We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.
Sir Winston Churchill --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill

To love our enemies (as the Gospel asks) is not a job for men, but for angels.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges

One puzzle these days is why Americans are so confident at the shopping mall and so glum in opinion polls. By many measures, the country's prosperity is broad-based. Families are buying and renovating homes at a ferocious pace. Since mid-2003, the number of payroll jobs has increased by 4.2 million. The unemployment rate of 5 percent is low by historic standards. But in polls, Americans are downbeat.... We have a real economy and a rhetorical economy: what's actually happening and what we say is happening. The first is often more stable than the second.
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson.

The hope of becoming rich is one of the most widespread causes of poverty.
Tacitus (ca. 56 ca. 117) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus

The beauty of war is that each leader of a band of assassins has his flag blessed and invokes God before setting off to exterminate his neighbors.
Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet (1694 - 1778) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.
Mark Twain as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-11-15-05.htm

The McCain Straight Talk Express: Teddy Roosevelt in the engine cabin, Robin Hood in the caboose.
Stephen Moore, The Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2005; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113296246560606908.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians. When bought they stay bought.
William Moyers (1934) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moyers

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencken

Fake IRS E-Mail Scam Goes Phishing ---
http://www.internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.159504&articleId=174403102

With the loss of competition in space (U.S. versus Russia), the public lost it's will for manned space flight.
Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong
I paraphrased this from Neil's November 6, 2005 interview on Sixty Minutes (CBS)
It reveals how competition is a powerful motivator for creativity and exploration.  Sometimes competitive races (such as quests to reach the South Pole or to discover DNA structure) drive men and women to win for the sake of beating out the competition as much as the prize itself.

But new space competition is igniting
"China eyes 2017 moon landing," CNN, November 4, 2005 --- http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/11/04/china.moon.reut/index.html

A fire in the belly doesn't light itself. Does the spark of ambition lie in genes, family, culture--or even in your own hands? Science has answers
Of all the impulses in humanity's behavioral portfolio, ambition--that need to grab an ever bigger piece of the resource pie before someone else gets it--ought to be one of the most democratically distributed. Nature is a zero-sum game, after all. Every buffalo you kill for your family is one less for somebody else's; every acre of land you occupy elbows out somebody else. Given that, the need to get ahead ought to be hard-wired into all of us equally. And yet it's not. For every person consumed with the need to achieve, there's someone content to accept whatever life brings. For everyone who chooses the 80-hour workweek, there's someone punching out at 5. Men and women--so it's said--express ambition differently; so do Americans and Europeans, baby boomers and Gen Xers, the middle class and the well-to-do. Even among the manifestly motivated, there are degrees of ambition. Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer and then left the company in 1985 as a 34-year-old multimillionaire. His partner, Steve Jobs, is still innovating at Apple and moonlighting at his second blockbuster company, Pixar Animation Studios.
Jeffry Kluger, "Ambition: Why Some People Are Most Likely To Succeed," Time Magazine Cover Story, November 6, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/TimeNov6

Great news from Rita Kosnik (Professor of Management at Trinity University)

Dear Professor Kosnik:

Congratulations are in order for students in your class who earned a Global Top 20 ranking for their company's BSG-Online performance during Week 10 of the 2005 Season II polling period.

Industry 4

The co-managers of Aladdin (Company A) earned a Global Top 20 ranking on the following performance criteria:

Overall Game-To-Date Score - Their Overall Score of 109.0 was the 14th best Overall Score performance of the week, worldwide! Earnings Per Share - Their EPS of $23.23 was the 6th best EPS performance of the week, worldwide! Stock Price - Their Stock Price of $511.86 was the 5th best Stock Price performance of the week, worldwide! You should be quite proud of your students for such an excellent performance — a performance that reflects quite well on you and the caliber of instruction that students are receiving in your course. View the Global Top 20 lists for Week 10 of the 2005 Season II polling period ---
http://www.bsg-online.com/stats/top20.html?id=171

Each Monday we compile lists of the prior week's 20 best-performing companies worldwide based on each of four measures: Overall Score (current year), Earnings Per Share, Return On Average Equity, and Stock Price.

All companies that appear on a Global Top 20 list during a polling week are automatically eligible to compete in the 2005 Season II Best-Strategy Invitational. Participation is completely free of charge. The 2005 Season II BSI begins 5-Dec-05 and runs for two weeks through 18-Dec-05, with one decision due daily Monday through Friday for two weeks to determine a BSI Grand Champion in as many industries as needed to accommodate all the entrants. Find out more about the 2005 Season II Best-Strategy Invitational ---
http://www.bsg-online.com/stats/BestStrategyInvitational.html

All company co-managers who enter the Best Strategy Invitational will receive a Distinguished Participant Certificate (which will provide the necessary documentation for students being able to list their participation on their resumé), and the BSI Grand Champions will be given a place of honor in the BSG-Online Hall of Fame ---  http://www.bsg-online.com/stats/hall-of-fame.html

We hope you will encourage your qualifying teams to compete in the 2005 Season II Best-Strategy Invitational.

Congratulations once again to you and your students and thank you for using BSG-Online in your class. As always, please call or e-mail if you have any questions or any suggestions for improving the simulation.

Best regards from the BSG-Online author team,

Art Thompson
Greg Stappenbeck
Mark Reidenbach

Burn TV on DVD
Does your aging VCR, with its clunky analog tapes and limited capabilities, feel antiquated? Maybe it's time to switch to a slim DVD recorder. Today's models offer better quality and larger recording capacity than ye olde VCR--plus on-screen programming guides, and built-in hard drives that hold hundreds of hours of video. The newest DVD recorders far outshine last year's relatively primitive models--making this a great time to jump in. They're cheaper, too: A year ago, such recorders were priced for the television elite--up to $1000 for one with a 160GB hard drive--but today various models are within reach of ordinary TV watchers. A basic recorder (like CyberHome's DVR1600) sells for less than $100; a model with an 80GB hard drive (for example, the Lite-On LVW-5045) costs less than $300; and a deluxe 250GB model (such as the Toshiba RD-XS54) runs about $700.
Richard Baguley, "Burn TV on DVD:  The latest DVD recorders have hard drives, program guides, and lower prices. If you love TV, one of these ten models may be right for you," The Washington Post, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901188.html?referrer=email

Fruits and Vegetables May Be Making You Sick You Sick
More Americans are eating their vegetables. But the healthy trend comes with a risk: Illnesses traced to fresh produce are on the rise. Fruits and vegetables are now responsible for more large-scale outbreaks of food-borne illnesses than meat, poultry or eggs. Overall, produce accounts for 12% of food-borne illnesses and 6% of the outbreaks, up from 1% of the illnesses and 0.7% of outbreaks in the 1970s, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, meat-related E. coli infections have been on the decline.
Jane Zhang, "When Eating Your Vegetables Makes You Sick: Illnesses Tied to Produce Become Far More Common As Consumption Rises," The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2005; Page D1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113332082056009884.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

Why true love only lasts one year
When a person falls in love, levels of a protein called Nerve Growth Factor skyrocket, researchers from the University of Pavia found. "We have demonstrated for the first time that circulating levels of NGF are elevated among subjects in love, suggesting an important role for this molecule in the social chemistry of human beings," said Dr. Enzo Emanuele, who led the study. But, after studying a volunteer group of people between the ages of 18 and 31, researchers found the levels of NGF had fallen to original levels after one year, the Daily Mail reported. Not to discourage romantics, the team wrote that they believe the same chemical also stimulates companionship, which is essential in any long-term relationship. The report appears in the current Psychoneuroendocrinology Journal.
"Brain's 'true love' lasts only a year," PhysOrg, November 29, 2005 --- http://www.physorg.com/news8568.html

For women, dressing for success depends upon status in the organization
Psychologist Peter Glick and colleagues found provocative dress, such as the use of tight skirts and low-cut blouses, harmed businesswomen. But the negative effect was limited to women in high status positions, with such dress viewed as inappropriate for both managers and receptionists. However, only managers dressing in a sexy manner evoked hostile emotions and were deemed less intelligent. "A female manager whose appearance emphasized her sexiness elicited less positive emotions, more negative emotions, and perceptions of less competence on a subjective rating scale and less intelligence on an objective scale," the authors reported. The study appears in the December issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly.
"Study: Women execs must avoid sexy dress," PhysOrg, November 29, 2005 --- http://www.physorg.com/news8560.html

"EBay Hears and Sees No Evil, It Just Sells It," by Paul McDougall, InformationWeek Newsletter, November 30, 2005

Is eBay Adam Smith's perfect market, where prices are set by the honest interaction of buyers and sellers and everyone goes home happy, or is it simply the perfect vehicle for price gouging--and much, much worse?

The short supply of Microsoft's Xbox 360 means the game system is fetching up to $1,000 on eBay. Fair enough. If gamesters really can't wait a few more weeks to play the 360 version of "Call of Duty 2" or "NBA Live 06," then it's their money, right? Sure, but eBay's willingness to turn a blind eye to scalping, copyright infringement, and the sale of questionable goods has a darker side that proved very convenient for a creep named Peter Braunstein.

Braunstein, of New York City, is a former fashion writer and playwright who's gone off the deep end in the worst way. On Halloween, he allegedly impersonated a firefighter to gain entry to a former co-worker's apartment. Inside, he's alleged to have used chloroform to render the woman unconscious. What followed was a series of sexual attacks that lasted more than 12 hours.

Braunstein, now a fugitive, got everything he needed to act out this sicko scenario on eBay because, after all, "Whatever it is, you can get it here." Or so the online auctioneer boasts. For Braunstein, "whatever it is" included the firefighting gear, law-enforcement badge, potassium nitrate, and chloroform that he allegedly used during the crime.

Continued in article

"Understanding T Cells:  A nano tool is making it possible to better control the immune system," by Emily Singer, MIT's Technology Review, November 28, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/NanoTech/wtr_15927,303,p1.html?trk=nl

Scientists have long known that T cells play a major role in orchestrating the body's immune response. But researchers have been unsure exactly how these cells send and receive signals to attack invaders.

One fundamental question has been whether it is the number or the pattern of receptors on the surface of the T cell that controls the response. Understanding this cellular language could, for example, help researchers design better treatments for auto-immune diseases, such as allergies or rheumatoid arthritis, where the immune system has sent a misguided message to attack itself.

In a new experiment, published last week in Science, Jay Groves and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley designed an artificial membrane that allows them to begin to answer these questions. The membrane has proteins that are constricted in a specific region. When receptors on the T cell bind to the proteins on the artificial membrane, the receptors are constrained to these specific geometric patterns, allowing a closer examination of the effects of the patterns.

Under normal physiological conditions, when a T cell binds to an infected cell, receptors on the surface of the T cell migrate toward the junction between the two cells. Previously, scientists thought that the growing number of receptors triggered a strong T cell activation. But when Grove and his team blocked the migration of T cell receptors by binding them to locked-in proteins on the artificial membrane, which acts like an infected cell, they discovered it was the position of the receptor that actually controlled the response.

"Spatial configuration matters rather than number," says Groves. "It's like realizing when reading a sentence you need to pay attention to the order of the letters to know what the words mean, you can't just count the number of each kind of letter."

To develop the artificial membrane, the Berkeley researchers used electron beam lithography to create nanoscale chrome patterns on a silica substrate, which was then coated with membrane lipids and proteins. Although the proteins normally float freely through the lipid membrane, on the synthetic membrane, they're kept in place by the chrome patterns, which act as barriers.

Other experts say these findings demonstrate the power of nanotechnology for studying cellular processes. "This paper represents a wonderful, rare, and early example of how bringing together micropatterning technology and cell biology can help shed light on interesting questions in biology," says Arup K. Chakraborty, a theoretical immunologist at MIT.

Bob Jensen's threads on ubiquitous computing and nanotechnology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

Business Technology: Security Threats Galore, But No Worries Here
Taken together, you begin to get the full, unsettling picture of information security today. Automated bot attacks, Windows bulletins by the dozen, a new breed of business worms, risk of heap overflow in Cisco's IOS, the underground's new fascination with unpatched holes in 20 types of applications and devices. And that doesn't even include problems caused by spyware or phishing, or customer-data breaches, or the complications of wireless networks and devices, or CDs with hidden rootkits, or the Sober worm variants spreading again. With all of this going on, how do you explain the fact that so few security and IT professionals feel things have gotten worse? It's possible they have systems in place to ward off ill-intended probes, keep software patched, and protect customer records. Maybe the bullets are bouncing off. That, or maybe security at their companies isn't as good as it seems.
John Foley, "Business-Technology: Security Threats Galore, But No Worries Here," InformationWeek Newsletter, November 29, 2005

Bob Jensen's threads on computing and networking security have been updated (somewhat) at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection

Security threats and hoaxes --- http://www.trinity.edu/its/virus/

From Jim Mahar's blog on November 24, 2005 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

Writely - The Web Word Processor --- http://www.writely.com/

Eric Briys did it again! The person who turned me onto blogging and the person behind Cyberlibris and the cyberlibris blog sent me a note today mentioning Writely.com.

I checked it out and wow! It is so cool. It is an online word processor that multiple people can use at the same time. It will be perfect for co-authoring papers etc. Indeed, you can pretty much make it a "wiki" world.

I have several uses (in and outside of finance) already ready to go.

Check it out. I bet you will be as excited as I am about it!!!

Jensen Comment:  Among other things this is a way to to send email without having an email system.  But it is also a way of publishing on the Web without having a Web server.  Note that all you need is a Web browser like Internet Explorer.

"Exercising the Brain Innovative training software could turn back the clock on aging brains," by Emily Singer, MIT's Technology Review, November 21, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com//wtr_15914,1,p1.html?trk=nl 

A new cognitive training program designed to rejuvenate the brain's natural plasticity could slow down mental decline by as much as ten years. The program and others like it may be an accessible way for older people to take advantage of recent advances in the neuroscience of aging.

The connections in the brain are plastic, meaning that when we learn something, the properties of our synapses and other neural circuits change, improving their processing speed and the fidelity of the information being encoded.

As we age, though, this natural learning process starts to deteriorate. "Sensory information gets encoded less accurately, and the brain has to look and listen longer before it can make a decision about what it's seeing or hearing," says Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Francisco, who's been studying the neural basis of learning for 30 years.

Continued in article

"'Freakonomics' Abortion Research Is Faulted by a Pair of Economists, by Jon E. Hilsenrath, The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2005; Page A2 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113314261192407815.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Prepare to be second-guessed.

That would have been useful advice for Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and author of the smash-hit book "Freakonomics," which uses statistics to explore the hidden truths of everything from corruption in sumo wrestling to the dangers of owning a swimming pool.

The book's neon-orange cover title advises readers to "prepare to be dazzled," and its sales have lived up to the hype. A million copies of the book are in print. The book, which was written with New York Times writer Stephen Dubner, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 31 weeks and is atop The Wall Street Journal's list of bestsellers in the business category.

But now economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston are taking aim at the statistics behind one of Mr. Levitt's most controversial chapters. Mr. Levitt asserts there is a link between the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s and the drop in crime rates in the 1990s. Christopher Foote, a senior economist at the Boston Fed, and Christopher Goetz, a research assistant, say the research behind that conclusion is faulty.

Long before he became a best-selling author, Mr. Levitt, 38 years old, had established a reputation among economists as a careful researcher who produced first-rate statistical studies on surprising subjects. In 2003, the American Economic Association named him the nation's best economist under 40, one of the most prestigious distinctions in the field. His abortion research was published in 2001 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, an academic journal. (He was the subject of a page-one Wall Street Journal story in the same year.)

The "Freakonomics" chapter on abortion grew out of statistical studies Mr. Levitt and a co-author, Yale Law School Prof. John Donohue, conducted on the subject. The theory: Unwanted children are more likely to become troubled adolescents, prone to crime and drug use, than are wanted children. When abortion was legalized in the 1970s, a whole generation of unwanted births were averted, leading to a drop in crime nearly two decades later when this phantom generation would have come of age.

The Boston Fed's Mr. Foote says he spotted a missing formula in the programming of Mr. Levitt's original research. He argues the programming oversight made it difficult to pick up other factors that might have influenced crime rates during the 1980s and 1990s, like the crack wave that waxed and waned during that period. He also argues that in producing the research, Mr. Levitt should have counted arrests on a per-capita basis. Instead, he counted overall arrests. After he adjusted for both factors, Mr. Foote says, the abortion effect disappeared.

. . .

Still, as economic debates go, this one is relatively civil. Mr. Foote praises Mr. Levitt for making all of his data and his programming easily accessible and hastens to add that "in many ways it is a very careful paper." Mr. Levitt responds, "I think this is exactly the way science should work," with controversial theories being poked and prodded for their robustness.

Edward Glaeser, a Harvard professor who helped referee Mr. Levitt's original abortion submission to the Quarterly Journal of Economics, said the Foote critique isn't damning, though it does suggest the impact of abortion on crime has not been as strong as Mr. Levitt has argued. "These guys have put the [data] through the wringer," Mr. Glaeser says of Mr. Foote and his research assistant. "There is no question that the results get smaller and weaker, but there still seems to be something there."

Jensen Comment:  Abortion is only one of various topics, albeit the most controversial topic, covered in Levitt's book entitled Freakonomics and his various articles on these topics --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics

One striking example of the authors' creative use of economic theory involves mathematically proving the existence of cheating among Sumo wrestlers. In a Sumo tournament, all wrestlers compete in fifteen matches. Those who win a majority of the matches receive preferential treatment; those who don't must perform humiliating duties, such as washing hard-to-reach places on the bodies of their betters. The authors studied the odds involved in the fifteenth match and noticed an odd discrepancy. Statistically, the wrestlers who won eight of the previous fourteen matches and lost only six should have out-performed the wrestlers who won seven and lost seven, as they'd already proven themselves slightly better. This was not the case; the 7-7 underdogs beat their 8-6 opponents far too often for it to be a mathematical coincidence. The authors came to the inescapable conclusion that the 8-6 wrestlers, who could afford to throw a single match without fear of jeopardizing their standings, were deliberately losing, presumably for a later favor.

Surging Energy Costs on Campus
Around the country, colleges are facing sharply higher energy costs, as prices for oil and natural gas have been driven up by increasing demand and, especially, by the impact of Hurricane Katrina on production and delivery. Campus officials say that cost increases are averaging in the 20 percent range but spiking in some places by 40 percent, which can mean $1 million on a small campus or as much as 10 times that on larger ones.
Doug Lederman, "Surging Energy Costs," Inside Higher Ed, November 28, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/28/energy

Surging Grades of Athletes
The National Collegiate Athletic Association plans to investigate correspondence high schools, The New York Times reported Sunday, in an article examining the way a growing number of college athletes are using those high schools to bring their grades up to meet minimum standards to play intercollegiate athletics.
Inside Higher Ed, November 28, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/28/qt

Cultural Diversity Pressures Schools to Teach Religious Values
Leaders from the Hindu and Muslim faiths said last night that they backed the teaching of Christian values, because of what they saw as the need to promote all religions. Salah Beltagui, a prominent Scottish Muslim in who works in the Scottish Inter Faith Council, added: "We want people to know about all kinds of faiths because they have lots in common. It all adds to the aim of teaching more morals and values about life." Mohan Sharma, a spokesman for the Hindu community added: "Everyone should try and teach their own religion but also respect all other religions." The Inter Faith Week will be celebrated by leaders of all the major faiths this week, including Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Imam Mustaqeem Shah from the UK Islamic Mission, and Rabbi David Rose. An initiative will be launched to promote calls for faith groups to work together more in order to prevent prejudices developing between communities.
Eddie Barnes, "Non-Christian clerics urge the Kirk to push religious teaching in schools," Scotsman, November 27, 2005 --- http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=2310662005
 

"The Mall Had Its Day; Now It's the Web's Turn Back at Work, People Go Online and Shop," by Margaret Webb, The Washington Post, November 28, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/WashingtonPostNov28

The online retail industry has taken to calling today Cyber Monday or Black Monday, named after Black Friday, when many retailers traditionally have started to make a profit -- or go into the black -- for the year. In a recent survey by Shop.org and BizRate Research, 77 percent of retailers reported that their sales last year increased substantially on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

. . .

The growing phenomenon is an intensification of the year-round surge of online shopping during the workweek, changing the workplace as much as shopping patterns. At QVC.com, for example, Mondays are almost always the biggest shopping day of the week, said spokeswoman Bonnie Clark. For Visa, which processes 47 percent of all online purchases, weekdays bring much higher volume than weekends -- the exact opposite of typical traffic patterns in regular retail stores. The workweek after Thanksgiving is Visa's highest-volume week of the year.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on ecommerce are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm

New Gadgets:  Two Cell Phones With Keyboards
I looked at two of the latest handsets in this category: the LG VX9800 from Verizon Wireless and Samsung D307 from Cingular Wireless.  For the LG phone, Verizon offers a choice between $400 with a one-year contract and $300 with a two-year contract. Cingular sells the Samsung for $250 with a two-year service contract. Of the two phones, I like the LG better despite its higher price: The keyboard is much easier to use than Samsung's, and the phone offers a few extras, including a 1.3-megapixel camera and a media card slot.
Grace Aquino, "Two Sleek Cell Phones With Handy Data Entry:  Sending text messages and entering contacts in your phone's address book can be a whole lot easier with a keyboard-equipped handset," PC World via The Washington Post, November 28, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/CellKeyboard

From The Washington Post on November 28, 2005
What percentage of teens, ages 15 to 17, own cell phones?

A. 42 percent
B. 58 percent
C. 67 percent
D. 74 percent

"Lavish Spending, Little Reward D.C. Agencies Gave Contractor Millions for Projects but Scant Oversight," by David S. Fallis and Dan Keating, The Washington Post, November 28, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/LavishSpending

With the District's approval, he gave himself an $82,000 salary and paid his brother $8,000 as a consultant. He spent $25,000 for signature artwork and a matching stainless steel table. He bought $6,000 chairs, a new blue sport-utility vehicle and a silver van, personalized with vanity tags. He spent $143 to settle debts at a florist and rush a "Happy Birthday" bouquet to the D.C. Council member who approved his grants. He billed taxpayers for it all.

Over seven years, District officials sank nearly $5.4 million into his projects. Three city agencies gave him multiple contracts, and four others had a role in making sure he was paid.

But when Prioleau's foundation collapsed last year, the city's investment evaporated. Most of the furnishings had been sold at public auction after languishing in a warehouse for almost two years. About $195,000 worth of equipment was sold for slightly less than $9,000, just to pay a storage bill. Prioleau closed his training center.

Prioleau defended his work in interviews over the course of a year and reported to the D.C. government that his center had trained thousands of disadvantaged people. But city officials say there are no records to verify that number.

The story of Archie Prioleau and his dealings with the District is one of broader failings -- the propensity across city agencies to violate their policies as they dispense public funds with little attention to how the money is spent.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's updates on fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Executive Compensation and Company Violation Database That is Searchable by Zip Code

"Labor Web Site Keeps Tabs on Business Workers Can Check Executive Salaries, Company Violations," by Amy Joyce, The Washington Post, November 18, 2005, Page D03 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701623.html?referrer=email

An AFL-CIO affiliate yesterday launched an online database of more than 60,000 companies, listing information about their executive compensation, overseas job outsourcing, and violations of labor, safety and health standards.

The Web site is operated by Working America, a group that advocates on behalf of nonunion workers. The site started last year in a much smaller form focused on companies that had outsourced jobs overseas. The expanded version is designed to provide workers and the public with a more complete picture about companies, the group says.

"It gives information to workers they don't have otherwise and gives information so people can take action," said Karen Nussbaum, director of Working America, which was founded two years ago and has more than 1 million members.

The group's site is one of several recent efforts by labor organizations to challenge companies publicly on how they treat their employees. The efforts are designed to encourage workers to fight what the organizations view as bad labor practices, or to embarrass companies into changing their ways.

The best-known actions in recent months come from Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart. Both groups monitor the retailer's moves and conduct campaigns to raise awareness of -- and ultimately change -- the company's labor, environmental and other practices.

The information listed on the site comes from government records obtained by Working America through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as from media reports and research conducted by nonprofit advocacy groups.

The new site is "an excellent example of giving ordinary people information about what corporations are doing," said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "With this, they are putting a new dimension of the economy into the hands of the public."

The public database, http://www.workingamerica.org/jobtracker  , is searchable by Zip code, company name and industry. Visitors can also enter a Zip code or state to find out which companies in that area are exporting jobs or violating labor laws.

Pat Cleary, senior vice president at the National Association of Manufacturers, called the Web site a "desperate tactic."

"They should track companies that are importing jobs as well and should tell the story of the tens of millions of companies who spend billions of dollars to ensure their employees' safety," he said.

Jensen Comment:  The database apparently does not cover colleges, but it does have a Public Administration category.

What desktop search is best for you?

November 18, 2005 message from Scott Bonacker [AECM@BONACKER.US]

Microsoft released a new desktop search tool this week. You can learn more about it and download the 9MB installation file from:

http://desktop.msn.com/ 

Several add-ins are available, and are a necessity to be able to search the files most of us work with.

I've tried it on a workstation, and unlike the Google product it will index and search large files - I was able to find a phrase in page 388 of a 37.6 MB PDF file with it. There is even some control over which folders are included in the search indexes.

The only recommendation may be that it is free, however. As you might expect it steers you towards using more Microsoft products, although you can turn some of those features off.

The X1 search tool has it beat in being useful, though. The default view when searching lets you specify several characteristics simultaneously including filename, type, date/time, path and size. At the same time you can search for words or other information within the files that are indexed. You can set limits on what folders are indexed, and the size of the files that are indexed as well.

If your files are organized into folders, no matter what criteria you use, you can narrow the search to folders at any level in the directory tree. When searching for common words that helps immensely in preventing an overwhelming list of results.

Even for the money, I still prefer X1. http://www.x1.com/ 

Scott Bonacker, CPA
Springfield, Missouri

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

November 21, 2005 message from Donald Ramsey [dramsey@UDC.EDU]

For an awesome list of 43 professional certifications in accounting and finance, compiled by Prof. Greg Burbage of Sacramento City College, check http://www.scc.losrios.edu/~burbagg/CPALinks.html

Bob Jensen's threads on careers in accountancy are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#careers

OxyContin Pain Medication Questions and Answers ---
http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/oxycontin/oxycontin-qa.htm

More Bad News on Audit Inspection Reports Under SOX

"The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board found audit deficiencies at three major accounting firms," SmartPros, November 18, 2005 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x50712.xml

Reports on the PCAOB's inspection of Ernst & Young LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and BDO Seidman LLP, issued Thursday, said the inspection team identified matters it considered to be audit deficiencies.

In the reports, the PCOAB said those deficiencies included failures by the firm "to identify and appropriately address errors in the issuer's application of GAAP (or generally accepted accounting principles)," and that one or more of those errors was "likely to be material to the firms' financial statement."

In all three reports, the PCAOB said "the deficiencies also included failures by the firm to perform, or to perform sufficiently, certain necessary audit process."

The three reports, which can be viewed on the PCAOB's Web site, www.pcaobus.org , provide details of specific cases, without mentioning the audited entities by name.

For earlier reports on negative inspection outcomes of Deloitte and KPMG, go to "Incompetent and Corrupt Audits are Routine" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#IncompetentAudits

Pathways to Philosophy (United Kingdom)

November 26, 2005 message from Geoffrey Klempner [G.Klempner@sheffield.ac.uk]

This is the launch page for the Pathways to Philosophy distance learning programs run by the International Society for Philosophers in partnership with the Philosophical Society of England

The new URL for the Pathways to Philosophy Portal is:

http://www.philosophypathways.com 

The new URL for Ask a Philosopher is:

http://www.philosophypathways.com/questions/ 

Please adjust your links or bookmarks to these URLs.

SHARPEN YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE (2005) YEAR'S FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS AND DEVELOPMENTS --- http://accountingeducation.com/index.cfm?page=newsdetails&id=141776

Bob Jensen's threads on U.S. accounting standards are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm

"Dead Men Do Tell Tales:  Virtual autopsies reveal clues that forensic pathologists might miss," by John Gartner, MIT's Technology Review, November 23, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com//wtr_15922,1,p1.html?trk=nl 

In a trend that's sure to show up soon on CSI, some medical examiners are performing computer scans on cadavers, both to accelerate the autopsy process and to provide better views of fatal injuries. These "virtual" autopsies can help solve crimes -- as well develop strategies for extending lives.

During the past 18 months, radiologists in Sweden have performed more than 100 virtual autopsies on murder victims, according to Anders Ynnerman, a professor in the Department of Science and Technology at Linköpings University, who also works at the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV) in Linköping. Ynnerman says evidence from virtual autopsies has been used to clarify the cause of death in several criminal trials in Sweden.

A virtual autopsy begins with either a computer tomography (CT) or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan -- the same systems used in hospitals. Then a graphics workstation compiles the "slices" of data collected in the scans into a single three-dimensional visualization -- a rendition that's beyond the capabilities of standard software used for visualizing CT and MRI results, according to Ynnerman.

Full-body scans take approximately 20 seconds, while the graphics workstations can compile the data into a navigable 3-D image within one minute, says Dr. Anders Persson, manager of the CMIV. And the scans cost about $350 each.

The process is more effective than standard autopsies in certain respects, Persson says, because the visualizations make it is easier to see bleeding patterns and to correctly classify infections. Also, while the imaging technologies can't detect poisons, they help pathologists identify areas that may yield evidence, and perform targeted biopsies, rather than opening up the entire body, he says.

Continued in article

From the Scout Report on November 23, 2005

Governance Divide: A Report on a Four-State Study on Improving College Readiness and Success ---  http://www.highereducation.org/reports/governance_divide/governance_divide.pdf 

Many policy analysts and commentators have been bemoaning the fact that the United States’ substantial lead in the worlds of technology and scientific discovery seems to be fading rather quickly. A number of policy think-tanks have preoccupied themselves with exploring this question, and The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education has been exploring the very complex link between K-12 and postsecondary education policymaking as of late. One of their latest reports, released in September 2005, examines the efforts made by four states in order to improve the transition from high school to college. The report was jointly written by the Center, the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, and the Institute for Educational Leadership. Among its findings were that states should ensure that students in high school understand what the expectations in college will be and that states also provide better information about education for policymakers and the public.

Also see
The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement  --- http://www.csrclearinghouse.org/
 

---

Policy Review http://www.policyreview.org/ 

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University publishes a number of important and widely read publications, and perhaps one of its best known periodicals is Policy Review. Under the guidance of editor Tod Lindberg, Policy Review continues to publish a wide range of pieces on topics ranging from affirmative action to eminent domain. On their site, visitors can learn about the mission of the publication and they can browse their extensive archive, which dates back to 1995. A section titled “Special” features interviews with Dick Cheney from 1993 and Joseph Lieberman from 1990. The most recent issue of Policy Review available on the site features pieces on the current state of Russia and how America might effectively restore its image around the world. Many pieces in Policy Review will be both thought- provoking and potentially controversial, and for those reasons, they are definitely worth a look.

---

Teen Content Creator and Consumers --- http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Content_Creation.pdf 

With more and more young people using the internet for a wide variety of purposes, there has been an increased effort to study what exactly they arte doing online. This latest research report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project looks at how teenagers create content for the internet (such as weblogs) and how they choose to download content off the internet. Authored by Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden and released in November 2005, this 29- page report reveals that over half of all the teens surveyed for this report create content for the internet and that thirty-eight percent of all teens surveyed read blogs. The report also contains a number of helpful charts and tables that will be of interest to those with an interest in the changing nature of internet usage patterns.

---

Happy 100th Birthday E=mc²
Einstein equation marks 100 years
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4457020.stm

Einstein's E=mc² inspires ballet
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4145797.stm

Rampart Dance Company: Constant Speed
http://www.rambert.org.uk/index.html

American Museum of Natural History: Einstein http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/

Albert Einstein Biography
http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-bio.html

Einstein’s Big Idea
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/

The Center for the History of Physics: Albert Einstein Image and Impact http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/

 

Kea Coloring Book 3.4 (software for kids) --- http://www.keasoftware.com/coloring/index.php

Bob Jensen provides some helpers for finding professional help at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fees.htm

VoIP Providers Heeding the Call?
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that transmits phone calls much the same way e-mail travels over the Internet or corporate data networks . It's a great way to cut communications costs and add a raft of features to calling plans, so early adopters -- many of them tech-savvy -- put up with the glitches that plagued VoIP calling from the start. These days, quality is improving and VoIP calling is gaining wider adoption, but many kinks have yet to be worked out (For a product review of one service, see BW Online, 11/28/05, "Skype Has People Talking"). And pressure on providers such as Vonage to resolve the issues is higher than ever.
"VoIP Providers Heeding the Call?," Business Week, November 28, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/BWnov28

Boys & Girls Clubs of America --- http://www.bgca.org

National Adoption Information Clearinghouse --- http://naic.acf.hhs.gov/

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:
Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We theorize that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.
"On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets: An Empirical Study," by Ali Rahimi1, Ben Recht , Jason Taylor, Noah Vawter, Allegedly bored geeks at MIT, February 17m 2005 --- http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

Also see http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000120067587/

"Should You Be in (Adult Webcam) Pictures?," by Regina Lynnk, Wired News, November 11, 2005 --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69545,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

Have you ever participated in an adult chat room? If so, you probably agreed to something like the terms above -- possibly without reading them. And if that's the case, you might want to get a copy of the new book webAffairs (NSFW), published by Eighteen Publications, as soon as possible to see whether you're in it.

. . .

The book is a large hardback, printed on heavy paper, each page a meticulously designed collage of webcam windows, chat excerpts, the author's narrative and snippets of conversation between the author and her husband. It raises questions of privacy in public spaces, of fidelity, of emotional and sexual involvement with lovers onscreen and off.

And it truly captures what it means to belong to an adult online community. In fact, it's the best window to cyber relationships -- and their effect on offline relationships -- I've seen.

"One of the interesting aspects of this project is the idea that virtual space is undefined," Show-n-tell says. "It blurs the line between public and private space as we understand it."

Continued in article

"BlackBerry Blackout," The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2005; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113331772773709819.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

There's a chance, albeit a small one, that sometime this week BlackBerries around the country could go quiet. Depending on where you stand on these pervasive email handheld devices, that may or may not seem like a good thing. But it's a sign of how quickly our economy adapts to new technologies that a BlackBerry service break would prove highly inconvenient to many businesses and positively disruptive to some. Whatever happens, however, the U.S. government wants to make sure its "crackberry" addicts still get their fix.

The threat of a service interruption comes at the end of a four-year-long legal battle between Research in Motion, the Canadian company that makes BlackBerries and manages the email service, and NTP, a patent-holder that has sued RIM, claiming its technology violates patents held by NTP.

RIM lost the original case years ago, but it has since been tied up in appeals, U.S. Patent Office rulings and settlement negotiations. A federal judge is expected to rule soon on whether to enforce a March settlement that later fell apart over an undisclosed dispute, while the Patent Office is still reviewing the validity of NTP's patents themselves.

If the settlement is not enforced, an injunction could be placed barring RIM from providing service in the U.S. until RIM licenses NTP's patents. That's a chance the feds don't want to take, so earlier this month the Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the case, requesting that any injunction exclude the government's 300,000 or so users. NTP says the technology exists to do so fairly easily.

Continued in article

RIM is trying to reverse its loss of a patent-infringement suit filed by NTP, which claimed RIM infringed on several patents, including NTP's radio-communications technology. Given the popularity of the Blackberry among businesspeople, stopping the service would leave lots of companies scrambling. Experts say a settlement could cost RIM as much as $1 billion. The company, however, says it has no intention to pay. Instead, if it loses in court, RIM promises to release a "software workaround" that would allow it to maintain its U.S. operations. For RIM customers, particularly large companies, it would be a good idea to start working with RIM now on its "workaround" plans. This case appears to be more of a question of when NTP gets the injunction, not if, so Blackberry users better be prepared.
Antone Gonsalves, InternetWeek Newsletter, December 1, 2005

"Palm stock rises as judge rules against BlackBerry maker," Mercury News, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/columnists/13294782.htm

Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die
Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain -- for a while -- but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil wheel. The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin. And profit is god, after all. (Genuflect here, if you must.).
Tony Long, "Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die," Wired News, November 10, 2005 --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68742,00.html

FDA approves brain stem cell transplant trial
For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a clinical trial to test whether a purified population of human neural, or brain, stem cells can be safely used in humans. The (Stanford) medical center is one site being considered for the trial, which is designed to investigate the effect of transplanted stem cells in children with Batten disease—a fatal genetic disorder. The FDA-approved protocol, which was designed in part by Stanford physicians and researchers Stephen Huhn, MD, and Greg Enns, MD, will now be submitted to the medical center's Institutional Review Board for the consideration afforded all trials involving human subjects. Huhn and Enns are slated to co-direct the trial if the IRB approves the protocol. Researchers speculate that the cells, which are isolated from fetal brain tissue, may provide enzymes that are missing or defective in patients with the condition. However, the planned phase-I trial is primarily designed to test the safety of the treatment.
Krista Conger, "FDA approves brain stem cell transplant trial," Stanford Today, October 26, 2005 ---
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/october26/med-stemcell-102605.html

Hormone finding offers new hope for obesity drug
When the appetite-enhancing hormone ghrelin was discovered a few years ago, researchers thought they had found the last of the major genes that regulate weight. They were wrong. Introducing obestatin, a newly discovered hormone that suppresses appetite. The finding, published in the Nov. 11 issue of Science, offers a key to researchers developing treatments for obesity. In a nation that desperately needs to slim down—the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 65 percent of Americans over the age of 20 are either overweight or obese—obestatin is likely to generate interest from scientists and drug-makers alike.
Rosanne Spector, "Hormone finding offers new hope for obesity drug," Stanford Today, October 26, 2005 ---
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/november16/obe-111605.html

Senior Citizen Bloggers Defy Stereotypes
Forget shuffleboard, needlepoint and bingo. Web logs, more often the domain of alienated adolescents and home to screeds by middle-aged pundits, are gaining a foothold as a new leisure-time option for senior citizens. There's Dad's Tomato Garden Journal, Dogwalk Musings, and, of course, the Oldest Living Blogger.
Carla K. Johnson, "Senior Citizen Bloggers Defy Stereotypes," The Washington Post, November 10, 2005 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/10/AR2005111001881.html?referrer=email

They're still fools at Sony:  The Trojan horse fix creates security risks
Consumers who used computers to listen to Sony BMG music CDs containing flawed software were still exposed to potentially crippling security breaches yesterday, experts said, as the company continued to try to fix the problem. Sony BMG Music Entertainment released a software patch earlier in the week, but experts warned that the fix created as many security problems as the original program, and as of yesterday the company had not come up with a new approach.
Brian Krebs, "Sony's Fix for CDs Has Security Problems of Its Own," The Washington Post, November 17, 2005 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/16/AR2005111602242.html?referrer=email
Jensen Comment:  Actually Microsoft has a better fix to Windows problems created by Sony.  However, the fixes from Microsoft and Sony eliminate the ability to play BMG music on your computer.  What a stupid mess!

Merger Creates New Rival for Big Four Firms
The merger of Global Alliance and Moore Stephens North America, Incorporated has created one of the largest Certified Public Accounting (CPA) organizations in the world based on revenues. Known as Moore Stephens International (MSI), the association will be headquartered in New York City, New York and be represented by more than 500 offices around the world having gross revenues exceeding $1.25 billion.
"Merger Creates New Rival for Big Four Firms," AccountingWeb, November 16, 2005 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101490

Palmetto Rebellion South Carolina Republicans will cut taxes--or else.
Even when tax rates remain unchanged, a dramatic uptick in home values can push tax bills through the roof. The result is today many seniors on fixed incomes can't hold onto homes they've lived in for decades. Steep tax bills also force the poor to forgo homeownership and with it the hope of making it into the middle class. Meanwhile, middle-class homeowners struggle to pay the taxman.
Brendan Minter, "Palmetto Rebellion South Carolina Republicans will cut taxes--or else. ," The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2005 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110007609

Texas School Lesson:  The Supreme Court Strikes Down Robin Hood
The Texas Supreme Court did the expected last week and struck down the statewide property tax for funding public schools. But what was surprising and welcome was the Court's unanimous ruling that the Texas school system, which spends nearly $10,000 per student, satisfies the funding "adequacy" requirements of the state constitution. Most remarkable of all was the court's declaration that "more money does not guarantee better schools or more educated students."
"Texas School Lesson," The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2005; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113323153685208752.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

November 28, 2005 message from Silvia Childs [childs@algebra1help.com]

Dear Robert,

Thank you so much for deciding to include a link to our site on your personal web page.

This is the linking info:

Suggested Title: Algebra Tutor Suggested Description: Search out instant solutions to nerve-breaking math problems with a downloadable resource designed to help people learn algebra in an easier step-by-step way. URL: http://www.algebra1help.com 

Search out instant solutions to nerve-breaking math problems with a downloadable resource designed to help people learn algebra in an easier step-by-step way.

Sincerely,

Silvia Childs

November 11, 2005 message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

From the Wall Street Journal:

As the Detroit Pistons were introduced before the Kings' home opener, the people who run the video screens at Arco Arena chose to show scenes of burned-out cars, buildings in disrepair and other shots that didn't exactly make one want to contact a Motor City realtor.

"We're sick about it and we're sorry," said Kings co-owner Joe Maloof. "It was an unfortunate, stupid idea. We are apologizing to the city, Pistons fans, the mayor, the organization. The whole thing was a big mess."

Jensen Comment
This sort of degradation of a city should be left to Michael Moore who launched his film career and fortune by doing the same thing to Flint, Michigan in 1989 --- http://www.michaelmoore.com/dogeatdogfilms/rogerme.html
For a synopsis see http://lists.cat.org.au/pipermail/canberra/2004-January/000290.html
The script is available at http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/r/roger-and-me-script-transcript.html 

The Net is wriggling into the nooks and crannies of businesses across the world. Here, a glimpse at the future
The Web is wriggling into the nooks and crannies of businesses across the globe, from an Italian electricity giant to an onion farm in Oregon. Some companies are culling data they had never encountered before and sharing the information with customers via blogs or wireless hookups. Others are turning customers into their eyes and ears in the marketplace. Sure, the technology is zippy. But this year's WebSmart 50 shows that the bigger story, in many cases, is how it redefines age-old relationships. Suppliers are becoming partners, developers are suddenly knee-deep in customer relations, and employees who used to be the last to find out news are publishing it themselves. Such changes are having a far greater impact on companies than anything Google or Apple has cooked up. Plenty of these projects are about nuts-and-bolts management. But they aren't limited to companies. Schools, public bus systems, even New York City's government are using the Web to reshape operations. Kaiser Permanente's digitization of patient records helped it uncover problems with Vioxx a year before the drug's recall. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals revamped its site on a dime after Hurricane Katrina so it could recruit volunteers for the first time in its 130-year history.
"The Web Smart 50," Business Week, November 21, 2005 --- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_47/b3960401.htm

"Borderline Stupidity," by Felice Prager, The Irascible Professor, November 15, 2005 --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-11-15-05.htm

Morgan Quitno Press - "Reliable Rankings for 16 Years."

As explanation, Morgan Quitno Press of Lawrence, Kansas (not far, I am told, from where Dorothy and Toto lifted off to find the ruby slippers and flying monkeys) produces annual announcements that designate our country's:

Safest City - Newton, Massachusetts

Most Dangerous City - Camden, New Jersey

Smartest State - Massachusetts in 2004 (before Vermont got the honors this year)

Most Improved State - New Hampshire

Most Livable State - New Hampshire

Healthiest State - Vermont

Safest State - North Dakota

Most Dangerous State – Nevada

Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention (American History) ---
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/continental/

Helpers for teaching MIS

November 15, 2005 message from David Kroenke

Recently, I attended two seminars with Dr. Marilla Svinicki from the University of Texas. Dr. Svinicki presented several research-based teaching ideas that I think can be profitably used in the introductory MIS class. Several of these ideas along with results of using them in my MIS class are out on www.TeachingMIS.com  this week.

I also recently learned of the work on Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) that is supported by the University of Michigan. This week's blog has several links to this important work as well.

Please take a look! www.TeachingMIS.com

Best regards,
David Kroenke
University of Washington

World Agricultural Information Centre Portal --- http://www.fao.org/waicent/

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for economic statistics are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics

Helpers for Personal Finance from the Texas Society of CPAs

November 11, 2005 message for The AccountingWeb

Welcome to Money Management U!

AccountingWEB.com - Nov-11-2005 - How much time do employees at your firm spend dealing with, or just worrying about, their personal finances? According to a recent Texas Poll, nearly 30 percent of Texas employees spend six or more work hours a week on personal finance. With the holidays coming, personal finance is likely to assume an even more prominent role in everyone’s minds as we contemplate buying gifts, preparing holiday meals, traveling to visit family and other holiday activities.

In order to help staff members keep their minds on their jobs, not their checkbooks, the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants (TSCPA) is launching Money Management U., a statewide employee enrichment program offering free personal finance resources for the workplace.

Money Management U. materials cover a variety of personal finance topics including identity theft, home buying, credit card debt, and educating children about money. Among the resources available are:

articles for employee newsletters and/or company intranets

• table tents
• flyers
• paycheck inserts

In addition, companies can request CPA speakers for employee seminars on personal finance topics. Money Management U. resources can be downloaded for free from the TSCPA’s consumer web site at www.ValueYourMoney.org

Money Management U.
New Financial Literacy
Resources for the Workplace
Having a job may give you a paycheck, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you know what to do with the money you earn. Thanks to Money Management U., an employee enrichment program, the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants is offering free financial literacy resources for the workplace.

Financial Recordkeeping Checklist
Drowning in receipts, paycheck stubs, old tax returns, and bank records? Are your expandable file folders expanded past their limit? Is your attic home to dusty boxes filled with old financial records? How long do you have to retain them, anyway?

Shredding: From Nicety to Necessity
If you employ even one person like a nanny, a housekeeper or a gardener, take note. Destroy personal information or face possible fines with a Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act provision going into effect this summer.

Guarding Against Identity Theft
Minimize your risk for becoming a victim of identity theft with these helpful steps. This article covers how thieves obtain your information, preventive steps and what to do if you're victimized.

Bankruptcy Law Changes Go Into Effect
It’s a new chapter for bankruptcy law in the United States and the page is turning in October – creating a rush of last-minute filers..

A Survival Plan for Important Papers
In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina and Rita disasters, many Americans are re-examining their own readiness to react, and quickly, should catastrophe strike their home, whether hurricane, flood, fire, tornado or other calamity.

Disaster Recovery Guide for Hurricane Victims
The Texas Society of CPAs offers its condolences to those who've lost loved ones and their livelihoods to Hurricane Rita and Katrina. For those displaced by both Gulf Coast disasters, a free disaster recovery financial planning guide is available to help navigate insurance, tax deductions, replacing important documents, and much more.

Charitable Giving Checklist(.pdf)
Your guide to smart tax-deductible contributions.

Free Credit Reports Now Available to Texans
In the battle to fight identity theft, Texans can now order free credit reports every 12 months from each of the three national credit bureaus. Credit scores aren't included in the free offer though. You'll have to pay up to get your digits.

Free Financial Planning Disaster Preparedness Guide Available
Be ready before disaster strikes. Get the information you need to know to protect your loved ones and property with insurance, estate planning and more.

Click here for more News You Can Use

Tax tips and small business helpers are also provided at www.ValueYourMoney.org

"KPMG Honored for Programs in Support of Disabled," SmartPros, November 22, 2005 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x50745.xml

Accounting firm KPMG has been selected by the YAI/National Institute for People with Disabilities (NIPD) Network as its "2005 Corporation of the Year" recipient.

The annual award was accepted by KPMG LLP chairman and CEO Timothy P. Flynn at the agency's "Share the Joy" gala in Manhattan this month. The YAI/NIPD Network is a network of not-for-profit health and human services agencies for people with developmental and learning disabilities.

"This award recognizes KPMG for their long and continued commitment to helping create jobs for people with disabilities, and also their support of YAI's fundraising activities," said Dr. Joel M. Levy, CEO of the YAI/NIPD Network. "We are thankful for their continued support, and we are pleased to recognize KPMG as a firm that is dedicated to making a difference in the lives of these individuals."

KPMG's Flynn commented, "KPMG has supported the YAI/NIPD Network and its programs through volunteerism, board participation and individual and corporate fundraising initiatives for more than a decade. We are honored to be chosen for this distinguished award and pleased to be among an impressive list of past and present honorees."

Past honorees of the award have included Pfizer, Avon Products, RJR Nabisco and Time.

Bob Jensen's threads on the two faces of KPMG are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#KPMG

Electronic Books, Poems, and Journals

Forwarded by Betty Carper

Audrey Hepburn's Secret to Great Beauty
Actually titled “Time Tested Beauty Tips,” this poem by Sam Levenson is commonly mis-credited to Audrey Hepburn. A favorite of hers, she read it to her children on the very last Christmas Eve she spent with us here on Earth.

TIME TESTED BEAUTY TIPS

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

 

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

 

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day.

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.

 

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

 

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.

 

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.

If you share this with another woman, something good will happen . . ..you will boost another woman's self esteem, and she will know that you care about her.

Hope video (forwarded by Dick Wolff) --- http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/2529/4candles.swf

Forwarded by a good friend.

Subject: Meeting with President @ White House

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:02:09 -0500, "Congressman Dan Lungren" <Ca03reply@mail.house.gov>  wrote:

November 23, 2005

I thought you might be interested in hearing about an unexpected experience I had two weeks ago. On Wednesday, November 9, my office received a call in the morning asking if I would come to the White House to meet with the President on the war in Iraq and other issues. I had my staff rearrange my schedule so I could attend and along with less than two dozen other members boarded a bus to go to the White House at 3:30 in the afternoon.

When we arrived at the White House, we were surprised to be led up to the second floor - the private quarters of the President and his family - for our meeting. While I have been in and around Washington, DC off and on for 35 years and have had the opportunity to be invited to the White House on a number of occasions, this is the first chance I had to visit the private quarters.

After a short period of social mixing, we sat down on several couches and chairs to engage in a dialogue with President Bush. Contrary to some of the press reports I have seen recently concerning his personal demeanor, the President was very friendly, outgoing, vigorous in his presentation, well versed on the issues, and manifested a command of details. It was obvious that he sees the defense of the nation against the danger of radical Islamic fascism as his major duty. He is passionate in his description of the threat to our nation. In particular, he read us a letter written by Al-Qaida's number two leader, Ayman Zawahiri to his deputy in Iraq - the terrorist Zarqawi. In the letter, Zawahiri writes that Al-Quaida views Iraq as "the place of the greatest battle." In this and other parts of the letter, it is obvious the terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in a war against us and others who are part of the "western world".

The President made it clear that we should take these terrorists at their word and understand clearly the importance they have attached to the outcome of the war in Iraq. In fact in his letter, Zawahiri makes specific reference to the outcome of the Vietnam War and declares that "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam - how they ran and left their agents - is noteworthy." Further in the letter Al-Qaida's number two leader stresses the specific goals of their Jihad: "The First Stage - expel the Americans in Iraq. The Second Stage - reestablish an Islamic Authority or Amirati, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a Caliphate. The Third Stage - extend Jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. The Fourth Stage - the clash with Israel."

Zawahari makes it clear that the war does not end with the Americans' departure from the region and that they must defeat us before the appeal of democracy to the Iraqis is successful in establishing a stable government. Interestingly enough, he notes that the greatest part of the struggle is taking place "in the battlefield of the media".

The President recognized the necessity for us to "succeed in the battlefield of the media". In other words, he stated that he would be discussing the war on terrorism repeatedly and in greater detail than he had before, that the sacrifice sustained by our men and women in uniform require us to be more vigorous in our defense of our actions. In short order, let me quickly mention several points the President stressed about the current state of affairs in Iraq.

1. We are taking cities and territories back from terrorist control.

2. Iraqi troops are securing more areas. (For example: in August 2004, fiveIraqi Regular Army battalions were in combat. Today, ninety-one Iraqi Regular Army battalions are in combat.)

3. Iraqis are making great strides in making a democracy with greater freedom. (It seems that we do not recognize the importance of several historic actions taken by the Iraqi people so far this year. The January elections were historic, dramatic, and successful. On the 15th of October, nearly 10 million Iraqis turned out to vote on a new constitution. And in less than a month, Iraqis will go to the polls to elect a permanent government.)

We had an opportunity to question the President on his strategies, the opinions of our military leaders, the rate of progress leading to the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq, the need to be more direct with the American people on the challenges that lie ahead as well as issues concerning the cost of the war and the long term prospects in the Middle East.

I had an opportunity to raise some of these questions as well as deliver to the President other concerns expressed by the constituents who have attended my 3rd District Town Hall meetings. These included the serious problems of illegal immigration and continued federal deficit spending. In the arena of the budget deficit, we have different perspectives. I politely, but strongly articulated my concerns that have been echoed by 3rd District constituents in 17 town halls and or telephone town hall phone conversations throughout 2005 and suggested that the President exercise the use of his veto pen on spending bills.

In total, we met with the President for about one hour and fifteen minutes. The consensus of those in attendance was that the President was open to us, took into consideration the points that we raised, and was very much in command of facts, tactics, and strategy concerning our greatest challenge - terrorism in the name of Islamic fascism. I hope this gives you some idea of the dynamics of a meeting with the President of the United States as well as the current state of his thinking. I would welcome any comments you might have on the issues that were raised.

Sincerely,

Congressman Dan Lungren

A recent article by Becky Bartindale and Lisa Krieger in the San Jose Mercury News chronicles the latest assault by the religious right on the teaching of evolution in the public schools.  Bartindale and Krieger's story describes the recent lawsuit by Jeanne Caldwell and her attorney husband Larry Caldwell, against two biologists from the University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontology who have developed an extensive web site that provides information about evolution for teachers as part of a web site that attempts to explain evolution to the general public.

Our placement of graduates continues to be a source of pride. The Daniels Class of 2004 had an overall placement rate of 90.1 percent for all graduate business degrees; our School of Accountancy graduates had a 99 percent placement rate.
School of Accountancy Newsletter, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, November 28, 2005

It is especially gratifying when we can report good news. The Wall Street Journal honored the School of Accountancy's MBA-Accounting program by ranking it as No.6 nationally for academic excellence in Accounting. The School of Accountancy's Tax Team is one of six undergraduate teams moving on to the national competition in the Deloitte Tax Challenge. The Wall Street Journal again honored Daniels as one of the world's best business schools. We ranked No. 4 in the world for producing graduates with high ethical standards and No. 8 nationally among 47 North American business schools. Daniels also earned national recognition for its full- and part-time programs in Forbes. In U.S.News & World Report's 2006 list of "America's Best Graduate Schools," the Daniels College of Business ranked at No. 78, up two places from 2005.

Handy links to product instruction sheets --- http://www.instructionsheets.com/

Handy links to product promotions --- http://www.fixtureferrets.co.uk/

Electronic repair information and help --- http://www.alldata.com/

Numeric Conversions --- http://convertplus.com/en/

Question
What is the largest encyclopedia in the history of the world (in 82 languages no less)?

Answer

Wikipedia at http://www.wikipedia.org/
This online encyclopedia is free and allows virtually anybody in the world to make new entries or modifications to old entries merely by typing in a browser like Internet Explorer.  This degree of open share obviously causes problems since bad people are free to abuse the privilege of such open sharing.  Wikipedia is at last taking some serious steps to help reduce misleading information in the Encyclopedia. 

"FALSE WITNESS How true are "facts" online?," by Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times, December 4, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html 

E-Mail This Printer-Friendly Single-Page Reprints Save Article By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

It has, by most measures, been a spectacular success. Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales said that traffic doubles every four months.

Still, the question of Wikipedia, as of so much of what you find online, is: Can you trust it?

And beyond reliability, there is the question of accountability. Mr. Seigenthaler, after discovering that he had been defamed, found that his "biographer" was anonymous. He learned that the writer was a customer of BellSouth Internet, but that federal privacy laws shield the identity of Internet customers, even if they disseminate defamatory material. And the laws protect online corporations from libel suits.

He could have filed a lawsuit against BellSouth, he wrote, but only a subpoena would compel BellSouth to reveal the name.

In the end, Mr. Seigenthaler decided against going to court, instead alerting the public, through his article, "that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool."

Mr. Wales said in an interview that he was troubled by the Seigenthaler episode, and noted that Wikipedia was essentially in the same boat. "We have constant problems where we have people who are trying to repeatedly abuse our sites," he said.

Still, he said, he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.

In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.

The real problem, he said, was the volume of new material coming in; it is so overwhelming that screeners cannot keep up with it.

Continued in article

Publisher and Education Fraud
Buy up and close down the competition:  It seems like this is what robber barons used to do in the 1900s and why the U.S. passed antitrust laws that don't seem to be working very well these days.

"Are Lawyers Being Overbilled for Their Test Preparation?" by Jonathan D. Glater, The New York Times, December 4, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/business/yourmoney/04law.html 

MANY executives dream of dominating their industries the way BAR/BRI does the business of helping law school graduates prepare for bar examinations. Every law student knows BAR/BRI. Hundreds of thousands of them have taken its courses to pass the bar, an essential step in most states before a law school graduate can practice law. Some of the best law professors in the country teach segments of the company's courses, which are offered live in select locations and on videotape at others.

But now BAR/BRI could use a few lawyers itself. Some of the people who paid the fees, took the courses and passed the bar have turned on the company, which is owned by the Thomson Corporation of Stamford, Conn. Represented by an aggressive Los Angeles lawyer named Eliot G. Disner, they have filed a lawsuit charging that the company that helped them to become lawyers has operated an illegal monopoly and has overcharged hundreds of thousands of students by an average of $1,000 each - or, collectively, by hundreds of millions of dollars.

In complaints filed in the spring and summer, different groups of students charged that BAR/BRI has paid competitors to shut down and negotiated illegal agreements with potential competitors to divide the market. In particular, they cite a 2003 agreement with Louisiana State University, which until 2004 operated its own bar review course; under the deal, BAR/BRI promised to pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to the school, and the school promised not to run a competing bar review course.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on publisher frauds are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals

A new blog from the University of Illinois
ISSUES IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/

Is your doctor's needle long enough to do the job? (This is not humor even if you do chuckle a little!)
Two-thirds of the 50 patients in the study did not receive the full dosage of the drug, which instead lodged in the fat tissue of their buttocks, researchers from The Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin said in a presentation to the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
"Study - Longer needles needed for fatter buttocks," Yahoo News, November 28, 2005 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051128/hl_nm/buttocks_dc

From WebMd on November 30, 2005 --- http://www.webmd.com/

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On Jan. 17, 1946, a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman launched a radical new era in the treatment of mental illness in this country. On that day, he performed the first-ever transorbital or "ice-pick" lobotomy in his Washington, D.C., office. Freeman believed that mental illness was related to overactive emotions, and that by cutting the brain he cut away these feelings.

Freeman, equal parts physician and showman, became a barnstorming crusader for the procedure. Before his death in 1972, he performed transorbital lobotomies on some 2,500 patients in 23 states.

One of Freeman's youngest patients is today a 56-year-old bus driver living in California. Over the past two years, Howard Dully has embarked on a quest to discover the story behind the procedure he received as a 12-year-old boy.

In researching his story, Dully visited Freeman's son; relatives of patients who underwent the procedure; the archive where Freeman's papers are stored; and Dully's own father, to whom he had never spoken about the lobotomy.

"If you saw me you'd never know I'd had a lobotomy," Dully says. "The only thing you'd notice is that I'm very tall and weigh about 350 pounds. But I've always felt different -- wondered if something's missing from my soul. I have no memory of the operation, and never had the courage to ask my family about it. So two years ago I set out on a journey to learn everything I could about my lobotomy."

Neurologist Egas Moniz performed the first brain surgery to treat mental illness in Portugal in 1935. The procedure, which Moniz called a "leucotomy," involved drilling holes in the patient's skull to get to the brain. Freeman brought the operation to America and gave it a new name: the lobotomy. Freeman and his surgeon partner James Watts performed the first American lobotomy in 1936. Freeman and his lobotomy became famous. But soon he grew impatient.

. . .

"There were some very unpleasant results, very tragic results and some excellent results and a lot in between," says Dr. Elliot Valenstein, who wrote Great and Desperate Cures, a book about the history of lobotomies.

Continued in article and in audio

"Lawsuits Won't Stop Pandemics," by Paul A. Offit, The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2005; Page A16 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113340332388210943.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

During the past 100 years, pharmaceutical companies have made vaccines against pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, rubella (German measles) and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), among others. As a consequence, the number of children in the U.S. killed by pertussis decreased from 8,000 each year to less than 20; the number paralyzed by polio from 15,000 to zero; those killed by measles from 3,000 to zero; those with severe birth defects caused by rubella from 20,000 to zero; and those with meningitis and bloodstream infections caused by Hib from 25,000 to less than 50. Vaccine makers have been the single most powerful force in determining how long we live; during the 20th century, the lifespan of Americans increased by 30 years -- mostly because of vaccines.

But the landscape of vaccines is also littered with tragedy. In the late 1800s, starting with Pasteur, scientists made rabies vaccines using cells from nervous tissue (such as animal brains and spinal cords); the vaccine prevented a uniformly fatal infection. But the rabies vaccine also caused seizures, paralysis and coma in as many as one of every 230 people that used it.

In 1942, the military injected hundreds of thousands of servicemen with a yellow fever vaccine. To stabilize the vaccine virus, scientists added human serum. Unfortunately, some of the serum came from people unknowingly infected with a hepatitis virus. As a consequence, 330,000 soldiers were infected, 50,000 developed severe hepatitis and 62 died.

In 1955, five companies stepped forward to make Jonas Salk's new formaldehyde-inactivated polio vaccine. One company -- Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, Calif. -- made it badly. Because of Cutter's failure to completely inactivate the virus in their vaccine, 120,000 children were inadvertently injected with live, dangerous poliovirus; 40,000 developed mild polio, 200 were permanently paralyzed and 10 were killed. It was one of the worst biological disasters in American history.

Given all of these problems, what role did personal-injury lawyers play in pushing vaccine makers to make better, safer products? The answer: none. That's because the tragedies caused by vaccines weren't the result of foul play, cost-cutting, deceit or misrepresentation. Every problem was caused by the inevitable, painful, intolerable but requisite process of knowledge gained with time that is required for advances in science and medicine. Scientists eventually found a way to grow rabies virus in safer cells. The Cutter tragedy -- later found to be caused by a filtration problem shared by all five companies making polio vaccines -- was quickly identified and corrected. And when researchers later discovered hepatitis B virus -- the virus that had in retrospect contaminated the yellow fever vaccine -- they made a vaccine to prevent it.

Like it or not, we learn as we go. And no amount of suing is ever going to change that.

Continued in article

New Idea for Mystery Writers
Google searching helps commit a murder and then helps in convicting the murderer

"Ex-Computer Consultant Convicted In 'Google Murder' Trial ," Internet Week, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.159504&articleId=174403108

In a murder trial featuring evidence of Google searches, jurors late Tuesday found former computer consultant Robert Petrick guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of his wife. He will serve a life sentence without possibility of parole. Prosecutors hadn't sought the death penalty. Petrick, who represented himself during the North Carolina trial, is expected to appeal and has requested a court appointed lawyer. Jurors rejected Petrick's attempts to convince them that Google searches for the words "neck," "snap," "break," and "hold," uncovered on his hard drive, were done by another user.

Petrick also failed to persuade jurors that all the evidence against him was circumstantial and that prosecutors hadn't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed Janine Sutphen and dumped her body in a Raleigh-area lake.

Prosecutors had seized several computers from Petrick's home after Sutphen, a concert cellist, disappeared in January 2003. They used evidence collected from the hard drives to make their case. Internet histories showed that showing someone used Google to search the terms neck, snap break and hold and reviewed a document entitled "22 Ways to Kill a Man With Your Bare Hands." They also said that someone had researched body decomposition and the topography of the lake where Sutphen's body was found.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment: 
Here are the "22 Ways to Kill a Man With Your Bare Hands" --- http://www.totse.com/en/bad_ideas/irresponsible_activities/22kill.html

Question:
Why is Sony BMG like a bungling waiter?

Answer
Watching Sony BMG stumble from one fiasco to another over its copy-protection technology is like watching a silent-movie comedy about a bungling waiter. He starts to lose control of a heavy tray of soups and desserts, and, in trying to regain his balance, yanks tablecloths to the floor; sends silverware, dishes, and food flying; and veers around the room, knocking over furniture and patrons, and generally spreading disaster all around. Sony's efforts to extricate itself from its digital-rights-management scandal are a similarly spectacular series of pratfalls. But it's likely to have little long-term impact on Sony. Just some public embarrassment that Sony will quickly overcome, and fines that Sony can afford to pay. The effects on business are much bigger. The fiasco is another demonstration of the power of bloggers to shape public opinion. And the events also demonstrate yet again that consumer digital-rights-management technology doesn't work, and can't be made to work.
Mitch Wagner, InformationWeek Newsletter, November 28, 2005

Outpacing Moore's Law
Kevin Teixeira, a spokesperson for Intel, says data storage components, such as hard disks and flash chips, are actually outpacing Moore's Law, the credo that predicts the number of transistors on a chip will double roughly every 18 months. At the same time, the demand for the iPod nano, smart phones, digital cameras, and other devices that use flash memory will keep driving down the price of flash memory components. Unlike the spinning hard drive in today's computers, as well as iPods from months ago, flash memory has no moving parts, making a smaller, more rugged gadget that's also less prone to failure.
Kate Greene, "Storage Grows in a Flash:  The four-gigabyte Flash storage card in Apple's iPod Nano was obsolete before it hit store shelves," MIT's Technology Review, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com//wtr_15939,1,p1.html?trk=nl

Will your university contribute to your legal defense?
When Merle H. Weiner was hired as a law professor at the University of Oregon, she was told that one of her duties was to write articles and books — and she did just that, publishing extensively on her areas of expertise, one of which is domestic violence. But Weiner found out this year that even if the university expects her to publish, she was on her own when she faced a threatened suit over one of her articles, even though the university never contested the quality of the article and even though she had obtained legal opinions that she would prevail in court — if only someone had agreed to pay the bills necessary to fight.
Scott Jaschik, "Twisting in the Wind," Inside Higher Ed, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/30/liability

The Joys of Faculty Self-Evaluations --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/11/30/schwyzer

Distinction between lies and bullshit
The gist of Frankfurt’s argument, as you may recall, is that pitching BS is a very different form of activity from merely telling a lie. And Marshall’s comments do somewhat echo the philosopher’s point. Frankfurt would agree that “garden variety lying” is saying one thing when you know another to be true. The liar operates within a domain that acknowledges the difference between accuracy and untruth. The bullshitter, in Frankfurt’s analysis, does not. In a sense, then, the other feature of Marshall’s statement would seem to fit. Bullshit involves something like “indifference to factual information in itself.”
Scott McLemee, "Piled Higher and Deeper," Inside Higher Ed, November 29, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/11/29/mclemee

Question
What is spoofing?

Answer
See http://www.paypalsucks.com/paypal-spoof-sites.shtml (this site has a great illustration of an eBay spoof)

Critical Update: Phishing and Spoof sites are reaching epidemic levels. You MUST learn about this right now and take action. While PayPal is most often the target of "spoofers," there has been a recent rash of spoof sites for almost every site on the net: PayPal, Ebay, US Bank, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Yahoo, Hotmail, Washington Mutual, Commerce Bank, and ANY ONLINE SITE. Whatever you do, DO NOT click on the link in the email! If you actually have an account at one of the companies mentioned, go there by opening your browser and typing in the correct URL yourself.

"Spoof sites" are web sites created by criminals to trick you into giving them your information. The sites are designed to copy the exact look and feel of the "real" site, in this case PayPal.com, but in fact, any information you enter will be going to criminals, not PayPal. These sites can be as simple as just copying the PayPal site via a "view, source" or built using advanced scripts so that for all intents and purposes, it looks and acts like the real PayPal site. After a thief builds such a site, they will usually email you (spam) saying things like "Your account is limited," or "We require additional information," or "Due to a security breach, we need to verify your information." This is known as "phishing." (Pronounced "fishing." To project yourself against "phishing" see our Spyware Solutions page.)

In the phishing email, there will be a link. It will look like https://www.PayPal.com/ ..., but in fact the email will hide the real address which will either be a string of numbers, or the PayPal.com URL followed by a bunch of cryptic looking information, or even something that resembles an email address. DO NOT CLICK on these links! It's like handing your car keys over to a chop-shop.

A fast-spreading variation on the long-running Sober worm is using extremely effective tactics to trick users.
"New Sober Worm Spoofs FBI, CIA ," by Gregg Keizer, InformationWeek, November 22, 2005 --- http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.159017&articleID=174401321

A new variation of the long-running Sober worm uses extremely effective tactics to trick users into infecting their PCs, security companies said Tuesday, including posing as messages from the FBI and CIA. Sober.w -- called Sober.x by Symantec, and Sober.z by Sophos and F-Secure -- is spreading rapidly, said security experts, fast enough for vendors to have amplified their threat levels Tuesday. Symantec raised its warning to a "3" in its 1 through 5 scale, the first time since the Zotob outbreak in August that the Cupertino, Calif.-based anti-virus vendor has taken a worm to that threat level.

"The rate of its spread is quite high," said Sam Curry, vice president of Computer Associates’ eTrust security group, who also called the raw number of infections "still relatively low, but growing."

U.K.-based MessageLabs disagreed with the second half of Curry's estimate, however. "The size of the attack indicates that this is a major offensive, certainly one of the largest in the last few months," spokesman Chaim Haas said. By mid-Tuesday, MessageLabs had stopped nearly 3 million copies of the worm from reaching its customers' inboxes.

Sophos, another U.K.-based anti-virus vendor, said that its tallies showed this Sober now accounting for 61 percent of all malware.

Sober.w is the most recent example of the two-year-old Sober family, and shares important characteristics with other variants, including bilingualism (messages arrive in either English or German), address hijacking, and mass-mailing.

Computer Associates' Curry believes the fast spread is due to better-than-average technical skills. "It's using slightly more effective techniques," said Curry, "including running three separate [SMTP] processes. That's becoming somewhat common, because the more simultaneous processes a worm runs, the more copies it can blitz out."

Others, however, credit the enticing bait dangled by the worm for its success. "I just don't see any technical reason why this has popped," said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering for Symantec's security response team. Instead, he points to the worm's social engineering tricks, which include posing as a message from the CIA or FBI (English), or the Bundeskriminalamt, the German national police agency most like the FBI (German).

These messages, with spoofed return addresses such as "mail@cia.gov" and "admin@fbi.gov," claim that "We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites," and demand that the user open the attached .zip file, which supposedly contains questions to answer.

The FBI, in fact, took the unusual step Tuesday of issuing a statement saying that the messages were bogus. "These e-mails did not come from the FBI," the agency said. "Recipients of this or similar solicitations should know that the FBI does not engage in the practice of sending unsolicited e-mails to the public in this manner."

"This variant of Sober may catch out the unwary as they open their e-mail inbox," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, in a statement Tuesday. "Every law-abiding citizen wants to help the police with their inquiries, and some will panic that they might be being falsely accused of visiting illegal websites and click on the unsolicited email attachment."

Sober's creator or creators are unknown, although suspicions have long placed them in Germany. Recently, the Bavarian state police (Bayerisches Landeskriminalamt) predicted the release of a minor Sober variant the next day, leading to conjecture by security analysts that the police may be on the trail of the hackers. No arrests have been made of anyone accused of writing a Sober worm. The FBI urged users who had received the Sober.w worm to report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Question
What is pharming and why is it the most dangerous form of phishing and spoofing?

Answer
Pharming is a type of spoofing that utilizes Trojans programs, worms, or other virus technologies that attack the Internet browser address bar and is more dangerous than mere phishing. When users type in a valid URL they are redirected to the criminals' websites instead of the intended valid website.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharming

Bob Jensen's threads on computer and network security are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection

"Two More Ways to Fight Viruses, for Free," by Rob Pegoraro, The Washington Post, November 28, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/PegoraroNov28

But you don't have to. For several years, two Czech software developers have offered free versions of their anti-virus programs to home users. These no-charge downloads don't offer every feature provided by McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., the two security developers whose programs come pre-installed on most Windows PCs. But when put to the same tests as software from the Big Two, they did the job almost as well and with less fuss.

Both of these freebies -- Avast 4 Home Edition, from Prague's Alwil Software, and AVG Free Edition, from Brno-based Grisoft Inc. -- can be installed only on home computers that aren't put to any business or commercial use. (Income from sales to businesses and organizations covers the cost of this exercise in Internet charity.)

These two programs share a few welcome traits. Both are relatively small downloads -- almost 10 megabytes for Avast, just under 15 for AVG -- that tout compatibility with systems as old as Windows 95. And both automatically download updates every day and allow quick manual updates.

With Avast ( http://www.avast.com/eng/free_virus_protectio.html ), the major selling point is a greater sense of security. After a refreshingly fast install, Avast automatically scans your computer for trouble before allowing Windows to boot up -- a helpful precaution if the computer may already be infected.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on computer and network security are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection

From Jim Mahar's blog on November 29, 2005 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

Most corporate fraud found by luck: study - Yahoo! News

Most corporate fraud found by luck: study - Yahoo! News: "Despite tough regulations aimed at improving corporate governance, financial fraud is still on the rise around the world, and most is still detected by chance, a study from auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) showed on Tuesday"

"For the roughly one-third which said they could quantify the cost of the fraud, the total losses exceeded $2 billion, or an average of $1.7 million per company.

"Economic crime remains difficult to detect, despite everybody's best efforts to invest in internal controls," said Steven Skalak, Global Investigations Leader at PWC.

The survey showed that the most common methods of finding out about financial fraud were still accidental, like calls to hotlines or tips from whistle-blower employees."

Why am I not surprised? Because if people want to hide their dishonesty, it is often easy to do. In class I occassionally use the Adelphia case where I hand out the footnotes that let to the Rigas' downfall.

Knowing that there was a problem, most people (myself included)could not tell for sure which footnote was the "smoking gun."

Bob Jensen's recent PowerPoint presentation on fraud is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudTrinidad.ppt

"Our accomplishments in Iraq make for long list," by Mary Laney, Chicago Sun-Times, November 28, 2005 --- http://www.suntimes.com/output/laney/cst-edt-laney28.html

In Iraq, we cornered the dictator's sadistic sons and sent them to their final judgment. We captured their father, the tyrant and mass-murdering Saddam Hussein, dragged him out of a rat-hole in the desert and are bringing him to justice before a jury of Iraqis. We've seen the populace of Iraq vote on a constitution -- even under threat of being beheaded by Islamofascists -- going to the polls some 70 percent strong. Schools are opening, stores are operating and soon the Iraqi people will vote again on a new government.

But here we get all the static, all the talking heads, and all the theories of what's happening over there. We hear politics instead of facts. We get editorials in place of reports. We have Congress tied up with some politicians making threats and insisting that we set a date to withdraw our troops or withdraw our troops immediately. We hear them making accusations that President Bush lied when he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction -- even though former President Bill Clinton said the same thing when he was in office, as did others in his party who now seem to be suffering from an acute case of amnesia regarding the recent past.

The supreme ayatollah of Iran is urging a speedy pullout of foreign troops from Iraq. Now, if former President Jimmy Carter were still in the White House, perhaps that would happen. Carter was the president, you'll recall, who wrote a nice letter to the Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran after his country took over the American Embassy and was holding Americans hostage inside. But there's a different president in the White House today. President Bush is not backing down in the war on terror -- despite all the noise and all the chatter and talking heads who are criticizing him.

The noise is so loud about the war, yet we're not hearing what we need to hear. We're not hearing from the soldiers, the generals, the boots on the ground. Why is this?

The soldiers are putting their lives on the line daily, yet we don't hear from them or about them in the myriad reports coming out of Baghdad. The Marines are making certain schools are free of bombs and children can go inside to learn. Yet we don't hear from them. We only hear of the fatalities of the war -- not the victories of the war. We see pictures of the soldiers who have given their lives, but no pictures of the heroes who are, daily, making progress over there.

There are those who would like to set a date by which we will withdraw American troops. That's like playing poker and telling which cards you have and when you intend to play them. It doesn't work in war.

Continued in article

"The Missing Element Of Blame For Ignorance On Iraq," Captain's Quarters, November 28, 2005 --- http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/

The Washington Post carries an interesting argument from Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institute on the divergence of military and civilian opinion on the war in Iraq, a separation that he calls dangerous in the long run for American political discourse. O'Hanlon acknowledges that the support for the war in Iraq among military personnel goes far beyond the normal top-level cheeriness down to at least the mid-level officer corps, and wonders why that doesn't translate to better civilian support:

In recent months a civil-military divide has emerged in the United States over the war in Iraq. Unlike much of the Iraq debate between Democrats and Republicans, it is over the present and the future rather than the past. Increasingly, civilians worry that the war is being lost, or at least not won. But the military appears as confident as ever of ultimate victory. This difference of opinion does not amount to a crisis in national resolve, and it will not radically affect our Iraq policy in the short term. But it is insidious and dangerous nonetheless. To the extent possible, the gap should be closed. ... The military's enthusiasm about the course of the war may be natural among those four-star officers in leadership positions, for it has largely become their war. Their careers have become so intertwined with the campaign in Iraq that truly independent analysis may be difficult. But it is striking that most lower-ranking officers seem to share the irrepressible optimism of their superiors. In talking with at least 50 officers this year, I have met no more than a handful expressing any real doubt about the basic course of the war.

Continued in article

"Meet the Press," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, November 17, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/11/17/mclemee

All of this (parts not quoted here) is a roundabout way of framing the virtues of Danny Schechter’s The Death of Media, as well as its limitations. It is a new title in the Melville Manifestoes series published by Melville House, an independent press mentioned here on Tuesday. Schechter, one of the first producers for CNN and a winner of two Emmys for his work on the ABC program “20/20,” has been a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. He is also the author of a book called The More You Watch, the Less You Know (1999), which I haven’t read — though reportedly it did upset Bill O’Reilly, which seems like recommendation enough.

Schechter, then, is someone who brings tacit knowledge aplenty to the work of commenting on the state of the media. Last year, in his documentary WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception, he did more than reconstruct how the print and electronic media alike fell into line with the administration’s justifications for war. In that, he drew in part on a piece of scholarly research that certainly does deserve the closest and most shame-faced attention by the entire journalistic profession, the study Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Susan D. Moeller, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Maryland at College Park.
(The full text is available here --- http://www.cissm.umd.edu/documents/WMDstudy_full.pdf )

But Schechter went a step further — zeroing in on moments when reporters and editors worried aloud that changes in the mass media were eroding the difference between practicing journalism and providing coverage. That distinction is not a very subtle one, but it’s largely missing from the conceptual universe of, say, cultural studies.

“Providing coverage” is rather like what Woody Allen said about life: Most of it is just showing up. The cameras record what is happening, or the reporter takes down what was said — and presto, an event is “covered.” The quantity of tacit knowledge so mobilized is not large.

By contrast, any effort to “practice journalism” involves (among other things) asking questions, following hunches, noticing the anomalous, and persisting until someone accidentally says something meaningful. There is more to it than providing stenography to power. It involves certain cognitive skills — plus a sense of professional responsibility.

In his manifesto, Schechter runs through the familiar and depressing statistics showing a decline of public confidence in the mainstream media, increasing percentages of “infotainment” to hard news, and steady downsizing of reporting staff at news organizations.

One public-opinion poll conducted for the Pew Center found that “as 70 percent of the people asked expressed dissatisfaction with the news media.” And the same figure emerged from a survey of people working in the news media: about 70 percent, as Schechter puts it, “feel the same way as their customers.” He quotes Hunter S. Thompson’s evocative characterization of the television industry as “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

To all of this, Schechter offers the alternative of ... uh, Wikipedia?

Well, “citizen journalism” anyway — through which “the ideas, observations, and energy of ordinary people” will serve as “not only a way of democratizing the media but also enlivening it.” He points to “the meteoric growth of the blogosphere and the emergence of thousands of video activists,” plus the contribution of scholars to “first rate publishing projects,” including “a new online, non-commercial encyclopedia that taps the expertise of researchers and writers worldwide.”

Well, it’s probably not fair to judge the possibilities for citizen journalism by the actual state of public-access cable TV — or any given Wikipedia entry written by a follower of Lyndon LaRouche. (Besides, are either all that much worse than MSNBC?) But something is missing from Schechter’s optimistic scenario, in any case.

It is now much easier to publish and broadcast than ever before. In other words, the power to cover and event or a topic has increased. But the skills necessary to foster meaningful discussion are not programmed into the software. They have to be cultivated.

That’s where people from academe come in. The most substantial interventions in shaping mass media probably won’t come from conference papers and journal articles, but in the classroom — by giving the future citizen journalist access, not just to technology, but to cognitive tools.

Congratulations to William and Mary University
The Mason School of Business at the College of William and Mary made history this month when both undergraduate and graduate teams took first place for their divisions in the Deloitte Tax Case Study Competition held in Orlando, Florida. William and Mary is the first university to place first in both divisions . . . The Deloitte Tax Case Study Competition is an annual competition testing tax problem-solving skills, requiring each team to complete a complex hypothetical case study in a five-hour time period, testing the students’ time management and teamwork skills as well as their tax topic knowledge. Taxes represent the largest expenditure on the income statements of most companies, according to a statement from the Mason School of Business.
"History Made at Deloitte Tax Case Study Competition," AccountingWeb, December 1, 2005 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101530

"Job Losses in Cities Mounting But Accounting Firms Prosper," AccountingWeb, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=101526

Federal programs sponsored by both the Clinton and Bush administrations over a period of years have failed to stop the loss of jobs in the nation’s cities, according to a Harvard University study reported by the Associated Press. Nearly half of the country’s 82 largest municipalities lost jobs from 1995 to 2003 in comparison with surrounding metropolitan areas, only one of which lost jobs. Michael Porter, the Harvard business professor who conducted the study said “It’s sobering. . . . It suggests that there are relatively few inner cities that are thriving in the sense of job growth.” Porter’s team found that only 10 cities added more jobs than the surrounding metropolitan areas. Cities that lost jobs lost them faster than the surrounding areas, the AP reports.

In a separate analysis, the AP found that most of the inner cities that received federal tax incentives under empowerment zone and renewal community programs lost jobs. In fact, the AP analysis found that the best-performing cities were not part of these federal programs. Experts agree that tax incentives alone will not revive the cities, the AP report says. Municipalities need to improve services and schools, build affordable housing and enact reasonable business regulations, Porter told the AP.

Continued in article

From Paul Pacter's IAS Plus, December 1, 2005 --- http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm

The US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has published a report summarising issues identified in implementing Auditing Standard No. 2 An Audit of Internal Control over Financial Reporting Performed in Conjunction with an Audit of Financial Statements (AS2). The PCAOB's monitoring revealed that some audits "were not as effective or efficient as Auditing Standard No. 2 intends and as the Board expects they can be in the future, given the benefits of experience, adequate time and resources." The report cites specific examples of inefficiency and ineffectiveness. It also explains and clarifies certain aspects of AS2 and amplifies certain guidance it has previously issued. Click for: PCAOB Press Release (PDF 58k) PCAOB Report (PDF 277k)

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting and auditing reforms are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudProposedReforms.htm

From the Scout Report on November 18, 2005

NOAA Paleoclimatology Program [pdf] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html 

It is a tall order to try to study even the recent past, so visitors should find the research accomplishments of the staff members at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Paleoclimatology Program quite impressive. Their work revolves around examining different aspects of the natural world, such as ice cores and lake sediments, in order to understand climate variability over a wide range of time periods. Visitors to the homepage will find themselves presented with a clickable interface that presents information on such topical areas as paleoceans, caves, and ice core analysis. Perhaps one of the real highlights here is the “Paleo Perspectives” area, which contains three different well-written documents that offer the paleoclimatological perspective on drought in the North American historical record and abrupt climate change in the historical past.

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The Megiddo Expedition http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/megiddo/ 

Located at a site that is of immense historical importance, the excavations at Megiddo in Israel have drawn researchers and archaeologists for over one hundred years. In the ancient world, Megiddo was a nexus of what may be termed “international” trade, as caravans of merchants came through from as far as Asia and Africa. Of course, there are a number of other reasons the site is tremendously important, including the fact that the Egyptians first began their empire-building ways when in the 15th century BCE they moved to conquer Canaan here. This site, developed by Tel Aviv University, allows visitors to explore a virtual recreation of this ancient site and to learn about the work of previous excavation on the site which have provided new insights into the Bronze Age. Interested parties may also want to read the current and back issues of their newsletter, “Revelations”, and learn about how they may join an upcoming excavation on the site.

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Digital Past http://www.digitalpast.org 

The Land of Lincoln is certainly not lacking in organizations who seek to document the rich history of the area, whether it be the many innovations in farm technology that have arisen out of the creative minds of local inventors or the gritty urban landscapes of the Second City’s nooks and crannies. Fortunately for those with a penchant for these subjects, there is the Digital Past website, which began in 1998 with a partnership with the North Suburban Library System in Wheeling, Illinois. Currently, the digital archive contains over 35,000 items (such as postcards, architectural plans, and personal letters) culled from close to 30 institutions in the area. Visitors may want to take a look at some of their thematic collections of digitized objects and related materials, such as those devoted to the architecture of the North Shore community of Glencoe or a history of the city of Park Ridge. Of course, visitors should feel most welcome to search the complete archive of materials here, which they may do by looking through a list of cities, organizations, and proper names.

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Weather Watcher 5.6.1 http://www.singerscreations.com/AboutWeatherWatcher.asp 

While one can’t do much to change weather conditions, there are certainly a number of fine ways to stay more than adequately informed about this all-so common topic of casual conversation. This latest offering allows users to retrieve the current conditions, hourly forecast, detailed forecast, and weather maps for over 77,000 cities across the world. The application can also be set to automatically retrieve weather data at set intervals or to have a weather map set as desktop wallpaper. This version of Weather Watcher is compatible with all computers running Windows 98 and newer.

Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption --- http://www.fieldmuseum.org/pompeii/

Study: Radical Islam Emerging In The Workplace In France
As France grapples with the rise of Islamic extremism abroad and at home, those are snapshots of what might be an emerging trend: radical Islam in the private sector. The line between legitimate religious expression and extremist subversion can be blurry. But a recent study by a local think tank paints a picture of rising fundamentalism in the workplace, ranging from proselytizing to pressure tactics to criminal activities. In companies such as supermarket chains in immigrant-heavy areas, for instance, militant recruiters cause workplace tensions by imposing fundamentalist ideas on co-workers and pressuring managers to boycott certain products, the study says. On a more sinister level, the study asserts that Islamic networks are trying to establish a presence in companies involved in sectors such as security, cargo, armored cars, courier services and transportation. Once they gain a foothold, operatives raise funds for militants via theft, embezzlement and robbery, the study says. "Parallel to these sect-like risks, the spread of criminal practices has been detected in the heart of companies [with] two goals: crime using Islam as a pretext; and in addition, local financing of terrorism," concludes the study by the Center for Intelligence Research in Paris.
"Study: Radical Islam Emerging In The Workplace In France," The Hartford-Courant, November 28, 2005 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1529729/posts

From Paula regarding upside-down XMAS trees

In case you hadn't heard about them, see:

O Tannenbaum, You're Upside-Down http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051126/ap_on_fe_st/upside_down_christmas 

Or listen to the program from NPR: Demand Grows for Upside-Down Christmas Trees http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5006258 

Here are the two" Most Read Articles" on NY Times.com for the month of November:

1) 100 Notable Books of the Year Published online: November 23, 2005 The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 5, 2004 --- http://snipurl.com/RankOneNov

2) Saying Goodbye California Sun, Hello Midwest By MOTOKO RICH and DAVID LEONHARDT, Published: November 7, 2005 After a decade of soaring home prices, a growing number of people are leaving California for other parts of the U.S. --- http://snipurl.com/RankTwoNov

Forwarded by a good friend who, like my Erika, believes in Angels

This was written by a Hospice of Metro Denver physician

I just had one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and wanted to share it with my family and dearest friends:

I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke and splutter and die - I barely managed to coast, crusing into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow truck. It wouldn't even turn over. Before I could make the call, I saw a woman walking out of the "quickie mart" building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell into a Gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay.

When I got there, it looked more like she had been overcome by sobs than that she had fallen; she was a young woman who looked really haggard with dark circles under her eyes. She dropped something as I helped her up, and I picked it up to give it to her. It was a nickel.

At that moment, everything came into focus for me: the crying woman, the ancient Suburban crammed full of stuff with 3 kids in the back (1 in a car seat), and the gas pump reading $4.95.

I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help, and she just kept saying "I don't want my kids to see me crying," so we stood on the other side of the pump from her car. She said she was driving to California and that things were very hard for her right now. So I asked, "And you were praying?" That made her back away from me a little, but I assured her I was not a crazy person and said, "He heard you, and He sent me."

I took out my card and swiped it through the card reader on the pump so she could fill up her car completely, and while it was fueling, walked to the next door McDonald's and bought 2 big bags of food, some gift certificates for more, and a big cup of coffee. She gave the food to the kids in the car, who attacked it like wolves, and we stood by the pump eating fries and talking a little.

She told me her name, and that she lived in Kansas City. Her boyfriend left 2 months ago and she had not been able to make ends meet. She knew she wouldn't have money to pay rent Jan 1, and finally in desperation had finally called her parents, with whom she had not spoken in about 5 years. They lived in California and said she could come live with them and try to get on her feet there.

So she packed up everything she owned in the car She told the kids they were going to California for Christmas, but not that they were going to live there.

I gave her my gloves, a little hug and said a quick prayer with her for safety on the road. As I was walking over to my car, she said, "So, are you like an angel or something?"

This definitely made me cry. I said, "Sweetie, at this time of year angels are really busy, so sometimes God uses regular people."

It was so incredible to be a part of someone else's miracle. And of course, you guessed it, when I got in my car it started right away and got me home with no problem. I'll put it in the shop tomorrow to check, but I suspect the mechanic won't find anything wrong.
 

When I was a first-year student over 40 years ago at Iowa State University, one of my Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brothers was Bob Bartley.  Bob was dedicated to journalism, free people, and free markets from get-go.

"The Wall Street Journal to Honor Robert L. Bartley with Fellowship Program and Lecture Series," Business Wire, November 29, 2005

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2005--The Wall Street Journal today announced plans for an annual lecture and fellowship program to honor the contributions and memory of former Editorial Page Editor, Robert L. Bartley. Mr. Bartley, whose career at the Journal spanned nearly 40 years--including fully three decades as editorial page editor and editor--died in December 2003.

Starting in 2006, the Journal will inaugurate the Robert L. Bartley Lecture, to be delivered annually by someone whose work and ideas comport with Mr. Bartley's philosophy of "free people, free markets."

"Throughout his 30 years as the Journal's editorial page editor and editor, Bob Bartley inspired principled and original thinking that changed and shaped the society in which we all live," Wall Street Journal Publisher Karen Elliott House said.

Also beginning in 2006, the Journal will inaugurate the Robert L. Bartley Fellowship Program under the stewardship of The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The fellowships, consisting of paid internships of up to six months, will be provided to young thinkers and writers whose views are broadly consistent with Mr. Bartley's philosophy and who aspire to careers in journalism. As many as four such fellows will be selected each year through an application process that will be judged by senior members of the Journal's editorial board. Fellows will work as writers and editors on the editorial page in the U.S., Europe or Asia, as well as at the Far Eastern Economic Review. The fellowships will help to perpetuate not only Mr. Bartley's memory, but also the principles and priorities to which he devoted his distinguished career.

"Bob devoted attention to teaching and motivating talented young people, many of whom have gone on to careers in journalism at the Journal and elsewhere. The Bartley Fellowships are consistent with that legacy," Ms. House said.

"The best way to honor Bob Bartley's legacy is to continue to promote the principles he believed in and the journalism he practiced," said Paul A. Gigot, editorial page editor, The Wall Street Journal. "We think that fellowships for aspiring journalists and an annual Bartley Lecture will help to carry Bob's belief in 'free people, free markets' to future generations."

Mr. Bartley achieved several honors during his long tenure at the Journal, including a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1980 and, shortly before his death, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In awarding that medal, President Bush cited Mr. Bartley as "one of the most influential journalists in American history."

If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
Bill Lyon as quoted in InformationWeek Newsletter, December 6, 2005

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Mark Twain as quoted in a recent email message from Bruce Lubich

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Charles Caleb Colton as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-12-05-05.htm

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges

SonyBMG's disastrous use of rootkit software has taught us a valuable lesson:
we're too trusting of commercial software.
John Gartner in MIT's Technology Review, December 7, 2005 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com//wtr_15971,1,p1.html?trk=nl

Certainly, the accounting profession, our firm included, has taken some shots from regulators and others over the last several years, and I'm here to tell you that we deserved some of those shots. I do feel somewhat fortunate, though, that my profession has faced some very tough times, and not only survived, but emerged better for the experience. The times have taught us the dangers of being arrogant...of not listening. We have been reminded of the importance of engaging with others, not just with companies and boards, but with policymakers, opinion leaders, academicians, and the investor community. While what we have been through has been difficult, it has been to a positive end because it has encouraged us to do some soul-searching--as individuals and as a profession--to rediscover our roots. We have had time to ask ourselves, as accounting professionals, why we do what we do...why it matters. What is our purpose and how does that guide our decisions? These are important questions in defining the culture of any organization.
Jim Turley, CEO of Ernst & Young, December 1, 2005 --- http://eyaprimo.ey.com/natlmktgaprimoey/Attachments/Attachment42550.pdf
Bob Jensen's threads on E&Y are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Ernst

Accounting-industry regulators [on Wednesday] acknowledged that auditors and public companies had faced "enormous challenges" in complying with strict new governance measures but expressed confidence the process would become easier with time.
SmartPros --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x50826.xml

In any case, the real question is whether 404 (Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) ), despite the expense, has been good for corporate America. To me, the answer is an unambiguous yes.
Joseph Nocera, "For All Its Cost, Sarbanes Law Is Working," The New York Times, December 4, 2005

Research: SOX Costs to Exceed $6 Billion in 2006.
SmartPros --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x50796.xml

Who put Porter Goss in charge of intelligence?
Al Qaida leaders Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi haven't been found 'primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them ...
CIA director Porter Goss said in the interview broadcast November 29, 2005 on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Who put him in charge of Arizona State University's student newspaper?
I'm all dangerous now. Man, I haven't gotten laid so much in my life as I did after 9/11 . . . Girls always confuse sympathy with sex. And guys are always up for it. And I'm not gonna say no.
Yaser Alamoodi --- http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2004-10-07/culture/speakeasy.html
Jensen Comment:  The Opinion Journal noted that Yaser Alamoodi, the Saudi president of Arizona State University's student government, is urging a ban on students posing for Playboy and similar magazines on the ground that ASU's image as a party school is harmful to its academic reputation --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007608#shariah

U.S. employers increased their payrolls during November by the largest number of jobs since before Hurricane Katrina. Nonfarm payrolls climbed by 215,000 jobs after a downwardly revised 44,000-job increase in October, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate held steady at 5.0% last month.
Wall Street Journal Newsletter, December 2, 2005

Economy Sends Out Healthy Signals:  Factory Activity Is Robust --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113344383465111272.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

One key reason the U.S. economy has outperformed other industrialized nations, and exceeded its long-run average growth rate during the past two years, is the tax cut of 2003. By reducing taxes on investment, the U.S. boosted growth, which in turn created new jobs that replace those that are lost as the old economy dies. Ireland is also a beautiful example of the power of tax cuts to boost growth and lift living standards. Economic growth is the only true shock absorber for an economy in transition. To minimize the pain of technological globalization and address the anxiety that these forces are creating, free-market policies must be followed. While tremendous pressures are building to increase government involvement in the economy, it is important that the U.S. stay the course that brought it out of recession.
Brian S. Wesbury, "Pouting Pundits of Pessimism:  Every bit of good economic news gives them reason for despair," The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2005 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007622
Jensen Comment:
Good News:  Tax cuts and economic growth keep the U.S. economy in the lead for now.
Bad News:  Tax cuts and economic growth only delay the inevitable fall --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm

This is the Alfred E. Neuman, "What, me worry?" school of public relations. It doesn't seem quite appropriate for a major war.
Dannel Henninger --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110007623

An atheist group at the University of Texas at San Antonio is offering free (soft) porn in exchange for Bibles.  Now's your chance for a free eyeful, especially if you've collected a room full of Gideon Bibles swiped from hotel rooms over the years just hoping an offer like this would one day come along --- http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/02/atheist_group_offers.html

Food crisis feared as fertile land runs out
New maps show that the Earth is rapidly running out of fertile land and that food production will soon be unable to keep up with the world's burgeoning population. The maps reveal that more than one third of the world's land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison combined satellite land cover images with agricultural census data from every country in the world to create detailed maps of global land use. Each grid square was 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) across and showed the most prevalent land use in that square, such as forest, grassland or ice.
Kate Ravilious, "Food crisis feared as fertile land runs out," The Guardian, December 6, 2005 --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1659467,00.html

Samaritan's Purse for International Relief --- http://www.samaritanspurse.com/
Some items mentioned in The Opinion Journal Newsletter on November 29, 2005 with respect to what $1,700 will buy:

- Given 170 mosquito nets treated with natural insecticide to protect children in developing countries as they sleep from mosquitos who may infect them with deadly malaria, encephalitis or dengue fever. (Malaria alone kills one African child every 30 seconds.)

- Helped 113 poor children to learn to read and write in places like Afghanistan and in the isolated tribal areas of Thailand and Vietnam.

- Sent life-saving food for two months to 48 refugee families who are near starvation in places like Darfur.

- For a month, cared for 42 orphans who have AIDS in Africa and Asia. (Sixteen million orphans have AIDS and the number is increasing.)

- Helped to build a school for 42 impoverished children in the remote villages of South Asia or war-ravaged towns of East Africa.

- Supplied 22 thirsty families in the Third World with clean water from new freshwater wells, filters and purification projects. (At least two million people, mostly children, die annually from contaminated water or waterborne diseases.)

- Transformed 22 lives with the gift of a wheelchair for poverty-stricken and disabled people living in Latin America, Africa or Asia.

- Rescued eight children from bondage and abuse by human traffickers from Africa to Southeast Asia to Latin America.

- For another $300, saved a child's life by buying an airline ticket to fly a child to North America for life-saving heart surgery through the Children's Heart Project.

Darfur Drawn: The Conflict in Darfur Through Children’s Eyes --- http://hrw.org/photos/2005/darfur/drawings/

Many Colleges Ignore New SAT Writing Test
The University of Chicago, Ohio State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions say scores on the writing test won't figure into their admissions decisions this year. "We don't know what they mean," says Ted O'Neill, Chicago's dean of admissions. "We don't know what they predict." . . . But some admissions officers say the essay's predictive value hasn't been established, that it tests a narrow skill -- writing quickly -- that isn't core to a college education. They also fear it can easily be coached and thus confer benefits to wealthy applicants. Some schools are giving less consideration to the writing than to other sections of the test, or counting it on a case-by-case basis if it helps tip the scales. "We are using it with a really skeptical eye," says Jess Lord, dean of admission and financial aid at Haverford College in Haverford, Pa. Mr. Lord says his office will consider the writing score but won't give it much weight if it's inconsistent with the rest of a student's application.
Charles Forelle, "Many Colleges Ignore New SAT Writing Test:  Essay May Not Predict Academic Success, Critics Say; When the Results Can Help," The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2005; Page D1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113392427118515919.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

Convergence of foreign and domestic accounting rules could catch some U.S. companies by surprise
Although many differences remain between U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS), they are being eliminated faster than anyone, even Herz or Tweedie, could have imagined. In April, FASB and the IASB agreed that all major projects going forward would be conducted jointly. That same month, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that, as soon as 2007, it might allow foreign companies to use IFRS to raise capital in the United States, eliminating the current requirement that they reconcile their statements to U.S. GAAP. The change is all the more remarkable given that the IASB was formed only four years ago, and has rushed to complete 25 new or revamped standards in time for all 25 countries in the European Union to adopt IFRS by this year. By next year, some 100 countries will be using IFRS. "We reckon it will be 150 in five years," marvels Tweedie. "That leaves only 50 out."
Tim Reason, "The Narrowing GAAP:  The convergence of foreign and domestic accounting rules could catch some U.S. companies by surprise," CFO Magazine December 01, 2005 ---
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/5193385/c_5243641?f=magazine_coverstory

"Princeton University Says Campus Event On Terrorism is 'Too Inflammatory'," U.S. Newswire, December 4, 2005 --- http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=57581

PRINCETON, N.J. Dec. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In clear violation of free speech, Princeton University has cancelled a speaking event by three former Middle East terrorists because it says that the use of the word "terrorist" in the promotion for the event is "too inflammatory" the Walid Shoebat Foundation said today.

The speakers will still hold a press conference near the campus on Thursday, Dec. 8, at 6 p.m. The location will be announced in an updated media release the morning of the press conference.

"We believe Princeton is creating red tape to stop the event," said Keith Davies, the executive director of the Walid Shoebat Foundation.

The event organizers planned to bring Walid Shoebat, Ibrahim Abdallah and Zak Anani to the Ivy League school to lecture on the terrorist mindset and how they were indoctrinated into terrorism.

Walid Shoebat is from a prominent family in Bethlehem. After joining the PLO, he took part in numerous acts of violence against Israel including the bombing of a bank. He was also involved in the attempted lynching of an Israeli soldier. Feature stories on Mr. Shoebat have aired on the BBC, FOX News, MSNBC, CBS and have been published in the Telegraph and Calgary Sun.

Zak Anani was a leader of the most notorious Arab gangs prior to Lebanese civil war. Before he age 16, he killed numerous Arabs in gang warfare and hated the West.

Ibrahim Abadallah was born and raised in Dearborn, Mich. to a Jordanian father. At 17, he immigrated to Israel, where he joined the PLO. He injured many Israelis while rioting and throwing Molotov cocktails at them.

Insurgents kidnapping their allies:  Seems a little like dimwitted accountants that steal the accounts payable
The kidnappers, who call themselves the Swords of Truth, said the four would die on Thursday unless Iraqi prisoners were released. The video was aired on Arab television station al-Jazeera.  Of course, as the Guardian notes, the hostages, who represent an outfit called Christian Peacemaker Teams, were already on the same side as the terrorists: "The group had been campaigning on behalf of a number of detainees held by the US in Iraqi jails." James Robbins http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200512050823.asp  notes on National Review Online that kidnapping their allies seems an awfully foolish approach.
Opinion Journal, December 5, 2005

Safety Tips for Holiday Season Lighting --- http://www.ul.com/

E-Tailers Try New Holiday Tricks
It's not only a merry Christmas on the Web this year, it's also an innovative one. Forrester Research Inc. (FORR ) says online retail sales this holiday will surge 25%, to $18 billion. The increasingly strong profitability of Net commerce is giving retailers the chance to experiment with a stockingful of new sales and marketing tactics. They're tapping into technologies such as blogs, social networking, and wireless phones to draw shoppers to their sites. "There are a host of new ways to reach out that are more innovative," says Forrester analyst Carrie Johnson.
"E-Tailers Try New Holiday Tricks:  They're tapping blogs, social-networking sites, and GPS technology to lure shoppers," Business Week, December 12, 2005 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963120.htm?chan=tc?link_position=link1

What is happening to the discipline of English in modern academe?
Instead, there’s a strong tendency, as Louis Menand puts it, toward “a predictable and aimless eclecticism.” A young English professor who has a column under the name Thomas Hart Benton in The Chronicle of Higher Education puts it this way: “I can’t even figure out what ‘English’ is anymore, after ten years of graduate school and five years on the tenure track. I can’t understand eighty percent of PMLA, the discipline’s major journal. I can’t talk to most people in my own profession, not that we have anything to say to each other. We don’t even buy one another’s books; apparently they are not worth reading. We complain about how awful everything is, how there’s no point to continuing, but nobody has any idea what to do next.” The English department mainly survives as a utilitarian administrative conceit, while the English profession operates largely as a hiring and credentialing extension of that conceit . . . One of the noblest and most disciplinarily discrete things we can do in the classroom is to take those ontological drives seriously, to suggest ways in which great works of art repeatedly honor and clarify them as they animate them through character, style, and point of view. One of the least noble and most self-defeating things we can do is avert our student’s eye from the peculiar, delicate, and enlightening transaction I’m trying to describe here. When we dismiss this transaction as merely “moral” — or as proto-religious — rather than political, when we rush our students forward to formulated political beliefs, we fail them and we fail literature. Humanistic education is a slow process of assimilation, without any clear real-world point to it. We should trust our students enough to guide them lightly as they work their way toward the complex truths literature discloses.
Margaret Soltan, "No Field, No Future," Inside Higher Ed, December 6, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/06/soltan 

Where does Palm go from here now that it's been beaten down by competition?
Indeed, Palm couldn't keep generating the heat. Its dominance vanished as devices such as the Handspring Visor and Research In Motion's Blackberry entered the market. And it wasn’t just hardware that posed a threat: Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and other PC makers chose to license Microsoft's competing PocketPC operating system instead of the Palm OS for their handheld devices. In March 2001, Palm announced that it would sell the m500 and color m505 handhelds, featuring expansion slots for adding peripherals, but the devices were delayed by several months. Palm had prematurely announced the products “to steal some thunder” from rising handheld competitor Handspring, according to Todd Kort, a principal analyst with Gartner. (Handspring was founded by former Palm executives Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky.)
John Gartner, "Palm's Life Line What can Palm's tumultuous history tell us about the future of the mobile device market?" MIT's Technology Review, December 7, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com//wtr_15973,1,p1.html?trk=nl

So why am I not skinny after decades of social drinking?
People who average around a drink a day are 54-percent less likely to be obese than their non-drinking counterparts, says a report out Monday in the journal BMC Public Health. It found half of moderate drinkers were in the normal weight range, compared with only one-quarter of the teetotalers.
Dan Olmsted, "HealthWrap: Alcohol gets mixed reviews," Science Daily, December 7, 2005 --- http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20051205-15250500-bc-healthwrap.xml

Marquette suspends dental student for blog comments
A dental student at Marquette University has been suspended for the rest of the academic year and ordered to repeat a semester after a committee of professors, administrators and students determined that he violated professional conduct codes when he posted negative comments about unnamed students and professors on a blog . . . The focus of the hearing, Taylor said, were half a dozen postings including one describing a professor as "a (expletive) of a teacher" and another that described 20 classmates as having the "intellectual/maturity of a 3-year-old."
Megan Twohey, "Marquette suspends dental student for blog comments," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 5, 2005 --- http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec05/375555.asp

Also see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/06/kentucky

Yet another example of how fraud works in high finance
It was a prudent move. While LandAmerica CFO G. William Evans says the review turned up nothing irregular at the Richmond, Virginia-based company, it appears some pension consultants have been recommending money managers based on self-interest, and not on the needs of their clients. Indeed, a study of 24 pension consultants conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission found that more than half of the advisory firms earned money from both retirement-plan clients and money-management funds. According to the SEC study, issued in May, most of these pension advisers had relationships with unaffiliated broker-dealers or operated their own broker-dealers — thus providing themselves with an easy way to receive indirect payments from money managers.
Randy Myers, "Games They Play:  The other shoe has yet to drop on pension consultants' possible conflicts of interest. But companies can't afford to wait," CFO Magazine, December 1, 2005 --- http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/5193393/c_5243641?f=magazine_alsoinside

Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the Core" threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

In particular, the "Pension Fund Consulting Racket" is discussed at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#PensionFundConsulting

How much can a university do to become one of the Top 20 in the nation?
In 1997, political leaders in Kentucky embraced a campaign to turn the state’s flagship campus, the University of Kentucky, into one of the top 20 public research universities in the country by 2020. Legislators and the governor at the time, Paul Patton, argued that the state could not transform its economy and better educate its citizens without significantly strengthening the research and education enterprise at its leading university. Skeptics scoffed, noting that dozens of universities covet spots in the top 20, when, as the name suggests, it only has room for 20.
Doug Lederman, "Angling for the Top 20," Inside Higher Ed, December 6, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/06/kentucky

Studies of the aging process among employees
The Quest for Human Longevity: Science, Business, and Public Policy
by Lewis D. Solomon
(Transactions Publishers, 2006) --- http://www.innovationwatch.com/books/bks_0765803003.htm

Airline Passenger Complaints Rise Sharply:  What airlines have the most versus fewest complaints?
So far this year, US Airways has the most complaints per passenger, while Southwest Airlines has the fewest. The biggest complaint has been flight problems, which includes cancellations, delays and missed connections. In October, for example, the number of canceled flights increased nearly 52% to 10,475, from 6,895 canceled trips in October 2004. Mishandled baggage reports increased as well, rising nearly 22% to 239,452 for the month, compared with 196,847 mishandled bags a year earlier.
Scott McCartney, "Airline Passenger Complaints Rise Sharply:  Total Number Jumps 29%, With Flight Cancellations And Delays Topping List," The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2005; Page D1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113382545441814515.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

Animal rights activists probably won't like this one
Police have collared the latest in technology by kitting out their firearms dogs with cameras. New recruits to the Northumbria Police force are German shepherds Sammy, five, and three-year-old Zara. They have been trained to help during armed sieges and wear miniature television cameras with transmitters fitted to their heads or harnesses. It means they can search buildings and relay the information back to officers. The Fido camera system also has infra-red lights, which means pictures can be provided in darkness. Pictures are seen on a receiver unit carried by the dog handler who can watch the progress of the...
BBC News, December 4, 2005 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1534243/posts

But this one about dogs is a laughing matter
Sounds of Dog's 'Laugh' Calms Other Pooches Researchers: Canine Laugh Is Long Loud Panting Sound Dec. 4, 2005 — - Researchers at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service in Washington state say sometimes a bark is just a bark -- but a long, loud panting sound has real meaning. They say the long, loud pant is the sound of a dog laughing, and it has a direct impact on the behavior of other dogs. "What we found is that it had a calming or soothing effect on the dogs," said Patricia Simonet, an animal behaviorist in Spokane who has...
"Sounds of Dog's 'Laugh' Calms Other Pooches Researchers: Canine Laugh Is Long Loud Panting Sound," ABC News, December 4, 2005 --- http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=1370911

Intel Announces Chip Technology Breakthrough Using New Materials
Intel and QinetiQ researchers have jointly demonstrated an enhancement-mode transistor using indium antimonide (chemical symbol: InSb) to conduct electrical current. Transistors control the flow of information/electrical current inside a chip. The prototype transistor is much faster and consumes less power than previously announced transistors. Intel anticipates using this new material to complement silicon, further extending Moore's Law.
"Intel Announces Chip Technology Breakthrough Using New Materials," Yahoo News, December 7, 2005 --- http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/051207/20051207005320.html?.v=1

Heavy NCAA Penalties for Georgia Tech

"NCAA Puts Georgia Tech and the U. of South Carolina on Probation for Violations of Academic Rules," by Rebecca Aronauer and Brad Wolverton, The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 2, 2005, Page A34.

In November the NCAA put Georgia Tech on probation for two years and stripped the institution of several scholarships after discovering that academic officials had inadvertently allowed 17 ineligible athletes to compete over a six-year period.

Eleven of the athletes were football players, including some who had received all-conference or all-American honors.  The other students participated in men's and women's track and field, and women's swimming.  Six of the 17 athletes got a D in a class but were still permitted to compete in athletic events.

The NCAA's Division I Committee on Infractions said the institution had displayed a lack of institutional control by failing to properly train academic officials and by not conducting a thorough investigation into possible rules violations.

The committee also said that Georgia Tech had received a substantial competitive advantage by allowing the ineligible athletes to compete.

Because of the violations, Georgia Tech must forfeit the wins its football team had in games from the 1998-99 to 2004-5 seasons in which any of the 11 ineligible athletes competed.

The university must also expunge all individual track and swimming athletes' results from contests in which they competed.

Georgia Tech is considering an appeal of the ruling.

Recall an earlier tidbit:
Coach Takes the Test
More evidence that many universities are losing (or never had) quality control on athlete admissions and grading
The National Collegiate Athletic Association punished Texas Christian University’s men’s track program on Thursday for a set of rules violations that included some of the most egregious and unusual examples of academic fraud in recent history. They included an instance in which a former assistant coach took a final examination alongside a track athlete — with the consent of the faculty member in the course — and then swapped his version of the test with the athlete’s, allowing him to pass.
Doug Lederman, "NCAA Finds Fraud at TCU," Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/23/tcu

Bob Jensen's threads on athletics controversies in higher education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Athletics

Generic No-Name Lighted Tree at Auburn University
Holiday season brings out campus multiculturalism By Ellen Burke Staff Reporter December 07, 2005 As the sun sets on the Capstone, simple white lights shine from a tree in front of the Rose Administration Building as workers assemble the final branches. But there's a mystery about the tree - it has no name. Across the nation, debates rage about whether trees on public property should be designated as Christmas trees or as "holiday" trees, incorporating other religious holidays into the meaning of the tree. The UA tree hasn't been named and won't be, UA spokeswoman Cathy Andreen said. "If people...
The Crimson White, December 7, 2005 --- http://www.cw.ua.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/12/07/43968b2a9a07a

From The Washington Post on December 7, 2005

What is Slashdot?

A. A computer language
B. Anti-Virus software
C. Spyware
D. A technology news Web site

Suggestions for accountancy from the Directors of the SEC and the FASB

From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on December 9, 2005

TITLE: SEC's Cox Wants Simpler Rules, More Competition for Accounting
REPORTER: Judith Burns
DATE: Dec 06, 2005
PAGE: C3
LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113381176660114298.html
TOPICS: Accounting, Auditing, Auditing Services, Public Accounting, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Securities and Exchange Commission

SUMMARY: Questions relate to helping students understand the status various influences on the accounting profession from the AICPA, the SEC, the FASB, and the legislature via the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

QUESTIONS:
1.) Where did SEC Chairman Christopher Cox describe the ways in which he wants to see change in the accounting and auditing professions? What is the purpose of that organization? (Hint: you may find out about the organization's mission via its web site at www.aicpa.org 

2.) In accordance with law, how is the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) responsible for accounting and reporting requirements in the United States? Hint: you may investigate the SEC's mission via its web site at www.sec.gov

3.) What are the issues associated with complex accounting rules? Who establishes those rules? In what way are those rules influenced by the SEC?

4.) The SEC has named an interim chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). How is this speech's topic related to the process of change in leadership at the PCAOB?

5.) Commissioner Cox indicated his concern over the fact that only 4 public accounting firms perform audit and accounting work for most of the publicly traded companies in the U.S. and that regulators may have contributed to that concentration. How is that the case? What might regulators do to change that situation?

December 6, 2005 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@terry.uga.edu]

 National Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments. His (Cox, the new Director of the SEC) talk is available at: http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch120505cc.htm 

He had three main messages:

1. Accounting rules need to be simplified. "The accounting scandals that our nation and the world have now mostly weathered were made possible in part by the sheer complexity of the rules." "The sheer accretion of detail has, in time, led to one of the system's weaknesses - its extreme complexity. Convolution is now reducing its usefulness."

2. The concentration of auditing services in the Big 4 "quadropoly" is bad for the securities markets. The SEC will try to do more to encourage the use of medium size and smaller firms that receive good inspection reports from the PCAOB.

3. The SEC will continue to push XBRL. "The interactive data that this initiative will create will lead to vast improvements in the quality, timeliness, and usefulness of information that investors get about the companies they're investing in."

A very interesting talk - one that seems to promise a high level of cooperation with the accounting profession.

The SEC web site has posted several presentations by members of the SEC accounting staff. These were all presentations at the AICPA SEC conference yesterday - the premiere financial reporting and auditing conference of the year. Scott Taub's (acting Chief Accountant) remarks are particularly interesting as they build on what Cox had to say in the areas of reducing complexity and making interactive data more available. Scott also spoke about fair value accounting and using professional judgment. His remarks are at: http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch120505sat.htm  . . . there are about ten other presentations on more detailed accounting and auditing matters also available at the SEC web site.

FASB Chairman Bob Herz' speech earlier today at the AICPA SEC conference is available at: http://www.fasb.org/herz_aicpa_12-06-05.pdf 

Bob builds on yesterday's comments by SEC Chairman Cox and argues that "continued progress on reducing complexity and improving the transparency and usefulness of reported financial information is imperative and consistent with our nation's longstanding commitment to the importance of high-quality financial reporting to the health and vitality of our capital markets and our economy." Bob calls for the FASB, SEC, PCAOB and all other interested parties to take "collective action to address these issues."

Denny

Jensen Comment --- Here's a related news item

SEC's Cox Wants Simpler Rules, More Competition for Accounting," by Judith Burns, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2005; Page C3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113381176660114298.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing

US-EU agreement on international cooperation --- http://www.iasplus.com/europe/0512useudialogue.pdf

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting standard setting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm

Photographs:  What you see may be entirely false
In 2003, the Los Angeles Times ran a picture by staff photographer Brian Walski of a British soldier in Basra, Iraq, motioning to a man carrying a child. When an astute journalist at the Hartford Courant, one of many newspapers that reprinted the photo, noticed that it seemed to contain repeated images of the same person in the background, the veracity of the picture came into question. Walski admitted that he had used Adobe's Photoshop software to combine two separate photographs for the final image, and was promptly fired. The Walski episode not only led to a widespread discussion of ethics in photojournalism, but also demonstrated how easily a skilled user can employ programs like Photoshop to fool average viewers -- and sometimes even experts -- into taking a faked image for the truth. Because almost all digital photos, including those used as evidence in court, are vulnerable to this kind of tampering, computer scientists and others are busy advancing the state of the art in digital forensics.
Kate Greene, "Photo Chop Shop Digital forensics can detect misleading cut-and-paste jobs and match a photograph to an individual camera's 'fingerprint.'," MIT's Technology Review, December 6, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com//wtr_15966,1,p1.html?trk=nl

Louis Althusser and a Play Called The Caïman
At Althusser’s funeral in 1990, Jacques Derrida recalled how, “beginning in 1952 ... the caïman received in his office the young student I then was.” One of the biographers of Michel Foucault (another of his pupils) describes Althusser as an aloof and mysterious figure, but also one known for his gentleness and tact. When a student turned in an essay, Althusser wrote his comments on a separate sheet of paper — feeling that there would be something humiliating about defacing the original with his criticisms.
Scott McLemee, "Thinking at the Limits," Inside Higher Ed, December 7, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/07/mclemee

Explosive Growth in For-Profit College Education

Adapted from Time Magazine, December 5, 2005, Page 29

What are the estimated revenues generated in 2005 by for-profit higher-education companies?
Hint:  Revenues are up 71% from 2001.

What is the percentage of U.S. undergraduate and graduate students attending for-profit schools?
Hint:  Enrollments in for-profits schools are increasing a four times the rate of increase for traditional colleges

Answers:
$17.6 billion and 9%

Shrinking Competition
Following Blackboard's agreement to buy WebCT, we have Adobe buying Macromedia
"Adobe Completes Acquisition of Macromedia" ---  http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200512/120505Bundles.html

All the Internet (a classified index) --- http://www.alltheinternet.com/

Bob Jensen's search helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

From WebMD
How to get rid of love handles --- http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/106/108199.htm

Certification Examinations Serve Two Purposes: 
 One is to screen for quality and the other is to put up a barrier to entry to keep a profession from being flooded

The California test (BAR exam for lawyers), by all accounts, is tough. It lasts three days, as compared with two or 2½-day exams in most states. Only one state -- Delaware -- has a higher minimum passing score. According to the National Conference of Bar Examiners, just 44% of those taking the California bar in 2004 passed the exam, the lowest percentage in the country, versus a national average of 64% . . . Critics say the test is capricious, unreliable and a poor measure of future lawyering skills. Some also complain that California's system serves to protect the state's lawyers by excluding competition from out-of-state attorneys. There has been some loosening of the rules. California adopted rules last year permitting certain classes of lawyers to practice in the state without having to take the bar.
"Raising the Bar: Even Top Lawyers Fail California Exam," by James Bandler and Nathan Koppel, December 5, 2005; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113374619258513723.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Jensen Comment:
Unlike the BAR exam, the CPA examination is a national examination with uniform grading standards for all 50 states, even though other licensure requirements vary from state to state.  Also the CPA examination allows students to pass part of the exam while allowing them to retake other parts on future examinations.  Recently the CPA examination became a computerized examination (will both objective and essay/problem components).  This may change performance scores somewhat relative to the data presented below.

You can read the following at http://www.cpaexcel.com/candidates/performance.html

National Average Pass Rates
The National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) publishes an Annual Report Entitled "Candidate Performance on the Uniform CPA Examination." Annual data since 1998 typically showed that, for each exam held since that year:

• Only about 12% of all candidates passed all 4 exam parts
• 58% of first time candidates did not pass any exam part
• 46% of repeat candidates did not pass any exam part

Student Pass Rates at Top Colleges, per NASBA, May 2004 Edition:

• Top 10 colleges, students without advanced degrees      40.78% average
• Top 10 colleges, students with advanced degrees           65.53% average

The NASBA Web site is at http://www.nasba.org/nasbaweb.nsf/?Open

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Trends in Accountancy Doctoral Programs

First I would like to congratulate Bentley. Bentley is a very fine college with a unique mission in business studies.

In the Hasselback Directory the latest accountancy doctoral program to start up seems to be SUNY-Binghamton in 1999. The University Texas at San Antonio started one up in accounting around 2003 and will soon be graduating its first students. Are there any other new doctoral programs in accounting since 1999?

I do know that American, Lehigh, Santa Clara, and Rice dropped their doctoral programs and that many of the large mills such as Illinois and Texas have greatly cut back on the numbers of doctoral students graduating in accounting. Minnesota is listed in the Hasselback Directory as not having any doctoral graduates since 1994. Columbia and Penn State list all zeros since 1997 and 1999 respectively. Tulane also seems to have dropped out of this business in 1999. Georgia Tech has all zeros since 1995. Mississippi and Pittsburgh list all zeros since 2001. UCLA’s last graduate is listed for 1997. MIT has only graduated two students since 1998.

Has anybody conducted a more formal and current study of changing trends in accounting doctoral programs and enrollments?

It would seem that one of the factors leading to our present shortage of doctoral graduates is the decline in both programs and enrollments in programs that are, in some cases, barely hanging on.

December 5, 2005 reply from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

Dave Weber responded to my forward of your email to our dept:

"I don't think the Hasselback is very accurate about recent graduates. I know, for example, that Penn State has had a few graduates over the time they're listed at zero (not to mention that they are expecting 6 on the market this year - not exactly a shortage at PSU!)

Also, I believe Emory has recently started a PhD program in accounting."

January 3, 2006 reply from Jim McKeown [jcm@psu.edu]

Bob,

Here are numbers of Penn State Ph. D. grads I can recall. I don't think I'm missing any, but will check.

2000 4
2001 1
2002 2
2004 2
2005 1

For some of them, these are degree award dates, not when they departed to take positions, possibly ABD. I assume that's the way these things should be counted.

I have no idea why Hasselback is missing all of these. I did a quick check on the 7 grads from 2000 through 2002 in the 2004-2005 edition (the only one here at home) and found one missing (she's no longer in academia) and two listed as Penn State Ph.D. with no degree date (now at Harvard and MIT). The other four show Ph.D. at Penn State with correct degree dates. Clearly they aren't doing a count from their listings.

Dave Weber is correct that we have 6 students coming out this year. (We try to admit 4 per year, but got some bunching.)

I don't know of any more accurate source. I suspect that many of the studies just accept the Hasselback numbers.

Please let me know if you need more info to try tracking this down.
jcm

 

December 5, 2005 reply from Jim McKinney [jim@MCKINNEYCPA.COM]

Morgan State University will be graduating its first graduates this year, I believe.

Farewell, Peter Drucker: A Tribute to an Intellectual Giant, Knowledge@Wharton, University of Pennsylvania --- http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1326

Also see http://www.thenewstribune.com/24hour/opinions/story/2924265p-11590772c.html

December 2, 2005 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

WORLD DIGITAL LIBRARY INITIATIVE ANNOUNCED

The U.S. Library of Congress, in partnership with Google, announced a plan to begin building a World Digital Library (WDL) for use by other libraries around the globe. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said that the WDL "would bring together online 'rare and unique cultural materials held in U.S. and Western repositories with those of other great cultures such as those that lie beyond Europe and involve more than 1 billion people: Chinese East Asia, Indian South Asia and the worlds of Islam stretching from Indonesia through Central and West Asia to Africa.'" For more details about the World Digital Library go to http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-250.html

Also of interest:

"What Is a Digital Library Anymore, Anyway? Beyond Search and Access in the NSDL" by Carl Lagozei, Dean B. Kraffti, Sandy Payettei,

Susan Jesurogaii D-LIB MAGAZINE, vol. 11, no. 11, November 2005 Volume 11 Number 11 http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/lagoze/11lagoze.html 

Google Gives $3 Million to Library of Congress for Digital Library ---
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B10FB345A0C718EDDA80994DD404482 

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GOOGLE SCHOLAR: ONE YEAR LATER

Google Scholar was launched a year ago this month as an aid to searching for scholarly literature located on the Web. Now that scholars have had time to put the service to a test, some are beginning to point out critical deficiencies and pitfalls. Criticisms include:

-- it's a single search tool, and no single search tool searches the entire bibliographic universe

-- it does not offer full disclosure about content (what is and is not included) in the database

-- current research appears late in the database

-- indexing is incomplete

-- it does not provide equal coverage of all subject areas

Peter Jacso provides in-depth evaluation of Google Scholar in "As We May Search -- Comparison of Major Features of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar Citation-Based and Citation-Enhanced Databases" (CURRENT SCIENCE, v. 89, no. 10, November 25, 2005, pp. 1537-47). His article is available online at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1537.pdf

Librarian Joe Buenker's webpage, "Google Scholar's Impact on Libraries," includes a bibliography of critiques of Google Scholar at http://www.west.asu.edu/jbuenke/librarianship/google-scholar.html

Google Scholar is available at http://scholar.google.com/

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The article "Recommended Readings on the Top-Ten IT Issues" (EDUCAUSE REVIEW, vol. 40, no. 6, November/December 2005, pp. 114–15) provides a list of recommended readings on information technology issues identified by the 2005 EDUCAUSE Current Issues Survey. The article is available at http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm05/erm0566.asp . The complete survey and a longer version of the reading list are available at http://www.educause.edu/2005SurveyResources/6323 .

EDUCAUSE Review [ISSN 1527-6619], a bimonthly print magazine that explores developments in information technology and education, is published by EDUCAUSE ( http://www.educause.edu/ ). Articles from current and back issues of EDUCAUSE Review are available on the Web at http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/ .

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"Why People Don't Read Online and What to do About It" by Michelle Cameron UBIQUITY, vol. 6, issue 40, November 2-8, 2005 http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v6i40_cameron.html 

In this brief essay, Cameron provides online writers some commonsense tips to improve the likelihood that people will read their Webpages.

The Best Companies to Buy From:  Who offers reliable products and hassle-free service?
As with previous surveys, lots of readers gave us an earful about hard-to-understand tech reps. Dell customer Todd Garlick says that the few times he has phoned Dell for help with his son's Inspiron 1150 laptop, the support reps were "friendly and knowledgeable" but hard to communicate with. "I've had fouled-up orders on replacement parts. I've had to call back two or three times because I couldn't understand what the reps were saying," says Garlick, a dental technician in Boise, Idaho. "I probably won't buy a Dell again" because of such problems, he adds. The accent issue is a sensitive topic for vendors, who invariably offer vague, carefully worded statements about how they're training tech reps to communicate better with callers. Some companies have responded by returning support centers to North America. For instance, Gateway, which bought eMachines in 2004, decided last year to use only U.S.-based support for many of its products, including desktops and notebooks. Toshiba reports that 80 percent of its North American support calls are handled by its Toronto center.
"Reliability and Service: The Best Companies to Buy From Who offers reliable products and hassle-free service? We polled 35,000 PC World readers about their PCs, printers, cameras, and other hardware, and learned that good help can be hard to find," PC World via The Washington Post, December 2, 2005 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/01/AR2005120100166.html?referrer=email

I wish the ACLU had to take a NY subway:  Why are subways different from airplanes?
The New York branch of the once-venerable civil rights organization filed a lawsuit last summer charging that random police searches of passengers' bags were an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. The transit system instituted the searches shortly after the deadly terrorist bombings of London's underground in July. Passengers have the right to refuse inspection and leave the transit system.
"Derailing the ACLU Train," The Wall Street Journal,  December 5, 2005; Page A20 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113374096736413640.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Online Applications To College Surge
Online college applications are surging, stoked by an array of tactics schools have adopted to nudge applicants away from traditional paper filings. The development started as an effort by colleges to cut costs and make life simpler for admissions officers. Now it has turned into a way for families to save money: In a bid to encourage more applicants to apply online, fees are often waived for electronic applications. But for many applicants, online filing has added more anxiety, and work, to what is already a stressful time.
Robert Tomsho, "Online Applications To College Surge:  Some Schools Waive Fees for Electronic Filers, But the Process Adds Anxiety for Many Students," The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2005; Page D1--- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113331711186209812.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

Sickening:  Congressman's Betrayal of Troops Called Greatest Sin
Rep. Randy Cunningham's dramatic fall from power represents more than just a historic case of personal corruption unprecedented in the long history of the Congress. It is also betrayal on a grand scale. Cunningham betrayed his friends, his constituents, his colleagues and, certainly most important, the U.S. combat troops he so loudly championed. By steering contracts vital to the Iraq war effort to cronies, he may have put those troops at greater risk by judging contracts more for what they would do for him than for the military. That - even more than his manifest dishonesty, personal bullying of opponents and slight legislative record - may turn out to be the most shameful legacy of the now-disgraced Republican. "This is nauseating at so many levels," said Norm Ornstein, a veteran congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. What Cunningham, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, did, said Ornstein, "is worse than just taking money. It is taking money and undermining everything he presumably stood for." In the end, Cunningham was a portrait of contradictions and inconsistencies. The ever-macho tough guy, he took bribes to buy two 19th-century commodes, or chests of drawers. The family man, he liked to invite women to his yacht. There, two women told Copley News Service, he would change into pajama bottoms and a turtleneck sweater to entertain them with chilled champagne by the light of a lava lamp.
"Congressman's Betrayal Of Troops Called Greatest Sin," by George E. Condon Jr., San Diego Union-Tribune, December 1, 2005 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1533271/posts

Quarterback ranking controversies are not much different than college ranking controversies
According to the National Football League's Byzantine system for rating quarterbacks, Eli is only the 18th-best passer in the league, but a closer look reveals that he has reached the top rung of pro quarterbacks and is on the verge of superstardom. The proof is in the bottom line: The Giants are first in the National Football Conference in points scored and are third in the entire league, behind only the San Diego Chargers and the Indianapolis Colts, whose quarterback is the more celebrated Manning, Eli's older brother Peyton. The NFL's passer rating formula gives too much weight to pass-completion percentage, which most analysts now realize is a minor statistic. As football stats guru Bud Goode once asked me, "Would you rather complete two of three passes for nine yards or one of three for 10?" Eli's pass completion after 11 games is just 52.5%, the lowest in the NFC, and one of the lowest among starting quarterbacks in the entire league. But Eli has passed for 2,664 yards, second in the NFC only to future Hall of Famer Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers, and Mr. Manning has more touchdown passes than Mr. Favre (20 to 19) and substantially fewer interceptions (10 to 19). In fact, Eli currently has more touchdown passes than any quarterback in his conference.
Allen Barra, "The Family Business Will quarterback brothers face off in the Super Bowl?" The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110007614

Bob Jensen's threads on controversies in college rankings are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

"Don't Shred on Me:  The U.N. must not be allowed to destroy the Volcker investigation's archives," by Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, Novembe4r 30, 2005 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110007613  

Paul Volcker's findings on Oil for Food have been widely received as the final word on the United Nations relief program for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Far from it--as Mr. Volcker himself has admitted. In reporting that Saddam, along with his smuggling and oil graft, diverted $1.8 billion in kickbacks from U.N.-approved relief contracts under the program, Mr. Volcker underestimates, quite probably by billions, the amount the U.N. allowed Saddam Hussein and many of his favored business partners to graft out of Oil for Food deals for goods such as oil parts, milk, laundry soap and baby food. In low-balling the total, Mr. Volcker understates the negligence of the U.N., and overlooks some of the most potentially virulent links in Oil for Food.

The most urgent implication of Mr. Volcker's incomplete findings is that his huge and expensively assembled archives must be preserved intact well beyond the Dec. 31 deadline by which Mr. Volcker now plans to start disposing of them. Above all, they must not be handed back to the U.N., where too much related to the corrupt Oil for Food program has already vanished--including, to a fascinating extent, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own powers of recollection. The former head of the program, Benon Sevan, alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam, was allowed to skip town, U.N. pension in hand. Mr. Annan is even now resurrecting, via a new $4 million U.N. program called the Alliance of Civilizations, the career of his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who officially retired earlier this year after it came to light that during Mr. Volcker's investigation Mr. Riza had overseen the shredding of three years' worth of documents that might have better illuminated the oil-for-fraud shenanigans of the U.N.'s executive 38th floor.

As it happens, Rep. Henry Hyde, who has led the main investigation into Oil for Food in the House, introduced a bill on Nov. 17 urging that the U.S. withhold $100 million from its U.N. dues for each of the next four fiscal years, or until the secretary of state certifies to Congress that the Volcker investigation's archives have been transferred, intact and uncensored by the U.N., "to an entity other than the [Volcker] Committee or the United Nations"--and made available for public inspection, at the very least by law-enforcement authorities.

Continued in article

Paris: Capital of the 19th Century (History) --- http://dl.lib.brown.edu/paris/index.html

Chartres: Cathedral of Notre-Dame --- http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?c=chartres&page=index

"Lawsuit Accuses AOL of Illegal Billing," The New York Times, December 2, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-AOL-Lawsuit.html

A lawsuit seeking to potentially cover hundreds of thousands of America Online Inc. subscribers accuses the Time Warner Inc. unit of illegally billing customers by creating secondary accounts for them without their consent.

The lawsuit, filed last month in St. Clair County Circuit Court on behalf of 10 AOL customers in six states, claims the company confused and deceived customers about the charges, stalled them from canceling unauthorized accounts and refused to return questioned fees.

''AOL exploits its subscribers' confidential billing information to unlawfully generate additional revenue by charging subscribers for additional membership accounts that they neither order nor request,'' the lawsuit alleges, calling the scheme ''common, uniform and continuing.''

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's updates on fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Humanities in Business

A huge real-world problem for a moral philosopher (who's strong on the Greeks and weak in modern finance)

"Oil-Rich Norway Hires Philosopher As Moral Compass:  State Seeks Ethics Lesson On Investing Its Bonanza; Mr. Syse Reads Hobbes," by Andrew Higgins, The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2005; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113340298608010935.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Henrik Syse, a professional philosopher, says he gets ribbed by his family that "five of my 10 best friends are dead Greeks." But this fall he put aside writing a book on Plato to ponder a more practical puzzle: what to do with around $190 billion?

Mr. Syse started work in September as the in-house ethicist for the Norwegian government's Petroleum Fund, one of the world's largest pools of investment capital. "It has been a steep learning curve," says the 39-year-old academic. "I'm a philosopher. I'm not a banker."

With a new office in the Norwegian Central Bank, he gets paid to ruminate on how, at a time of surging energy prices, the world's third-biggest oil exporter can best match profit and principle. Investment, he says, "is teeming with ethical issues." He has begun trying to figure out how the Petroleum Fund, the custodian of Norway's oil earnings, can use its investments to get companies to behave more ethically.

Mr. Syse's unorthodox career path reflects Norway's unusual position among major oil-exporting countries, all of which now wrestle with how to wisely deploy their massive windfall. Most are either poor, autocratic, corrupt or cursed by an assortment of these and other ills. Norway, by contrast, is prosperous, democratic and squeaky clean.

The money managers of other petro-states "can run around in the shiniest suits and biggest limos," says Mr. Syse, but this is "not our profile." He takes the tram to work and wears socks stitched with the cartoon dog Snoopy.

Home to the Nobel Peace Prize and a plethora of human rights and peace groups, this nation of just 4.6 million has long used its reputation for moral rectitude to wield influence around the globe out of proportion to its size.

The Petroleum Fund was set up to husband Norway's oil wealth for future generations. This spring, Knut Kjaer, who oversees the fund, and Yngve Slyngstad, its head of equities, approached Mr. Syse about a job. Mr. Syse figured the offer must be a joke or a misunderstanding. "Do you know who you are talking to?" he recalls responding. "If I had a stock and bond before me, I wouldn't know the difference."

Mr. Kjaer assured him the fund had enough financial experts. It needed a moral philosopher, he explained, to help implement a new set of "ethical guidelines" introduced by the Finance Ministry late last year. Offered nearly double his academic salary, Mr. Syse decided to take the job.

With degrees in philosophy from the University of Oslo and Boston College, Mr. Syse knows plenty about ethics. His last book, "Paths to a Good Life -- Philosophical Reflections on Everyday Ethics," applies the theories of great thinkers to ordinary problems, such as whether parents should sometimes lie to their children.

He's on shakier ground with high finance. Sometimes stumped by the jargon bandied about by his new colleagues, he keeps a copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Business near his desk "so I can run back and look something up if I don't understand." His four-person staff helps guide him like "a blind man's dog," he says, and he sometimes consults a treatise by the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who warned that unrestrained desires such as greed render life "poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Continued in article

Confusing (really bad) accounting in any case

"Windfall Accounting Tax," The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2005; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113331721189409814.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

The last time Congress imposed a form of the windfall tax was the final gloomy days of Jimmy Carter, and the result was: a substantial reduction in domestic oil production (about 5%), thus raising the price of gas at the pump; and a 10% increase in U.S. reliance on foreign oil. A windfall profits tax is the ultimate act of economic masochism because it taxes only domestic production, while imports and foreign oil subsidiaries bear almost none of the cost.

But wait, this time it's worse. The current Senate proposal would actually require oil companies with daily production of 500,000 barrels or more to disregard generally accepted accounting principles, by revaluing their oil inventories. GAAP accounting (and current tax law) allows oil firms to value barrels of oil sold at what it costs to replace that barrel.

The Senate bill would require the companies to revalue their inventories by $18.75 a barrel -- an arbitrary number if there ever was one. In effect, this means that Congress is creating the illusion of higher oil profits, and thus raising the tax liability of oil companies by an estimated $5 billion next year. This would be on top of the 35% tax rate they already pay on their actual profits.

When Andy Fastow tried to create phony profits at Enron, he got 10 years in the slammer. Now Senators want to create phony corporate profits, so they can grab them to spend. Where's Eliot Spitzer when you really need him? What's even more reprehensible about this revenue grab is its retroactive nature. In a sense this is less a tax than it is an ex post facto confiscation of private property.

Because this is a one-time inventory adjustment for taxes paid in 2006, supporters claim the tax will be no disincentive to future production or reserves. Try that one again. If oil companies believe that their profits will be sliced any time there is a spike in oil prices, their incentive to hold reserves in anticipation of higher future prices is vastly diminished. It is precisely when supplies are curtailed and prices are high that we want oil companies to have plentiful reserves. It was the profit motive, so maligned on Capitol Hill, that helped ensure that the "oil crisis" that followed Katrina's blow to Gulf refineries was surprisingly mild and short lived.

Both Republicans and Democrats also say that what troubles them is that the oil companies aren't investing enough of their profits in new refineries, or new oil exploration and production in the U.S. Hello? Explore where? Even with $60 oil and $12 natural gas, Congress refuses to open more of Alaska or the Outer Continental Shelf to new drilling. The Senate recently rejected a House-passed measure that would reduce regulatory hurdles to building new refineries. The oil companies aren't investing more in domestic refineries and exploration for one simple reason: Congress won't let them.

Continued in article

No democracy in the corporate world
In the typical corporate election of directors, shareholders have two ineffectual choices -- vote for the company's nominees, or withhold their votes for one or more of those nominees (abstaining or failing to vote does not constitute withholding a vote). In a number of recent corporate elections, one company nominee did not receive a majority of votes cast because so many shareholders withheld their votes. Nevertheless, that nominee was seated as a company director, and was renominated by the company in the next election. This apparent disregard of shareholder sentiment is based on both legal norms and practical realities. Corporate elections are governed by state laws, which generally do not require a majority vote to elect directors (unless mandated by a corporate bylaw). These state laws recognize the reality of most corporate elections -- there are no competing candidates to replace a company director who does not receive a majority of votes cast. Indeed, under majority rule, a company could be left with no directors if enough shareholders withheld their votes for all company nominees.
Robert C. Pozen, "Democracy By Proxy," The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2005; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113332038344909872.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

"Editor's Note: Why Wikis Won't Go Away," by Tom Smith, InformationWeek Newsletter, December 6, 2005

Wiki is an Internet technology platform that addresses one of the key objectives of many Web sites: to receive and make use of the valuable contributions that readers have to make to their products. They may also be viewed as a modern-day version of the old CompuServe forums that IT professionals visited in search of solutions to specific technical problems: a place where readers can share and benefit from each others' knowledge. One huge value of wikis: they aggregate the collective knowledge of a group of people and professionals since no one source can provide all the information you need. But there are clear downsides that anyone analyzing wikis needs to be aware of, and in recent days we've gotten yet another reminder of them: As with many "open" technologies on the Net, wikis can bring out the worst in some people who have malicious intent. In this case, John Seigenthaler--who was assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the 1960s--was incorrectly identified on Wikipedia as having been viewed as potentially involved in the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy. In his own words, Seigenthaler provided a wrenching account of the pain this caused him. This troubling incident followed a high-profile wiki experiment at the Los Angeles Times that was mostly viewed as a failure. Other complaints about wikis are surfacing. The good news: Wikipedia has just announced tighter rules that prohibit new submissions from anonymous contributors.

Also see "Wikipedia Tightens the Reins ," Wired News, December 5, 2005 --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69759,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6

College Newspapers Grow Up:  They have the ads, the readers—and budgets to match --- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10216907/site/newsweek/from/ET/

In school from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.?
The British government is proposing a new program that would extend every school day with a mix of clubs, courses, and childcare facilities. For some children, an "extended schooling" day could stretch from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The idea is not so much childcare as to give children a chance to try out a wider range of disciplines and activities. Is this an idea that American schools should consider?
techLearning News, December 6, 2005
Jensen Comment:  When I went to school in rural Iowa, the hours were from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. followed by practice for football, basketball, baseball, etc.  Drama rehearsals were at night.

Some Students are Challenging Ward Churchill
A small group of students at the University of Colorado confronted Ward Churchill outside his classroom Wednesday about his essay on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. "Who do you think deserved to die?" asked Ian VanBuskirk, 23, chairman of the College Republicans. "Why don't you circle the names?" he said as he tried to hand Churchill a marker while pointing to a large banner carried by other students that listed the names of all the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Churchill, who was surrounded by students, as he made his way to his basement...
Tillie Fong, "Challenging Churchill:  College Republicans stage confrontation outside class," Rocky Mountain News, December 1, 2005 --- http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4279691,00.html

Bob Jensen's threads on Ward Churchill are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisyChurchill.htm

In Kansas, a confessed serial killer makes reference to Factor X
Now, just as The Times was running its profile of the last Angry Young Man, the sentencing hearing for Dennis Rader, the confessed BTK killer, was underway in Kansas. News accounts mentioned, usually in passing, his claims that the striking of sadistic murders he committed over the years were the result of something he called “Factor X.” He did not elaborate on the nature of Factor X, though reporters often did often note that the killer saw himself as demonically possessed. (He also referred to having been dropped on his head as a child, which may have been one of Rader’s cold-blooded little jokes. But in a television interview, Rader indicated that Factor X, while mysterious, was also something in his control. “I used it,” he said. A jolting remark — at least to anyone familiar with Colin Wilson’s work. Over the years, Wilson has developed a whole battery of concepts (or at least of neologisms) to spell out his hunch that the Outsider has access to levels of consciousness not available to more conformist souls. Something he dubbed “Faculty X” has long been central to Wilson’s improvised psychological theories, as well as to his fiction. (The Philosopher’s Stone, which Oates liked so much, is all about Faculty X.)
Scott McLemee, "A Killing Concept," Inside Higher Ed, December 1, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/01/mclemee

Jensen Comment
Also see http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwbib.html
 

"Explaining Different Size Tires:  Why Some Vehicles Have Larger Rear Wheels," The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2005; Page D8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113322839580008672.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

Q: I recently purchased a Cadillac SRX and was surprised to find different size front and back tires. What is the reasoning behind this and could replacement tires be the same size without compromising safety and handling? -- T. Eggleston Solon, Ohio

A: Since the SRX and other performance-oriented vehicles are, in many ways, designed around their tires, you should stick with the manufacturer's recommended tire sizes. It is increasingly common for cars and even SUVs to have larger, wider wheels on the rear than on the front, especially when above-average handling is among the vehicle's selling points.

Car makers say that using different or "split" tire sizes helps them tune vehicles for better-balanced and more predictable handling. Cadillac says the split tire arrangements on the SRX and some of its other cars are meant "to always maintain the proper vehicle understeer gradient so the vehicle doesn't do more than you ask in a turn."

"In Belushi widow's book, Woodward is no hero," New York Daily News, November 30, 2005 --- http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/370290p-314989c.html

After the "SNL" (NBC's Saturday Night Live) player OD'd, Judy Belushi Pisano encouraged all of his pals to talk to Woodward, who, like John, had grown up in Wheaton, Ill.

She now tells us: "Woodward was the wrong guy [to write that book]. I was foolish."

So she and Tanner Colby have assembled "Belushi: A Biography," a just-published collection of affectionate memories of John — and unaffectionate ones of Woodward.

"It was my first experience of getting tricked by a journalist," says Belushi's "Continental Divide" co-star Blair Brown. "I really felt betrayed, and it made me question all of his other work."

Writer Mitch Glazer recalls that all Woodward wanted to hear about was Belushi's drug use. "Whenever I started telling him the good things about John, he would literally put down his pen and wait for me to finish," says Glazer.

"'Wired' has so many things wrong," says "Blues Brothers" director John Landis, who told Woodward how he and Belushi "sobbed and huggged" after he flushed a mound of Belushi's coke down the toilet. "That book has me giving John some big roundhouse, John Wayne punch in the face, and it's just not true."

Continued in article

Forwarded by Barb Hessel

Read the directions carefully ahead of time as the test is in Japanese. It took some thinking but I did get it. Barb

Ok..... This is a tough one. This is an IQ tester. The object of the game is to get everyone across the river. This is a test some Japanese applicants have to take when applying for a job in Japan. The instructions are listed below. After reading, click on the link. Enjoy!

http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/riverIQGame.swf 

Click on link, and then click on the big blue circle. Use the rules below. This is going to do your head in, but it can be done. Apparently this is an IQ test given to job applicants in Japan: "Everybody has to cross the river". The following rules apply: Only 2 persons on the raft at a time The father can not stay with any of the daughters, without their mother's presence The mother can not stay with any of the sons, without their father's presence The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member, if The Policeman is not there Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft

To start click on the big blue circle on the right. To move the people click on them. To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of the river.

Barb

Thirdspace (The Site of Emerging Feminist Scholars) --- http://www.thirdspace.ca/
This site has both a peer reviewed journal and an online community of feminist scholars, including links and resources)

For your next trip via airplane, train, or bus
Google Transit Trip Planner --- http://www.google.com/transit

"Google Unveils Public Transit Mapping Service," by Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek, December 8, 2005 --- http://www.internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.160284&articleId=174907393

Google Inc. on Thursday launched in beta a trip-planning service for people who prefer to take pubic transit rather than drive. The Google Transit Trip Planner, which is initially available only for the Portland, Ore, metro area, provides directions for public transportation from a starting location to a destination. Besides showing a road map of the route, the service provides transportation schedules and other information to help plot a step-by-step itinerary. In addition, the service compares the cost of the trip with the cost of driving.

Use of the service is similar to Google Local, a mapping and local search service that lets users find businesses and other locations in a city, and get driving directions. Locations and directions are shown over a roadmap or an aerial view of the area. The new transit service offers the same views.

Google Transit, which is currently a Google Labs product, has not been integrated with Google Local, because the company said it needed time to develop the product further. Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., did not have any definite plans for which cities would be added or when.

Engineers in San Francisco, New York, and Zurich who use public transportation often started the project, the company said.

Bob Jensen's threads on mapping and trip planning are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

Never have writers' block:  How to make millions writing by a formula

"Writer's Block:  One cliché follows another. Flat character succeeds flat character. Everything is predictable in No. 19 of Grafton's alphabetic series," by Alexander Theroux, The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2005; Page P15 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113356934392713014.html?mod=todays_us_pursuits

S Is for Silence, by Sue Grafton (Putnam, 374 pages)

In "S Is For Silence," Sue Grafton offers version No. 19 in her best-selling alphabetical series. She seems to be attempting to do for fiction what the illustrator Edward Gorey did for art in his memorable "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" (1962): "A is Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears...." But she does not seem to be managing the task nearly so well. Yes, Grafton fans are legion. But are they wise?

The plot of "S" turns on the disappearance, 34 years before, of tarty Violet Sullivan, who in 1953 (for no reason that I can see, the book is set in 1987) put on her tarty finery, left for the Fourth of July fireworks and was never seen again.

In the small California town of Serena Station, it was said that she had run off with a lover or was murdered by her husband or perhaps even killed herself. Her daughter, Daisy, seven at the time, now 41 and plagued by the mystery, needs the help of Kinsey Millhone, Ms. Grafton's user-friendly private investigator, a 37-year-old divorcée who jogs three miles a day, drives a VW and slings clichés around like hash. We are given the usual group of droolies: Jake, Foley, Tom, Chet, Winston, Calvin and (yes) Hairl. So whodunit?

Since 1982, when Ms. Grafton wrote "A Is for Alibi," the plots have changed but not the mode -- the books follows a recipe of pedestrian sameness. Curiously, she claims for her new book, by way of a published "conversation," to have adopted a technique, new to her, of using narrative time-shifts from chapter to chapter. The narrative method is of course as old as the genre, and the genre without grace can be old indeed.

There is not a magic or an original sentence in the entire novel. Instead Ms. Grafton has created a brand: "mixture as before," in the parlance of Somerset Maugham, a phrase taken from the world of pharmaceuticalia. Ms. Grafton duplicates herself intentionally, like a druggist with a prescription to fill. As with John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell and even Stephen King, you know what you're going to get.

Andy Warhol did this kind of thing, too, with Marilyn, Mao and Campbell Soup cans. But when did readers become compulsivists? It would appear nowadays that if a writer does not repeat himself, finding sanctuary in the tried and (if you insist) true, he will never find a market. Formula becomes friend.

There is not one exceptional word in these pages, not one intriguing turn of phrase -- nothing, in Gerard Manley Hopkins's terms, "counter, original, spare, strange." But this is not a surprise, for Ms. Grafton's prose aims at standard recognition. It is as predictable as, well, the march of any abecedarium. "All you can do is give it your best shot." "The world's a big place." "Now and then someone slips through the cracks." "Sounds like you're in the thick of things." One cliché follows hard upon another. Flat character succeeds flat character. Everything is predictable here. But such is the way with brands. S isn't for silence. It's for sales.  

To make millions from your own writings do you're own publicity

"The Shorts List:  Amazon's selling stories and essays for 49 cents. Is anybody buying?" by Brendan I. Koerner, Slate, December 2, 2005 --- http://www.slate.com/id/2131368/

The wisdom of Harry S. Dent usually doesn't come cheap. The financial pundit's monthly newsletter, which features his ruminations on demographic trends and beat-the-Street strategies, costs $199 per year. That's a bargain compared to the $50,000 Dent charges for a two-hour keynote address.

Those steep price tags make Dent's Bubble After Bubble in the Ongoing Bubble Boom seem like quite the steal. The 38-page booklet, which predicts a stock-market comeback, can be purchased from Amazon.com as an HTML document, PDF file, or plain-text e-mail for a mere 49 cents, as part of the online bookseller's new Amazon Shorts program. Since the first few dozen shorts debuted in early August, Bubble After Bubble has consistently dominated the category's best-seller list, beating out a Danielle Steel essay called Candy for the Soul, an anti-Bush polemic by Mark Crispin Miller, and a nine-page, shoe-gazing meditation from Gloria Vanderbilt. How did Dent rise to the top of Amazon's short-form heap?

Largely by taking responsibility for Bubble After Bubble's publicity. Aside from including the shorts in an author's search results, Amazon hasn't done much promotion. And neither have publishing houses, likely because they don't make any money off the deal; there is no mention of Candy for the Soul, for example, on the Random House Web site, which includes an otherwise exhaustive list of Steel's 52 best sellers.

How to win be more comfortable at parties and make partner in your firm

In general the staff accountants or lawyers who become partners of the firm have skills of conversation and name recalling skills that set them apart from the "nerds" who have great technical skills but just don't have those "people skills" with clients and peers.  I always remember a woman who made partner in one of the large accounting firms back when it was very difficult for women to become partners.  I always thought her genuine interest in athletics, combined with an outgoing personality, added greatly to her ability to make conversation with student recruits and clients at social gatherings.  Since knowing her, I've often advised accounting graduates to study social skills and practice how to make "social conversation."  There are tricks to remembering names (I've never tried to master this like I should have), and there are tricks to making conversation and feeling more comfortable in social settings (I'm a bit better at this, especially after a cocktail or two or three).

Perhaps some of you have some good advice to give to students along these lines.  My main advice is to study how to ask questions and become a sincere listener.  The only thing more dull than somebody who talks too much and listens too little is somebody who says nothing at all or has little to talk about other than the weather.  It also helps to be able to laugh at yourself and avoid taking yourself too seriously.

The next piece of advice is to stay up on certain daily happenings in the news, athletics, and entertainment as a base to ask questions about in potentially dull settings.  Then practice asking questions and making interesting conversation.  It may help your career as well as making you have more fun in life.

The following tidbit that came out recently on NPR may be helpful along these lines.  I don't necessarily agree with the classification of good things versus bad things.  If you know a person's spouse or friend, for example, I think it is courteous to ask about that spouse or a friend.  Asking somebody about their holiday plans is a good ice breaker in spite of what Debra Fine says.  If fact, it may just be an icebreaker to ask whether Debra Fine really understands the "fine art of talk." 

I guess what I'm saying here is that Debra Fine does not necessarily have the best advice, but at least she sets us thinking about the craft of making small talk, especially if you're trying to make students aware of how important small talk can be in life. 

"Small Talk Secrets for the Holiday Season," NPR, December 7, 2005 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5040682

If the idea of the office holiday party makes you want to hide in your cubicle, brushing up on "small talk" skills can make the events more enjoyable. Debra Fine, author of The Fine Art of Small Talk, offers timely tips that can turn the holiday season into an opportunity for conversational success:

Top 10 Icebreakers

1. "What is your connection to the host/hostess or event?"

2. "What do you enjoy the most about this time/season of the year?"

3. "Describe how this season of the year impacts your work?"

4. "Bring me up to date about your life/work/family since the last time we got together..."

5. "Tell me about your plans for the holidays..."

6. "Describe your favorite holiday tradition..."

7. "What challenges do you encounter at this time of year?"

8. "Tell me about a special gift you have given or received?"

9. "What is your favorite holiday? Why?"

10. "What have you got going on during the coming year?"

Conversation Killers to Avoid

1. "Are you married?" or "Do you have any kids?" Where are you going with either one of these if the response is "No"?

2. "How's your job at Boeing, United Airlines, Martha Stewart Enterprises (fill in the blank)?" Unless you know a person well, assume nothing! Don't put them on the spot like that. Instead ask: "What's been going on with work?"

3. "How's your wife?" (She left, took all the money, the kids and got the house!)

4. "Merry Christmas!" "What are your Christmas plans?" Not all of us celebrate Christmas.

5. At all costs avoid "Is that real?" "Are those real?"

Related NPR Stories

• Dec. 2, 2005
  Holiday Office Party Tips
• Dec. 13, 2004
  Office Party Survival Guide
• Oct. 14, 2005
  Interview: 'Art of Small Talk'

Tom DeLay's Woes Won't End in Texas
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has done Rep. Tom DeLay a great favor. By keeping the ethical focus on Mr. DeLay in Austin, he has kept it away from a growing scandal in Washington with far more serious implications for the former House majority leader.
Jonathan Gurwitz, "Tom DeLay's Woes Won't End in Texas," The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2005; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113392575893615947.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Pork Cutting Payback: 
Why the President of the U.S. has trouble with some GOP, as well as Democratic, party senators

"Free England A story of Senate pork--and payback," The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2005 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007638

Here's one way Congress could be useful in fighting the terrorists in Iraq: Confirm Gordon England as Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Conducting a war requires a fully staffed Pentagon, something the U.S. Senate is proving itself unwilling to provide. President Bush was forced to use his recess-appointment power last summer to name Eric Edelman as Undersecretary for Policy, the department's No. 3 position, when Democrat Carl Levin refused to lift his hold on the nomination over a spat pertaining to Mr. Edelman's predecessor, Douglas Feith. Ditto for Peter Flory, Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy.

Now it looks like the President will have to follow suit with Mr. England, who has been in limbo since he was nominated in March. It's a good thing Donald Rumsfeld seems to like his job. If the 73-year-old Defense Secretary were to retire, who knows whether a successor could be confirmed.

Mr. England's stalled confirmation is all the more outrageous since he is being held up by a member of the President's own party. Olympia Snowe is miffed that, as Navy Secretary, Mr. England did not fight some cuts in the ship-building budget dear to the heart of the Senator from Maine. Her office tells us he did not show sufficient "leadership." "I don't know what it would take" to get the Senator to lift her hold, a Snowe spokesman says. Translation: This is payback, so forget about it. Another Republican, Mississippi's Trent Lott, has had similar problems with Mr. England's lack of devotion to naval pork. He finally lifted his own hold last month, after meeting with Mr. England, who has been Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense since May, when Paul Wolfowitz left to head the World Bank. Under the rules governing political appointments, he is permitted to serve as "acting" since he already has a government job--that of Navy Secretary.

Continued in the article

Senator Robert Byrd and watchdog groups spar over ‘pork',
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., has steered more than half-a-billion federal dollars to West Virginia in 2004 and 2005, prompting a GOP critic to say the effort is part of Byrd's well-established campaign strategy. This year, the senator already has racked up at least $177 million, according to various sources, including Byrd's office. The 2005 tally is bound to go higher, with two appropriations bills still tangled up in Congress and two others on President Bush's desk. Citizens Against Government Waste, which bills itself as "America's No. 1 Taxpayer Watchdog," estimated that Byrd was responsible for $399 million for West Virginia projects in 2004. Gary Abernathy, former executive director of the state Republican Party, said the pattern is familiar. "It's always been well understood that beginning about his fifth year of every term, he starts cranking up the pork for West Virginia," Abernathy said. "It's the worst kept secret in the state."
Justin D. Anderson, "Senator, groups spar over ‘pork'," Charleston Daily Mail, December 5, 2005 --- http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/2005120531/

The brain's biology of music and creativity

"Why Does Music Move Us? Science gets closer to the intersection of biology and creativity," by Douglas McLennan, The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2005; Page P13 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113355500543712682.html?mod=todays_us_pursuits

Researchers are only now beginning to unlock the secrets of the brain. It seems like every month some new study or another comes along to explain why we get addicted to nicotine, or how our neural pathways were changed because we studied piano as children, or how meditation alters our brainwave patterns.

Isolating which part of the brain is responsible for moving your big toe is a neat trick. But what about "softer" functions like figuring out how judgment is formed or music is made? "Why Music Moves Us: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music," a conference at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle last month, tried to apply some scientific paint stripper, to ask some basic questions about how the brain "hears" and translates sound into music.

We know how the ear catches sound, and that sound waves are translated into neurons that travel to the brain through some 30,000 auditory nerves from each ear. But how is it that the brain translates those neurons into something we recognize as music? Scans show that the brain is much more actively engaged with music than with speech. But there is no actual physical sound in your brain. No notes. No music. Only neurons.

The idea of pitch is a mental phenomenon, says Robert Zatorre, professor of neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. Only the way sounds are organized makes them interesting. Brain scans show that different parts of the brain register activity depending on the kind of music played. Dissonance, for example, is generally perceived as unpleasant, and it provokes reactions in a different region of the brain than consonant harmonies do.

The idea of pitch is a mental phenomenon, says Robert Zatorre, professor of neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal. Only the way sounds are organized makes them interesting. Brain scans show that different parts of the brain register activity depending on the kind of music played. Dissonance, for example, is generally perceived as unpleasant, and it provokes reactions in a different region of the brain than consonant harmonies do.

Music is a basic human condition. We're born primed to pick up on beat regularities and able to put sound in some sort of coherent order. All cultures have music, and the ability to recognize music comes before speech. The brain is wired with reward and avoidance circuitry, and music, like sex or cocaine, rates high in the reward region.

There is strong evidence that our attraction to music isn't just for enjoyment. Music helps build community. And patients who have suffered strokes or other brain injuries often show dramatic improvement in their recovery if music or rhythm is played during therapy, reported Michael Thaut, professor of music and neuroscience at Colorado State University.

Our understanding of how the brain perceives music is still rudimentary, and researchers haven't even developed reliable tests to measure what we want to know about some of the most basic brain functions. Trying to measure, for example, if the brain has a different electrical reaction to music it likes than to music it doesn't is quite difficult because "like" and "dislike" are subjective terms that are hard to quantify scientifically.

Still, it's clear that our perceptions of the world have physical roots in the brain, and those perceptions can be altered. Studies have shown, for example, that the recognition of pitch can be altered by as much as 1½ tones with medication.

Continued in article

The Shift Away From Print
For most scholarly journals, the transition away from the print format and to an exclusive reliance on the electronic version seems all but inevitable, driven by user preferences for electronic journals and concerns about collecting the same information in two formats. But this shift away from print, in the absence of strategic planning by a higher proportion of libraries and publishers, may endanger the viability of certain journals and even the journal literature more broadly — while not even reducing costs in the ways that have long been assumed.
Gifford Fenton and Roger C. Schonfeld, "The Shift Away From Print," Inside Higher Ed, December 8, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/08/schonfeld

"How Charlotte Tops Big Cities In School Tests," by Robert Tohsho, The Wall Street Journal,  December 2, 2005; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113348682455111986.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

The scores on those tests were released yesterday and on the whole, results for big cities were mixed and achievement gaps between white and minority students persisted. The tests, taken by fourth- and eighth-graders in the 2004-2005 school year, are part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, widely considered the nation's most independent and accurate measurement of achievement in core subjects. Districts volunteered for the big-city testing. Statewide NAEP tests are mandatory under the "No Child Left Behind" law, but they are used only to shed light on performance, not to determine compliance or funding. The tests are administered by the federal government, which samples students based on demographics.

Among the participating urban districts, Charlotte, with 124,000 students, had the highest scores in all categories except eighth-grade math, where it tied with Austin, Texas. Charlotte's fourth-graders beat the average for all schools in math, with a score of 244 (on a 0-to-500 scale), seven points above the average. In reading, the fourth-graders' average score was 221, four points above the national average.

Districts in the urban NAEP -- including Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, and New York City -- face some of the nation's biggest challenges because a high proportion of their students are from low-income and minority families.

Charlotte was the only participating district that beat the national average for fourth-grade reading. Only Austin and Charlotte beat the national average on eighth-grade reading.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said the report "dispels the myth that city schools can't make the grade," and she added that some of the best results came from states with the longest histories of creating accountability with standardized test scores.

A reform effort launched by Charlotte-Mecklenburg in the late 1990s focused on shifting more district funds to low-performing schools from schools that were doing better -- a move that has lately created some backlash. The district also reduced class sizes in those schools and offered to pay graduate-school tuition for teachers who agreed to work in those schools for at least two years. The district also required all of its elementary schools to adhere to a strict, phonics-based reading program.

And it brought more learning-disabled students back into mainstream classrooms and paired up teachers who had been teaching them separately. Now, "you have a great combination of teachers who are very, very versed in reading and teachers who are very, very versed in additional learning strategies," says Frances Haithcock, the district's interim superintendent.

The district's demographics also helped. Although centered in Charlotte, it is a countywide district that takes in more suburbs than most of its urban counterparts. About 56% of its students are minorities, compared with about 77% in big-city schools overall. Meanwhile, the district has annual tax revenue of about $9,500 per pupil in its budget, compared with $9,300 for Los Angeles and $8,100 for Houston.

Even so, low-income and minority students in the Charlotte district performed well compared with their counterparts elsewhere. Among fourth-graders in low-income families -- identified by their participation in discount lunch programs -- Charlotte students scored higher than the national average in math by five points, while black and Hispanic eighth-graders outpaced their counterparts nationwide in reading.

"Charlotte has a history of taking ... school reform pretty seriously," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a public-schools policy group based in Washington, D.C.

Over the last five years, the district used a combination of state grants and federal anti-poverty funding to hire retired teachers to return to the classroom to mentor younger instructors and developed "pacing guides" that tell teachers where they should be in the curriculum in any given week of the year. To make certain that teachers in low-performing schools keep pace, teams from the central office visit classrooms up to four times a year.

Continued in article

"The Missing Black Men," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, December 5, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/05/blackmale

The numbers are chilling indeed. Last year, 31 percent of CUNY’s 188,000 undergraduates were black. Of those black undergraduates, women outnumbered men 2 to 1 (a ratio that is quite common at colleges nationwide). The gender gap appears to be the greatest at CUNY colleges that have the largest proportion of black enrollments. Medgar Evers College, for example, is 92 percent black. Only 23 percent of those black students are men. At York College, which is 62 percent black, only 29 percent of black students are men.

One theme of CUNY officials working on the Black Male Initiative is the interrelationship between the issues facing the university system and those facing the New York City schools and economy. Here too, the challenge is obvious. At the high school level, for instance, only 31 percent of black males graduate after four years. And of the black male labor market (defined as those 16 to 64), only 55 percent are employed.

What to do?

One model that is generating a lot of talk at CUNY is the creation of special programs to focus on black men, such as the Male Development and Empowerment Center at Medgar Evers. Despite the enormous gender gap at the college, black enrollment and retention have been edging upward the past few years, something many link to the creation of the center.

Peter A. Holomon, director of the center, says that the key to its success has been basing programs on interviews with students — “asking the brothers why they or others are coming or not coming to school or staying in school.”

Continued in article

Are your bathroom floors too cold?

"For Cold Feet," by Sara Schaefer Munoz, The Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2005; Page P10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113356457592212844.html?mod=todays_us_pursuits

There are three types of underfloor electric heating for small spaces like bathrooms. The first uses cables on a spool that can be laid out in a tight serpentine pattern to avoid cold spots, but can be tricky to space evenly. Because the cables aren't protected when they're being installed, they can be damaged. To avoid problems, test them with an Ohm meter before covering them up. Enough cables made by Easy Heat to heat a typical 50-square-foot bathroom run about $480 (www.warmtiles.com), including a thermostat that can be set to warm up the floor before your morning shower. The second type features cables encased in mats, which are simpler to install than the cables on a spool except in irregular corners. Mats from WarmlyYours cost about $400 for a 50-square-foot room, also including a programmable thermostat (www.warmlyyours.com). The third relies on heat-conducting film; one self-regulating type, which can hover at about 80 degrees without a thermostat, is made by Electro Plastics. Enough film for a 50-square-foot room also costs about $400 (www.warmfloor.com).

Students or Unionized Workers?

"Labors Lost Will anyone take a stand against striking grad students? The WSJ Opinion Journal, December 2, 2005 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007624

One of the oddest things about the disruptive 25-day strike by graduate students at New York University is the penalty they face if they don't end their action by Monday. On the surface, it sounds tough. NYU President John Sexton told strikers this week that unless they resume their teaching-assistant duties (which include grading papers, leading discussion groups and teaching low-level courses) by Dec. 5, they won't be paid to do these things next semester.

Yet President Sexton is no Ronald Reagan. Unlike the striking air-traffic controllers whom Reagan fired in 1981, NYU teaching and research assistants face a soft landing. Anyone who ignores Mr. Sexton's ultimatum will continue to get free tuition and full medical benefits. The university also says that if the loss of teaching-assistant stipends--say, $9,500 a semester--causes economic hardship for some, NYU will help arrange a loan. Oh, the life of an exploited graduate student.

That said, the graduate union at NYU (a k a Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers--another oddity) has had a giddy ride over the past five years. In 2000, NYU became the first private university compelled to deal with such a union. That happened after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that certain students who perform services at their institution qualify as employees and are thus entitled to enter into collective bargaining agreements with their employers.

In 2004, however, the NLRB reversed the earlier decision, saying that graduate teaching assistants are not employees after all, but students whose duties are part of their education and whose stipends are like fellowships. When Local 2110's contract expired this summer without agreement on a new one, NYU announced that it would no longer recognize the union. The strike that began Nov. 8 is a protest against derecognition.

It's unclear how many strikers there are. Yet it's obvious that the educational process has suffered as students deal with the turmoil of demonstrations and missed classes just ahead of a crucial exam period. To avoid crossing picket lines, some professors have held classes off-campus, forcing commutes to venues such as the headquarters of the Communist Party USA. Many students, and particularly their parents, believe that the strike is depriving them of the learning experience they paid for. It is undergraduate tuition, after all, that funds the stipends of those teaching assistants, who pay no tuition. To be sure, even with their subsidies, graduate students aren't rich. Unionization or the threat of it has led administrators at some universities to upgrade benefits for teaching assistants. Ultimately, however, graduate students are scholars-in-progress. In the collegial setting of academe, they belong on the same team as their mentors, the senior scholars.

It's no surprise that the UAW, with its waning blue-collar base, is eager to enroll graduate students. The real issue is whether the union mentality and the blunt weapon of collective bargaining are any way to advance academic excellence. The last four weeks at NYU demonstrate that they are not.

Question
Why did Samsung so readily confess to price fixing?

Answer
Anyone following the Justice Dept.'s investigation of price fixing in the memory-chip industry had reason to pay especially close attention to court fillings made public Nov. 28. Samsung Electronics, the South Korean chipmaker, had already pled guilty in the case and agreed to a $300 million fine (see BW Online 10/14/05, "Samsung's Day of Reckoning"). But the document sheds new light on Samsung's agreement to plead guilty and names seven individuals who could face criminal prosecution in the matter.
"Samsung's Fuller Disclosure Newly released documents help to explain why the chipmaker admitted guilt in the Justice Dept.'s mammoth price-fixing probe," Business Week, November 30, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/BWsamsung

Bob Jensen's updates on fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

"A Louisiana Education," The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2005; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113348536028911943.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

New Orleans public schools were in trouble long before Katrina's visit in August. But the hurricane aftermath has given the state an opportunity to turn things around educationally, and Louisiana seems eager to seize it.

Last month, the legislature voted to let the state effectively take over the New Orleans public school system. What's more, the state plans to turn a significant number of the city's underperforming schools over to universities and foundations to reopen as charters. Change was way overdue, to put it mildly. Some 90% of the city's 117 public schools were performing below the state average, and 68 of the state's 170 failing schools are located in Orleans Parish.

Not that this abysmal record stopped the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and its local affiliate, the United Teachers of New Orleans, from vehemently opposing the state action. But their arguments that chartering public schools means voiding collective-bargaining agreements and teacher-tenure rules got little sympathy from Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco, state lawmakers and parents understandably fed up with a school system graduating illiterates year after year.

In a speech last month endorsing the state takeover, Ms. Blanco noted that Katrina refugees with school-age children who had relocated to better schools across the country would be reluctant to return home if educational improvements weren't made. "If we're going to bring back New Orleans, we must bring back our schools," said Ms. Blanco. "We cannot afford to rebuild schools that do not give students the quality education that they need."

Continued in article

It will be interesting to learn more about how MCI intends to quantify risk
ASHBURN, Va., December 6, 2005—MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCIP) today announced the launch of its NetSec Security Risk Management Service, a new managed solution that helps companies improve their security by quantifying, prioritizing and remediating security risks across an enterprise. MCI’s latest cloud-to-core offering enables companies to enhance their decision-making capabilities to take proactive and immediate action against threats and vulnerabilities, when and where it is needed most.
As quoted in a December 6, 2005 news release from MCI --- http://global.mci.com/us/enterprise/security/

Those wonderful (some say pesky) computer science students:  Music man Cracks DRM schemes
The ongoing saga of Sony BMG's sneaky, lawsuit-inducing copy-protection software opened a new chapter Monday when the music company released an uninstaller program to allow customers to remove the offending code from their PCs. The release was Sony's second attempt at erasing its errors -- its previous push of mea-culpaware last month backfired horribly when 24-year-old Princeton University researcher John "Alex" Halderman found that the uninstaller opened up a security hole even worse than the original digital rights management program. And while the discovery shocked outsiders, and embarrassed Sony, it was a little like déjà vu to Halderman, one of a handful of smart researchers who seem determined to hold the recording industry's feet to the fire.
Quinn Norton, "Music Man Cracks DRM Schemes," Wired News, December 7, 2005 --- http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69763,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4