In 2017 my
Website was migrated to the clouds and reduced in size.
Hence some links below are broken.
Contact me at
rjensen@trinity.edu if you really need to file that is missing.
Tidbits on July 14, 2009
Bob Jensen
Another sunrise in the White Mountains
Honestly, I did not touch up any of the pictures shown below in any way
except for the final picture below where I added "Thanks Dad"
This summer we've had more rain and less sun
than usual.
We keep waiting for summer, but a temperature range of 45-65 doesn't much feel
like summer.
On some afternoons our beautiful mornings can change to something like this.
Quite often our cottage is above the clouds
and the rain
Although I really don't take the time to
golf, I do live on a mountain golf course.
Here are some of the ducks that live on the
water hazard in front of the first green.
The rains bring on lovely flowers.
Five years ago I bought an air conditioner
when we bought the cottage.
I think we've turned it on less than three days each summer and one time this
summer.
I may make a planter out of the compressor you can see below.
The Stories Behind Names of Flowers
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657689923189159.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
For pictures to go with the names see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower
After getting $4,500 for my 21-year old
"clunker" (maybe and maybe not) and plus annual $1,200 economicstimulus
payments, I'm
ready to be stimulated, economically speaking, yet another time. Keep taxpayer dough showering over me
up here in the White Mountains ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/07/10/help_they_are_talking_about_a_new_stimulus!
Aw Shucks!
Few Economists Favor More Stimulus ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124708099206913393.html#mod=todays_us_page_one
Jensen Comment
The good news is that economic sense never gets in the way of the spendthrift
U.S. Congress.
Seriously I have a 21-year old Cadillac
Deville that I inherited from my father about ten years ago. It's a great car
--- nothing ever goes wrong as long as I buy good tires and a new battery now
and then. But it is, after all, 21 years old and has an EPA fuel mileage rating
of 18 that's the number given to the car for both town and highway mileage
combined. Now if I want the $4,500 in Obama's "Cash-for Clunker" deal I have to
trade the Cad for a new car with a rating of 28, which means I'm limited to tiny
cars that I can lift off the ground with one arm. Buying a heavier hybrid makes
little sense since we put on less than 5,000 miles per year on both cars. But
with the blizzards up in these mountains we really need an all-wheel drive
vehicle.
If I want the $3,500 Cash-for-Clunker deal the new car must
have a rating of 23-27 which gets me a new car that I can only lift off the
ground with two arms.
Actually the Subaru Forrester or Outback cars I might be happy with have ratings of 22, but that means $0
for my "clunker" (which in no way is a clunker). So I may just keep the heavy
Cad for a lifetime of comfortable driving in the summer (it sits in my barn in
the winter and is replaced by my 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee for snow driving).
Great Video of an 89-Year Old Woman
My 21-year old Cad barely has 80,000 miles to date. The woman in this video
drove the same Mercury for over 540,000 trouble-free miles over 45 years of her
life provides evidence that it is possible to drive an American-made car with
the original drive train for a lifetime ---
http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html
Sadly, President Obama has committed taxpayer
dollars to guarantee the lifetime (up to 120 years) drive train (engine,
transmission, etc.) of all new Chrysler cars and zero dollars to guarantee a
single part of any Ford Motor Company vehicle. I waiting to see if he extends
this 120-year warranty to Italian cars that will now carry a Chrysler
boilerplate.
If Maxwell
had a lifetime powertrain warranty on the car that Jack Benny purchased, he
undoubtedly would have driven that Maxwell right up to the day he died ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-z7t5Fkg3o
A picture
of a Maxwell automobile like Jack owned is available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_automobile
Mel
Blanc's classic routine ---
Click Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9s8U0O0XPE&feature=PlayList&p=3C493293CF8D2819&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=36
In the 1970s, K-Mart offered
an insane warranty that would replace a battery with no replacement cost for as
long as you owned the car. Little did K-Mart realize that people like me drive
cars for 20 or 30 years. I think I had eight totally free battery replacements.
Once I even wore a Jack Benny nametag into the K-mart service center. They did
seem to appreciate my humor.
If Plymouth had a given me a
lifetime powertrain warranty on by 1970 stationwagon, I would still be driving a
1970 Plymouth stationwagon with new fenders, doors, seats, radiator, muffler,
exhaust pipes, and of course a new battery from K-Mart (those lifetime battery
warranties are still good).
Alas, in 1998 my Plymouth
stationwagon transmission failed (the car would only go in reverse). At that
time I decided that replacing this component of the powertrain did not meet the
benefit-cost test without having a lifetime powertrain warranty from Plymouth.
The saddest part was having to give up the lifetime battery replacement from
K-Mart.
Bob
Jensen
Cash for Clunkers Fuel Economy
Guidelines --http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/cars.shtml
Magnificent
The Farmers by Artist Robert Duncan (Slide Show) ---
Click Here
After it loads hit the arrow buttons!
Life is Beautiful ---
http://www.greatdanepromilitary.com/Life/index.htm
Tidbits on July 14, 2009
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.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/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Bob Jensen's essay on the financial crisis bailout's aftermath and an alphabet soup of
appendices can be found at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.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
The Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
"Microsoft Office to Go Online for Free," Fortune, July 13,
2009 ---
Click Here
Also see
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23838/?nlid=2174
This will not be the full-featured version of Office that you can purchase, but
it will compete head on with Google Office.
Free Alternatives to/for MS Office (Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#MSofficeAlternatives
Also see
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,1000001108,39674807,00.htm
Unfortunately none of
the free alternatives to MS Office will have all the new and supposedly
wonderful features of the 2010 Version of MS Office
Richard Campbell forwarded this link describing the new features
to look forward to with the MS Office 2010 ---
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10284013-12.html?tag=smallC
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
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
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
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
Inspiration: Games Versus Teachers
"Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher
Education, July 14, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 ---
http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml
Bob Jensen's threads on networked learning simulations ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Simulation
Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
Video: We Are the World ---
Click Here
Video: Investing for Inflation ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/janet-tavakoli-author-of-dear-mr-buffett-on-investing-for-inflation/
Historical Thinking Matters ---
http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/
The Simpsons' cartoon version of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead ---
http://tinyurl.com/pu89ca
Video: 3 Ways The Brain Creates Meaning ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-3-ways-the-brain-creates-meaning/
PBS creates a library of digital resources for free use in
schools ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/07/08/pbs-creates-library-of-digital-resources-targeted-to-classroom-use.aspx
Evian Roller Babies (fun and fancy free) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PHnRIn74Ag&feature=yva-video-display
In some ways this video makes you not trust much of what your eyes see in moving
pictures.
Comedy Video: Warren Buffett & The Nervous Nellie ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/comedy-video-warren-buffett-the-nervous-nellie/
P.J. O'Rourke is a 21st-century H.L. Mencken-a libertarian satirist and
quote-machine who's deeply suspicious of most any office-holder ("Politics is
the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit") ---
http://reason.com/blog/show/134561.html
CNN Video: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells CNN's
John King that he's concerned about President Obama's spending.---
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/03/colin_powell_concerned_with_obamas_spending.html
Also see
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/03/state-of-the-union-im-concerned-about-obamas-agenda-says-powell/
Western Soundscape Archive ---
http://westernsoundscape.org/
Free music downloads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Video: We Are the World ---
Click Here
Mountain Stage ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92133820
Tanya Tucker: Living In A Country Song ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106474479
Yolanda Kondonassis: Impressions Of The Harp ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105927495
Konstantin
Preobrezhensky - Author, describes his life as a former Lt. Colonel in the KGB
who worked before, during, and after the fall of the Soviet Union. In his book,
he describes Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR),
Russia and the Press, and his personal experiences. This is the first in a
series of extraordinary video interviews with former KGB officer Konstantin
Preobrezhensky ---
http://nocompromisemedia.com/2009/07/01/no-compromise-with-putins-russia/
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free
online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Magnificent
The Farmers by Artist Robert Duncan (Slide Show) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Farmers.pps
John Jacob Omenhausser Civil War Sketchbook ---
http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital/record.jsp?pid=umd:50498
Lianhuanhua: Picture Storybook ---
http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/storybook/index.php?c=1
The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African
Photographs: 1860-1960
http://repository.library.northwestern.edu/winterton/
Aluka (art history in Africa) ---
http://www.aluka.org/
SFMOMA: Kerry James Marshall [African-American Art]
---
http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/interactive_features/79
Boeing unveils first Australian Super Hornet ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2289494/posts
The Day President Obama Bottomed Out ---
Click Here
But wait! The video puts it all in a different context ---
Click Here
It's all right since we forgave President Carter for lusting in his
heart (but not his burka) ---
Click Here
From a Special Edition of the Scout Report via Email on
July 2, 2009
Best of 2008-2009
-
Smithsonian's History Explorer
-
Academic Earth
-
Chronicling America: Historic American
Newspapers
-
National Science Foundation: Discoveries
-
The Mannahatta Project
-
The Great Issues Forum [iTunes, RealPlayer]
-
Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
-
Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's
Natural History, 1884-1934
-
LabCAST: The MIT Media Lab Video Podcast
-
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in
Renaissance Venice
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
About 800 pages of the world's oldest surviving Christian Bible have been
pieced together and published on the Internet for the first time, experts in
Britain said Monday ---
http://www.physorg.com/news166106367.html
Poets House ---
http://www.poetshouse.org/
From Harvard University
Open Collections Programs: Expeditions and Discoveries ---
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/expeditions/
The State University of New York Digital
Repository ---
http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/
Libraries to the Rescue ---
http://www.imls.gov/resources/podcasts_Jun09.shtm
Institute of Museum and Library Services: Primary Source
http://www.imls.gov/news/source.shtm
Random House Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels
of the 20th Century ---
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/17
Searchable Bible Online ---
http://www.biblegateway.com/
Quran online ---
http://www.quranexplorer.com/
Complete Multimedia Bible w/ James Earl
Jones ---
Click Here
MP3 Quaran ---
http://www.quranonline.net/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.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
"Microsoft Office to Go Online for Free," Fortune, July 13,
2009 ---
Click Here
Also see
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23838/?nlid=2174
This will not be the full-featured version of Office that you can purchase, but
it will compete head on with Google Office.
Free Alternatives to/for MS Office (Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#MSofficeAlternatives
Also see
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,1000001108,39674807,00.htm
Unfortunately none of
the free alternatives to MS Office will have all the new and supposedly
wonderful features of the 2010 Version of MS Office
Richard Campbell forwarded this link describing the new features
to look forward to with the MS Office 2010 ---
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10284013-12.html?tag=smallC
Also see
http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,1000001108,39674807,00.htm
Perspectives of the U.S. Congress
The U.S. Congress held a moment of silence for the tragedy of Michael Jackson,
something it has never done for a single recipient of the Medal of Honor
False Promises
If the Senate doesn't pass a bill to cut global warming, Democratic Sen. Barbara
Boxer says, there will be dire results: droughts, floods, fires, loss of
species, damage to agriculture, worsening air pollution and more. She says
there's a huge upside, however, if the Senate does act: millions of clean-energy
(union) jobs, reduced reliance on foreign
oil and less pollution for the nation's children. Boxer is engaged in her
biggest sales job ever. The stakes couldn't be higher as she faces one of the
toughest high-profile acts of her lengthy career: getting Congress to sign off
on historic legislation to lower greenhouse-gas emissions.
Yahoo News, July 11, 2009
Jensen Comment
Senator Boxer covers up the fact that the Cap and Trade Bill has virtually
nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with corporate welfare
where billions of dollars will be showered upon large corporations and their
labor unions while doubling the cost of electricity to rural America and forcing
millions of jobs to leave America for more polluting parts of the world --- like
India and China.
Dear Premier Jiabao ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Jiabao
We are imposing a 50% tariff on all imported goods from China because you've
failed to impose carbon emission limits to levels that the United States is
imposing in on all manufacturing plants. I'm sorry about this, but a clause in
the Cap and Trade legislation to help our labor unions and create more jobs in
the U.S. gives me no choice in the matter.
Senator Boxer
Dear Madam Boxer
We are not turning over 50% of our investment in the $12 trillion U.S. National
Debt and will no longer support the spendthrift U.S. Congress that is
building up the annual Federal government spending
deficit by over $2 trillion per year.
We will cease bidding on new issues of Treasury Bonds used to finance your
overspending. Please take your import tariffs plus your spending deficits and
shove them where the "sun don't shine Barbie Doll."
Wen
Jensen Comment
Since President Obama wisely opposes the pro-labor union clause in the Cap and
Trade Bill that imposes tariffs on nations that pollute at hire carbon rates
than the U.S., this clause will probably be deleted or not enforced. But he's
playing a dangerous game when trying to appease the unions that helped get him
elected.
China’s new lending more than doubled in June from a
month earlier, increasing concerns bad loans and asset bubbles will emerge amid
a credit boom. New lending was 1.53 trillion yuan ($224 billion), the central
bank said on its Web site today, bringing total lending this year to 7.4
trillion yuan. The calculation for new loans is preliminary, the central bank
added. The government is countering an export collapse by flooding the economy
with money to fuel domestic demand. Rapid credit growth poses a risk to the
nation’s lenders and a concentration of credit in some industries and businesses
may damage the stability of the financial system, the banking regulator said
yesterday. “Excess liquidity is fueling speculation and that means asset bubbles
and wasteful investment,” said Isaac Meng, a senior economist at BNP Paribas SA
in Beijing. “Expect credit to slow dramatically in the second half.”
"China’s New Lending Surges, Fueling Bad-Loan Concerns
(Update1)," Bloomberg News, July 8, 2009 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=asIkAKte9CbY
Harvard economist Greg Mankiw says that we should
keep an eye on what the Obama Administration decides to do about Chinese tire
imports because last week, the U.S. International Trade Commission advised the
president to slap taxes on imports of low-cost Chinese tires. Supposedly,
they’re harming American tire companies. Mankiw comments: “President Obama's
views about international trade are still something of a mystery. As a senator
and presidential candidate he seemed like a protectionist, but once elected he
hired a bunch of free traders as economic advisers.” Fortunately, so far,
President Obama has sounded more like a free trader than...
John Stossel, "Free Trade Watch,"
ABC News, July 7, 2009 ---
http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/07/free-trade-watch.html
I’ve reported on the government’s boneheaded farm
subsidy programs that cost taxpayers $25 billion per year, and import taxes that
cost consumers another $12 billion in higher supermarket costs. The average
American household pays $320 per year for these policies, but voters rarely
complain, because the costs are well hidden. Also, it’s another case of
concentrated benefits winning in politics over diffuse costs. Even if you do
know that you will be unfairly penalized $320/year, you are less likely to go to
your Congressman about that than the business that will win millions.
John Stossel, "Your Handout to Agri-Business,"
ABC News, July 9, 2009 ---
http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/07/your-handout-to-agribusiness.html
From MIT
Energy experts generally agree that the electrical grid
in the United States needs to be upgraded if the country is to increase its use
of renewable-energy sources like wind power and significantly reduce emissions
of greenhouse gases. But plans to string new high-voltage lines to bring wind
power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, where most of the demand
is, could be expensive and unnecessary, and a distraction from more urgent
needs, some experts say.
Kevin Bullis, "A Costly and
Unnecessary New Electricity Grid: A national interstate system for
distributing power may prove an expensive boondoggle," MIT's Technology
Review, July 14, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22997/?nlid=2174
From MIT
The European cap-and-trade system, known as the Emission Trading System (ETS),
is the world's largest pollution market, and it offers important lessons for
U.S. policymakers (see "Carbon
Trading on the Cheap"). One lesson rings
louder than all the others: cap-and-trade, by itself, won't make much of a dent.
David Victor, "The Problem with Cap
and Trade David Victor explains why emissions trading alone won't be adequate to
address global warming," MIT's Technology Review, July/August 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22846/?nlid=2156
EU: Climate Deal Pointless Without China, India
The chances of concluding a new global climate change
pact remain dim unless China, India and Brazil make significant cuts in carbon
dioxide emissions as well a senior Swedish climate change official said
Thursday. Lars-Erik Liljelund, special climate change adviser to the Swedish
government, said cuts from richer countries in the 27-nation bloc or planned
cuts in the United States will not be enough to meet aims to cut at least 25
percent of emission from 1990 levels. "The problem at the moment is that if you
take the contributions made so far by the United States, the European Union and
Japan then we don't come up to that minus 25 percent," he told reporters. He
said cuts from those richer countries and regions would only reach two-thirds of
that minimum target.
Newsmax, July 2, 2009 ---
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/investing/china_india_climate/2009/07/02/231487.html
CNN Video: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells CNN's John King that
he's concerned about President Obama's spending.---
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/03/colin_powell_concerned_with_obamas_spending.html
Also see
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/03/state-of-the-union-im-concerned-about-obamas-agenda-says-powell/
"Parsing the Health Reform Arguments Some of the shibboleths we've heard in
recent weeks don't make much sense," by George Newman, The Wall Street
Journal, July 1, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124640626749276595.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Also see
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2009/07/01/better_health_care
There's No Such Thing as Free Health Care
"The costly truth about Canada's health care system," by John Strossel,
Reason Magazine, July 2, 2009 ---
http://www.reason.com/news/show/134553.html
"Medicare Administrative Costs Are Higher, Not Lower, Than for Private
Insurance," by Robert Book, The Heritage Foundation, June 25, 2009 ---
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2505.cfm
To say nothing of the ease with which vendors defraud Medicare.
U.S. Senate Hearings (where nobody listens unless the melody is from the
choir)
Princeton University Physics Professor Gores Gore On Global Warming and Climate
Change ---
Click Here
"Obamanomics' War On Business Will Strangle Economic Recovery," by Carol
Platt Liebau ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/CarolPlattLiebau/2009/07/13/obamanomics_war_on_business_will_strangle_economic_recovery
By contrast, private (health) insurers try to manage
care, and that takes money. Not only does administrative spending go toward
screening for waste and fraud -- logical, given the return-on-investment
incentives -- they also go toward building networks of (honest) doctors and
other providers. Medicare doesn't pay for this legwork, so it simply counts
fraud losses as more spending. Generally private insurers also attempt to pay
for other things that consumers find valuable, such as high quality, while
Medicare and Medicaid are forbidden by law from excluding substandard providers,
unless they're criminals. Dead doctors, fake patients, high-school dropouts,
fly-by-night businesses and the rest will continue to swindle our sclerotic
entitlement system, no matter how far the government turns up the after-the-fact
heat. The arrests in Detroit and Miami are another argument against importing to
the rest of the health economy the model that enabled these scams.
"Why It's Easy to Steal From Medicare: Arrests in Detroit
and Miami are another argument against importing to the rest of the health
economy the model that enabled these scams," The Wall Street Journal,
July 2, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124649425934283347.html#mod=todays_us_opinion
The salary of the chief executive of a large
corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the
nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
John Kenneth Galbraith ---
Click Here
The total return of the S&P 500 index fell by nearly 40% last year, the
second-worst performance by America’s stock market since 1825 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/us-stockmarket-returns-since-1825/
But Wall Street's pay packages in 2009 are shooting for all time highs ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous compensation ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
We are living, after all, in a sort of
conflict-of-interest golden age. Professionalism is for sale almost wherever you
choose to look. Among the forces that most conspicuously drove the late
real-estate bubble, for example, were appraisers and bond rating agencies that
apparently decided to put themselves on the market. The city of Washington is an
extreme case of this marketized world. The capital swarms with hired guns,
payola pundits, and think tanks on a mission. Every bad idea that has ever
appealed to the funding class is well-represented here. And with the coming of
the health-care debate, as the Post itself has noted, the entire apparatus has
swung into well-compensated action.
"When Newspapers Peddle Influence: A revealing scandal at
the Washington Post," The Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124701195025708919.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Blame Proposition 13 and the $200 billion platinum pension spending mentality
of California's state workers and their unions
Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick
turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its
once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the
seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a
celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines
of Argentina or Latvia.
Joel Kotkin, "Who Killed
California's Economy?" Forbes, July 7, 2009 ---
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/06/economy-pension-environment-business-opinions-columnists-california.html
This may go down as one of the greatest construction projects of all time
American engineers who serve as consultants for the
Egyptian military have recently informed Israel that Hamas has succeeded in
digging 60-meter deep smuggling tunnels to avoid detection and destruction by
the IDF, defense officials said on Thursday. The American engineers, deployed as
consultants along the Philadelphi Corridor in Egyptian Rafah, have been using
technology that can detect seismic movements to uncover tunnels. But it is more
difficult to detect them once they have reached the 60-meter depth, the
engineers told their Israeli counterparts. According to IDF assessments, Hamas
now has several hundred active tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor, even
though close to 300 were reportedly bombed by the Israel Air Force during
Operation Cast Lead in December and January. Digging to the new depths required
special techniques, one official said. "The Palestinians are experts at digging
tunnels," the official said. "They reach 60 meters, pump out the groundwater,
and pump in air so they can continue digging."
Yaakov Katz, "US engineers: 'Gaza
tunnels now 60m deep'," Jerusalem Post, July 3, 2009 ---
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443709998&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The U.S. Congress is just grateful that water board torture was not used
instead
Somali Islamist fighters on Friday beheaded seven
prisoners accused of abandoning the Muslim faith and spying for the government
in the largest mass execution since the Islamists were pushed from power two and
a half years ago. The public killings in the southwestern town of Baidoa
followed weeks of fierce fighting as the Islamists try to seize Somalia's
capital, Mogadishu, amid mounting concerns about the influx of hundreds of
foreign fighters to the failed state. The beheadings may be linked to the
Islamists' failure to take Mogadishu after a 2-month-old offensive, said a
senior analyst at global intelligence company Stratfor....
Katherine Houreld, Yahoo News,
July 10, 2009 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090710/ap_on_re_af/af_somalia_beheadings_4
President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, announced
today she may sue her potential future colleagues for racial bias over
yesterday's 5-4 ruling that overturned her own decision in the New Haven fire
fighters discrimination lawsuit.
The Supreme Court ruled in Ricci v. DeStefano Monday that an employer could
not throw out the results of a promotion exam simply for fear of a lawsuit from
racial minorities who fared poorly on the test.
Sotomayor accused the high
court's "Constitutional literalists" of bias and an "abject lack of wisdom" in
tossing out the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' prior ruling in the case
which she joined. "In their majority ruling in Ricci, Justices Roberts, Alito,
Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas failed to take into account the cultural forces
exerted on a Latina appeals court judge," said Sotomayor. "Historical,
entrenched institutional prejudice can cause a person, even a wise Latina, to
make emotional decisions which, while consistent with the cultural norms of the
aggrieved ethnic group, might not comport entirely with the specific language of
the Constitution -- a document of questionable practical value due to the
Anglo-Saxon cultural bias of its authors." Sotomayor said she hopes the threat
of a lawsuit will be enough to persuade the Supreme Court to reverse its ruling.ing
Suing the U.S. Supreme Court
Scott Ott, Washington Examiner,
June 30, 2009 ---
Click Here
While the recent Supreme Court decision in the New
Haven firefighters' case will be welcome news to those who don't think that a
gross injustice is O.K. when those on the receiving end are white, the reasoning
behind the 5 to 4 decision is a painful reminder that the law is still tangled
in a web of assumptions, evasions and contradictions when it comes to racial
issues. Nor have these problems been clarified with the passage of time. On the
contrary, the growing complexity and murkiness of civil rights law over the
years recalls the painful saying: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we
practice to deceive."
Thomas Sowell, "A Tangled Web,"
Townhall, July 7, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/07/07/a_tangled_web
For my TV show on the effect of a government
monopoly on K-12 education, we gave kids in Belgium the same international test
we gave to kids at a top New Jersey high school. The Belgian kids cleaned the NJ
kids’ clocks. Pockets of charter competition have begun to compete with the
monopoly, but we clearly have a long way to go. Immigrants seeking to become
U.S. citizens have to pass a test. It’s not that hard a test. 92.4% of new
immigrants pass on first try. The test includes simple questions like “Who was
the first President?”
John Stossel, "Still Stupid in America," ABC News, July 8, 2009
---
http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/07/still-stupid-in-america.html
I’ve often reported on how licensing laws kill
opportunity. Typically, politically connected businesses band together with
regulators in the name of creating “standards” for “safety”, “fairness”, etc.,
but the regulations quickly become a mechanism for protecting the establishment
from cheaper or more innovative competition. In DC, a “cosmetology board” was
putting innovative hair braiders out of business. With the help of the Institute
for Justice the hairdressers took that case to court and won. But politicians,
urged on by special interests, are always busy passing business-killing
licensing laws.
John Stossel, "Opportunity Killing
Laws," ABC News, July 8, 2009 ---
http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/07/opportunitykilling-laws.html
Payback Time
A report in USA Today says that "billions of dollars in federal aid delivered
directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly
to places that supported President Obama in last year's presidential election."
Got that? Money that's supposed to "stimulate" our economy is in fact lining the
pockets of Democratic Party supporters.
"Blue State Stimulus," IBD Editorials, July 9, 2009 ---
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332032012323719
"The Feminists Demand and Receive," by Phyllis Schlafly, Townhall,
July 7, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2009/07/07/the_feminists_demand_and_receive
Nevertheless, the feminists demanded that
half the stimulus jobs be given to women. The feminists worked to achieve
this result by directing the stimulus funds into the types of jobs where
women predominate and by allocating at least a third of the spending in
manufacturing and construction industries to training women for those men's
jobs.
All the feminist organizations joined in
the political clatter. They called for a meeting so they could lecture
Obama's economic advisers and hurl their demands that the stimulus package
create jobs that women like, such as workplace-comfortable inside jobs with
air-conditioned offices and carpeted floors.
As one tactic to intimidate Obama
administration officials, the feminists successfully insisted that
participants in the meeting be seated in a circle without a table between
them -- a format that enabled the feminists to be confrontational. The
feminists created their own vocabulary to shout at the men, demanding jobs
for "human infrastructure" and "human bridges," which were euphemisms for
social service, health-care, childcare and librarian jobs.
. . .
Obama gave two of his economists the task
of calculating the gender ratio of jobs to be created by the stimulus
legislation. They reported that women had only 20 percent of jobs lost in
the recession but would get 42 percent of stimulus-created jobs.
In Georgia, for example, two-thirds of the
$3.9 billion stimulus money will go to existing social programs.
Despite the recent welcome Ricci decision
by the Supreme Court against egregious reverse discrimination on the basis
of race, the feminists can look forward to Sonia Sotomayor joining the high
court and ruling that "empathy" requires reverse discrimination for women.
After all, when she was on the Second Circuit, she upheld affirmative action
in the Ricci case, and her own words (repeated many times) reveal that she
believes a woman's view of the law can be better than a man's.
When are the American people going to wake
up to the fact that the feminists are not for equal opportunity or fairness?
The feminist movement is for reverse discrimination to give jobs to women
and make men, husbands and fathers irrelevant as family providers.
Continued in article
Something the liberal press will never mention about Bush successes
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 23 terrorist plots
against the United States have been foiled. This report updates a November 2007
report from the Heritage Foundation that described 19 plots that had been foiled
to date since 9/11. Less than two years later, the U.S. has foiled four more
plots aimed at Americans. While some trials have ended in mistrial and charges
against some suspects were dropped, significantly more individuals have been
convicted and sentenced for their crimes. These victories make the case for
continued U.S. vigilance against terrorism around the globe. While these
particular attacks have been disrupted, the threat remains. The Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and Congress should not construe the successes over the
past eight years as a signal to reduce U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
Jena Baker McNeill and James Jay
Carafano, "Terrorist Watch: 23 Plots Foiled Since 9/11," Heritage
Foundation, July 2, 2009 ---
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HomelandSecurity/bg2294.cfm
Giving in to terrorism demands
About two weeks ago, the Obama administration released
Laith Qazali after extensive negotiations with the Asaib al-Haq terror network.
That network has long been in negotiations with the fledgling Iraqi government,
dangling the possibility of laying down its arms, renouncing violence, and
integrating into Iraqi society, provided that its top members — particularly
Qais and Laith Qazali, as well as Ali Mussa Daqduq — be released. Realizing,
however, that these terrorists were responsible for kidnapping and killing
American soldiers in gross violation of the laws of war, the Bush administration
had declined to release them. The Obama administration has not only released
Laith Qazali, it has been in negotiations to release his brother, Qais Qazali,
as well. The negotiations and release were carried out in flagrant disregard of
the longstanding policy against exchanging prisoners for the release of
hostages. Undermining that policy endangers all American troops and civilian
personnel — as well as the troops and civilian personnel of our allies — by
encouraging terrorists to kidnap them to use as bargaining chips.
Andrew C. McCarthy, "Negotiating
with Terrorists: The Obama administration ignores a longstanding — and
life-saving — policy," National Review, June 24, 2009 ---
Click Here
In Troy, New York, where a quarter of the children
live below the poverty level and the average household makes less than $30,000 a
year, the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000
taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant. They call it economic development. What
it is is a sin. What it is is welfare for the wealthy, proof positive that
raping the taxpayer is what the government does best. Meet George Soros. He owns
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns
70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
Bob Ionsberry, July 2, 2009 ---
http://www.boblonsberry.com/writings.cfm?go=4
Konstantin Preobrezhensky - Author, describes his
life as a former Lt. Colonel in the KGB who worked before, during, and after the
fall of the Soviet Union. In his book, he describes Russia and the Russian
Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), Russia and the Press, and his personal
experiences. This is the first in a series of extraordinary video interviews
with former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrezhensky ---
http://nocompromisemedia.com/2009/07/01/no-compromise-with-putins-russia/
The Huffington Post issued an apology Friday evening
for an article about the resignation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posted at
their website entitled, Palin Will Run In '12 On More Retardation Platform,
written by HuffPo writer Erik Sean Nelson.The Daily Dose published an e-mail
apology from Mario Ruiz of HuffPo: Due to an editorial lapse, Erik Sean Nelson’s
post on Sarah Palin bypassed the normal vetting process and appeared on HuffPost
— but was never featured anywhere on the site. Even though satiric works are
generally given greater latitude, Nelson’s post falls outside of HuffPost’s
editorial guidelines.
See
http://dailydose.us/2009/07/03/huffpo-statement-on-the-deleted-huffington-post-story/
Jensen Comment
HuffPost should've been content to calling her a bimbo "slut" like CBS and NBC.
Actually the HuffPost author apologized to special needs families for implying
retarded people might be as stupid as Sarah Palin. I'm serious! He apologized to
special needs people, but not to Sarah Palin. His apology was even less sincere
than the smirking first apology of David Letterman (who subsequently sobered up
when advertisers commenced to withdraw financial support from CBS).
Liberals like
David
Letterman and
Keith Olbermann just cannot let Sarah Palin alone after she resigned
David Letterman says she was waving goodbye to Russia from her front porch
Sarah Palin has deeply disappointed her enemies. People
who hate her guts feel she's really let them down by resigning. She's like the
ex-girlfriend they're SO over, never want to see again, have already forgotten
about -- really, it's O-ver -- but they just can't stop talking about her.
Liberal: Ha, ha ... Sarah who? She's over, she's toast, a future Trivial Pursuit
answer, nothing more.
Ann Coulter, "Forgetting Sarah Palin,"
Townhall, July 8, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2009/07/08/forgetting_sarah_palin
This situation developed because Alaska's
transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests.
While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can
become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the
need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly,
ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if
the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the
2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been
targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature.
Most have centered on Ms. Palin's use of government resources, and to date have
turned up little save for a few state trips that she agreed to reimburse the
state for because her children had accompanied her. In the process, though, she
accumulated $500,000 in legal fees in just the last nine months, and knew the
bill would grow ever larger in the future. "The Alaska ethics elves had painted
such a target on Sarah's forehead that she had begun turning down pretty much
every invitation she got -- even though they were pouring in every day by the
dozens," a confidant of the governor's told me. "It is not throwing in the
towel. It is deciding that she was ineffective in fighting for her principles
and could do more in another role."
John Fund, "Why Palin Quit Death by
a Thousand FOIAs," The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124700261179807839.html#mod=djemEditorialPage
Obama and Snopes and Wikipedia Playing Loose With Facts
Below is a letter Obama sent to Kapi'olani Medical
Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii at a Centennial Dinner on
01/24/2009 which was read by Rep. Neil Abercrombie. Obama clearly references
this hospital as his hospital of birth. Below is screen shot of Snopes.com
90 minutes before this article was published at
WND.COM showing his hospital of birth in Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu,
Hawaii . . . For more on that see
Snopes and FactCheck caught misrepresenting the position of those after Obama's
birth certificate.... and
Video of reporter asking the White House Briefing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
about Obama's "LONG FORM" birth certificate.
"Snopes.com changes hospital of Obama's birth 90 minutes after
WND.COM article," Value Voters News, July 8, 2009 ---
http://www.valuesvoternews.com/2009/07/snopescom-changes-hospital-of-obamas.html
Jensen Comment
It is too late to worry about Obama's credentials to be President, and it's not
uncommon for Wikipedia to play loose with facts. But Snopes stakes its
reputation on being accurate.
Andrew Breitbart takes on the elitist media,
specifically the three female "feminists" who have been on the trash Sarah
bandwagon from the beginning, and he does it with gusto: What a shock that
Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It
did not so much criticize Alaska's governor for prematurely stepping down from
her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina
Fey began last fall. The assassination of Sarah Palin - by media.
"The Elite “Feminist” Attack Machine," Flopping Aces, July
5, 2009 ---
http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/07/05/the-elite-feminist-attack-machine/
Jensen Comment
Liberals should lay off Sarah Palin. She's the best thing that can happen for
Democratic Party success in future elections.
The main stream media is finally discussing the
sexual preferences of Frank Lombard - the Duke University administrator accused
of molesting and offering his five-year-old adopted son for sex, via the
internet. Naturally, the newspapers are focusing on threats to the gay adoption
movement not threats to those who are adopted by gay parents. I’d like to bring
the conversation back to Frank Lombard for a moment. His potential as a child
molester should have been detected by social workers and friends alike. Just one
look at Frank Lombard’s Amazon Wish List should have convinced anyone that he
should not be adopting a young boy.
Mike Adams, "Frank Lombard’s Wish
List," Townhall, July 6, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/Columnists/MikeAdams/2009/07/06/frank_lombard%E2%80%99s_wish_list
American soldiers in Afghanistan will be under
orders to back down when they're chasing Taliban fighters whenever they think
that civilians might be at risk.
McClatchey, Yahoo News, July 1, 2009
---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090701/wl_mcclatchy/3264079
Jensen Comment
What an incentive for the Taliban to drag along a civilian little kid or two for
each terror engagement. Why not handcuff each child to a Taliban machine gun?
GIs could thereby be under orders to let the Taliban roam at will
Yes we still have an ally
Around 800 British troops have pushed deep into
Taliban-held territory in Helmand province after a ten-day battle to secure
river crossings. The latest wave of two-week-old Operation Panther's Claw
involved one of the most strategically significant operations the British have
carried out in Helmand, a British Army statement said. Hundreds of soldiers from
the Light Dragoons began moving to secure a large area north of Lashkar Gah
after 750 Welsh Guards seized 13 canal crossings. "Hundreds of soldiers from the
Welsh Guards Battlegroup have successfully seized 13 key canal crossings in one
of the most strategically significant British operations ever...
Ben Farmer, "UK forces push deep
into Taliban territory in Afghanistan," The London Telegraph, July 3,
2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5735038/UK-forces-push-deep-into-Taliban-territory-in-Afghanistan.html
The Catch and Release Policy: How it works for terrorists
As Marine Corps forces roll into southern Afghanistan,
they face an enemy familiar to US officials -- Mullah Zakir, a former Guantanamo
Bay prisoner who now leads a reconstituted Taliban. Abdul Qayum Zakir, also
known as Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, is from Helmand Province and has taken a
circuitous route to become head of the radical Islamic group.
Seth G. Jones, The New York Post,
July 5, 2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07052009/news/worldnews/mullah_sprung_from_gitmo_jail_now_leads__177719.htm
Taxpayers: Beware GM's Decision to Build Compact in Michigan
Now, there is one factor that probably tipped things in
favor of Michigan — money. The state offered $779 million in tax credits over 20
years, $130 million in federal funds for worker training and another $102
million came from local political districts. Reportedly, that dwarfed anything
the other two states came up with. So why doesn’t GM just come out and say it
was all about the money? It seems like that would be a whole lot better than
clamming up and encouraging rumor mongers (like me) and conspiracy theories. One
is also inclined to ask how a state as flat broke as Michigan can come up with
that kind of dough. I suppose the answer is that they have a friend on the
Potomac.
Seeking Alpha, July 6, 2009 ---
Click Here
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems
to have made a stunning admission in favor of cleansing America of unwanted
populations by aborting them.
Kathleen Gilbert, "Supreme Court
Justice Ginsburg: I Thought Roe Would Help Eradicate Unwanted Populations
Through Abortion," Lite Site News, July 9, 2009 ---
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09070901.html
Jensen Comment
An empirical evidence clearly bears out Judge Ginsburg's hypothesis as crime
rates plunged dramatically in inner cities according the University of Chicago
Professor Steven Levitt ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics
"New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis: Zero money down, not subprime
loans, led to the mortgage meltdown," by Stan Liebowitz, The Wall Street
Journal, July 3, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html
What is really behind the mushrooming rate
of mortgage foreclosures since 2007? The evidence from a huge national
database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the
single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in
a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of
the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to
remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected.
Many policy makers and ordinary people
blame the rise of foreclosures squarely on subprime mortgage lenders who
presumably misled borrowers into taking out complex loans at low initial
interest rates. Those hapless individuals were then supposedly unable to
make the higher monthly payments when their mortgage rates reset upwards.
But the focus on subprimes ignores the
widely available industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers
Association) that 51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime,
and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a
growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures. (These percentages are based
on the period since the steep ascent in foreclosures began -- the third
quarter of 2006 -- during which more than 4.3 million homes went into
foreclosure.)
Sharing the blame in the popular
imagination are other loans where lenders were largely at fault -- such as
"liar loans," where lenders never attempted to validate a borrower's income
or assets.
This common narrative also appears to be
wrong, a conclusion that is based on my analysis of loan-level data from
McDash Analytics, a component of Lender Processing Services Inc. It is the
largest loan-level data source available, covering more than 30 million
mortgages.
Minimum-Wage Increase Comes at a Bad Time for Weakened Job Market
The federal minimum wage goes up this month just as job
losses are sending new alarms about the economy, giving traction to perennial
fears that higher wages will hurt job creation. In the past, minimum-wage
increases have done little to dent job creation. And pouring more money into
people's pockets -- especially low-wage workers who are likely to spend the
increase to meet living costs -- would normally boost the economy. But these
aren't normal times. "It's tough timing," said John Silva, chief economist at
Wells Fargo, who expects low-skilled workers and teenagers will be hit hardest.
"You're going to have a very negative response. In a recession like this,
companies don't have the pricing power to pass on those costs." History, in this
case, isn't a reliable predictor, he says, because the current economic slump is
much deeper than during previous times.
Chris Mahar, The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124684183990798403.html
Barney's Rubble: The problem was that the system let people borrow more
than they could afford
The focus on subprimes ignores the widely available
industry facts (reported by the Mortgage Bankers Association) that 51% of all
foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate
for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime
foreclosures . . . The analysis indicates that, by far, the most important
factor related to foreclosures is the extent to which the homeowner now has or
ever had positive equity in a home. The accompanying figure shows how important
negative equity or a low Loan-To-Value ratio is in explaining foreclosures
(homes in foreclosure during December of 2008 generally entered foreclosure in
the second half of 2008). A simple statistic can help make the point: although
only 12% of homes had negative equity, they comprised 47% of all foreclosures.
Further, because it is difficult to account for second mortgages in this data,
my measurement of negative equity and its impact on foreclosures is probably too
low, making my estimates conservative.
Stan Liebowitz, The Wall Street Journal, July
3, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html
"Here's The Real Reason The Dollar Is Screwed," by Joe Weisenthal,
Clusterstock, July 7, 2009 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-reason-the-dollar-is-screwed-2009-7
So, then, what's the real reason to fear a
dollar decline? It's that governments around the world are more stable and
transparent than they used to be, meaning more currencies are worth "holding
in the mattress." It still is, for the most part, that no matter where you
are, it makes sense to hold some US Dollars as a reliable store of value.
But maybe now you'll carry some Brazilian Real or Singapore Dollars.
Basically, the real issue is current and growing Dollar competition, a trend
that doesn't look likely to abate.
Granted, this doesn't absolve US
policymakers in the slightest, as they've given investors all kinds of
reasons to look for alternatives. A failure to control the fiscal situation,
as well as the politicization of debt and lending come to mind.
Further thoughts: This idea that we've
become addicted to our status of having the reserve currency has been
discussed a lot. What's not frequently discussed is the extent to which is
this case. How much profit do we derive from the each year in the form of
cheaper funding costs, and whatnot. Are we more like AIG, which was wholly
dependant on its AAA status, or more like Berkshire Hathaway, which can take
a ratings hit and still keep chugging?
Also see "Russia to raise new currency issue with China at
G8," Reuters, July 8, 2009 ---
http://www.reuters.com/article/usDollarRpt/idUSL715783520090707
. . . the Obama-supporting/George W.
Bush-hating/billionaire benefactor of hyper-liberal MoveOn.org, George Soros,
predicted that the administration's spending and borrowing will trigger
inflation and higher interests rates. "As markets revive," he said, "fear of
inflation will drive up interest rates, which will choke off recovery."
Larry Elder, "Obamanomics Supporters
- Cracks in the Dike," Townhall, July 9, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/LarryElder/2009/07/09/obamanomics_supporters_-_cracks_in_the_dike
Possible Investing Inflation Hedge
George Washington University is planning to increase,
to 10 percent from 6 percent, the share of its $1 billion endowment invested in
farms,
Bloomberg reported. The news service quoted one of
the university's analysts as saying that the fund already has farm investments
in Latin America and Eastern Europe and is now looking to Australia. The
endowment data collected each year by the National Association of College and
University Business Officers is not granular enough to determine whether GW's
strategy is unusual.
Inside Higher Ed, July 7, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/07/qt#202778
Forwarded by my good neighbors
It is the month of August, on
the shores of the Black Sea . It is raining, and the little town looks
totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody
lives on credit. Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town.
He enters the only hotel,
lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms
upstairs in order to pick one.
The hotel proprietor takes
the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.
The Butcher takes the 100
Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the rancher.
The rancher takes the 100
Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.
The supplier of feed and fuel
takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute
that in these hard times, gave her "services" on credit.
The hooker runs to the hotel,
and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay
for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.
The hotel proprietor then
lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not
suspect anything.
At that moment, the rich
tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note,
after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.
No one earned anything.
However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a
lot of optimism.
And that, ladies and
gentlemen, is how the United States Government is trying to do business
today. Let's hope they succeed!
Hot Academic Jobs of the Future
Note that due to shortage of supply of PhD accountants, newly-hired
accounting PhDs are generally among the highest paid faculty in their ranks such
as newly hired assistant professors of accounting now being paid well over
$120,000 for nine-month contracts in major universities. In most instances
accounting assistant professors get significantly higher offers than their
counterparts in science, humanities, and engineering. They may not do much
better than new hires in law schools. Medical schools have such complicated ways
of paying faculty, that comparisons of salaries of medical schools with all
other disciplines in a university are virtually impossible. For example, medical
faculty sometimes get bonuses for clinical services in university hospitals.
A June/July 2009 report says the shortage of accounting PhDs is getting worse
instead of better, particularly as the supply of new PhD graduates in accounting
declines while demand for accounting faculty explodes (accounting is probably
the only business discipline where demand for graduates has either held steady
in corporations or increased in public accounting):
"Doctoral-Level Faculty Numbers Continue to Decline," AACSB,
June/July 2009 ---
http://www.aacsb.edu/publications/enewsline/datadirect.asp
And yet opportunities for graduates of accounting doctoral programs is
totally ignored in the latest article in the Chronicle of Higher Education
about the hottest academic jobs of the future. If I were advising a confused
undergraduate student who is contemplating a career in academe, I would say look
more closely at accounting, including the warts of virtually all accounting
doctoral programs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
"Hot Academic Jobs of the Future: Try These Fields," by Lee Roberts,
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 10, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i41/41b02201.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Green chemistry
Green chemistry focuses on eliminating the use of
toxic chemicals in chemistry without stifling scientific progress. Paul T.
Anastas, a Yale University chemist, founded the field in 1991. As it grows
in importance, more institutions are expected to offer master's degrees and
doctorates. Among the universities with green-chemistry programs are
Carnegie Mellon and Yale Universities and the Universities of Oregon,
Scranton, and Massachusetts at Lowell.
Terry Collins, a chemistry professor at Carnegie
Mellon who heads the university's Institute for Green Science, thinks the
intellectual rationale for the field is strong. "It hasn't gotten a lot of
federal support, but I think that's going to change," he says. One reason:
Mr. Anastas has been nominated by President Obama to head the Environmental
Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development.
Energy
Threats to human society by the consumption of
limited resources have sparked a race to find alternative energy sources
that are sustainable, efficient, and safe for the environment. Among the
leaders in this research mission is the Energy and Resources Group at the
University of California at Berkeley. The interdisciplinary group has been
devising technical and policy alternatives to unsustainable energy and
resource use for the past 30 years.
The Energy Efficiency Center at the University of
California at Davis identifies promising energy-efficient technologies and
develops viable business ventures around them. Established in 2006 with a
challenge grant from the state, the center focuses on transferring
technology from academe to the marketplace.
Boston University's Center for Energy and
Environmental Studies, meanwhile, specializes in the fields of energy and
environmental analysis.
Gerontology
Not only are professors aging — everybody else is,
too. The aging process will take on a more prominent role in society as the
baby-boom generation ages, making studies like gerontology a growth area,
says Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship
Foundation.
The oldest and largest school of gerontology in the
world is the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern
California. It has conducted research in molecular biology, neuroscience,
dem-ography, psychology, sociology, and public policy on aging since 1975.
The Universities of Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland at
Baltimore, and Massachusetts at Boston are among those offering doctoral
programs in the field.
Education
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the
number of postsecondary educational administrators will increase by 14
percent from 2006 to 2016.
"The leadership turnover in education is going to
be tremendous in the coming years," said Mark David Milliron, president and
chief executive of Catalyze Learning International, an education-consulting
group in Newland, N.C. "Folks are scrambling to fill the C-level pipeline;
as a result, Ph.D.'s and Ed.D.'s are in high demand, and will be for some
time."
Nanotechnology
A nanometer, one billionth of a meter, is about
10,000 times narrower than a human hair. Nanotechnology is the study of the
control of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. It has the potential to
create materials and devices in fields as diverse as electronics, energy
production, and medicine.
Among institutions that offer programs in the
growing field are the Universities of Washington and North Carolina at
Charlotte; the State University of New York at Albany; and Arizona State,
Louisiana Tech, Pennsylvania State, and Rice Universities.
Health policy
Just as gerontology will become more important as
the population ages, health-related fields and health-care policy will
remain vital in coming years. Some of the influential universities for
health policy and management are Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and New York
Universities.
Information technology
Harry Lewis, a Harvard professor of computer
science and one of the authors of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty and
Happiness After the Digital Explosion (Addison-Wesley, 2008), believes
information technology will remain a growth area in the coming years. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics agrees, projecting that among selected
occupations requiring a doctoral degree, computer and information science
will have one of the largest growth rates — 22 percent — from 2006 to 2016.
Some of the better-known programs in information
technology are those offered by the University of California at Berkeley,
the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and Stanford University.
Engineering
There always seems to be a high demand for
engineers of one kind or another, and the next decade should be no
exception. Engineering comprises such a broad array of studies and
competencies that it can lead to vastly different careers. In especially
promising fields, the Bureau of Labor Statistics sees environmental
engineering experiencing 25-percent growth between 2006 and 2016, and
industrial and biomedical engineering each experiencing about 20-percent
growth in that time.
Jensen Comment
I think that for many years to come, new accounting PhDs will have many more
choices about where to accept job offers and what they will earn in their new
jobs at colleges and universities.
July 10, 2009 reply from Patricia Walters
[patricia@DISCLOSUREANALYTICS.COM]
Full disclosure: I'm clinical faculty and had an 12
year gap between my two academic lives. I have a 3-year contract (which I
was glad didn't come up for renewal this year).
In my view, this salary inversion (I believe your
ratio is typical) is one of the costs of having tenure. I personally don't
think of it as a "penalty" although I do understand why tenured faculty feel
that way.
Rather, I view this differential between tenured
faculty salaries and other market-based salaries (whether in or outisde of
academia) as the market price for bearing the risk of losing one's job
(which tenure track faculty is still subject to).
I don't know but wonder if there is any data on the
percentage of tenure track faculty who actually are ABLE to stay at their
first school.
Pat
July 10, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Pat,
Remember that in major universities, publications in leading academic
journals are the major things counted (not necessarily read) for performance
raises. Teaching has a minimum threshold but is secondary to publication
records.
Salary compression arises from many suspected causes, not the least of
which is that tenure protects the jobs but not the performance raises of
faculty with declining research productivity. In accounting, the very few
tenured faculty with increasing research productivity generally do move on
to endowed chairs or at least named professorships in other universities.
It’s surprising how many accounting faculty who are highly productive
(relative to other accounting researchers and not chemists) in their
non-tenure years actually burn out in terms of research. Some actually move
into administrative positions because, in my viewpoint, they want out of
both teaching and research and still obtain high performance raises.
If you extract from the TAR publishing records of hot non-tenured
accounting faculty, you get the picture that accounting researcher
productivity generally declines as the tenure years pile on --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
Universities also take advantage of the fact that salary is only one of
the factors leading to family decisions to not move to new towns. There is a
stickiness due to spouse employment, children in good schools that they
really like, transactions costs of home selling, unwillingness to give up
friends and other neighbors, unwillingness to depart colleagues at work, and
just plain fear of the unknown.
Another factor that I tended to ignore (except for one time) was the risk
of giving up tenure in the old job for having to go through the tenure
process once again in a new job. Although the University of Maine gave me
the Nicolas Salgo endowed chair and tenure when I moved from Michigan State,
I became the KPMG Professor at Florida State without being given tenure in
advance. Trinity University gave me the Jesse Jones endowed chair without
giving me tenure up front.
In hindsight, things worked out for me, but I can name at least one
instance (at Notre Dame) where a well known accounting professor given a
chair and then denied tenure afterwards.
Bob Jensen
Second June 10, 2009 replay from Patricia Walters
[patricia@DISCLOSUREANALYTICS.COM]
Bob:
You are of course right on all counts above. I
would add that perhaps the primary reason I left academic in 1994 was
because I did not believe that I would have the fortitude to do the
necessary research to get tenure. I knew myself well enough then to realize
that I would put most of my efforts into my teaching and so be constantly on
the move. I also have no regrets about my years at the CFA Institute. I
believe my current teaching is better because of the work and experience I
had there. There are huge personal costs to these moves, let alone the need
to be thinking about a job search. This is not to say that I don't also have
to write to maintain my academic qualification for AASCB purposes. It just
doesn't have to be the 'accountics' research that is what's wanted in most
of the top-tier journals.
There are also trade-offs between cash and quality
of life that academics must make which are not much different that those
other professionals make. There is money to be made in consulting and
continuing ed training by academics even though the former may be more
dependent on research than the latter. One of the aspects of academia that I
like, beside teaching and interacting with students at the university,
surprisingly is that, if an opportunity comes along to do consulting or
training work, I can say 'no'. Something one cannot do (normally) without
consequences in a full-time job outside of academia. In that respect, I can
create my own balance between money and quality of life.
The current trade-off I'm personally struggling
with is living in NJ when I really want to be living on my farm in VA and
this struggle is despite the fact I very, very much like Fordham, its
students, and my colleagues. It is a great place to work.
Your comments about performance raises are
interesting. Clinicals at Fordham are not eligible for such raises....all we
can do is negotiate at contract renewal times. I have the impression that
these raises are not all that terrific regardless of the amount of research
one does, but I admit to not having first hand experience.
Pat
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#careers
If GM says its shares are "destined to be
worthless," why does the SEC still allow trading in those shares?
"A Stock With Bounce: Investors Stick to G.M.,"
Michael J. de la Merced and Zachery Kouwe, The New York Times, July 10,
2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/business/11shares.html?ref=business
The stock, which trades under the ticker symbol
GMGMQ, gained as much as 43 percent on Friday, after G.M. announced that it
had completed the sale of its assets to an entirely new company. Nearly 75
million shares traded hands until the securities industry’s self-regulator,
Finra, halted trading at 2:09 p.m., citing “extraordinary events.”
The stock closed at $1.15 a share, up 31.3 cents,
or 37 percent, for the day, giving the bankrupt company a market value of
$702 million, up from $512 million on Thursday.
“This certainly has all the hallmarks of market
manipulation, but it’s very hard for the S.E.C. to prove,” said Peter J.
Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “Someone made
a lot of money here.”
G.M. has issued statements telling investors not to
buy the shares because they are destined to become worthless.
Continued in article
A Primer on the New General Motors ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/business/11primer.html?ref=business
Turkey Times Time for Overstuffed Law Schools
Lean Times for MBA Programs
Accounting Profession Holds Steady Despite Turbulent Economy
Doctoral-Level Accounting Faculty Numbers Continue to Decline (while demand
increases)
Credentials of Accounting Instructors Are Changing Dramatically
"Law Schools Mull Whether They Are Churning Out Too Many Lawyers," by
Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 9, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/07/21755n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
At a time when law-school graduates are facing
greater debt and fewer job opportunities, the University of Miami School of
Law has offered to pay accepted students to stay away—at least for a year.
The school's unusual offer, which followed an unexpectedly high number of
acceptances for this fall's entering class, comes during a period of soul
searching in legal education about just how many lawyers the nation needs
and whether educators have an obligation to paint a realistic picture of
students' prospects for landing jobs that would justify taking out loans of
$70,000 or more.
At least 10 new law schools are on the drawing
board around the country, in addition to the 200 already accredited by the
American Bar Association. At the same time, the demand for legal services
has dropped during the economic recession, prompting hundreds of firms to
lay off lawyers, cut salaries, and delay the start dates of new associates.
As law schools continue to churn out graduates, the resulting bottleneck
could make the competition for jobs even more fierce. And some legal experts
predict that even when they do resume hiring, many big firms won't be able
to continue paying new associates the salaries of $120,000 or more that
students had counted on to whittle down their debt.
But that sobering news hasn't stopped students from
flocking to law schools, which saw the number of applicants rise 4.3 percent
for this fall, according to the ABA. At the University of Miami, a
higher-than-expected yield prompted Dean Patricia D. White to send accepted
students an e-mail message last month offering $5,000 scholarships if they
deferred their admission for a year and completed at least 120 hours of
public service by next June. Doing so would also improve their chances of
winning the school's three-year, $75,000 public-interest scholarship, she
said.
"While I would like to believe that this year’s
elevated acceptance rate reflects the great sense of excitement about the
law school and its future that led me to become its new dean, I fear that
some of it may be related to the shortage of jobs in the current economy,”
she wrote. “Perhaps many of you are looking to law school as a safe harbor
in which you can wait out the current economic storm. If this describes your
motivation for going to law school, I urge you to think hard about your
plans and to consider deferring enrollment."
In addition to being difficult and expensive, "in
these uncertain and challenging times the nature of the legal profession is
in great flux. It is very difficult to predict what the employment landscape
for young lawyers will be in May 2012 and thereafter.”
The average debt faced by graduates of public law
schools now tops $71,000, while private-school graduates must pay back, on
average, more than $92,000, according to the bar association. Over the past
year, shrinking endowments and state appropriations have prompted many law
schools to enact double-digit tuition increases at a time when the credit
crisis has made low-interest student loans harder to come by.
The recession has raised new challenges for law
schools now in the pipeline and renewed questions about whether they are
needed. Three new schools have been proposed in New York State, which
already has 15. Pennsylvania, which has eight law schools, has one more in
the works.
Law schools are proliferating, in part, because
they add to a college’s prestige. And because they don’t require expensive
laboratories and can offer a number of large lecture classes, they can
either break even or make money for their institutions.
The State University of New York system, which has
a law school at its Buffalo campus, is considering adding two more, at Stony
Brook and Binghamton. State lawmakers set aside $2.25-million to explore the
possibility of starting a third new law school at St. John Fisher College,
in Rochester.
Other colleges with aspirations of opening law
schools include Husson College, in Bangor, Me.; Louisiana College, in
Pineville; Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrowgate, Tenn.; the University
of North Texas, in Denton; and Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. In
addition, a new law school will open next month at the University of
California at Irvine.
Concordia University, based in Portland, Ore.,
hopes to open a law school in Boise, Idaho, where it could end up competing
with a law school the University of Idaho hopes to open there. The
University of New Haven put its plans for a law school on hold because of
the economic downturn.
Loren D. Prescott Jr. is in charge of the
law-school planning effort at Wilkes University, which hopes to open the
school in 2011. The university’s trustees have approved the new school,
contingent upon whether the university can raise the necessary money without
hurting its other schools or programs.
Mr. Prescott acknowledges that the recession raises
questions both about the employment prospects of graduates and the school’s
ability to raise money. But he says that when the economy eventually
recovers, more jobs will open up, especially for graduates who apply their
legal skills to business, philanthropy, and other careers outside law firms.
And, while he says law schools should be honest
with students about their career prospects, he disagrees with those who
argue that opening new schools will doom more students to lifetimes of
underemployment and crushing debt.
“Should we deny someone the opportunity to go to
law school, or to go to a school in their region, simply because we feel we
know better about their chances of getting a job?” he says. The state’s
existing schools are relatively difficult to gain admittance to, he says,
and Wilkes’s would focus on students with slightly lower Law School
Admission Test scores who would otherwise have to leave the region to attend
a law school. It would also emphasize badly needed practical skills, he
says.
Not surprisingly, administrators at many existing
law schools aren't eager to welcome potential new competitors. James R.
Newton, vice dean for administration at the State University of New York at
Buffalo Law School, says the state’s 15 law schools are plenty.
“The school’s position is that there is no market
justification for another law school,” he says. “New York already has more
law schools per capita than any other state, and legal employment in New
York is saturated, not expanding.”
William D. Henderson, an associate professor at
Indiana University at Bloomington's Maurer School of Law who has done
extensive research on the legal job market, says he would like to see a Web
site in which law schools published accurate details about bar-passage rates
and employment statistics. That, he says, would give students a more
realistic idea of how readily they would be able to pay off their debts.
Instead of just reporting that a certain percentage of graduates went into
"business," the site would detail the kinds of jobs and salaries they
earned.
“The reality hasn’t filtered down to students that
this isn’t like Boston Legal where you get a law degree and walk into a
great, high-paying job,” Mr. Henderson says. “We’re taking their money and
putting people $100,000 in debt,” he says, while their job prospects are at
best uncertain.
Continued in article
Times grew lean for MBA programs before the economic crash
With MBA enrollments down, B-schools are striving to
become more relevant to prospective students. To remain leading suppliers of
management talent to corporations, consulting firms, investment banks, and other
business, B-schools are being forced to adapt to a changing world. "More and
more, companies find themselves involved in exploration," says Margaret A.
Neale, a professor of organizational behavior and leader of the MTIS program at
Stanford. "To be competitive, you have to be more creative."
"Tomorrow's B-School? It Might Be A D-School ," Business Week, August 1,
2005 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_31/b3945418.htm
Now it's getting to be bare bones
At the same time, students themselves are confronting a stark new economic
reality of their own. Burdened with debt and entering a market for MBA talent
that's getting grimmer by the day, many are questioning their reasons for
getting an MBA. "There's no way the economic crisis doesn't make every single
person rethink what he or she wants to do and whether it's a good time to do
it," says Guy Turner, a first-year student at the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business.
Francesca Di Medlio, "Amid Economic Carnage, Business Schools Mull Fixes,"
Business Week, March 9, 2009 ---
Click Here
Accounting Profession Holds Steady Despite Turbulent Economy
As many white-collar professions lose stability amid
the economic crisis, one profession is actually weathering the storm.
"Accounting Profession Holds Steady Despite Turbulent Economy," SmartPros,
June 29, 2009
Doctoral-Level Accounting Faculty Numbers Continue to Decline (while
demand increases)
Over the last 4-5 years, the percentage of academically qualified (AQ) faculty
who are engaged in the life of the school has declined. At the same, the
percentage of professionally qualified faculty members who are actively engaged
has increased.
"Doctoral-Level Faculty Numbers Continue to Decline," AACSB,
June/July 2009 ---
http://www.aacsb.edu/publications/enewsline/datadirect.asp
The proportion of academically qualified faculty at
both the participative and supportive level has experienced an overall
decline, according to data collected annually from AACSB member schools. At
the same time, faculty who are considered professionally qualified (or those
that do not hold a doctoral-level degree) have increased.
AACSB categorizes faculty into two basic areas: 1)
those who hold a doctoral-level degree and 2) those who do not have a
doctorate but have a master's degree in a business-related field and who are
considered as highly experienced professionals. Within these two categories,
individuals are additionally classified as either participating or
supporting faculty. Participating faculty members are defined as individuals
(full-time or part-time) who teach, serve on committees, work with student
groups, take part in planning, or otherwise participate more fully in the
life of the school. Supporting faculty are considered as individuals
(full-time or part-time) who teach but do not otherwise participate in the
life of the school.
2007–08 data found that nearly 64% of all faculty
reported were listed as academically qualified (or those who hold a
doctoral-level degree). Among faculty listed as participating, the
percentage was even higher at 82.7%. The largest proportion of faculty
listed as professionally qualified (or those who do not hold a
doctoral-level degree) was 78.7% among those faculty listed as supporting.
These numbers show a fairly significant shift in some areas since 2002–03.
During 2002–03, slightly more than 76% of all faculty were listed as
academically qualified with the proportion among participating faculty
equating to 91.2%. The proportion of faculty who are professionally
qualified has risen in both the participating and supporting categories.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#careers
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
More on the Greatest Swindles of the World
If the left-of-left Obama worshipper Rep. Dennis Kucinich voted against an
Obama, Pelosi, Waxman, Gore-promoted bill there must be a catch ---
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/10478
There is a catch --- this is a record-breaking corporate welfare package
that more then doubles our electricity bills
"The Carbonated Congress Orszag nails it: The 'largest corporate welfare
program' ever," The Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657758880989227.html
President Obama is calling the climate
bill that the House passed last week an "extraordinary" achievement, and so
it is. The 1,200-page wonder manages the supreme feat of being both hugely
expensive while doing almost nothing to reduce carbon emissions.
The Washington press corps is playing the
bill's 219-212 passage as a political triumph, even though one of five
Democrats voted against it. The real story is what Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
House baron Henry Waxman and the President himself had to concede to secure
even that eyelash margin among the House's liberal majority. Not even Tom
DeLay would have imagined the extravaganza of log-rolling, vote-buying,
outright corporate bribes, side deals, subsidies and policy loopholes. Every
green goal, even taken on its own terms, was watered down or given up for
the sake of political rents.
Begin with the supposed point of the
exercise -- i.e., creating an artificial scarcity of carbon in the name of
climate change. The House trimmed Mr. Obama's favored 25% reduction by 2020
to 17% in order to win over Democrats leery of imposing a huge upfront tax
on their constituents; then they raised the reduction to 83% in the
out-years to placate the greens. Even that 17% is not binding, since it
would be largely reached with so-called,
offsets, through which some businesses
subsidize others to make emissions reductions that probably would have
happened anyway.
Even if the law works as intended, over
the next decade or two real U.S. greenhouse emissions might be reduced by 2%
compared to business as usual. However, consumers would still face higher
prices for electric power, transportation and most goods and services as
this inefficient and indirect tax flowed down the energy chain.
The sound bite is that this policy would
only cost households "a postage stamp a day." But that's true only as long
as the program doesn't really cut emissions. The goal here is to tell voters
they'll pay nothing in order to get the cap-and-tax bureaucracy in place --
even though the whole idea is to raise prices to change American behavior.
At the same time -- wink, wink -- Democrats tell the greens they can tighten
the emissions vise gradually over time.
Meanwhile, Congress had to bribe every
business or interest that could afford a competent lobbyist. Carbon permits
are valuable, yet the House says only 28% of the allowances would be
auctioned off; the rest would be given away. In March, White House budget
director Peter Orszag told Congress that "If you didn't auction the permit,
it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been
enacted in the history of the United States."
Naturally, Democrats did exactly that. To
avoid windfall profits, they then chose to control prices, asking state
regulators to require utilities to use the free permits to insulate
ratepayers from price increases. (This also obviates the anticarbon
incentives, but never mind.) Auctions would reduce political favoritism and
interference, as well as provide revenue to cut taxes to offset higher
energy costs. But auctions don't buy votes.
Then there was the peace treaty signed
with Agriculture Chairman Colin Peterson, which banned the EPA from studying
the carbon produced by corn ethanol and transferred farm emissions to the Ag
Department, which mainly exists to defend farm subsidies. Not to mention the
310-page trade amendment that was introduced at 3:09 a.m. When Congress
voted on the bill later that day, the House clerk didn't even have an
official copy.
The revisions were demanded by
coal-dependent Rust Belt Democrats to require tariffs on goods from
countries that don't also reduce their emissions. Democrats were thus
admitting that the critics are right that this new energy tax would send
U.S. jobs overseas. But instead of voting no, their price for voting yes is
to impose another tax on imports from China and India, among others. So a
Smoot-Hawley green tariff is now official Democratic policy.
Mr. Obama's lobbyists first acquiesced to
this tariff change to get the bill passed. Afterwards the President said he
disliked "sending any protectionist signals" amid a world recession, but he
refused to say whether this protectionism was enough to veto the bill. Then
in a Saturday victory lap, he talked about green jobs and a new clean energy
economy, but he made no reference to cap and trade -- no doubt because he
knows that energy taxes are unpopular and that the bill faces an even
tougher slog in the Senate.
Mr. Obama wants something tangible to take
to the U.N. climate confab in Denmark in December, but the more important
issue is what this exercise says about his approach to governance. The
President seems to believe that the Carter and Clinton Presidencies failed
by fighting too much with Democrats in Congress. So his solution is to
abdicate his agenda to Congress -- first the stimulus, now cap and trade,
and soon health care. We wish he had told us he was running to be Prime
Minister.
Of all the proposals in President Barack Obama's
breathtakingly ambitious agenda to foster long-term economic decline, by far the
biggest is the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, which the House of
Representatives passed with the narrowest of majorities late Friday evening.
This bill by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman
(D-Beverly Hills) and Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is more damaging
than the $787 billion stimulus, the proposed huge increases in federal spending
and corresponding increases in the national debt, the takeover of GM and
Chrysler, and the proposed tax hikes on the wealthy - combined. Enacting
Waxman-Markey (H. R. 2454 . . .
Myron Ebell, "Waxman-Markey is Hilarious, but the Joke is on Us," Townhall, June
29, 2009 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/MyronEbell/2009/06/29/waxman-markey_is_hilarious,_but_the_joke_is_on_us
EU: Climate Deal Pointless Without China, India
The chances of concluding a new global climate change
pact remain dim unless China, India and Brazil make significant cuts in carbon
dioxide emissions as well a senior Swedish climate change official said
Thursday. Lars-Erik Liljelund, special climate change adviser to the Swedish
government, said cuts from richer countries in the 27-nation bloc or planned
cuts in the United States will not be enough to meet aims to cut at least 25
percent of emission from 1990 levels. "The problem at the moment is that if you
take the contributions made so far by the United States, the European Union and
Japan then we don't come up to that minus 25 percent," he told reporters. He
said cuts from those richer countries and regions would only reach two-thirds of
that minimum target.
Newsmax, July 2, 2009 ---
http://moneynews.newsmax.com/investing/china_india_climate/2009/07/02/231487.html
CNN Video: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells CNN's John King that
he's concerned about President Obama's spending.---
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/03/colin_powell_concerned_with_obamas_spending.html
"A Timeline of the Madoff Fraud," The New York Times, June 29,
2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/06/29/business/madoff-timeline.html?ref=business
Nome: A Good Deal for Ruth Madoff
The Chamber of Commerce in Nome says it "cordially
invites" Ruth Madoff to move there, "where you can live off the land, far away
from the prying news media.
"Nome offers shelter to Ruth Madoff," Anchorage Daily News, July
3, 2009 ---
http://www.adn.com/3437/story/852272.html
Jensen Comment
In addition she can be frozen for centuries and wake up at a time when the world
has forgotten all about the $65 billion Madoff fraud. By then $65 billion Obama
dollars won't buy a cup of coffee.
Sadly, Mrs. Madoff will probably decline this generous offer
from Nome. Since she still has millions of current dollars, she will probably
make out well in senior singles events, especially in Florida and further south
in the Carribean. If all she wants is to get away from civilization, she might
consider marrying an Emperor penguin in the Antarctic. That would be more
exciting to being married to a tuxedo-clad Bernie.
New Hints at Why the SEC Failed to Seriously Investigate Madoff's Hedge
Fund
After being repeatedly warned for six years that this was a criminal scam
It's beginning to look like a family "affair"
(The SEC's) Swanson later married Madoff's niece,
and their relationship is now under review by the SEC inspector general, who is
examining the agency's handling of the Madoff case, the Post reported. Swanson,
no longer with the agency, declined to comment, the Post said.
"SEC lawyer raised alarm about Madoff: report," Reuters, July 2, 2009 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090702/bs_nm/us_madoff_sec
The Washington Post account is at ---
Click Here
A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer
warned about irregularities at Bernard Madoff's financial management firm as
far back as 2004, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing agency
documents and sources familiar with the investigation.
Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the
SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent emails to a
supervisor saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't
add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, the report said.
Several of the questions directly challenged Madoff
activities that turned out to be elements of his massive fraud, the
newspaper said.
Madoff, 71, was sentenced to a prison term of 150
years on Monday after he pleaded guilty in March to a decades-long fraud
that U.S. prosecutors said drew in as much as $65 billion.
The Washington Post reported that when
Walker-Lightfoot reviewed the paper documents and electronic data supplied
to the SEC by Madoff, she found it full of inconsistencies, according to
documents, a former SEC official and another person knowledgeable about the
2004 investigation.
The newspaper said the SEC staffer raised concerns
about Madoff but, at the time, the SEC was under pressure to look for
wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry. Walker-Lightfoot was told to focus
on a separate probe into mutual funds, the report said.
One of Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case
was Eric Swanson, an assistant director of her department, the Post
reported, citing two people familiar with the investigation.
Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their
relationship is now under review by the SEC inspector general, who is
examining the agency's handling of the Madoff case, the Post reported.
Swanson, no longer with the agency, declined to
comment, the Post said.
SEC spokesman John Nester also declined to comment,
citing the ongoing investigation by the agency's inspector general, the
newspaper said.
Our Main Financial Regulating Agency: The SEC Screw
Everybody Commission
One of the biggest regulation failures in history is the way the SEC failed to
seriously investigate Bernie Madoff's fund even after being warned by Wall
Street experts across six years before Bernie himself disclosed that he was
running a $65 billion Ponzi fund.
CBS Sixty Minutes on June 14, 2009 ran a rerun that is
devastatingly critical of the SEC. If you’ve not seen it, it may still be
available for free (for a short time only) at
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5088137n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
The title of the video is “The Man Who Would Be King.”
Also see
http://www.fraud-magazine.com/FeatureArticle.aspx
Between 2002 and 2008 Harry Markopolos repeatedly told
(with indisputable proof) the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernie
Madoff's investment fund was a fraud. Markopolos was ignored and, as a result,
investors lost more and more billions of dollars. Steve Kroft reports.
Markoplos makes the SEC look truly incompetent or
outright conspiratorial in fraud.
I'm really surprised that the SEC survived after Chris
Cox messed it up so many things so badly.
As Far as Regulations Go
An annual report issued by
the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) shows that the U.S. government
imposed $1.17 trillion in new regulatory costs in 2008. That almost equals the
$1.2 trillion generated by individual income taxes, and amounts to $3,849 for
every American citizen. According the 2009 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments:
An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, the government issued 3,830
new rules last year, and The Federal Register, where such rules are listed,
ballooned to a record 79,435 pages. “The costs of federal regulations too often
exceed the benefits, yet these regulations receive little official scrutiny from
Congress,” said CEI Vice President Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., who wrote the report.
“The U.S. economy lost value in 2008 for the first time since 1990,” Crews said.
“Meanwhile, our federal government imposed a $1.17 trillion ‘hidden tax’ on
Americans beyond the $3 trillion officially budgeted” through the regulations.
Adam Brickley,
"Government Implemented Thousands of New Regulations Costing $1.17 Trillion in
2008," CNS News, June 12, 2009 ---
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49487
Jensen Comment
I’m a long-time believer that industries being regulated end up controlling the
regulating agencies. The records of Alan Greenspan (FED) and the SEC from Arthur
Levitt to Chris Cox do absolutely nothing to change my belief ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
How do industries leverage the regulatory agencies?
The primary control mechanism is to have high paying jobs waiting in industry
for regulators who play ball while they are still employed by the government. It
happens time and time again in the FPC, EPA, FDA, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc. Because so
many people work for the FBI and IRS, it's a little harder for industry to
manage those bureaucrats. Also the FBI and the IRS tend to focus on the worst of
the worst offenders whereas other agencies often deal with top management of the
largest companies in America.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Quotation of the Week
What the models failed to capture was that humans don’t
behave in simple, predictable and uncorrelated ways. It’s impossible to
overstate the importance of the way these models cope with correlation of
peoples’ psychology. To sum it up: they don’t. Let me know if that’s too complex
an analysis for the mathematical masters of the universe.
"Quibbles With Quants: Models are not Reality," Psy-Fi Blog: A Sideways
Look and Psychology and Finance, July 6, 2009 ---
http://www.psyfitec.com/2009/07/quibbles-with-quants.html
Link forwarded by the Financial Rounds Blog
Can the 2008 investment banking failure be traced to a math error?
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street ---
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
Link forwarded by Jim Mahar ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/recipe-for-disaster-formula-that-killed.html
Highest Grossing Films of All Time (Top 20) ---
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/1881
But these rankings change if they're inflation adjusted ---
Click Here
http://www.simoleonsense.com/why-journalists-dont-account-for-inflation-when-they-report-box-office-records/
Random House Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century
---
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/17
Ten Most Read Articles in the Harvard Business Review ---
http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/web/collections/10mustreads
Jensen Comment
I wouldn't call them all "must reads" unless you want to drop titles of what you
read at cocktail
parties. The problem with the HBR is they often publish "fad articles" weak on
research and scholarship. I was turned off by the HBR when it refused to publish
error corrections of an article published by a Harvard Business School alum. The
HBR is not a journal that I track intensively like many other academic journals
--- unless I'm invited to certain cocktail parties.
The Wisdom and the Ignorance of George Bernard Shaw
This is the whole contention of The Quintessence of
Ibsenism, put better than the book puts it; it is a really sharp exposition of
the dangers of "idealism," the sacrifice of people to principles, and Shaw is
even wiser in his suggestion that this excessive idealism exists nowhere so
strongly as in the world of [Pg 128] physical science. He shows that the
scientist tends to be more concerned about the sickness than about the sick man;
but it was certainly in his mind to suggest here also that the idealist is more
concerned about the sin than about the sinner.
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, 1909, Project Guttenberg
EBook #19535 ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/3/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm
Jensen Comment
This reminded me of a critical comment about the unhealthy dominance of
positivism in accounting research for three decades commencing around 1975. His
comment was to the effect that positivist anthropology is the study of
anthropologists rather than anthropology per se. This would seem to be the
antithesis of Shaw's scientist.
This blindness to paradox everywhere perplexes
Shaw's outlook. He cannot understand marriage because he will not understand the
paradox of marriage; that the woman is all the more the house for not being the
head of it. He cannot understand patriotism, because he will not understand the
paradox of patriotism; that one is all the more human for not merely loving
humanity. He does not understand Christianity because he will not understand the
paradox of Christianity; that we can only really understand all myths when we
know that one of them is true. I do not under-rate him for this anti-paradoxical
temper; I concede that much of his finest and keenest work in the way of
intellectual purification would have been difficult or impossible without it.
But I say that here lies the limitation of that lucid and compelling mind; he
cannot quite understand life, because he will not accept its contradictions.
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, 1909, Project Guttenberg
EBook #19535 ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/3/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm
The ultimate epigram of Major Barbara can be put
thus. People say that poverty is no crime; Shaw says that poverty is a crime;
that it is a crime to endure it, a crime to be content with it, that it is the
mother of all crimes of brutality, corruption, and fear. If a man says to Shaw
that he is born of poor but honest parents, Shaw tells him that the very word
"but" shows that his parents were probably dishonest. In short, he maintains
here what he had maintained elsewhere: that what the people at this moment
require is not more patriotism or more art or more religion or more morality or
more sociology, but simply more money. The evil is not ignorance or decadence or
sin or pessimism; the evil is poverty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, 1909, Project Guttenberg
EBook #19535 ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/3/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm
There is something unexpected and fascinating about
this reversal of the usual argument touching enterprise and the business man;
this theory that success is created not by intelligence, but by a certain
half-witted and yet magical instinct. For Bernard Shaw, apparently, the forests
of factories and the mountains of money are not the creations of human wisdom or
even of human cunning; they are rather manifestations of the sacred maxim which
declares that God has chosen the foolish things of the earth to confound the
wise. It is simplicity and even innocence that has made Manchester.
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, 1909, Project Guttenberg
EBook #19535 ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/3/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm
Lastly, he has obliterated the mere cynic. He has
been so much more cynical than anyone else for the public good that no one has
dared since to be really cynical for anything smaller. The Chinese crackers of
the frivolous cynics fail to excite us after the dynamite of the serious and
aspiring cynic. Bernard Shaw and I (who are growing grey together) can remember
an epoch which many of his followers do not know: an epoch of real pessimism.
The years from 1885 to 1898 were like the hours of afternoon in a rich house
with large rooms; the hours before tea-time. They believed in nothing except
good manners; and the essence of good manners is to conceal a yawn. A yawn may
be defined as a silent yell. The power which the young pessimist of that time
showed in this direction would have astonished anyone but him. He yawned so wide
as to swallow the world. He swallowed the world like an unpleasant pill before
retiring to an eternal rest.
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, 1909, Project Guttenberg
EBook #19535 ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/3/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm
We call the twelfth century ascetic. We call our own
time hedonist and full of praise and pleasure. But in the ascetic age the love
of life was evident and enormous, so that it had to be restrained. In an
hedonist age pleasure has always sunk low, so that it has to be encouraged. How
high the sea of human happiness rose in the Middle Ages, we now only know by the
colossal walls that they built to keep it in bounds. How low human happiness
sank in the twentieth century our children will only know by these extraordinary
modern books, which tell people that it is a duty to be cheerful and that life
is not so bad after all. Humanity never produces optimists till it has ceased to
produce[Pg 249] happy men. It is strange to be obliged to impose a holiday like
a fast, and to drive men to a banquet with spears. But this shall be written of
our time: that when the spirit who denies besieged the last citadel, blaspheming
life itself, there were some, there was one especially, whose voice was heard
and whose spear was never broken.
Gilbert K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, 1909, Project Guttenberg
EBook #19535 ---
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/5/3/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm
"We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks?," by Miguel Helft, The New
York Times, July 4, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/business/05ping.html?hpw
Jensen Test:
Rent Textbooks from Chegg ---
http://www.chegg.com/
Rental prices are about half the so-called purchase price of a new book.
Buying a used book is probably a better idea since it, in turn, can be sold back
into the used market.
Intermediate Accounting ISBN 0470374942 by Kieso et al.
New (Chegg claims the new price is $209
but the price of hardcover is $177 at Barnes & Noble )
The Amazon
Price of a new hardcover is $168 ---
Click Here
Bigwords.com (international edition that differs somewhat in chapter orderings)
lists a price of $53.98
Used prices start at Amazon for about $159 (but watch carefully for the edition
number)
Rent from Chegg ($96.53) ---
http://www.chegg.com/details/intermediate-accounting/0470374942/
Jensen Comment
To get value for my money, I prefer used houses, cars, and books.
Of course, both Amazon and Google are now selling electronic versions of
textbooks. For Amazon you must have a Kindle reader. For Google, all you have to
have is a computer, although to date Amazon has a wider selection of textbooks
available.
American Council of the Blind
filed a lawsuit last month against Arizona State University, saying that its
plan to use the Kindle to distribute books to students is illegal because blind
people cannot use the device as currently configured ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/06/kindle
March 25, 2009 message from Ramsey, Donald
[dramsey@UDC.EDU]
The cost accounting book I'm using retails for
$190.30. I see on a textbook search website called Bigwords.com that no less
than 9 large dealers are offering it at under $50 for a new copy, including
shipping. How can this be possible?
My concern would be how to get the word to students
early enough so they could (1) not buy books at retail, and (2) get delivery
in time for the first assignment.
Cheers,
Don
March 25, reply from Zane Swanson
[ZSwanson@UCO.EDU]
Convince your university/college/department to go
completely electronic (like Kindle) and the pricing problem would be gone.
This recession may well drive some cost-sensitive programs to go to
electronic books looking for a comparative advantage or a means of covering
a budgetary shortfall. The tipping point will center around the trade-off
costs of the campus book store versus outsourcing the textbooks
electronically.
Zane Swanson
Jensen Added Comment
Universities that are promoting Kindle are running into some resistance from
sight-impaired students. Although Kindle benefits some sight-impaired students
by being able to enlarge fonts, the issue is one of access to Kindle readers and
access to audio versions of the text. Many publishers have audio versions
restricted to sight-impaired students. To avoid conflicts with sight impaired
students, universities might have to offer audio versions to sight-impaired
students at deals as good as Kindle deals to other students.
The National Federation of the Blind and the
American Council of the Blind
filed a lawsuit last month against Arizona State University, saying that its
plan to use the Kindle to distribute books to students is illegal because blind
people cannot use the device as currently configured ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/06/kindle
PS
I noticed that Bigwords.com is also selling solutions manuals ---
Click Here
http://www5.bigwords.com/search/?z=easysearch&searchtype=ISBN&searchstring=Kieso&Go.x=36&Go.y=28
Free online textbooks, cases, and videos ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Teaching Without Textbooks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NoTextbooks
Bob Jensen's threads on technologies for aiding handicapped learners ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
July 6, 2009 message on the AAA Commons from
julie.smith.david@asu.edu
July 6, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
The Kindle pickings for accounting textbooks are still pretty sparse.
None of the high volume accounting textbooks have Kindle editions as of yet.
A sample of the best selections, in my opinion, is shown below:
Wiley GAAP Codification Enhanced by Barry J. Epstein (Kindle Edition
- April 22, 2009) - Kindle Book Buy: $46.10
Intermediate Financial Theory (Academic Press Advanced Finance)
(Kindle Edition) by John B. Donaldson Jean-Pierre Danthine (Author)
$54.66 & includes wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
Financial Engineering Principles: A Unified Theory for Financial
Product Analysis and Valuation by Perry H. Beaumont (Kindle Edition -
Oct 3, 2003) 63.96
I don't think accountants will be using Kindle books for accounting
textbooks for some time to come. They might, however, recommend some of the
popular press editions in finance (such as some Warren Buffett writings),
but I don't see much that is exciting here. Some of the blogs like
(Knowledge@wharton) are available, but there's a fee for Kindle downloading
of the blogs that are free when downloading into a PC. Bummer.
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's threads about electronic books are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
"A sad day for fair use," Creative Commons, July 6, 2009 ---
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15664
Last week
a U.S. district court judge
issued a preliminary injunction
against the publication of 60 Years Later: Coming
Through the Rye, a book based on the idea of J.D.
Salinger’s Holden Caufield character as a 76 year old man.
Strong reactions to the ruling have come from many across
the legal, literary and technology fields, for example
Mike Madison,
Jim Brown, and
Mike Masnick.
My Media Musings delivers the
bottom line, easily understood by all:
Seeing
judges ban books is never a good thing. Seeing a judge
ban a book for such flimsy reasons as this is downright
frightening. If her ruling stands, expect to see a long
line of similar suits in the near future.
"Copyright laws threaten our online freedom, by Christian Engström,
Financial Times, July 7, 2009 ---
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87c523a4-6b18-11de-861d-00144feabdc0.html
"Colleges Offer Online Help on Copyright Law for Instructors," by Marc
Beja, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 24, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3846&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
A Fair(y) Tale: Animated cartoon about copyright law ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo
Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University created this humorous, yet
informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the
very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms. Also see
http://snipurl.com/fairu1
Bob Jensen's threads on the DMCA are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Harvard Study: Copyright restrictions limit the spread of digital
learning tools
Copyright restrictions limit the spread of digital
learning tools in schools and colleges, according to
a new report from the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard University.
Inside Higher Ed, July 19, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/19/qt
From the AAUP (with higher education in mind)
Campus Copyright Rights and Responsibilities: A Basic Guide to Policy
Considerations ---
http://www.aaupnet.org/aboutup/issues/Campus_Copyright.pdf
New Guidelines for Copyright Policies in Universities
Four associations have released a
guide for colleges to use in reviewing whether
their copyright policies reflect recent legal and technological developments.
The guide notes that colleges and their faculty members are major producers of
copyrighted material, and that professors and students also are big users of
such material — sometimes in ways that create legal difficulties. The groups
that prepared the guide are the Association of American Universities, the
Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American University
Presses, and the Association of American Publishers.
Inside Higher Ed, December 7, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/07/qt
A report released yesterday by a pair of
free-expression advocates at New York University Law School's Brennan Center for
Justice claims Web site owners and remix artists alike are finding
free-expression rights squelched because of ambiguities in copyright law. The
study argues that so-called "fair use" rights are under attack. It suggests six
major steps for change, including reducing penalties for infringement and making
a greater number of pro-bono lawyers available to defend alleged fair users.
BNA's Internet Law News (ILN) - 12/6/2005
Coverage at
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-5983072.html">
Report at
http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/WillFairUseSurvive.pdf">a>
From the University of Illinois Scholarly Communication Blog on December 7, 2005
---
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/
Bob Jensen's threads on the frightening DMCA are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright
A Good Day (Maybe?) for Open Sharing
From the Issues in Scholarly Communications Blog from the University
of Illinois on June 26, 2009 ---
http://www.library.illinois.edu/blog/scholcomm/
Yesterday,
Senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Cornyn (R-TX) (re-)introduced the
Federal Research Public Access Act (S.1373),
a bill that would ensure free, timely, online
access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S.
federal agencies. S.1373 would require those agencies with annual
extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the
public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from such
funding no later than six months after publication in a
peer-reviewed journal. The bill gives individual agencies
flexibility in choosing the location of the digital repository to
house this content, as long as the repositories meet conditions for
interoperability and public accessibility, and have provisions for
long-term archiving.
The bill specifically
covers unclassified research funded by agencies including:
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
Department of Education
Department of Energy
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Transportation
Environmental Protection Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Science Foundation
Continued in article
Long URL condensers
Tinyurl.com ---
http://tinyurl.com/
Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have
it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back
together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the
text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email
postings and never expires.
The older and better-known service is SnipIt ---
http://snipurl.com/
Problems with big checks drawn
on JP Morgan (Chase) Bank: Branches may refuse to cash them
Sondra Matthews from JP Morgan has responded to
this article with the following information. JP Morgan (Chase) follows an
internal policy which is based on preventing fraud and is specifically geared to
protecting their account holders and the bank itself. Ms. Matthews explains that
there is an upwards dollar limit on the checks it will cash for non-customers in
its branches and this amount is completely risk based, and designed to protect
its account holders.
Dianna Cotter, "CHASE bank refuses to honor checks written on its bank (update
2)," Examiner.com, July 9, 2009 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
You can probably deposit the check in your own bank account in another bank and
wait for clearance. This is a suspected ploy of JP Morgan to motivate small
business firms to change banks to JP Morgan.
What gets to me is that banks that won't cash their own checks are protecting
their customers. Since banks must make good on checks that do not have valid
signatures, these banks are not protecting their customers by refusing to cash
demand deposit checks signed by their customers. The banks are protecting
themselves by requiring that they be deposited in some bank account rather than
be turned in for cash. Also the banks like to get interest free money while over
the days that it takes for one bank to cash a check drawn on another bank ---
its called living it up on the "float."
5 Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Can Do versus Cannot Do ---
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cellphones.asp
Free Residential and Business Telephone Directory (you must listen to an
opening advertisement) --- dial 800-FREE411 or 800-373-3411
Free Online Telephone Directory ---
http://snipurl.com/411directory [www_public-records-now_com]
Free online 800 telephone numbers ---
http://www.tollfree.att.net/tf.html
Google Free Business Phone Directory --- 800-goog411
To find names addresses from listed phone numbers, go to
www.google.com and read in the phone number without spaces, dashes, or
parens
Cool Search Engines That Are Not
Google ---
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/coolsearchengines
Bob Jensen's search helpers ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Education Technology Search ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Distance Education Search ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Search for Listservs, Blogs, and Social Networks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm
Big Companies Leaving the U.K. Because of Tax Concerns
McDonald's, the fast food giant, will join the ranks of
companies quitting the UK when it moves its European headquarters to Geneva
later this year. Senior executives, including Denis Hennequin, president of
McDonald's operations in Europe, will be based there. The US company, which
opened its first restaurant in London in 1974, joins other large US corporations
that have based their European operations in Switzerland, including Kraft,
Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and Yahoo. Google also chose Zurich for its
European headquarters, despite having a large office in the UK capital . . .
Changes to the taxation of foreign profits linked to intellectual property
rights such as patents and trademarks, announced in this year's Budget, led
publishing company Informa to move its tax residency to Switzerland earlier this
year. The company has said it would end up paying twice, because of a UK tax on
dividends from intellectual property rights abroad. Home-grown UK companies have
also upped sticks in recent years, in search of more favourable tax regimes. The
list includes Regus, the temporary office supplier, which has moved to
Luxembourg, advertising giant WPP and pharmaceuticals company Shire which are
both relocating their headquarters to Ireland, and Brit Insurance, which plans
to move to the Netherlands. Investment company Henderson set up a new parent
company in Ireland to pay less tax.
Amy Wilson, London Telegraph, July 11, 2009 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
Since California now has the highest taxes and the highest environmental
restrictions among all 50 states, lawmakers in Sacramento should take heed in
terms of how high tax rates can backfire. As we speak, corporations are leaving
California after looking at 49 other alternatives.
Good Luck Jack (and Suzi): You're Going to Need All the Luck You Can
Get
"Jack Welch Launches Online MBA: The legendary former GE CEO says he
knows a thing or two about management, and for $20,000 you can, too," by Geoff
Gloeckler, Business Week, June 22, 2009 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2009/bs20090622_962094.htm?link_position=link1
A corporate icon is diving into the MBA world, and
he's bringing his well-documented management and leadership principles with
him. Jack Welch, former CEO at General Electric (GE) (and Business Week
columnist), has announced plans to start an MBA program based on the
business principles he made famous teaching managers and executives in GE's
Crotonville classroom.
The Jack Welch Management Institute (JWMI) will officially
launch this week, with the first classes starting in the fall. The MBA will
be offered almost entirely online. Compared to the $100,000-plus price tag
for most brick-and-mortar MBA programs, the $600 per credit hour tuition
means students can get an MBA for just over $20,000. "We think it will make
the MBA more accessible to those who are hungry to play," Welch says. "And
they can keep their job while doing it."
To make the Jack Welch Management Institute a
reality, a group led by educational entrepreneur Michael Clifford purchased
financially troubled Myers University in Cleveland in 2008, Welch says.
Welch got involved with Clifford and his group of investors and made the
agreement to launch the Welch Management Institute.
Popularized Six Sigma For Welch, the new
educational endeavor is the latest chapter in a long and storied career. As
GE's longtime chief, he developed a management philosophy based on
relentless efficiency, productivity, and talent development. He popularized
Six Sigma, wasn't shy about firing his worst-performing managers, and
advocated exiting any business where GE wasn't the No. 1 or No. 2 player.
Under Welch, GE became a factory for producing managerial talent, spawning
CEOs that included James McNerney at Boeing (BA), Robert Nardelli at
Chrysler, and Jeff Immelt, his successor at GE.
Welch's decision to jump into online education
shows impeccable timing. Business schools in general are experiencing a rise
in applications as mid-level managers look to expand their business acumen
while waiting out the current job slump. The new program's flexible
schedule—paired with the low tuition cost—could be doubly attractive to
those looking to move up the corporate ladder as the market begins to
rebound.
Ted Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago's
Booth School of Business, agrees. "I think it's a good time for someone to
launch a high-profile online degree," Snyder says. "If you make the
investment in contentthat allows for a lot of interaction between faculty
and students and also among students, you can get good quality at a much
more reasonable tuition level."
Welch's Secret Weapon That being said, there are
challenges that an online MBA program like Welch's will have a difficult
time overcoming, even if the technology and faculty are there. "The
integrity and quality of engagement between faculty and students is the most
precious thing we have," Snyder says. "Assuming it's there, it dominates.
These things are hard to replicate online."
But Welch does have one thing that differentiates
his MBA from others: himself. "We'll have all of the things the other
schools have, only we'll have what Jack Welch believes are things that work
in business, in a real-time way," he says. "Every week I will have an online
streaming video of business today. For example, if I was teaching this week,
I would be putting up the health-care plan. I'd be putting up the financial
restructuring plan, talking about it, laying out the literature, what others
are saying, and I'd be talking about it. I'll be doing that every week."
Welch and his wife Suzy are also heavily involved
in curriculum design, leaning heavily on the principles he used training
managers at GE.
Continued in Article
Jensen Comment
There are enormous obstacles standing in the way of the
super-confident Jack Welch on this one. I should mention that I've never been a
Jack Welch fan and am especially disturbed that he is the world's leader in
platinum retirement perks that, in my opinion, go way beyond his value in the
past and future to GE. But I will try to not let my prejudices bias my remarks
below.
- This raises the question of why students choose one MBA program over
another after being admitted to several. For example, suppose a student has
not yet made a decision about accepting MBA program offers at Harvard,
Wharton, Stanford, Claremont, or the Jack (and Suzi) Welch Management
Institute. Assume location and climate are of no concern in this choice.
Some years back the relatively new Claremont MBA program assumed that the
worldwide reputations of faculty were the most important draw for new
students. So they hired at least one big name in each of the business
disciplines, the most notable of which was the famous Peter Drucker.
I won't go into details here and Claremont has a very respected MBA program,
but it has had huge problems attracting enough top students. The reason
quite simply, in my viewpoint, is that students choose MBA programs for
reasons other than reputations of faculty. Of course they assume that a top
MBA program has hired top faculty, but reputations of individual faculty are
not why they choose Stanford over Harvard or Wharton over Claremont. The
choose MBA programs for many of the reasons that led to top MBA programs in
U.S. News or the WSJ. They want high paying opportunities for
fast track wealth, and they assume the last five decades of established
success in that regard makes an MBA program the best for them. They also
want to be among the best students and alumni in the world, because they
feel that networking with current students and active alumni is a leading,
if not the leading, factor for career advancement opportunity.
Having a few big names on the faculty just does not cut it relative to the
more important factors when top students seek out an MBA program. The same
can be said to a somewhat lesser extent when choosing a doctoral studies
program. In the latter case, an applicant is often heavily influenced by a
current or former Professor X who recommends the doctoral program at
University Y because Professor Z happens to be a leading research advisor at
University Y. This is not the case for MBA students in most instances.
- If you're starting up an MBA program, an online MBA program is probably
a good idea. This will attract some high GMAT applicants who, for whatever
reason, just cannot leave town to become a full-time student in another
locale. But at the same time, an online MBA program is a turn off to other
top prospects. Some of the reasons were mentioned above. In addition, online
degree programs still have a stigma that online degrees are inferior (even
though many studies, such as the SCALE Experiment at Illinois, suggest that
online learning may be better if online instruction is excellent. Equally
important is that potential employers generally recruit more aggressively in
reputable onsite MBA programs. Jack Welch will have more success if he can
get inside tracks for his graduates to roll into the top jobs. Somehow I
doubt that he can do this for more than a handful of graduates vis-a-vis the
competition from the top 50 MBA programs ranked by U.S. News and the
WSJ.
- The timing could not be worse for starting a MBA Program. Top programs
at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, etc. are having trouble placing their
students, including their top students after Wall Street virtually imploded
and we're in probably the worst job market since the 1930s. This June, 80%
of the nation's undergraduates seeking employment could not find jobs for
which a college education is required. I suspect the situation is even worse
for the nation's MBA programs in terms of graduates who did not already have
satisfactory jobs before entering an MBA program. Some enter such programs
with jobs such as when a career military officer decides to go for an MBA on
the side.
- It is hard to compete without accreditation with MBA programs that are
accredited. Hundreds of MBA programs around the world have struggled
desperately to get AACSB accreditation. I doubt that the Jack Welch name
trumps accreditation.
In any case it will be interesting to track the progress of the Jack Welch
Management Institute. I would applaud if it becomes one of the best online
degree programs in the world, because I highly support the development of more
and better online training and education programs in the world ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
The Official Website of the Jack (and Suzi) Welch Management Institute is at
http://www.welchway.com/
The competition is listed at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
More on the greatest swindles of the world
General Electric, the world's largest industrial company, has quietly become the
biggest beneficiary of one of the government's key rescue programs for banks. At
the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial
giants getting help from the government. The company did not initially qualify
for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by
guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the
eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.
As a result, GE has joined major banks collectively saving billions of dollars
by raising money for...
Jeff Gerth and Brady Dennis,
"How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue Industrial Giant Becomes Top
Recipient in Debt-Guarantee Program," The Washington Post, June 29, 2009
---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802955.html?hpid=topnews
Jensen Comment
GE thus becomes the biggest winner under both the TARP and the Cap-and-Trade
give away legislation. It is a major producer of wind turbines and other
machinery for generating electricity under alternative forms of energy. The
government will pay GE billions for this equipment. GE Capital is also "Top
Recipient in Debt-Guarantee Program." Sort of makes you wonder why GE's NBC
network never criticizes liberal spending in Congress.
Jensen's threads on the bank rescue swindle are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm z
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Question
How would you advise Jack and Suzi to modify the program for greater assurance
as to success?
Answer
My advice would be to make this a GE Executive MBA Program. The business model
would be to gear it to GE professionals, especially newly hired engineers that
are strong on technical ability and weak on managerial skills, financial
management, marketing, and accounting.
The key to success would be to have GE pay the tuition as a fringe benefit to
the winning employees selected to get an MBA from Jack and Suzi. This may not be
too difficult since there are shrines throughout the world in GE facilities
where Jack Welch is worshipped as a God.
Some of the advantages of this business model are as follows:
- A major advantage of this MBA program is that students do not expect the
program to help find them careers in leading corporations. The students
would already have promising careers in GE or other corporations who partner
with GE in sending employees to the JWMI. The JWMI, therefore, would not
have to invest in a heaving marketing program to attract students. Students
would be more or less handed to the degree program on a silver platter. The
program would also not have to invest heavily in a graduate placement
program. Graduates are already employed.
- The JWMI would be assured of cream-of-the-crop student talent. Firstly,
the students obtained their jobs in a highly selective GE or other corporate
hiring process that only extends job offers competitively to the best
undergraduates in the world. Secondly, the students would have to meet added
filters of being worthy of obtaining a "free" MBA degree.
- The JWMI can hire all its new faculty from the start on the basis of
their extensive corporate experience and teaching skills. The program would
not be burdened with research faculty that are under severe pressures to
conduct research and publish papers in academic journals. Other MBA programs
in the world often have non-tenured faculty who have little choice but to
give primary time and attention to research. Teaching classes must become a
secondary priority until reaching tenure. And then the pressure to continue
research and publication does not end.
- Assuming tht JWMI will not be granting tenure to faculty, every faculty
member in the JWMI (full-time or part-time) will have contract renewal based
upon teaching performance. Lower performers can be shown the door at any
time.
There are successful business models of this nature already in existence,
although in most instances the corporation or other organization selected an
AACSB-accredited institution to devise a special curriculum for employees
seeking degrees in that institution. A few examples are summarized below.
- For many years the Terry School of Business at the University of Georgia
has been running a special-curriculum online MBA program for employees of
the accounting firm PwC. The PwC employees in this program mostly have
degrees in computer science, engineering, or other technical specialties
outside business disciplines. Although PwC is generally known as a global
accounting firm and auditing firm, employees selected for the Terry School
MBA program are mostly on career tracks in the consulting division of PwC.
The objective of this program is not to qualify graduates to sit for the CPA
examination. The objective is to give these students career advancement
skills in management, marketing, finance, and accounting.
-
Customized delivery of
a graduate program can be just as important
to the employer–and as beneficial for the
student–as tailored content.
PricewaterhouseCoopers wanted to offer an
M.B.A. program to up-and-coming employees of
its management-consulting services group,
who travel four or five days each workweek.
But "having to be in town each weekend or a
certain weekday evening just wouldn't work
for them," says Don Burkhard, a director of
the company's Learning and Professional
Development Center. Burkhard came to an
agreement with his own alma mater, Terry
College of Business at the University of
Georgia, to provide a two-year M.B.A.
program to consultants that relies heavily
on distance learning.
http://www.justcolleges.com/mba/customized-mba.htm
|
|
|
- Ernst & Young partnered with Notre Dame and the University of Virginia
to offer a special-curriculum online (will some full time intervals) program
leading to a masters degree in assurance services ---
Click Here
http://snipurl.com/eymasters
-
The Facts
-
During the first summer, you
will attend classes for 5 to 10
weeks at one of the
participating universities. You
will be eligible for E&Y
benefits and will be paid a
$1,000/month starter stipend.
-
After the first semester, you
will begin full-time client
service as an Assurance and
Advisory Business Services
professional, while taking one
class fall semester via distance
learning.
-
You will return for a second
summer of classes at the
university to complete your
master's degree.
-
All costs associated with
tuition, books, room and board,
and transportation are covered
by E&Y. A portion or all costs
associated with the program may
be taxable to you as the
participant.
- The University of Texas offers a special MBA program for Dallas-based
executives of Texas Instruments. Babson College has a masters degree program
for Lucent employees. And the list goes on and on ---
http://www.justcolleges.com/mba/customized-mba.htm
- Deere & Company has an exclusive partnership with Indiana University to
provide an online MBA program for Deere employees. Deere pays the fees. See
"Deere & Company Turns to Indiana University's Kelley School of Business For
Online MBA Degrees in Finance," Yahoo Press Release, October 8, 2001 ---
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/011008/cgm034_1.html
- US Military --- Over 4,000 training and education courses from a variety
of sources, including US Air University ---
http://www.au.af.mil/au/ "All
levels of Airmen, enlisted and officers, and civilians are educated through
in-residence or distance-learning courses to meet emerging geo-political
challenges faced by the United States. Developing adaptive and innovative
students who will produce and disseminate new ideas is crucial to the
security of our nation."
- Army Online University attracted 12,000 students during its first year
of operation and doubled in ensuing years.
Twenty-four colleges are delivering
training and education courses online through the U.S. Army's e-learning
portal. There are programs for varying levels of accomplishment, including
specialty certificates, associates degrees, bachelor's degrees, and masters
degrees. All courses are free to soldiers. By 2003, there was a capacity
for 80,000 online students. The PwC Program Director is Jill Kidwell ---
http://www.adec.edu/earmyu/kidwell.html
- The U.S. IRS offers Internet education opportunities. IRS employees who
want to get ahead in the organization are heading back to the classroom -
21st century style. College level courses in accounting, finance, tax law,
and other business subjects will be available on the Internet to IRS
employees.
http://www.accountingweb.com/item/46816/101
The IRS pays the fees for all employees. The IRS online accounting classes
will be served up from Florida State University and Florida Community
College at Jacksonville ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60881-2001May7.html
- For example, the IRS online accounting classes will be served up from
Florida State University and Florida Community College at Jacksonville ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60881-2001May7.html
"Stanford, Duke, Rice, ... and Gates?," by Kevin Carey, Chronicle
of Higher Education, July 10, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i41/41a02201.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Dear Bill Gates,
Hi! You don't know me, but I have an idea about how
you should spend your hard-earned money. I'll bet you get a lot of that
these days.
It's an old idea, a 19th-century idea. But I think
its time has come again. Two words: Gates University.
What does that mean? Just what it sounds like! You
should build a brand-new university, a great 21st-century institution of
higher learning. A university unlike anything the world has ever seen.
The time is right — your foundation, the world's
largest, recently announced a big push to improve postsecondary education.
It's a terrific move. High-quality college credentials are the key to
opportunity in the modern economy. If our higher-education system doesn't
get much better at helping more students earn them, your good work in
improving elementary and secondary education will be for naught.
But you've also learned from your decade of pushing
schools to improve. It's really hard! As you said in your annual letter in
2009, "We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping
to create a new school."
Well, high schools are a breeze compared with
colleges, which are both more apt to resist change and more skilled at doing
so successfully.
You need to prove that newer, better ways are
possible. Fortunately, that part is easier in higher education. The problem
with high schools is that there are tens of thousands of them, all serving
local regions, and they don't pay attention to one another. Higher education
is a national market, with only a few hundred elite colleges, in close
competition. You won't have to work to get people to watch Gates University.
It'll get all the notice it needs — and then some.
What would Gates University look like? To start, it
would look like something. It wouldn't be wholly virtual. A university needs
a physical center, a beating heart, a place where students and teachers come
together and learn.
Admission to Gates U., the place, would be
selective — but without the bribery and latent classism that still stain our
so-called best colleges. No legacy admissions, once you start having
legacies. No buying one's way in, no gentleman's agreements with wealthy
private high schools that admit the "right" kind of students. No bias
against striving ethnic groups, no special considerations for senators'
sons.
And no preferences for athletes, because Gates
University won't be running a pro football team on the side. (Seattle
already has one, last I checked.)
Who would work at Gates University? Anyone who
could do a great job. Maybe professors will have Ph.D.'s, maybe they won't.
If a really smart person drops out of college, founds a phenomenally
successful business, and decides to turn toward education as a way of giving
back, he or she would be welcome to apply for a job. You, for example, would
be qualified to teach at Gates U.
There would be no tenure, obviously. I assume you
never thought it was a good idea at Microsoft — why have it here? Nor would
you sequester faculty members into departments organized around academic
disciplines. The world can get by without one more English department or
college of business. Gates's programs would cross traditional disciplines,
organized around goals for what students need to learn. Faculty time, pay,
and status would center on the primary teaching mission.
How would you grant credits at Gates University?
You wouldn't. At least not the way colleges normally do, based on time in
contact with professors. No credit hours at Gates U., no degrees based on
the number of years enrolled. Instead you'd describe in great, public detail
all of the knowledge, skills, and attributes that students pursuing a given
course of studies would need to acquire. You'd be very open about how you
teach those things and how you assess what students have learned. Then you'd
grant credentials when students met those academic standards — regardless of
how long it takes.
How many students would you serve at Gates
University? As many as you can. That, more than anything, would truly
distinguish the university from all others.
Many public and nonprofit universities are trying
to expand distance education over the Internet. But they're often
constrained by their brands, their culture, their fealty to tradition. While
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and
others are pioneering "open courseware" — well-developed materials available
free of charge to individual learners and instructors — many colleges'
online divisions are mere appendages, ways to make money and survive.
Traditional colleges tend to look at the Internet and say, "How can we use
this to keep being what we've always been?" Gates University would use the
Internet to be what no university has ever been.
For-profit universities, meanwhile, are surging
into the online market. Some provide valuable services, while others are
ripping off students and taxpayers. But on some level they all want to
provide as good an education as necessary for as much tuition as possible.
Gates University would provide as good an education as possible for as much
tuition as necessary, to as many students as it can reach.
How many students is that? You made a vast fortune
with information technology and economies of scale. More people weren't an
obstacle for you — they were an opportunity. How does Microsoft think about
the number of people it could sell software to? That's how you should think
about the number of people Gates University could serve.
Gates University, the place, would be the center of
a global, Web-based institution of higher learning. In the same way that
your foundation works to provide low-cost pharmaceuticals and vaccines to
developing nations, your faculty members would work hand-in-hand with
colleagues around the world to develop curricula, enforce academic
standards, and experiment with novel new ways to use technology to help as
many students as possible earn high-quality, low-cost degrees.
Because Gates University's standards would be open,
the job market would have no trouble accepting its degrees. And I don't
think you'll have any problems attracting students. Your name is global
currency. People of every nation and culture need higher education, and they
would jump at the chance to earn credentials with your imprimatur. Because
Gates U. would be nonprofit, you'll price those degrees at cost. Since
you'll have no money-losing sports teams, huge libraries full of books,
bloated administrative structures, or unproductive professors, I'm guessing
that will be far less than what other elite institutions now charge.
And for low-income students learning online, the
charge will be even less. Technology and economies of scale are creating
huge, largely untapped opportunities to lower the marginal cost of higher
education. People all over the world have the talent, motivation, and will
to earn degrees from world-class universities. But many of them are poor and
isolated and far away. Gates University's mission would be to find those
people, wherever they are, and give them the chance to learn.
These are big changes. Some might put you in
conflict with accreditors, which are still too focused on fitting
universities into a precast mold. But that's OK — it's a fight worth having,
and one I think you would win. Indeed, the whole process of building Gates
University would generate a conversation about postsecondary education that
is sorely needed.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Given Bill Gate's pattern of giving away billions of dollars, my guess is that
the money would go toward schools, probably K-12 schools, in Africa. His
philanthropy seems to be more focused on global needs. Thus far he's focused
more on health needs, but eventually he perhaps will be equally focused on
learning needs of young minds.
"THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS," The Chronicle of Higher Education,
June 2009 ---
http://research.chronicle.com/asset/TheCollegeof2020ExecutiveSummary.pdf?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
This is the first Chronicle Research Services
report in a three-part series on what higher education will look like in the
year 2020. It is based on reviews of research and data on trends in higher
education, interviews with experts who are shaping the future of colleges,
and the results of a poll of members of a Chronicle Research Services panel
of admissions officials.
To buy the full, data-rich 50-page report, see the
links at the end of this Executive Summary. Later reports in this series
will look at college technology and facilities in 2020, and the faculty of
the future
"The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age," by Jane
Park, Creative Commons, June 26th, 2009 ---
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15522
Bob Jensen's threads on controversies in higher education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on available online training and education programs
are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
Business Technology from Business Week Magazine ---
http://bx.businessweek.com/business-technology/
The Journal of Accountancy has a great monthly technology section
(with particular focus on things you never, ever thought you could do with MS
Office, particularly Excel) ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/
The Q&A modules are particularly informative and should be centralized in one
place in addition to monthly editions.
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting software ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#AccountingSoftware
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on July 10, 2009
Public Pensions Cook the Books
by Andrew G.
Biggs
The Wall Street Journal
Jul 06, 2009
Click here to view the full article on WSJ.com
TOPICS: Advanced
Financial Accounting, Financial Accounting Standards Board, Governmental
Accounting, Market-Value Approach, Pension Accounting
SUMMARY: As
Mr. Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, puts it,
"public employee pension plans are plagued by overgenerous benefits, chronic
underfunding, and now trillion dollar stock-market losses. Based on their
preferred accounting methods...these plans are underfunded nationally by
around $310 billion. [But] the numbers are worse using market valuation
methods...which discount benefit liabilities at lower interest rates...."
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: Introducing
the importance of interest rate assumptions, and the accounting itself, for
pension plans can be accomplished with this article.
QUESTIONS:
1. (Introductory)
Summarize the accounting for pension plans, including the process for
determining pension liabilities, the funded status of a pension plan,
pension expense, the use of a discount rate, the use of an expected rate of
return. You may base your answer on the process used by corporations rather
than governmental entities.
2. (Advanced)
Based on the discussion in the article, what is the difference between
accounting for pension plans by U.S. corporations following FASB
requirements and governmental entities following GASB guidance?
3. (Introductory)
What did the administrators of the Montana Public Employees' Retirement
Board and the Montana Teachers' Retirement System include in their
advertisements to hire new actuaries?
4. (Advanced)
What is the concern with using the "expected return" on plan assets as the
rate to discount future benefits rather than using a low, risk free rate of
return for this calculation? In your answer, comment on the author's
statement that "future benefits are considered to be riskless" and the
impact that assessment should have on the choice of a discount rate.
5. (Advanced)
What is the response by public pension officers regarding differences
between their plans and those of corporate entities? How do they argue this
leads to differences in required accounting? Do you agree or disagree with
this position? Support your assessment.
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
"Public Pensions Cook the Books: Some plans want to hide the truth
from taxpayers," by Andrew Biggs, The Wall Street Journal, July 6,
2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124683573382697889.html
Here's a dilemma: You manage a public employee
pension plan and your actuary tells you it is significantly underfunded. You
don't want to raise contributions. Cutting benefits is out of the question.
To be honest, you'd really rather not even admit there's a problem, lest
taxpayers get upset.
What to do? For the administrators of two Montana
pension plans, the answer is obvious: Get a new actuary. Or at least that's
the essence of the managers' recent solicitations for actuarial services,
which warn that actuaries who favor reporting the full market value of
pension liabilities probably shouldn't bother applying.
Public employee pension plans are plagued by
overgenerous benefits, chronic underfunding, and now trillion dollar
stock-market losses. Based on their preferred accounting methods -- which
discount future liabilities based on high but uncertain returns projected
for investments -- these plans are underfunded nationally by around $310
billion.
The numbers are worse using market valuation
methods (the methods private-sector plans must use), which discount benefit
liabilities at lower interest rates to reflect the chance that the expected
returns won't be realized. Using that method, University of Chicago
economists Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh calculate that, even prior to
the market collapse, public pensions were actually short by nearly $2
trillion. That's nearly $87,000 per plan participant. With employee benefits
guaranteed by law and sometimes even by state constitutions, it's likely
these gargantuan shortfalls will have to be borne by unsuspecting taxpayers.
Some public pension administrators have a strategy,
though: Keep taxpayers unsuspecting. The Montana Public Employees'
Retirement Board and the Montana Teachers' Retirement System declare in a
recent solicitation for actuarial services that "If the Primary Actuary or
the Actuarial Firm supports [market valuation] for public pension plans,
their proposal may be disqualified from further consideration."
Scott Miller, legal counsel of the Montana Public
Employees Board, was more straightforward: "The point is we aren't
interested in bringing in an actuary to pressure the board to adopt market
value of liabilities theory."
While corporate pension funds are required by law
to use low, risk-adjusted discount rates to calculate the market value of
their liabilities, public employee pensions are not. However, financial
economists are united in believing that market-based techniques for valuing
private sector investments should also be applied to public pensions.
Because the power of compound interest is so
strong, discounting future benefit costs using a pension plan's high
expected return rather than a low riskless return can significantly reduce
the plan's measured funding shortfall. But it does so only by ignoring risk.
The expected return implies only the "expectation" -- meaning, at least a
50% chance, not a guarantee -- that the plan's assets will be sufficient to
meet its liabilities. But when future benefits are considered to be riskless
by plan participants and have been ruled to be so by state courts, a 51%
chance that the returns will actually be there when they are needed hardly
constitutes full funding.
Public pension administrators argue that government
plans fundamentally differ from private sector pensions, since the
government cannot go out of business. Even so, the only true advantage
public pensions have over private plans is the ability to raise taxes. But
as the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out in 2004, "The government
does not have a capacity to bear risk on its own" -- rather, government
merely redistributes risk between taxpayers and beneficiaries, present and
future.
Market valuation makes the costs of these potential
tax increases explicit, while the public pension administrators' approach,
which obscures the possibility that the investment returns won't achieve
their goals, leaves taxpayers in the dark.
For these reasons, the Public Interest Committee of
the American Academy of Actuaries recently stated, "it is in the public
interest for retirement plans to disclose consistent measures of the
economic value of plan assets and liabilities in order to provide the
benefits promised by plan sponsors."
Nevertheless, the National Association of State
Retirement Administrators, an umbrella group representing government
employee pension funds, effectively wants other public plans to take the
same low road that the two Montana plans want to take. It argues against
reporting the market valuation of pension shortfalls. But the association's
objections seem less against market valuation itself than against the fact
that higher reported underfunding "could encourage public sector plan
sponsors to abandon their traditional pension plans in lieu of defined
contribution plans."
The Government Accounting Standards Board, which
sets guidelines for public pension reporting, does not currently call for
reporting the market value of public pension liabilities. The board
announced last year a review of its position regarding market valuation but
says the review may not be completed until 2013.
This is too long for state taxpayers to wait to
find out how many trillions they owe.
Bob Jensen's threads on Off-Balance-Sheet Financing (OBSF) are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#OBSF2
Bob Jensen's threads about fraud in government are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#Lawmakers
A Fabulous, Albeit Controversial, History Story
History of the University of Phoenix and Its Founder (a really interesting long
article)
"Phoenix Risen: How a history professor became the pioneer of the
for-profit revolution," by Thomas Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education,
July 10, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i41/41a00101.htm
Unfortunately this fabulous article is not free, but professors and students
will find it in their campus library.
(Introductory paragraphs not quoted)
It is hard to square that with the actual John
Sperling, who may just be the least flashy billionaire out there. He tools
around Phoenix in a decade-old car (albeit a Jaguar), carries his IBM
ThinkPad tucked under one arm, and dons the same outfit almost every day: a
blue, button-down shirt and khaki slacks. He loves theater, classical music,
and especially poetry. He is easily bored by chitchat but lights up when the
conversation turns to politics or the environment. He sees the University of
Phoenix not as a giant ATM to support his causes, but as a force for social
good, an enterprise consistent with his left-of-center worldview. These days
he is spending millions on solar technology and sustainable agriculture,
which he hopes can reel humankind back from the edge of calamity.
What's more, following a brief retirement of sorts,
he has returned to the helm of the company he founded and is attempting to
steer it through one of the country's choppiest economic periods. So how did
a middling history professor become the billionaire leader of the for-profit
revolution? And, as he nears his 90th year, is he still up to the challenge?
John Sperling grew up poor and sickly in the middle
of America — Missouri — during the Great Depression, the youngest son of a
doting mother he loved and an abusive father he loathed. In his
autobiography, Rebel With a Cause (2000), the account of his boyhood is
filled with startling scenes of suffering and cruelty. Mr. Sperling is a fan
of Charles Dickens, and it's no wonder.
His father beat him regularly, and, at age 10,
after one humiliating episode too many, the boy threatened to kill the old
man in his sleep if he ever hit him again. The threat did the trick, and the
beatings stopped. When he was 15 his father died and John couldn't have been
more pleased. His mother told him to at least try to look mournful, but he
couldn't help himself: "I raced outside, rolled in the grass squealing with
delight," he writes in his book. "There I lay looking up into a clear blue
sky, and I realized this was the happiest day of my life. It still is."
After high school, he took a job as a stocker at a
department store but was fired for being too slow. With no prospects, no
skills that he knew of, and zero self-confidence, Mr. Sperling did what lots
of young men have done before and since: He went to sea, snagging a spot on
a freighter bound for the Far East.
It was on board that his education began. Fellow
sailors introduced him to novelists, like Henry Miller, and philosophers,
like Oswald Spengler. He also read Marx and embraced socialism (a position
he has modified in the years since). Back in the United States in 1941, he
got a night job at a filling station and enrolled at the City College of San
Francisco.
During World War II, Mr. Sperling kicked around the
military but never saw overseas action. He trained with the Navy,
transferred to the Army, was discharged, and was called up again. Along the
way, he got married and struggled with anxiety. He learned to sew to make
his wife clothes, and to box to improve his self-confidence.
He left San Francisco for Reed College, a
significant step up for a young man who had been a below-average high-school
student. The competition from his classmates was stiff, and he began to
despise those who had grown up with everything he had not, like educated
parents, good schools, and money. Still, he excelled and was accepted into
graduate school in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley.
When he learned that he would be forced to take a slew of prerequisites,
though, he switched to history.
He shone at Berkeley, too, winning an endowed
studentship at King's College Cambridge. Those days at Berkeley, he recalls
now, were the most blissful of his life. "In the cafes, we honed our
academic skills by expounding and arguing theory, fact, and fiction," he
writes. "It was a movable intellectual feast."
. . .
With two former students as co-founders, Sperling
worked out of his house and used $26,000 in savings as seed money for the
fledgling program, which was originally called the Institute for Community
Research and Development. By the second year, revenues were just under
$3-million. Locked inside the middle-aged professor, it turns out, was a CEO
waiting to burst forth.
In the mid-70s, Mr. Sperling's company was entirely
different from what the University of Phoenix would become. Instead of
competing with nonprofit institutions, it formed partnerships, acting as a
subcontractor to teach working adults. Mr. Sperling traveled the country
drumming up business and often running into skepticism and even scorn from
those in traditional higher education. He saw his mission as bringing higher
education to underserved communities. But naysayers said his company was
lowering the standards of its accredited partners. Why would a college bring
in outsiders to teach? And why cater specifically to working adults?
Not that the venture was a failure. Some colleges
did sign on, but the arrangements ultimately proved problematic. Mr.
Sperling remembers sitting in his office in San Jose — a proper office
building rather than his living room — thinking that if he didn't come up
with a new plan there would no longer be a company to run. The money was
coming in, but he sensed trouble ahead.
That's when the University of Phoenix was born, at
least in his mind. Problems with California regulators, whom Mr. Sperling
believed were determined to shut his company down, prompted a move to
Arizona. In those first few years, Phoenix was dismissed as a diploma mill
and struggled to gain accreditation.
As profitable and ubiquitous as Phoenix is now, it
is hard to imagine the company as a small, vulnerable upstart. But that's
what it was, even after it was accredited. Other institutions in Arizona
were hoping for its demise, and reports in the local news media about the
California interlopers were almost uniformly negative. There was an FBI
investigation into allegations that Mr. Sperling had bribed officials at the
University of San Francisco to get them to support a contract with his
pre-Phoenix company. The probe went nowhere but was a genuine distraction.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sperling, now twice divorced,
struggled in his personal life. At 57, he was diagnosed with prostate
cancer. Following surgery, he discovered that smoking marijuana helped him
manage his pain better than prescription drugs. He has been an advocate of
legalization ever since.
There were internal company struggles, too. One of
them involved Mr. Sperling and another founder, Peter Ellis. Mr. Ellis had
been one of Mr. Sperling's students at San Jose State and considered him a
father figure. In his autobiography, Mr. Sperling portrays his former
student as a hard worker but an inadequate leader who wasn't up to the
challenge of building a university. The two men tangled over a host of
issues, and Mr. Ellis, after some deft maneuvering by Mr. Sperling, was
pushed out with a payment of $125,000, a tiny amount considering that he had
an ownership stake in the company. They haven't spoken to each other since.
Nearly three decades later, Mr. Ellis, who now runs
a company called Community Crime Prevention Associates, says he was ready to
leave. In his view, the University of Phoenix had strayed from its original
mission and become too focused on the bottom line. And Mr. Ellis, a
self-described do-gooder, thought the university was no longer interested in
doing good.
That said, he has watched in awe as the company he
helped start has grown exponentially. As for his former professor, he sees
Mr. Sperling as an ambitious businessman who hates to lose. "He's a
brilliant guy, but he loves power," says Mr. Ellis.
Others also point to Mr. Sperling's fierce drive,
his confidence in his own abilities, his desire to be in charge. Suzanne W.
Helburn, a longtime collaborator on some of Mr. Sperling's writing projects,
has had her disagreements with him over the years, but the two have remained
friends. She describes him as cocky, ambitious, and very sure of his own
judgment. "He's an archetype entrepreneur," she says. "He loves starting
things. He's totally enthusiastic about the new thing."
Continued in a very long and interesting article
Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free online video courses and
course materials from leading universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
What's Online Learning Really Like in a Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting
Class at the University of Phoenix?
The Chronicle's Goldie Blumenstyk has covered distance education for
more than a decade, and during that time she's written stories about
the economics of for-profit education, the ways that online institutions
market themselves, and the demise of
the 50-percent rule. About the only thing she hadn't done, it seemed, was to
take a course from an online university. But this spring she finally took the
plunge, and now she has completed a class in government and nonprofit accounting
through the University of Phoenix. She shares tales from the cyber-classroom --
and her final grade --
in a podcast with Paul Fain, a Chronicle reporter.
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2008 (Audio) ---
http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v54/i40/cyber_classroom/
-
All course materials (including textbooks) online;
No additional textbooks to purchase
-
$1,600 fee for the course and materials
-
Woman instructor with respectable academic
credentials and experience in course content
-
Instructor had good communications with students
and between students
-
Total of 14 quite dedicated online students in
course, most of whom were mature with full-time day jobs
-
30% of grade from team projects
-
Many unassigned online helper tutorials that were
not fully utilized by Goldie
-
Goldie earned a 92 (A-)
-
She gave a positive evaluation to the course and
would gladly take other courses if she had the time
-
She considered the course
to have a heavy workload
Jensen Added Comment
It wasn't mentioned, but I think Goldie took the ACC 460 course ---
Click Here
ACC 460 Government and Non-Profit Accounting
Course Description
This course covers fund accounting, budget and
control issues, revenue and expense recognition, and issues of reporting for
both government and non-profit entities.
Topics and Objectives
Environment of Government/Non-Profit Accounting
- Compare and contrast governmental and proprietary accounting.
- Analyze the relationship between GASB and FASB.
- Analyze the relationship between a budget and a Comprehensive Annual
Financial Report (CAFR).
- Determine when and how to use the modified accrual accounting
method.
Fund Accounting Part I
- Distinguish between expenses and expenditures.
- Explain the effect of encumbrances on a budget.
- Apply the principles of fund accounting.
- Determine the closing process for the fund accounting cycle.
- Explain the reconciliation of government-wide financial statements
with the fund statements.
Fund Accounting Part II
- Apply accounting procedures for recognizing revenues and other
financial resources.
- Record interfund transfers.
- Prepare fund and non-governmental accounting entries.
- Prepare a financial statement for a governmental agency.
Overview of Not-for-Profit Accounting
- Examine the funds for different types of not-for-profit
organizations.
- Compare and contrast reporting by governmental, not-for-profit, and
proprietary organizations.
Current Issues in Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting
- Analyze current issues in government and not-for-profit accounting.
Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free online video courses and
course materials from leading universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads on assessment ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education (although the University of
Phoenix also has onsite campuses) alternatives are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Colleges Deserve Some Respect
Finally, because the for-profit institutions are in
competition with public universities and community colleges that charge lower
tuition, they must offer students something more. Outstanding service, flexible
schedules that fit the students' lifestyles, strong faculty members who combine
theory with practical experience and who know how to teach, as well as quality,
market-driven programs, are what lure students to the for-profit university —
even if the tuition is more expensive. In reality, all institutions strive to
have their revenues exceed their expenses. Sound institutions use the money to
enhance the educational experience of the students. Regardless of the nature of
a higher-education institution — private or public, research or career-oriented,
for-profit or not-for-profit — its quality will be determined by its management.
There have unquestionably been abuses in some for-profit education institutions,
but the same can be said about private and public traditional institutions as
well. Perhaps it's time to evaluate institutions on their own merits, rather
than classify them by stereotypical categories.
Michael J. Seiden, "For-Profit Colleges Deserve Some Respect," Chronicle of
Higher Education, July 10, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i41/41a08001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Please send Amy (and me) your best "learning nudgers"
July 2, 2009 message from Amy Dunbar
[Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]
Dale Flesher, the President of the Teaching and
Learning Section of the AAA, asked me to be a breakfast speaker on Monday,
Aug. 3, at the AAA meeting. The breakfast is a 6:45 AM, so I need a good
topic to keep folks awake, and I think I found one: Learning Nudges. I read
an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this morning that mentioned
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions
About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246545491&sr=8-1
After reading the AECM emails on “cheat sheets,” I
realized that the AECM would be a great source of nudges! Certainly a
“cheat sheet” is one that helps students study for exams, but I was
disheartened by Linda Marquis’s statement that the scores didn’t change when
she instituted the practice. Nevertheless, I think it’s a great suggestion
for easing student tension prior to exams.
I would appreciate your suggestions for what you use
for nudges in your classes. My goal is to create a handout that would give
the nudge and the name and school of the person who uses the nudge. I would
love to know if/how you use humor as a nudge. Perhaps it is stretching the
concept of a “nudge,” but I think humor eases tension and creates bonds
among students. Just my two cents.
My email is
amy.dunbar@uconn.edu.
Thank you!
Amy Dunbar
Department of Accounting #431
School of Business
University of Connecticut
2100 Hillside Road, Unit 1041
Storrs, CT 06269-104
amy.dunbar@uconn.edu
July 2, 2009 reply
by Bob Jensen
Hi Amy,
I think "learning nudges" can be helped by interesting
history pieces. For example, when beginning an accounting class you might
show how Incan khipus people kept accounting records with knots on strings
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
You can even bring your own knitting for this one.
I think great ethics videos fit into most any
accounting course as "learning nudges." One of the greatest is at
http://www.baylortv.com/streaming/001496/300kbps_str.asx
Accounting professors all too often neglect possible
learning nudges in the history of accountancy.
When introducing derivative financial instruments accounting I delve into
the early history (back to Roman times) of derivatives speculation and the
timeline of frauds ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
For AIS and auditing topics there's a wealth of sadness
and humor in the history of these topics --- think of all the stupid
technology disasters in the history of computing.
I hate to say it, but in your specialty (tax) there
must be a wealth of humorous material on absurd tax shelters. For example,
the Frontline (PBS Television) expose on the KPMG German trolleys grabs
student attention ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#KPMG
I often did "learning nudges" with clips from news
shows such as Sixty Minutes, 20/20, and especially the absurd and funny
exposes of John Stossel ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stossel
John is extremely clever and funny and informative. His writings are
fantastic serve as a major source on learning nudges.
Remember that your university's media center probably
has video cartridges on these popular Network shows in their archives.
My all time favorite is a Sixty Minutes piece on
derivative financial instruments ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/SIXTY01.wmv
In spite of poor quality, Enron's infamous home video
is near the top in terms of humor and sadness ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/windowsmedia/enron3.wmv
One of my favorite and humorous writers is P.J.
O'Rourke. Talk about attention grabbers --- O'Rourke supplies a lifetime
worth of attention grabbers and learning nudgers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke
There may be some humorous (also sad) learning nudges
to attract attention by pointing out some really dumb decisions made in
business (or possibly accounting or the tax code). For example there are
some really dumb decisions made by fund managers to invest in absurdly
(intentionally absurd derivatives engineered by salesmen at Merrill Lynch
and elsewhere). Some of the derivatives fraud books are really a laugh a
page, including such examples as shown below.
Also track some of the other "dumbest moments" in
business such as Merrill Lynch CEO's "Commode on Legs."
"Dumbest
Moments in Business 2009...Midyear Edition," Fortune via Yahoo,
July 2, 2009 ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2284224/posts
Some of these "dumbest moments"
are very good attention grabbers.
***********************
Some of the older
derivatives fraud exposes and humor include the following:
Michael Lewis,
Liar's Poker: Playing the Money Markets (Coronet,
1999, ISBN 0340767006)
Lewis writes in Partnoy’s earlier
whistleblower style with somewhat more intense and comic
portrayals of the major players in describing the double
dealing and break down of integrity on the trading floor
of Salomon Brothers.
John Rolfe and Peter
Troob, Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall
Street Jungle (Warner Books, Incorporated, 2002,
ISBN: 0446676950, 288 Pages)
This is
a hilarious tongue-in-cheek account by Wharton and
Harvard MBAs who thought they were starting out as
stock brokers for $200,000 a year until they
realized that they were on the phones in a bucket
shop selling sleazy IPOs to unsuspecting
institutional investors who in turn passed them
along to widows and orphans. They write. "It took
us another six months after that to realize
that we were, in fact, selling crappy public
offerings to investors."
There are other books along a similar
vein that may be more revealing and entertaining
than the early books of Frank Partnoy, but he was
one of the first, if not the first, in the roaring
1990s to reveal the high crime taking place behind
the concrete and glass of Wall Street. He was the
first to anticipate many of the scandals that soon
followed. And his testimony before the U.S. Senate
is the best concise account of the crime that
transpired at Enron. He lays the blame clearly at
the feet of government officials (read that Wendy
Gramm) who sold the farm when they deregulated the
energy markets and opened the doors to unregulated
OTC derivatives trading in energy. That is when
Enron really began bilking the public.
|
|
3. What are some
of Frank Partnoy’s best-known works?
Frank Partnoy,
FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street (W. W.
Norton & Company, 1997, ISBN 0393046222, 252 pages).
This is the first of a somewhat
repetitive succession of Partnoy’s “FIASCO” books that
influenced my life. The most important revelation from
his insider’s perspective is that the most trusted firms
on Wall Street and financial centers in other major
cities in the U.S., that were once highly professional
and trustworthy, excoriated the guts of integrity
leaving a façade behind which crooks less violent than
the Mafia but far more greedy took control in the
roaring 1990s.
After selling a succession of phony
derivatives deals while at Morgan Stanley, Partnoy blew
the whistle in this book about a number of his
employer’s shady and outright fraudulent deals sold in
rigged markets using bait and switch tactics.
Customers, many of them pension fund investors for
schools and municipal employees, were duped into complex
and enormously risky deals that were billed as safe as
the U.S. Treasury.
His books have received mixed reviews,
but I question some of the integrity of the reviewers
from the investment banking industry who in some
instances tried to whitewash some of the deals described
by Partnoy. His books have received a bit less praise
than the book Liars Poker by Michael Lewis, but
critics of Partnoy fail to give credit that Partnoy’s
exposes preceded those of Lewis.
Frank Partnoy,
FIASCO: Guns, Booze and Bloodlust: the Truth About High
Finance (Profile Books, 1998, 305 Pages)
Like his earlier books, some investment
bankers and literary dilettantes who reviewed this book
were critical of Partnoy and claimed that he
misrepresented some legitimate structured financings.
However, my reading of the reviewers is that they were
trying to lend credence to highly questionable offshore
deals documented by Partnoy. Be that as it may, it
would have helped if Partnoy had been a bit more
explicit in some of his illustrations.
Frank Partnoy,
FIASCO: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader
(Penguin, 1999, ISBN 0140278796, 283 pages).
This is a
blistering indictment of the unregulated OTC market
for derivative financial instruments and the million
and billion dollar deals conceived in investment
banking. Among other things, Partnoy describes
Morgan Stanley’s annual drunken skeet-shooting
competition organized by a “gun-toting strip-joint
connoisseur” former combat officer (fanatic) who
loved the motto: “When derivatives are outlawed
only outlaws will have derivatives.” At that event,
derivatives salesmen were forced to shoot entrapped
bunnies between the eyes on the pretense that the
bunnies were just like “defenseless animals” that
were Morgan Stanley’s customers to be shot down even
if they might eventually “lose a billion dollars on
derivatives.”
This book has one of the best accounts of the
“fiasco” caused almost entirely by the duping of
Orange
County ’s Treasurer (Robert Citron)
by the unscrupulous Merrill Lynch derivatives
salesman named Michael
Stamenson. Orange
County eventually lost over a billion
dollars and was forced into bankruptcy. Much of
this was later recovered in court from Merrill
Lynch. Partnoy calls
Citron and Stamenson
“The Odd Couple,” which is also the title of Chapter
8 in the book.Frank Partnoy, Infectious Greed:
How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets
(Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, 2003, ISBN:
080507510-0, 477 pages)Frank Partnoy, Infectious
Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial
Markets (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated,
2003, ISBN: 080507510-0, 477 pages)
Partnoy shows how corporations gradually
increased financial risk and lost control over overly
complex structured financing deals that obscured the
losses and disguised frauds pushed corporate officers
and their boards into successive and ingenious
deceptions." Major corporations such as Enron, Global
Crossing, and WorldCom entered into enormous illegal
corporate finance and accounting. Partnoy documents the
spread of this epidemic stage and provides some
suggestions for restraining the disease.
"The Siskel and
Ebert of Financial Matters: Two Thumbs Down for the
Credit Reporting Agencies" by Frank Partnoy,
Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 77, No. 3,
1999 ---
http://ls.wustl.edu/WULQ/
(Not Humor)
|
|
Liars Poker II is called "The End"
The Not-Funny Punch Line is Not Until Page 9 of This Tongue in Cheek Explanation
of the Meltdown on Wall Street!
Now I asked
Gutfreund about his biggest decision. “Yes,” he said. “They—the heads of the
other Wall Street firms—all said what an awful thing it was to go public
(beg for a government bailout)
and how could you do such a thing. But when the temptation arose,
they all gave in to it.” He agreed that the main effect of turning a partnership
into a corporation was to transfer the financial risk to the shareholders. “When
things go wrong, it’s their problem,” he said—and obviously not theirs alone.
When a Wall Street investment bank screwed up badly enough, its risks became the
problem of the U.S. government. “It’s laissez-faire until you get in deep shit,”
he said, with a half chuckle. He was out of the game.
This is a must read to understand what went wrong on Wall Street --- especially
the punch line!
"The End," by Michael Lewis December 2008 Issue The era that defined Wall Street
is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s
Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom?tid=true
It should be a heck of a lot of fun, Amy, to catalog some of the great
learning nudges that you discover in your searches. Please share the best ones
with us (including both the humorous and not-so-funny nudgers).
"Are Independent Audit-Committee Members Objective?" The Harvard Law
School, July 6, 2009 ---
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/2009/07/06/are-independent-audit-committee-members-objective/
Based upon a forthcoming Accounting Review article by Matthew Magilke of
the University of Utah, Brian W. Mayhew of the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
and Joel Pike of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.)
The working paper can be downloaded from SSRN at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1097714
Abstract:
We use experimental markets to examine stock-based compensation's impact on
the objectivity of participants serving as audit committee members. We
compare audit committee member reporting objectivity under three regimes: no
stock-based compensation, stock-based compensation linked to current
shareholders, and stock-based compensation linked to future shareholders.
Our experiments show that student participants serving as audit committee
members prefer biased reporting when compensated with stock-based
compensation. Audit committee members compensated with current stock-based
compensation prefer aggressive reporting, and audit committee members
compensated with future stock-based compensation prefer overly conservative
reporting. We find that audit committee members who do not receive
stock-based compensation are the most objective. Our study suggests that
stock-based compensation impacts audit committee member preferences for
biased reporting, suggesting the need for additional research in this area.
Keywords: Audit Committee, Stock Compensation,
Independence
Jensen Comment
I hate to keep repeating myself, but this will probably go down as one of those
student experiments that have dubious extrapolations to the real world. The
student compensation is nowhere near the possible compensations of real board
members of real corporations. My traditional example here is my banker friend
who gambles for relatively large stakes with his poker-playing friends, but
never gambles even small time with his local Bangor bank.
Even more discouraging is that following decades of publications of empirical
academic research, the findings will simply be accepted as truth without ever
replicating the outcomes as would be required in real science. In science, its
the replications that are more eagerly anticipated than the original studies.
But this is not the case in accounting research ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Replication
Probably the most fascinating study of an audit committee is the history of
the infamous Audit Committee of Enron. Evidence in retrospect seems to point to
the fact that the Audit Committee and the Board of Directors (Bob Jaedicke was
on both Boards) were truly deceived by clever and unscrupulous Enron executives.
Probably the most penetrating study of what happened was the after-the-fact
Powers' Study conducted by the Board itself ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm
There are times when I'm more impressed by a sample of one than a sample of
students in an artificial experiment that is never replicated.
Also see Question 7 at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnronQuiz.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on professionalism and independence are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Professionalism
Speaking of Dumb Business Decisions
Watch the video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bOug1d20c
"What The Pickens Fiasco Means To Green," by Andy Stone, Forbes,
July 8, 2009 ---
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/08/boone-pickens-wind-power-business-energy-pickens.html
The White House would be wise to learn the lessons
of T. Boone Pickens' wind-power failure.
On Tuesday, Texas oilman and energy security
proselyte T. Boone Pickens announced that he will delay, and likely
permanently scuttle, plans for a 687 turbine wind project in the Texas
panhandle.
The demise of the project, which was supposed to be
the largest in the world at a rated generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts,
came when Pickens discovered he couldn't raise money to build transmission
lines to carry wind energy from his remote 200,000 acres to big cities that
would consume the power.
Pickens had obviously hoped to become the poster
child for wind. Instead, his Texas experiment is now a cautionary tale on
the critical role of transmission to wind development. He's stuck with $2
billion worth of General Electric ( GE - news - people ) turbines, which he
hopes to move to smaller projects throughout the Midwest and Canada. He's
also decided to wait for the government to build transmission to carry wind
power in Texas.
Transmission is a critical and often overlooked
component to making green energy work, particularly because wind and solar
resources are often located in rural areas far from major transmission
backbones.
A year ago the Department of Energy released a
roadmap by which the U.S. would generate 20% of its electricity from wind by
the year 2030. The critical bottleneck in the plan would be transmission.
DOE said a nationwide network of high-voltage power lines would suffice to
get all that wind energy to market, but the plan would cost at least $60
billion.
In the drive to stimulate green energy, President
Obama will need to keep the need for transmission front and center.
"Dumbest
Moments in Business 2009...Midyear Edition," Fortune via Yahoo,
July 2, 2009 ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2284224/posts
Some of these "dumbest moments"
are very good attention grabbers in class.
Deloitte to Pay $1M in Beazer Suit
Deloitte & Touche has agreed to pay investors of Beazer
Homes USA nearly $1 million to settle claims the firm should have noticed the
homebuilder was issuing inaccurate financial statements as the housing market
began to decline earlier this decade. The audit firm, Beazer, and former Beazer
executives have settled the class-action lawsuit for a total of $30.5 million,
pending approval by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Georgia. Deloitte is scheduled to pay $950,000.
Sarah Johnson, "Deloitte to Pay $1M in Beazer Suit," CFO.com, May 7, 2009
---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13612963/c_13610376?f=TodayInFinance_Inside
Bob Jensen's threads on Deloitte & Touche are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Deloitte
"Beazer to Pay Up to $53 Million in Fraud Case," by Brett Kendall and
Sarah H. Lynch, The Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124648101952382381.html#mod=todays_us_marketplace
Beazer Homes USA Inc. will pay up to $53 million to
settle mortgage fraud charges related to federally insured mortgage loans
the company made to buyers of its homes.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that
Beazer will pay $5 million to the federal government and up to $48 million
to victimized homeowners.
The settlement is tied to an agreement with federal
prosecutors in North Carolina that will allow the Atlanta-based company to
avoid criminal prosecution on the mortgage-fraud charges, and on other
accounting-fraud charges related to the manipulation of company earnings.
In a separate action, the Securities and Exchange
Commission filed civil charges Wednesday against Beazer's former chief
accounting officer, accusing him of conducting a fraudulent earnings scheme
and hiding his wrongdoing from outside auditors and other company
accountants.
In the mortgage fraud case, prosecutors said Beazer
ignored income requirements in making loans to unqualified buyers, and
sought to hide from the Federal Housing Administration that some company
branches had excessive default rates on their loans.
Prosecutors also said Beazer charged home buyers
interest "discount points" at closing but kept the money and didn't reduce
interest rates on the loans. They added that the home builder provided
buyers with cash gifts so they could come up with minimum down payments,
only to add the gift price onto the purchase price of the house.
Beazer said in a statement that it has fully
cooperated with governmental authorities since irregularities in its
mortgage origination business and its financial reporting came to light.
"We deeply regret these matters and have used what
we have learned to strengthen our control and compliance culture," said
Beazer Chief Executive Ian J. McCarthy.
In the SEC's accounting fraud case, the agency said
Beazer's former chief accountant, Michael T. Rand, wrongfully understated
the company's income between 2000 and 2005 by setting aside a reserve or
rainy-day fund for land development and house construction costs.
Mr. Rand's lawyer didn't return a call for comment.
When home sales slowed in 2006, Beazer tapped into
a reserve for land development and house construction and improperly boosted
its slumping earnings, the agency said.
In the end, the SEC said, Beazer understated the
company's income in SEC filings by $63 million between fiscal years 2000
through 2005. In addition, the company overstated its income and understated
losses by a total of $47 million in fiscal year 2006 and the first two
quarters of fiscal year 2007.
Corrections & Amplifications The Securities and
Exchange Commission accused the former chief accounting officer of Beazer
Homes USA Inc. of engaging in an accounting scheme that caused the company
to understate its income between 2000 and 2005. A previous version of this
article incorrectly said the company had overstated its income during those
years.
History of Litigation of Beazer Homes ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beazer_Homes_USA
SEC Sues Ex-CAO of Beazer Homes in Earnings Scheme ---
http://www.complianceweek.com/blog/scuttlebutt/2009/07/01/sec-sues-ex-cao-of-beazer-homes-in-earnings-scheme/
Beazer Accountant Fired in Document Destruction Try ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6fOumplBPfM
Outside auditors informed Beazer the appreciation
interest in the homes violated accounting principles, and would not allow the
company to record the revenue and profit from the home sales to the outside
investors. In order to deceive its auditor, the SEC
states, Beazer circumvented the accounting rules by entering into new agreements
in 2006 that omitted the appreciation interest, but then entered oral side
agreements with the investors for the company to receive a portion of that
appreciation. Beazer is one of the country's 10 largest single-family home
builders with operations in Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,
Indiana, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
"Beazer Homes settles SEC investigation," Entrepreneur, September 24, 2008 ---
http://www.entrepreneur.com/localnews/1705617.html
Deloitte & Touche has agreed to pay investors of Beazer Homes USA
nearly $1 million to settle claims the firm should have noticed the
homebuilder was issuing inaccurate financial statements as the housing
market began to decline earlier this decade. The audit firm, Beazer, and
former Beazer executives have settled the class-action lawsuit for a
total of $30.5 million, pending approval by the U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of Georgia. Deloitte is scheduled to pay $950,000.
Sarah Johnson, "Deloitte to Pay $1M in Beazer Suit," CFO.com, May
7, 2009 ---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13612963/c_13610376?f=TodayInFinance_Inside
Bob Jensen's threads on Deloitte & Touche are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Deloitte
|
Judge Hands Ward Churchill an All-Out Defeat
"Judge Rejects Ward Churchill's Plea for Reinstatement, Vacates Verdict in His
Favor," by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 8, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/07/21690n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
A state court judge on Tuesday not only denied Ward
Churchill everything he sought in his long-running battle with the
University of Colorado system, but also negated the one victory the
controversial scholar had won so far: a jury verdict holding that system
officials had violated his First Amendment rights by firing him from a job
as a tenured ethnic-studies professor in response to statements he had made.
Having presided over the four-week trial that led
to the jury's April 2 decision that the university had illegally fired Mr.
Churchill for academic misconduct, Judge Larry J. Naves decided to vacate
the jury verdict on the grounds that the university officials named in his
lawsuit were immune from such litigation.
Moreover, Judge Naves held, he could not
appropriately order Mr. Churchill's reinstatement on the flagship campus, in
Boulder, because the jury had found the professor undeserving of any
significant compensation for damages—as reflected by its awarding him just
$1 for economic losses—and because the university system's lawyers had
successfully made the case that returning Mr. Churchill to his old job would
damage the university, its faculty members, and its students.
"I conclude that reinstating Professor Churchill
would entangle the judiciary excessively in matters that are more
appropriate for academic professionals," Judge Naves wrote.
In briefs and hearings leading up to his decision,
Judge Naves said, he received credible evidence that Mr. Churchill's
reinstatement would "create the perception in the broader academic community
that the Department of Ethnic Studies tolerates research misconduct." Such a
perception, the judge said, will very likely make it harder for the
department to attract and retain new faculty members. "In addition," he
wrote, "this negative perception has great potential to hinder students
graduating from the Department of Ethnic Studies in their efforts to obtain
placement in graduate programs."
On the question of whether the university would
have owed Mr. Churchill pay in lieu of reinstatement if the jury's verdict
had been upheld, Judge Naves refused to grant the professor even that much,
saying that Mr. Churchill had not made a serious effort to find another job
since his dismissal, in 2007.
The judge's ruling was a major setback for Mr.
Churchill, who had been investigated for academic misconduct, found guilty
of it by a series of faculty panels, and fired by the Colorado Board of
Regents at a time when the university system was under tremendous pressure
to fire him as a result of the uproar over an essay in which he had argued
that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were provoked by the United
States' actions abroad.
Mr. Churchill's lawyer, David A. Lane, responded to
Judge Naves's ruling by announcing plans to appeal. In a statement e-mailed
to The Chronicle, the lawyer said, "The message in this ruling is that if
your First Amendment rights are violated by the University of Colorado,
don’t look to Denver District Court for justice, because justice did not
prevail in this instance."
Several university officials issued statements
heralding the judge's decision. Bruce D. Benson, president of the University
of Colorado system, said, "This ruling recognizes that the regents have to
make important and difficult decisions" that should not be influenced by
"the threat of litigation." The regents' chairman, Steve Bosley, said the
ruling "affirms that in dismissing Professor Churchill, the Board of Regents
did the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons."
Philip P. DiStefano, chancellor of the Boulder
campus, called the decision "a victory for faculty governance" in that it
"reinforces the idea that faculty set the standard for academic integrity on
our campus and all campuses across the country."
'Fruit of the Poisoned Tree'
Some prominent advocates of academic freedom said
they were troubled by the judge's decision. Cary Nelson, president of the
American Association of University Professors, issued a statement saying the
"chilling effect of the judge's views could be substantial."
Continued in article
Also see
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/08/churchill
One of the least diverse (politically) academic associations is the highly liberal Modern
Language Association. However, even the MLA could not muster up a vote critical
of the firing of Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado.
While material distributed by those seeking to condemn
Churchill’s firing portrayed him favorably, and as a victim of the right wing,
some of those who criticized the pro-Churchill effort at the meeting are
long-time experts in Native American studies and decidedly not conservative.
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
December 31, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/mla
Bob Jensen's threads on Ward Churchill are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
Jensen Comment
Aside from probably faking his claim to faking Native American heritage in order
to avoid having to earn a PhD in academe, his big black eye as far as I'm
concerned are the allegations by Native American scholars that he faked major
findings in his research for political reasons. The proven plagiarism is less
important in the grand scheme of his scholarship but became crucial in
overturning his tenure status.
Sadly this fiery speaker will now
become even more of a hero among liberal professors and students who place
politics ahead of honest scholarship
For accounting instructors seeking
examples of uncollectable accounts:
The University of Colorado will bill Churchill for legal expenses ---
http://www.pirateballerina.com/blog/entry.php?id=973
Also see the Chronicle of Higher Education version ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's threads on the Ward Churchill saga are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm
That
Dubious Lifetime Powertrain Warranty from Chrysler and President Obama
Great Video of an 89-Year Old Woman
My 21-year old Cad barely has 80,000 miles to date. The woman in this video who
drove the same car for over 540,000 trouble free miles over 45 years of her life
provides evidence that it is possible to drive an American-made car with the
original drive train for a lifetime ---
http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html
Sadly, President Obama has committed taxpayer
dollars to guarantee the lifetime (up to 120 years) drive train (engine,
transmission, etc.) of all new Chrysler cars and zero dollars to guarantee a
single part of any Ford Motor Company vehicle. I waiting to see if he extends
this 120-year warranty to Italian cars that will now carry a Chrysler
boilerplate.
If Maxwell
had a lifetime powertrain warranty on the car that Jack Benny purchased, he
undoubtedly would have driven that Maxwell right up to the day he died ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-z7t5Fkg3o
A picture
of a Maxwell automobile like Jack owned is available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_automobile
Mel
Blanc's classic routine ---
Click Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9s8U0O0XPE&feature=PlayList&p=3C493293CF8D2819&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=36
In the 1970s, K-Mart offered
an insane warranty that would replace a battery with no replacement cost for as
long as you owned the car. Little did K-Mart realize that people like me drive
cars for 20 or 30 years. I think I had eight totally free battery replacements.
Once I even wore a Jack Benny nametag into the K-mart service center. They did
seem to appreciate my humor.
If Plymouth had a given me a
lifetime powertrain warranty on by 1970 stationwagon, I would still be driving a
1970 Plymouth stationwagon with new fenders, doors, seats, radiator, muffler,
exhaust pipes, and of course a new battery from K-Mart (those lifetime battery
warranties are still good).
Alas, in 1998 my Plymouth
stationwagon transmission failed (the car would only go in reverse). At that
time I decided that replacing this component of the powertrain did not meet the
benefit-cost test without having a lifetime powertrain warranty from Plymouth.
The saddest part was having to give up the lifetime battery replacement from
K-Mart.
Bob
Jensen
July 9, 2009 message from XXXXX
Bob,
One issue that was brought up earlier was the risk
of not being able to collect on a warranty for a new car purchased from GM
or Chrysler. I'm looking at new cars. Do you have any idea whether GM will
deliver on warranty repairs for a car purchased now?
July 9, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi
XXXXX,
The
thing to do is read the fine print in the Federal government's so-called
guarantee to make good on Chrysler and GM warranties if the companies
default.
First
take a look at
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/understanding-obamas-auto-warranty-plan/
Then
you should read the fine print of the warranty on any GM or Chrysler car you
purchase.
One
risk is that if GM or Chrysler should fail, parts will become harder and
harder to find for cars, especially models that may only have been available
for a short time so that there are very few used cars to cannibalize for
parts. If both your Chrysler company and your Chrysler transmission (with
that dubious "life-time" Chrysler power train warranty) should fail, what
happens if there are no longer any needed transmission parts? Ask the dealer
to explain this scenario before you buy a Chrysler or a GM car!
It's
also not clear whether the Government's warranty backup plan will cover
Fiats when Chrysler begins to sell Fiats. Wouldn't that be a kick in the
butt when our Federal government backs up Italian car warranties but not
Ford Motor Company warranties?
Bob
Jensen
A15. Lifetime means lifetime
This is put in writing by Chrysler at
http://www.chrysler.com/en/lifetime_powertrain_warranty/faq.html
Jensen Comment
I'm not certain President Obama really understands that he is now backing up
each new Chrylser's powertrain for a "lifetime" which attorneys can claim
provides coverage until the buyer dies. Do you want to buy each of your newborns
a new Chrysler? What a bummer if this also includes Fiats.
How anxiously are you awaiting a FIAT with a Chrysler boilerplate?
When FIAT entered the U.S. market and failed in the 1970s it was called "Fix It
Again, Tony"
Why does the Second Italian Navy use glass bottom boats? To look for the first
Italian Navy.
Who put the seven bullets into
Benito
Mussolini? Three hundred Italian marksmen.
Among the 38 automobile models tested for reliability in 2008 ---
http://www.which.co.uk/reviews/cars-and-motoring/index.jsp
Honda and Toyota at the top of the 2008 reliability
list, followed closely by Daihatsu, Lexus, Mazda, and Subaru. This largely
mirrors the latest Consumer Reports predicted reliability ranking, though there
Scion was at the top and Mazda placed 12th with Consumer Reports due to a
different model line-up. Fiat ranked 35th
(out of 38), followed by Renault, Land Rover, and
Chrysler/Dodge. Jeep is the highest-rated brand
from Chrysler, with its 29th place just barely keeping it in the “Poor”
category. Fiat, Chrysler, and Dodge are
categorized as “Very poor.” In total, Fiat,
Chrysler, and Dodge provide similar reliability, and it isn’t good.
Consumer Reports, May 5, 2009 ---
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/05/chrysler-and-fiat-reliability-merger-of-equals.html
Consumer Reports online subscribers
can see
how brands compare.---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
My 1989 Cadillac is ten times more reliable than my 1999 Jeep Cherokee. I don't
plan to shift gears into a FIAT. My next car up in these mountains will probably
be a Subaru station wagon (with all-wheel drive).
Tips on Personal Finance ---
http://twitter.com/EverydayFinance
Bob Jensen's threads on personal finance ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Oops! I forgot to ask the main
accounting questions.
How do we account for
“lifetime warranties” that are not backed by the Federal government?
How do we account for
“lifetime warranties” that are backed by the Federal government?
Actually if we assume “going
concern” accounting, the accountants and auditors can probably ignore the
government backing of warranties as defined at
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/understanding-obamas-auto-warranty-plan/
But there’s still a question of how
to estimate warranty reserves for “lifetime warranties?”
Do auditors now have to factor in actuarial life expectancies of buyers of new
Chrysler vehicles?
I’m curious if cars die for
reasons other than powertrain failures or being totaled in collisions?
It would seem that most
anything on a car that declines due to wear and tear can be replaced. It’s the
powertrain replacements that usually make it not worthwhile to make repairs (due
to the cost of making powertrain repairs).
There’s also a Catch 22 in
Chrysler’s lifetime powertrain warranty. The car has to be taken regularly to a
Chrysler dealer for powertrain inspection and maintenance. What if Chrysler
fails and there are no more Chrysler dealers to do the powertrain inspections
and maintenance? Does this get Obama’s powertrain backup off the hook?
This thread commenced with a question about how to account for the lifetime
warranty of the powertrain of a Chrysler.
I might note that even though President Obama committed taxpayers to fully
backing up GM and Chrysler new car sales warranties but not new Ford Motor
Company automobiles, thereby putting Ford at somewhat of a competitive
disadvantage, or so it would appear until you watch the video below.
I enjoyed the video below at
http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html
"Gadgets Show How Much Power Your House Eats," Geoffrey F. Fowler, The
Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204261704574276022585190910.html
Curtailing your home electricity use is a bit like
losing weight: You already understand the basics of how to do it, but it’s
hard to accomplish without help and motivation. An array of gadgets are
vying to serve as electricity personal trainers, monitoring home power use
minute by minute, and making you feel guilty about indulgences like blasting
the air conditioner.
I have been testing three of these devices, the
Power Monitor from Black & Decker Corp., the very similar PowerCost Monitor
from Blue Line Innovations Inc., and the more-sophisticated The Energy
Detective 5000 from Energy Inc. In my tests, the Black & Decker model
provided the most effortless electricity-tracking service. At $99.99, it is
also the least expensive.
The devices provide real-time data about how much
power you’re using across the house in terms that are easy to comprehend:
cost per hour and cost per month. Turn on the microwave and watch the cost
jump from 10 cents to 25 cents an hour. Turn off some lights and see the
cost drop a few cents.
The firms say their customers have, over time, seen
drops of as much as 20% in power bills by being more mindful of electricity
use and making informed purchases, such as installing efficient light bulbs.
The largest drops are often recorded in households that have (power-hogging)
electric water heaters, and where the whole family gets involved in
monitoring use. An independent Oxford University study in 2006 found that
people getting direct feedback on their power consumption reduced use 5% to
15%.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
These gadgets don't much interest me personally since I'm an economical old dog
to a point who, at this stage of life, will be frugal with power but not to a
point where I will sacrifice quality of life. But I see an immense opportunity
here for business firms and other organizations to identify and correct power
wastage.
These gadgets might be of interest in managerial/cost accounting courses.
Students might be assigned to think creatively about how to use these gadgets in
particular business firms such as fast food restaurants or law offices.
Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology
"13 Indicted In $100 Million Mortgage Fraud Case," by Lisa Chow,
NPR (audio), July 9, 2009 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106415891
Prosecutors in New York have charged 13 people with
running a massive mortgage fraud scheme. They say everyone was in on the
alleged scheme: lawyers, appraisers and mortgage brokers.
According to the indictment, mortgage company AFG
Financial Group, based on Long Island, targeted properties whose owners were
starting to default on their mortgages.
The company recruited "straw buyers" — people with
good credit scores — to apply for a loan to buy the target property, while
promising the distressed owners that they'd get to stay in the home.
The indictment says they paid appraisers to inflate
the value of the property. Then they allegedly paid off lawyers to represent
all parties: the seller, the buyer and the bank at the closing.
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau says
the group fraudulently obtained $100 million in mortgage loans.
"One of the morals of this case is there is no free
lunch," Morgenthau says. "People with distressed properties thought they
were being bailed out. They didn't look carefully at all at what the
transaction was."
Morgenthau says 25 people were involved in the
scheme, and 12 already have pleaded guilty.
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on mortgage lending Greed, Sleaze, Bribery, and Lies
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#Sleaze
Your Friends and Enemies Aren't Always What They Seem to Be
Under the pristine skirts of Wal-Mart's support for minimum wage increases and
universal health care
is some pretty dirty underwear
"Everyday Low Politics: Wal-Mart buys protection by selling out its
competitors," The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2009 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124649408574683287.html
Corporate America's cheerleading for more
government involvement in health care now includes Wal-Mart, that liberal
paragon of social irresponsibility. The discount giant's ex-critics probably
ought to be more skeptical, given that this seems to be anticompetitive
special pleading in progressive drag.
This week the nation's largest employer blessed an
employer mandate, aka "pay or play." This would require businesses that do
not offer "meaningful coverage" -- i.e., government-approved -- to pay some
percentage of their payroll to a federal insurance plan. This mandate is one
of the more controversial policies in the Democratic health package, and
Wal-Mart's endorsement will help it along, or at least give liberals
political cover against business criticism.
Another way of putting it is that Andy Stern
finally got his man. Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke was joined in his show of
support by Mr. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union
and probably the most influential U.S. labor leader, as well as by John
Podesta, President Clinton's former chief of staff now running the leftward
Center for American Progress. Both organizations regularly assail Wal-Mart.
The SEIU, having failed in its drive to organize Wal-Mart stores, went on to
help fund a harassment group called Wal-Mart Watch. The Podesta outfit
provides ammunition for critics about the retailer's supposedly skimpy
benefits -- especially health coverage -- and other corporate-greed
outrages.
Then the fog of politics set in. Wal-Mart hired
Leslie Dach, another former Clinton operative, to give its public image an
extreme makeover. It has since rolled out green programs (most of which save
it money in any case), and in 2007 the company joined with organized labor
to call for universal health care by 2012. Two years before, it plumped for
a higher minimum wage.
The employer-mandate endorsement falls into the
same self-interest department. A boost in the minimum wage helps Wal-Mart
because most of its workers already earn well over the wage floor, and it
hurts smaller, less-profitable competitors that can't afford to pay more. On
health care, an employer mandate will also reduce the margins of their
rivals. This is especially true for businesses of a slightly smaller size
that cannot insure on the same scale or currently don't reach the 55% of the
1.4 million Wal-Mart employees who are insured through the company. (Another
40% or so are covered by spouses or the likes of Medicaid.)
The Wal-Mart-Stern-Podesta troika made sure to
specify that "shared responsibility" must be "fair and broad in its
coverage," with an emphasis on the latter. The Mom & Pop stores that
liberals accuse Wal-Mart of running out of town may get hit hardest.
Democrats say they'll exempt certain small businesses, size details to be
determined. But if the mandate is limited to large employers, it won't
reduce the number of uninsured. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,
99% of firms with more than 200 workers provide health benefits, only 62% of
smaller firms.
Businesses are also largely indifferent whether
compensation comes in the form of wages or benefits, so an employer mandate
-- an indirect tax on employment -- may cause wages to rise more slowly. Or
it may simply mean fewer jobs. In a 2007 paper, the economists Katherine
Baicker of Harvard and Helen Levy of the University of Michigan estimate
that 0.2% of all full-time workers and 1.4% of uninsured workers would lose
their jobs because of an employer mandate. Most at risk are the 33% of the
uninsured earning within $3 of the minimum wage. Thus many of the same
people who shop at Wal-Mart because of its low prices -- and who Democrats
claim to speak for -- would be worse off.
An employer pay-or-play tax is not only a revenue
grab to fund government health care, but it is also meant to transfer the
choices about coverage to government from consumers. Businesses are going
along with this and other gambits in part because of a prisoners' dilemma:
They're terrified of being shut out of Democratic health negotiations lest
they get stuck with the bill. Wal-Mart may also be trying to pre-empt an
employer mandate the Senate is considering that would target companies with
predominantly low-wage, low-skilled or entry-level work forces.
Other big businesses are also trying to buy
protection or some political reprieve. Big Pharma recently promised to
reduce the cost of prescription drugs by $80 billion over the next decade,
and the physician, hospital and insurance lobbies have made similar
offerings. Yet the political class is simply pocketing these concessions and
demanding more, hastening the day when government controls most U.S. health
dollars -- and the businesses become the equivalent of utilities.
Mr. Stern has been clear that his major goal all
along has been to pressure Wal-Mart into endorsing government health
insurance. As for Wal-Mart's executives, please don't come running for help
when Mr. Stern returns for his next political payoff.
July 1, 2009 message from Carolyn Kotlas
[kotlas@email.unc.edu]
EDUCATING THE NET
GENERATION
"A number of authors have
argued that students who are entering the higher education system have grown
up in a digital culture that has fundamentally influenced their preferences
and skills in a number of key areas related to education. It has also been
proposed that today's university staff are ill equipped to educate this new
generation of learners -- the Net Generation –- whose sophisticated use of
emerging technologies is incompatible with current teaching practice."
EDUCATING THE NET GENERATION:
A HANDBOOK OF FINDINGS FOR PRACTICE AND POLICY (Australian Learning and
Teaching Council, 2009, ISBN:
9780734040732) reports on a
collaborative project that began in 2006, between staff at the University of
Melbourne, the University of Wollongong, and Charles Sturt University. Some
of the findings of the study included:
"The rhetoric that
university students are Digital Natives and university staff are Digital
Immigrants is not supported."
"[E]ven though young
people's access to and use of computers and some information and
communications technologies is high, they don't necessarily want or
expect to use these technologies to support some activities, including
learning."
"The use of
publishing and information sharing tools, such as wikis, blogs and photo
sharing sites, positively impacted on many students' engagement with the
subject material, their peers and the general learning community."
"[M]any Web 2.0
technologies enable students to publicly publish and share content in
forums hosted outside their university's infrastructure. This raises
complex questions about academic integrity including issues of
authorship, ownership, attribution and acknowledgement."
The handbook is available at
http://www.netgen.unimelb.edu.au/
The Australian Learning and
Teaching Council works with 44 Australian higher education institutions "as
a collaborative and supportive partner in change, providing access to a
network of knowledge, ideas and people." For more information, contact:
Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 4-12 Buckland St., Chippendale,
Sydney NSW 2008 Australia; tel: 02 8667 8500; fax: 02 8667 8515;
email
info@altc.edu.au;
Web:
http://www.altc.edu.au/
......................................................................
STUDENT COMPUTER SKILLS:
PERCEPTION AND REALITY
"The ubiquitous use of
computers in homes and schools has aided the perception that more
students are computer literate than past generations. There is a
potential 'perfect storm' manifesting between students' perceived
proficiency of computer application skills and the actual assessment of
those skills."
By administering survey and
assessment instruments to over 200 business school students, researchers
Donna M. Grant, Alisha D. Malloy, and Marianne C. Murphy compared students'
perceived proficiencies in three computer skills areas -- word processing,
presentation graphics, and spreadsheets -- with their demonstrated skills.
Their research results showed "some differences in the students' perception
of their word processing skills and actual performance, no difference in
perception and performance for their presentation skills, and a significant
difference in perception and performance for their spreadsheet skills.
The study led to a redesign of
an introductory business school course to remedy students' deficiencies.
The paper, "A Comparison of
Student Perceptions of their Computer Skills to their Actual Abilities" (JITE,
vol. 8, 2009, pp. 141-60), is available at
http://jite.org/documents/Vol8/JITEv8p141-160Grant428.pdf
The peer-reviewed Journal of
Information Technology Education (JITE) [ISSN 1539-3585 (online) 1547-9714
(print)] is published in print by subscription and online free of charge by
the Informing Science Institute. For more information contact: Informing
Science Institute,
131 Brookhill Court, Santa
Rosa, California 95409 USA; tel:
707-531-4925; fax:
480-247-5724; Web:
http://informingscience.org/
[Editor's note: At the time
this article was written, the JITE website and this paper were accessible;
at the time of this mailing, they are not. I have notified the JITE
webmaster of the problem in the hope that the site will soon be back
online.]
......................................................................
NEW ONLINE JOURNAL ON
INSTRUCTION
The first issue of the online
peer-reviewed JOURNAL OF INSTRUCTIONAL PEDAGOGIES [ISSN: 1941-3394],
published by the Academic and Business Research Institute, is available at
http://aabri.com/jip.html
Papers in this issue that are
related to instructional technology and e-learning include:
"Student Perceptions of How
Technology Impacts the Quality of Instruction and Learning" by Thomas
Davies, et al.
"The Effects of Self-Regulated
Learning Strategies and System Satisfaction Regarding Learner's Performance
in E-Learning Environment" by Jong-Ki Lee
"Student Performance in
Online Quizzes as a Function of Time in Undergraduate Financial Management
Courses" by Oliver Schnusenberg
"Student Satisfaction in
Web-enhanced Learning Environments" by Charles Hermans, et al.
The Academic and Business
Research Institute supports the research and publication needs of business
and education faculty. For more information about the journal, contact:
Raymond Papp, Editor;
email:
jip@aabri.com
......................................................................
CRITIQUE OF E-LEARNING IN
BLACKBOARD
"Just as utopic visions of
the Internet predicted an egalitarian online world where information flowed
freely and power became irrelevant, so did many proponents of online
education, who viewed online classrooms as a way to free students and
instructors from traditional power relationships . . ."
In "A Critical Examination of
Blackboard's E–Learning Environment"
(FIRST MONDAY, vol. 14, no. 6,
June 1, 2009), Stephanie J. Coopman, professor at San Jose State University,
identifies the ways that the Blackboard 8.0 and Blackboard CE6 platforms
"both constrain and facilitate instructor–student and student–student
interaction." She argues that while the systems have improved the
instructor's ability to track and measure student activity, this "creates a
dangerously decontextualized, essentialized image of a class in which levels
of 'participation' stand in for evidence of learning having taken place.
Students are treated not as
learners, as partners in an educational enterprise, but as users."
The paper is available at
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2434/2202
First Monday [ISSN 1396-0466]
is an online, peer-reviewed journal whose aim is to publish original
articles about the Internet and the global information infrastructure. It is
published in cooperation with the University Library, University of Illinois
at Chicago. For more information, contact: First Monday, c/o Edward
Valauskas, Chief Editor, PO Box 87636, Chicago IL 60680-0636 USA; email:
ejv@uic.edu; Web:
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/
......................................................................
GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has
just published the 4th version of the "Google Book Search Bibliography." "It
primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal,
library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are
provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including
e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories." The
bibliography is available at
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/gbsb/gbsb.htm
Links to Bailey's other
extensive publications, including "Scholarly Electronic Publishing
Bibliography" and the "Open Access Webliography," are available at
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/
......................................................................
RECOMMENDED READING
"Recommended Reading" lists
items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found
particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and
websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to
carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in
this column.
OASIS: Open Access Scholarly
Information Sourcebook By Alma Swan and Leslie Chan
http://www.openoasis.org/
"OASIS aims
to provide an authoritative 'sourcebook' on Open Access, covering the
concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving it. The
site highlights developments and initiatives from around the world, with
links to diverse additional resources and case studies."
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm
Rednecks probably were the first to pee into a gas tank.
Now it's not such a far-fetched idea.
"Producing hydrogen from urine," PhysOrg, July 3, 2009 ---
http://www.physorg.com/news165836803.html
Woman Banned from Internet Downloading
Just weeks after a federal jury ruled that a Minnesota
woman must pay $1.92 million for illegally sharing copyright-protected music,
the recording industry wants to make sure she doesn't do it again.
PhysOrg, July 6, 2009 ---
http://www.physorg.com/news166115446.html
"Executive Compensation and Boards of Directors," by J. Edward Ketz,
SmartPros, July 2009 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x67023.xml
It has been amazing to listen to the discourse over
executive compensation during the past year or so. On one side we have the
pure capitalists who tell us that government ruins everything, neatly
forgetting that unbridled capitalism exploits those with little power and
ignoring the fact that many CEOs do not provide enough value to shareholders
to justify their compensation. On the other extreme we have those who trust
government to cure all ills, overlooking the idiocy of many bureaucrats and
the possibility of a dangerous slide toward totalitarianism. We shall not
find a solution at either end of this spectrum.
The Bush administration leaned toward the pure
capitalists by appointing Harvey Pitt and Christopher Cox to head the SEC.
Both of them slept during scandalous times, Enron and WorldCom occurring on
Pitt’s watch and the collapse of the banking industry on Cox’s. They failed
shareholders by allowing CEOs to run roughshod over the investors.
The Obama administration wants to intervene by
setting maximum compensation levels for corporate managers and to regulate
bonuses. It may come as a shock to this administration and its supporters,
but neither Obama nor anybody on his team is omniscient. They just do not
have a sufficient knowledge of business and economics to determine these
parameters. In fact, some of the decisions already made are so faulty that
one wonders just how much economics anybody in this administration
understands (increasing the deficit by more than the deficits produced by
all previous presidents combined and attempting to pass an energy tax during
a recession are two examples).
It is no wonder the public is starting to stir over
the compensation issue—some CEOs are indeed overpaid. While numerous current
examples exist, my favorite illustration remains Sprint in 2003. Somehow
Sprint CEO William Esrey and President Ronald LeMay finagled the firm to
give, and the board of directors to approve, so many stock options that they
made approximately $1.9 billion. Clearly, the two of them did not add that
much value to the firm! But the question is what to do about these problems.
After lying dormant on this issue for years, the
SEC on July 1 voted 5-0 to require business entities that received bailout
money to permit shareholders to vote on executive pay {http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-147.htm}.
They also voted to require all SEC registrants to disclose more information
about executive compensation. These issues must still be aired in public for
two months before becoming final. This is a step in the right direction as
it attempts to deal with the issue but without having Big Brother dictate
the actual salary and bonus.
The SEC proposal is quite disappointing, however,
because the vote is nonbinding. Given that, I’m not sure what the point is.
It is almost as if they want to fail so that Big Brother will have to
intervene and set prices for all of us.
What the SEC and Congress and the President should
be doing is creating incentives and disincentives so that the economic
system would function more smoothly. They should stay out of the details
because they don’t have the knowledge to make the right decisions and
because we would like to keep some freedoms in our society. Perhaps they
should read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
The central problem continues to be the enervation
of shareholders by the management class. We need to rectify this imbalance
and empower the shareholders to regain control over their own companies.
After all, they are the owners!
The other thing to do is to put some fire under the
directors at corporate enterprises. The board of directors supposedly
represents the shareholders, but often belies that point by assisting
mangers in their grab for power and wealth. The Congress could help by
enacting legislation that would allow investors to sue directors when the
directors abrogate their duties to the shareholders. (Recall that the
Supreme Court greatly restricted the liability of directors in Central Bank
of Denver v. First Interstate Bank of Denver.)
Of course, the impotence of most boards of
directors is frequently the consequence of allowing managers to choose their
buddies to be on the board. “Independent directors” is a joke; I don’t if
very many of them are really independent. So another thing that should be
done is to give shareholders the right to vote for the directors. And not
with a manager-stacked deck of choices as if we lived in some communist
country. Give the shareholders the opportunity to add candidates to the
ballot. Again, they are the owners!
The executive compensation issue remains a
hot-button item. But it cannot be ignored by the pure capitalists nor
remedied by the governments’ controlling the price of labor. A more moderate
approach is appropriate. I think the key institution in this matter is the
board of directors. If empowered and if held accountable for their
decisions, I think the board of directors could properly address the issue
of executive compensation.
Bob Jensen's threads on corporate governance are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance
Bob Jensen's threads on outrageous executive compensation even for
executives with failed performance ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
Richard Campbell notes a nice white collar crime blog edited by some law
professors ---
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/
From the Scout Report on July 3, 2009
TeamViewer 4.1.6320
---
http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx
Various web technologies can
help bring people together for business or pleasure, and TeamViewer is just
one of the many applications dedicated to this mission. This application
allows multiple users to screen-share and also transfer files across
machines. The drop-down toolbar helps users easily maximize or minimize the
other computer's screen, and the application's server remembers which
computers users have connected to as well. This version is compatible with
computers running Windows or Max OS X.
Weather Watcher 5.6.51
---
http://www.singerscreations.com/Weather-Watcher.asp
Mike Singer has been working
on his Weather Watcher application for sometime, and his hard work has paid
off for those with a particular penchant for matters of an atmospheric
nature. This version of Weather Watcher will automatically retrieve the
current conditions, hourly forecast, daily forecast, and detailed forecast
as reported by The Weather Channel.
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Business Week's most popular white papers as of July 2, 2009 ---
http://whitepapers.businessweek.com/data/web/bw/bw_topres.jsp
Education Tutorials
Inspiration: Games Versus Teachers
"Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming," Chronicle of Higher
Education, July 14, 2009 ---
http://chronicle.com/media/video/v55/i41.5/wright/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Introduction to (video) Game Design 2009 ---
http://pod.gscept.com/intro2gd2009.xml
Bob Jensen's threads on networked learning simulations ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Simulation
Bob Jensen's threads on edutainment and learning games ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Bob Jensen's threads on virtual worlds in education are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
PBS creates a library of digital resources for free use in
schools ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/07/08/pbs-creates-library-of-digital-resources-targeted-to-classroom-use.aspx
From a Special Edition of the Scout Report via Email on
July 2, 2009
Best of 2008-2009
-
Smithsonian's History Explorer
-
Academic Earth
-
Chronicling America: Historic American
Newspapers
-
National Science Foundation: Discoveries
-
The Mannahatta Project
-
The Great Issues Forum [iTunes, RealPlayer]
-
Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
-
Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's
Natural History, 1884-1934
-
LabCAST: The MIT Media Lab Video Podcast
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Support for Students Exposed to Trauma ---
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR675.pdf
National Institutes of Health: History of Medicine
---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/
Includes books, reports, pictures, videos, etc.
Aging in the Know (medicine) ---
http://www.healthinaging.org/agingintheknow/
Environmental Protection Agency: Wetlands ---
http://www.epa.gov/wetlands/
The Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems ---
http://casfs.ucsc.edu/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Freedom of Information Act ---
http://www.archives.gov/foia/
P.J. O'Rourke is a 21st-century H.L. Mencken-a libertarian satirist and
quote-machine who's deeply suspicious of most any office-holder ("Politics is
the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit") ---
http://reason.com/blog/show/134561.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
From a Special Edition of the Scout Report via Email on
July 2, 2009
Best of 2008-2009
-
Smithsonian's History Explorer
-
Academic Earth
-
Chronicling America: Historic American
Newspapers
-
National Science Foundation: Discoveries
-
The Mannahatta Project
-
The Great Issues Forum [iTunes, RealPlayer]
-
Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
-
Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's
Natural History, 1884-1934
-
LabCAST: The MIT Media Lab Video Podcast
Video: Nassim Taleb Talks About The Book “Dancing With
Chance” ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/nassim-taleb-talks-about-the-book-dancing-with-chance/
“Dance With Chance” Table
Of Contents (Via Decision Science News)
Preface
The illusion of control from Chapter 1:
Three Wishes from a Genie
Some national puzzles from Chapter 2: The
Ills of Pills
Mind over medicine from Chapter 3: Getting
the Right Medicine
The power of luck from Chapter 5: Watering
Your Money Plant
Mediocrity and failure from Chapter 6:
Lessons from Gurus
The creative destruction of copper from
Chapter 7: Creative Destruction
Take a chance on me from Chapter 8: Does
God Play Dice?
The statistician who ate humble pie from
Chapter 9: Past or Future
A black Monday and a black swan from
Chapter 10: Of Subways and Coconuts – Two Types of Uncertainty
Blinking marvelous from Chapter 11: Genius
or Fallible?
Predicting marital happiness from Chapter
12: The Inevitability of Decisions
Increasing the sum of human happiness from
Chapter 13: Happiness, Happiness, Happiness
Also see
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31706523
Awesome video (via
Cal Tech)….If you like Taleb’s- Fooled By Randomness you will enjoy this
talk! The speaker Leonard Mlodinow was Stephen Hawkin’s co-author for A
Brief History Of Time.
Video: The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-the-drunkards-walk-how-randomness-rules-our-lives/
Video
Introduction (Via Perimeter Institute)
In ‘The
Drunkard’s Walk’, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows
us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount
about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of
everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a
result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and
obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by
chance. By showing us the true nature of chance and revealing the
psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us,
Mlodinow gives us the tools we need to make more informed decisions.
Speaker
Background (Via Perimeter Institute)
Leonard
Mlodinow received his doctorate in physics from the University of
California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max
Planck Institute, and now teaches about randomness to future scientists
at Caltech. Along the way he also wrote for the television series
MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation. His previous books include
Euclid’s Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to
Hyperspace, Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in
Life, and, with Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time. He lives in
South Pasadena, California.
Video Link
(click the play button) ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
Video: Historical Thinking Matters ---
http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/
From Harvard University
Open Collections Programs: Expeditions and Discoveries ---
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/expeditions/
John Jacob Omenhausser Civil War Sketchbook ---
http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital/record.jsp?pid=umd:50498
American Civil War
History Site ---
http://www.factasy.com/
The State University of New York Digital Repository ---
http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/
Western Soundscape Archive ---
http://westernsoundscape.org/
British Museum: London 1753
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/britain/london_1753/london_1753.aspx
The British Museum: Research
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research.aspx
Henry VIII: Man and Monarch
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/henryviii/index.html
Edinburgh World Heritage --- http://www.ewht.org.uk/Home.aspx
Taking Liberties (U.K. history) ---
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties
Lianhuanhua: Picture Storybook ---
http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/storybook/index.php?c=1
Libraries to the Rescue ---
http://www.imls.gov/resources/podcasts_Jun09.shtm
Institute of Museum and Library Services: Primary Source
http://www.imls.gov/news/source.shtm
The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960
http://repository.library.northwestern.edu/winterton/
Aluka (art history in Africa) ---
http://www.aluka.org/
SFMOMA: Kerry James Marshall [African-American Art] ---
http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/interactive_features/79
About 800 pages of the world's oldest surviving Christian Bible have been
pieced together and published on the Internet for the first time, experts in
Britain said Monday ---
http://www.physorg.com/news166106367.html
Searchable Bible Online ---
http://www.biblegateway.com/
Poets House ---
http://www.poetshouse.org/
From Harvard University
Open Collections Programs: Expeditions and Discoveries ---
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/expeditions/
The State University of New York Digital
Repository ---
http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/
Libraries to the Rescue ---
http://www.imls.gov/resources/podcasts_Jun09.shtm
Institute of Museum and Library Services: Primary Source
http://www.imls.gov/news/source.shtm
Random House Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th
Century ---
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/17
Magnificent
The Farmers by Artist Robert Duncan (Slide Show) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Farmers.pps
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
July
1, 2009
July 6, 2009
July 7, 2009
July 8, 2009
July 9, 2009
July 13,
2009
Caffeine May Fight Alzheimer's Memory Loss
Drinking Coffee May Combat Brain Protein Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease
By
Jennifer Warner
WebMD Health News ---
Click Here
Reviewed by
Louise Chang, MD
July 6, 2009 -- Getting your daily
caffeine hit may
help keep your memory sharp.
A new study shows caffeine reversed memory loss in mice bred to develop
Alzheimer’s disease and reduced the level of beta-amyloid protein in the blood
and brain. Plaques containing beta-amyloid protein are found in the brains of
people with Alzheimer’s disease.
"The
new findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable 'treatment' for
established
Alzheimer's
disease, and not simply a protective strategy," researcher Gary Arendash, PhD, a
neuroscientist at the University of South Florida, says in a news release.
"That's important because caffeine is a safe drug for most people, it easily
enters the brain, and it appears to directly affect the disease process."
Caffeine Reduces Memory Loss
In the study, mice bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease were given
500 milligrams of caffeine (equivalent to five cups of regular coffee) in their
daily drinking water once they started developing memory problems at age 18 to
19 months, about age 70 in human years.
After two months, the mice that drank the caffeinated water performed much
better on tests of their memory and thinking skills -- to the level of normal
mice of the same age. Those given plain water continued to do poorly on these
tests. The study also showed that the brains of the caffeinated mice experienced
a nearly 50% reduction in the level of beta-amyloid.
The researchers also looked at long-term caffeine treatment in normal mice. With
10 months of caffeine treatment, there was no improvement in memory and thinking
skills.
Based on these findings, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease,
Arendash and colleagues say they plan to start human trials to see whether
caffeine can benefit people with early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
4
Must-See Articles
·
New Risk Index Helps Predict
Alzheimer's
·
Brain Changes May Precede
Memory Loss
·
Brain Scans May Predict
Alzheimer's
·
New Steps Toward Stopping
Alzheimer’s
Will Coffee Be the Next Alzheimer’s Drug?" by Shannon Firth,
Finding Dulcinea, July 7, 2009 ---
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/health/2009/july/Will-Coffee-Be-the-Next-Alzheimer-s-Drug.html
Caffeine may help reverse memory problems
associated with Alzheimer’s disease, say researchers at the University of
Florida. Previous studies have found other health benefits associated with
regular coffee consumption.
"Link between obesity and diabetes discovered," PhysOrg July
8th, 2009 ---
http://www.physorg.com/news166270497.html
A Monash University study has proven a critical
link between obesity and the onset of Type 2 diabetes, a discovery which
could lead to the design of a drug to prevent the disease.
The team, led by Associate Professor Matthew Watt,
discovered that fat cells release a novel protein called PEDF (pigment
epithelium-derived factor), which triggers a chain of events and
interactions that lead to development of Type 2 diabetes.
"When PEDF is released into the bloodstream, it
causes the muscle and liver to become desensitised to insulin. The pancreas
then produces more insulin to counteract these negative effects, " Associate
Professor Watt said.
This insulin release causes the pancreas to become
overworked, eventually slowing or stopping insulin release from the
pancreas, leading to Type 2 diabetes."
"It appears that the more fat tissue a person has
the less sensitive they become to insulin. Therefore a greater amount of
insulin is required to maintain the body's regulation of blood-glucose,"
Associate Professor Watt said.
"Our research was able to show that increasing PEDF
not only causes Type 2 diabetes like complications but that blocking PEDF
reverses these effects. The body again returned to being insulin-sensitive
and therefore did not need excess insulin to remain regulated."
Associate Professor Watt said identifying the link
is a significant breakthrough in explaining the reasons why obesity triggers
the onset of Type 2 Diabetes.
"Until now scientists knew there was a very clear
pattern and had strong suspicions that a link existed between the two
conditions, but our understanding of the chain of events that are caused by
the release of PEDF shows a causal link," Associate Professor Watt said.
"Type 2 diabetes patients will benefit knowing the
two conditions are linked. We already know that weight-loss generally
improves the management of blood glucose levels in diabetes patients.
Researchers can now move forward knowing this link exists and we can begin
to design new drugs to improve the treatment of Type 2 diabetes," Associate
Professor Watt said.
"A Limb Regeneration Mystery Solved: Salamanders regrow limbs
with less drastic cellular changes than previously thought," y Courtney
Humphries, MIT's Technology Review, July 2, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22955/?nlid=2147
Support for Students Exposed to Trauma ---
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR675.pdf
Forwarded by John Stancil
Seems that a prof allowed an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper for the note card during
a closed-book examination.
One student says “Let me get this straight. I can use anything I put on the
card?”
Prof say, “Yes.”
The day of the test, the student brought a blank sheet of paper, put it on
the floor and had a grad student stand on the paper.
R-Rated
Video on Training Your Dog to Greet Your Mother-in-Law ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWfsVK4LAtI
High School Sophomore Might Get a Darwin Award
Alexa Longueira Suffers Deep Cuts, Bruises After
Landing In Raw Sewage, Blames DEP For Leaving Hole Unattended: Alexa Longueira,
a high school sophomore, was walking along Victory Boulevard near Travis Avenue
on Staten Island Wednesday evening when she felt the earth move and was plunged
into smelly darkness.
WCBSTV, July 11, 2009 ---
http://wcbstv.com/local/texting.manhole.raw.2.1081403.html
Dimwitted thieves steal fake cell phones in Mexico
Call it the case of the dead cells - both telephones
and the ones in the brain. Employees at a Telefonica Movistar cell-phone store
in Morelia, Mexico say they arrived Tuesday morning to find that the store had
been broken into. An examination of the shop revealed the only items missing
were hollow replica phones for display that are completely useless for making
calls. Employees say the clueless thieves overlooked real cell phones and cash
in another part of the shop. Store owners nonetheless reported the theft to
local police, who are investigating.
MyWay ---
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090708/D99A874G0.html
Tidbits Archives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.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/
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.
Three Finance Blogs
Jim Mahar's FinanceProfessor Blog ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
FinancialRounds Blog ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Karen Alpert's FinancialMusings (Australia) ---
http://financemusings.blogspot.com/
Some Accounting Blogs
Paul Pacter's IAS Plus (International
Accounting) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
International Association of Accountants News ---
http://www.aia.org.uk/
AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries ---
http://www.accountingeducation.com/
Gerald Trites'eBusiness and
XBRL Blogs ---
http://www.zorba.ca/
AccountingWeb ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/
SmartPros ---
http://www.smartpros.com/
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
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 Master List of Free
Online College Courses ---
http://universitiesandcolleges.org/
Shared Open Courseware
(OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing
Universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Free Textbooks and Cases ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Mathematics and Statistics Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Free Science and Medicine Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Free Social Science and Philosophy Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Free Education Discipline Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Teaching Materials (especially
video) from PBS
Teacher Source: Arts and
Literature ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm
Teacher Source: Health & Fitness
---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm
Teacher Source: Math ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm
Teacher Source: Science ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm
Teacher Source: PreK2 ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm
Teacher Source: Library Media ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm
Free Education and
Research Videos from Harvard University ---
http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp
VYOM eBooks Directory ---
http://www.vyomebooks.com/
From Princeton Online
The Incredible Art Department ---
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/
Online Mathematics Textbooks ---
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives ---
http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/doc/intro.jsp
Moodle ---
http://moodle.org/
The word moodle is an acronym for "modular
object-oriented dynamic learning environment", which is quite a mouthful.
The Scout Report stated the following about Moodle 1.7. It is a
tremendously helpful opens-source e-learning platform. With Moodle,
educators can create a wide range of online courses with features that
include forums, quizzes, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and surveys. On the
Moodle website, visitors can also learn about other features and read about
recent updates to the program. This application is compatible with computers
running Windows 98 and newer or Mac OS X and newer.
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
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