Tidbits on December 31, 2020
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

My Photographs:  Year 2020 in Review
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/ErikaBob/01/2020Review.htm

 

Tidbits on December 31, 2020
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Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

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

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

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

Video: Tesla Assembly Line Beginning with Coils of Aluminum ---
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8_lfxPI5ObM?rel= 
If this does not change the way we teach direct labor vs. mfg. overhead costing nothing will

Animated timeline shows how Silicon Valley became a $2.8 trillion neighborhood ---
History of Silicon Valley in one animated timeline - Business Insider
It began in the 19th century.

Aerial View of Sugar Hill, NH --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ATDjsJUi7M

Foliage in Sugar Hill, NH --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOPSUMWbclU

Foliage at the Sunset Hill House Hotel in Sugar Hill, NH --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RowlAA9XIno

History of the Sunset Hill House Resort in Sugar Hill, NH 000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3uqK8T1ZDc

Lupines in Sugar Hill, NH --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7-1jCk4Ak0

Lupines in New Hampshire --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOR1vTHZjPo

Four Seasons at 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 

Great XMAS Flash Mob ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/merry-christmas-enjoy-the-best-christmas-flash-mob-of-all-time/

Hillsdale College: Oh Holy Night ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/video-hillsdale-college-choir-performs-o-holy-night/

Anna Netrebko sings Mussorgsky's Detskaya (The Nursery), Valery Gergiev conducts the RPhO ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykzW_x1IRho

How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heartbreak, “River,” Became a Christmas Classic ---
https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/how-joni-mitchells-song-of-heartbreak-river-became-a-christmas-classic.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Listen to it at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VV6j_mFR9c

RUMBLE ON: MORE NATIVE AMERICAN MUSICIANS YOU SHOULD KNOW ARTS ---
www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/rumble-on-more-native-american-musicians-you-should-know

INDIGEF (ndigenous music) ---  www.indigefi.org

C-G-G-A-G B-C ---
https://jborden.com/2020/12/28/music-monday-c-g-g-a-g-b-c/

Christmas Songs ---
Music Monday: My Favorite Christmas Songs Countdown – Borden's Blather (jborden.com)
Also see
Music Monday: And The Runner-up Is… – Borden's Blather (jborden.com)

One of the Greatest Dances Sequences Ever Captured on Film Gets Restored in Color by AI: Watch the Classic Scene from Stormy Weather ---
https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/one-of-the-greatest-dances-sequences-ever-captured-on-film-gets-restored-in-color-by-ai-watch-the-classic-scene-from-stormy-weather.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Direct Link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoMbeDhG9fU

Flight of the Bumble Bees ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZO5KTJTwhE

The Ultimate 80s Medley: A Nostalgia-Inducing Performance of A-Ha, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, Van Halen & More ---
https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/the-ultimate-80s-medley.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

For Dave Brubeck’s 100th Birthday, Watch Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of “Take Five” ---
https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/dave-brubecks-100th-birthday.html
Dave Brubeck's Version ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain ---
https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/the-ukulele-orchestra-of-great-britain-performs-i-cant-get-no-satisfaction.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Beethoven by Yves Nat - Complete Piano Sonatas, Pathetique, Moonlight, Appassionata, Hammerklavier ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBDN2sPRggk

Bob Jensen's Links to Free Music
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm


Photographs and Art

Slide Show:  Beautiful Places in the USA ---
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2020/12/06/when-we-can-travel-again-most-beautiful-places-to-visit-in-the-us/

WHAT JANE SAW (two museums visited by Jane Austin) ---
http://whatjanesaw.org/

WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART: COLLECTION EXPLORER
http://wcma-explorer.williams.edu/  

NATIONAL GALLERIES SCOTLAND: COLLECTIONS ARTS ---
www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/collections

NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE: RESOURCES (Canada ) ---
Resources | Music Alive Program | National Arts Centre (nac-cna.ca)

AMERICANS (Native American Exhibit) ---
https://americanindian.si.edu/americans/

See inside Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen’s $40 million NYC penthouse ---
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/see-inside-tom-brady-and-gisele-bundchens-40-million-nyc-penthouse-11608320786?cx_testId=48&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=6&mod=home-page-cx&cx_method=click#cxrecs_s
So why's he not playing for the Jets?

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

The Best Mystery Books of All Time --- https://www.thereadinglists.com/best-mystery-books-of-all-time/

Not-So-Funny Yard Signs that Get Better Later in the Slideshow (Click on the Slideshow) ---
https://www.science-a2z.com/the-most-hilarious-and-original-yard-signs-youve-ever-seen-part2/?utm_medium=yahoo&utm_source=347&utm_campaign=402654456&utm_term=NEWS_US-c&site_id=news.yahoo.com&vmcid=p%24g%2co%244650d852-484a-11eb-b141-008cfa5b6918-7f2ca7d4a700%2ct%241609076940847

Google Book Search --- https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?hl=en

The Classroom Bookshelf --- https://www.theclassroombookshelf.com/

Digital al Public Library --- https://dp.la/ 

The Reading Lists --- https://www.thereadinglists.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on libraries --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries

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 December 15, 2020
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2020/TidbitsQuotations121520.htm             




Good News Tidbits

MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning: A Free Online Course ---
MIT's Introduction to Deep Learning: A Free Online Course | Open Culture

Incredible Scientific Discoveries in 2020 ---
https://www.newsweek.com/incredible-scientific-discoveries-2020-1557134

Why Bitcoin Will Not Take Over the World ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/why-bitcoin-will-not-take-over-the-world.html

Agriculture Industry Bets on Carbon as a New Cash Crop ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/agriculture-industry-bets-on-a-new-cash-crop-carbon-11608719403?mod=djemCFO

The University of Texas agreed to disband its absurd political correctness police force and end policies that suppress speech on campus ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/ut-austin-dropping-bias-response-teams-to-settle-free-speech-lawsuit/

Apple announces ambitious plan to produce electric cars by 2024: report ---
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/apple-announces-ambitious-plan-to-produce-electric-cars-by-2024-report
It's one thing to passively invest in a business venture and quite another to actively manage that venture. With new ventures in health care and automobile manufacturing, Apple may be biting off more than it can chew. But I listed this as a good news tidbit in terms of welcoming new competition in electric car manufacturing.

Tiny Nuclear Reactors Yield a Huge Amount of Clean Hydrogen ---
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a34964936/small-modular-reactors-produce-clean-hydrogen/

U.S. physicists rally around ambitious plan to build fusion power plant ---
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/us-physicists-rally-around-ambitious-plan-build-fusion-power-plant  

The Deterrent Effect of DNA Databases ---
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/deterrent-effects-dna-databases?utm_source=outreach&utm_medium=email

It's Been a Good Week for Science
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/this-has-been-quite-a-week-for-science.html

Scientists unearth the ‘holy grail’ of volcano research after finding way to predict eruptions ---
https://www.studyfinds.org/scientists-find-holy-grail-of-volcano-research-predict-eruptions/
Now we need some new eruptions to test the theory
Bad News: The Supervolcano Under Yellowstone is Alive and Kicking ---
http://earth.nautil.us/article/570/the-supervolcano-under-yellowstone-is-alive-and-kicking

This Car Is Powered By Salt Water: 760HP, Top Speed 186 MPH, 621 Miles/Tank ---
https://www.scifront.com/this-car-is-powered-by-salt-water-760hp-top-speed-186-mph-621-miles-tank/?fbclid=IwAR1R3sz1mauI6oydiozJWi-3LlEmL-SfCXRoHebGiFln0pRF2iAVR_yCRMw
Thank you Jagdish Gangolly for the heads up

College undergrads find hidden text on medieval manuscript via UV imaging ---
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/college-undergrads-find-hidden-text-on-medieval-manuscript-via-uv-imaging/  

Four Technology Gift Ideas
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/newsletters/2020/nov/technology-gift-ideas-cpas.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=02Dec2020
My favorite is the "Remarkable Tablet 2"

Amazon Publishing in Talks to Offer E-books to Public Libraries ---
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/85068-dpla-in-talks-to-offer-amazon-publishing-e-books-to-libraries.html

OZY Examines 28 Startups to Watch ---
https://www.ozy.com/?utm_term=OZY&utm_campaign=sundaymagazine&utm_content=Sunday_12.06.20&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email

From Peoples Into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe ---
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/22/book-review-from-peoples-into-nations-a-history-of/


Bad News Tidbits

Three lessons from Stanford’s Covid-19 vaccine algorithm debacle ---
https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/21/stanford-covid19-vaccine-algorithm/

Parents Demand Major Academic Publisher Drop Proctorio Surveillance Tech ---
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88am8k/2000-parents-demand-major-academic-publisher-drop-proctorio-surveillance-tech2,000
Many of these parents don't care if their students cheat as long as they get A grades

Massachusetts School Allegedly Bans ‘The Odyssey’ by Homer ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/massachusetts-school-allegedly-bans-the-odyssey-by-homer/
Some classics are just not politically correct

Internal investigation finds $1 million in alleged fraud by 4 employees of Chico State’s Department of Accounting ---
UPDATED FOR CLARITY: Internal investigation finds $1 million in alleged fraud by 4 employees of Chico State’s Department of Accounting – The Orion
Thank you Glen Gray for the heads up

Over 70 West Point Cadets Accused of Cheating on Calculus Exam ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/over-70-west-point-cadets-accused-of-cheating-on-calculus-exam/

Berkeley cheating allegations spike nearly 400 percent with online classes ---
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16437
Bob Jensen's threads on cheating scandals ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#UVA

New Mexico walks back 'free' college tuition promise, can no longer afford it ---
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16454

The curse of 'white oil': electric vehicles' dirty secret ---
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/08/the-curse-of-white-oil-electric-vehicles-dirty-secret-lithium

Law prof advocates for Black Americans votes to 'count twice' ---
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16499
Why stop at twice?

Municipal Bonds Aren’t Out of Peril ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/municipal-bonds-arent-out-of-peril-11608892206?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst

Illinois Is Ground Zero for the Pension Crisis (taxpayers in 49 states asked to should pension fraud and mismanagement in Illinois) ---
https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/illinois-is-ground-zero-for-the-pension-crisis

Illinois' and Chicago's budget gimmicks ---
https://www.data-z.org/news/detail/illinois-and-chicagos-budget-gimmicks

A short history of corruption in Illinois ---
https://www.data-z.org/news/detail/a-short-history-of-corruption-in-illinois

California Inmates May Have Bilked State's Unemployment Funds by $40 Million
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-inmates-may-have-bilked-400m-from-states-unemployment

California’s $2 billion benefit fraud ---
https://www.data-z.org/news/detail/californias-2-billion-benefit-fraud

Tyler Cowen:  "The Lancet published this b.s.?"
Neoliberal economics, planetary health, and the COVID-19 pandemic: a Marxist ecofeminist analysis - The Lancet Planetary Health
Jensen Comment
I can't make any sense out of this paper.

The U.S. Treasury market came close to a meltdown in March, revealing a rickety system that threatens “national economic security,” a Stanford professor says ---
Click Here

Say What? 23.6% of All US Dollars Were Created in the Last Year ---
https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/23-6-of-all-us-dollars-were-created-in-the-last-year  
Jensen Comment
Don't believe the economists that say simply printing money for government spending above what is taxed and borrowed is not inflationary!

Ivy League librarians demand a world without police and prisons ---
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16256
Would they dare step outside their libraries?

FBI:  2019 Crime Statistics ---
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019  

Chattanooga library suspends protest leader C-Grimey to investigate burning of conservative books ---
https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2020/dec/04/book-burning/537313/

McGill University Students Want Prof Stripped of Emeritus Status for Criticizing Social Justice, BLM, Etc. ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/mcgill-university-students-want-prof-stripped-of-emeritus-status-for-criticizing-social-justice-blm-etc/
Freedom of speech is just too dangerous for college campuses.

Online MBA Rankings Scandal Costs Temple University $17 Million; After Ranking #1 In 2015-2018 With False Data, Business School Now Ranks #88 ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/12/online-mba-ranking-scandal-costs-temple-17-million-after-ranking-1-in-2015-2018-with-false-data-busi.html

Students push for removal of student government member over conservative beliefs ---
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16261
Next endangered species --- conservative faculty
Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness of USA universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness

How Prestige Journals Remain Elite, Exclusive And Exclusionary ---
https://www.forbes.com/sites/madhukarpai/2020/11/30/how-prestige-journals-remain-elite-exclusive-and-exclusionary/?sh=5ce6f8754d48

The IRS ‘Roboaudit’—An Abuse of Authority ---
https://www.cpajournal.com/2020/12/24/icymi-the-irs-roboaudit-an-abuse-of-authority/  

Big Time Islamic Drug Dealers ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/iran-backed-hezbollah-and-syria-likely-behind-billion-dollar-drugs-bust-italian-police-say/
In the meantime the Taliban made billions on drug dealing

Pretty Soon There’ll Be Just One Big Book Publisher Left ---
Pretty Soon There’ll Be Just One Big Book Publisher Left | The New Republic
And almost certainly one big seller..

France:  Nicolas Sarkozy graft trial: prosecutors call for four-year sentence ---
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/08/nicolas-sarkozy-graft-trial-prosecutors-call-for-four-year-sentence

Tesla is getting more aggressive in revoking paid software features on used cars, raising the stakes in a battle over what used Teslas can do that has raged for years ---
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3mb3w/people-are-jailbreaking-used-teslas-to-get-the-features-they-expect

The NY Times:  Meryl Streep Isn’t on Our List of Greatest Actors. Here’s Why ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/insider/best-actors-list.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Reader Center


Book Reviews

When a Reviewer Misleads and Lies:  Reaganland ---
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/8/book-review-reaganland/

When an Author MisleadsThe Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy ---
https://s18798.pcdn.co/albertobisin/wp-content/uploads/sites/16384/2020/10/KeltonByBisin.pdf

The Nesting Dolls, by Alina Adams – A Meaningful Dramatization Of Life Under Socialism ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/book-review-the-nesting-dolls-by-alina-adams-a-meaningful-dramatization-of-life-under-socialism/

The four thinkers who (allegedly) reinvented philosophy ---
https://www.newstatesman.com/time-magicians-invention-modern-thought-wolfram-eilenberger-review

Tyler Cowen:  The Very Very Best Books of 2020 ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/the-very-very-best-books-of-2020.html

Maria Popova's Favorites for 2020 ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/12/19/favorite-books-2020/?mc_cid=c420f18864&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Barnes & Noble Book of the Year
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse ---
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-boy-the-mole-the-fox-and-the-horse-charlie-mackesy/1132291821?ean=9780063018433#/
Finalists ---
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/book-of-the-year/_/N-2tny

Math, what is it good for? Absolutely everything, it turns out ---
https://flipboard.com/article/math-what-is-it-good-for-absolutely-everything-it-turns-out/a-Ki8bP00GSnipCKh1PPhZtw%3Aa%3A53023144-08f2a333d5%2Ftheglobeandmail.com
Also see
https://www.amazon.com/All-Things-Being-Equal-Better/dp/0735272891

The Guardian:  Best Fiction of 2020 ---
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/28/best-fiction-of-2020

Harvard students told a lurid tale of murder. Was it true? ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/harvard-students-told-a-lurid-tale-of-murder-was-it-true/2020/12/11/9ab7c5b4-2698-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html

Kraft ---
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/suisse/luscherj.htm

Poetry:  Pushing against the Corset ---
https://www.drb.ie/essays/pushing-against-the-corset

The Guardian:  The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup ---
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/20/the-best-recent-and-thrillers-review-roundup

An exhilarating life of Mozart ---
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/11/28/an-exhilarating-life-of-mozart

Beethoven’s triumphant career was a struggle against adversity --- |
https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/11/21/beethovens-triumphant-career-was-a-struggle-against-adversity

Thoughtful Humanist Books for Young Children ---
https://thehumanist.com/arts_entertainment/books/thoughtful-humanist-books-for-young-children

Masters of None? The Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag ---
https://literaryreview.co.uk/masters-of-none

Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide ---
https://www.amazon.com/Chernobyl-Stalkers-Guide-Darmon-Richter/dp/1916218423/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=darmon+richter&qid=1607375587&sr=8-1/marginalrevol-20

The Hispanic Republican ---
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/11/book-review-the-hispanic-republican/

Not a wonderful world: why Louis Armstrong was hated by so many ---
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/17/not-a-wonderful-world-louis-armstrong-was-hated-by-so-many

Russian Roulette: The Life and Times of Graham Greene review – addicted to danger ---
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/28/russian-roulette-the-life-and-times-of-graham-greene-review-addicted-to-danger
This a review of an author rather than a book review by a reviewer who says previous biographers "disparages his subject’s previous biographers, Norman Sherry and Michael Sheldon: reviewers found their approach “prurient and trivial”, he says, and much new material has since come to light."

A Year of Reading by various readers ---
https://themillions.com/


Vox:  The Year in Things ---
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22179406/2020-in-objects-covid-new-years-toilet-paper-peloton-masks-nintendo-switch-mail-masks


Daniel Jacobson on Freedom of Speech at Universities in the Age of Cancel Culture ---
https://connections.cu.edu/spotlights/five-questions-daniel-jacobson

Massachusetts School Allegedly Bans ‘The Odyssey’ by Homer ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/massachusetts-school-allegedly-bans-the-odyssey-by-homer/
Some classics are just not politically correct


Microsoft's PowerToys Utility:  How to Quickly Resize Multiple Images on Windows 10 ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/704597/how-to-quickly-resize-multiple-images-on-windows-10/
Jensen Comment
I downloaded this and found you can do a lot more than resize images.


The Biggest Obstacles Faced by New Programmers ---
https://readwrite.com/2020/12/24/the-biggest-obstacles-faced-by-new-programmers/


Top energy CEOs and investors share their best predictions for 2021, including a hydrogen boom, the rise of commercial EVs, and more layoffs in oil ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/energy-experts-dish-on-what-to-expect-in-2021-2020-12?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Business_Insider_select&pt=385758&ct=Sailthru_BI_Newsletters&mt=8&utm_campaign=Insider%20Select%202020-12-29&utm_term=INSIDER%20SELECT%20-%20ENGAGED%2C%20ACTIVE%2C%20PASSIVE%2C%20DISENGAGED%2C%20NEW

 

Ah, 2020 — the year that wore out the word unprecedented.

The price of US oil went negative for the first time ever. Exxon, once the world's largest company, was kicked off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 

Meanwhile, wind and solar became the cheapest sources of electricity in most parts of the world. And Tesla's market value breached $600 billion, greater than the combined market value of the other nine largest car companies

As coronavirus vaccines race across the country, hope is now seeping into the oil industry, where profits are tethered to fuel demand. Crude prices are notching up as a result. 

Clean-energy execs are feeling good, too, as a climate-friendly administration prepares to take office. Gina McCarthy, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under former president Barack Obama, will lead domestic climate policy, while former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm is set to run the Department of Energy and pioneer a transition to electric cars, if confirmed by the Senate. 

Needless to say, 2021 is already shaping up to be a very different year. So, what can you expect?

We put that question to 24 energy investors, CEOs, and analysts. Here are their top predictions. 

Layoffs, budget cuts, and bankruptcies this year among oil and gas companies were largely the result of a severe drop in demand for oil, which drove down the price of crude beginning around March.

Now the question has become, "When will demand recover, and when will it peak?" 

Some respected analysts and companies, including BP, say the answer is possibly never — demand for oil may have peaked last year

Others don't agree with that view. Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of the consulting firm IHS Markit, tells us he expects demand to recover in late 2021 or in 2022, assuming there's a strong economic rebound. He also sees some shale production ramping up before the end of next year. 

Meanwhile, Vikas Dwivedi, a strategist at Macquarie Group, says demand will return in late 2022 at the earliest, but more likely in 2023. (The International Energy Agency, a respected forecaster, said that global oil demand will not recover in 2021.)

Dwivedi also points out some "positive surprises" that he says have boosted oil markets, and may continue to support them in the new year, including a strong auto and real estate market, deurbanization, and demand for petrochemicals

As far as prices are concerned, Martijn Rats, an oil analyst at Morgan Stanley, "sees a path to" $55 per barrel of Brent in the second half of next year, according to a note the bank published in early December. Goldman Sachs also sees Brent hitting $55 next year. That's about $4 up from where prices stand today

American shale companies will be leaner and less focused on growth.

American shale companies weren't thriving heading into the pandemic. As Morgan Stanley analysts noted, they "lost money for much of the last decade."

In that time, they pumped millions of barrels of oil out of the ground, flooding the market with crude that ultimately ended up driving down prices and undermining their own endeavors. 

This year, after oil markets collapsed, companies involved in oil exploration and production were forced to adopt a more disciplined approach to spending money, the analysts said. Heading into 2021, they're focused less on growth and more on generating returns to shareholders, they added.

That's also lowered the price-per-barrel that shale firms need to turn a profit, experts say. 

"Shale producers need to establish a new social contract with investors that it's not growth at any cost, it's growth at what cost," said Yergin, author of the book, The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. "You have to give money back to investors, and I'm starting to see that."

Continued in article


Eyeing low rates and financial pressure tied to Covid-19, higher-education institutions are issuing a record amount of debt this year ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bond-boom-comes-to-americas-colleges-and-universities-11608978781?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst
Jensen Comment
Contrary to what liberal economists are preaching, there will be inflation if government spends trillions without taxing or borrowing for things like universal health care, free college, minimum basic income, reparations, etc. Inflation means that colleges can pay off dear dollar debt with cheap dollars. However, the benefits depend heavily on how the borrowed dollars spent.


How to Mislead With Statistics
Paradoxes of Probability & Statistical Strangeness
https://scitechdaily.com/paradoxes-of-probability-statistical-strangeness/?fbclid=IwAR3JlsjucUeAQg8LeYTFvSoGJcFWpovSvr3gnB4CM99Ekihr-_FTuXlTQOo  
Thank you Jagdish Gangolly for the heads up

Simpson's Paradox
Base Rate Fallacy
Will Rogers Paradox
Berkson's Paradox
Multiple Comparisons Fallacy


Amtrak Managerial Accounting Challenge for Students:  How to hypothetically explain this to taxpayers?
https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2020/12/26/amtrack/

Amtrack, the government run passenger rail system, purchases soda for $3.40 per serving, and then resells it to customers for $2.00. Meanwhile, McDonald’s purchases soda for 9 cents per serving, and then resells it to customers for $1.29.


The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to ban smoking tobacco in apartments (and college dorms), but made an exception for cannabis ---
CNN International on Twitter: "The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to ban smoking tobacco in apartments, but made an exception for cannabis https://t.co/lG19QGAEIy" / Twitter
Is smoking cannabis less of a hazard in terms of fire danger and lung disease caused by first and second hand smoke?


The Rise and Fall of an American Dream
The Donut King who went full circle - from rags to riches, twice ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54546427?mod=djemCFO


Paychecks of Washington DC Power Players ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-trump-fauci-aoc-pelosi-mcconnell-schumer-earn-make-2020-12?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Business_Insider_select&pt=385758&ct=Sailthru_BI_Newsletters&mt=8&utm_campaign=Insider%20Select%202020-12-26&utm_term=INSIDER%20SELECT%20-%20ENGAGED%2C%20ACTIVE%2C%20PASSIVE%2C%20DISENGAGED%2C%20NEW

Anthony Fauci's $434,312 paycheck
President Trump $400,000 plus a lot of very special benefits including Air Force One
Pence earned $253,300 in 2020
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley earn $193,400 per year
House speaker Pelosi makes $223,500 plus special benefits like a jet plane (she got a larger plane after complaining about the size of her first plane)
Most House and Senate lawmakers take home $174,000 in pay each year plus generous expense accounts
Justice Amy Coney Barrett will earn a salary of $265,600 per year as the newest member of the Supreme Court

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
For many top government leaders, think AOC, the salaries are a pittance compared to what they make on the outside from investments, lobbyists, book royalties, speeches, etc.


The Bank Underground Christmas Quiz ---
https://bankunderground.co.uk/2020/12/18/the-bank-underground-christmas-quiz-5/


The IRS ‘Roboaudit’—An Abuse of Authority ---
https://www.cpajournal.com/2020/12/24/icymi-the-irs-roboaudit-an-abuse-of-authority/  


Chinese Stocks Have Banner Year, Gaining Nearly $5 Trillion ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-stocks-have-banner-year-gaining-nearly-5-trillion-11608892204?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst


How to Look Better on Zoom (and Other Video-Calling Apps) ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/673264/how-to-look-better-on-zoom-and-other-video-calling-apps/

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


Bears Love Ice Cream

Among my many online pictures are several photographs I took of a young bear tearing down our hummingbird feeder. In these mountains the shy black bears are really not dangerous; But they can be a nuisance. Erika and I retired in a cottage on the eastern outskirts of the small village called Sugar Hill, New Hampshire. Downtown Sugar Hill has three municipal buildings, a tiny post office that's open two mornings each week, and a historic store called Harmon's Cheese Country Store. The store is owned by Maxine (mother) and Brenda (daughter). Brenda operates the store and a ton of charity activities for this part of the world. She lives above the store, but many nights she sleeps over in her elderly mother's house on the west side of Sugar Hill

The following is a paragraph from Page 2 of Maxine's 2020 XMAS Letter:

Wildlife:  The wildlife actually liked this crazy, covid year; with less traffic you saw more wildlife all day long. We had various birds, turkeys, hummingbirds, hawks, porcupines, coyotes, deer, and bear. A bit too much wildlife for Brenda. Our local bears raided the bird feeders and hummingbird feeders during the day, so I had to stop feeding the birds. With no bird feeders to raid, a bear discovered ice cream at our country store. He destroyed the locked ice cream freezer on the store's front porch. The next night he returned and broke into a 2nd story window to enter the store. He tried a few things but discarded them until he found the ice cream; he licked each wrapper so clean you would have thought it hadn't been used. After ice cream he poked a claw into a maple syrup jar, making a sticky mess all over the store before he left. On the 3rd day, he watched as Fish & Game set up a trap which Brenda made sure had ice cream in it. Later in the evening while Brenda was still at the store, he walked right into the trap for his ice cream fix.

Erika and I had a yard sale years ago, and a moose was disappointed that she could not find a single item of clothing that fit.


METRICS TOOLKIT --- www.metrics-toolkit.org
For example, what are some limitations of article citation metrics?


Toyota's game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut ---
https://asia.nikkei.com/content/4c8b11d1c65d83d23ba9aeb11030a947

A trip of 500 km on one charge. A recharge from zero to full in 10 minutes. All with minimal safety concerns. The solid-state battery being introduced by Toyota promises to be a game changer not just for electric vehicles but for an entire industry.

The technology is a potential cure-all for the drawbacks facing electric vehicles that run on conventional lithium-ion batteries, including the relatively short distance traveled on a single charge as well as charging times. Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020s. The world's largest automaker will unveil a prototype next year.

The electric vehicles being developed by Toyota will have a range more than twice the distance of a vehicle running on a conventional lithium-ion battery under the same conditions. All accomplished without sacrificing interior space in even the most compact vehicle.

Solid-state batteries are expected to become a viable alternative to lithium-ion batteries that use aqueous electrolyte solutions. The innovation would lower the risk of fires, and multiply energy density, which measures the energy a battery can deliver compared to its weight.

It would take roughly 10 minutes to charge an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery, cutting the recharging time by two-thirds. The battery can extend the driving distance of a compact electric vehicle while maintaining legroom.

Toyota stands at the top of the global heap with over 1,000 patents involving solid-state batteries. Nissan Motor plans to develop its own solid-state battery which will power a non-simulation vehicle by 2028.

The shift toward the new battery technology will also have an effect on companies further down the supply chain.

Japanese auto materials makers are rushing to set up the necessary infrastructure to supply automakers. Mitsui Mining and Smelting, commonly known as Mitsui Kinzoku, will start up a pilot facility that will make solid electrolytes for the batteries.

The production site, located at a research and development center in Saitama Prefecture, will be able to produce dozens of tons of solid electrolyte annually staring next year, enough to fulfill orders for prototypes.

Oil company Idemitsu Kosan is installing solid electrolyte production equipment at its Chiba Prefecture site with the aim of beginning operation next year. Manufacturing solid electrolytes requires solidifying sulfides, which is a specialty of the metal and chemical industry. Sumitomo Chemical is developing material as well.

Japanese manufacturers like Sony and Panasonic have been pioneers in commercializing battery cells for vehicles. But since the late 2000s, Chinese rivals have emerged to prominence. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited, also known as CATL, is now the world's largest supplier of lithium ion batteries. Japan's Asahi Kasei, once the global leader in battery separator material, gave up the crown last year to Shanghai Energy.

Electric vehicles are anticipated to become commonplace amid the global shift away from carbon. The Japanese government has been encouraging the domestic development of solid-state batteries, under the outlook that most of the technology relating to automotive performance will depend on China if the status quo holds.

The government is putting together a fund of about 2 trillion yen ($19.2 billion) that will support decarbonization technology. Policymakers will consider using those funds to provide subsidies of hundreds of billions of yen that will fund the development of the new batteries.

The goal is to support the development of a mass-production infrastructure within Japan. Because solid-state batteries use lithium, an element with limited global reserves, the government will assist in procuring the material.

The rest of the world is following suit. Germany's Volkswagen plans to have production running for solid-state batteries as soon as 2025 via a joint-venture with a U.S. startup.

Chinese tech group QingTao (Kunshan) Energy Development will spend over 1 billion yuan ($153 million) into R&D of solid-state batteries, among other areas. The investment will last for three years starting in 2021.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The unanswered question is the change in EV cost for this new technology. The unanswered worry is the cost and availability of lithium for hundreds of millions of cars. My bet is still riding on hydrogen for hundreds of millions of vehicles.


Stocking Stuffers ---
https://topcrate.com/home/?s=display&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqcv47vW87QIVXazACh0QMQztEAEYASAAEgI6rfD_BwE  

Also see
https://go.zangdeal.com/coolest-gifts/?s=gdn&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-c6zjv-87QIVnwH5AB1LvABHEAEYASAAEgJepfD_BwE


Amidst pandemic hunger potato farmers in Idaho and Montana are destroying millions of potatoes due glut in the supply chain ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/potato-farmers-destroy-potatoes-covid19-even-in-a-food-shortage-2020-6


Under the Biden-Harris plan, community college will be free — and public colleges and universities will be tuition-free for families earning less than $125,000 a year ---
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-pledges-tuition-free-community-college-for-all-public-colleges-for-working-class

Jensen Comment
A lot of details need to be worked out such as funding of room, board, books, and transportation. Then there's the issue of capacity, especially in flagship colleges that will be the most popular for high school graduates.

But most importantly, the issue is how to fund this massive program. We should commence to grease the money printing presses since it's literally impossible to fund this free college program with government borrowing or taxation after funding other initiatives such as universal health care, bailout of states and cities, road maintenance/improvements, universal basic income, etc.

What Biden and Harris don't tell you is that new taxes on business are passed on to customers. Business firms don't pay taxes. Their customers bear increased business taxes with increased prices among the businesses that can survive the higher taxation.

In some nations (think Germany, Norway, and Denmark) college tuition is free. However, only the top third of high school graduates are allowed to go to college or trade schools funded by taxpayers. The majority of students rely on the capitalist private sector to train them on-the-job for job skills ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Tertiary
List of countries by tertiary education attainment ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment
 

I doubt that Biden and Harris are considering limiting free college and trade schools to only the top high school graduates. They envision a trillion dollar program not limited to top high school graduates.

Chronicle of Higher Education:  Free Public Higher Education is a Horrible Idea ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Free-Public-College-Is-a/247134?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en&cid=cr&source=ams&sourceId=296279

Now that the race for the Democratic nomination for president is becoming more serious, it is time to take an equally serious look at the proposal for tuition-free public college that has been explicitly endorsed by candidates including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Julián Castro and that is likely to feature prominently in the upcoming debates.

Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that the proposal is not both unaffordable and unenforceable without an unprecedented level of state cooperation and expenditure. Let’s pretend as well that it is more than bumper-sticker material and actually the product of careful thought. Let’s pretend that it actually could become the law of the land.

It would be a terrible law.

There are many problems with higher education in the United States, but the greatest and most destructive is the significant inequality of access to education on the basis of race and economic status, which are often though not always intertwined. The goal of any good public policy should be to use finite public funds to reduce this inequality.

While eliminating tuition at all public colleges and universities, from the smallest community college to flagships like the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan, would indeed benefit many lower-income students, it would also, and probably to a greater extent, be a boon to students from the upper-middle and upper classes.

Moreover, the policy would not alleviate and would probably worsen the most striking inefficiency in our system of public education: the abysmally low rates of graduation.

In short, tuition-free college would be a hugely inefficient use of public resources and might actually make inequality of access worse.

The median family income at Virginia is $155,500, and 67 percent of students come from the upper economic quintile. At Michigan the numbers are $154,000 and 66 percent, and at the University of Minnesota — economically diverse by comparison — $110,000 and 50 percent. By contrast, the median family income at Minnesota’s private colleges is $83,000, or slightly below the state median.

Unsurprisingly, a recent study shows that affluent students disproportionately benefit from scholarships and grants offered at these flagship public institutions. Over time these universities have become more selective, more dependent on tuition revenue as state funding has been reduced, and thus less accessible to many of the lower-income students they were ostensibly intended to serve. They behave very much like elite private colleges and universities.

Here is almost certainly what would happen if these public universities were to become tuition-free: The absence of tuition would sharply increase the number of applications they received and would make them even more selective than they are now. Already Virginia and Michigan accept fewer than 30 percent of their applicants.

Unless those elite universities completely changed their admissions practices, an increase in selectivity would benefit primarily the high-achieving students who attend private and well-funded suburban high schools. Nothing in the "free tuition" plans addresses the capacity of these universities to enroll more students, so the applicants most likely to be squeezed out would be those from precisely the economic backgrounds that the plans are intended to help.

Nor does anything in these plans address the quality and efficiency of education provided at public institutions, so the graduation rates at the less selective, woefully underfunded institutions would remain low or get lower. The current six-year graduation rate at four-year Minnesota state universities is 49 percent. Among students of color it is 44 percent. More than half of the students who would attend such a college free would not receive a degree from that college.

Absent the ability to charge tuition, and given the likelihood that federal and state subsidies would be unable to keep pace with rising costs, the most likely outcome is that these already low graduation rates would decline over time. Absent any plan to address racial inequality, the achievement gap between white students and students of color would persist. There is no simple way to deal with the problem of inequality of access to education in the United States, given the deep and complex roots of that problem in everything from racism to fiscal policies that have come increasingly to favor the wealthy. But any policy change should focus on ensuring that the greatest benefit accrues to those who are most in need, that is, those from the lower income levels.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on how free college in parts of Europe is only available to the elite Top 1/3 of Tier 2 (high school) graduates. No nation in the world offers free college to everybody ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Tertiary

 


Trendline Quiz:  For a given phenomenon (like number of workers per Social Security retiree) you draw a trend line and then compare your answer with the actual trend line ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/the-hardest-storyline.html  
Compare your answer both in terms of trend and closeness of the dots.
A similar quiz could be developed for accounting students such as comparing cash flow trends of a company with accrual earnings and working capital ratios.
For example, note the well-known WT Grant Case.  In 1980 Largay and Stickney (Financial Analysts Journal) published a great comparison of WT Grant's operating working capital with accrual earnings and cash flows. I used this study for years in some of my accounting courses. It's a classic for giving students an appreciation of when cash flow statements can be more predictive than accrual earnings or working capital trends when inventories and accounts receivable are badly managed.! This large chain of department stores went bankrupt and died in 1976.


How to Mislead Without Statistics

With Centuries-Old Techniques, This Farm Is Preparing for the Future No modern methods or machinery required — just crops cultivated by hand in incredible, climate-proof quantities ---
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/permaculture-bec-hellouin-farm-france/

. . .

There is no tractor or plow in this place of constant growth. The farmers do not use fossil fuels, nor artificial fertilizers and pesticides. The manual work saves costs and reduces their carbon footprint. But there is also another reason. A tractor designed for modern farming could not plant more than three rows of carrots on the barely one-meter-wide strips utilized by this farm. At Bec Hellouin, four times that density of crops is grown in that amount of soil. “We cultivate radishes, carrots, lettuce and cabbage in 12 rows on this space,” says Charles.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Much can be said for the above ventures into farming on land not amenable to mechanized large-scale food production. But we should not extrapolate this article to world production of  grains (corn, soybean, and wheat) production from giant farms in the USA's Midwest or the mechanized vegetable production in California where my son is connected by marriage to a 5,000 acres of rice and tomato farm using enormous Caterpillar tractors, giant combines, etc. Yes you can now plant and harvest rice and tomatoes with robotic tractors, combines, and trucks. The produce is untouched by human hands. The trucks taking harvests to processing mills could even be driverless if the laws permitted such deliveries without drivers.

The modern world with over seven billion hungry people cannot and will not return to farming without machines --- big and better machines. What the above article fails to compare is the productivity of our present mechanized farms with productivity of what they would become today if we banned the machinery and chemicals of farming. We can now longer feed the world with hunting, gathering, and non-mechanized organic farms and food factories.

I'm reminded of the following remarks of Milton Friedman about the lesson of spoons.
Milton Friedman:  The Lesson of the Spoons ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/spoons-are-in-aisle-9.html
Chopsticks would be even better than spoons in providing more and more workers with tools to move the earth.


FiveThirtyEight:  The 40 Weirdest and Best Charts We Made in 2020
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-40-weirdest-and-best-charts-we-made-in-2020/


Google is facing multiple lawsuits from the Department of Justice and three dozen states. Here’s what you need to know ---
https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuits-explainer/


WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART: COLLECTION EXPLORER
http://wcma-explorer.williams.edu/  

A Quick Bit of Math:   Is one set of students (say graduates of Williams College)  worth 15 times more than the other (say graduates of community colleges)? ---
A Quick Bit of Math | Confessions of a Community College Dean (insidehighered.com)

A few days ago, in the midst of trying to perform some budgetary alchemy, I found myself wondering about the budget at my alma mater. I know it’s a different sector of higher ed, but students are students. How much, I wondered, is the disparity?

 

Naturally, I turned to the interwebs.

 

A quick search turned up this page from the provost’s office of Williams College. It covers 2018-19, but I think that’s close enough to get the general idea. It opens by noting that “Last year, we invested $115,000 in each of our students.” The total was $238 million for slightly over 2,000 students. Lest we think that excessive, though, it goes on to note that the nonlabor part of the budget remains lower than it was 10 years ago. It’s 24 percent of the budget, which comes out to roughly $27,600 per student.

 

Brookdale’s budget for the year is about $81 million. It currently has 10,438 students. That comes out to just over $7,760 per student. Put differently, the amount spent on one Williams student equals the amount spent on 14.8 Brookdale students.

 

Hmm.

 

That seems a bit much. Having met students from both, I don’t think a Williams student is worth nearly 15 Brookdale students.

 

To be fair, the Williams figure includes dorms, which we don’t have. If we assume that dorms and related costs are, say, 30 percent of the total -- a guess, but roll with it -- then the amount spent on directly comparable things is $80,500 per student, as opposed to our $7,760. That’s still over 10 to one.

 

The provost makes the point that at an annual tuition of $70,000, Williams charges about $45,000 less than the cost of production, even for full-pay students. We also charge less than the cost of production. Tuition and fees add up to slightly over half of our operating budget. Both institutions are nonprofit. At that level, some comparison seems fair.

 

This isn’t about Williams specifically. As a grad myself, if I wanted to beat up on a small New England liberal arts college, I’d beat up on Amherst. (It’s what we do.) And at least Williams had the decency to reduce tuition when it went to remote instruction, unlike some places (cough UVA cough).

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Firstly, it should be noted that we should be talking averages here and not exceptions such as a comparison of the best community college graduate with the worst graduates of Ivy League colleges.

Secondly, it should be noted that Williams College provides more than most any community college (ignoring the difference between four years of undergraduate schooling versus two years). Much of the extra value of a Williams diploma rides on the prestige it brings when students apply for graduate/professional schools or seek employment. This prestige arises from various interacting factors such as admission standards amongst competitive applicants to Williams College, small classes even in core first-year courses, an outstanding faculty in all disciplines, and all the things Williams provides for students outside of classroom learning (such as dorm living, speakers and artistic performers invited to campus, and great interactions with other students outside the classroom, including participation in athletic teams).

Thirdly, Williams, like other prestigious colleges, has a great network of alumni that can assist graduates in many ways, including mentoring, internships, and the job market. These become even more important among professional schools. For example the Tuck MBA Program at Dartmouth College prides itself in having very close alumni relations that connects recent graduates with successful Tuck alumni in business and government.

We should not claim that a Williams College graduate is "worth more" than a community college graduate, because value of any graduate is determined by many variables other than collegiate experience. But we should note that a Williams College student is probably afforded more living and learning opportunities that most community college students.


How the US government hack happened, and what it means, explained by an expert ---
https://www.vox.com/22187866/usa-cyber-hack-solar-winds-microsof


Feds Bust Massive Drug Ring at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Appalachian State ---
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/12/feds-bust-massive-drug-ring-at-duke-university-unc-chapel-hill-and-appalachian-state/


Hearing Aid Regulations:  Can You Hear Me Now? No ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/can-you-hear-me-now-no.html  


Harvard Business Review:  U.S. Financial Reporting Is Stuck in the 20th Century ---
https://hbr.org/2020/12/u-s-financial-reporting-is-stuck-in-the-20th-century?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=finance_not_activesubs&deliveryName=DM111568

. . .

Value investors rely on multiple, often complicated, methods to make trading decisions. One way relies on income statement (profits) and balance sheets (assets) to identify cheap or expensive stocks. For example, a stock with low stock prices but large assets and profits could be a good stock to buy. This has been the fundamental tenet of value investing. However, as our previous HBR article and Professor Baruch Lev’s 2016 book The End of Accounting describe, balance sheet and income statement are becoming largely useless for this kind of decision making.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
One thing about the Harvard Business Review is that often it's prestigious name contains articles with enticing titles and little substance in the articles. The above article is a great example of having a misleading title and little substance in the article.

From the title one would think that the article is going to tell you something substantive about moving financial reporting to the 21st Century. I find nothing in the article about how we should move financial reporting to the 21st Century. For example, the article suggests creating "recreated values," but does not explain how to create these values operationally or how "recreated values" could be part of the FASB standards for auditors and their clients.

The authors state that Lev's writings describe how useless the balance sheet and the income statement are becoming. I disagree! There is empirical evidence over the past two decades that shows that this is not the case, and that traditional accounting numbers have information value for investment decisions. Furthermore, Lev's proposals for recreated values are totally useless, because they are highly subjective vaporware numbers that, to my knowledge, have never produced recreated values that decision makers found useful. If there are such illustrations of the operational value of Lev's proposals why didn't the authors of this HBR article cite them as useful illustrations.

My criticisms of Lev's The End of Accounting book are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#LimitsOfBigData

As an illustration of the usefulness of FASB standards for financial decision making, consider the FASB requirement that hedge accounting only be allowed to the extent hedges are effective. Many similar findings for the usefulness of FASB and IFRS standards can be found in the academic literature.
Does Mandatory Retrospective Hedge Effectiveness Assessment under ASC 815 Provide Risk-Relevant Information? ---
Accounting Horizons (2020) 34 (3): 61–85
https://meridian.allenpress.com/accounting-horizons/article-abstract/34/3/61/432377/Does-Mandatory-Retrospective-Hedge-Effectiveness

Current accounting standards permit special accounting treatment of derivatives used for hedging purposes. However, the requirement to perform periodic, retrospective assessments of hedge effectiveness and to disclose a quantitative accounting measure of hedge ineffectiveness (AMHI) for such derivatives has been controversial. In response to concerns over the compliance costs of this requirement, the FASB removed this requirement in the recently effective ASU 2017-12. However, this change was made with little empirical evidence on the benefits of retrospective effectiveness assessment and quantitative disclosure of AMHI. We document one potential benefit of this requirement to investors by providing initial evidence that (1) AMHI is positively associated with an array of concurrent market- and accounting-based risk measures and (2) investors react negatively to large AMHIs and related disclosures upon 10-K filings. Our findings suggest that this requirement can provide investors with risk-relevant information and shed light on its potential usefulness.

Bob Jensen's free tutorials on accounting for derivative financial instruments and hedging activities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm

Jensen Comment
Of course there's a continuing need to improve financial reporting standards for the 21st Century. Sadly, the above HBR article entitled "U.S. Financial Reporting Is Stuck in the 20th Century" does virtually nothing to improve financial reporting standards other than to promote vaporware accountancy.


From the Chronicle of Higher Education
The essayist (former long-time journal editor for Phi Beta Kappa Society) who mocked Jill Biden’s degree, and was widely derided in return, has been lobbing grenades at colleges for decades ---

https://www.chronicle.com/article/joseph-epstein-is-not-a-fan-of-the-modern-university?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1834765_nl_Chronicle-Review_date_20201221&cid=cr&source=ams&sourceId=296279&cid2=gen_login_refresh

You may have heard that Joseph Epstein wrote a column in The Wall Street Journal arguing that Jill Biden, soon to be the first lady of the United States, shouldn’t call herself “Dr.” even though she has earned a terminal degree in education and has every right to employ that honorific. You may have also heard that his column was not generally well-received, inspiring rebukes from the likes of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and his former employer, Northwestern University (which said it “strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views”). But were you aware that Joseph Epstein has other opinions about, for example, how college presidents these days are ridiculous figureheads who lack the gravitas of their predecessors, or why the real problem with the current crop of undergraduates is that their parents hugged them too much?

Well, he does. And he shares these pungent critiques, and many more like them, in his recent book, Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits. It should be noted that although Epstein is enjoying — or maybe enduring — an unexpected cameo in the national news cycle, it’s not as if he just burst onto the hot-take scene. His publisher, Axios Press, calls him “the greatest living essayist writing in English,” a superlative that rules out a host of worthy contenders, though what’s unquestionably true is that he is among the language’s most prolific. Gallimaufry contains 528 pages’ worth of his musings. His 2018 collection, The Ideal of Culture, is a mere 572 pages. And there is no shortage of other volumes with droll titles for the Epstein completist: With My Trousers Rolled, Once More Around the Block, Narcissus Leaves the Pool, The Middle of My Tether.

For more than two decades, Epstein was the editor of The American Scholar, the magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. His stewardship there was not without controversy. He wrote the following assessment of feminist scholars in 1991: “The feminists roll on, perpetually angry, making perfectly comprehensible the joke about the couple in their West Side Manhattan apartment who, having been twice robbed, determine to protect themselves, he wanting to get a revolver, she a pit bull, and so they agree to compromise and instead get a feminist.” That, along with an eyebrow-raising line about “dykes on bikes” directed at the feminist scholar Catharine R. Stimpson, prompted Joyce Carol Oates, the novelist, to write that it was an “embarrassment” that Epstein served as editor and that his “resignation is long overdue.”

Overdue or not, he didn’t resign, although five years later he was fired. In his new collection, he blames his ouster on that vague catch-all, political correctness. “As for the reason for my being fired,” he writes, “it had nothing to do with politics, since I made it a point to clear the journal’s pages of all contemporary political content, but to do with my not running any articles in the journal on the subjects of feminism or African-American studies.” That wasn’t because he was necessarily against running such articles, he contends, but because he “wasn’t interested in the clichés on the subject and hoped for work that went beyond standard victimology.” At the time, The Chronicle quoted one professor as calling Epstein a victim of the culture wars (there was one then too) and another as saying he “has been driving people crazy for years.” Take your pick.

Epstein, who is 83, was bemoaning changes in college life, and in the rest of society, long before many of those skewering him on Twitter — or their parents, probably — were born. In his essay “Immaturity on Campus,” he shakes his head ruefully at the fact that, when he began teaching, in 1973, jackets and ties were no longer de rigueur for male professors, and not all female professors wore skirts. Epstein believes that the classroom power dynamic has shifted too far in favor of students, and he traces that trend to asking them to evaluate their professors. “Who ever said that students were in a position properly to judge the true quality of teaching?” he writes. He cites a fellow professor’s decision to bring doughnuts to an early-morning class as a pathetic example of “sucking up,” and hopes the “doughnuts received a strong evaluation.”

Those evaluations helped lead to rampant grade inflation (“somehow the grade of C jumped up to B ). “At the school where I taught, a proudly left-wing teacher was said to give black students automatic A’s as an act of reparation,” he writes. What’s more, some students started referring to professors by their first names, which for Epstein suggested more than a casual, hallway familiarity: “I recall a young female student, on the edge of tears, during an office hour, asking why I had marked up her papers, as she thought, so severely. ‘Jerry [an associate professor in the same department],’ she said, ‘is never so hard on my writing.’ Hmm, ‘Jerry’? I concluded there was a good chance The deeper problem, in Epstein’s estimation, is that today’s college students have been on the receiving end of unwarranted encouragement from their parents. Epstein says he was once tempted to scrawl “too much love in the home” across an undergraduate composition that fell short of his standards. Epstein himself did not suffer from the same surfeit of affection; in fact, he doesn’t remember ever being hugged by his parents or told that they loved him. (The book includes an essay that spells out why “being hugged by a man … is not my idea of a swell time”).

Don’t get him started on college presidents today. Back in Epstein’s time, that office was occupied by scholars of stature like Robert F. Goheen at Princeton or Alfred Whitney Griswold at Yale. Now he can only dimly recall that “the president of Harvard is a woman, or was a woman until recently.” Presidents are no longer the towering intellects of yore, according to Epstein. These days, when college presidents aren’t “hanging with the wealthy in a position of unspoken but obvious subservience,” they are being “photographed in sweaters and neckties surrounded by racially and ethnically diverse students.” It is a sorry state of affairs, he believes, though Epstein expresses sympathy for the diminished institutional leaders. “In our time every university president is a minor-league Ozymandias, within the small compass of his realm a king of kings — and yet a king without any real power to change things that matter.”

It would be unfair to suggest that Epstein’s oeuvre is endless spleen-venting at the supposed failures and absurdities of modern higher education. He can be a witty guide to the work of writers he admires, like P.G. Wodehouse, who also tended to view anything newfangled with a jaundiced eye. He delivers memorably caustic assessments of Susan Sontag (“the great American savant-idiot”) and Isaiah Berlin (after considering whether he was a writer or a scholar, Epstein wonders “if he were either”). He defends the despised typeface Comic Sans and chronicles his own ill-fated forays into facial hair, comparing a mustache he once grew to — brace yourself — a “Guatemalan illegal alien.” He is a man who is not afraid to take an unpopular stance or risk offense while making a crack.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
After students acquired power through their teacher evaluations, the media grade in the USA actually jumped from C to A-
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
I think students would rather get easy A grades than donuts.

Final Grade Option:  University of Texas lets students decide if they want to keep their final grade, despite 'unintended consequences' ---
https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=16412
What if recruiters commence to equate the "Pass" grades with "C" grades?


How to Mislead With Statistics

The worst 15 states for retirement taxes
https://moneywise.com/a/the-15-worst-states-for-retirement-taxes
Has anybody whispered in the Omaha's famous Warren Buffett?

01 Nebraska (highest retirement taxes)
02 Connecticut
03 Kansas
04 Wisconsin
05 Minnesota
06 Vermont
07 Rhode Island
08 New Jersey
09 Illinois
10 New York
11 California
12 Maine
13 Maryland
14 Ohio
15 Massachusetts

Jensen Comment
The differences in retirement taxes differ relatively little compared to differences in living costs, especially real estate prices and rents. One can retire in a relatively cheap rural home in Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Minnesota compared to rural homes in most of the other states listed above. Small towns in in the Midwest have be drying up for years as large farms gobbled up small farms and took away most of the retail trade in small farming communities.

The above rankings are misleading for low-income retirees, but the article does a reasonably good job pointing this out.

It's about time for Warren Buffett to move to Texas, but he probably is not as concerned about his taxes as most people since he gives so much more to charities than he pays in taxes each year. Taxing him merely steals money from those charities.


Cancel Culture --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture

Conservative Miami Law Prof Fights The Campus Cancel Culture ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2020/12/conservative-miami-law-prof-fights-the-campus-cancel-culture.html#more

Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness


Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults ---
Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties in Adults - writix.co.uk

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


Why are investment prices rising amidst an explosion in corona virus cases in the USA?

From a Quartz newsletter on December 13, 2020

. . .

You can thank the pandemic for this year’s splashy stock debuts. Much of 2020’s IPO value comes from tech companies, which have seen their valuations shoot up as coronavirus created massive demand for video conferencing, food delivery, online shopping, and other digital tools that make hunkering down more bearable.

The pandemic also brought a wave of new investors into the stock market. Stuck at home, bored, and without live sports to bet on, millions of Americans made accounts on stock-trading app Robinhood. Investment firm Fidelity saw trading volume rise 97% in the third quarter year over year, while the Nasdaq saw equity options trades go up by half. These novice traders have eagerly piled into IPOs alongside institutional investors.

The situation is raising alarm bells, especially since the last time the US saw a dizzying, tech-led IPO spike in 2000, it was quickly followed by a massive bust. Two decades laterwidespread speculation and low federal interest rates have combined to pump valuations up to new heights, despite the fact that 80% of the companies that have gone public this year don’t turn a profit. Hand-wringing analysts called this week’s IPO prices “absurd,” “ridiculous,” andembarrassing.”

Time will tell whether they—or the millions of new investors who just bought into Airbnb, Doordash, and C3.ai at towering valuations—are right.

Jensen Comment
High-priced homes in our White Mountains of New Hampshire, like housing prices in many other rural properties in various parts of the USA, are in a hot market at the moment due to various factors such as urban flight, lower state taxation, low interest rates, lower crime in rural areas, and new remote working alternatives. 

And people are spending more on housing and other equity investments in anticipation of spiked inflation that will follow trillions of increased federal government spending.

 I'm friends with a relatively young couple from Cape Cod who are now building a new scenic home not far from our home. She is a research proposal editor for MIT who, until covid hit, had nearly a two-hour commute each way by train to and from MIT. Now she does her job remotely and can continue to do so when she and her husband move into their new home in Sugar Hill, NH. 


What are expensive sports teams doing for city economies?

From a Quartz newsletter on December 13, 2020

Morale lesson. 
For all that “show me the money” bravado, sports teams, it turns out, mean very little to a city’s economy. Economists see the impact of baseball teams as “small potatoes”—the equivalent of one mid-sized department store at best. In an
 illuminating analysis for Quartz’s field guide on the sports industry, Dan Kopf gets to the heart of why we root for them in the first place. 


How to Mislead With Statistics (by avoiding key variables)

Are Home Prices in Black Neighborhoods Underpriced? ---
https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/are-home-prices-in-black-neighborhoods-underpriced

Jensen Comment
Read the article for examples of how the statistics are misleading in this study. However, the article misses several main points. Firstly, it does not mention crime statistics for black neighborhoods. Secondly, it does not mention that many black neighborhoods like those in Chicago are centers for dangerous gangs and gang warfare. Thirdly, I don't know how an analyst makes adjustments for public education troubles and "walkability" troubles for whites in most black neighborhoods.

And there are some seemingly little things that are not so little in terms of real estate value. Because many prosecutors are not discouraging shoplifting crime in low income neighborhoods (think of Los Angeles that no longer prosecutes teenage misdemeanors) retail businesses like supermarkets and big box stores are avoiding low income neighborhoods. This in turn, affects real estate values, since shopping is no longer convenient in those neighborhoods. There are other inconveniences such as having worse taxi pickup services in high crime neighborhoods.


Oracle is moving its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas — the latest tech giant to flee the tech capital for the Southern state ---
Oracle moving HQ from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas - Business Insider

Elon Musk, like everyone else, is moving to Texas. Here are 12 Lone Star State cities America is in love with ---
The Texas cities everyone in the country is moving to - Business Insider


Colorado State Will Offer Pass/Fail Grading; U. of Maryland Won’t ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/live-coronavirus-updates-heres-the-latest?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_1797892_nl_Academe-Today_date_20201209&cid=at&source=ams&sourceId=296279&cid2=gen_login_refresh  

Jensen Comment
Students complaining the loudest at Colorado State are probably the best students in the courses who can no longer demonstrate that they are best among all the students receiving a "Pass" grade.

Most of my students over my 40 years of teaching received traditional letter grades. The few who passed my courses on a Pass-Fail basis tended to put in the minimal effort required to pass. Nearly all of them were capable of learning more from my courses, but the pass-fail option allowed them to put more effort into courses where they struggled for traditional letter grades.

Graduate programs where students were required to have a B average to graduate were problematic for them, because for some students C grades in graduate school voulf lead to not being able to graduate when they don't have offsetting A grades elsewhere. In other words some students put extra effort in my courses to avoid "the hook." Years ago a C grade no longer reflected an average grade like it was before grade inflation ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor


The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 39.

Continued in article


The Moscow Times:  Russia Suffers New Blow in $50Bln Yukos Case ---
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/12/04/russia-suffers-new-blow-in-50bln-yukos-case-a72242
Who on earth believes Russia will cough up $50 billion for this?


Z-value --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score
Also see
https://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Z-Scores

The Distribution of One Million Z-Values ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/the-distribution-of-one-million-z-values.html


In total, 557,013 vehicles were stolen in the 15 cities listed below from 2017 through 2019 ---
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/portand-stolen-car-rate

1             Portland, OR (Highest Stolen Car Rate Per Capita in the USA)

2             San Jose, CA

3             Seattle, WA

4             Salt Lake City, UT            

5             San Francisco, CA            

6             Riverside, CA     

7             Las Vegas, NV   

8             Memphis, TN    

9             Louisville, KY     

10           Los Angeles, CA

11           Oklahoma City, OK         

12           Milwaukee, WI 

13           San Antonio, TX               

14           New Orleans, LA             

15           Tucson, AZ

Only cities of more than 1 million residents were compared and ranked. Denver was excluded due to lack of data. Smaller cities and towns near the USA's southern border have higher theft rates per capita.


Recent New York Sales Tax Litigation Leaves Auto Dealership at Side of Road ---
https://www.cpajournal.com/2020/12/01/recent-new-york-sales-tax-litigation-leaves-auto-dealership-at-side-of-road/

Jensen Question
Do these same issues arise in divorce such as when one spouse grants full-title to property (such as an automobile) to the other spouse as part of the divorce settlement? Is this transfer of title subject to sales tax? This could be expensive in states where real estate titles transfers are subject to a sales tax.


WSJ:  Stock Buybacks: What Every Investor Needs to Know ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/stock-buybacks-what-every-investor-needs-to-know-11607185864?mod=djm_dailydiscvrtst  


Alexander Hamilton:  The Federalist Papers #22 A: The Articles of Confederation Lead to Uncoordinated Trade Policy and Military Free-Riding ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/12/13/alexander-hamilton-the-articles-of-confederation-lead-to-uncoordinated-trade-policy-and-military-free-riding


This Reads Like a Forthcoming BBC Mystery Script:  Solving the great book heist ---
Tome raiders: solving the great book heist | Books | The Guardian


Oracle’s Hidden Hand Is Behind the Google Antitrust Lawsuits ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-23/oracle-for-years-secretly-lobbied-states-justice-department-to-sue-google?cmpid=BBD122320_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=201223&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily


A court in St. Petersburg on Friday convicted a prominent history professor on charges of murdering and dismembering a female student and sentenced him to 12 1/2 years in prison ---
https://news.yahoo.com/russian-professor-sent-prison-killing-141652203.html

Jensen Comment
In the USA this would be considered a light sentence considering all the life-without-parole sentences that I hear about on TV's Forensic Files. But then a year in most any Russian prison may be less comfortable than in most USA prisons.




From the Scout Report on December 4, 2020

DVC ---  Data Version Control · DVC
DVC is a distributed revision control system and automation framework for data scientists. The DVC documentation is written primarily around machine learning applications, but very similar workflows pop up when performing many other kinds of statistical analysis or simulation. DVC leverages Git to track program code or scripts and provides large file storage using backends such as Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Drive, and others. This "large file storage" is meant to cover both original source data files as well as intermediate results (including parameter files for machine learning models, statistical results like fitted curves, and results of simulations). DVC's automation framework allows users to describe the steps in their analysis as stages in a "lightweight pipeline." As users make changes to their scripts and code, DVC can re-run only the stages in the pipeline whose inputs have changed. DVC can track different analyses as "experiments" that are represented as git branches, providing users with a systematic way to store alternative approaches. DVC is written in Python and should run anywhere that Python does. The Download section of the DVC site provides installation instructions for Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.


CP EDITOR --- https://cpeditor.org/ 
CP Editor's developers describe it as a "lightweight and cross-platform code editor specially designed for competitive programming," that aims to make programming easier by "automating many things for you." In particular, it has support for automatically running a test suite as changes are made to a program and highlighting any test cases that are failing. CP Editor also provides syntax highlighting and code completion features for C/C++, Java, and Python. By installing a Language Server, users can also get linting of their code as they type, with errors and warnings underlined with the error text. Users can also assemble their own personal libraries of "code snippets" that can be quickly inserted into the file they are editing. In the Download section of the CP Editor, site users can locate installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.

From the Scout Report on December 18, 2020

ASCIIDOCTOR --- https://asciidoctor.org/
Asciidoctor is a publishing system that processes source files written in the AsciiDoc minimal markup format to produce output in HTML5, DocBook, PDF, and a number of other formats. According to the pull-quote on the Asciidoctor front page from Linux creator Linus Torvalds, AsciiDoc is a good format to use because "it's actually readable by humans, easier to parse and way more flexible than XML." The "Get Writing" link at the top right of the Asciidoctor home page will lead users to a guide documenting the AsciiDoc format along with a brief tutorial on how to produce HTML 5 and DocBook output. In the Docs section of the site, users can find more detailed reference manuals both on the AsciiDoc syntax and on advanced uses of the Asciidoctor toolchain. Under the Installation heading on the front page, users can locate instructions for installing Asciidoctor on Windows, macOS, and several flavors of Linux


ZEROTIER --- www.zerotier.com
ZeroTier is a network virtualization system that combines the capabilities of traditional VPN systems and software defined wide area network solutions. Some example uses of ZeroTier include: accessing devices on a home network (for example, network attached storage, home automation, and printers) from anywhere; creating a virtual LAN across several households to play network games; routing traffic destined for the internet through a VM running on a cloud provider; routing traffic received at a VM on a cloud provider to an internal machine on a private network; or connecting systems running on a variety of cloud providers as if they were in a single data center. The ZeroTier manual located in the Support section of the site contains a detailed technical description of how the software works along with a number of example configurations. The ZeroTier Knowledge Base contains additional tutorials and "Getting Started" guides. The ZeroTier site offers installers for Windows, macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD desktops along with installers for Android and iOS devices. On the free "Basic" service plan, users can create networks with up to 50 members.

 




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


Education Tutorials

CLOUD ZOO (zoology) --- https://pudding.cool/2020/11/cloud-zoo/

THE CRAFTY WRITER'S CREATIVE WRITING COURSE ---
https://www.thecraftywriter.com/

WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART: COLLECTION EXPLORER
http://wcma-explorer.williams.edu/  

150 SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS ---  www.fizzicseducation.com.au/category/150-science-experiments

Bob Jensen's threads on education links ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch


Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

Scientists suggest US embassies were hit with high-power microwaves – here’s how the weapons work
https://theconversation.com/scientists-suggest-us-embassies-were-hit-with-high-power-microwaves-heres-how-the-weapons-work-151730

U.S. physicists rally around ambitious plan to build fusion power plant ---
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/us-physicists-rally-around-ambitious-plan-build-fusion-power-plant  

METRICS TOOLKIT --- www.metrics-toolkit.org

THE PLANETARY SCIENCE JOURNAL ---
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2632-3338

JOURNAL OF COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ARCHAEOLOGY ---
https://journal.caa-international.org/

1948:  The first transistor, short for transfer resistor, was developed at Bell Labs. The 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three Bell scientists for the science behind the invention ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor

CORAL REEF RESEARCH FOUNDATION ---
Home - Coral Reef Research Foundation (coralreefpalau.org)

Mount Everest is higher than previously thought, say Nepal and China ---
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mount-everest-is-higher-than-previously-thought-say-nepal-and-china

THE SCIENCE OF BAKING: HOW PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER BAKER --- www.pepper.ph/science-baking

150 SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS ---  www.fizzicseducation.com.au/category/150-science-experiments

CLOUD ZOO (zoology) --- https://pudding.cool/2020/11/cloud-zoo/

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

LGBTQ&A --- www.lgbtqpodcast.com

PSYCHSESSIONS Podcasts ---
https://psychsessionspodcast.libsyn.com/

METRICS TOOLKIT --- www.metrics-toolkit.org
For example, what are some limitations of article citation metrics?

MY AMERICA (Immigration) --- https://my-america.org/

ILLUSTRATED VERSION OF THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS --- 
www.un.org/en/udhrbook/index.shtml

FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES: UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ---
www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/universal-declaration-human-rights

COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW ---
HRLR Posts – Columbia Human Rights Law Review

CANADIAN MUSEUM FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: STORIES ---
https://humanrights.ca/stories

BETTER HUMAN PODCAST ---
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/better-human-podcast/id1481010283   

ON-CALL SCIENTISTS (human rights) --- www.aaas.org/programs/on-call-scientists

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

MATHOLOGER (MATHEMATICS Video) ---  www.youtube.com/channel/UC1_uAIS3r8Vu6JjXWvastJg

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

Alexander Hamilton:  The Federalist Papers #22 A: The Articles of Confederation Lead to Uncoordinated Trade Policy and Military Free-Riding ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2020/12/13/alexander-hamilton-the-articles-of-confederation-lead-to-uncoordinated-trade-policy-and-military-free-riding

Charles Babbage originated the modern analytic computer. He invented the principle of the analytical engine, the forerunner of the modern electronic computer ---
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Babbage/
Reply from Jagdish

Bob,
And the world's first programmer was Ada Lovelace, Countess of Lovelace; she was the daughter of the Scottish poet Lord Byron. Ada programmed Babbage's machine, and the programming language Ada is named after her.

 Here is a video on the Ada programming language. I hope someone adapts it to designing accounting systems. It is one of the ideal languages for the purpose since it has all the tools that are required for the purpose. C++, Jaca,... do not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e-BGblAMC4&feature=emb_logo

Regards,

Jagdish
Jagdish S. Gangolly
Emeritus Associate Professor
Department of Informatics
Director (Retired), PhD Program in Information Science
State University of New York at Albany
1400 Washington Ave Albany, NY 12222

From Peoples Into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe ---
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/22/book-review-from-peoples-into-nations-a-history-of/

Isaac Newton Theorized That the Egyptian Pyramids Revealed the Timing of the Apocalypse: See His Burnt Manuscript from the 1680s ---
Isaac Newton Theorized That the Egyptian Pyramids Revealed the Timing of the Apocalypse: See His Burnt Manuscript from the 1680s | Open Culture

WHEN THE SMITHSONIAN DISCOVERED AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COLONY IN THE GRAND CANYON ---
https://archaeology-world.com/when-the-smithsonian-discovered-an-ancient-egyptian-colony-in-the-grand-canyon/

WHAT JANE SAW (two museums visited by Jane Austin) ---
http://whatjanesaw.org/

MY AMERICA (Immigration) --- https://my-america.org/

Financing Social Security Through the Years ---
https://www.cpajournal.com/2020/12/03/icymi-financing-social-security-through-the-years/   

Open Source Cookbooks --- https://opensourcecookbook.cargo.site/

HISTORY OF PIES --- https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PieHistory.htm

Aerospace and Aviation

Wright Brothers --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers

Charles Lindbergh --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh

AEROSPACE HISTORY TIMELINE --- www.aiaa.org/about/History-and-Heritage/History-Timeline

RAF100: AIMING FOR AWESOME --- www.raeng.org.uk/education/schools/teaching-and-learning-resources/raf100

EAA AVIATION MUSEUM: VIRTUAL COCKPIT TOURS --- www.eaa.org/eaa-museum/cockpit-360-virtual-tour

BESSIE COLEMAN, BARNSTORMING PIONEER --- www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCgdU2oHt_0

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AVIATION, AERONAUTICS, AND AEROSPACE ---
https://commons.erau.edu/ijaaa/

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

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings ---
https://folkways.si.edu/

What Ancient Egyptian Sounded Like & How We Know It ---
What Ancient Egyptian Sounded Like & How We Know It | Open Culture

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

THE CRAFTY WRITER'S CREATIVE WRITING COURSE ---
https://www.thecraftywriter.com/

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



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

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

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

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

December 1, 2020

Biden Fractures Foot, Will Wear Orthopedic Boot

Moderna to Seek FDA Approval for COVID Vaccine

This Injury a Possible Sign of Domestic Violence

COVID in Kids: The Most Telling Symptoms

Millions Traveled for Thanksgiving Holiday

CDC Group Meets Tuesday on COVID Vaccine Priority

AstraZeneca Plans More Testing of COVID-19 Vaccine

Scotland Will Supply Period Products for Free

Leaders Urge Caution as COVID Surges in Nursing Homes

December 2, 2020

FL Gov Discounts More Lockdowns and Mask Mandates

Nurse on Leave After Mocking COVID Precautions

Cases Drop 30% in England After Lockdown

CDC Panel Votes on Who Should Get COVID Vaccines First

Pence: Vaccine Distribution May Start in 2 Weeks

Several COVID-19 Advisers Make Grim Predictions

Controversial Trump COVID Adviser Scott Atlas Resigns

Training May Speed Smell's Return After COVID

Almost Half in U.S. Fear Surprise Medical Bills

December 3, 2020

Couple Uses Canceled Wedding to Feed Hundreds

UK Authorizes Use of Pfizer COVID Vaccine

LGBTQ Adults Often Miss Out on Cholesterol Meds

Menopause Can Make Workplace Tougher for Women

NYC Issues Warning for Elderly and at-Risk People

FL Gov Discounts More Lockdowns and Mask Mandates

Nurse on Leave After Mocking COVID Precautions

Cases Drop 30% in England After Lockdown

CDC Panel Votes on Who Should Get COVID Vaccines First

December 4, 2020

Financial Missteps Could Signal Future Dementia

Pandemic Is Driving U.S. Surge in Cardiac Arrests Tied to Overdose

Can Some Vaccines Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk?

Obama, Bush, Clinton Will Take COVID-19 Vaccine

COVID Can Harm the Infant Heart

CVS Will Give COVID Treatment in Patients’ Homes

‘Overwhelming Majority’ Will Need COVID-19 Vaccine

COVID-19 Possibly Arrived in the U.S. in Dec. 2019

Florida Passes 1 Million COVID-19 Cases

December 5, 2020

Biden to Ask Americans to Wear Masks for 100 Days

Couple Arrested for Flying After Testing Positive

U.S. Emergency Call System Faces ‘Breaking Point’

Hackers Tried to Access COVID Vaccine ‘Cold Chain’

Baby Girl Born From Embryo Frozen for 27 Years

California Governor Issues New Stay-at-Home Order

Smile When You Get a COVID Vaccine, It'll Hurt Less

Study Gauges Mental, Physical Toll of Divorce

450,000 U.S. Deaths Possible by February

December 8, 2020

Nurse Shares COVID Vaccine Side Effects from Trial

Public Health Experts Applaud Biden’s CDC Pick

ADHD Medication ODs Rising in U.S. Kids, Teens

Pandemic Drives Couples to Divorce or to Seek Help

Biden to Name California AG as HHS Secretary

Americans Increasingly Say They'll Get COVID Vaccine

Thanksgiving Travel COVID Surge Expected This Week

Obesity Drives Breast Cancer Risk for Black Women

Flu Vaccines, COVID Protocols Tamp Down Flu Season

December 9, 2020

A Better, Safer Way to Rid Some Kids of Seizures?

New Technology May Help Cells Fight against Cancer

Oregon Doctor Suspended After Refusal to Wear Mask

AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine Effective in Late Trials

Drug Reverses Age-Related Mental Decline in Mice

Will December's COVID-19 Crush Overwhelm Hospitals?

FDA: Pfizer COVID Vaccine Effective After One Dose

British Woman First to Get Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

Opening Car Windows Can Cut COVID Transmission

December 10, 2020

Allergic Reactions Spur Alerts Over Pfizer Vaccine

COVID Fuels Depression In Pregnant Women, New Moms

U.S. Can’t Get More Pfizer Vaccines Before June

U.S. Faces ‘Dark Time’ with Holiday COVID Surges

Florida State Police Raid Home of DeSantis Critic

Mystery Illness Strikes Hundreds in India

A Better, Safer Way to Rid Some Kids of Seizures?

New Technology May Help Cells Fight against Cancer

Oregon Doctor Suspended After Refusal to Wear Mask

December 11, 2020

Ellen DeGeneres Says She Has COVID-19

COVID-19 Vaccines On the Way: What to Know

COVID Vaccine Wins Key U.S. Vote

COVID-19 Deaths Surpass 9/11 Deaths in Single Day

Recall: Erectile Dysfunction, Depression Drugs Mixed Up

158 People Arrested at LA 'Super Spreader' Party

Schools & Vaccines Are Biden Priorities

Thanksgiving COVID-19 Wave Emerges in State Data

Heart Disease Is World's No. 1 Killer

December 12, 2020

COVID Vaccine Supply Limited, Distribution Unclear

FDA Approves Emergency Use of Pfizer COVID Vaccine

COVID Leads to Heartbreaking Letters to Santa

High-Dose Vitamin D Won't Prevent Seniors' Falls

Why Do Black Patients Fare Worse With Blood Cancer?

Med Student Finds Buried Treasure Worth Millions

Nearly 3 Million to Get COVID Vaccine in First Week

Saliva Equals Nasal Swab for COVID Test Accuracy

FDA Authorizes Nonprescription at-Home COVID Test

December 15, 2020

COVID Surge Wrecks Contact Tracing Efforts

Reports: Nursing Home Vaccinations May Be Delayed

COVID-19 Appeared in Boy in Italy in November 2019

Three COVID Vaccines Compared

COVID Patients Can Have Neurological Problems

Hundreds of Hospitals at or Near Full Capacity

Kids' Weight Rises When Convenience Stores Open

COVID Tied to Rare But Severe Eye Infection

Depression Risk Rises from Too Much Social Media

December 16, 2020

World War II Vet Receives VA’s First COVID Vaccine

FDA Committee: Moderna Is Vaccine Highly Effective

FDA Approves Non-Prescription Home Test for COVID

Pediatricians: Let Kids Be Part of Vaccine Trials

High BP in Middle Age Can Harm Your Brain

Public Information Lacking Amid COVID Vaccine Push

CDC Encourages COVID Vaccine With Stickers, Buttons

U.S. Teen Vaping Rates Leveling Off, Remain High

Which Animals Most Vulnerable to COVID Infections

December 21, 2020

Most Americans Oppose COVID Vaccine Mandates

COVID Has Southern California ICU Capacity at Zero

Experts: Pregnant Women Can Get COVID-19 Vaccine

104-Year-Old WWII Veteran Beats COVID

No Link Seen Between COVID, Guillain-Barré Syndrome

COVID Far More Lethal Than Flu, Data Shows

Pence Receives COVID-19 Vaccine on Live TV

2 Alaskan Workers Report Adverse Vaccine Reactions

Pfizer Vials Hold Extra Doses of COVID-19 Vaccine

December 22, 2020

WebMD Poll: More Want COVID-19 Vaccine Earlier

Biden Receives COVID-19 Vaccine on TV

75 COVID-19 Cases Linked to N.C. Church Event

Johnson & Johnson May Apply for EUA in February

8 Nuns Die of COVID at Wisconsin Retirement Home

Employers Can Require Mandatory Vaccines for Staff

Reactions Pause COVID-19 Vaccinations at Hospital

Vaccine Official Apologizes to Governors for Missteps

CDC Gives Final OK to Moderna COVID Vaccine

December 23, 2020

CDC Seeks Passengers on Flight Where Man Died of COVID

Congress Passes Pandemic Economic Relief Package

Fauci: Santa Claus Vaccinated, Cleared for Travel

Poll: Mask Wearing Declines Even as COVID Spreads

COVID-19 Variant Sparks U.K. Travel Restrictions

Biden Receives COVID-19 Vaccine on TV

WebMD Poll: More Want COVID-19 Vaccine Earlier

75 COVID-19 Cases Linked to N.C. Church Event

Johnson & Johnson May Apply for EUA in February

December 24, 2020

Fauci: ‘Umbrella of Protection’ Possible By Summer

As COVID Numbers Rise, So Does 'Psychic Numbing'

Looking Back on 2020: Top COVID-19 Search Terms

Travelers from the UK to NYC Must Now Quarantine

COVID Makes 2020 the Deadliest Year in U.S. History

COVID Doesn't Pass to Baby During Pregnancy

Lean Cuisine Meals Recalled Due to Plastic Pieces

CDC Seeks Passengers on Flight Where Man Died of COVID

Congress Passes Pandemic Economic Relief Package

December 25, 2020

Masks May Not Stop Kids from Reading Emotions

Feds Buy 100 Million More Pfizer Vaccine Doses

Antarctica Reports First COVID-19 Outbreak

Looking Back on 2020: Top COVID-19 Search Terms

From Public to Personal: Pandemic Lessons Learned

As COVID Numbers Rise, So Does 'Psychic Numbing'

Fauci: ‘Umbrella of Protection’ Possible By Summer

Travelers from the UK to NYC Must Now Quarantine

COVID Makes 2020 the Deadliest Year in U.S. History

December 30, 2020

Your Boss May Require You to Get a COVID-19 Vaccine

2.1 Million COVID Vaccine Doses Given in U.S.

3-Year-Old COVID Patient Recovering From Stroke

Los Angeles County Testing for New COVID Variant

Making Boredom Help You Thrive During COVID-19

Eviction Bans Keep Renters Home, Curb COVID Spread

COVID-19 Survival Declines When Brain Affected: Study

Blood Pressure Often Differs Widely Between Arms

Vaccine Guidance Updated for Underlying Conditions

December 31, 2020

COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Faces Delays

UK Approves AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

Colorado Finds First U.S. Case of U.K. COVID Variant

Pandemic Tougher on Mental Health For Women Than Men

WHO Leader: COVID ‘Not Necessarily the Big One’

Extreme Psychotic Reactions In Few COVID Patients

Florida, Texas Vaccinate Those 65 and Older

Smartphones Can Hold Vaccine Record in L.A. County

New U.S. Diet Guide Emphasizes Balance Through Life

VIEW ALL HEALTH NEWS

 


Europe has great health care systems and universities. So why aren't European nations apart from the U.K. leading the way in development of Covid19 vaccines?
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/covid-19-vaccine-updates-from-around-the-world-these-nine-candidates-are-at-phase-iii-trial-stage/ss-BB19594l

Click on the right arrow to see the nine leading vaccines being developed --- mostly from the USA and China except for the one being developed in the U.K.
Does Europe rely too much on pharmaceuticals developed outside of Europe, especially those developed in the USA?


Vitamin D Could Explain Why Autism Is Three Times More Common in Boys
https://scitechdaily.com/vitamin-d-could-explain-why-autism-is-three-times-more-common-in-boys/


Blindness cure on horizon after vision loss fully restored in mice with glaucoma ---
https://www.studyfinds.org/blindness-cure-vision-loss-fully-restored-glaucoma/


What happens to our consciousness when we fall asleep? Study may solve one of biggest scientific mysteries ---
https://www.studyfinds.org/what-happens-to-consciousness-when-asleep/




Humor for December 2020

The Funniest Books of All Time --- https://www.thereadinglists.com/funniest-books-of-all-time/

Not-So-Funny Yard Signs that Get Better Later in the Slideshow (Click on the Slideshow) ---
https://www.science-a2z.com/the-most-hilarious-and-original-yard-signs-youve-ever-seen-part2/?utm_medium=yahoo&utm_source=347&utm_campaign=402654456&utm_term=NEWS_US-c&site_id=news.yahoo.com&vmcid=p%24g%2co%244650d852-484a-11eb-b141-008cfa5b6918-7f2ca7d4a700%2ct%241609076940847

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

The local news station was interviewing an 80-year-old-lady because she had just gotten married for the fourth time. The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 80, and then about her new husband’s occupation. “He is a funeral director” she answered. “Interesting,” the newsman thought.

He then asked her if she wouldn’t mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living. She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect on all those years. After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she had first married a banker when she was in her 20’s, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40’s and a preacher when in her 60’s and now in her 80s a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.

(Wait for it)
She smiled and explained, “ I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go."

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

"You claim to be a chocolate lab," said the cat to the dog. "Lemme check."

Attack this day with the enthusiasm and confidence of of a four-year old wearing a Batman t-shirt.

I thought I would never be the kind of person to wake up early just to exercise. I was right all along.

Two ways to really improve your day:  Don't check the news, and stay off the scales.

The Circle of Life:  An old man on a walker meets a toddler trying to push a stroller.

Elsie Frey's One Liners Forwarded by Tina

For me drinking responsibly means don't spill it.

The older I get, the earlier it gets late.

I remember when I could get up without sound effects.

When I ask for directions, please don't use words like "east."

When I run I run like the winded.

I finally got eight hours of sleep; It only took three days, but whatever.

 




Humor December 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q4.htm#Humor1220.htm 

Humor November 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q4.htm#Humor1120.htm

Humor October 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q4.htm#Humor1020.htm  

Humor September 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q3.htm#Humor0920.htm 

Humor August 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q3.htm#Humor0820.htm 

Humor July 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q3.htm#Humor0720.htm 

Humor June 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q2.htm#Humor0620.htm

Humor May 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q2.htm#Humor0520.htm

Humor April 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q2.htm#Humor0420.htm   

Humor March 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q1.htm#Humor0320.htm  

Humor January 2020 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book20q1.htm#Humor0120.htm

Humor December 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q4.htm#Humor1219.htm

Humor November 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q4.htm#Humor1119.htm

Humor October 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q4.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   




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