If a little fantasy roleplay can lead to a morphing of one’s sense of self, then what must it be like for professional actors, and especially so-called method actors, who follow the teachings of the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski and truly embody the parts they play?
There is certainly anecdotal evidence that actors experience a blending of their real self with their assumed characters. For instance, Benedict Cumberbatch said that, while he enjoyed playing a character as complex as Sherlock Holmes, there is also ‘a kickback. I do get affected by it. There’s a sense of being impatient. My mum says I’m much curter with her when I’m filming Sherlock.’
Mark Seton, a researcher in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, has even coined the provocative term ‘post-dramatic stress disorder’ to describe the sometimes difficult, lasting effects experienced by actors who lose themselves in a role. ‘Actors may often prolong addictive, codependent and, potentially, destructive habits of the characters they have embodied,’ he writes.
But some commentators are skeptical about all this. For example, Samuel Kampa of Fordham University in New York City argued on Aeon recently that the notion of character immersion was exaggerated, and that actors ‘don’t literally forget who they are, since their actual beliefs and desires remain the same’.
Until recently, this debate over whether actors literally lose themselves in their roles was largely a matter of conjecture. However, a pair of research papers in psychology published this year has provided some concrete evidence, and results suggest that actors’ sense of self is changed profoundly by their characters.
In one paper, published in Royal Society Open Science, a team led by Steven Brown at McMaster University in Ontario recruited 15 young Canadian actors trained in the Stanislavski approach, and scanned their brains while the actors assumed the role of either Romeo or Juliet, depending on their sex. The actors spent some time getting into character for the balcony scene, and then, while they lay in the scanner, the researchers presented them with a series of personal questions, such as ‘Would you go to a party you were not invited to?’ and ‘Would you tell your parents if you fell in love?’ The actors’ task was to improvise their responses covertly in their heads, while embodying their fictional character.
The researchers then looked at the actors’ brain activity while they were in role, as compared with other scanning sessions in which they answered similar questions either as themselves, or on behalf of someone they knew well (a friend or relative), in which case they were to take a third-person perspective (covertly responding ‘he/she would’ etc). Crucially, being in role as Romeo or Juliet was associated with a distinct pattern of brain activity not seen in the other conditions, even though they too involved thinking about intentions and emotions and/or taking the perspective of another.
In particular, acting was associated with the strongest deactivation in regions in the front and midline of the brain that are involving in thinking about the self. ‘This might suggest that acting, as a neurocognitive phenomenon, is a suppression of self processing,’ the researchers said. Another result was that acting was associated with less deactivation of a region called the precuneus, located further to the rear of the brain. Typically, activity in this area is reduced by focused attention (such as during meditation), and the researchers speculated that perhaps the raised activity in the precuneus while acting was related to the split of resources required to embody an acting role – ‘the double consciousness that acting theorists talk about’.
In fact, if anything, these new brain-scan findings – the first time that neuroimaging has been used to study acting – suggest that the process of losing the self occurs rather easily. There was a fourth condition in the study, in which the actors were simply asked to respond as themselves, but with a British accent. They were explicitly instructed not to assume the identity of a British person, yet merely imitating a British accent led to a pattern of brain activity similar to that seen for acting. ‘[E]ven when a character is not being explicitly portrayed, gestural changes through personal mimicry can be a first step towards the embodiment of a character and the retraction of the self’s resources,’ the researchers said.
That last finding, indicating the ease with which the self can be weakened or overshadowed, jibes with another paper, published recently in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General by a team at Dartmouth College and Princeton University, led by Meghan Meyer. Across several studies, these researchers asked volunteers to first rate their own personalities, memories or physical attributes, and then to perform the same task from the perspective of another person. For instance, they might score the emotionality of various personal memories, and then rate how a friend or relative would have experienced those same events. Or they would rate how much various character terms applied to themselves, and then how much they matched the personality of a friend.
After taking the perspective of another, the volunteers scored themselves once again: the consistent finding was that their self-knowledge was now changed – their self-scores had shifted to become more similar to those they’d given for someone else. For instance, if they had initially said the trait term ‘confident’ was only moderately related to themselves and then rated the term as being strongly related to a friend’s personality, when they came to rescore themselves, they now tended to see themselves as more confident. Remarkably, this morphing of the self with another was still apparent even if a 24-hour gap was left between taking someone else’s perspective and re-rating oneself.
Continued in article
Humor for October 2019
I put this in the humor section, because it reads like a joke
Five-Year Old Scores a Touchdown; Coach Facing a $500 Fine and Possible Two-Game
Suspension ---
https://jborden.com/2019/10/20/five-year-old-scores-a-touchdown-coach-facing-a-500-fine-and-possible-two-game-suspension/
Beware Ads That Rhyme, They’ll Get You Every Time ---
https://jborden.com/2019/10/22/beware-ads-that-rhyme-theyll-get-you-every-time/
Ogden Nash Quotations ---
https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/ogden-nash-207.php
True Story: Hitman hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman
who hires hitman who tells police ---
https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/23/hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-tells-police-10971438/?ito=cbshare
Five hitmen have been jailed for attempted murder, after each one avoided carrying out the contract themselves so they could make a profit.
Chinese businessman Tan Youhui was looking for a hitman to take out a competitor, Wei Mou, and was willing to pay 2 million yuan (£218,000) to get the job done.
The hitman that Mr Youhui hired, decided to offer the job to another hitman, for half the original price.
The second hitman then subcontracted to another hitman, who then subcontracted to a fourth, who gave the job to a fifth.
However, hitman number five was so incensed at how much the value of the contract had fallen, that he told the target to fake his own death, which eventually led to the police finding out about the plot, Beijing News reporte
Humor October 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q3.htm#Humor1019.htm
Humor September 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q3.htm#Humor0919.htm
Humor August 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q3.htm#Humor0819.htm
Humor July 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q3.htm#Humor0719.htm
Humor June 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q2.htm#Humor0619.htm
Humor May 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q2.htm#Humor0519.htm
Humor April 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q2.htm#Humor0419.htm
Humor March 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q1.htm#Humor0319.htm
Humor February 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q1.htm#Humor0219.htm
Humor January 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q1.htm#Humor0119.htm
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
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