Since his days growing up in Tampa, Fla., the lanky
kid with the slightly mischievous smile had wanted to be a soldier. By this
bright morning, April 4, 2003, Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith had more than
fulfilled his dream. He had served 15 of his 33 years in the U.S. Army,
including three tours of duty in harm's way--in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and
Kosovo.
Now all his training, all his experience, all the
instincts that had made him a model soldier, were about to be put to the
test. With 16 men from his First Platoon, B Company, 11th Engineer
Battalion, Sgt. Smith was under attack by about 100 troops of the Iraqi
Republican Guard.
"We're in a world of hurt," he muttered.
That "world" was a dusty, triangular walled
compound about half the size of a football field, near the Saddam Hussein
International Airport, 11 miles from Baghdad. Sgt. Smith's engineers, or
"sappers," had broken through the 10-foot-high concrete-block southern wall
with a military bulldozer and begun turning the compound into a temporary
"pen" for Iraqi prisoners as U.S. forces pressed their attack on the
airport.
. . .
Sgt. Smith could have withdrawn as well, back south
through the compound. But beyond it was a lightly defended aid station
crowded with 100 combat casualties and medical personnel. To protect it from
being overrun, Sgt. Smith chose to fight no matter what the odds. Under
intense fire, Sgt. Smith's men heroically extracted all three wounded
crewmen from the APC. Sgt. Smith then entered the vehicle, ordering Spc.
Michael Seaman to join him as driver and "keep me loaded" with ammo belts.
Sgt. Smith popped up out of the turret hatch and grabbed the grips of the
.50-caliber machine gun mounted on top.
The Iraqis were practically on top of him. Coolly
grasping the situation, Sgt. Smith ordered Spc. Seaman to back the APC south
into the compound to a position half way down the eastern wall. There he
could arc the big machine gun back and forth, from the gate entrance to the
north, all along the western wall of the triangle, to the Iraqi occupied
tower in the southwest corner to his left.
To fire the machine gun, Sgt. Smith had to stand in
the APC's main hatch, his body exposed from the waist up to a withering fire
coming at him from three directions. On the ground through the blur of
combat, Sgt. Matthew Keller saw Sgt. Smith grimly firing measured bursts
from atop the APC even as a hail of bullets hit around him.
Sgt. Keller yelled at him to get out. Sgt. Smith
looked back at him and with a slight shake of his head, made a cutting
motion across his throat with his right hand. Sgt. Keller would always
remember the look in his eyes. "There was no fear in him whatsoever."
As Spc. Seaman, crouching in the adjoining hatch,
fed him ammunition belts, Sgt. Smith directed an expert and murderous fire
with the long-barreled M2, hitting Iraqis who tried to enter the compound
through the gate or over the wall. He tried also to suppress renewed fire
coming from the Iraqis in the guard tower to his left.
Finally, one of his fellow sappers, First Sgt.
Timothy Campbell, led a small fire team which stole up to the tower and
killed all Iraqis inside. But by this time, Sgt. Smith's machine gun had
fallen silent. The attack had been broken. Nearly 50 Iraqi dead lay all over
the area. Others were in retreat. But Sgt. Smith was now slumped in the
turret hatch, blood soaking the front of his uniform.
Spc. Seaman jumped out of the vehicle in tears. "I
told him we should just leave," he said. Pvt. Gary Evans drove the APC out
of the compound at high speed to the nearby aid station.
But it was too late. When Medic Michelle Chavez
tried to remove Sgt. Smith's helmet, she realized that it was holding his
head together. A bullet--one of the last fired from the tower--had entered
through Sgt. Smith's neck and traveled up into his brain, shattering his
skull from the inside. There were 13 bullet holes peppered over his armored
vest--the impact from any one of them enough to knock a man down. The vest's
ceramic armor inserts, back and front, had been cracked in numerous places.
"Sapper Seven," the wiry, hollow-cheeked guy who had been so hard on his men
in training, so exacting, so insistent on "doing it right"; the guy who had
led them into battle on the first day of the war with a rock-'n'-roll tape
blaring from his Humvee; the guy who had personally got down on his knees in
front of their convoy to patiently, carefully extract the deadly mines when
they ran into a minefield near the Karbala Gap, was dead.
A chaplain and a sergeant in dress uniforms came to
Birgit Smith's home near Fort Stewart, Ga., late on the night of April 4 to
break the terrible news. Mrs. Smith, the German girl Paul had met and
married during his tour of duty in Western Europe in 1992, listened numbly
to her visitors. She fought the growing dread and pain by grasping at a
desperate hope:
"Our name is so common," she said, tears welling up
in her eyes. "Maybe it's a mistake."
There was no mistake. Paul Ray Smith had given his
life protecting his men and his position. He had almost single-handedly
blunted an overwhelming attack which might well have overrun the nearby aid
station.
"There are two ways to come home, stepping off the
plane and being carried off the plane," Sgt. Smith had written in an unsent
email to his parents. "It doesn't matter how I come home, because I am
prepared to give all that I am to insure that all my boys make it home." He
had been the only American killed in the courtyard fight.
On April 4, 2005, exactly two years after his
selfless action, his wife and their children David and Jessica stood in the
White House as President Bush presented them the nation's highest decoration
for bravery, the Medal of Honor. It was the first awarded in the Iraq War.
Paul Ray Smith had indelibly marked his "common name" on history's small
bright roll of those forever remembered for their uncommon valor.
Mr. Bennett writes the "American Heroes" series for the American
Security Council.
American Resolve Versus the Media Polls
The reason was that almost all realized that the 9/11 attacks have
changed the way most Americans see the world and their own place in it. Running
away from Saigon, the Iranian desert, Beirut, Safwan and Mogadishu was not hard
to sell to the average American, because he was sure that the story would end
there; the enemies left behind would not pursue their campaign within the U.S.
itself. The enemies that America is now facing in the jihadist archipelago,
however, are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. as the world knows it
today. Those who have based their strategy on waiting Mr. Bush out may find to
their cost that they have, once again, misread not only American politics but
the realities of a world far more complex than it was even a decade ago. Mr.
Bush may be a uniquely decisive, some might say reckless, leader. But a visitor
to the U.S. soon finds out that he represents the American mood much more than
the polls suggest.
"'The Last Helicopter'," by Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal, March
29, 2006; Page A18 ---
Click Here
Question
What can you do to prevent being taken on eBay?
(Word of Caution: Never open an email message that pretends to be from
Pay-Pal)
To which "Kate" replied: "That's true, indeed. I
just scammed you, sorry for that, it's nothing personal. ... It's what I do, and
it pays well." How did Smith get into this mess? The way any confidence-game
victim does - by letting an overabundance of trust overwhelm ordinary caution.
Jeffe Gelles, "Psssst ... wanna buy a wedding dress?" The News-Sentinel,
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/13980893.htm
Two brothers have published a book of "true tales of
treachery, lies and fraud" from eBay. "Dawn of the eBay Deadbeats" contains
stories written by eBay buyers and sellers. From stories of disappointing
purchases to out-and-out fraud, the book is a manual of what can go wrong when
buying and selling on auction sites. Brothers Stephen and Edward Klink co-wrote
the book, illustrated by Clay Butler. The idea for the book sprung from a
website Stephen Klink had created. A New Jersey police office, he founded
eBayersThatSuck.com - a site that aims to help people avoid auction scams -
after he himself was ripped off online.
Ina Steiner, "Dawn of the eBay Deadbeats: New Book Uncovers Online Auction
Treachery," AuctionBytes.com, December 28, 2005 ---
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m12/i28/s01
Imagine buying vintage Spiderman
comics for $16,000 and receiving instead, a box of printer paper or
losing a whopping $27,000 in purchasing a big rig that didn't exist in
the first place. These are just many of the online auction fraud horror
stories that brothers Edward and Steve Klink compiled from their eBay
watchdog Web site eBayersThatSuck.com (E.T.S.).
In their book "Dawn of the eBay Deadbeats," some
70 strange-but-true stories were collected and retold with the help of
illustrator Clay Butler.
The December 2005 publishing of the book comes just in time as the
online auction giant has been criticized by consumer groups, most
recently by the U.K. magazine "Computing Which?" for its passive and
sometimes delayed approach in handling fraud reports.
At any given time, the site has 78 million listings, and 6 million new
listings are added each day.
And while, eBay maintains that less than .01 percent of all listings end
in a confirmed case of fraud, that could mean that of the 1.9 billion
listings reported by eBay in 2005, that 190,000 cases were confirmed
frauds in the last year.
Currently there are almost 900 horror stories from eBay fraud victims
are on the E.T.S. site whose motto is "Winning the war on deadbeats."
And already the brothers are working on the next volume of horror
stories, encouraging victims who want to get their tales to be told to
get into contact with them.
United Press International spoke with Edward Klink about the recent
book, their watchdog
Web site, and the current state of eBay.
"We had collected hundreds of stories
on the Web site
and figured it was time to take these stories to a wider audience and
let the victims have their say," Edward Klink said. "Plus with our
combined backgrounds, Steve is a police officer and I'm a
business writer,
we felt we were ideally suited to get the job done."
Fraud on eBay can take on many forms including items paid for that vary
from the description in the sale, unpaid items, and spoof eBay or
Pay-Pal e-mails.
And like the many victims on their site, the brothers too have
encountered the problem of auction fraud.
In 2003, Steve, a New Jersey police officer, won a set of "new"
speakers, only to find that it looked as if they were "gnawed on by a
wild animal."
"The seller said they weren't that way when mailed, and eBay said there
was nothing they could do," Klink said. "Annoyed that he was stuck with
the merchandise and given no recourse, Steve started
www.ebayersthatsuck.com and stories began pouring in from around the
world."
And the site has received a positive response since it's been up and
running.
"People love it," Klink said. "On eBay, their official boards are
closely monitored and talk about problems and scams and eBay's failings
are not generally tolerated. So E.T.S. gives them an outlet. When it
first came out Ebayersthatsuck.com was featured on Courttv.com and
newspapers as far away as South Africa."
According to Klink, while eBay has what could be considered --"the
ultimate
business model" -- of collecting fees and
delegating the marketing, selling, packaging, shipping, and
customer service
to eBay users, it's very easy for these same users to fall victim to
fraud.
"I think consumers let their guard down when they are sitting at home
and surfing the Web with their coffee," he said. "If a stranger offered
them a $1,400 antique vase on the street they'd most likely walk away,
but when that same vase is on
the Internet for some reason the reaction is
more, 'Say, now that looks interesting.'"
And have the brothers seen any improvements in eBay's handling of the
fraud issue?
"eBay says it is a tiny fraction of all auctions," Klink said, "but the
hundreds of people who told us their stories hate being in that tiny
group and never thought they would be. Lots of fraud is underreported,
too. EBay encourages users to settle it among themselves, and if they
can't, then they are directed to pay $20.00 to have SquareTrade, a third
party, mediate the dispute. But it's not often a scammer shows up for
mediation!"
. . .
"We want people on eBay to have a good buying and
selling experience - transparent, well-lit, and safe," the spokesperson
said. "Fraud on all levels is something we take seriously."
The company also has a team dedicated to working
with law enforcement rather it be educating them on fraudulent cases and
working proactively taking information on specific cases to them or
cooperating with investigations.
"We would invite anyone to visit the site and read
more," said the spokesperson, who also emphasized that the no. 1 issue for
online shoppers is to pay safely using Pay-Pal or a credit card than any
other form of payment.
In many cases, consumers are able to get their
money back, Pay-Pal offers up to $1,000 back with buyer protection and
credit card programs usually have a pay back program in cases of fraud. In
many cases, Pay-Pal offers a way for consumers to make purchases without
providing personal information and at the same time protecting money.
"Dawn of the eBay Deadbeats" ($12.95) is
available on Amazon, eBay, and in select bookstores.
"Like all learners, new online instructors need
hands-on experience, feedback, and ongoing support to become comfortable and
proficient in the virtual classroom. It is unrealistic to expect even the
most self-motivated, creatively pedagogical, and technically inclined
instructor to fly solo after just a few hours of training." In "Uniting
Technology and Pedagogy: The Evolution of an Online Teaching Certification
Course" (EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 29, no. 1, 2006), Bonnie Riedinger and
Paul Rosenberg explain how and why a certification course for online
teaching was moved out of the classroom and into an online environment. The
authors note from this experience that the online environment presents an
"opportunity for instructors to examine their pedagogical habits." The
complete article is available online at
http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm06/eqm0616.asp?bhcp=1 .
EDUCAUSE Quarterly, The IT Practitioner's Journal
[ISSN 1528-5324] is published by EDUCAUSE, 4772 Walnut Street, Suite 206,
Boulder, CO 80301-2538 USA. Current and past issues are available online at
http://www.educause.edu/eq/ .
See also:
"The Myth about Online Course Development: 'A
Faculty Member Can Individually Develop and Deliver an Effective Online
Course'" by Diana G. Oblinger and Brian L. Hawkins EDUCAUSE REVIEW, vol. 41,
no. 1, January/February 2006
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0617.asp
For tips on how to make your students' laptop
computers part of their learning activities, see "14 Good Ideas from Liesel
Knaack for Using Laptops in the Classroom" (SIDEBARS, January 2006). Knaack
is a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology where
every student gets an IBM Thinkpad on their first day of class to use
throughout their studies at the University. The article is online at
http://online.bcit.ca/sidebars/06january/on-the-side-1.htm .
SideBars [ISSN 1718-3685] is published by the
Learning Resources Unit of the British Columbia Institute of Technology [
http://www.lru.bcit.ca/
]. "Founded in December 2001, SideBars provides useful information and news
items for instructors, course developers, educational technologists, and
anyone else who has an interest in distributed learning in its various
manifestations." Current and back issues are available at
http://online.bcit.ca/sidebars/ . Email
subscriptions are available at no cost at
http://online.bcit.ca/sidebars/subcribe.html .
In January the University of Michigan Scholarly
Publishing Office launched a refereed online journal, PLAGIARY. The purpose
of the journal is "to bring together the various strands of scholarship
which already exist on the subject, and to create a forum for discussion
across disciplinary boundaries." Papers in the first issues include:
-- "The Google Library Project: Both Sides of the
Story"
-- "Copy This! A Historical Perspective On the Use
of the Photocopier in Art"
-- "A Million Little Pieces of Shame"
Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism,
Fabrication, and Falsification [ISSN 1559-3096] is available free of charge
as an Open Access journal on the Internet at
http://www.plagiary.org/
. For more information contact: John P. Lesko, Editor,
Department of English, Saginaw Valley State University, University Center,
MI 48710 USA; tel: 989-964-2067; fax: 989-790-7638; email:
jplesko@svsu.edu
Since Infobits reaches subscribers all over the
world, we welcome information about resources in other languages besides
English. This month, we present these:
USE
http://munin.bui.haw-hamburg.de/amoll/use/
"USE: Usability Engineering fur E-Learning" is an online document produced
by the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences Department of Information. The
document, written in German, shows how to involve students when planning and
designing an e-learning website.
STICEF
http://sticef.univ-lemans.fr/ "STICEF:
Sciences and Technologies Information and Communication for Education and
Training" presents research "undertaken in the field of communication and
information technologies in the service of human training." Papers are in
French, but English abstracts are available. Recent papers include:
-- "Reusing Available (educational) Software
developed by CAL (Computer Assisted Learning) Researchers?"
-- "Effet d'un feedback informatif sur la prise de
notes dans un environnement d'apprentissage informatise'"
Editor's note: Machine translation certainly has
its limitations; however, in order to decide if the text is relevant to your
needs, sometimes you need a "quick and dirty" translation of a web page into
your preferred language. In these cases, try Google's translation tools at
http://www.google.com/language_tools . A 2005
evaluation of machine translation systems conducted by the US National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) rated Google's tool best
overall. The NIST report is online at
http://www.nist.gov/speech/tests/mt/mt05eval_official_results_release_20050801_v3.html
.
I discovered Dan Madigan in the February 2006 issue
of Accounting Education News ---
http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm
In that issue of AEN, a summary of provided of his Idea Paper #43 on "New
Technologies that are Shaping Education and Learning." Excerpts from that
summary are provided below.
Idea Paper #43 by Dan Madigan
New Technologies that are Shaping Teaching
and Learning
Blogs
You can create your own blog for free by going to
http://www.blogger.com/home . Blog technology allows blogs
to be syndicated and aggregators allow users to automatically
search for favorite blogs on the web and have them delivered to
personal accounts (
http://www.bloglines.com/ ) [using tools like RSS feed
readers-Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary].
Many universities buy a proprietary LMS, but increasingly
universities are building their own LMS based on open source
software like Moodle (
http://www.moodle.org/ ). Moodle's no-cost (excluding costs
associated with hardware and support), flexibility to adapt to
small or large institutions, departments, programs and
individuals, and world-wide support are attractive features.
Presentation Software
Although PowerPoint®
may be the most common example of this program, there are many
other programs including Keynote, Adobe Acrobat, and the popular
and free Open Office Suite package that includes IMPRESS as its
presentation program (
http://www.openoffice.org/index.html ). Simple
presentations can also be created using the Simple
Standards-Based Slide Show System (S5). This open source system
(
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/ ) requires only basic
knowledge of web skills and can be learned quickly.
Tutorials/Self-tutorials
A basic tutorial can be created with any text editor and
delivered to students through a variety of digital technologies
such as email, Portable Document Files (PDF) that can preserve
the format and colors of a document, web pages, and CDs.
Tutorials that appeal to visual learners can be created with
scanning software or basic screen capture software found on any
operating system. Video tutorials, like those for software
applications, can be created with screen capturing software that
captures the movement of a mouse as it is used to open windows
and select options in a program. A microphone, used
simultaneously with the screen-capturing tool to narrate the
actions and video-editing software, completes the process. More
advanced tutorials include functions that, for example, mimic
teacher/student interactions and exchanges, and include an
assessment of those interactions. These interactive tutorials
can be created through advanced programs such as Adobe FLASH and
java scripting.
Concept Mapping Software
Description: Concept mapping (a method of
brainstorming) is a technique for visualizing the relationships
between concepts and creating a visual image to represent the
relationship. Concept mapping software serves several purposes
in the educational environment. One is to capture the
conceptual thinking of one or more persons in a way that is
visually represented. Another is to represent the structure of
knowledge gleaned from written documents so that such knowledge
can be visually represented. In essence, a concept map is a
diagram showing relationships, often between complex ideas.
With new mapping software such as the open source Cmap (
http://www.cmap.ihmc.us/download/ ), concepts are easily
represented with images (bubbles or pictures) called concept
nodes, and are connected with lines that show the relationship
between and among the concepts. In addition, the software
allows users to attach documents, diagrams, images other concept
maps, hypertextual links and even media files to the concept
nodes. Concept maps can be saved as a PDF or image file and
distributed electronically in a variety of ways including the
Internet and storage devices.
Webcast
These live sessions are highly interactive and allow users to
share applications, such as whiteboards, concept maps and word
documents, and to communicate live through audio and chat.
Elluminate (
http://www.elluminate.com/educator_solutions.jsp ) is one of
many server-based software programs that is enjoying popularity
in educational settings. Webcasts provide educational
institutions with the ability to support conferencing and to
deliver training and presentations to personnel anytime and
anywhere. Recorded and archived webcasts, because they are
economical to develop and store, are increasingly becoming the
preferred way for universities to deliver lectures, events and
presentations to faculty and students through the web, CDs, DVDs
and even TV broadcasts.
Podcasts
Some popular free podcatcher websites are iTunes and iPodder.
The browser Firefox also has podcatching features. Users can
create their own podcast for free by going to websites such as (
http://www.twocanoes.com/vodcaster/ ). For a nominal fee, a
more powerful and cross-platform podcast creator tool can be
found at (
http://www.potionfactory.com/ ).
ePortfolios
Although many standard software programs can be used to
create basic ePortfolios, the most dynamic programs, such as
Open Source Portfolio (
http://www.osportfolio.org ) are designed specifically for
developing portfolios that serve a variety of reflective and
representational functions within a password protected system.
Personal Response Systems (Clickers)
Individuals are equipped with their own remote control
keypads that have letters or numbers that correspond to choices
given by a presenter. The results of the responses are captured
on a computer either through infrared or radio signals and
compiled in ways that show such breakdowns as class distribution
and individual responses. Typically, the results are instantly
made available to the participants via some type of graphic that
is displayed with a projector. Presenters can set automatic
controls within the system that limit the time a responder has
to answer a question. Each remote "clicker" has a serial number
so that all users and their responses can be individually
identified and recorded.
Supporting Digital Technology for Teaching
and Learning
As faculty are carefully assessing their use of technology
for purposes of teaching and learning, universities need to
assess whether their technology support is adequate and
responsive to the needs of those instructors. During the early
phases of the digital revolution on campuses, this meant
building an infrastructure, providing equipment and offering
basic skills-oriented workshops to faculty and students. Over
the years, however, we have learned that basic technology
support has not always been enough to ensure that digital
technologies are being used effectively as ways to enhance
student learning. Some universities have heeded the challenge
and are creatively building upon existing programs to develop a
technology of support that is responsive to the professional
lives of today's faculty. What follows are five examples that
serve to represent ways that universities are developing
creative solutions for supporting a learning environment that is
increasingly being influenced by a digital revolution that show
no signs of abating anytime soon.
Faculty Involvement
Faculty need to have a critical voice in university decisions
about technology improvement and deployment on
campus--especially when the technology relates to teaching and
learning issues...Forward thinking universities find new and
inclusive ways to tap into the collective voice so that student
learning and new technologies can be effectively aligned.
Blended Workshops
Forward thinking universities go beyond skills-based
technology workshops. They have found creative ways to blend
pedagogical instruction with technology instruction...Also,
universities have begun to offer blended workshops that have a
distinct pedagogical focus yet blend in thinking about
resources, including technology resources, which can support a
strong pedagogical focus...
Threaded Workshops
Universities are using the threaded workshop model as a
framework for teaching and learning workshops that include
learning about new technologies. Each workshop in the series is
"threaded" in such a way as to relate to one another and play
off of one another. Thus, a series on integrated course design
might have individual workshops on different topics like
assessment, learning activities, motivation, and learning
outcomes that are aligned in a way that gives participants a
more comprehensive view of how to build a dynamic course. All
discussions about technology in these threaded workshops are
contextualized within the larger pedagogical discussion, and are
focused on how the technology serves to support the pedagogy.
Because instructors attend the series over a period of several
weeks, they bring back to each workshop their applied knowledge
and share it with one another as real world and relevant
experiences...
Just-In-Time Resources
Universities are increasingly realizing that busy instructors
do not need to be experts in all areas of digital technology in
order to use technology effectively in the classroom.
Universities support this notion by making technology learning
easy, accessible, and just-in-time. Today's digital technology
allows just-in-time resources to flourish on campus. For
example, Internet available tutorials that are home grown or
licensed (
http://www.atomiclearning.com ) make it easy for instructors
to learn new software/hardware in bits and pieces and when
needed. Why learn everything there is to know about PowerPoint
or your computer operating system when you can learn only what
you need by going to a two-minute video that is available
anywhere and anytime. In addition, just-in-time resources
extend the learning environments of students. Why spend
valuable class time teaching students how to use a certain
technology application for a project or activity when
just-in-time resources can be made available to students at
their level and at a time outside of class time?
Universities are home to a rich diversity of student learners
whose cultures have been tremendously impacted by the digital
revolution of the last fifteen years. These students grew up
communicating, creating knowledge, and sharing resources through
the Internet and all its applications. As university students,
they are poised to take advantage of the digital world for
learning. But are we as teachers? We should not jump
headfirst into this potential digital cauldron without taking
stock of an important detail--as with all technologies and
instructional practices, we must not only understand their
potential to impact deeper learning in students, we must also
understand their limitations as a means to achieve a deeper
learning. It is not the lecture, cooperative learning or the
problem-based method itself that enhances student learning any
more than it is the Internet, podcast, or blog. It is far more
important to know how to use instructional methods and
technology to support learning outcomes that are integrally
linked to the student learner as a critical thinker. Students
may know how to navigate the Internet and use other forms of
digital technology for purposes of their own learning, but do
they know how to take full advantage of those technologies for
learning at the university level? This is where progressive
universities enter the equation and lead.
In today's educational climate of decreasing state support
and public scrutiny of educational spending, universities can
ill afford to squander important dollars on technology resources
that have not been critically assessed in terms of supporting
student learning. But, universities cannot stop there. Faculty
and administrators must combine efforts to celebrate openly the
important symbiosis between technology and learning. Nothing
less will suffice or we will suffer from our own negligence.
The above quotes are only isolated quotes from a much longer
document.
March 30, 2006 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]
Dan is an exceptional person and has had much influence how I go
about my teaching assignments. He, for instance, taught me about the
learning centered classroom. This took place when he was directing
our CTLT (Center for Teaching & Learning using Technology). He did
such a great job that he got promoted.
Big Tax Return Preparer is Watching You: Yet another
incentive to do your own tax returns
The person who prepares your tax return may sell your private
information (Repeated from March 31 edition of New Bookmarks)
This link
was forwarded by Scott Bonacker
[cpa@BONACKERS.COM]
"IRS plans to allow preparers to sell data: Critics said the
proposed regulation could lead to a loss of privacy for clients," by
Jeff Gelles, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 21, 2006 ---
Click Here
The IRS is quietly moving to loosen the
once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns. If it
succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers will be able to
sell information from individual returns - or even entire returns -
to marketers and data brokers.
The change is raising alarm among consumer
and privacy-rights advocates. It was included in a set of proposed
rules that the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec.
8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them "not a
significant regulatory action."
IRS officials portray the changes as
housecleaning to update outmoded regulations adopted before it began
accepting returns electronically. The proposed rules, which would
become effective 30 days after a final version is published, would
require a tax preparer to obtain written consent before selling tax
information.
Critics call the changes a dangerous breach
in personal and financial privacy. They say the requirement for
signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers,
especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents before a
filing deadline.
"The normal interaction is that the
taxpayer just signs what the tax preparer puts in front of them,"
said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America, one of
several groups fighting the changes. "They think, 'This person is a
tax professional, and I'm going to rely on them.' "
Criticism also came from U.S. Sen. Barack
Obama (D., Ill.). In a letter last Tuesday to IRS Commissioner Mark
Everson, Obama warned that once in the hands of third parties, tax
information could be resold and handled under even looser rules than
the IRS sets, increasing consumers' vulnerability to identity theft
and other risks.
"There is no more sensitive information
than a taxpayer's return, and the IRS's proposal to allow these
returns to be sold to third-party marketers and database brokers is
deeply troubling," Obama wrote.
The IRS first announced the proposal in a
news release the day before the official notice was published,
headlined: "IRS Issues Proposed Regulations to Safeguard Taxpayer
Information."
The announcement did not mention potential
sales of tax information. It said the proposed rules were guided by
the principle "that tax return preparers may not disclose or use tax
return information for purposes other than tax return preparation
without the knowing, informed and voluntary consent of the
taxpayer."
IRS spokesman William M. Cressman defended
the proposal in similar terms.
"The heart of this proposed regulation is
about the right of taxpayers to control their tax return
information. The idea is to emphasize taxpayer consent and set clear
boundaries on how tax return preparers can use or disclose tax
return information," Cressman said in an e-mail response to
questions.
Cressman said he was unable to explain "why
this issue has come up at this time other than our effort to update
regulations that date back to the 1970s and predate the electronic
era."
Not all the changes have drawn opposition.
Beth A. McConnell, director of the
Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group (PennPIRG), said she
welcomed a requirement that a taxpayer would need to consent to
overseas processing of any portion of a tax return.
"That's a positive development, but I don't
think it's worth giving up our tax returns' privacy for," said
McConnell, who plans to testify on behalf of the U.S. Public
Interest Research Group at an April 4 IRS hearing in Washington on
the rule changes.
McConnell accused the IRS of using the new
limit on overseas processing to dress up changes that would chiefly
benefit tax preparers, marketers and data brokers.
"That's a disturbing trend among Washington
officials lately," McConnell said. "They'll offer a modest consumer
protection in one area in exchange for dramatic weakening of
consumer protections in another area, and then try to convince the
public that it's all in our interests."
Critics of the proposal said it could do
more than open up sales of tax information to data brokers and
marketers, because it could undermine taxpayer confidence in the
entire tax system.
"Privacy protections for tax information
are especially critical given the largely voluntary nature of the
U.S. tax system," said Chi Chi Wu, a tax-law specialist at Boston's
National Consumer Law Center.
Wu and other critics said they were
uncertain who or what was behind the proposed changes in IRS privacy
rules, which currently prohibit tax preparers from selling returns
to third parties for marketing purposes, and require written consent
if they want to use it for marketing by companies under their own
corporate umbrella.
Officials at H&R Block and Jackson-Hewitt,
two of the nation's largest tax-preparation firms, did not respond
to requests for comment. Cressman said the IRS had so far received
only about a dozen comments on the proposal.
"I think this just flew under the radar
screen for so many people," McConnell said.
The IRS is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of
federal income-tax returns. If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return
preparers will be able to sell information from individual returns - or even
entire returns - to marketers and data brokers.
The change is raising alarm among consumer and privacy-rights advocates.
It was included in a set of proposed rules that the Treasury Department and
the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice
labeled them "not a significant regulatory action."
IRS officials portray the changes as housecleaning to update outmoded
regulations adopted before it began accepting returns electronically. The
proposed rules, which would become effective 30 days after a final version
is published, would require a tax preparer to obtain written consent before
selling tax information.
Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and financial
privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless
for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents
before a filing deadline.
"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax
preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer
Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes. "They
think, 'This person is a tax professional, and I'm going to rely on them.' "
Criticism also came from U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D., Ill.). In a letter
last Tuesday to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, Obama warned that once in the
hands of third parties, tax information could be resold and handled under
even looser rules than the IRS sets, increasing consumers' vulnerability to
identity theft and other risks.
"There is no more sensitive information than a taxpayer's return, and the
IRS's proposal to allow these returns to be sold to third-party marketers
and database brokers is deeply troubling," Obama wrote.
The IRS first announced the proposal in a news release the day before the
official notice was published, headlined: "IRS Issues Proposed Regulations
to Safeguard Taxpayer Information."
The announcement did not mention potential sales of tax information. It
said the proposed rules were guided by the principle "that tax return
preparers may not disclose or use tax return information for purposes other
than tax return preparation without the knowing, informed and voluntary
consent of the taxpayer."
Conduct a simple
search. Some basic tips are included here along
with recently added search features. These tips refer to the search
box on Google's homepage.
Quotations.
Put quotation marks around the phrase:
"SEC study". Don't worry about
capitalization: "sec sTuDy" will
return the same results as "SEC study"
Tracking.
Need to track your shipment from a major shipping
company like UPS or USPS? Simply type in the tracking number in
the search box. Do the same for tracking a flight: enter the
airline followed by the flight number.
Dictionary.
Find the definition of a word by typing
define: ethics
Calculator.
That's right. Type in a math problem and Google will
spit out the answer. Try this: (256-96)/96
Directions/Maps. Many Web sites offer maps and driving
directions. Now Google does too. Type in an address in the box
and the results will return a street map and a
satellite image. From here, type in from/to driving directions.
Explore "more."
From the Google homepage, click on "More" and you're in
Google heaven.
Toolbar.
If you use Google often, download the Google toolbar to
your Web browser. Not only do you have instant Google access,
you can block pop-ups and auto fill your personal information
into Web forms.
News.
With Google News, access news stories from a myriad of sources,
from The New York Times to Christian Science
Monitor to PC World. When you search in Google
News, you get results of how that word or phrase appeared in
periodicals within the last 30 days. This feature saves you from
having to visit several different news sites for the same story
or topic. Give it a test run by typing in
FASB.
Local.
Find local businesses and services with a map pointing
to the exact physical position. Traveling to Seattle for a
conference and need to find the nearest Westin hotel? Type in Seattle
Westin.
Special
Searches. When looking for a specific government
document, search .gov Web sites only. Other special search
options include Public Service Search, University Search, and
Microsoft Search.
Alerts.
Are you following a particular company in the news? Customize an
Alert and you'll be notified via email when Google finds that
topic. A practical application would be to monitor your company,
industry, or competitors.
This is just a small
helping of what Google has to offer. In addition to cool search
capabilities, Google has email, a photo editor, satellite imaging, a
Web blog tool, a language translator, instant messaging, and a
mobile-device tool (all free). To further your Google knowledge,
don't miss the Help page, which provides tips for basic and advanced
searching.
Happy googling!
NIQUETTE KELCHER is the Web
Managing Editor for SmartPros Ltd.
Political Bias in Undergraduate Education
In this month's Carnegie Perspectives, Tom Ehrlich
and Anne Colby revisit the highly politicized Academic Bill of Rights
legislation. Tom and Anne lead the Foundation's work on the importance of civic
and political engagement among undergraduate students. In this piece, they argue
for the necessity for college faculty members to become much more self-conscious
of the variety of ways in which they communicate their political and social
views to students. They provide recommendations and precautions for campus
leaders who seek to create opportunities for teaching and inquiry that will
encourage student learning around difficult issues.
Lee S. Shulman, President The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching, March 29, 2006 ---
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/conversations/sub.asp?key=244&subkey=1565
Question
What may be some of the direct and indirect commodification implications for you
and your college under various new legislation and pending legislation in
Washington DC? Hint: Under the bill, colleges can no longer be able to turn down credits
solely based on a school's source of accreditation.
"Higher-Education Bill
Aims to Stir Up Academia," by John Hechinger, The Wall Street Journal,
March 30, 2006; Page A8 ---
Click Here
Republicans are "opening up a tremendous number of
provisions for the for-profits," says Ms. Flanagan. "Those are the ones with
a seat at the table. The rest of us have been left out."
Congress recently handed for-profit schools a big
win when it eliminated a rule requiring all colleges to offer at least half
of their instruction in brick-and-mortar classrooms to be eligible for
federal financial aid. The restriction, intended to prevent fraud, had
hindered online education programs that are especially popular offerings
among education companies.
A provision in the latest bill would weaken another
requirement -- that schools receive no more than 90% of their revenue from
federal financial aid. The rule was intended to prevent a repeat of
widespread fraud in the 1980s and early 1990s, when some trade schools
signed up unqualified low-income students in order to collect federal aid.
For-profit schools are most likely to bump up against the 90% limit because
they lack other funding sources and often cater to low-income students.
Schools would now have more time to get back in line with the rule if they
fall short.
Yet another measure would put for-profits more on
equal academic footing with established schools. Traditional schools have
long tended to reject degrees and course credits from students at for-profit
schools, which often lack the imprimatur of long-established regional
accrediting agencies. Under the bill, they would no longer be able to turn
down credits solely based on a school's source of accreditation.
Jensen Comment
This legislation can have far-reaching impacts on faculty. It will open
employment opportunities in for-profit colleges. But it will also increase
competition, especially in graduate professional programs in business, law,
pharmacy, nursing, etc. I think it will also greatly increase the danger of
fraud.
What is the meaning of “commodification” in education today? When asked to list the top 10 problems facing
the academy today, I bet most professors would include the
“commodification” of education. By that they mean a sort of creeping
penetration of market-forces into the academy such that earning a B.A.
is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from, say, buying a Camaro.
As an adjunct I am not privy to the way this trend has altered the wider
institutional structure of higher education, beyond noticing that that
very little of the tuition my students pay finds its way back to me.
However, as someone who regularly teaches service courses I have
extensive experience with bread and butter teaching, and I am familiar
with what “commodification” is supposed to mean in this context: the
idea that professors are expected to produce “customer satisfaction” in
their students, and students are supposed to actually “enjoy” the
classes they take.
Alex Golub, "The Professor as Personal Trainer," Inside Higher Ed,
October 24, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/10/24/golub
March 30, 2005 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
In a very rare turn of events, I find myself in
total 100% agreement with Bob's speculation on this one. In reply to Glen's
response, I'm not sure the federal employees had as much to do with this
bill as lobbyists. Congress is generally more attuned to the needs of
lobbyists than it is to federal employees.
And as Bob points out, this smacks not only of
lobbyists, but good old fashioned planking politics, knee-jerk politics.
Okay, (yawn), so what else is new?
But what I'm really wondering is: Why we accounting
professors -- of all people -- haven't been able to see the connection
between the "calls for transparency in corporate reporting", and the "calls
for accountability in higher education"?
Why don't we have transparency when it comes to
judging the quality of a transcript? Why do we pay so much attention to
accurate, transparent, and fair financial reporting of corporations, but so
little attention to such qualities when it comes to transcript reporting?
Isn't education more important than mere money?
(Okay, okay, I know the real answer, but we're *supposed* to be ACADEMICS,
aren't we??)
What's good for the goose should be good for the
gander, right? Take a close look at this concept.
We require companies to go to astoundingly complex,
costly, gyrating, unimaginable effort to publicly report on the results of
their operations. Why? So the public can openly compare quality between
organizations, and thereby make good decisions. To support this public
reporting, we have established an unbelievably-complex set of rules -- and
then mandated adherence to them -- about how to create those annual reports.
And then we require periodic audits to ensure "uniform" application across
organizations to promote public confidence in the comparisons. We require
certification of those who do the checking, too.
Why not apply the same principle to higher
education? Isn't hiring an employee tantamount to making an investment?
Shouldn't there be some way of comparing the quality of various individuals'
transcripts, just as there is a way to compare stocks and bonds? Why don't
we care about the quality of a transcript the way we do a stock certificate?
Why don't we propose a set of "generally accepted
academic reporting principles" for the issuing organization (e.g.,
universities, colleges, diploma mills, etc.) and mandate adherence to these
uniform reporting standards.
Oh, come on, sure, you can claim that education is
more complex and multi-dimensional than simple cash flows and net income
calculations. But hey, get serious -- have you looked at derivative or SPE
or pension accounting lately? I rest my case.
And we already have the audit mechanism in place --
kinda -- (given our dean's worshipful obeisance to the AACSB). (footnote:
can you imagine having the AACSB spend four weeks at your institution EVERY
YEAR after the May commencement? Wow, what a thought! I wonder which junior
is going to get stuck spending his weekend proofing the assessment figures!)
And talk about malfeasance and negligence! If the
accrediting agencies were held to the same standards as financial auditors,
just think of the job opportunities this would create for all those poor
law-school students who might otherwise face an oversupply of lawyers in our
economy in the coming years.
While I believe Congress is acting politically and
irrationally (both as always), they are at least responding to a problem
about bias in decision making relating to the quality of transcripts. They
are responding to a changing market environment in transcripts. I'm not
confident in the winners of popularity contests to come up with solutions to
difficult problems. Can we as academics do any better?
My experience has been that just because a
bricks-and-mortar school is accredited says very little about the quality of
its education (inputs maybe, outputs no). And while there are many
fraudulent on-line educational programs, my brother- in-law's experience
teaching at such an institution (named after its home town in Arizona) would
seem to indicate that with proper management, proper administration, proper
mission definition, proper faculty hiring decisions, and proper execution
(!), the concept can possibly result in as good an education as
bricks-and-mortar.
But after all my devils-advocating at the
fundamental level, I repeat, I agree with Bob. I see such a law as this
creating far more problems than it solves.
And of course, my whole post here assumes the WSJ
article got things right in the first place. My experience with WSJ
reporting's quality leaves this assumption in grave doubt... We need
transparency and accuracy of reporting in the media FAR FAR more than we
need it in financial reporting or education or anything else, for that
matter.
David Fordham
Actually David, I think the WSJ article got it right this time although
without the details about the political fight described below by Doug Lederman.
The rest of the rhetoric as lawmakers
began work on the key piece of higher education legislation
probably left many of those who watched it longing for a
different era, or perhaps a different political system
entirely. Republican and Democratic lawmakers mostly talked
past each other, with Democrats accusing Republicans of
shortchanging students in the bill and squelching debate by
restricting the number of amendments to the measure, and
Republicans charging Democrats with distorting the goals of
the legislation and devolving into unnecessary partisanship.
In terms of actual legislating, very
little got done Wednesday, in part because the House Rules
Committee, which sets the terms of debates and voting for
each piece of legislation,
approved only 14, mostly minor amendments
that could be offered on the House
floor Wednesday.
Although Democrats complained that
Republican leaders were purposely trying to limit their
ability to try to alter the Higher Ed Act legislation —
“shutting down this process,” Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.)
said – the Rules Committee, in a highly unusual move, met
late into the night Wednesday to
craft a second rule that cleared the way
for 8 of the other 100 or so proposed
amendments to be debated and voted on today.
The only amendment of real
substance that was considered Wednesday was offered by Rep.
Dan Burton (R-Ind.), and vigorously opposed by higher
education groups. It sought to require colleges that receive
funds through the Higher Education Act’s international
education programs to report in a public database any
donations they received from foreign sources.
While Burton and other supporters
of the measure portrayed it as an anti-terrorism effort – a
news release from Burton quoted David Horowitz as saying the
amendment would prevent “the undue influence of foreign
monies” – Burton also did not hide the fact that he was
primarily
targeting campus Middle East studies programs,
some of which conservatives have
accused of being hotbeds of Muslim radicalism.
“The underlying goal of the
amendment is to draw attention to the anti-American,
anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic rhetoric being preached at
some college’s ‘Middle East Studies’ centers,” said the
Burton news release, which featured a line at the top
boasting that the “American Jewish Congress strongly
supports disclosure.”
College groups lobbied hard against
the Burton measure, and it was defeated soundly, by a vote
of 306 to 120.
The oil exporters of the Persian Gulf are flush
with cash. Some of that money is going towards acquiring P&O, the British
shipping concern, thus sparking off the heated controversy over foreign
control of U.S. ports. This has led people to worry that Arab petrodollars
might be scared away from the U.S. In fact, unlike during the last oil boom
of the late 1970s, relatively little of the current Arab oil surplus has
been directly invested in U.S. assets or even deposited in the international
banking system. This time much of the oil money has remained at home where a
classic speculative mania is now being played out.
Lawrence of Arabia took the title of his celebrated
book from a passage in the Book of Proverbs: "Wisdom hath builded her house,
she hath hewn out her seven pillars." In homage to Lawrence, we identify the
seven pillars of folly upon which the Great Arab Boom has been weakly
constructed.
• The first pillar is liquidity:
OPEC members have earned around $1.3 trillion in petrodollars since 1998,
according to the Bank for International Settlements. The extra liquidity
injected into the Gulf economies by the oil price hike since 2002 is
estimated at around $300 billion by HSBC. Some of this money has been spent
on building up foreign currency reserves and on the acquisition of foreign
companies, such as P&O. Arab takeovers of European and U.S. firms totaled
$30 billion last year. Some money has even been invested in hedge funds and
gold. However, a great deal has stayed in the Gulf region.
This has contributed to an extraordinary explosion
of bank credit in Saudi Arabia and its neighbors. Since the member countries
of the Gulf Cooperation Council link their currencies to the U.S. dollar,
they have also enjoyed the Federal Reserve's easy money policy. The Saudi
government has recently repaid around $100 billion of outstanding debt,
further contributing to domestic liquidity.
The deposit base of Gulf commercial banks has
increased by over 60% since 2000, according to a recent report from Credit
Suisse. Bank loans have financed business investment, personal consumption,
property development and stock margin loans, thereby boosting both the
economy and asset prices.
• The second pillar is the new economy:
The Gulf economies are growing rapidly, along with corporate profits.
Returns on equity in the region are approaching 20%, calculates Credit
Suisse. Saudi Arabia has recently joined the World Trade Organization.
Kuwait is selling off some state-owned businesses. A new era of permanently
high oil prices and perpetual prosperity has been hailed.
The Gulf rulers are seeking to reduce their
economies' dependence on oil. This is spurring a massive investment boom.
Dubai is attempting to transform itself into a leading financial center and
tourist resort. Saudi Arabia intends to become a world leader in fertilizer
production. A bridge costing $3 billion is proposed to span the Red Sea. A
new economy is coming into being. The current oil boom, unlike former ones,
won't be followed by a bust, say the believers. This time it's different.
• The third pillar is the stock market:
The recent performance of Arab stock markets makes the Nasdaq of the late
1990s look like a slouch. Since January 2002, the Egyptian, Dubai and Saudi
stock markets are up respectively by over 1,100%, 630% and 600%. Only four
years ago, Gulf companies were priced at around twice book value. Today they
trade on an average of 44 times historic earnings and at over eight times
book value. Gulf banks are valued at over nine times book value, according
to Credit Suisse.
Sabic, a Saudi conglomerate, is currently ranked
among the world's 10 largest companies by market capitalization. The Saudi
stock exchange has a market cap of around $750 billion. That's roughly three
times the country's GDP. By comparison, the U.S. stock market reached a peak
of 183% of GDP in March 2000. In fact, the relative overvaluation of the
Saudi stock market is even greater than these figures suggest. Nomura
analyst Tarek Fadlallah points out that as the oil industry remains in state
hands, a far smaller fraction of Saudi economic activity is captured by the
stock market than in the U.S.
• The fourth pillar is an IPO boom:
In the late 1980s, the Japanese authorities kindled a speculative mania by
floating telecom giant NTT. In unconscious imitation, the Gulf states have
stimulated their mania with privatizations and IPOs at bargain prices. It is
not unknown for stocks to climb 500% on the first day's trading.
Applications for new issues have been oversubscribed by up to 800 times. One
IPO in the United Arab Emirates attracted aggregate subscriptions greater
than $100 billion, a larger sum than the UAE's GDP.
• The fifth pillar is a property boom:
Dubai is the fastest-growing city in the world. Hundreds of new buildings
are under construction, including what is planned to be the tallest building
ever, the Burj Tower. Cynics point out that the capping of the world's
highest property, from the Empire State Building to the Petronas Towers in
Malaysia, has occasionally in the past coincided with economic crises.
Reports suggest that the majority of new Dubai properties are being acquired
for speculative purposes, with only small deposits put down. They are being
flipped in the contemporary Miami manner.
• The sixth pillar is market inefficiency:
Financial information in the Gulf is totally inadequate. The Saudi megacap
conglomerate Sabic attracts no domestic financial analysis, says Nomura's
Mr. Fadlallah. Companies report their results in a rudimentary fashion. It
is against the law to sell short overpriced stocks in the Saudi market. And
foreigners' financial sophistication is absent since only Gulf nationals can
purchase Saudi stocks. Instead, speculators operate in an information vacuum
in markets reportedly dominated by insider trading and practiced
manipulation.
• The seventh pillar is the madness of crowds:
Newspapers gleefully report stories of police called to protect banks from
overeager IPO subscribers. A Saudi woman is said to have been divorced by
her husband for no reason other than that he'd had lost money in the stock
market. Up to two million of the 16 million Saudi population are said to be
playing the market. Interest-free loans are commonly available. Saudi bank
foyers are lined with LCD screens showing stock movements. A local TV
station has started to provide stock market reports. The education minister
has warned teachers to stop day-trading at schools. People are quitting
their jobs to trade.
This is a familiar tale of folly, similar in
certain aspects to the global technology bubble of the late 1990s. And like
the tech bubble it is set to burst. The current Gulf prosperity is a mirage
created by a haze of liquidity. The Federal Reserve, which inadvertently
caused the Arab bubble when it slashed interest rates in 2002, is currently
mopping up that liquidity. The Gulf Arabs are likely to be rudely awoken
from their speculative dreams. In fact, the Arab markets are beginning to
crack: Dubai has fallen 40% from its November peak, and the Saudi market is
down by around 12% in the past few days.
There are several implications of the coming Arab
crash. Speculative booms lead to capital being misallocated. Many of today's
investments in the Gulf region may appear, in retrospect, as extravagant as
U.S. fiber-optic expenditures in the late 1990s. As for Dubai's desire to
become an international financial center, it is spookily reminiscent of
Tokyo's ambition to rival New York and London in the 1980s. Japan's ambition
was shattered by the collapse of its bubble economy.
The political consequences could be more serious.
Arab rulers have deliberately encouraged the boom in the hope that rising
asset prices and a strong economy would distract their youthful populations
from religious fundamentalism. This strategy could backfire. History teaches
that when speculative bubbles burst and the public loses large sums, there
is normally a political backlash. This was true of the U.S. in the 1930s,
and to a lesser extent in the early 2000s, and of Japan in the 1990s. It's
not hard to imagine Islamists capitalizing on a future bust with
denunciations of stock-market gambling. Some of today's young Arab
day-traders could well turn into tomorrow's al Qaeda recruits.
Mr. Chancellor is deputy U.S. editor for Breakingviews.com.
Gore and Blood
We see a lot of snide remarks and jokes about Al Gore the conservative media,
and he (like his counterpart George W. Bush) has made some rather dumb remarks
in highly boring speeches. But when teamed up with the former head of Goldman
Sachs Asset Management, Gore and Blood (not the best of last name combinations)
produced a rather good, albeit short, article about some severe accounting
limitations.
I commend The Wall Street Journal for carrying this
piece which I would normally expect to appear in a more liberal media outlet.
Capitalism and sustainability are deeply and
increasingly interrelated. After all, our economic activity is based on the
use of natural and human resources. Not until we more broadly "price in" the
external costs of investment decisions across all sectors will we have a
sustainable economy and society.
The industrial revolution brought enormous
prosperity, but it also introduced unsustainable business practices. Our
current system for accounting was principally established in the 1930s by
Lord Keynes and the creation of "national accounts" (the backbone of today's
gross domestic product). While this system was precise in its ability to
account for capital goods, it was imprecise in its ability to account for
natural and human resources because it assumed them to be limitless. This,
in part, explains why our current model of economic development is
hard-wired to externalize as many costs as possible.
Externalities are costs created by industry but
paid for by society. For example, pollution is an externality which is
sometimes taxed by government in order to make the entity responsible
"internalize" the full costs of production. Over the past century, companies
have been rewarded financially for maximizing externalities in order to
minimize costs.
Today, the global context for business is clearly
changing. "Capitalism is at a crossroads," says Stuart Hart, professor of
management at Cornell University. We agree, and we think the financial
markets have a significant opportunity to chart the way forward. In fact, we
believe that sustainable development will be the primary driver of
industrial and economic change over the next 50 years. The interests of
shareholders, over time, will be best served by companies that maximize
their financial performance by strategically managing their economic,
social, environmental and ethical performance. This is increasingly true as
we confront the limits of our ecological system to hold up under current
patterns of use. "License to operate" can no longer be taken for granted by
business as challenges such as climate change, HIV/AIDS, water scarcity and
poverty have reached a point where civil society is demanding a response
from business and government. The "polluter pays" principle is just one
example of how companies can be held accountable for the full costs of doing
business. Now, more than ever, factors beyond the scope of Keynes's national
accounts are directly affecting a company's ability to generate revenues,
manage risks, and sustain competitive advantage. There are many examples of
the growing acceptance of this view.
In the corporate sector, companies like General
Electric are designing products to enable their clients to compete in a
carbon-constrained world. Novo Nordisk is taking a holistic view of
combating diabetes not only through treatment but also through prevention.
And Whole Foods and others are addressing the demand for quality food by
sourcing local and organic produce. Importantly, the business response is
about making money for shareholders, not altruism.
In the nongovernmental sector, organizations such
as World Resources Institute, Transparency International, the Coalition for
Environmentally Responsible Economies (Ceres) and AccountAbility are helping
companies explore how best to align corporate responsibility with business
strategy.
Over the past five years we have seen markets begin
to incorporate the external cost of carbon dioxide emissions. This is
happening through pricing mechanisms (price per ton of carbon dioxide) and
government-supported trading platforms such as the European Union Emissions
Trading Scheme in Europe. Even without a regulatory framework in the U.S.,
voluntary markets are emerging, such as the Chicago Climate Exchange and
state-level initiatives such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
These market mechanisms increasingly enable companies to calculate project
returns and capital expenditures decisions with the price of carbon dioxide
fully integrated.
The investment community has also started to
respond. For example, the Enhanced Analytics Initiative, an international
collaboration between asset owners and managers, encourages investment
research that considers the impact of extrafinancial issues on long-term
company performance. The Equator Principles, designed to help financial
institutions manage environmental and social risk in project financing, have
now been adopted by 40 banks, which arrange over 75% of the world's project
loans. In addition, the rise in shareholder activism and the growing debate
on fiduciary responsibility, governance legislation and reporting
requirements (such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the EU Business
Review) indicate the mainstream incorporation of sustainability concerns.
While we are seeing evidence of leading public companies adopting
sustainable business practices in developed markets, there is still a long
way to go to make sustainability fully integrated and therefore truly
mainstream. A short-term focus still pervades both corporate and investment
communities, which hinders long-term value creation.
As some have said, "We are operating the Earth like
it's a business in liquidation." More mechanisms to incorporate
environmental and social externalities will be needed to enable capital
markets to achieve their intended purpose--to consistently allocate capital
to its highest and best use for the good of the people and the planet.
Mr. Gore, a former vice president of the United States, is chairman of
Generation Investment Management. Mr. Blood, formerly head of Goldman Sachs
Asset Management, is managing partner of Generation Investment Management,
which he co-founded with Mr. Gore.
The Committee for Economic
Development (CED), a business-led public policy group, on Tuesday released a
policy statement examining the state of corporate governance in the U.S. and
offering practical recommendations for restoring public trust in business.
“The high-profile corporate scandals of the past
few years, coupled with numerous problems regarding financial statements,
have shaken shareholders’ trust in many businesses leaders and their
companies,” Roderick M. Hills, co-chair of CED and chair of the CED
Subcommittee on Corporate Governance, said in a prepared statement. “It is
imperative that we take concrete steps to restore the practices and
processes that are the foundation of good business ethics. Specifically, I
believe that the auditing process must reflect responsibility by company
leaders, not just a rigid adherence to accounting rules. The auditing
process needs to be guided by an over-arching set of principles that
guarantee that the CEO, Board of Directors, and other top company officials
know that they are fully committed to providing a truly fair and clear
presentation of the firm.” Hill is currently a partner at Hills, Stern and
Morley.
CED’s recommendations include:
Making Audit Committees Autonomous and
Vigorous
In order to accurately present a company’s position, the board of
directors must have access to all pertinent data. This will only occur
if a board’s auditing committee is competent, independent and
establishes effective control over both internal and independent
external auditors. The relationship between the audit committee and the
internal and external auditors is crucial. The audit committee should
exercise the same tone of control over the internal auditor as it does
over the external auditor, extending to decisions of hiring, firing and
compensation.
Ensuring that Users Understand that
financial Information is Based on Judgments
Financial statement would be more useful if they were governed by fewer
rules and displayed more judgment that lies behind estimated numbers.
Stock analysts, the investing public, and regulators, must recognize the
inherently judgmental character of accounting statements and financial
information. Ranges of values, rather than precise numbers, should be
explained and understood as such. In addition, financial statements
should be supplemented with non-financial indicators of value.
Giving Sarbanes-Oxley a Chance to Work
CED sees room to tailor the requirements imposed by Section 404 of
Sarbanes-Oxley within the existing statute, and endorses the Public
Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) implementation guidance, based on their evaluation of
the first-year experience. The guidance, issued simultaneously by the
two agencies in May 2005, should lower the costs and increase the value
of Section 404 compliance. Moreover, CED does not recommend a broad
exemption from Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for small capitalization
companies, but nevertheless, supports the objective of mitigating the
costs to smaller companies.
Taming Excessive Executive Compensation
In CED’s view, the disparity of income between top corporate executives
and average employees is a cause for serious concern. The differentials
that exist today too often reflect neither market conditions nor
individual performance. The procedure for determining executive
compensation has been broken at far too many of our larger corporations,
and CED believes that the solution to excessive compensation must be
regarded as a matter of process and disclosure, including compensation
committees must adopt measurable, specific, and genuinely challenging
goals for the performance of their businesses, and judge management by
them; the compensation process must be run by compensation committees
composed of independent directors; the compensation committee should
have direct authority over all terms of any management contract,
including all forms of compensation; management should have a
substantial equity interest in their company; and management should make
a full, timely, and transparent disclosure to shareholders of its
compensation.
Using Independent Nominating Committees to
Select and Appraise Directors
A paradox of corporate stewardship is that, despite the principle that
directors represent shareholders in the selection and retention of
management, historically, most directors have been selected by
management. In the CED’s view, the best approach to building
high-quality boards is to assign to truly independent nominating
committees the responsibility for recommending new board candidates and
for evaluating the performance of existing board members. The nominating
committee should also have the responsibility of recommending committee
assignments. ,/li> “We acknowledge at the outset that no laws or
policies will ever be sufficient to end all corporate misbehavior – or,
for that matter, misbehavior in any segment of public life,” Hills
continues. “We are confident, however, that truly independent and
inquisitive boards of directors will provide the best safeguard against
corporate wrongdoing.”
Stanford University is setting up a
research center to focus on the emerging academic discipline of
corporate governance, funded with $10 million from legendary Silicon
Valley venture capitalist Arthur Rock and his wife.
The new institution at Stanford Law School
will be led by law professors Robert Daines and Joseph Grundfest and
will study issues such as executive pay, shareholder rights and the
state of the auditing industry, the university said. Organizers hope
the center will also be more hands-on, interacting with regulators
and judges and creating teaching materials for business-school
students.
"We don't want to be just an academic
center," Mr. Grundfest said in an interview. "We also want to help
improve the quality of corporate governance in the real world." He
added that Stanford's law school has been active in the area since
1993, when it launched a program called Directors College to help
educate corporate-board members.
Mr. Grundfest served as a commissioner with
the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1985 to 1990. He will
direct the center with Mr. Daines, a corporate-law scholar who once
worked at investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc
The Influence of Audit Committee Financial
Expertise on Earnings Quality: US Evidence by Bo Qin
SSRN-The Influence of Audit Committee Financial
Expertise on Earnings Quality: US Evidence by Bo Qin
More evidence that board make-up matters. In this
peice, Qin finds that, having an
..accounting-literate professional as SEC
initially proposed serving on the audit committee are more likely to
have high quality of reported earnings than others without such an
expert.
Interestingly the final definition of financial
expert that was adopted by the SEC yielded a MUCH weaker finding so it
appears that not only board make-up matters, but also definitions!
Cite: Qin, Bo, "The Influence of Audit Committee
Financial Expertise on Earnings Quality: US Evidence" (March 2006).
Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=799645
A look at derivative trading before Black and
Scholes.
In a forthcoming Journal of Finance piece, Moore
and Juh examine how options were priced 60 years BEFORE the Black-Scholes
formula. They find that when markets were competitive, the pricing errors
were about the same that we find today!
Summary: Previous research on the efficiency of
option pricing is mixed. This may be because of poor data (example monthly
data) or actual mispricing.
In this paper, Moore and Juh use option data from
South African markets (the article contains an interesting history of these
gold-dominated markets as well!), and find that while investors sort of "got
it" they did misprice some and that this mispricing seems tied to the degree
of competition in the market.
Specifically it appears that investors
overestimated volatilty somewhat. For instance from the section on option
pricing:
"Of the 112 stocks in our data set, 84 had more
than half of the options quoted on them overpriced relative to Black-Scholes
model prices (including 18 stocks forwhich all options written were
overpriced)...."
As a percentage, this mispricing seems to be tied
to market competitivenes:
"Our results suggest that findings of option
mispricing that rely on a broker’s quotes are quite sensitive to the
competitiveness of the market in which the broker operated. It is possible
that differing levels of competition in the option writing market can
explain the divergent findings of Boness (1964), Kruizenga (1964), Black and
Scholes (1972), and Kairys and Valerio (1997)." Of course in today's market
we do not always get things correctly either and the authors compare the
pricing errors of today with those of the earlier period. The finding? The
errors are quite comparable. In the words of Moore and Juh:
"Comparing these warrants to derivatives trading
between 2001 and 2003 on the same exchange and using the same methods to
compute volatility, we find that early twentieth century investors mispriced
in a comparable way using a historical measure of volatility and
outperformed modern JSE investors using a perfect-foresight measure of
volatility. Development of the modern theory does not appear to have
improved the performance of South African investors." and equally important
(maybe more so) after showing that the mispricing was a function of the
degree of competitiveness in the market:
"...these results suggest that a competitive
market, whether through trading of derivatives on an exchange or competition
among rival brokers, has been more important in driving derivativeprices to
fair values than the development of a formal derivative pricing model...."
Cool paper!
Cite:
Derivative Pricing 60 Years before Black-Scholes:
Evidence from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange by LYNDON MOORE and STEVE JUH.
This review was based on a Northwestern University working paper.
Accelerated share repurchase (ASR) Manipulation of
Earnings-Per-Share (EPS)
Games Corporations Play
What's special about ASRs is that the business firm simulates a normal
repurchase program but enjoys an immediate EPS jump. The accounting rules seem
to allow the entity instantly to reduce the number of shares outstanding.
Managers are smart enough to know
that earnings per share (EPS) is the most important statistic found within a
financial report. Since they are evaluated on the basis of financial
performance and performance is gauged by EPS, business executives do a
number on EPS. If you can't earn it legitimately and if you don't want to
out-and-out make it up, do the next best thing. Just stretch the truth as
far as you can and hope nobody finds out. Wash, rinse, and spin: that's
their motto!
Accelerated share repurchase (ASR) programs are the
new game in town. They involve derivative contracts on the business
enterprise's own stock in an attempt to inflate EPS. Managers seek ways to
reduce the denominator in EPS, and, for a fee, Wall Street is happy to
oblige.
Not that derivatives on one's own stock are new. In
the heyday of the late 1990s and early 2000s, firms would write put options
or go long on forward contracts on their common stock. Neither instrument
hedged anything; they were merely contracts that bet that their stock prices
would climb over the life of the derivative. If they did, the company would
gain the premium in the case of the written put options, for the buyers of
these instruments would let the options lapse. In the case of the forward
purchase contract, the corporation would buy back its own shares at old,
cheaper prices. Alternatively, the participants in the forward contract
could cash-settle the gain/loss on the forward.
These cute derivatives paid handsomely as long as
the stock market cooperated by generating higher prices. As soon as the
market turned south, the shareholders in these business enterprises
discovered huge losses. Recall the saga of EDS, which engaged in both
activities, writing put options and having forward purchase contracts. The
stock price of EDS took a nosedive in 2001 and 2002, and the firm lost $225
million on their gamble.
Today those games have been replaced with the ASR
racket. SFAS No. 150 has virtually eliminated the incentive for writing put
options or engaging in forward purchase contracts on one's stock because it
requires the firm to mark the instruments to market, placing gains and
losses into the income statement. Until and unless the FASB amends SFAS No.
150 to do the same with ASRs, business entities can employ ASRs without
marking them to market. Any gains or losses bypass the income statement and
go into equity.
ASRs work like this. The counterparty, usually a
financial institution, borrows the company's shares from investors and sells
the stock short. The company purchases shares from the counterparty and
simultaneously enters into a forward sale contract with the counterparty.
Later the counterparty purchases shares in the open market to cover its
short position. At maturity the forward contract is settled by selling the
shares at the exercise price or by the net cash amount.
What's special about ASRs is that the business firm
simulates a normal repurchase program but enjoys an immediate EPS jump. The
accounting rules seem to allow the entity instantly to reduce the number of
shares outstanding.
Managers in a variety of corporations have
participated in ASRs, and they have accounted for them in the manner
described. They include Cardinal Healthcare, Cendant, Duke Energy,
Hewlett-Packard, and Waste Management. (Gee, haven't we seen these firms in
recent news stories?)
The problem with ASRs is that it is all nonsense.
The forward should be marked to market rather than bypassing the income
statement. Moreover, while the firm has repurchased the common shares, it
also has promised to sell them (or cash-settle) in the forward contract. In
my mind the forward negates the repurchase aspect and so the denominator
ought to stay the same. Instead of treating the two transactions separately,
the corporation should account for them as joint set of transactions.
Why do these managers persist in exaggerating
financial statements to improve their performance evaluation? Why don't they
try to tell it like it was instead of telling it like they wanted it to be?
Don't these managers care to tell investors and creditors the truth?
And why are investment bankers playing the
huckster? They are playing with fire when they peddle these tricks to
managers. Didn't they learn anything from the financial meltdown in
2001-2002? Weren't they humiliated by criminal investigations by the Justice
Department? Didn't they lose enough money in the lawsuits they settled out
of court, and aren't they bothered by the remaining lawsuits still in play?
How many more criminal investigations and how many more civil suits do they
wish to face? These games have to end -- if they endure, more financial
implosions are in the forecast, hurting managers and investments bankers as
well as investors and creditors.
A House of Representatives subcommittee is going to
have a public hearing on Wednesday that has the objective of discussing
"ways to promote more transparent financial reporting, including current
initiatives by regulators and industry."
Baker Subcommittee to Advocate Transparency in
Financial Reporting
The Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital
Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, chaired by Rep.
Richard H. Baker (LA), will convene for a hearing entitled Fostering
Accuracy and Transparency in Financial Reporting. The hearing will take
place on Wednesday, March 29 at 10 a.m. in room 2128 of the Rayburn
building.
Members of the Subcommittee are expected to discuss
ways to promote more transparent financial reporting, including current
initiatives by regulators and industry.
For the capital markets to operate most
efficiently, information about public companies must be understandable,
accessible, and accurate. Corporate statements are mathematical summaries
meant to convey a company’s condition. The four basic documents which must
be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are at the
heart of investor disclosure: the income statement, the cash flow statement,
the balance sheet, and the statement of changes in equity.
Among the current initiatives to improve the
clarity and usefulness of public company information is a trend away from
quarterly earnings forecasting, the use of technology to decrease
complexity, and a review of the various accounting standards and how they
interact.
Subcommittee Chairman Baker said, "If U.S. markets
are to remain on top in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, we
need to move away from the complex and cumbersome and explore technological
and other methods of enhancing the clarity, accuracy, and efficiency of our
accounting system. At the same time, we need to look at whether earnings
forecasting and the beat-the-street mentality, which appears to have
contributed to some of the executive malfeasance of the past several years,
truly serves the best interest of investors or the goal of long-term
economic growth."
The corporate scandals several years ago revealed
weaknesses in the financial reporting system. While many companies were
violating financial reporting requirements, regulatory complexity also may
have contributed to some lapses in compliance.
Fraud, general manipulation of statements, and
regulatory complexity all contribute to a reduction in the usefulness of
financial statements and all may obfuscate the picture of companies’
financial health. A number of recent studies have argued against the
practice of predicting future quarterly earnings, concluding that the drive
to “make the numbers” can lead to poor business decisions and the
manipulation of earnings.
Congress, regulators, and the industry subsequently
have assessed financial reporting failures and have reacted with efforts
aimed at strengthening the system, including many provisions of The
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
More recent initiatives by regulators to streamline
financial reporting standards and accounting include:
A Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)
review of complex and outdated accounting standards;
The use of principles-based, rather than
rules-based, accounting;
FASB’s continued cooperation with the
International Accounting Standards Board on the convergence of
accounting standards; and
The use of eXtensible Business Reporting
Language, or XBRL, a computer code which tags data in financial
statements. The use of XBRL allows investors to quickly download
financial data onto spreadsheets for analysis.
Public Companies have been filing financial
statements with the SEC since the passage of the Securities Exchange Act of
1934.
March 28, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Denny,
I know that we disagree on the principles based
standards initiative. My negative position on this is outlined somewhat at
http://snipurl.com/JensenPBS
I just don't think the principles based Ten
Commandments are sufficient to discard all statutes on felony law. I don't
think we can discard all FDA rules on drug testing and replace them with
principles based guidelines for pharmaceutical companies to follow. The same
can be said for environmental protection regulations, child protective
services, and whatever. Sometimes we need detailed rules so we have better
guidance as to what is right and what is wrong in specific and complex
circumstances.
You and I go back to the old days (and we passed the
CPA exam). GAAP was much less complex and could virtually be memorized. We
go back to the days when much was left to "auditor judgment."
But we also go back to the days when CEOs were not
fanatics about hitting analyst forecasts. We go back to days when top-tier
management compensation did not swing heavily an eps number. We go back to
the days when debt was debt and equity was equity. More importantly we go
back to the days when an auditor could actually understand contracts being
written.
In the past CEOs respected auditor decisions and did
not threaten auditors like in so many companies are doing today. Too many
times in recent years we've seen where virtually all big auditing firms have
caved in to pressures from large clients such as the way KPMG caved in on
Fannie Mae and Andersen caved in on various big clients ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#others
I think that less complex principles based standards
will only increase conflicts between clients and auditors. Neither will know
that rules (albeit complex rules as in the case of derivatives, leases, VIEs,
and pensions) are being broken if there are no detailed rules to be broken.
I think the absence of detailed rules greatly
increase inconsistencies in "auditor judgment." I think absence of detailed
rules takes away auditor bargaining chips when dealing with clients.
I guess my bottom line conclusion is that the global
world of contracting, risk management, and mezzanine debt is totally unlike
the simpler world back in the old days when we were auditor whippersnappers.
Bob Jensen
Scientific Method in Accounting Has Not Been a Method
for Generating New Theories
The following is a quote from the 1993 President’s Message
of Gary Sundem,
President’s Message. Accounting Education News 21 (3). 3.
Although empirical scientific method has made many positive
contributions to accounting research, it is not the method that is likely to
generate new theories, though it will be useful in testing them. For
example, Einstein’s theories were not developed empirically, but they relied
on understanding the empirical evidence and they were tested empirically.
Both the development and testing of theories should be recognized as
acceptable accounting research.
But Scientific Method Can Be Used to Test Theories (at least indirectly)
With the aid of a researcher from the University of Iowa, the WSJ
uncovers evidence of backdating of employee stock options
The Wall Street Journal asked Erik Lie, an
associate professor of finance at the University of Iowa who has studied
backdating, to generate a list of companies that made stock-option grants
that were followed by large gains in the stock price.
The Journal examined a number of the companies,
looking at all of their option grants to their top executive from roughly
1995 through mid-2002. Securities-law changes in 2002 curtailed the
potential for backdating a grant. Executives typically receive option grants
annually.
Mr. Lie and other academics say a pattern of sharp
stock appreciation after grant dates is an indication of backdating; by
chance alone, grants ought to be followed by a mixed bag of stock
performance -- some rises, some declines.
To quantify how unusual a particular pattern of
grants is, the Journal calculated how much each company's stock rose in the
20 trading days following each grant date. The analysis then ranked that
appreciation against the stock performance in the 20 days following all
other trading days of the year. It ranked all 252 or so trading days in a
given year according to how much the stock rose or fell following them.
For instance, Affiliated Computer Services Inc.
reported an option grant to its then-president, Jeffrey Rich, dated Oct. 8,
1998. In the succeeding 20 trading days -- equal to roughly a month -- ACS
stock rose 60.2%. That huge gain was the best 20-trading-day performance all
year for ACS. So the Journal ranked Oct. 8 No. 1 for ACS for 1998.
It is very unlikely that several grants spread over
a number of years would all fall on high-ranked days.
But all six of Mr. Rich's did. Another of his
option grants also fell on the No. 1-ranked day of a year, March 9, 1995.
Two grants fell on the second-ranked day, those in 1996 and 1997. In 20 02,
his options grant was on the third-ranked day of the year, and in 2000, his
grant came on the fourth-ranked day.
If a year has 252 trading days, the probability of
a single options grant coming on the top-ranked day of that year would be
one in 252. The chance of it coming on a day ranked No. 8 or better would be
eight in 252.
The analysis then used the probability of each
grant to figure how likely it is that an executive's overall multiyear grant
pattern, or one more extreme than the actual pattern, occurred merely by
chance. The more high-ranked days in the pattern, the longer the odds and
the more likely it is that some factor other than chance influenced those
dates. Two companies said they did use something other than chance -- they
made grants on days when they thought the stock was temporarily low. This
could explain results that differ somewhat from chance, but it wouldn't
account for the extreme patterns of consistent post-grant rises.
John Emerson, an assistant professor of statistics
at Yale, reviewed the methodology and developed a computer program to
calculate the probabilities for all of the executives' grants except those
to UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire. Because the number of his grants and
complexity of his pattern made a computational method infeasible, the
Journal used an estimate for his probability that Mr. Emerson said is
conservative. Mr. Emerson said the figures for all six executives surpass a
standard threshold statisticians use to assess the significance of a result.
For Mr. Rich's grants, the Journal's methodology
puts the overall odds of a chance occurrence at about one in 300 billion --
less likely than flipping a coin 38 times and having it come up "heads"
every time.
Exceedingly long odds also turned up in the
Journal's analysis of grant-date patterns at several other companies. "It's
very, very, very unlikely that they could have produced such patterns just
by choosing random dates," said Mr. Lie.
David Yermack, an associate professor of finance at
New York University, reviewed the Journal's methodology and said it was a
reasonable way to identify suspicious patterns of grants. But Mr. Yermack
also said the odds shouldn't be thought of as precise figures, largely
because they depend on assumptions in the method used to determine which
grant dates are more favorable than others.
Because nobody actually authorizing the grant on a
given day could have known how the stock would do in the future, the
Journal's analysis used post-grant price surges as an indication of possible
backdating. Academics theorize that the most effective way to consistently
capture low-price days for option grants is to wait until after a stock has
risen, then backdate a grant to a day prior to that rise.
The decision to look at 20 trading days after each
grant was arbitrary. But Messrs. Yermack and Lie said it was a reasonable
yardstick to detect possible backdating. Using a longer period, such as a
year, wouldn't be a good way to spot backdating of a few days or weeks
because the longer-term trading would overwhelm any backdating effect.
The 20-day price rises don't present an immediate
opportunity to profit, since options can't usually be exercised until held a
year or more. But when the options do become exercisable, they'll be more
valuable if they were priced when the stock was low.
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on March 24,
2006
TITLE: At Knight Ridder, Margins Shine
REPORTER: Steven D. Jones
DATE: Mar 16, 2006
PAGE: C3
LINK:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114247685757399736.html
TOPICS: Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Analysis, Financial
Statement Analysis, Income from Continuing Operations
SUMMARY: In this article, the author compares several income statement based
financial ratios, such as profit margin and operating earnings ratios, among
companies in different industries. He then further analyzes reasons behind
positive and negative perceptions of ratios that are numerically comparable.
There are concerns about definitions provided in the article and some questions
highlight those issues.
QUESTIONS:
1.) List all financial ratios cited in the article. Provide a definition of each
from an accounting textbook glossary and include a description of how to
calculate the ratio.
2.) The author writes that "net profit margin is the broadest measure of a
company's ability to efficiently run itself." Do you agree with that statement?
Support your answer with reference to the definition of the ratio given in
answer to number 1 above and by making specific reference to efficiency ratios.
3.) How does the author compare several companies' net profit ratios? What
other income statement items does the author consider to support arguments that
ConocoPhillips is faring well, but Knight Ridder is not doing as well, while
both show approximately the same profit margin of 8.3% and 8.4%, respectively?
4.) In what ways does the author consider trends over time in order to assess
the nature of profit margins at any particular point in time?
5.) How does the author add industry information to the time series analysis
of financial ratios?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
--- RELATED ARTICLES ---
TITLE: McClatchy Agrees to Acquire Knight Ridder for $4.5 Billion
REPORTERS: On-line Journal Editors with Joseph T. Hallinan and Dennis K. Berman
ISSUE: Mar 13, 2006
LINK:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114224828072596508.html
"At Knight Ridder, Margins Shine: Publisher Stacks Up Well By Some
Profit Measures Though Revenue Is Weak." by Steven D. Jones, The Wall Street
Journal, March 16, 2006; Page C3 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114247685757399736.html
What does an oil company that was recently brought
before Congress to explain its record profits have in common with a
newspaper publisher that agreed to be sold this week? They generate nearly
identical net profit margins.
ConocoPhillips, which had a net profit margin of
8.3% last year, had been accused by some lawmakers of making a windfall
profit on the rally in crude oil -- a charge the company and other oil
giants strongly deny. Knight Ridder Inc., which had a net profit margin of
8.4% in 2005, is trying to convince people the newspaper business is still
relevant, and the company just agreed to sell itself to smaller competitor
McClatchy Co. in a deal that is now valued at about $66 a share, or $4.5
billion.
Net profit margin is the broadest measure of a
company's ability to efficiently run itself. It is calculated by dividing
net profit by net revenue.
The comparison of the two companies illustrates
that operating prowess alone doesn't equal market success, and there are
plenty of other examples. The upshot: On measures of profitability often
watched by investors, weakened companies often look as good as Wall Street
darlings.
Wall Street and some of Knight Ridder's own
shareholders came to doubt the company's worth because of its falling
revenue growth: Knight Ridder's top line rose less than 1% last year,
according to Thomson Financial, a data and research firm. ConocoPhillips's
revenue rose 29% in the same period.
Knight Ridder's margins were even better a few
years ago, points out John Janedis, media analyst for Banc of America
Securities, which does investment-banking work for the publisher. And they
still stack up or even best margins seen in other industries, particularly
the net operating margins, which are a measure of the company's skills at
running its core businesses.
For instance, operating-profit margins at Knight
Ridder were over 16% in the fourth quarter, compared with 15% at the Wall
Street giant Merrill Lynch & Co. Operating margins take into account all
wage and production costs and are calculated by dividing a company's
operating profit before taxes and interest payments due by its net revenue.
Over a five-year period, Knight Ridder's operating margins have averaged
19.5% compared with 14% at the venerable brokerage house.
The booming steel industry, whose stocks have risen
30% so far this year, enjoyed operating margins of 14% in the most recent
quarter. Over the past five years, operating margins in the steel business
have averaged a little better than 6%.
Looking again at net profit margin, Knight Ridder
is managing better than half the companies in the Standard & Poor's
500-stock index. Knight Ridder's 8.4% return over the past 12 months puts it
at No. 216 among companies in the S&P 500, according to Thomson Financial.
That also puts Knight Ridder ahead of other major publishers and even ahead
of coffee merchant Starbucks Corp.
Knight Ridder even stacks up well against some
companies in another hot stock sector: technology. For example, Knight
Ridder's standing on three key profit measures -- pretax, operating and net
-- were comparable to electronic-equipment maker Tektronix Inc. of
Beaverton, Ore., according to the Thomson analysis. And Tektronix shares
have been flirting with a new 52-week high of more than $32 a share.
California utility PG&E Corp. also delivers similar
profit ratios as Knight Ridder. And that utility was able to shed a lot of
costs when it went through bankruptcy reorganization early this decade.
Barbara gave me permission to post the following message on March 15, 2006
My reply follows her message.
Professor Jensen:
I need your help in working with regulators who are
uncomfortable with online education.
I am currently on the faculty at the University of
Dallas in Irving, Texas and I abruptly learned yesterday that the Texas
State Board of Public Accountancy distinguishes online and on campus
offering of ethics courses that it approves as counting for students to meet
CPA candidacy requirements. Since my school offers its ethics course in both
modes, I am suddenly faced with making a case to the TSBPA in one week's
time to avoid rejection of the online version of the University of Dallas
course.
I have included in this email the "story" as I
understand it that explains my situation. It isn't a story about accounting
or ethics, it is a story about online education.
I would like to talk to you tomorrow because of
your expertise in distance education and involvement in the profession. In
addition, I am building a portfolio of materials this week for the Board
meeting in Austin March 22-23 to make a case for their approval (or at least
not rejection) of the online version of the ethics course that the Board
already accepts in its on campus version. I want to include compelling
research-based material demonstrating the value of online learning, and I
don't have time to begin that literature survey myself. In addition, I want
to be able to present preliminary results from reviewers of the University
of Dallas course about the course's merit in presentation of the content in
an online delivery.
Thank you for any assistance that you can give me.
Barbara W. Scofield
Associate Professor of Accounting
University of Dallas
1845 E Northgate Irving, TX 75062
972-721-5034 scofield@gsm.udallas.edu
A statement of the University of Dallas and Texas
State Board of Public Accountancy and Online Learning
The TSBPA approved the University of Dallas ethics
program in 2004. The course that was approved was a long-standing course,
required in several different graduate programs, called Business Ethics. The
course was regularly taught on campus (since 1995) and online (since 2001).
The application for approval of the ethics course
did not ask for information about whether the class was on campus or online
and the syllabus that was submitted happened to be the syllabus of an on
campus section. The TSBPA's position (via Donna Hiller) is that the Board
intended to approve only the on campus version of the course, and that the
Board inferred it was an on campus course because the sample syllabus that
was submitted was an on campus course.
Therefore the TSBPA (via Donna Hiller) is requiring
that University of Dallas students who took the online version of the ethics
course retake the exact same course in its on campus format. While the TSBPA
(via Donna Hiller) has indicated that the online course cannot at this time
be approved and its scheduled offering in the summer will not provide
students with an approved course, Donna Hiller, at my request, has indicated
that she will take this issue to the Board for their decision next week at
the Executive Board Meeting on March 22 and the Board Meeting on March 23.
There are two issues:
1. Treatment of students who were relying on
communication from the Board at the time they took the class that could
reasonably have been interpreted to confer approval of both the online and
on campus sections of the ethics course.
2. Status of the upcoming summer online ethics
class.
My priority is establishing the status of the
upcoming summer online ethics class. The Board has indicated through its
pilot program with the University of Texas at Dallas that there is a place
for online ethics classes in the preparation of CPA candidates. The
University of Dallas is interested in providing the TSBPA with any
information or assessment necessary to meet the needs of the Board to
understand the online ethics class at the University of Dallas. Although not
currently privy to the Board specific concerns about online courses, the
University of Dallas believes that it can demonstrate sufficient credibility
for the course because of the following factors:
A. The content of the online course is the same as
the on campus course. Content comparison can be provided. B. The
instructional methods of the online course involve intense
student-to-student, instructor-to-student, and student-to-content
interaction at a level equivalent to an on campus course. Empirical
information about interaction in the course can be provided.
C. The instructor for the course is superbly
qualified and a long-standing ethics instructor and distance learning
instructor. The vita of the instructor can be provided.
D. There are processes for course assessment in
place that regularly prompt the review of this course and these assessments
can be provided to the board along with comparisons with the on campus
assessments.
E. The University of Dallas will seek to coordinate
with the work done by the University of Texas at Dallas to provide
information at least equivalent to that provided by the University of Texas
at Dallas and to meet at a minimum the tentative criteria for online
learning that UT Dallas has been empowered to recommend to the TSBPA.
Contact with the University of Texas at Dallas has been initiated.
When the online ethics course is granted a path to
approval by the Board, I am also interested in addressing the issue of TSBPA
approval of students who took the class between the original ethics course
approval date and March 13, 2006, the date that the University of Dallas
became aware of the TSBPA intent (through Donna Hiller) that the TSBPA
distinguished online and on campus ethics classes.
The University of Dallas believes that the online
class in fact provided these students with a course that completely
fulfilled the general intent of the Board for education in ethics, since it
is the same course as the approved on campus course (see above). The
decision on the extent of commitment of the Board to students who relied on
the Board's approval letter may be a legal issue of some sort that is
outside of the current decision-making of the Board, but I want the Board
take the opportunity to consider that the reasonableness of the students'
position and the students' actual preparation in ethics suggest that there
should also be a path created to approval of online ethics courses taken at
the University of Dallas during this prior time period. The currently
proposed remedy of a requirement for students to retake the very same course
on campus that students have already taken online appears excessively costly
to Texans and the profession of accounting by delaying the entry of
otherwise qualified individuals into public accountancy. High cost is
justified when the concomitant benefits are also high. However, the benefit
to Texans and the accounting profession from students who retake the ethics
course seems to exist only in meeting the requirements of regulations that
all parties diligently sought to meet in the first place and not in
producing any actual additional learning experiences.
A reply to her from Bob Jensen
Hi
Barbara,
May I
share your questions and my responses in the next edition of New
Bookmarks? This might be helpful to your efforts when others become
informed. I will be in my office every day except for March 17. My phone
number is 210-999-7347. However, I can probably be more helpful via
email.
As
discouraging as it may seem, if students know what is expected of them
and must demonstrate what they have learned, pedagogy does not seem to
matter. It can be online or onsite. It can be lecture or cases. It can
be no teaching at all if there are talented and motivated students who
are given great learning materials. This is called the well-known “No
Significant Difference” phenomenon ---
http://www.nosignificantdifference.org/
I think
you should stress that insisting upon onsite courses is discriminatory
against potential students whose life circumstances make it difficult or
impossible to attend regular classes on campus.
I think
you should make the case that online education is just like onsite
education in the sense that learning depends on the quality and
motivations of the students, faculty, and university that sets the
employment and curriculum standards for quality. The issue is not onsite
versus online. The issue is quality of effort.
The most
prestigious schools like Harvard and Stanford and Notre Dame have a
large number of credit and non-credit courses online. Entire accounting
undergraduate and graduate degree programs are available online from
such quality schools as the University of Wisconsin and the University
of Maryland. See my guide to online training and education programs is
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Anticipate and deal with the main arguments against online education.
The typical argument is that onsite students have more learning
interactions with themselves and with the instructor. This is absolutely
false if the distance education course is designed to promote online
interactions that do a better job of getting into each others’ heads.
Online courses become superior to onsite courses.
Amy
Dunbar teaches intensely interactive online courses with Instant
Messaging. See Dunbar, A. 2004. “Genesis of an Online Course.” Issues in
Accounting Education (2004),19 (3):321-343.
ABSTRACT:
This paper presents a descriptive and evaluative analysis of the
transformation of a face-to-face graduate tax accounting course to an
online course. One hundred fifteen students completed the compressed
six-week class in 2001 and 2002 using WebCT, classroom environment
software that facilitates the creation of web-based educational
environments. The paper provides a description of the required
technology tools and the class conduct. The students used a combination
of asynchronous and synchronous learning methods that allowed them to
complete the coursework on a self-determined schedule, subject to
semi-weekly quiz constraints. The course material was presented in
content pages with links to Excel® problems, Flash examples, audio and
video files, and self-tests. Students worked the quizzes and then met in
their groups in a chat room to resolve differences in answers. Student
surveys indicated satisfaction with the learning methods.
I might
add that Amy is a veteran world class instructor both onsite and online.
She’s achieved all-university awards for onsite teaching in at least
three major universities. This gives her the credentials to judge how
well her online courses compare with her outstanding onsite courses.
The
argument that students cannot be properly assessed for learning online
is more problematic. Clearly it is easier to prevent cheating with
onsite examinations. But there are ways of dealing with this problem.
My best example of an online graduate program that is extremely
difficult is the Chartered Accountant School of Business (CASB) masters
program for all of Western Canada. Students are required to take some
onsite testing even though this is an online degree program. And CASB
does a great job with ethics online. I was engaged to formally assess
this program and came away extremely impressed. My main contact there is
Don Carter
carter@casb.com . If you are really serious about this, I would
invite Don to come down and make a presentation to the Board. Don will
convince them of the superiority of online education.
I think a
lot of the argument against distance education comes from faculty
fearful of one day having to teach online. First there is the fear of
change. Second there is the genuine fear that is entirely justified ---
if online teaching is done well it is more work and strain than onsite
teaching. The strain comes from increased hours of communication with
each and every student.
Probably
the most general argument in favor of onsite education is that students
living on campus have the social interactions and maturity development
outside of class. This is most certainly a valid argument. However, when
it comes to issues of learning of course content, online education can
be as good as or generally better than onsite classes. Students in
online programs are often older and more mature such that the on-campus
advantages decline in their situations. Online students generally have
more life, love, and work experiences already under their belts. And
besides, you’re only talking about ethics courses rather than an entire
undergraduate or graduate education.
I think
if you deal with the learning interaction and assessment issues that you
can make a strong case for distance education. There are some “dark
side” arguments that you should probably avoid. But if you care to read
about them, go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
Bob, as a director and teacher in a graduate
accounting program that is exclusively online, I want to thank you for your
support and eloquent defense of online education. Unfortunately, Texas's
predisposition against online teaching also shows up in its education
requirements for sitting for the CPA exam. Of the 30 required upper division
accounting credits, at least 15 must "result from physical attendance at
classes meeting regularly on the campus" (quote from the Texas State Board
of Public Accountancy website at www.tsbpa.state.tx.us/eq1.htm)
Cynically speaking, it seems the state of Texas
wants to be sure its classrooms are occupied.
Barbara, best of luck with your testimony.
Bruce Lubich
Program Director,
Accounting Graduate School of Management and Technology
University of Maryland University College
At my school, Bowling Green, student credits for
on-line accounting majors classes are never approved by the department
chair. He says that you can't trust the schools that are offering these.
When told that some very reputable schools are offering the courses, he
still says no because when the testing process is done on-line or not in the
physical presence of the professor the grades simply can't be trusted.
David Albrecht
March 16, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
One tack against a luddites like that is to propose a compromise that
virtually accepts all transfer credits from AACSB-accredited universities.
It's difficult to argue that standards vary between online and onsite
courses in a given program accredited by the AACSB. I seriously doubt that
the faculty in that program would allow a double academic standard.
In fact, on transcripts it is often impossible to distinguish online from
onsite credits from a respected universities, especially when the same
course is offered online and onsite (i.e., merely in different sections).
You might explain to your department chair that he's probably been
accepting online transfer credits for some time. The University of North
Texas and other major universities now offer online courses to full-time
resident students who live on campus. Some students and instructors find
this to be a better approach to learning.
And you ask him why Bowling Green's assessment rigor is not widely known
to be vastly superior to online courses from nearly all major universities
that now offer distance education courses and even total degree programs,
including schools like the Fuqua Graduate School at Duke, Stanford
University (especially computer science and engineering online courses that
bring in over $100 million per year), the University of Maryland, the
University of Wisconsin, the University of Texas, Texas Tech, and even,
gasp, The Ohio State University.
You might tell your department chair that by not offering some online
alternatives, Bowling Green is not getting the most out of its students. The
University of Illinois conducted a major study that found that students
performed better in online versus onsite courses when matched pair sections
took the same examinations.
And then you might top it off by asking your department chair how he
justifies denying credit for Bowling Green's own distance education courses
---
http://adultlearnerservices.bgsu.edu/index.php?x=opportunities
The following is a quotation from the above Bowling Green site:
*****************************
The advancement of computer technology has
provided a wealth of new opportunities for learning. Distance education
is one example of technology’s ability to expand our horizons and gain
from new experiences. BGSU offers many distance education courses and
two baccalaureate degree completion programs online.
The Advanced Technological Education Degree
Program is designed for individuals who have completed a two-year
applied associate’s degree. The Bachelor of Liberal Studies Degree
Program is ideal for students with previous college credit who would
like flexibility in course selection while completing a liberal
education program.
Count me in the camp that just isn't that concerned
about online cheating. Perhaps that is because my students are graduate
students and my online exams are open-book, timed exams, and a different
version is presented to each student (much like a driver's license exam). In
my end-of-semester survey, I ask whether students are concerned about
cheating, and on occasion, I get one who is. But generally the response is
no.
The UConn accounting department was just reviewed
by the AACSB, and they were impressed by our MSA online program. They
commented that they now believed that an online MSA program was possible. I
am convinced that the people who are opposed to online education are
unwilling to invest the time to see how online education is implemented.
Sure there will be bad examples, but there are bad examples of face to face
(FTF) teaching. How many profs do you know who simply read powerpoint slides
to a sleeping class?! Last semester, I received the School of Business
graduate teaching award even though I teach only online classes. I believe
that the factor that really matters is that the students know you care about
whether they are learning. A prof who cares interacts with students. You can
do that online as well as FTF.
Do I miss FTF teaching -- you bet I do. But once I
focused on what the student really needs to learn, I realized, much to my
dismay, interacting FTF with Dunbar was not a necessary condition.
Amy Dunbar
March 20, 2006 reply from Linda Kidwell, University of
Wyoming [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]
For what it's worth, my research in academic
dishonesty has led me to believe that cheating in distance education is not
a big problem, relative to face-to-face education. I'm working on a paper
where students at a university with a massive distance program,
approximately 60% of their student credit hours, and so-called internal
students took self-reporting cheating surveys, similar to the methodology
used by Don McCabe, the preeminent expert in this area. The reported
cheating levels were significantly less for the distance students, in large
part because they lacked the opportunity to interact with students who might
be willing accomplices. Although they have streaming chat, there is
tremendous risk in contacting someone they don't know to instigate a
cheating network. Exams are proctored however.
To resolve this issue and make me
more comfortable with the grade a student earns, I have all my online exams
proctored. I schedule weekends (placing them in the schedule of classes) and
it is mandatory that they take the exams during this weekend period
(Fir/Sat) at our computing center. It is my policy that if they can't take
the paced exams during those periods, then the class is not one that they
can participate in. This is no different from having different times that
courses are offered. They have to make a choice in that situation, also, as
to which time will best serve their needs.
March 16, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison
University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Our model is similar to Carol Flowers. Our on-line
MBA program requires an in-person meeting for four hours at the beginning of
every semester, to let the students and professor get to know each other
personally, followed by the distance-ed portion, concluding with another
four-hour in- person session for the final examination or other assessment.
The students all congregate at the Sheraton at Dulles airport, have dinner
together Friday night, spend Saturday morning taking the final for their
previous class, and spend Saturday afternoon being introduced to their next
class. They do this between every semester. So far, the on- line group has
outperformed (very slightly, and not statistically significant due to small
sample sizes) the face-to-face counterparts being used as our control
groups. We believe the outperformance might have an inherent self- selection
bias since the distance-learners are usually professionals, whereas many of
our face-to-face students are full-time students and generally a bit younger
and more immature.
My personal on-line course consists of exactly the
same readings as my F2F class, and exactly the same lectures (recorded using
Tegrity) provided on CD and watched asynchronously, followed by on-line
synchronous discussion sessions (2-3 hours per week) where I call on random
students asking questions about the readings, lectures, etc., and engaging
in lively discussion. I prepare some interesting cases and application
dilemmas (mostly adapted from real world scenarios) and introduce dilemmas,
gray areas, controversy (you expected maybe peace and quiet from David
Fordham?!), and other thought-provoking issues for discussion. I have almost
perfect attendance in the on-line synchronous because the students really
find the discussions engaging. Surprisingly, I have no problem with
freeloaders who don't read or watch the recorded lectures. My major student
assessment vehicle is an individual policy manual, supplemented by the
in-person exam. Since each student's manual organization, layout, approach,
and perspective is so very different from the others, cheating is almost out
of the question. And the in-person exam is conducted almost like the CISP or
old CPA exams... total quiet, no talking, no leaving the room, nothing but a
pencil, etc.
And finally, no, you can't tell the difference on
our student's transcript as to whether they took the on-line or in-person
MBA. They look identical on the transcript.
We've not yet had any problem with anyone
"rejecting" our credential that I'm aware of.
Regarding our own acceptance of transfer credit, we
make the student provide evidence of the quality of each course (not the
degree) before we exempt or accept credit. We do not distinguish between
on-line or F2F -- nor do we automatically accept a course based on
institution reputation. We have on many occasions rejected AACSB- accredited
institution courses (on a course-by-course basis) because our investigation
showed that the course coverage or rigor was not up to the standard we
required. (The only "blanket" exception that we make is for certain familiar
Virginia community college courses in the liberal studies where history has
shown that the college and coursework reliably meets the standards -- every
other course has to be accepted on a course-by-course basis.)
Just our $0.02 worth.
David Fordham
James Madison University
"Say Cheerio to Jeeves," by Arik Hesseldahl, Business Week,
February 27, 2006 ---
Click Here
AskJeeves' signature butler, borrowed from
novelist P.G. Wodehouse, is being dropped, as the search site switches names
to Ask.com and revamps its format
After nearly a decade as the search engine with a
human face, AskJeeves.com is dumping the cheerful visage of the butler that
has graced its pages. Starting on Feb. 27, the site will become known
simply as Ask.com.
The character had been used under an agreement
reached in 2000 with the estate of the late British novelist, P.G.
Wodehouse, who penned a series of novels involving the adventures of the
butler Jeeves and his master Bertie Wooster. When initially launched,
AskJeeves.com allowed users to phrase their search terms as questions, such
as "What is the capital of Ohio?" or "How many cups are in a gallon?"
Those days are over, says Daniel Read,
vice-president for consumer products at the new Ask.Com, which for nearly a
year has been part of IAC Search & Media, a unit of IAC/Interactive (IACI),
Barry Diller's $5.7 billion (2005 sales) Internet concern: "The old name
hearkened back to what we were five to seven years ago and not what we are
now. And while we found there were some customers who were loyal to the
AskJeeves name, most of our users were ambivalent about it." IAC paid $1.85
billion for the site, which first launched in 1996.
PHASED OUT. The question approach worked
for a few years, and initially the company found a business building
customer-support Web sites that would allow customers to ask questions on
the Web. The business model changed when in 2001, AskJeeves acquired
Teoma.com itself once dubbed a "Google-killer," and built the Teoma search
technology into the AskJeeves site. Starting on Feb. 27, Teoma.com will
redirect users to Ask.com.
Jeeve's "retirement" hasn't been much of a secret.
Diller has been quoted several times over the last year as saying that the
character would be phased out.
"Lycos Europe's Survival Instincts," by Jack Ewing, Business Week,
February 24, 2006 ---
Click Here
The Web outfit is relying on a new, more
focused, search engine and cost cuts to deliver growth. Does it stand a
chance against Google?
By most conventional financial measures, Lycos
Europe should probably not exist. The Internet portal, search engine, and
Web services provider, part owned by German media giant Bertelsmann and
Spanish telco Telefónica (TEF), has had
only two profitable quarters in its six-year history. It's competing in a
business dominated by Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO). And it must cope
with the European market, where economies of scale are undercut by the need
to offer content tailored to national tastes and languages.
Yet on Feb. 22, Lycos Europe Chief Executive
Christoph Mohn stood bravely before a handful of reporters and analysts and
explained why he believes the company will finally be profitable in 2006.
"In a couple of years people will see that we're one of the few global
players," said Mohn, while standing before a laptop at a Frankfurt hotel
conference room and paging through a PowerPoint presentation on the
company's 2005 results. Lycos' loss narrowed to $24 million on sales of
$149 million last year, vs. a loss of $54 million in 2004.
Somebody believes Mohn. Shares of Lycos Europe,
which is a separate company from US.-based Lycos, rose more than 60% last
year. True, the recent price of 1.07 euros ($1.27) was still a long way
from the 2000 Internet bubble price of more than 23 euros. And the shares
fell sharply after the 2005 results were announced. But long after most
highfliers from those days have been forgotten, Lycos still employs almost
700 people, primarily in Gütersloh,
Germany, and offers services in eight European countries, plus the former
Soviet republic of Armenia. It's also the largest chat service in Europe,
with 5 million users.
WORLD AT YOUR FINGERTIPS. Mohn is clearly
true believer No. 1. With an enthusiasm that recalls the Internet euphoria
of a few years ago, he describes the new technologies that he argues will
someday allow Lycos to earn a decent return. The newest service, just
introduced in Germany and currently being rolled out across Europe, is a
search engine called Lycos iQ that's supposed to give more focused results
than Google does.
Users can type in a question, which other users
answer. Users rank answers the same way that eBay (EBAY) users rate sellers
of goods. The idea is to build a database of questions and answers, with
the best answers rising to the top of the list. (It works: This writer
asked for advice on the best places to cross-country ski around Frankfurt,
and within a few minutes received an e-mail with a link to a Web site
devoted to the topic.) "Lycos allows you to tap into the knowledge of the
whole population," Mohn said in an interview.
Will that be enough to compete against the huge
resources of Google? "I don't think [Lycos Europe has] a chance, to be
honest," says Hellen K. Omwando, an analyst at Forrester Research in
Amsterdam. "Look at Yahoo and MSN--even they can't manage to siphon away
Google users."
"ONE OF THE SURVIVORS." Omwando praises
Lycos' cost-cutting measures, which included eliminating more than 200 jobs
last year. She also has kudos for some of Lycos' business-to-business
services, such as software that allows small businesses to easily set up
online shops. But Omwando says the individual assets don't add up to
long-term growth. "Lycos is one of those players waiting to be sold," she
says.
Video on the Web is all the
rage now, the subject of an endless stream of articles and speculation that
it's the next big thing. And there's some evidence to back that up. Apple
Computer Inc. sold 12 million video clips at $1.99 each from its popular
iTunes Music Store in just a few months. Google has made a splash with a
similar video download store. According to AccuStream iMedia Research, about
18 billion video streams were online in 2005 and that number is expected to
grow by more than 30% in 2006.
But how do you find the
video clips you'd like to see, or download? Normal search engines like
Google's can sometimes point you to video clips, but they aren't optimized
for that task.
So, this week, we dived into
the world of online videos, looking for the best ways to find clips. We were
impressed by how much material is out there -- much of it free. We used
about 10 different video searching/hosting sites to find videos related to
TV shows, including "Grey's Anatomy," Hollywood actors, like Matthew
McConaughey, and musicians, like Brad Paisley. We also searched for news
videos, ads and amateur videos. We even looked for a famous "Saturday Night
Live" mock music video, and its imitators.
Our
results: AOL Video Search, Yahoo Video Search, and Blinkx TV earned our
appreciation because each searches the entire Internet for material, and
does a decent job.
Google Video and iTunes also perform video searches, but they search only
among the material they host on their own servers, and which they offer for
sale, or for free downloading. They don't search across the entire Web.
Sites like YouTube.com and GoFish.com have sprung up as central download
sites for all sorts of video clips, some by amateurs and some by pros. But
they, too, search only the material they offer themselves.
The
technology for searching the actual spoken words in a video exists, but is
in its infancy. So, most video searches are done by looking for words in a
video's title text, or in descriptions or other information embedded in a
video file in the form of "metadata" or "tags" -- kind of like the embedded
title, artist and album information in a music file. Some TV shows stored on
the Web also contain closed captioning data, and that can be searched in
some cases.
AOL Video Search (www.aol.com/video)
uses the search engines of two smaller, yet powerful,
companies that it owns:
Truveo.com and
Singingfish.com. As you use AOL Video Search, your
past search topics are saved in a left-hand column and videos can be saved
into a special AOL playlist. An adult content filter is used on AOL's
server, meaning users can't turn the filter on or off.
Using
AOL, we found and watched the "Saturday Night Live" mock music video called
"Lazy Sunday," set in New York, and its West Coast response, "Lazy Monday,"
set in Los Angeles.
Yahoo Video Search (http://video.search.yahoo.com)
can display results in a visually attractive grid of
images from each video clip. Unlike AOL, which displays advertisements on
its search start and results page, Yahoo doesn't show ads on either page --
though ads will display if they're linked to videos from outside sources. A
SafeSearch filter can be used for blocking adult material as you search
videos.
Using
Yahoo's video search, we turned up clips of a forgettable 1998 appearance
Walt made in an East Coast vs. West Coast computer trivia contest held in
Boston. Not only was his East Coast team crushed, but they wore puffy
colonial shirts while being crushed.
Blinkx TV (www.Blinkx.tv)
uses a simple interface and makes searching easy -- an
empty box placed on the left of the screen with a collage of 100 tiny clip
images playing on the right. After results are returned, you can adjust a
horizontal slider between "date" or "relevance," depending on your
preference. Our results weren't always as accurate with Blinkx as they were
with other video-search sites -- one search returned spreadsheets rather
than videos -- but we liked how the results page played animated clips of
each video in the same window. Blinkx offers a prominent filtering button to
hide adult results.
Google Video (http://video.google.com),
which is still in its beta (or prerelease) version,
also offers video searching through free videos -- but allows you to search
only through material that Google hosts, or streams from its servers. This
site eliminates ads -- including Google's word-only ads -- entirely, which
is refreshing.
Click Fraud Gets Smarter
Internet ad-traffic scams could be ripping off as much as $1 billion annually.
Are Web companies like Google doing enough to foil them?
"Click Fraud Gets Smarter," by Burt Helm, Business Week, February 27,
2006 ---
Click Here
Internet ad-traffic scams could be ripping off
as much as $1 billion annually. Are Web companies like Google doing enough
to foil them?
Web consultant Greg Boser has an ingenious method
for sending loads of traffic to clients' Internet sites. Last month he
began using a software program known as a clickbot to create the impression
that users from around the world were visiting sites by way of ads
strategically placed alongside Google search results. The trouble is, all
the clicks are fake. And because Google charges advertisers on a per-click
basis, the extra traffic could mean sky-high bills for Boser's clients.
But Boser's no fraudster. He cleared the procedure
with clients beforehand and plans to reimburse any resulting charges.
What's he up to? Boser wants to get to the bottom of a blight that's
creating growing concern for online advertisers and threatens to wreak havoc
across the Internet: click fraud.
BILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION. The practice can
wildly skew statistics on the popularity of an ad, drain marketing budgets,
and enrich the scam artists behind it. While click fraud isn't new, the
methods for carrying it out--take Boser's clickbot software--are getting
increasingly sophisticated. And some advertisers, analysts and consultants
question whether Web companies such as Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) are
doing enough to nip click fraud in the bud. "No one has any idea how much
of this is actually going on," says Boser. "So we're going to see how well
[the search engines] actually try to protect advertisers."
One of Boser's biggest challenges is putting a
finger on exactly how widespread the practice is. Some search consultants
say click fraud accounts for upwards of 20% of all traffic, and may generate
more than $1 billion in dubious sales a year. Others say those stats vastly
overstate the problem.
Now, one of the biggest players in fraud detection
aims to end the guessing. Fair Isaac (FIC), which analyzes 85% of U.S.
credit card transactions, in partnership with Web search consultancy
Alchemist Media, will unveil plans at this week's Search Engine Strategies
Conference for what it says is the most rigorous study ever of click fraud.
Fair Issac will invite companies to submit traffic data that can be mined
for aberrations that may signify fraud. "We've seen indications that the
overall losses due to click fraud could equal more than $1 billion [a
year]--larger than the total magnitude of credit card fraud in the U.S.,"
says Kandathil Jacob, Fair Issac's director of product marketing. "It's
certainly worth our effort to look at it."
MORE CLICKS, MORE DOLLARS. A rising number
of companies would agree. The percentage of advertisers listing click fraud
as a "serious" problem tripled in 2005, to 16%, according to a survey by the
Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. Advertisers have filed
at least two class-action suits saying Google, Yahoo, and other search
engines ought to be more up-front about methods for combating the practice.
Google says the suits are meritless. Yahoo declines to comment.
And in January, Standard & Poor's equity analyst
Scott Kessler downgraded Google stock in part because he considers click
fraud a "notable risk" (see BW Online, 1/17/06, "S&P Downgrades Google to
Sell"). Among his concerns: the prospect of false clicks may sour companies
from placing ads on Google. He too says Google needs to be more forthcoming
on the issue. "No one has any idea as to what Google assesses [as] its own
percentage of clicks that are generated by fraud, no idea what that process
consists of, and all the things that are being done to battle it," he says.
Question
If you lost your hotel room's magnetic strip card that opens the door, I'll
just be you thought your were free of all worries when you simply got a
replacement card with a changed code that unlocks the hotel room door. Could
anybody who found or stole your original card still take advantage of you?
"Street-Level Credit Card Fraud,"
by Brian Krebs, The Washington Post, March 6, 2006 ---
Click Here
Until recently, Las Vegas police
officers couldn't figure out why some of the prostitutes and drug addicts
they arrested were found carrying multiple hotel room keys and slot machine
player's club cards. When confronted, the suspects said they kept them as
souvenirs or found them on the sidewalk. The cops initially assumed that the
cards were stolen, or -- in the case of the prostitutes -- perhaps belonged
to some of their more frequent clients.
"It was getting fairly regular that in post-arrest
inventory, we would find eight to 10 room key cards ... all from different
hotels," said
Dennis Cobb, deputy chief of the
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Technical Services
Division.
The mystery began to unravel when a LVMPD officer
slid one of the keys through a machine that reads the data stored on the
card's magnetic stripe. Each swipe revealed a 16-digit credit number, a
date, a person's name and the name of a bank. That's right, the keys
functioned exactly like credit cards, allowing the carrier to pay for
merchandise at any store or market where customers do their own swiping.
"The people who had these cards on them were using
them in transactions with local businesses," Cobb said.
The revelation is hardly a surprising one for a
city that had
the nation's second highest rate of identity-theft complaints
to the Federal Trade Commission last year. Cobb said the
stolen card data comes from a variety of sources, but he said it is not
unusual for service-industry workers who owe money to a drug dealer or a
bookie to be handed a handheld magnetic stripe "skimmer"
and ordered to periodically collect up to 100 accounts as a means of erasing
their debt.
The discovery led Cobb's division to team up with
researchers from the Identity Theft and
Financial Fraud Research and Operations Center
(IFFROC) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to
devise technologies that police could deploy in the field to detect various
types of fraud.
Hal
Berghel, the center's director, said the
people who are usually caught with key cards use them primarily at
convenience stores, gas stations and other places where purchases are less
than $20, which is below the scrutiny threshold for most fraud-detection
technologies.
"By the time the bottom feeders get the cards, the
data on them has already been shared with the organized criminals, who will
bang on a credit card though mail-order and Internet purchases," Berghel
said. At that point the cards are "throwaways that can only be used a couple
of times before they're canceled."
Last year, Berghel filed a patent application on
behalf of IFFROC for a technology called "Cardsleuth," software he demoed
for me when we met up last week in Washington. He hopes that one day a
pen-sized device will be used to read magnetic stripes and alert the user
when unexpected data is found. Berghel and his team are working on a
prototype, which he said could be updated periodically via a USB-based
docking station.
Berghel said the technology could be especially
useful in the case of a 9/11-type emergency by helping authorities
distinguish first responders from those individuals -- be they terrorists or
merely looters -- who might take advantage of a chaotic environment.
"There is still a need for on-the-spot validation
of credentials where you have a convergence of emergency workers, many of
whom have never seen each other before," he said.
Update, 11:45 a.m. ET: Apparently,
I didn't make it clear enough what is really going on here. This post is not
suggesting that hotel room keys are being encoded with credit card
information by the hotels, which has always been something of an urban
legend/e-mail hoax (see
Snopes and
previous discussions on Slashdot.) The folks I
interviewed for this piece said the encoding was being done by the criminals
(or more specifically, fraud rings who sold them to street hustlers who
would wring every last dollar out of the cards before they were cancelled).
From the crooks' perspective, the idea behind this is to be able to
anonymously use someone else's credit card at a physical location; someone
who got arrested holding someone else's actual credit card would have a lot
of explaining to do, but hotel room keys are likely to be overlooked or set
aside for what they appear to be.
March 6, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, at first I was going to congratulate you on
being hoaxed, but then I saw the addendum and explanation. But hey, you
don't need a hotel key card to do that -- you can re-encode any magnetic
stripe (even a subway pass for example) to serve the same purpose can't you?
Any mag stripe can serve as the medium at the gas pump, can't it? But
wait...
This is beginning to sound fishy. I question the
accuracy of the quotes, or the critical thinking skills of the sources
quoted. In fact, I'm thinking this whole article might be a hoax... or
perhaps a "joax"? Let's take a closer look...
First, the data on practically all credit cards
these days is super-encrypted, using layers of encryption, pads, padding,
and "check-digits on steroids".
I do not place a lot of faith in the accuracy of
the claim, "The mystery began to unravel when a LVMPD officer slid one of
the keys through a machine that reads the data stored on the card's magnetic
stripe. Each swipe revealed a 16-digit credit number, a date, a person's
name and the name of a bank. That's right..."
Nope, that's wrong. Baloney. Maybe back when I was
a kid, but not today. Credit card companies aren't that stupid.
I have used a card reader to demonstrate to my
students that commercial cards, even low-level ones like the pizza cards,
hotel keys, and even the subway cards, DO NOT put unencrypted data on the
cards, let alone sensitive stuff like account numbers on legitimate credit
cards like Visa and Mastercard. The data on their magnetic stripes is utter
gibberish unless you know how to decrypt it. A simple card reader does not
"reveal" account numbers, bank names, etc. Joke number one.
What's more, card READERS do NOT have the (highly
proprietary) algorithms to decode the data! The encrypted data stream is
sent to the headquarters (card center) computer still encrypted,
(double-encrypted, since the card readers encrypt the encrypted data again
before transmitting it over the datalink to the card center!) where the card
center computer then decodes the data! The card center then sends the
cardholders name, last four digits of the account, etc. back to the
merchant's computer to print the receipt. So I doubt that "each swipe
revealed..."
Even if you knew the algorithm, you'd still need
the encryption KEY! Credit card companies don't even let police departments
know their decryption keys. Joke number two. This inaccuracy makes me
question the legitimacy of the rest of the article.
Think about what the rest of the article is saying.
Since the data on a legitimate card is encrypted nine ways to Sunday, it is
highly unlikely anyone can "create" the encoded data string from scratch.
What is easier to do (and indeed CAN be done) is to COPY a valid string off
a valid card, and write the copied string onto a new card. Of course, with
"smart cards", this is pretty-nigh impossible because the card itself may
have an RFID chip (some European cards even have imbedded chips with gold
electrical contacts for reading) which contains a "serial number" -- which
number is incorporated as part of the key (encryption pad) to encode the
data on the magnetic stripe! Double layer protection. The chip's serial
number is built into it at time of manufacture and can't be changed, or
duplicated unless you have access to a chip-manufacturing plant.
But even if you weren't duplicating a smart card,
duplicatng the encrypted data string from a plain old credit card stripe
still means you must first physically be in possession of the original card,
right? Follow my logic here.
So, if you are in possession of the original card
to start with, why make a copy?
The only reason I can think of is this: you steal a
card without someone detecting it, copy it, and replace the card before the
victim knows it's gone. (Under any other scenario, the victim is sure to
cancel the card the instant he notices the theft.) So you have to take the
stolen original card and read it, then replace it, then make a duplicate --
hmmmm.
So here's where joke number three comes in: look at
the sentence in the article: "but he said it is not unusual for
service-industry workers who owe money to a drug dealer or a bookie to be
handed a handheld magnetic stripe "skimmer" and ordered to periodically
collect up to 100 accounts ..."
Not unusual? Come on, gimme a break! Even
professional pickpockets have to use care to steal a card without detection,
let alone REPLACE IT without detection! And this reporter expects me to
believe that any Tom, Dick or Harry "service-industry worker" off the
"street" is being told to do that 100 times? Yeah, right. Joke number three
is the funny one.
I don't doubt that such a theft-replacement can
happen, I won't even doubt it DOES happen, and I don't even doubt that
professionals aren't using this on a daily basis. I just don't believe for a
second that this is the major sensation the article makes it sound and that
service-industry workers are being recruited to do this on a "not unusual"
basis!
And someone is going to all this trouble to
perpetuate "bottom feeder" fraud like gas pumps and convenience stores?
(Joke number four)
Okay, so you're thinking: what's to stop a
professional criminal from getting the card, reading it, replacing it,
duplicating it, and then posing as a legitimate business to obtain the real
name of the holder, and the last four digits of his card number (as well as
an approval code) and then using that data or selling it to organized crime?
Nothing, except the card company's standard controls on vendors. I don't
doubt that someone somewhere might be doing this. But why go to this much
trouble? If it's so easy to corrupt service-industry people, why not get a
couple of the girls at Pizza Hut or Red Lobster or any other
"service-industry" employees with legitimate access to credit cards to do
this? Why isn't the article warning us to not give our credit cards to
ANYONE, even the waitress or parts clerk at AutoZone? And what's to stop the
Wal-mart programmers from capturing our data from their computer? Why does
the article think that hotel key cards in the possession of Las Vegas street
criminals are such a big deal? Joke number five perhaps?
And as the icing on the cake, the article sounds
like a publicity stunt for the "experts" who are trying to sell the "pen
like device" that ... seems to me ... to be attempting to do what biometrics
is better at doing already: "There is still a need for on-the-spot
validation of credentials where you have a convergence of emergency workers,
many of whom have never seen each other before," he said.
Perhaps the "Joax on me"?
A few musings from a perpetual media skeptic...
(who nevertheless finds the media very entertaining -- funny jokes abound if
you look for them)
David Fordham
Another message from David Fordham
Bob, I was going over to our tech department on
another errand, and for fun, I stopped by and asked them to scan my Visa
card through a reader. (Our university ID is a 'smart card' and students can
use it like a debit card, etc., ergo there are card readers all over campus!
The tech support department services them and has readers lying around the
office. We connected one up and read my card.
As I expected, the data on my Visa card came out
complete gibberish. A long string of numbers, none of which I could
recognize as being anything real: card number, bank number, expiration date,
zip code, anything. The tech told me what I already knew: the data is
encrypted, padded, reversed, check-digits added out the wazoo, interspersed,
interlaced, etc.
When I told him why I was interested in this, the
technician came up with another reason why he, like me, believes the article
is something of a "joax":
The technician referred to something called the
"physical resolution" of the magnetic stripes. My credit card holds at least
2048 characters of information (that's how many the reader picked up,
anyway). Hotel key cards have to hold far less information. Hotel cards are
generally much cheaper cards, and the quality of manufacture is much lower.
It is his opinion that you probably would have a hard time encoding a hotel
card with the character density required by a legitimate credit card. (The
bpi, or bits per inch, which determines resolution is something like the
magnetic equivalent of a pixel-count for a digital photo.) He said that
encoding a hotel key card with the data from a credit card would be like
trying to reproduce DaVinci's Last Supper using the 16-color 240x120 screen
resolution of a cell-phone display.
He also pointed out that the magnetic stripes are
not a universally-agreed-upon-standard. The physical location of the hotel
stripe may be in a different location on a key card than it is on a credit
card. Add in the multi-layer magnetic effects (analagous to different tracks
on an 8- track tape cartridge of days gone by), etc., and you end up with a
set of complicating factors that makes him as skeptical as I am about the
magnitude of the problem. "People have been trying this for years ... gluing
the old magnetic tape to credit cards, and stuff like that. These reporters
must think the credit card company security people are real dummies. In
addition to the stuff you can think of on your own, the credit card
companies are full of surprises and stuff you don't think of!" I'm
paraphrasing him here. "Forgery is an old problem, and the credit card has
evolved a long way. Every time your card expires and they send you a new
one, there are new security features in place, embedded in the card in
places you'd never think to look. Copying data from one card stripe to
another is a gimmick that hasn't been workable for years."
He said that the 'service industry personnel'
referred to in the article are probably waitresses and others with
legitimate access to cards, but like me, he believes any problem is
overblown and not worth worrying about... he, like me, agrees that putting
the 'read' information to use requires a lot more sophistication than the
'street criminals' are able to muster. Yet.
I ended our conversation by reminding him that
newspapers are in business to sell papers, not educate the public.
When I asked the tech if I could paraphrase his
comments, he said yes, but he'd appreciate not having his name used. I'm not
a fan of anonymity, but I respect his wishes.
"The Secret To Google's Success: Its innovative auction system has ad
revenues soaring," Business Week, March 6, 2006 ---
Click Here
Everybody knows that Google Inc.'s
innovations in search technology made it the No. 1 search engine. But Google
didn't make money until it started auctioning ads that appear alongside the
search results. Advertising today accounts for 99% of the revenue of a
company whose market capitalization now tops $100 billion.
Now, research is showing that Google's auction
methodology, invented internally and so important for its success, is far
more innovative than auction experts once believed. While superficially
similar to earlier types of auctions, it is a "novel mechanism" that
"emerged in the wild," write the authors of The High Price of Internet
Keyword Auctions, a new study by Benjamin Edelman of Harvard University,
Michael Ostrovsky of Stanford University, and Michael Schwarz of the
University of California at Berkeley. Google's AdWords became so successful
after its debut four years ago that some of its key features were quickly
adopted by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ), then the search-ad leader.
MATHEMATICAL RIGOR Close-mouthed Google has opened
up about AdWords since the three economists cracked its code last November.
It freed Hal R. Varian, a Berkeley economist who consults for Google, to
publish some of his findings about the auction methodology. And on Feb. 22,
Google gave an interview to BusinessWeek in which for the first time it
named the technical leader of the project: Eric Veach, a veteran of Pixar
Animation Studios whose Stanford doctorate was in computer graphics, not
economics. "Without his mathematical rigor we wouldn't have been able to do
it," said vice-president of product management Salar Kamangar, himself a
biology major, who was Employee No. 9 at Google and led the nontechnical
side of the project.
Some of Google's innovations are only now being
matched. For instance, Yahoo gives the top spot on its search results page
to the advertiser who pays the most per click. But Google maximizes the
revenue it gets from that precious real estate by giving its best position
to the advertiser who is likely to pay Google the most in total, based on
the price per click multiplied by Google's estimate of the likelihood that
someone will actually click on the ad. Anil Kamath, chief technology officer
of Efficient Frontier Inc., a search-engine marketing firm in Mountain View,
Calif., estimates that Google earns about 30% more revenue per ad impression
than Yahoo does. Kamath says Yahoo is likely to follow Google's lead soon.
Asked about that, a Yahoo spokesperson says the company is "currently
evaluating" making more use of the "click-through rate" in placing ads. Last
fall, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN embraced Google's approach, tweaking it to
increase ads' relevance, when it began auctioning search ad space.
What makes Google's auction so different? Auctions
come in two main flavors. In a typical first-price auction, participants put
in sealed bids, then the winner pays his or her bid. But the danger is the
high-bidder ends up regretting having won, an effect known as the winner's
curse. A second-price auction lessens winner's curse because the highest
bidder gets the prize but pays only the minimum necessary to win, namely the
second-highest bid, plus perhaps a penny.
Kamangar, Veach, and colleagues chose a
second-price auction. But not knowing theory, they designed one that
differed in a key respect from the one economists had studied. In the
economists' version, bidders always have the incentive to tell the truth. In
Google's auction they don't, say Edelman, Ostrovsky, and Schwarz, since in
some cases, by understating the top price they're willing to pay,
advertisers could get a slightly lower position on the search page for a lot
less money. They conclude that naive advertisers who told the truth could
overbid. Google's system has pluses for advertisers, too, says Varian. It's
easier to understand than the academic version. And it's proven to work on a
large scale.
AdWords Select, as it was called at its February,
2002, debut, was actually Google's third crack at an ad auction. The first
two were flawed, but Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin kept
pushing. Even the current system isn't perfect. Advertisers complain that
it's too much of a "black box." Still, if the best measure of innovation is
commercial success, Google's AdWords was a grand slam. Says Kamangar: "Third
time's a charm."
1. "Bobos
in Paradise" by David Brooks (Simon & Schuster, 2000).
Good books about popular culture can make
us feel as if we are looking in a mirror from a different angle--as
David Brooks proved with his brilliant dissection of "bourgeois
bohemians" in "Bobos in Paradise." Many of us who grew up in the
1960s fully enjoyed the freedoms of that era; even though we might
have scoffed at respectability back then, our later transition to it
seems to have happened quite naturally. We excuse our indulgences in
Starbucks by telling ourselves that, after all, it was a soy latte.
Old hippies can vote Republican, drive SUVs, live in McMansions and
still love "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." These inconsistencies
have never been better captured than they are in "Bobos."
2. "Cheap" by David Bosshart (Kogan
Page, 2006).
In the 1920s, Gottlieb Duttweiler founded
the Swiss grocery-store chain Migros--and was known from then on as
the man who invented über-discounting. He died in 1961, but
Duttweiler's legacy endures in the form of the Gottlieb Duttweiler
Institute, or GDI, located outside Zurich. A think tank dedicated to
merchant education and research into retail best practices, GDI runs
two annual high-powered gatherings, one on retail matters, the other
on food service. The events' focus, increasingly, is on the
explosive growth of shopping and retail across Russia and Central
and Eastern Europe. GDI's executive director is David Bosshart, a
distinguished political scientist. His book, "Cheap," points out
that the fastest-growing merchants in the First World are
mega-discount chains such as Aldi in Germany (owners of Trader
Joe's) and Dollar Store in the U.S. David's main themes: Consumers'
pursuit of bargains is a victory over the system, and nowadays cheap
is chic. A number of books lately have looked at the impact of
cutting costs in the supply chain, but it takes a Swiss German to
say it elegantly and globally.
3. "Not Buying It" by Judith Levine
(Free Press, 2006).
Most of us could live the rest of our lives
on fruits, vegetables, pasta, wine, olive oil and yearly doses of
socks and underwear. In truth we need little. Judith Levine, in "Not
Buying It," tries with her significant other to spend a year off the
shopping grid as they move between their homes in Brooklyn and
Vermont. The story swings from asking how crucial Q-tips really are
to exploring the fine line between shopping as therapy and shopping
as sickness. This is a charming book about trying to live small, and
it is a fair-minded look at the "simply living" movement.
4. "FutureShop" by Daniel Nissanoff
(Penguin, 2006).
I was not prepared to like "Futureshop" by
Daniel Nissanoff. Books about e-commerce tend to be like uninspired
sex: a convenient shortcut to a nap. But this one is like the jolt
of a double espresso. Who knew that secondary markets could be so
interesting? In Daniel's view, eBay is creating an "auction culture"
that is transforming the way we shop on- and offline. After all,
when a used car is transformed into a "preowned" Lexus, secondhand
status has lost all its stigma. Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, is
quoted as having no concerns about the threat of Target, but eBay
keeps him up at night.
5. "Design for Effective Selling Space"
by Joseph Weishar (McGraw-Hill, 1992).
Magic in the retailing realm is not what
you sell but how you sell it. From shop windows to catalog photo
shoots to the design of an e-commerce site, we live in a world where
our visual language is evolving faster than the spoken or written
word. Our eyes may be tired, but their connection to our brains has
never been better. In retail, making good stuff look great is called
Visual Merchandising, or VM, and the master historian of VM is
Joseph Weishar. Joe's gift is an ability to connect fine art and
commerce. His slide lectures--this Tiffany window, that assemblage
box by Joseph Cornell--are legendary (having a voice like Vic Damone
helps). Joe has a new book called "The Aesthetics of Merchandise
Presentation," but "Design for Effective Selling Space" is his
classic. My copy, bought used, came complete with coffee stains and
Post-it notes--the ultimate testimony to a book's worth.
Mr. Underhill is CEO of Envirosell Inc. and the author of "Why
We Buy" and "Call of the Mall."
Formal Comparison of Accounting Software Packages
March 1, 2006 message from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Ruth Bender asked: "...more broadly, how should she
start looking for the right package?"
One of the best tools I've ever come across for
evaluating commercial accounting software packages is called "The Accounting
Library", by a company out of Richmond Virginia called "Solutions, Inc."
The Accounting Library software covers well over
150 different commercial accounting packages. It includes ALL levels of
software, from Quickbooks (at the very bottom of the product line), all the
way up through SAP (the top). While 150 doesn't sound like a large number,
believe me, it has everything you've ever heard of, and more.
What you do is, you answer a set of
questionnaire-like questions dealing with the nature of your business and
what you want your accounting package to do for you. The questionnaire can
be quick-and-dirty, or extremely complex, depending on whether you are
evaluating on behalf of Mom-And- Pop's Hotdog Stand, or Boeing Aircraft
Corporation. You can spend weeks answering the full questionnaire if you
want to. yes, it covers currency conversions (about 90 ways to Sunday as
they say), analysis of just about everything (sales, costs, by product, by
client, by sales rep, by the kitchen sink, etc.), and just about anything
else you can think of.
After telling The Accounting Library about your
business nature and what you expect the accounting package to do for you,
TAL will then rank those products which meet or come close to your specs.
You can then "drill down" into the ranking to find out WHY one package was
rated higher than another, to find out which features you need that are or
are marginally met in each package, etc. You also have the opportunity to
reconsider your initial answers -- for example, during the drill-down
exercise, you may decide that perhaps keeping track of subassemblies by
date-manufactured isn't quite as important as you originally ranked it, or
that maybe you need to generate an "aged inventory by serial number" report
after all. You can then alter your original input, and re-run the
evaluation.
I used TAL back when I was teaching the systems
analysis classes, because it walks the students through a good "user needs
analysis"... albeit in checklist form (I had to add a lot of meat to explain
rationales, etc. and thus I used TAL as a support tool rather than a
concepts tool.)
What's more, the product has a fantastic
"introduction to accounting software", gives product descriptions and
summaries of capabilities, etc. -- in general it's just a fantastic learning
tool for comparing the many commercial- grade accounting packages out there.
The latest editions are also aimed at consultants
who help companies procure and install software.
If you decide the product is useful, telephone
(U.S.: 1-804- 330-0000) and ask for Charles Chewning, and tell him that
David Fordham of James Madison University told you about the product. No, I
don't get a finders fee or commission, but he is a supporter of JMU (and the
AIS educator's association too!) and might give you a discount on the
product if he knows you found it through us. (It's a steal at full price,
but hey, every few dollars helps!)
In New Zealand we have a very versatile package
called "MYOB" - or: Mind Your Own Business. We use it here for tuition, and
a number of us with clients also use it. I know from practice that it meets
all the criteria you mention with the EXCEPTION of forex (not too sure about
this). I can conceive how it might be handled fairly easily with a link from
Excel, as I have linked depreciation schedules (in Excel) directly into MYOB.
There are a number of web pages to check it out: just google "MYOB". Let me
know how you get on?
Regards, Roger Knights
Senior Lecturer
Auckland University of Technology (00649) 921-9999 ext 7055
People looking for accounting and management software often forget about
the wonderful Webledger alternatives where a heavy duty IT system is
maintained in a central location by the software system vendor such that
users can access the system on the Web and do not need their own hardware,
software, and expensive maintenance technicians. Webledger systems have
excellent backup computer and power systems such that the chances of going
down are almost zero except in nuclear war.
My favorite Webledger alterntive is NetSuite at
http://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml
NetSuite commenced under the name NetLedger with financing from the CEO of
Oracle. For all practical purposes it is an Oracle company.
Bob Jensen's Threads on Webledgers for
Distributed Network Computing of Accounting Systems and Business Services
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/webledger.htm
The above site is not one that I actively update. Hence, some of the links
may be broken and there may have been some buyouts and mergers that I've not
tracked in the past year or two.
Bob Jensen
March 2,, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
At 6:43 a.m. this morning I sang the praises of NetSuite in the message
below. As chance would have it, at 2:30 p.m. this afternoon I ran across the
following tidbit from the Accounting Web:
NetSuite, Inc.
leads the rankings of on-demand business
management software for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) according
to a new study of SMB business suites from Yankee Group. NetSuite
received, or tied for the
highest
ranking in all categories ranked by the study
including breadth of solution, market share, geographic coverage and
ease of customization.
“SMBs require an easy-to-use, integrated
business application suite," Sanjeev Aggarwal, Small and Medium Business
Strategies Senior Analyst and leader of the Yankee Group survey states.
“Such solutions can help improve personalization and the customer,
supplier, partner and employee experience.”
Study results indicate that small and mid-sized
enterprises are currently experiencing the same business application
transition, from cobbled together, stand-alone software solutions to and
integrated suite to manage core business operations, recently completed
by Fortune 1000 companies. The top three technology challenges facing
SMBs all involved the difficulty in integrating and managing multiple
stand-alone products for finance, ERP, CRM and E-commerce, according to
2005 SMB Business Applications and Web Survey conducted by Yankee Group
in November 2005.
“The same ‘point application vs. integrated
suite of applications’ battle that was fought in the enterprise is now
happening in the mid-market, and it is pretty clear that an integrated
suite of applications will win the SMB market as well,” Said Zach
Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. “The combination of an integrated suite of
business applications delivered as a service via the Internet is the
‘killer app’ for SMBs.”
The study also identifies the growing need for
on-demand solutions in the SMB market. As small and mid-sized businesses
don’t have the financial or human resources to manage complex on-premise
applications, they are seeking on-demand offerings to reduce costs and
increase productivity. Of the vendors studied, only NetSuite offers an
integrated suite of web-based applications. The offerings from both SAP
and Sage are designed as on-premise solutions. NetSuite enables
companies to manage all key business operations, including CRM; customer
support; accounting and payroll; warehousing and product assembly; web
store and web presence; and employee productivity, in a single,
integrated system that is delivered as an online service.
March 2, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
The Achilles heel (or the weakest link, for the
modern generation) of Web-Based Information Systems is the internet
infrastructure.
Most small and medium businesses of my acquaintance
(those most likely to outsource their information system to a web- based
vendor) are not served by hardened, robust, redundant ISP lines, but rather
are reliant on a single (and very vulnerable) delicate link for their
Internet service.
I have no doubt at all that NetSuite and the other
major web- based applications providers have well-designed, safe, secure,
backed-up, redundant, robust, multi-layered internet service lines coming
in. But I think you'd be hard-pressed to say the same about the "last mile"
of the infrastructure to the small and medium businesses.
A backhoe cuts the underground cable. A traffic
accident knocks down the pole holding the cable company's coax. A heavy
thunderstorm floods a DSL digipeater box. Lightning takes out the ISDN
tombstone. The yahoo six blocks down cuts through the lines while installing
his invisible dog fence. The contractor installing the new sewer line to the
new condo complex cuts through the fiber-optic backbone to the shopping
center. The phone company upgrades their equipment and suddenly everyone
served by the C.O. is offline for the rest of the day.
Been there. Done that. All of it. And more.
For most of us, these are inconveniences. I can
wait till tomorrow to make my Marriott reservation or check my bank balance
or purchase that TNC on e-bay.
For a business, however, even a little of this and
-- poof. A Monday-afternoon-till-Wednesday-morning Internet outage has more
effect than waiting five minutes for a reboot of your local information
system after the blue-screen-of-death from a Windows-based Accounting System
failure. My mother- in-law even continues serving the customers in her store
when the power is out, thanks to a UPS on the computerized cash register.
Of course, all companies should have a backup
information system for mission-critical apps anyway, even with local
systems. However, I'd bet most don't. I know most don't. So based on how
frequently internet service goes down to us non-redundant-line ISP
customers, I hope that NetSuite and its competitors are being honest with
customers and making sure they have contingency plans in place for Internet
outages before they agree to take over their InfoSys functions.
Another tuppence worth of tripe from...
David Fordham, CPTC
(certified pro-tech curmudgeon)
March 2, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
Actually the proof is in the business success of the
NetSuite Business Model. NetSuite would not have endured for so many years
and not have won so many prizes worldwide if something was not working well.
I think you are being a bit unfair in terms of the odds of breakdowns. I
think the main selling point of NetSuite is the added security.
For a medium to small size firm the odds of a system failure in your own
accounting IT system are relatively high unless an enormous amount is spent
on backup systems and a highly qualified IT staff to keep the system running
and recovering in case of failure. Such a system of hardware, software, and
expertise is very expensive if you want to keep the odds of disaster low.
There is also a reasonably high probability of error and fraud in your
own IT system because in a small system a great deal relies upon one or a
very small number of technicians running the system. Even if there is no
fraud, the loss of a key IT employee may throw the entire system into a
dither.
For an online system like NetSuite the odds of a
failure on NetSuite's end are minimal because of the massive investment in
backup systems and very highly trained database experts. NetSuite even
managed not to have one outage when there were a string of California power
outages during the Enron rip off of California in the 1990s (years when even
PG&E was on the brink of bankruptcy). Remember the rolling blackouts across
all of California. NetSuite had its own power generators to cover such
contingencies.
It is true that there is a possibility of a cable breakage in the last
mile to your home or business. However, these are usually restored fairly
quickly and there is virtually zero risk of losing any data that has already
been shipped to NetSuite.
Actually the proof is in the business success of the NetSuite Business
Model. NetSuite would not have endured for so many years and not have won so
many prizes worldwide if something was not working well.
SUMMARY: The author describes issues on both sides of patent disputes, based
on his experience as general counsel for Intel Corp., and relates them to the
patent infringement suit settlement by RIM.
QUESTIONS:
1.) What have been the events leading up to RIM (the company behind BlackBerry
hand held devices) paying $615 million to NTP? On what basis has that amount
increased over time? You may refer to the related articles to get a sense of
that issue.
2.) What are the accounting issues related to intellectual property? List all
that you can think of. How are these issues related to patent rights and
disputes as described in the article?
3.) How has RIM been accounting for the cost of defending against the patent
infringement suit by NTP? Determine the answer to this question based on
information in the second related article.
4.) What are the author' s proposals for reforming patent infringement law?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
RIM, the company that brings BlackBerry service to
four million subscribers, finally caved in to the threat of losing its
business. It paid NTP, a small patent holding company reputedly comprised of
just one inventor and one patent lawyer, $615 million to settle a four-year
patent dispute. For NTP it was like winning the lottery, but for the rest of
us, and for business in particular, it stinks. NTP used the patent system,
and the threat of shutting down BlackBerry service, to play chicken with RIM
and millions of BlackBerry users around the world. Unless the courts or
Congress do something to stop this kind of gamesmanship, we're only going to
see more cases like this.
NTP doesn't have a competitive product. It isn't
even in the business of making products. It's one of a large number of
companies known as patent trolls. Trolls acquire and use patents just to sue
companies that actually make products and generate revenue. A patent without
a product isn't worth much, whereas a patent tied to a revenue stream,
particularly someone else's, is a whole different matter. RIM was the best
thing that ever happened to NTP, because by last Friday the only question
left was how much of RIM's pie NTP could get.
The distressing part of this picture is that RIM's
contribution of complementary technologies, business acumen, product R&D and
marketing is what "enabled" the NTP invention to achieve commercial
relevance. The right question is: What would be a fair royalty for NTP,
given its contribution of the patent and RIM's contribution of everything
else? Unfortunately, that isn't where this case ended up. Because NTP had
the presumptive right to obtain an injunction against RIM and stop it dead
in its tracks, the issue on the table wasn't the value of NTP's patent in
the context of RIM's business; instead, it was the total value of RIM's
business. "Pay me a lot or lose everything" hardly leads to rational
settlements. Is this really what we want from our patent system?
At Intel, I see this problem every day and from
both sides of the fence. Intel owns a considerable portfolio of patents and
we believe strongly that inventors are entitled to fair compensation for
their efforts. But Intel is also a target for patent trolls because we run a
successful business. The fact that success creates leverage for trolls to
extract value above and beyond the true contribution of the patented
invention just doesn't seem quite . . . American.
Things got so lopsided in the world of patent
litigation not on account of the patent statute itself but from case law,
which has become increasingly protective of patent owners and tolerant of
excessive damages arguments by plaintiffs' lawyers. Our patent laws are
supposed to be about proliferation of technology. If there is actual
competition between patent owner and infringer, an injunction may be
appropriate -- it protects the patent owner's right to exclusivity and does
not deprive society of the benefits of the technology. On the other hand, if
the patent owner has not commercialized the invention, blocking others from
using it is a loss for all of us. The right to an injunction also needs to
be tempered by a commonsense look at how much real value the patented
technology adds to the whole commercial product. A fundamental invention
deserves greater value than a relatively minor tweak to work that went
before it. A broad application of the injunction remedy makes all patents
"crucial," whether they are or not.
What I'm suggesting here is not all that radical.
These concepts are already embedded in our patent laws; but unfortunately
they have been buried beneath the wrongheaded notion that all patents should
be treated equally.
There is a glimmer of hope. The Supreme Court will
hear eBay v. MercExchange, in which eBay faces the threat of an injunction
from MercExchange, a patent-holding company without a competitive product in
the online auction space. The eBay case is an opportunity for the highest
court to take the judiciary back to the language of the patent statute and
remind judges that they don't have to grant injunctions in every patent
case. Judges have the right to balance the interests of patent plaintiffs
with those of the defendant, and society at large. It may be with just a
touch of irony that we'll read about the eBay case on our now more costly
BlackBerries.
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on March 10,
2006
TITLE: Beyond AT&T, Larger Issue Is How to Play Convergence
REPORTER: James B. Stewart
DATE: Mar 08, 2006
PAGE: D4
LINK:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114177331767191861.html
TOPICS: Accounting, Advanced Financial Accounting, Mergers and Acquisitions
SUMMARY: The article covers issues related to the AT&T acquisition of
BellSouth that can be used in classes covering accounting for mergers and
acqusitions, particularly to focus on investor perspectives towards M&A
transactions. The related articles are the front page announcements of the
transaction.
QUESTIONS:
1.) What is the purpose of the AT&T acquisition of BellSouth? How is the
transaction structured? How is the $67billion acquistion price determined?
2.) What factors lead the author to say that "the deal has unfolded in
textbook fashion"? Why did AT&T shares drop about 3.5% upon announcement of the
transaction? Why did BellSouth's shares jump 10%?
3.) The author states that he likes the all stock structure of the
acquisition. So why is AT&T announcing plans to buy back shares of stock at the
same time that it is announcing a plan to issue shares of stock to undertake the
acquisition? What is the ultimate effect of the is combination of transactions
on the balance sheet? Why not just purchase the BellSouth shares for cash
instead?
4.) How does this plan allay fears of "earnings dilution"? In your answer,
define the term "earnings dilution."
5.) What are the concerns of regulators regarding this transaction? How are
circumstances in the telecommunications competitive environment different than
they were when AT&T was broken up in 1984?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
I wonder if you could help me. I received a request
from a PhD student who is looking at corporate hedging choices, earnings
management, etc. We were discussing the issues with accounting that Fair
Value causes, now that European companies have to follow IFRS. But he had
one very specific question:
Finally, I wanted to find out whether you could
kindly assist on a technical hedge accounting question. For my research I am
trying to determine whether I can get/ measure the extent to which firms (in
the US for this matter as IAS 39 is newly enacted), adopt hedge accounting.
Is there a way that one could observe or proxy the extent of hedge
accounting?
Do you know whether/how this information would be
available?
Many thanks Ruth
Dr Ruth Bender
Senior Lecturer in Finance
Cranfield School of Management Cranfield
Usually firms try to get hedge accounting relief (on eps) whenever they can
qualify for hedge accounting when adjusting derivative financial instruments
to fair value. It is not a matter of a firm electing to use hedge accounting
or not use hedge accounting. It is a matter of electing to use hedge
accounting for each derivative contract used as a hedge. In the U.S.,
portfolios seldom qualify for hedge accounting such that a firm is often
individually analyzing thousands of hedging contracts.
Certain types of derivatives have a hard time qualifying for hedge
accounting. Options in particular often fail to meet requisite hedge
effectiveness tests and can only qualify for hedge accounting to the extent
of changes in intrinsic value but not time value. Interest rate swaps often
do not match up properly (with hedged items) for hedge accounting.
Since qualifying for hedge accounting is such a fluid event (into and out of
qualifying over time), I doubt that any highly aggregated statistics on what
proportion of hedging derivatives qualify for hedge accounting would have
much meaning.
And
there is the problem of error. Many U.S. firms that took hedge accounting
are now in the process of revising financial statements because they
discovered ex post that they did not qualify for hedge accounting.
And
there is a serious problem that some firms have elected to use FAS 133 as an
earnings management tool because it is so easy to fool the auditors.
Some comments the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates auditors, has
made in its recent inspection reports of big audit firms. In a few
instances, the PCAOB has indicated that firms haven't been as diligent as
they should have been on hedge accounting in individual audits that the
board has reviewed. In an inspection report on KPMG LLP issued in September,
for instance, the PCAOB cited an audit of an unidentified client in which
KPMG "failed to appropriately address" improper derivatives accounting. A
report on Grant Thornton LLP last week said the firm "failed to perform
sufficient audit procedures" over one client's interest-rate derivatives and
didn't evaluate another's hedge accounting over foreign-currency futures.
"Hedge Accounting Gets On Regulators' Radar: Some Firms Using the
Tool Have to Restate Earnings; The New Lease Accounting?" by Michael
Rapoport, The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2006; Page C3
And
lastly there is the enormous problem that firms are taking hedge accounting
when they really do not qualify for hedge accounting. FAS 133 is so complex
that many firms are running inappropriate tests for effectiveness without
realizing that the tests being used are inappropriate. For example, they
might be running the test on cash flow effectiveness of hedges when FAS 133
is adamant that the tests have to be run on changes in value such that even
perfect cash flow hedges often fail the value tests for effectiveness
(particularly with options contracts).
Earnings Restatements Due to FAS 133 on Hedge Accounting
"Hedge Accounting Gets On Regulators' Radar: Some Firms Using the Tool Have
to Restate Earnings; The New Lease Accounting?" by Michael Rapoport, The Wall
Street Journal, January 27, 2006; Page C3
A year ago, companies were rushing to restate their
earnings because of problems with how they accounted for lease obligations
on their stores and plants. Something similar may be happening with the
bookkeeping for financial instruments that some firms use to guard against
risk.
In 2005, at least 40 companies, from small banks to
conglomerates like General Electric Co., restated past earnings because of
problems with "hedge accounting," according to a new report from research
and proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis & Co.
And more such revisions could be on the way. "I
don't think it's really over," says Jason Williams, a Glass Lewis analyst
who noted in the report that these restatements may show "a pattern similar
to the recent lease-accounting restatements."
So far, the hedging moves are only a fraction of
the hundreds of lease-accounting restatements. And there has been no
high-profile warning from the Securities and Exchange Commission about the
need to shape up on hedge accounting, as was the case with lease accounting.
But a number of smaller indications -- a recent
comment in an audit firm's inspection report, a speech by an SEC staffer --
suggest that regulators may indeed be pushing companies and their auditors
to clean up hedge accounting.
Hedge accounting is complex, but the goal is easy
to understand: When a company uses derivatives to hedge exposure to risks
like changes in interest rates and fluctuations in foreign currencies, it
wants those derivatives to qualify for hedge-accounting treatment under
accounting rules because any changes in the derivatives' value can be
excluded from current earnings. The value changes are "smoothed" into
earnings over time. Without that special accounting status, the derivatives'
ups and downs would make earnings unpredictable, which companies and
shareholders dislike.
To qualify for hedge accounting, however, companies
have to meet a strict set of criteria. And dozens have discovered lately
that either they haven't fully complied or have cut corners they shouldn't
have. Some have found their hedges don't do the job they're supposed to in
offsetting the changes caused by the risk they're hedging. Others don't have
sufficient documentation for their hedges.
In such cases, a company typically is disqualified
from using hedge accounting, and it has to restate earnings to add back in
the changes in the derivatives' values -- often boosting earnings in some
periods but lowering them in others.
Last fall, for instance, brokerage TD Ameritrade
Holding Corp. restated earnings lower for fiscal 2003 and higher for fiscal
2004 and 2005 over documentation issues. In December, finance company CIT
Group Inc. restated first-half 2005 earnings higher and third-quarter
earnings lower because it used the shortcut when it shouldn't have.
Representatives for both companies couldn't be reached to comment.
Many companies have said they decided to restate on
their own or in consultation with auditors. Yet regulators have been voicing
concern about the matter as far back as 2004, when the SEC said it had seen
instances of "aggressive interpretation" of hedge-accounting rules, and
cases in which companies "have not been diligent" in satisfying the
requirements.
And at least a couple of the restating companies
say they've had contact with regulators over hedge accounting. TD Ameritrade
said it held discussions with the SEC before making its restatement in
November. And the SEC is investigating GE over its hedge accounting. But
Russell Wilkerson, a GE spokesman, says the company was already in the
process of finding its hedge problems through an internal audit before it
heard from the SEC.
One small sign that regulators are concerned over
hedge accounting: Some comments the Public Company Accounting Oversight
Board, which regulates auditors, has made in its recent inspection reports
of big audit firms.
In a few instances, the PCAOB has indicated that
firms haven't been as diligent as they should have been on hedge accounting
in individual audits that the board has reviewed. In an inspection report on
KPMG LLP issued in September, for instance, the PCAOB cited an audit of an
unidentified client in which KPMG "failed to appropriately address" improper
derivatives accounting. A report on Grant Thornton LLP last week said the
firm "failed to perform sufficient audit procedures" over one client's
interest-rate derivatives and didn't evaluate another's hedge accounting
over foreign-currency futures.
A KPMG spokesman says the firm works with both
regulators and clients to make sure clients apply accounting principles as
regulators want "in an area where accounting practices continue to evolve."
Grant Thornton couldn't be reached.
And in a speech last month, Mark Northan, an SEC
professional accounting fellow, said some companies have used the "shortcut"
to hedge accounting when they haven't met all the conditions for doing so.
Dirty Pooling in Accounting
March 29, 2006 message received by Bob Jensen
Hi Bob Jensen
Hope you don't mind another question.
I worked on Wall Street during the other tech mania
(late 60's) which included the conglomerate craze. I know
pooling-of-interest accounting was kind of tarred and feathered in the
ensuing meltdown, but I was never too clear why that was so. I am still
wondering why bogus goodwill is preferable to retaining the financial track
record of the combined companies. Are you aware of what the actual
objections to p-o-i are?
March 29, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Some investors are impressed by high ROI or ROE numbers. Keeping the
denominator low with old historical cost numbers and the numerator high with
future earnings numbers "inflated" ROI and ROE and made the mergers appear
more successful than was actually the case.
There are other problems with "dirty pooling."
One of the best-known articles (from Barrons) was written by Professor
Abe Briloff about "Dirty Pooling at McDonalds." McDonald's shares plummeted
significantly the day that article was published ---
http://www.jstor.org/view/00014826/ap010167/01a00060/0
Actually, one of the arguments in favor of purchase
accounting rather than pooling of interests is that in an arm's length
transaction goodwill can actually be measured, unlike the pie-in-the sky
valuations in a hypothetical world.
The standard itself discusses a lot of both theory
and abuses. In general, academics fought against pooling. About the only
parties in favor of pooling were the corporations themselves.
Bob Jensen
Changes in Derivatives Accounting Are in the Wind
We might call this the Fannie Relief Ruling if it comes to “pass.”
If this happens it may be time to retire after having spent so much time
learning the complex rules of the current FAS 133. Actually I have been arguing
for this change in the accounting rules for some time. There will, however, be
greater inconsistencies between accounting for hedges of financial instruments
versus hedging of commodities such as fuel inventories.
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on March 3, 2006
TOPICS: Advanced Financial Accounting, Derivatives, Fair Value Accounting,
Financial Accounting Standards Board, Hedging, Historical Cost Accounting,
International Accounting Standards Board
SUMMARY: The article reports on implications for derivative accounting from
the FASB's proposal to implement a fair value option for financial assets and
liabilities that was announced in January 2005. From the FASB's web site
describing this proposed statement, one can learn that it would create a fair
value option so that entities may irrevocably elect to report certain financial
assets and financial liabilities at fair value and recognize changes in fair
value in earnings. The election of the fair value option would be made on a
contract-by-contract basis and would require separate line item reporting of the
instruments accounted for at fair value. This change could simplify hedge
accounting because the problems that currently arise in this area often stem
from situations in which entities cannot comply with hedge accounting treatment
criteria in FAS 133. Such non-compliance results in derivative instruments being
accounted for at fair value with changes in value flowing through earnings while
the hedged item continues to be accounted for under the historical cost model.
As the FASB states in the Exposure Draft, "creation of the fair value option
would permit an entity to mitigate that volatility by enabling entities to
achieve an offset accounting effect for the changes in the fair values of
related assets and liabilities without having to apply complex hedge accounting
provisions." The option also would allow greater convergence with international
accounting standards.
QUESTIONS:
1.) The author states in the article that "hedge accounting aims to ensure that
changes in the value of a derivative used to offset risks don't immediately flow
through to earnings." Is that an accurate portrayal of the purpose of hedge
accounting? If you believe so, support your answer. If not, provide what you
believe is an accurate description of the purpose of hedge accounting. In either
case, provide references to appropriate authoritative literature.
2.) Define the terms cash flow hedge, fair value hedge, and hedge
effectiveness.
3.) In what case would a derivative instrument's change in fair value not
flow through earnings each period? How would the instrument's change in value be
accounted for?
4.) In what case, even after complying with current hedging treatment
requirements, does a derivative's change in fair value flow directly through to
earnings? What additional earnings impact also flows through at the same time?
5.) How does the FASB's proposal for a fair value option "obviate the need to
use hedge accounting" as stated by Stephen Ryan, an NYU accounting professor,
and quoted in the article? Does the proposal preclude the need for all hedge
accounting treatments currently allowed under FAS 133? Explain. For further
information on the FASB proposal beyond that offered in the article, you may
access the FASB web site at www.fasb.org to search for "fair value option" or
access the proposal directly at http://www.fasb.org/draft/ed_fair_value_option.pdf
6.) What issues led to Fannie Mae's and GE's earnings restatements that are
described in the article? For information about the issues associated with
Fannie Mae, you may refer to the related article. Why do even positive earnings
restatements cause concern in the marketplace regarding the reliability of
financial reporting?
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
Although I had a tidbit about this in a previous edition of New Bookmarks,
I will repeat it here for convenience.
"Simply Put: Accounting-Rule Makers May Change How to Book Derivatives," by
James R. Hagerity and David Reilly, The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2006;
Page C1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114066273194380924.html
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for years complained
that accounting rules distorted their earnings, needlessly confusing
investors.
Now, U.S. accounting-rule makers are proposing a
way to help those mortgage giants and other companies to simplify the way
they account for complex derivatives that are often used to protect
companies against swings in interest rates and other risks.
That change, if enacted, won't bail out top
officers at Fannie and Freddie who lost their jobs in the past few years
after trying to circumvent existing accounting rules. Indeed, Fannie is
today expected to release the results of an internal investigation into its
bookkeeping improprieties led by former New Hampshire Sen. Warren Rudman.
But with its proposal announced in late January,
the Financial Accounting Standards Board is tossing a bone to companies that
have struggled to cope with a complex rule known as Financial Accounting
Standard 133. That rule sets out how companies book gains and losses on
derivatives, such as interest-rate and currency swaps.
The Norwalk, Conn., accounting-rule maker isn't
proposing to change FAS 133 itself; rather, the proposed rule provides a
simpler way for companies to account for derivatives and the securities and
other instruments they often hedge on a company's balance sheet. The rule
would let companies use current market prices, also known as "fair values,"
for a wider variety of instruments than is now allowed, much as rules from
the International Accounting Standards Board do.
Currently, companies must value some instruments at
their market price and others at their historical cost, resulting in a
balance-sheet mishmash. "We believe this will create an enormous opportunity
for companies to simplify their accounting," said Edward Trott, a member of
the FASB.
The change could also provide relief to companies
forced to restate results because of problems with so-called hedge
accounting they applied to derivatives, a FAS 133-induced headache that has
afflicted a number of companies.
Sometimes these restatements actually improve past
results, but that can still cause confusion for investors. Bank of America
Corp. yesterday, for instance, said it will restate several years of
earnings because the Charlotte, N.C., bank improperly applied a form of
hedge accounting to transactions related to interest rates and foreign
currencies. The restatement, along with changes to results for periods
before 2002, will result in a gain to earnings of $345 million, the bank
said.
Hedge accounting aims to ensure that changes in the
value of a derivative used to offset risks don't immediately flow through to
earnings. However, the criteria that allow derivatives to qualify for hedge
accounting are complex, requiring extensive documentation and regular
testing to guarantee that the hedge is actually doing its job. And the
accounting itself is a hassle.
In 2005, at least 40 companies restated results
because of problems with hedge accounting, according to a study by Glass
Lewis & Co., a San Francisco research firm. Among them: General Electric
Co., which last year issued a restatement that could increase earnings by
$538 million, according to Glass Lewis.
Currently, if a company doesn't use hedge
accounting and wants to protect itself against a swing in the value of a
mortgage loan, it would have to carry the original cost -- accountants refer
to it as the historical cost -- of the mortgage on its books while using the
market value of the derivative instrument that hedges the mortgage.
The apples-to-oranges comparison resulting from
this practice led to swings in earnings if a company couldn't use hedge
accounting. At a company like Fannie, for instance, a move in interest rates
could cut the value of a derivative, while at the same time increasing the
market value of a mortgage. In that event, the company would take a hit on
the derivative without being able to record the offsetting gain on the
mortgage, which is accounted for at its historical cost.
Giving companies the option of using market values
would obviate the need to use hedge accounting, said Stephen Ryan, an
accounting professor and derivatives specialist at New York University.
Firms could record both a derivative and the instrument it is hedging at
their market values.
Changes in derivative-accounting standards are
particularly important for Fannie and Freddie, government-sponsored
companies that provide funding for home-mortgage loans. Both have long been
heavy users of derivatives to guard against differences between the income
the companies get from millions of monthly mortgage payments and the price
they pay for borrowing in the bond markets.
In 2004, regulators found that Fannie had failed to
take the steps needed to qualify for hedge accounting, among other
accounting misdeeds. Those findings led to the ouster of the company's chief
executive officer, Franklin D. Raines, and some top aides. Fannie Mae is now
working on a restatement of past earnings.
Both Fannie and Freddie declined to comment on the
FASB proposal.
Fannie Mae Unearths More Accounting Problems The new problems include improper accounting for
certain investment securities and for some of the fees and obligations that
arise from Fannie's guarantees of payments on mortgages bundled into securities
and sold to investors world-wide. The newly disclosed problems also relate to
accounting for the costs of dealing with houses acquired through foreclosures,
for debt restructurings and for interest on delinquent loans, among other
things.
James R. Hagerty, "Fannie Mae Unearths More Accounting Problems: Company
Expects to Meet Its Capital Requirements; Market Share Drops Again," The Wall
Street Journal, March 14, 2006; Page A3 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114225528071896544.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
March 29, 2006 message from Ira Kawaller
The latest posting is an article that was
co-authored with Professor Timothy Koch (University of South Carolina),
published in "Bank Asset/Liability Management," March 2006. It deals with
the problem of managing interest rate risk when the assets or liabilities
that are the source of the exposure are subject to early-redemption (i.e.,
prepayment risk).
Click on the link to the right to find the article
on the Kawaller.com home page.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any
questions or comments that you might like to discusss.
A federal judge on Wednesday agreed that former
KPMG accounting executive David Greenberg can be freed on $25 million bail
in his tax fraud case - but he attacked Greenberg's character and vowed to
ruin his family financially should he decide to flee.
Greenberg is not expected to meet strict bail
conditions for at least several days in what prosecutors call the largest
criminal tax case in U.S. history, a fraud that helped rich people evade
$2.5 billion in taxes.
Even as he set bail, U.S. District Judge Lewis A.
Kaplan described Greenberg as "an extremely skilled individual who spent his
whole life trying to figure out how to hide the pea."
He was referring to a version of a deceitful street
game known as three-card monte, in which a pea is moved among three cups and
viewers are asked to guess where the pea ended up.
The judge said Greenberg's finances were in such
disarray that it was impossible to figure out where his assets were and how
much he was worth.
"I have no idea how much went in, came out and
remains," he said.
The judge warned Greenberg's family members that if
he flees, the court would make sure they "will be financially ruined and
stripped of everything they have."
He added, "If they're willing to take that risk,
I'm willing to take that risk of non-appearance."
He also required Greenberg to live in Manhattan and
submit to electronic monitoring.
The judge said Greenberg spent his professional
career "scheming how to protect other people's assets from the United States
government."
Greenberg is charged in an indictment accusing 17
former KPMG partners and managers with devising and marketing fraudulent tax
shelters that cost the U.S. Treasury $2.5 billion.
The indictment says the ex-KPMG executives teamed
with a former partner at a prominent law firm and another defendant to
defraud the Internal Revenue Service by filing false income tax returns and
by concealing the tax shelters from the IRS.
The judge said he was particularly disturbed that
Greenberg apparently forged the signatures of his ex-wife and his father on
papers establishing a limited liability company holding assets worth up to
$13 million. He noted that the government has alleged Greenberg boasted that
he could flee with money he controlled in the names of others.
Greenberg has denied the allegations. His lawyers
declined to comment after Wednesday's hearing.
KPMG is a worldwide network of professional firms
providing audit, tax and advisory services, according to its Web site. It
operates in 144 countries and has more than 6,700 partners.
One Case in Which KPMG is Not in Favor of Transparency
"KPMG Aims to Cloak Details of Client's Case: Auditor's Settlement
Offer Would Muzzle Targus Group Regarding Sanctions Order," by David Reilly,
The Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2006; Page C3 ---
Click Here
In trying to settle a lawsuit brought against it by
a former client, KPMG LLP has proposed terms aimed at preventing other
clients from learning the auditor was sanctioned by a judge in the matter.
KPMG has offered to settle for $22.5 million a suit
filed against it by Targus Group International Inc., a California
computer-case maker, according to a draft settlement proposal reviewed by
The Wall Street Journal. Targus claimed the accounting giant was negligent
in failing to detect alleged embezzlement by a former executive at the
company. KPMG has disputed that claim.
The proposed settlement payout is small compared
with the $465 million KPMG agreed to pay last year as part of a
deferred-prosecution agreement reached with the Justice Department. That
agreement, which helped the firm avoid a potentially catastrophic criminal
indictment, related to KPMG's sale of questionable tax shelters.
But the nonmonetary settlement terms being proposed
by KPMG to Targus underscore how big accounting firms are pursuing every
means at their disposal to limit their litigation liability and curtail the
ability of clients to bring cases against them. Other measures taken include
terms that some auditors are writing into their engagement contracts that
would limit the clients' ability to pursue legal action against them.
In the proposed settlement with Targus, KPMG wants
details of the case sealed and wants Targus to ask the state judge who
sanctioned KPMG to vacate, or overturn, that order, according to the
settlement document. The order, filed last July, sanctioned KPMG for
obstruction during pretrial proceedings, known as discovery, and fined it
$30,000. The judge also instructed any jury hearing the case against KPMG to
take into account the firm's failure to produce "requested documents in a
full and timely manner." At the time, KPMG said that it complied with the
judge's discovery orders and appealed the ruling. That appeal is pending in
the California Court of Appeal.
KPMG LLP agreed to pay a former audit client $22.5
million as part of a legal settlement that also calls for a California judge
to set aside a sanctions order imposed on the accounting giant last July,
according to a person familiar with the matter and documents related to the
case.
The settlement terms will allow KPMG to clear the
legal record of a disciplinary action that could potentially be used against
it by other parties who might sue the firm in the future. Orange County
Superior Court Judge Geoffrey T. Glass sanctioned KPMG last summer for
obstruction during pretrial proceedings.
The order emanated from proceedings related to a
lawsuit brought against KPMG by former client Targus Group International
Inc. The California-based computer-case maker sued the firm for malpractice,
alleging KPMG's audit failed to spot alleged embezzlement by a former
executive that cost the company as much as $50 million.
In settling the case, KPMG had proposed that Targus
agree not to oppose a request for Judge Glass to vacate the sanctions order,
according to a draft settlement proposal reviewed by The Wall Street
Journal. The accounting firm also wanted records related to the case, as
well as the sanctions order and its own appeal of that order, sealed, while
precluding executives at Targus, or their attorneys, from speaking about or
referring to the matter, according to the draft settlement proposal.
In a statement released yesterday, KPMG said: "The
parties have reached a settlement. We cannot discuss the terms, which are
confidential. We have settled the case to avoid more costly litigation." An
attorney for Targus didn't return a call seeking comment. The company's
general counsel, Michael Ward, was traveling outside the country and was
unavailable for comment.
From the Bets-L discussion list on designing an
ethics course, recommendation of topics to cover:
"Reputation Risk is regarded worldwide as the
highest order risk that faces organisations. Reputation risk is the current
and prospective impact on earnings and capital arising from negative public
opinion. This affects an institution's ability to establish new
relationships or services or continue servicing existing relationships. This
risk may expose the institution to litigation, financial loss, or a decline
in its customer base.
Reputation risk exposure is present throughout the
organization and includes the responsibility to exercise an abundance of
caution in dealing with its customers and the community and other
stakeholders. The process of dealing with Reputation Risk needs to include
prevention, protection, response and recovery strategies."
Philip F. Anschutz is a modest billionaire with an
estimated wealth of only $6.4 billion. He is rated 89th in the current list
in Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires. Before starting Qwest Communications in
1996, his father owned a contract drilling company and he bought his dad out
in 1961, according to the Washington Post. After striking it rich in Wyoming
and Utah’s oil fields, Anschutz moved into stocks and real estate.
He came to own most of the railroads in the West
and laid fiber-optical cable along his rail lines, connecting them at
central hubs in strategic locations in order to provide high-speed data and
T1 services for businesses, according to Wikipedia. Qwest incorporated in
1996, then acquired LCI in 1997 and added residential and business long
distance to their pallet of services.
And with all his success, he became the
non-executive chairman of Qwest Communications International, Inc. after he
stepped down as CEO in 2002. In 2002, the company he built also announced it
had incorrectly accounted for optical-capacity revenue, between the years
1999 to 2001, to the amount of $3.8 billion, according to ComputerWire. This
accounting scandal has not tainted his reputation.
George Soros is ranked 71st in Forbes’ The World’s
Billionaires. In September 1986, George Soros was a very large investor in
Harken Energy when it purchased Spectrum 7 that was our standing President
George W. Bush’s ailing oil venture. Spectrum 7 specialized in selling
limited partnerships, according to Wikipedia. In 1986, tax laws changed the
tax status of these financial instruments that had generated liberal tax
write-offs before the change.
George W. Bush was given an active membership on
the Harken board and initially given an $80,000 yearly consulting contract
that increased to $120,000 in 1989. Bush was given $500,000 in Harken stock
and options valued at $131,250. According to Wikipedia, Bush acquired
another $600,000 in Harken stock under the company’s Non-qualified Incentive
Plan. Bush also received two loans, at below-market 5% interest, totaling
$180,375. in 1986 and 1988. Harken stock was purchased with these loans and
his Harken stock holdings were converted to stock options which Bush says
were never exercised.
It was generally thought that Harken Energy was
buying political influence by having George H.W. Bush’s son on their board,
but this was confirmed by David Corn’s interview with George Soros. To
Corn’s question, “…What was the deal with Harken buying up Spectrum 7,”
Soros responded, “…We were buying political influence. That was it. He was
not much of a businessman,” according to Wikipedia.
Carl Icahn is no.53 in Forbes’ The World’s
Billionaires. He has earned his reputation as a corporate raider. He has
been buying weak telecommunications companies and merging them into publicly
held company XO Communications, of which he owns 61 percent, according to
CorpWatch. In an odd transaction, XO Communications auctioned off their
wireline businesses for $700 million to Carl Icahn, himself. Of the proceeds
of the auction, $400 million will be used to retire the company’s long-term
debt.
Some investors say that Icahn rigged the auction to
start with and surprised everyone but himself when he emerged as the winning
bidder. CorpWatch reports others are saying that Icahn may have lead the
company into trouble in order to sweeten the deal for himself.
Andrew Bogen, an attorney for the minority XO
shareholder R2 Investments, told CorpWatch, “It is inescapable that he used
his dual position as debt holder and the guy who runs the company in a way
that favors himself. We think Carl Icahn made all the important decisions
about who was permitted to bid – and that he had full information on other
bids when he made his.”
Tales from the Enron trial got you down? Like Andrew
Fastow's testimony of how he laundered $10,000 as a tax-free gift to his own
sons? So after work you stumble home, seeking refuge from the workaday sludge in
the stark competitive world of Sports Illustrated, which this week is awash in
the details of the doping case against Barry Bonds, an Icarus, legend has it,
who flew toward baseball heaven on wax wings made from human growth hormone. For
perspective on theBonds myth, I called Gary
Wadler, a physician who has seen it all as a member of the World Anti-Doping
Agency. "Bonds and Fastow were both into cooking," Dr. Wadler offered. "Bonds
cooked the record books and Fastow cooked the financial books."
Daniel Henninger, "Barry Bonds, Meet Andrew Fastow, The Wall Street Journal,
March 17, 2006 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110008100
Long-time subscribers to the AECM may remember my quips (years ago) about
Michael Kopper ---
These inspired AECMers to write their own quips about Enron and about accounting
in general.
You can read some of these AECM originals at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#Humor
Although he lacks the star power of some who have
preceded him, Ben Glisan Jr. could become the most important witness in the
government's effort to convict former Enron Corp. executives Jeffrey
Skilling and Kenneth Lay of conspiracy and fraud.
Prosecutors hope the 40-year-old Mr. Glisan,
Enron's former treasurer, will provide jurors with convincing support for
allegations made by prior witnesses in the trial. Unlike some of those prior
witnesses, Mr. Glisan was high enough up the corporate ladder to have
regular contact with Messrs. Skilling and Lay, including
A trained accountant, Mr. Glisan helped design some
of the financial transactions that are a major part of the alleged fraud at
Enron -- and, thus, he should be able to discuss those transactions with an
authority that some previous witnesses lacked. Unlike other witnesses who
are cooperating with the government in hopes of reducing their sentences,
Mr. Glisan simply pled guilty to an Enron-related crime to settle a 26-count
indictment and is serving his five-year prison term -- potentially boosting
his credibility to jurors.
Mr. Glisan was a protégé of one of the alleged
fraud's central figures, former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow,
who recently completed four days of often-contentious testimony. While privy
to Mr. Fastow's thinking and actions at Enron, Mr. Glisan doesn't carry all
the negatives of his former boss, who was feared and disliked by many at
Enron and has admitted to stealing millions from the company.
By contrast, the affable Mr. Glisan was a generally
popular figure. Even Mr. Skilling, interviewed by Enron investigators
shortly after the company's December 2001 collapse into bankruptcy court,
was quoted as describing Mr. Glisan as having the reputation of a "boy
scout."
Defense attorneys won't be singing Mr. Glisan any
campfire tunes when they cross-examine him. They are expected to portray the
former treasurer as a liar who betrayed the trust of Messrs. Skilling and
Lay by sharing in the booty that Mr. Fastow stole. Mr. Glisan has
acknowledged reaping $1 million from a $5,000 investment with a Fastow
partnership -- with the profit coming from money that Mr. Fastow admitted
filching from Enron and some of his other partners. Defense attorneys hope
to bring out contradictions between what Mr. Glisan and Mr. Fastow have told
federal officials.
"Former Enron Treasurer Details His View of Internal Operations," by Gary
McWilliams and John R. Emswiller, The Wall Street Journal, March 22,
2006; Page C3 ---
Click Here
He testified the company's senior executives were
"manufacturing" earnings and misleading investors in 2001 to cover
shortfalls and prop up the energy firm's falling stock price.
As of mid-August 2001, Messrs. Lay and Skilling
knew that the company was struggling financially, yet falsely told investors
it was in excellent shape, he alleged. Mr. Glisan said that in the
succeeding months Enron's condition became "significantly worse," yet Mr.
Lay continued to assure investors to the contrary.
Among the problems he said were "billions of
dollars of embedded losses" in Enron's international assets. The prosecution
introduced an Enron chart that indicated Mr. Skilling estimated the
company's international businesses carried a value of $4.5 billion less than
the value shown on Enron's books. Mr. Glisan said the company didn't write
down the assets because it would have required "a larger loss than we could
have stomached" and have serious repercussions for Enron in financial
markets.
"We misled Lea (Fastow's wife),"
Mr. Fastow said. "She would not, in my opinion, have
signed a fraudulent tax return. She did it because [the subordinate] Michael
Kopper and I conspired. ... I led her to believe that."
But for most of the day, Mr. Fastow was cool and in
control as he described the alleged wrongdoing at Enron. His principal
target was Mr. Skilling, who helped bring him to Enron in 1990. In 1998,
after Mr. Skilling became Enron's president, he tapped Mr. Fastow, then in
his late-30s, as chief financial officer.
The prosecution's initial questioning focused on
dealings between Enron and the LJM partnerships, which drew their initials
from the first names of Mr. Fastow's wife and their two sons. Before its
2001 bankruptcy filing, Enron had routinely reported dealings with LJM and
Mr. Fastow in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Enron
contended that the LJM relationship was proper and that because of Mr.
Fastow's familiarity with the company, Enron could do deals, such as selling
assets, faster and at lower transaction costs.
But the government, in its indictment of Mr.
Skilling and Mr. Lay on multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud, contends
that LJM was a crucial part of the Enron fraud. Prosecutors allege that by
taking money-losing investments off Enron's books and by doing other deals
to produce bogus earnings, the LJM operation helped the company mask its
deepening financial problems.
Mr. Fastow testified that he came up with the idea
for the partnerships in 1999 as a way to help Enron manage its earnings and
to enrich himself. As the partnerships' general partner, he said, he was
guaranteed hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual fees from LJM1 and
millions in fees from LJM2 -- with potentially even larger sums from
partnership profits.
Mr. Fastow said Mr. Skilling and others were
concerned about how the obvious conflict of interest between his roles as
Enron's finance chief and the head of the partnerships would look to
investors. "We all agreed it was a rather unusual arrangement," he said.
But, he added, Mr. Skilling was enthusiastic about using LJM funds to help
manipulate Enron's earnings.
The Enron president said "give me all the juice you
can" from the LJMs, Mr. Fastow told the court. Mr. Fastow raised $15 million
in investment capital for LJM1 and nearly $400 million for LJM2 from outside
parties, many of them banks and investment banks that did business with
Enron.
Mr. Fastow said the partnerships were willing to do
deals that Enron "just couldn't do with others" because they were too risky
or simply didn't make economic sense.
One deal involved an Enron power-plant project in
Brazil. In 1999, Mr. Fastow said, Mr. Skilling asked him to have LJM buy an
interest in the plant so that Enron could book income and hit its earnings
target for the quarter. Mr. Fastow said he used an expletive to describe the
power plant. "I told him it was a piece of s-. No one would buy it," he told
jurors.
Possible
headlines on the Enron saga following the guilty plea of Michael
J. Kopper:
Kopper Wired to
the Top Brass (with reference to secret conspiracies with
Andy Fastow)
The Coppers Got
Kopper
Kopper Cops a Plea
Kopper’s Finish is
Tarnished
Kopper Caper
Kopper Flopper
Kopper in the
Kettle
A Kopper Whopper
These are Jensen
originals, although I probably shouldn’t admit it.
He said Tuesday he misled his wife when he told her
the kickbacks were gifts. Fastow stared at the floor as the checks of those
ill-gotten gains, written to his wife and sons as well as himself, were
displayed for jurors on a massive screen. ''I did this,'' he said, tearful and
fighting to compose himself. ''I led her to believe that.''
"Ex-C.F.O. of Enron Says Lay Was Aware of Financial Woes," The New York Times,
March 8, 2006 ---
Click Here
Former Enron CFO Andy Fastow, the prosecution's
star witness, testified at the Lay-Skilling trial that he ran financial
partnerships designed to help Enron meet earnings targets and mask huge
losses. Mr. Fastow, who hasn't spoken publicly since October 2001, is among
the most highly anticipated witnesses in this trial. Following are excerpts
from his testimony.
Wednesday, March 8 LAY KNEW: Fastow testified that
former chairman Ken Lay was at a meeting in August 2001 in which he heard
about a "hole in earnings" at Enron, just days before he gave a BusinessWeek
interview claiming Enron was in its "best shape" ever. Fastow said of the
Lay interview, "I think most of the statements in there are false."
* * * ON GREED: In a heated cross-examination by
Skilling lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, Fastow admitted, "I believe I was
extremely greedy, and that I lost my moral compass, and I've done terrible
things that I very much regret."
INSIDE-OUT: Steady growth and bright prospects "was
the outside view of Enron," Fastow testified. "The inside view of Enron was
very different."
* * * RECURRING DREAM: Lay opted to characterize a
loss on an investment in the third quarter of 2001 as "nonrecurring," even
though a gain on the same holding was earlier characterized as "recurring,"
Fastow testified, adding, "I thought that was an incorrect accounting
treatment."
* * * DEATH SPIRAL: By October 2001, Enron's
suppliers refused to trade with the company and Fastow testified that he
feared the company would collapse and that he and an aide went to Lay to
warn him. "I said I thought this was a death spiral, a serious risk of
bankruptcy. I said the majority of trades being done were to unwind
positions."
* * * MORE HEROICS: "Within the culture of
corruption Enron had, a culture that rewarded financial reporting rather
than rewarding economic value, I believed I was being a hero. I was not. It
was not a good thing. That's why I'm here today."
Tuesday, March 7 THE PROFIT PROBLEM: One of Enron's
off-balance-sheet partnerships, LJM1, was designed to help the company
"solve a problem," Fastow testified. "We were doing this to inflate our
earnings, and I don't think we wanted to show people what we were doing.''
* * * MORE DEALS: Fastow quoted Skilling as saying,
" 'Get me as much of that juice as you can,' '' after Fastow informed him
that more money would need to be raised to continue making deals like LJM1.
In such deals, these so-called outside entities would purchase
underperforming assets from Enron to get debt off its balance sheet and
boost earnings.
* * * RISKY BUSINESS: Fastow testified that
partnerships like the LJMs were willing to do deals that Enron "just
couldn't do with others" because they were too risky or didn't make economic
sense.
* * * SKILLING'S WORD: Fastow testified about
pressure from Skilling to have one of the LJMs buy a minority stake in a
Brazilian power plant owned by Enron because Enron's South American unit was
struggling to meet its earnings target. "I told him it was a piece of s--t,
and no one would buy it,'' Fastow said, adding that he relented, in part,
because Skilling assured him he wouldn't lose money on the deal. Fastow
testified that there were many more "bear-hug" guarantees like this from
Skilling in mid-2000.
* * * BREAKING THE LAW: Fastow testified that the
LJMs were legal and did many legal deals, but "certain things I did as
general partner of LJM were illegal."
* * * BELIEVE IT OR NOT: In his first day of
testimony, Fastow repeatedly said that he thought he was "a hero for Enron,"
for coming up with these unique business deals to help the company meet Wall
Street targets even when it was financially in trouble. "I thought the
foundation was crumbling and we were doing everything we could to prop it up
as long as we could … We were in pretty bad shape."
* * * WORRIES ABOUT PUBLICITY: Skilling was
concerned, Fastow testified, that off-balance-sheet deals like the LJMs
would "attract attention, and if dissected, people would see what the
purpose of the partnership was, which was to mask potentially hundreds of
millions of dollars of losses."
* * * FALSE TAX RETURN: Fastow tearfully admitted
that he "misled" his wife about some of the money the couple earned from
Enron-related deals. "She would not, in my opinion, have signed a fraudulent
tax return," Fastow said. Lea Fastow served one year in federal prison for
filing a false tax return.
* * * A FAMILY AFFAIR: Fastow also admitted that he
had one of his top aides send $10,000 checks to each of his sons. The checks
were portrayed as gifts to the boys, but really they were proceeds from a
business deal. "I shouldn't have. It was the wrong thing to do."
Jensen Comment It comes as some relief to accountants that Fastow has not yet mentioned
collusion with the Andersen Auditors led by David Duncan. CFO Fastow worked in
secrecy ripping off Enron itself. CAO Rick Causey worked more closely with
Duncan to issue false financial statements. Rick Causey's fine for filing false
Enron financial statements was $1,250,000.
Andrew S. Fastow, Enron's former chief financial
officer, ended his testimony on Monday, still insisting that Jeffrey K. Skilling
and Kenneth L. Lay joined him in telling investors that Enron was profitable and
healthy when all of them knew otherwise . . . Mr. Fastow struggled to further
corroborate his testimony about the so-called Global Galactic list of illicit
side deals he said he made with one of the former chiefs, Mr. Skilling, to
guarantee profits. Mr. Fastow also tried to buttress his claims that he warned
Mr. Lay, Enron's founder, in a private meeting that Enron was in desperate need
of a "massive restructuring."
Alexei Barrionuevo, "Fastow Leaves Stand Insisting Lay and Skilling Knew,"
The New York Times, March 14, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/business/businessspecial3/14enron.html
What is "The Wall Street Journal" Risk? Under questioning from the prosecutor, John Hueston,
Mr. Fastow said Enron's board and top two executives discussed the questionable
nature of the partnerships, but ultimately approved them because they would help
the company hide hundreds of millions dollars in losses. At one board meeting, a
director wondered out loud about the "scrutiny and great problems" Enron could
face if information about the partnerships became public, describing it as "The
Wall Street Journal risk," testified Mr. Fastow, 44, who reached a plea bargain
with prosecutors on charges against him.
Alexy Barrionuevo and Vikas, Bajaj, "Fastow Says Enron Executives Approved Deals
to Hide Losses," The New York Times, March 7, 2006 ---
Click Here
Under questioning from the prosecutor, John Hueston,
Mr. Fastow said Enron's board and top two executives discussed the
questionable nature of the partnerships, but ultimately approved them
because they would help the company hide hundreds of millions dollars in
losses.
At one board meeting, a director wondered out loud
about the "scrutiny and great problems" Enron could face if information
about the partnerships became public, describing it as "The Wall Street
Journal risk," testified Mr. Fastow, 44, who reached a plea bargain with
prosecutors on charges against him.
At the same meeting, another director raised
questions about the propriety of Mr. Fastow's personally profiting from
LJM1; he was guaranteed $800,000 a year from the partnership regardless of
how it performed financially. But Mr. Fastow asserted that Mr. Skilling came
to his defense, saying, "Andy Fastow has put $1 million into the game. He
should get profits because he has skin in the game."
Nonetheless, the board approved LJM1, which also
had $15 million from outside investors, in early 1999. Later that year, Mr.
Fastow testified, Mr. Skilling encouraged him in his efforts to create LJM2,
for which he would eventually raise a total of $386 million. Mr. Fastow
earned $8 million in fees from the second partnership and was entitled to 20
percent of the entity's profits.
"Get me as much juice as you can," Mr. Fastow
recalled Mr. Skilling saying.
"We were using the equity to juice Enron's
earnings," Mr. Fastow added, "to report as much earnings as we wanted."
Mr. Fastow follows a parade of former Enron
executives who, under questioning from the prosecution, have presented
critical and damaging testimony against the two former top executives,
particularly Mr. Skilling. In its sixth week, the trial is the culmination
of a four-year federal investigation into the failure of and fraud at Enron
and is widely believed to be one of the most significant white-collar
criminal prosecution ever undertaken.
Mr. Fastow spoke in a strong, clear voice with his
trademark lisp, and he sipped coffee and water during his testimony. At one
point he asked Mr. Hueston for some water.
Mr. Skilling bobbed his head from side to side as
Mr. Fastow spoke; Mr. Lay seemed to be looking off to the side.
Before the testimony, Mr. Skilling appeared calm
and chatted with a reporter about trips to Argentina.
Some legal experts had recently suggested that
given the government's success thus far, they should have considered not
calling Mr. Fastow as a witness, because he was so closely involved in the
fraud at Enron and personally benefited from the off-balance-sheet
partnerships.
A central tenet of Mr. Lay's and Mr. Skilling's
defense is that Mr. Fastow masterminded most of the wrongdoing at Enron and
misled his bosses about his activities. Defense lawyers intend to vigorously
attack Mr. Fastow's credibility and the deal he reached with prosecutors, in
which he has pleaded guilty and agreed to a prison sentence that could total
10 years.
Continued in article
Enron Corp. dipped into reserve accounts to
illegally pad earnings in 2000 and improperly delayed reporting large losses
in a retail energy operation the following year, former accountants
testified yesterday. The testimony began the fifth week in the criminal
conspiracy-and-fraud trial of former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and former
President Jeffrey Skilling. The testimony provided new support for the
Justice Department's accusations that the two top executives manipulated
results at the company. Wesley Colwell, former accounting chief of Enron's
wholesale energy unit, alleged he shifted a total of $14 million in July
2000 to create a two-cents-a-share boost to the company's second-quarter
results. He testified that an Enron finance executive told him that month
that Mr. Skilling was looking to "beat the Street" estimate of its
second-quarter earnings. Mr. Colwell, who is testifying under a cooperation
agreement with the government, paid a $500,000 fine to settle allegations by
the Securities and Exchange Commission that he manipulated earnings. His
agreement with the Justice Department requires that he testify to avoid
criminal prosecution. Three previous government witnesses, all former Enron
executives, pleaded guilty to crimes related to the energy giant. Mr.
Colwell, who is testifying under a cooperation agreement with the
government, paid a $500,000 fine to settle allegations by the Securities and
Exchange Commission that he manipulated earnings. His agreement with the
Justice Department requires that he testify to avoid criminal prosecution.
Three previous government witnesses, all former Enron executives, pleaded
guilty to crimes related to the energy giant.
Gary McWilliams and John R. Emshwiller, "Accountant Says Enron Dipped Into
Reserves to Pad Earnings," The Wall Street Journal, February 28,
2006; Page C3 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114105814931084345.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
The former head of Enron Corp.'s retail-energy unit
tied former President Jeffrey Skilling and former Chairman Kenneth Lay in
testimony to an alleged effort to improperly hide hundreds of millions of
dollars of losses in the division.
The testimony yesterday by David Delainey, who
headed Enron Energy Services, or EES, was some of the most specific yet
linking Messrs. Lay and Skilling to alleged wrongdoing. The former Enron
president and chairman are in the fifth week of their federal fraud and
conspiracy trial. Mr. Delainey has pleaded guilty to one count of insider
trading and agreed to pay nearly $8 million in penalties. Like four previous
witnesses, he is testifying for the government as part of a cooperation
agreement.
Mr. Delainey took over the retail unit in early
2001 after having headed the company's profitable wholesale-energy trading
operation. While Enron at the time was publicly portraying the retail unit
as profitable and growing, Mr. Delainey contended yesterday that he found a
problem-ridden unit burdened by hundreds of millions of dollars of losses.
He said another senior executive had told him the unit's financial problems
"could potentially bankrupt Enron."
At a March 29, 2001, meeting led by Mr. Skilling,
Mr. Delainey testified, a decision was made to hide some of the big EES
losses. Mr. Delainey said he argued the action, which involved moving some
retail operations to the profitable wholesale unit, "lacked integrity" and
shouldn't be done.
Continued in article
Forwarded by Bob Overn
Question:
Did Enron's chairman ever meet with the president?
Answer: Yes,
A. Enron's chairman did meet with the president and
the vice president in the Oval Office.
B. Enron gave $420,000 to the president's party
over three years.
C. It donated $100,000 to the president's
inauguration festivities.
D. The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11
times.
E. The corporation had access to the administration
at its highest level and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to
grease deals for it.
F. The taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank
subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction.
Scandalous!!
G. BUT...the president under whom all this happened
WASN'T George W. Bush.
Ms. Watkins, 46, attracted national attention after
testifying before Congress in February 2002 about Enron's collapse two
months earlier. She was named one of Time magazine's people of the year in
2002 for raising red flags about the company's accounting while still
working there. She has since written a book with a Houston journalist about
Enron's fall, and formed a consulting practice that advises companies on
governance issues.
Defense lawyers, during combative
cross-examination, tried to paint Ms. Watkins as an opinionated fame-seeker
who had profited from the Enron scandal on the lecture circuit. The defense
lawyers also suggested that Ms. Watkins was never charged with insider
trading for selling Enron shares because she was wrong in believing that the
Raptors were fraudulent.
Prosecutors contend that the partnerships and
hedges Ms. Watkins testified about were part of a broad effort by Mr.
Skilling and Mr. Lay to manipulate earnings and hide debt. The former chief
executives are accused of overseeing a conspiracy to deceive investors about
Enron's finances so they could profit by selling Enron shares at inflated
prices.
Defense lawyers contend that prosecutors are
seeking to criminalize normal business practices and that the Enron
executives were the victims of thieving subordinates like Andrew S. Fastow,
the former chief financial officer.
Ms. Watkins's appearance on the stand came as the
government neared the end of its case. Judge Simeon T. Lake III said
Wednesday that he estimated that the case could be wrapped up by the end of
April.
Ben F. Glisan Jr., a former Enron treasurer, is
scheduled to take the stand next week. Mr. Glisan pleaded guilty to
conspiracy and is currently serving a five-year prison term.
In often-colorful testimony, Ms. Watkins recounted
how she became concerned around June 2001 that about a dozen Enron assets
were being hedged, or guaranteed against loss, by the Raptors vehicles,
which she soon learned contained only Enron stock. The Raptors were
intertwined with partnerships run by Mr. Fastow, who became Ms. Watkins's
boss that summer. The value of the assets, she said, "had tanked," dragged
down by Enron's plummeting share price.
After doing some investigation, she wrote an
anonymous letter about her concerns, then on Aug. 22, 2001, she met with Mr.
Lay to discuss them. The meeting came about a week after Mr. Lay had stepped
back into the role of chief executive after the resignation of Mr. Skilling.
At the meeting, they discussed a letter of hers in
which she had said that she was "incredibly nervous that Enron would implode
in a wave of accounting scandals." She also noted to Mr. Lay that employees
were talking about a "handshake deal" that Mr. Fastow had with Mr. Skilling
that ensured that Mr. Fastow would not lose money on transactions done with
the LJM partnership, which Mr. Fastow was running.
Mr. Lay seemed to take her seriously, Ms. Watkins
testified.
Days after the meeting, she learned that Vinson &
Elkins, the law firm that had originally approved the Raptors, was doing the
internal investigation into the partnerships. The firm, after consulting
with Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, issued a report saying that while the
"optics" or appearances were bad, the accounting was appropriate.
Ms. Watkins said she remained adamant that
Andersen, which had received several high-profile setbacks, should not be
trusted.
"I thought this was bogus," she said of the
investigation.
Concerned that Enron was manipulating its financial
statements, Ms. Watkins stepped up efforts to leave the company, which she
had begun shortly after she concluded the Raptors could be fraudulent. She
did not leave until after the bankruptcy.
Ultimately, Mr. Lay decided to unwind the Raptors
and take a write-off in a single quarter rather than restate the accounting
of Enron's financial statements. Ms. Watkins, under questioning from Chip B.
Lewis, a lawyer for Mr. Lay, conceded that while that was not her
preference, "continuing the fraud would have been worse."
Defense lawyers sparred with Ms. Watkins from the
outset. Mr. Lewis placed a copy of Ms. Watkins's book, "Power Failure," in
front of her, calling it a "housewarming present."
Ms. Watkins acknowledged that she could not explain
why prosecutors did not charge her with insider trading for selling Enron
shares.
Thomas Sowell's excuse for limiting interviews to
an hour is that it helps him "avoid stress." But one suspects the real
reason is that he has better uses for his time than to humor nettlesome
journalists. In any case, it's hard to question the time-management
preferences of a man who's published nearly 30 books, while also producing
academic articles, long-form magazine essays and a seldom-dull newspaper
column for more than two decades. Not bad for an orphan from Jim Crow North
Carolina who never finished high school and didn't earn a college degree
until he was 28.
Mr. Sowell's unorthodox views on racial matters
have made him our foremost "black conservative," but the modifier sells him
way short. He is one of the country's leading social commentators--without
qualification. And his scholarship is not only voluminous but wide-ranging,
covering everything from education and law to political philosophy,
migration and the history of ideas. His primary discipline, however, is
economics, specifically the history of economic thought, the subject in
which he earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1968 under
Milton Friedman and George Stigler. It is the subject he taught at Cornell,
UCLA, Amherst, Brandeis and elsewhere during an academic career in the 1960s
and '70s. And it is the subject of his most recent book, "On Classical
Economics," which Yale has just published.
Mr. Sowell, who will turn 76 this year but looks 20
years younger, sat for an interview on a cool, drizzly morning at Stanford
University's Hoover Institution, his perch since 1980, and where he
is--appropriately--the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow. He describes
his latest tome as "partly an old book and partly a new book." It combines
four somewhat revised essays on microeconomics, macroeconomics, methodology
and social philosophy from his 1974 publication, "Classical Economics
Reconsidered," with four new essays, on Mill, Marx, Sismondi and economic
history. Asked why classical economics--and economists like Adam Smith,
David Ricardo, Mill and Marx--continues to deserve attention, Mr. Sowell
replies that "if classical economics is relevant, than Mill and Marx are
relevant. Why is classical economics relevant? I guess it's relevant because
there are people who study it, and if they're going to talk about it they
ought to know what they're talking about, which is a requirement sometimes
overlooked."
Free-market economics, a legacy of the classical
school, is thought of as an old conservative doctrine. But Mr. Sowell
explains that it was in fact one of the most revolutionary concepts to
emerge in the history of ideas. Moreover, "the thinking of the classical
economist was not only a radical break from landmark intellectual figures
like Plato and Machiavelli but also from mainstream thinking to this day."
The notion of a self-equilibrating system--the market economy--meant a
reduced role for intellectuals and politicians, he says. "And even today
many still haven't accepted that their superior wisdom might be superfluous,
if not damaging."
Mr. Sowell may be an unabashed free-market
adherent, but he's proud to say that Professor Sowell left his personal
views out of the classroom. In his 2000 memoir, "A Personal Odyssey," he
relates an episode in which some students approached him after taking his
graduate seminar on Marxian theory. They expressed appreciation for the
course but added, "We still don't know what your opinion is on Marxism." He
took it as an unintended compliment.
"My job was to teach them economics, not teach them
what I happen to believe," says Mr. Sowell, who adds that efforts by some
today to counterbalance the prevailing liberalism in academia with more
right-wing instructors is not only an exercise in futility but a disservice
to students. "Even if you succeed in propagandizing the students while
they're students, it doesn't tell you much [about how they'll turn out]. I
suspect that over half [of the conservatives at the Hoover Institution] were
on the left in their 20s. More important, though, let's assume for the sake
of argument that, whatever you're propagandizing them with on the left or
right, every conclusion you teach them is correct. It's only a matter of
time before all those conclusions are obsolete because entirely different
issues are going to arise over the lifetimes of these students. And so, if
you haven't taught them how to weigh one argument against another, you
haven't taught them anything."
This lifelong passion for economics has been much
on display in recent years--"On Classical Economics" was preceded by "Basic
Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy" (2000) and "Applied Economics:
Thinking Beyond Stage One" (2003), both of which were written for the
general public. And it's worth noting the extent to which Mr. Sowell's
background in the dismal science also informs his better-known works on
ethnicity, race and culture. Other black conservative scholars have their
strengths, to be sure. Shelby Steele writes like a dream and favors an
existential approach to racial matters. John McWhorter's prose is as hip as
it is provocative.
But Mr. Sowell's forte has always been rigorous
analysis and adherence to facts, however stubborn and wherever they lead.
And the facts led him on a writing tear in the '70s and '80s. Some titles,
like "Race and Economics" (1975), "Markets and Minorities" (1981) and "The
Economics and Politics of Race" (1983), betray his technical background. But
Mr. Sowell's other influential books of this period--"Black Education: Myths
and Tragedies" (1972), "Ethnic America" (1981), "Civil Rights: Rhetoric or
Reality?" (1984)--are no less distinguished by the dispassionate empiricism
he brings to such emotionally charged topics. In these tomes and elsewhere,
Mr. Sowell's research questions the basic assumptions behind popular public
policies aimed at minorities.
And in the process, he's made mincemeat of the
sloppy methodology and flaccid arguments put forward by mainstream civil
right leaders and their liberal sympathizers. He has shown, empirically,
that affirmative action does not benefit poor blacks. He has shown,
empirically, that political clout is not a prerequisite for ethnic economic
advancement. And most importantly, he has exposed the harmful fallacy of
using racial and gender discrimination as an all-purpose explanation for
statistical group disparities.
Asked why many of these failed ideas, and the black
leaders who promote them, don't seem to lose credibility, Mr. Sowell
responds that the phenomenon is hardly limited to the realm of race. "You
could take it beyond the black leadership," he says. "Has [John Kenneth]
Galbraith lost any credibility? I remember 'The New Industrial State'"--the
1967 book in which Mr. Galbraith famously argued that large corporations
were immune to marketplace forces--"but since then, Eastern Airlines has
gone out of business. The Graflex Corporation has gone out of business.
Similarly with all kinds of big businesses. This hasn't made the slightest
dent in Galbraith's reputation. We have Paul Ehrlich, who has told us there
would be mass starvation in the world in the '80s, and now we find our two
biggest problems are obesity and how to get rid of agricultural surpluses."
Mr. Sowell's conclusion is a cynical one. "I have a book called 'The Vision
of the Anointed,' and there's a chapter in there called 'The Irrelevance of
Evidence.'"
The idea to apply economic concepts to racial
issues came, says Mr. Sowell, from the late Benjamin Rogge, who taught
economics at Wabash College in Indiana. "I was at Cornell, and Ben Rogge
came on campus to give a talk called 'The Welfare State Against the Negro.'
I happened to be out of town, so when I got back I wrote him a letter that
said I heard you gave this talk and that you're going to write a book on the
same theme. I said it's really amazing that no one's thought of this before
because there's so much material out there. At this point [in the late '60s]
I had no thought that I would ever touch it myself." The two became friends
over the years and "it occurred to Ben that he was never going to write that
book. And so Ben Rogge took his manuscript and simply handed it to me and
said do with it whatever you can. I was flabbergasted. I don't think I ever
used anything directly from his manuscript. But the fundamental idea the you
could apply economics to racial issues--that was the inspiration."
Similarly, Mr. Sowell says his interest in
"international perspectives"--most notably demonstrated in his lengthy
trilogy on cultural history published in the 1990s--initially came from
reading Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1963 classic study,
"Beyond the Melting Pot." "It was really the first book I read about
different ethnic groups. There were many different patterns. And more than
anything else, each group had its own pattern.
"The left likes to portray a group as sort of a
creature of surrounding society. But that's not true. For example, back
during the immigrant era, you had neighborhoods on the Lower East Side [of
Manhattan] where Jews and Italians arrived at virtually identical times.
Lived in the same neighborhoods. Kids sat side by side in the same schools.
But totally different outcomes. Now, if you look back at the history of the
Jews and the history of the Italians you can see why that would be. In the
early 19th century, Russian officials report that even the poorest Jews find
some way to get some books in their home, even though they're living in a
society where over 90% of the people are illiterate.
"Conversely, in southern Italy, which is where most
Italian-Americans originated, when they put in compulsory school-attendance
laws, there were riots. There were schoolhouses burning down. So now you
take these two kids and sit them side by side in a school. If you believe
that environment means the immediate surroundings, they're in the same
environment. But if you believe environment includes this cultural pattern
that goes back centuries before they were born, then no, they're not in the
same environment. They don't come into that school building with the same
mindset. And they don't get the same results."
It somehow seems an imposition to press Mr. Sowell
on his next project, though he graciously allows that a collection of
correspondence, as well as a book on intellectuals, is in the works. As the
interview clock winds down, however, he returns briefly to the topic of
race. He laments the fact that more public intellectuals aren't applying
economic analyses to racial policies, even while he understands the
hesitation.
"I think it would be great if someone would sit
down and take a sort of systematic textbook approach to it," says Mr.
Sowell. "[George Mason University economist] Walter Williams has written a
couple of very good books, but unfortunately they were not well promoted.
Guys like Gary Becker have other fish to fry, and they're writing for a
different audience. Besides Walter and me, I don't know who else out there
would write it. And heaven knows it's not the golden pathway to instant
popularity."
March 10, 2006 message from Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky
[dstone@UKY.EDU]
Ok, now you can answer that trivia question that
comes up over dinner at the next BAP banquet.
Specifically: "which CPA firm was the first to
podcast?"
Answer: Deloitte (based on 10 minutes of web
searching)
I am looking for freeware accounting system
packages implemented in MS Excel or MS Access. If you know of any, please
let me know how I can obtain. I will summarize respones for AECM. Thank you.
Joseph A. Brady
Accounting & MIS
Lerner College of Business & Economics
University of Delaware bradyj@lerner.udel.edu
March 28, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Joe
For freeware and shareware, I recommend that you first enter "Excel
Accounting" in the search box at
http://www.tucows.com/
Then do the same thing for "Access Accounting"
In general, Tucows is a great site for finding free software.
It has been
around for decades and has a wonderful rating system.
Although the consulting services are not free, a extensive listing of MS
Access accounting system software appears at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsacct.htm
This site also has some MS Access tips.
You might find some interesting free accounting software based on Excel
at this rather difficult site to navigate ---
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/
• Use to loosen rusty nuts and screws, clean garden tools.
• Cleans piano keys
• Keeps wicker chairs from squeaking
• Lubricates small rolling toys
• Keeps garden tools rust-free
• Cleans patio door glide strip
• Removes crayon from clothes dryer (make sure to unplug dryer first)
• Removes scuff marks from ceramic tile floor
• Keeps metal wind chimes rust-free
• Removes crayon from walls
• Helps join plastic shelving to make disassembly easier
• Removes water spots from mirrors
• Lubricates hinge on pruning shears
• Lubricates screws on lawn furniture
• Lubricates hydraulic rams on slideout of 5th wheel
• Cleans fiberglass bathtubs
• Cleans and prevents rust on oil tank exterior
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• Prevents rust on swamp cooler nuts
• Removes tea stains from countertops
• Removes crayon from wallpaper
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• Removes crayon from carpet
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• Shines leaves of artificial houseplants
• Keeps snow from sticking to shovel
• Removes coffee stains on floor tiles
• Keeps hose ends from corroding
• Lubricates moving parts on playground equipment
• Removes crayon from plastic
• Removes decals from bathtubs
• Removes old cellophane tape
• Removes crayon from shoes
• Cleans ashtrays
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• Cleans and protects underside of cast iron skillets
• Removes ink from carpet
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• Prevents mildew growth on fountain
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• Eliminates static on volume and tuning control knobs
• Cleans candle soot
• Removes ink from blue jeans
• Cleans residue on luggage handles
• Cleans old muffin tins
• Cleans and protects pruning shears
• Cleans gold-plated faucets
• Removes petroleum stains from clothing
• Keeps sewing needles from rusting
• Removes Kool-Aid stains from carpet and fabric
• Removes gunk from plastic dish-drainer
• Lubricates kitchen sink handheld spray nozzle
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• Helps prevent rust on hide-a-key containers
• Cleans vinyl garage doors
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• Removes gunk when replacing old faucets
• Cleans and protects medicine door latches
• Protects wrought iron from rust
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• Prevents rust from forming on washing machines
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• Preventative maintenance on cooking burner
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• Removes ink stains from leather
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• Shines shower doors
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• Cleans mildew from refrigerator gasket
• Helps clean rust from wire shelves
• Cleans newspaper ink from tables
• Removes rust stains from floor after mopping
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• Spray on rototiller blades to prevent rust during off-season
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Online Video
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
For those of you who missed this on February 26, the 60
Minutes television module on breakthroughs of stem cell research for spinal
cord injuries might listen to the audio module of 60 Minutes ---
Stem Cell Advances
The above link may not last very long on the Web. The module also discusses
advances in regenerating damaged heart tissue and the forthcoming clinical
trials (the first ever) on the fatal childhood Battens Disease These
advances are the closest things to miracle cures in history. Thus far only
embryos that were going to be otherwise destroyed are being used in the
research.
The main link to this and other video/audio modules on 60
Minutes is at:
Click Here
In the past I've provided links to various types of music
and video available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Momma Don't Let Your Babies Grow Into ...
Click Here
Photographs and Art
The "Oops" List
(includes photographs of crashed airplanes and other "Oops" happenings ---
http://www.micom.net/oops/
Many of the photographs and cartoons on the “Oops” list will be
familiar. You may not have seen some of these images, some of which are
hilarious.
The "Oops" List (some links are video links) ---
http://www.micom.net/oops/
From NPR
Photographs of the 2006 Winter Olympics ---
Click Here
Giant galaxies weren't
assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space Telescope image of the
face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy). It is the
largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy beyond the Milky Way
that has ever been publicly released. The galaxy's portrait is actually
composed from 51 individual Hubble exposures, in addition to elements
from images from ground-based photos. The final composite image measures
a whopping 16,000 by 12,000 pixels.
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Dual Covenant Theology: Thanks to the Cornerstone Church in San
Antonio Jews Can Now Get Into Heaven
An evangelical pastor and an Orthodox rabbi, both from Texas, have
apparently persuaded leading Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell that Jews
can get to heaven without being converted to Christianity. Televangelist
John Hagee and Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, whose Cornerstone Church and
Rodfei Sholom congregations are based in San Antonio, told The Jerusalem
Post that Falwell had adopted Hagee's innovative belief in what
Christians refer to as "dual covenant" theology. Ilan Chaim, Jerusalem Post, March 1, 2006 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment: This must be a huge relief to Jewish faithfuls.
Really bad news for Jews now that
it's a scientific fact that heaven does exist
Reverend Falwell denies that he ever once believed that Jews can get
into heaven Evangelist Jerry Falwell has a beef with the
Jerusalem Post after the newspaper published an article suggesting he's
changed his beliefs about salvation, now thinking Jews can get to heaven
without becoming Christians first. "Televangelist John Hagee and Rabbi
Aryeh Scheinberg, whose Cornerstone Church and Rodfei Sholom
congregations are based in San Antonio, told the Jerusalem Post that
Falwell had adopted Hagee's innovative belief in what Christians refer
to as 'dual covenant' theology. This creed, which runs counter to
mainstream evangelism, maintains that the Jewish people have a special
relationship to God through the revelation at Sinai and therefore do not
need 'to go through Christ or the Cross' to get to heaven."
"Falwell: Jerusalem Post 'fabricated' story on me Newspaper claimed
Christian evangelist had new tune on how Jews get to heaven,"
WorldDailyNet, March 1, 2006 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49063
Pastors John
Hagee and Jerry Falwell have both denied a report in The Jerusalem Post
earlier this week that they embrace the "dual covenant" theology, which
holds that Jews are saved through a special relationship with God and so
need not become Christians to get to heaven.
"Hagee, Falwell deny endorsing 'dual covenant'," Jerusalem Post,
March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395523403&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Jensen Comment
Just goes to show you what might happen to
evangelism if just anybody can pass through the Pearly Gates.
Authorities are moving quickly to Plains, Georgia to have Jimmy Carter
settle this matter once and for all ---
---
Click Here
March 2, 2006 reply from a Jewish friend
who is also an accounting professor
This little
tempest isn't sitting so great with the JPost readers. One
writes (in talkback to the article for which you provide the
url:
2. Explain 24
gates and 24 elders
David - Israel
03/02/2006 16:02
Falwell should
read his N. Testament. Revelations where John sees 24 elders
before the throne representing 12 tribes of Israel and 12
Apostles. Hmmmm, no replacement theology there. And the new
J-town has 24 gates; twelve for the tribes and 12 Apostles.
Hmmmmm. Sounds like God can dual anything He wants. And who said
you can't meet Jesus and receive your faith in Jesus after your
dead? N. Test verses make case for that. And every knee shall
bow and every tongue confess. I don't know how you force someone
to do that? Sorry Christians God is up to something far greater
than just saving you. Far greater.
So
Bob, I guess my day is still OK? Eric
Driver carries no cash. He's married.
Bumper Sticker
All I ask is the chance to prove that money
can't make me happy.
Bumper Sticker
Vote Democrat — it's easier than working! Bumper Sticker
Vote Republican — it's easier than thinking! Bumper Sticker
George W. Bush is about to fritter away his
party's last advantage. What Republicans have had going for them is that
they aren't Democrats.
Wesley Pruden, "Taking a chance on love for sale," The Washington
Times, February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the
great ones to public office. Aesop
Around me, if a woman don't wear mink, she
don't wear nothin'.
Big Boy Caprice in the 1001 movie Dick Tracie Directed by
Warren Beatty, screenplay by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr
There are three kinds of death in this
world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off
the network. Guy Almes
117 documents match your query. Search
Amazon.com for top-selling titles about +dwarf +"pubic hair". AltaVista
The number one problem in our country is
apathy ... But who cares? Darrel Anderson
Advice not heeded by Bob Jensen Ignorance of your profession is best concealed
by solemnity and silence, which pass for profound knowledge upon the
generality of mankind. "Advice to Officers of the British Army", 1783
I have learned from an early age to abjure
the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look
upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
The was (possibly still is) a billboard outside of Saskatoon showing
a feeding moose. The sign read as follows:
There's plenty of room for all God's
creatures,
Right beside the mashed potatoes.
A teacher who castrated a live pig in front
of her high school class is the target of protests by animal rights
activists throughout the country. The protests began after People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals posted information about the incident
at Rosamond High School on its Web site last month. The posting does not
say when the castration occurred. "We're concerned not only because
animals suffer during these routine castrations but also because of the
message it sends to students who are still forming opinions about
treatment of animals in our society," said Stephanie Bell, a PETA
cruelty case worker.
"Castration of live pig at Central Calif. school ignites
protests," Modbee, February 22, 2006 ---
http://www.modbee.com/state_wire/story/11834713p-12549652c.html
Japan Warns U.N. of Funding Cut If
widespread fraud and waste at the United Nations is not stopped, Japan
says it may cut its funding for the scandal-ridden international
organization. NewsMax, February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/24/223452.shtml
Remember This One? (turn your speakers up)
Do Your Own Damn Taxes Video (music from Frank Sinatra) ---
http://www.doyourdamntaxes.com/
University of Michigan may extend time to tenure to 10 years In part to try to make the academy family
friendly, the University of Michigan is currently mulling over changes
to the process it uses to promote professors, which would include
extending the maximum time to receive tenure from 8 to 10 years. Higher
education experts have increasingly been saying that, as baby boomers
age and require more attention, and as more women flood academe, a bit
of flexibility is in order.
David Epstein, "Slowing Down Tenure Time," Inside Higher Ed, February
28, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/28/michigan
Atheists and Agnostics Need Not Apply for Work at the
University of Charleston Edwin H. Welch, president of
the University of Charleston, is investigating the legal
ramifications of an advertisement that states that
applicants must believe in God — an apparent violation
of federal anti-bias laws. . . . The ad says that
prospective candidates must have earned a doctorate and
expertise in ethics, have had faculty development
experience and “must embrace a belief in God and present
moral and ethical values from a God-centered
perspective.” The unusual job requirement was noted on
Brian Leiter’s
blog.
Rob Capriccioso, "Divinely Inspired Bias?" Inside
Higher Ed, March 1, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/01/charleston
In an
attempt to avoid violating civil rights
laws, the University of Charleston has
made changes to a
co.
oversial job requirement
the stated that
applicants for the Herchiel and
Elizabeth Sims “In God We Trust” Chair
in Ethics must believe in God.
Rob Capriccioso, "Charleston Ends
Illegal Job Requirement," Inside
Higher Ed, March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/02/charleston
Question
What's really behind epidemic of teacher-student sex? The seemingly endless stream of
reports of female school teachers having sex with their underage male
students– a storyline titillating to some
but profoundly disturbing to most – is one of today's most sensational
news stories. In fact, a recent, federally funded study concludes the
problem of school teachers molesting students dwarfs in magnitude the
clergy sex-abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church. Now, in a
groundbreaking investigation, the newest edition of WND's elite monthly
Whistleblower magazine – titled
"PREDATORS: What's really behind today's epidemic of teacher-student
sex?" – unveils what's really behind this
troubling new phase in the "sexual revolution."
"PREDATORS: What's really behind today's epidemic of teacher-student
sex?" Whistleblower Magazine, March 1, 2006 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49049
Question
On average, what is the increase in technology spending expected for
higher education?
Technology spending by colleges and
universities is expected to increase by 35 percent, to $6.9 billion, in
2006, according to a report by Market Data Retrieval. The report found
increases in all sectors of higher education. Hardware purchases
represent about half of all spending. Inside Higher Ed, February 28, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/28/qt
Listening to Student Voices on Technology
March 1, 2006 message from Bob Blystone
You might find the referred to 21 page
report concerning student use of computers very interesting. It
concerns high school students primarily.
The "Oops" List (includes photographs of crashed airplanes and
other "Oops" happenings ---
http://www.micom.net/oops/
Many of the photographs and cartoons on the “Oops” list will be
familiar. You may not have seen some of these images, some of which are
hilarious.
The "Oops" List (some links are video links) ---
http://www.micom.net/oops/
The "Oops" impact of labor unions of California politics: Some
Cities and Counties Will Declare Bankruptcy
From 1999 through 2002, I was the Vice
Chair of the Senate Public Employment and Retirement Committee.
During that time, a number of bills presented to the committee
increased pension and retirement benefits for state and local
government employees. Every single one of these bills were passed
and signed by Governor Davis.
At the hearing on each of these bills, the
lobbyists for the government employee unions showed up and begged
the committee members to vote for the bill. In addition, the
representative for the California Public Employee Retirement System
(CalPERS) told the committee that the retirement system could afford
the increases because it had a $60 billion surplus. The surplus was
so big that the state did not have to pay any money to the CalPERS
fund, and CalPERS told us we would never have to pay into the
retirement system ever again, even with the benefit increases. Of
course, the government employee unions control the CalPERS board.
The state was experiencing record budget surpluses, so everyone
thought that the good times would last forever.
I kept trying to explain to my legislative
colleagues that we were being foolish. No one can increase benefits
without some cost. At some point, I said, these pension chickens
were going to come home to roost in our budget. My colleagues called
me Chicken Little telling me “the sky is not falling.” They said the
pension was sound and the budget could absorb the cost.
Oops.
The chickens have come home to roost. The
City of San Diego is going bankrupt from generous pension benefits.
Orange County is talking seriously about filing bankruptcy again to
get out from underneath their pension requirements. The state’s
contribution to CalPERS is estimated to be $3.5 billion this year,
and even higher next year. This is from nothing in 1999.
And this week, the Legislative Analyst’s
Office released a report that the cost of retiree health benefits
will be “in the range of $40 billion to $70 billion, and perhaps
more.” The report identifies two reasons for this increased cost;
(a) increased health care costs; and (b) legislatively mandated
increased health benefits.
Health care costs have increased
significantly in the last six years for one reason: legislatively
mandated minimum requirements for health care. From 1999 to 2000,
the Legislature passed over 30 different mandates on health
insurers, and as a result, costs increased over 40%.
Defining the term "child" sounds simple --
except at tax time.
There are at least five different tax
breaks tied to children and until recently, the tax code had a
separate test for each. Recognizing the absurdity and inefficiency
of that, Congress enacted legislation in late 2004 streamlining the
definition of a child. The new system took effect for 2005 tax
returns, which people are preparing now.
But the new law has ended up creating
loopholes allowing some high-income families to get tax benefits
that weren't intended for them -- such as the earned-income tax
credit, which is intended for low-income workers. At the same time,
some low-income families are finding themselves unable to claim
benefits that they should be getting.
Francis
Degen, president of the National Association of Enrolled Agents,
which represents about 40,000 private-sector tax specialists,
offered this example: A couple with two children living at home
-- a 14-year-old daughter and a 22-year-old son -- file a joint
return with adjusted gross income of $400,000. At that level of
income, the parents don't get any tax benefit from claiming the
daughter as a dependent. On the other hand, the son, who has
$15,000 in wages and isn't a full-time student, can claim his
sister, enabling him to receive the child-tax credit and
earned-income tax credit. Assuming he had no tax withheld, this
turns what would have been a balance due of $683 on his return
to a federal income-tax refund of $3,158.
I don't see how the son can
claim his sister as a dependent when he must fail "test to be a
qualifying relative part 4 - you must provide more than half of
the person's total support for the year." I have a 16 year old
son, who in no way would give his hard earned bucks (he pumps
gas) to his sister! See IRS Pub 17 page 25 chapter 3.
What am missing something
here?
Question
How much more is the cost of a U-Haul trailer to move from Los Angeles
to Boise versus the vice versa?
It takes hard work to drive anyone away from
California's sunshine and scenic vistas, but politicians in Sacramento
have been up to the task. The latest Census Bureau data indicate that,
in 2005, 239,416 more native-born Americans left the state than moved
in. California is also on pace to lose domestic population (not counting
immigrants) this year. The outmigration is such that the cost to rent a
U-Haul trailer to move from Los Angeles to Boise, Idaho, is $2,090--or
some eight times more than the cost of moving in the opposite direction.
What's gone wrong? A big part of the story is a tax and regulatory
culture that treats the most productive businesses and workers as if
they were ATMs. The cost to businesses of complying with California's
rules, regulations and paperwork is more than twice as high as in other
Western states. But the worst growth killer may well be California's tax
system. The business tax rate of 8.8% is the highest in the West, and
its steeply "progressive" personal income tax has an effective top
marginal rate of 10.3%, or second highest in the nation. CalTax, the
state's taxpayer advocacy group, reports that the richest 10% of earners
pay almost 75% of the entire income-tax revenue in the state, and most
of these are small0business owners, i.e., the people who create jobs.
"Meathead Economics: Hollywood liberals drive productive Californians
to leave the state," The Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2006
---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008026
Question
What is the impact of low fat diets on older women? Hint: It "won't cut their risk of cancer or heart disease." (with
calorie intake held constant)
Older women who reduce the amount of total
fat in their diets won't cut their risk of cancer or heart disease, but
some women might benefit from lowered fat intake. So says a School of
Medicine researcher who helped direct the much-publicized Women's Health
Initiative, which followed test subjects for 15 years . . . But a School
of Medicine researcher who helped direct the WHI work said the study
showed a modest reduction in breast cancer among the women who started
with the highest fat intake before cutting back. And the findings also
suggested a health benefit for women who reduced their consumption of
saturated and trans fats. "Just switching to low-fat foods is not likely
to yield much health benefit in most women," said Marcia Stefanick, PhD,
professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and
chair of the WHI steering committee. "Rather than trying to eat
'low-fat,' women should focus on reducing saturated fats and trans
fats." She also recommended that women eat more vegetables, in
particular dark, leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables, though the
trial did not specifically study these foods.
Susan Ipaktchian, "Low-fat diet no panacea for preventing cancer for
women But some adjustments in fat intake may benefit certain women,
study author says," Stanford University News Service, February 8,
2006 ---
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2006/february8/med-whi-020806.html
"Will WebMD's Healthy Glow Last?" by Arlene Weintraub,
Business Week, February 23, 2006
The Net health-care concern has been a hit
on the Street since being spun off last year. Now its numbers have
to back up the optimism
Just days after Google (GOOG) raised a
staggering $4 billion in a September secondary stock offering,
another brand-name dot-com made a much quieter, but equally
impressive splash on Wall Street. Health-information provider WebMD
Health (WBMD) spun out from its parent company on Oct. 4, raising
$129 million. Shares of its stock have nearly doubled to $34.92
since then (as of the market close on Feb. 22).
Why aren't physicists as rich as Warren Buffet? On Monday, October 19, 1987 – infamously known
as “black Monday” – the Dow fell 508 points, or 22.9%, marking the
largest crash in history. Using an analytical approach similar to the
one applied to explore heart rate, physicists have discovered some
unusual events preceding the crash. These findings may help economists
in risk analysis and in predicting inevitable future crashes.
"Physicists Predict Stock Market Crashes," PhysOrg, February 24,
2006 ---
http://physorg.com/news11164.html
Jensen Comment
If physicists can predict market crashes, why aren't they short selling
at the right moments to become as rich as Warren Buffet? The problem in
all time series models of stock market prices lies in evaluating the
false positives and negatives. I always tell my students that the Wizard
can predict every stock market crash because the Wizard is always
predicting stock market crashes. The studies cited above, however, are
much more scholarly and worth reading.
Fraud at Harvard
In a legal settlement reached last summer, Harvard agreed to pay $26.5
million
Questions
Did fraud by a Harvard professor ultimately sink its President Summers?
"I was surprised that he was
gone by February of '06," said Mr. McClintick, and
"that it happened as rapidly as it did."
"How
Harvard Lost Russia" was
published in the January issue of Institutional
Investor magazine, a subscription-only
publication, about a month and a half before Dr.
Summers's resignation, which he announced last
Tuesday. The move came just two weeks after a Feb. 7
meeting when the president was challenged on several
issues, including his reaction to events described
in Mr. McClintick's article.
In roughly 18,500 words, (22,007 including
sidebars), Mr. McClintick chronicled financial improprieties by
those in charge of Harvard's Russia project, including Andrei
Shleifer, a professor of economics who is a friend and protégé of
Dr. Summers's, and Jonathan Hay, a Harvard-trained lawyer. The two
men were accused of making personal investments in Russia at a time
when they were working under contract to establish capitalism in the
former Soviet nation.
Their behavior led the United States
government to file civil charges against Harvard, Mr. Shleifer and
Mr. Hay for fraud, breach of contract and making false claims.
In a settlement reached last summer,
Harvard agreed to pay $26.5 million.
Mr. Hay was ordered to pay a fine based on his future earnings and
Mr. Shleifer agreed to pay $2 million, though none of the parties
admitted wrongdoing. Mr. Shleifer has not been subjected to any
disciplinary action from Harvard.
Some Harvard watchers attribute that to Dr.
Summers's influence, though he formally recused himself from the
matter, and they see the entire affair, assiduously detailed by Mr.
McClintick, as an indelible stain on
Harvard's reputation.
Mr. McClintick, 65, a 1962 graduate of
Harvard, is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the
author of several books, including "Indecent Exposure," which
investigated financial scandal at Columbia Pictures. That book was a
finalist for the National Book Award and helped solidify Mr.
McClintick's reputation as a meticulous investigator.
Continued in article
Update on March 8, 2006| Harvard University's faculty-ethics board
is investigating Andrei Shleifer, a star in its economics department
star who was caught up along with the school in a scandal that involved
investing in Russia, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Prof. Shleifer and Harvard last year paid nearly $30 million to settle a
civil suit brought by the U.S. government alleging that Prof. Shleifer
violated federal conflict-of-interest rules by investing in Russia. The
case dates back a decade when Mr. Shleifer headed a
U.S.-government-funded Harvard project to help Russia develop financial
markets
John Hechinger, "Harvard Investigates Conduct Of a Star Economics
Professor," The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2006; Page A6
YOU know what would be so
cool? A portable
Wi-Fi hot spot. Whenever
you wanted Internet access, you wouldn't have to
hunt for a wireless coffee shop or pay $24 a night
to your hotel.
Instead, you'd travel with a little box. Plug it
into a power outlet — or even your car's cigarette
lighter — and boom, you and everyone within 200 feet
could get onto the Internet at high speed, without
wires.
Actually, such boxes exist.
They come from companies like Kyocera, Junxion and
Top Global, and they're every bit as awesome as they
sound. (Unfortunately, the category is so new that
it has no agreed-upon name. "Portable hot spot" is
descriptive but unwieldy. "Cellular gateway" is a
bit cryptic. Kyocera's term, "mobile router," may be
as good as any.)
Before you start thinking
that you've died and gone to Internet heaven,
however, you should know that these boxes don't work
alone. Each requires the insertion of a PC laptop
card provided by a cellular carrier like
Verizon,
Sprint or Cingular. The
card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of
those companies'
3G
("third generation") high-speed cellular data
networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection
as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers — not
just one privileged laptop — can go online.
With those PC cards, you
can go online anywhere there's a cellular signal: in
a taxi, on a bus, in a waiting room or wherever. In
major cities, the speed is delightful, like a D.S.L.
or slowish cable modem (400 to 700 kilobits a
second). In other areas, you can still go online,
but only slightly faster than with a dial-up modem.
(Also note that uploading is far slower than
downloading.)
Continued in article
WiFi Internet Access Across All of London The service is expected to go live within
the next few months, and the entire city will be covered within six
months, according to the network's provider.
K.C. Jones, "Wi-Fi Moving To London," InformationWeek, February
23, 2006 ---
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180206231
From The Washington Post on February
24, 2006
A university in what city banned campus-wide Wi-Fi?
Meanwhile broadband is not so great in the United States The laissez faire approach taken by the
United States in developing the nation's broadband network has failed.
Not only have we fallen since 2000 from number three to number 16 in the
number of high-speed Internet subscribers per capita, but there's a good
chance we'll fall out of the top 20 this year. The reason is our
government's failure to oversee the building of the broadband
infrastructure and to provide the subsidies needed to get as many people
online as possible. Unlike other developed nations, we haven't taken an
approach that would reflect a belief that universal access to the
high-speed Internet is a critical component of a competitive economy.
Antone Gonsalves, InternetWeek Newsletter, February 23, 2006
Q: Can I convert my home videos so they
will play on a video iPod? If so, how?
A: Probably, though it
depends on whether they are in one of the formats that can be easily
converted, and it can be hard to tell in advance. You'll need
conversion software to do it. One option, for both Windows and Mac
users, is to spend $30 to upgrade Apple's free QuickTime media
player to the pro version, which can convert numerous video file
types to an iPod-compatible format.
Another option is to download
one of many free conversion utilities that appeared on the Web after
the video-capable iPod was released. For Windows users, there are
numerous choices. One example is Free iPod Video Converter, at
www.ipod-video-converter.org. If you use a
Mac, one such program is iSquint, at
www.isquint.org. I haven't tested either.
Q:I like to visit about 50 news sites
every morning but don't want an RSS feed only. I like to see the
entire site. Is there a way to open all of them at the same time,
without having to click on each bookmark one by one?
A: Certainly. All you
need to do is switch to a tabbed Web browser, like Firefox or Opera
for Windows or Mac; or Safari or Camino, for the Mac only. These
browsers can open multiple Web sites, in the same window, marking
each site with a tab bearing its name. And they allow users to open
these multiple sites with a single click. Though each differs
slightly, all have a command -- usually called "Open in Tabs" --
that will open a list or folder full of bookmarks with one click.
For instance, every morning I open about 20 technology-related Web
sites in Firefox or Safari with one click.
Q:I would like to purchase a laptop
computer in the U.S. but use it for extended periods in Europe. Is
there anything I have to modify because of the difference in the
electrical power supply?
A: Most laptops I have
tested in recent years have power adaptors that can handle both U.S.
and European electrical standards. Just make sure the one you choose
is similarly equipped. The only thing you'd have to buy is a cheap
plug adapter -- not a transformer -- to physically fit the plug into
the sockets used in the European countries where the laptop will be
used.
Using microbes to create alternative fuels
"Craig Venter's Next Little Thing: The man who mapped the human
genome has a new focus: using microbes to create alternative fuels," by
Michael S. Rosenwald, The Washington Post, February 27, 2006 ---
Click Here
"The Methanol Economy Forget about the hydrogen economy:
Methanol is the key to weaning the world off oil. George Olah tells us
how to do it," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, March 2,
2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16466,296,p1.html
This is a huge book of statistical data that will probably attract
your interest and be of great value within reach of your desk.
For starters, it weighs 29 pounds. It has
five volumes. And it's densely packed with more than a million
numbers that measure America in mind-boggling detail, from the
average annual precipitation in Sweet Springs, Mo., to the wholesale
price of rice in Charleston S.C., in 1707
. . .
Professors Sutch and Carter, who are
married and both teach at the University of California at Riverside,
are editors in chief of Historical Statistics of the United States,
an ambitious expansion of previous compilations that were published
by the United States Census Bureau in 1949, 1960 and 1975. This
"Millennial Edition" is a privatized version, authorized by the
Census Bureau but published by Cambridge University Press.
Since the last edition, the editors write,
they have tried to rationalize the "phenomenal growth of the
American quantitative record," which is why Historical Statistics
has proliferated to more than 5,000 pages, from 1,235 in the last
version, and includes new chapters on slavery, poverty, American
Indians, the Confederacy and the nation's territories overseas.
"As time goes on, the statisticians and the
bureaucrats who produce a lot of these numbers for the government
keep producing new data," Professor Sutch said. "The other thing is
that scholars have really jumped into the field. They are going back
and trying to reconsider all sorts of issues with new perspectives,
and one of those perspectives is a quantitative one."
The new edition, which sells for $825 and
is also available in an online version, is a gold mine for scholars,
students and assorted nerds and numbers crunchers, although, as with
a gold mine, exposing the veins and nuggets can be challenging. Some
tables are not comparable, many do not include percentages, and some
contemporary tables are current only to 1990.
"The whole project was designed to present
data in raw form rather than highly manipulated," Professor Sutch
said. "That makes it more difficult. You have to do a little work to
use this."
The couple have been working on the revised
collection for 11 years, although they estimate that more than half
that time was spent in fund-raising. (Cambridge says the book cost
more than $1 million to produce.) What statistics surprised them?
"We're the wrong people to ask about what's
surprising," Professor Carter said. "We've been working on it so
long."
Historical Statistics of the United States
is a product of collaborative scholarship. Introductory essays by
contributors provide context and some navigational tools, and hint
at trends.
Professors Charles Hirschman, Reynolds
Farley and Richard Alba point out in their essay, for instance, that
while only 1.9 percent of Americans 18 and older claim two or more
racial identities, 4 percent of those younger than 18 do.
A discriminating browser can also learn, or
be reminded, that:
Fewer than 1 in 10 black children under 5
live with both parents; workers with the highest hourly wages now
work the longest hours; there are more religious workers (also
bartenders, gardeners and authors) than ever recorded, and more
shoemakers than at any other time since the Civil War; only half of
Americans have access to fluoridated water; a growing share of poor
people live in the suburbs; philanthropy compared with the gross
domestic product has been declining since 1960; more Protestants and
Jews say they attended religious services within the last week than
at any time in the last 50 years; the nation is producing record
amounts of broccoli; it took four days on average to travel between
New York and Boston in 1800; attendance at horse-racing tracks
peaked in 1976, but rodeo attendance is at an all-time high; and the
proportion of people who have no opinion in presidential approval
polls is the lowest in a half century.
"It's not just a data dump," Professor
Carter said. "Believe it or not, we've been really highly
selective."
The editors write that research for the new
edition "exposed many lacunas in the statistical record." For
example, Professor Sutch said, "On immigration we have a lot of good
data on how many people arrived, but very bad data on how many
left."
The couple do their own taxes and balance
their own checking account, but they were not trained as
statisticians. Professor Sutch, 63, and Professor Carter, 58, are
both economic historians.
"Readers may be surprised that the critical
skill that's more required than formal statistics is more like
literary criticism," Professor Carter said. "You look at a number
and don't say that's a fact. You want to say where did it come from,
who generated it, why, is it consistent with what we would get from
looking at other sources, does it make sense? What sort of insight
can the quantitative record give to the qualitative one?"
Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition,
5 Volume Set, Susan Carter (Editor), Michael R. Haines, Scott Sigmund
Gartner, Gavin Wright (Editor), Susan B. Carter (Editor) ---
Click Here
The Department of Defense (DOD) has failed
its audit to the extent that auditors have stopped wasting money
trying to audit their books, according to Black Enterprise. Problems
with the Pentagon books has allowed the DOD to pay troops, civilian
workers, and contractors the wrong amounts; to lose track of
equipment, such as planes and tanks; and to document trillions of
dollars in transactions improperly, according to Black Enterprise.
Gregory D. Kutz, managing director of the General Accounting Office
(GAO), told Congress last summer that these accounting problems
would cost taxpayers $13 billion in 2005. The GAO is the
investigative arm of Congress.
The “clean audit” of DOD books scheduled
for 2007 is not in sight, according to Black Enterprise. The DOD has
received a “clean opinion” on only 16 percent of its assets and 49
percent of its liabilities as of June 2005, according to Thomas B.
Modly, deputy undersecretary of defense for financial management.
Black Enterprise reported that Modly said the DOD hopes to settle
their balance sheet on 47 percent of assets and 49 percent of
liabilities by 2007. It might help to understand the problem by
understanding the size of Pentagon operations. Black Enterprise
reports it had in fiscal year 2005:
$1.3 trillion in assets
$1.9 trillion in liabilities
3 million in personnel
$635 billion in operational costs
2,569 facilities in the country
and 807 outside of the United States
One of the other problems cited is that DOD
has about 5.2 million items in its inventory, according to Modly.
Wal-Mart only has 11,000 and Home Depot only has 50,000 inventory
items, according to Black Enterprise. Another problem is the
gridlock of some 4,150 different business operations, including 713
different human resources systems.
Jack Minnery, a Defense Finance and
Accounting Service accountant, told Black Enterprise, “The Pentagon
wasn’t in the business of making money, so they never needed an
income statement. They expensed their assets like planes and
buildings and such. They dished money out, and they never kept track
of what they owned.” Minnery continued, “That’s one of the main
reasons I don’t believe they’ll ever have a clean [audit].” Minnery
complained about missing money in 2002 to earn his label as a
whistle-blower.
Minnery told Black Enterprise, “Their
systems can’t keep track of who they’ve sold stuff to, who owes
them, who they owe.” Concerning the inter-service gaggle of ordering
codes, Minnery said, “The Navy has a set of [codes], the Army has a
set, the Air Force has a set. They don’t have the same number of
digits, and they don’t match each other.”
In 1990, the GAO started assigning some
government agencies to a “high risk” list. DOD’s supply chain and
weapon systems acquisitions have remained on this list since that
time and six other defense divisions made the list in 2005. Danielle
Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on
Government Oversight, told Black Enterprise, “Nothing’s gotten
better. It keeps getting worse.” Knoxstudio.com reports that Jeffrey
Steinhoff, GAO’s managing director for financial management and
assurance, said, “They’re not close to the finish line. They have a
long way to go.”
Untangling the mess has seemed elusive
except “by making the business process support the war-fighter more
effectively, we are seeing a significant amount of momentum,”
according to Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for
business transformation. Effective might be an overly optimistic
opinion as Black Enterprise reports that the government spent $179
million on two automation systems meant to resolve disbursement
problems that failed, according to the GAO.
Winslow T. Wheeler, director of a military
reform project at the Center for Defense Information (CDI), told
Black Enterprise, “We don’t know how badly managed it is. It’s not
that DOD flunks audits, it’s that DOD’s books cannot be audited. DOD
aspires for the position where it flunks an audit. If this were a
public company, it would have gone belly up before World War II.”
CDI is an independent monitor of the military.
In more wasteful news, Stuart Bowen,
special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told Political
Gateway that $8.8 billion is unaccounted for due to inadequate
oversight from Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that “was
relatively nonexistent.” Bowen is in charge of tracing the funds.
Frank Willis, the former number two
official at the CPA transportation ministry, told Political Gateway
that the CPA kept billions in cash to pay for its projects because
Iraq is without the financial infrastructure that would support the
use of checks or money orders. Willis said, “I would describe (the
accounting system) as nonexistent.” Willis told a CBS interviewer,
“Fresh, new, crisp, unspent, just-printed 100-dollar bills. It was
the Wild West.”
In other wasteful news, the GAO has
released a report finding that the Bush Administration spent more
than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts over two
and a half years, according to the California Chronicle. Congressman
Henry A. Waxman, (D-Calif.), House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi,
(D-Calif.), and Congressmen George Miller, (D-Calif.), and Elijah E.
Cummings, (D-Md.), with other senior Democrats, released the report.
Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Costs Disputed by Audi The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton
subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion
no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even
though the Pentagon's own auditors had identified more than $250 million
in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified. The Army said in
response to questions on Friday that questionable business practices by
the subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, had in some cases driven up the
company's costs. But in the haste and peril of war, it had largely done
as well as could be expected, the Army said, and aside from a few
penalties, the government was compelled to reimburse the company for its
costs. Under the type of contract awarded to the company, "the
contractor is not required to perform perfectly to be entitled to
reimbursement," said Rhonda James, a spokeswoman for the southwestern
division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, based in Dallas,
where the contract is administered.
James Glanz, "Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Costs Disputed by
Audit," The New York Times, February 27, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/international/middleeast/27contract.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Question:
What has been one of the most massive, if not the most massive, fraud in
the history of the U.S. (aside from Department of Defense ongoing fraud
discussed above)?
Answer:
The attorney/physician rip off on phony asbestos health damage claims.
"Diagnosing for Dollars A court battle over silicosis shines a harsh
light on mass medical screeners—the same people whose diagnoses have
cost asbestos defendants billions," by Roger Parloff, Fortune,
June 13, 2005, pp. 96-110 ---
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,1066756,00.html
How, then, to account for this: Of 8,629
people diagnosed with silicosis now suing in federal court in Corpus
Christi, 5,174—or 60%—are "asbestos retreads," i.e., people who have
previously filed claims for asbestos-related disease.
That anomaly turns out to be just one of
many in the Corpus Christi case that sorely challenge medical
explanation. At a hearing in February, U.S. District Judge Janis
Graham Jack characterized the evidence before her as raising "great
red flags of fraud," and a federal grand jury in Manhattan is now
looking into the situation, according to two people who have been
subpoenaed.
The real importance of those
proceedings, however, is not what they reveal about possible fraud
in silica litigation but what they suggest about a possible fraud of
vastly greater dimensions. It's one that may have been afflicting
asbestos litigation for almost 20 years, resulting in billions of
dollars of payments to claimants who weren't sick and to the
attorneys who represented them. Asbestos litigation—the original
mass tort—has bankrupted more than 60 companies and is expected to
eventually cost defendants and their insurers more than $200
billion, of which $70 billion has already been paid.
The odor around asbestosis diagnosis has
been so foul for so long that by 1999, professor Lester Brickman of
the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law was referring to asbestos
litigation as a "massively fraudulent enterprise." At the request of
his defamation lawyer, Brickman says, he toned that down to
"massive, specious claiming"
Why Cancer Strikes Some It's a conundrum that puzzles doctors and
patients alike: one person smokes a few cigarettes per week in college
and contracts lung cancer in middle age, while another person smokes a
pack a day his whole life -- and lives to age 90. A new program
announced last week by the National Institutes of Health aims to unravel
such mysteries by precisely measuring the role that environmental
agents, such as pesticides and solvents, play in common diseases,
including cancer, asthma, and autism. A major part of the program will
fund the development of technologies to monitor personal environmental
exposures and to determine how those exposures interact with an
individual's genetic makeup to increase the risk for disease. Scientists
hope these technologies will allow doctors to determine who is at risk
early on, and thus be able to intervene.
Emily Singer, "Why Cancer Strikes Some: New ways to gauge an
individual's response to environmental toxins will help scientists
understand susceptibility to disease," MIT's Technology Review,
February 16, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16348,304,p1.html
Question
So who are usually the master chefs cooking the accounting books and
what is their main reason?
Answer: The executives wanting fat
bonuses
Question:
What is the typical ploy?
Answer
Get the fat bonus and then issue revised financial statements. Who
ever heard of executives having to give back the cash bonuses
received after the financial statements are revised?
Example
Besides Enron, look at big fat Fannie Mae Investigators have uncovered new evidence
that senior executives of Fannie Mae, the nation's largest buyer of home
mortgages, manipulated its accounting in the 1990's to meet earnings
projections so that top executives could receive more than $25 million
in bonuses. In a 2,600-page report that was made public today, former
Senator Warren Rudman and a team of lawyers and investigators concluded
after an 18-month investigation that Fannie Mae's accounting practices
"in virtually all of the areas that we reviewed were not consistent
with" generally accepted accounting principles. Stephen Labaton and Eric Dash, "Report on Fannie Mae
Cites Manipulation to Secure Bonuses," The New York Times, February 23,
2006 ---
Click Here
Report protects the fannies
of Fannie's Board of Directors: But executives are hit hard They said the report criticizes Timothy Howard,
the company's former chief financial officer, and Leanne G. Spencer, the
former controller, for their roles in setting accounting policies. They
added that the report focuses less criticism on Franklin D. Raines, the
former chief executive, but says the company's management didn't keep
the board adequately informed about accounting problems. (See
related article)
James R. Hagerty, "Fannie Report On Accounting Shields Board,"
February 23, 2006; Page A2 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114066161292580888.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
The Culture of Corruption Runs Deep and Wide in
Both U.S. Political Parties: Few if any are uncorrupted Committee members have shown no
appetite for taking up all those cases and are
considering an amnesty for reporting violations,
although not for serious matters such as accepting a
trip from a lobbyist, which House rules forbid. The data
firm PoliticalMoneyLine calculates that members of
Congress have received more than $18 million in travel
from private organizations in the past five years, with
Democrats taking 3,458 trips and Republicans taking
2,666. . . But of course, there are those who deem the
American People dumb as stones and will approach this
bi-partisan scandal accordingly. Enter Democrat Leader
Nancy Pelosi, complete with talking points for her
minion, that are sure to come back and bite her ....
“House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) filed
delinquent reports Friday for three trips she accepted
from outside sponsors that were worth $8,580 and
occurred as long as seven years ago, according to copies
of the documents.
Bob Parks, "Will Nancy Pelosi's Words Come Back to Bite
Her?" The National Ledger, January 6, 2006 ---
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27262498.shtml
Doesn't S.304 of
Sarbanes-Oxley say that they have to give the
bonuses back?
I'm not being picky, it's a
serious question. I'm currently doing some research
for a client comparing SOX with the European 8th
Directive, and so have just had the joy of reading
the full text of both. My reading of SOX is that
Fannie Mae's CEO and CFO would have to pay back the
bonuses.
If that's NOT the case,
would someone mind emailing me to point out my error
please! Take it offline -
r.bender@cranfield.ac.uk
Thanks
Ruth
February 24, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
You may be right about this Ruth, although I
don’t know of this ever happening before SOX. Also,
if bonuses of given throughout a company, it may be
hard to collect money back that’s already spent.
Also it would get sticky if the accounting mistakes
were truly accidents.
It would be far better if Congressional
representatives had to give their take back in the
case of Fannie Mae.
Bob Jensen
The findings come as Fannie Mae's regulator
considers whether to force some former executives to return bonuses. And
the report will not be the final word on the scandal: the Justice
Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are still
investigating former executives. Fannie Mae was run with "an attitude of
arrogance," according to the report, which catalogs how the company
violated accounting principles repeatedly to show stable earnings and
less volatility. But the most troubling finding was that the company,
rattled by falling interest rates in 1998, improperly delayed taking
nearly $200 million in expenses.
Stephen Labaton and Eric Dash, "Loan Buyer Accounting Is Faulted,"
The New York Times, February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/business/24fannie.html
February 24, 2006 reply from Linda Kidwell, University of Wyoming
[lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]
Section 304 requires CEOs and CFOs to
reimburse their companies for bonuses or other incentives earned as
a result of statements later restated as a result of misconduct.
Quoting from Robert Prentice's "Student Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act" (page 28):
"Among several unanswered questions about
this provision is how 'misconduct' should be construed. Does it
require fraudulent intent or just recklessness or even some lesser
wrong? . . . is the misconduct of underlings that the CEO and CFO
are unaware of sufficient to require disgorgement?"
I suppose we'll have to let the courts
interpret this one as time goes on.
Linda
February 24, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Linda,
Thank you for the direct quotes.
I
suspect only very stupid executives will actually have to pay back
any bonuses.
One can imagine all sorts of moral hazards here. For example,
suppose CEO Jones (having a salary of $12 million per year)
conspires with Green Eyeshade Lotus (having a salary of $21,000 per
year) to fudge a journal entry resulting in a $500 million
overstatement of earnings. Both secretly split Jones' bonus of $20
million. Of course the G.E. Lotus $10 million "gift" from his boss
is deposited in a secret bank account in the Cayman Islands.
They're both in tall cotton unless the error gets detected and
requires revision of the company's financial statements. If caught,
Jones claims no knowledge of the mistake, and G.E. Lotus readily
confesses that he very accidentally slipped a few digits. Of course
he got no bonus so there's nothing to pay back. Jones announces to
the media that G.E. Lotus has been fired. But that doesn't matter
much to G.E., because he's soon eating lotus leaves in Tahiti. Jones
keeps his half of the take because he is not even accused of
misconduct.
Even if Jones had never met his employee G.E. prior to auditor
discovery of the accounting error, Jones might seek out G.E. to take
the fall ex post (for a$10 million gift). The problem with these
kinds of deals in modern times is that the amount of money involved
is so staggering.
Someday you may want to read one of my favorite short stories by
Somerset Maugham. It's entitled "The Lotus Eater" ---
http://shortstory.byethost6.com/maughamlotus.html
I'm a bit worried about a long life now that now that I'm retiring.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It
prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
All I want to know is, in my many years in
corporate accounting before I joined academe, where were the people
who were supposed to offer ME deals like this? What, do I look like
a Goody-Two-Shoes or something?
Pat
February 24, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Pat,
The reason is that CEOs don't make such deals to people like you
Pat who spout quotations like the one below"
"In a house of gold, the hours are lead."
The CEO will always scout out a naïve bookkeeper who daydreams
that a life nibbling on lotus leaves in a gold house is more fun
over the long haul hour by hour day after day.
Put in another way, those are the bookkeepers, unlike you, who
take Glen Gray to heart when Glen tried to convince a judge that the
best jobs entail never having to wear anything but pajamas. I read
somewhere (certainly it could not have been in Playboy Magazine)
that Hugh Hefner has over 300 pairs of pajamas in his Playboy
Mansion.
But I think that's because "He Don't Look Good Naked Anymore" in
his house of gold or so he says (turn up the speakers) ---
http://www.goodolddogs.com/older.html
The stock market seemed relieved yesterday
when Warren Rudman's 2,652-page report into Fannie Mae's accounting
troubles didn't report major new discrepancies in the mortgage
giant's books. That news was enough to put the stock up about 2% on
the day after a nearly 4% rise Wednesday ahead of the report's
release.
And we suppose it is good news of a sort
that Fannie Mae's accounting restatement, for which the world has
been waiting for more than a year, won't grow from the $10.8 billion
figure already estimated. But $10.8 billion is big enough as it is;
WorldCom's fraud came to "only" $11 billion. The report's main
findings paint the picture of a company that routinely flouted both
the rules and law. Some conclusions from the executive summary give
a flavor:
• "[M]anagement's accounting practices
in virtually all of the areas that we reviewed were not
consistent with GAAP, and, in many areas, management was aware
of the departures from GAAP" (emphasis added).
• "[E]mployees who occupied critical
accounting, financial reporting, and audit functions at the
Company were either unqualified for their positions, did not
understand their roles, or failed to carry out their roles
properly."
• "[T]he information that management
provided to the Board of Directors with respect to accounting,
financial reporting, and internal audit issues generally was
incomplete and, at times, misleading."
• "[T]he Company's accounting systems
were grossly inadequate."
The report also identified one case, in
1998, where earnings were manipulated specifically to meet a bonus
target. That one instance was a doozy, however; a $199 million
amortization expense that went unreported in order to make sure
management got its lush payday.
If Fannie Mae were a normal private
company, it would be tarred and feathered faster than you can say
"Enron." But Fannie Mae is not just another private company. It has
a federal charter and an implicit guarantee from the government
(read: taxpayers) of its debt. Which makes it all the more vital
that Congress reduce the risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose
to our financial system and the federal fisc.
****************
One of the Rudman report's more worrisome findings was that Fannie's
derivatives accounting was wrong because Fannie claimed that its
hedges exactly matched its risk exposure when it did not. Fannie has
long claimed it is capable of perfectly hedging the interest-rate
and prepayment risks in its $800 billion portfolio of
mortgage-backed securities. The Rudman report found that that often
was not true. But the report only looked at the accounting issues
posed by derivatives and hedging, so the public still knows precious
little about the extent of the portfolio risk.
****************
The report lets former CEO Franklin Raines
off lightly, blaming him mainly for a "culture" that tolerated the
accounting abuses. But the core of that culture was a belief that
critics -- including us -- could be dismissed and assailed because
the company knew it had Congress bought and paid for. And judging by
the laughably weak reform that Financial Services Chairman Mike
Oxley passed through the House, it still does. If Republicans on
Capitol Hill want to know why voters think they've gone native, the
failure to rein in Fannie even after a $10.8 billion accounting
scandal is Exhibit A.
Jensen Comment
Fannie Mae fired the KPMG auditing firm and is now spending over $140
million just to restate past financial statements. Most of the troubles
center on FAS 133 rules for reporting derivative financial instrument
hedges.
How to anticipate problems in the fast-growing market of credit
derivatives?
Risk does not evaporate: After all the market diffusion of risk,
somebody must end up bearing the risk "The size of gross exposures and the
extraordinarily large number of contracts suggest the scale of the
unwinding challenge the market would confront in the event of the exit
of a major counterparty," Timothy Geithner, president of the New York
Fed observed in a speech yesterday. Mr. Geithner added that the 10
largest U.S. banks have about $600 billion in net potential credit
exposure in the derivatives market, and that exposure represents about
20% of their total credit exposure. Banks have increased their exposure
to the credit-derivatives markets by about 15% relative to their capital
over the past five years.
Henny Sender, "Concerns Dog Credit Derivatives: Industry-Group
Symposium Explores Market Imbalances Bankruptcies,"The Wall
Street Journal, March 1, 2006; Page C3 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114118157518586167.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing
After a one-day flurry of nervousness surrounding the
collapse of Barings PLC, financial markets returned to a
nominal calm. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose
22.48 to 4011.05, shy of its record high of 4011.74
reached Friday.
The settlements announced today, including
the largest penalties ever imposed on individual auditors, reflect the
seriousness with which the SEC regards the responsibilities of
gatekeepers."
It took forever, but KPMG partners finally settle with the SEC on
the really old Xerox accounting fraud The Commission (SEC) has announced on February
22, 2006 that all four remaining defendants in an action brought against
them and KPMG LLP by the agency in connection with a $1.2 billion
fraudulent earnings manipulation scheme by the Xerox Corporation from
1997 through 2000 have agreed to settle the charges against them. Three
partners agreed to permanent injunctions, payment of record civil
penalties and suspensions from practice before the Commission with
rights to reapply in from one to three years. The fourth partner agreed
to be censured by the Commission. "This case represents the SEC's
willingness to litigate important accounting fraud allegations against
major accounting firms and their audit partners, even where the
accounting was complex," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, the SEC's Director
of Enforcement. "The settlements announced
today, including the largest penalties ever imposed on individual
auditors, reflect the seriousness with which the SEC regards the
responsibilities of gatekeepers."
Andrew Priest, "FOUR CURRENT OR FORMER KPMG PARTNERS SETTLE SEC
LITIGATION RELATING TO XEROX AUDITS," Accounting Education News,
February 23, 2006 ---
http://accountingeducation.com/index.cfm?page=newsdetails&id=142393
Faculty Ambivalence: Debates on Unionization of
Faculty and Graduate Assistants
These strategies
do not seem to have paid dividends. The
PSC’s plan fizzled amidst widespread
faculty ambivalence about (or even
opposition to)
defying
New York State law,
which prohibits
strikes by public employee unions; a
settlement on terms well short of the
union’s “non-negotiable” demands appears
imminent. At NYU, President John Sexton
recently stated that striking graduate
students would not receive 2006 teaching
assignments; some of those who started
off on picket lines have
returned to their
jobs.
In retrospect, PSC and GSOC leaders
probably erred in their hard-line
rhetoric and actions. But the two
organizations also illustrate — if in an
exaggerated fashion — some of the
pitfalls associated with academic
unionization.
K.C. Johnson, "The Perils of Academic
Unions," Inside Higher Ed,
February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/02/24/johnson
Novel explored sexual politics among college
students
Tom Wolfe,whose last novel
explored sexual politics among college students, was
named Thursday by the National Endowment for the
Humanities to deliver this year’s Jefferson Lecture.
Being selected for the talk is considered a top honor by
the federal government for intellectual achievement.
Wolfe’s campus-based novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, was
published in 2004. He is best known for earlier works,
including The Bonfire of the Vanities, The
Right Stuff, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Inside Higher Ed, February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/24/qt
Debates on Size: Pomona College, Amherst, Rice, and Some Other
Small Colleges Plan to Grow in Size Pomona College, a Claremont McKenna neighbor,
is planning to increase enrollment — currently 1,500 — by 10 percent.
Amherst College has just unveiled a plan to increase the size of each
entering class, currently 410-425 students, by another 15-25 students.
Bryn Mawr College (total enrollment just over 1,200) is currently
conducting a feasibility study about its enrollment size. Grinnell
College last year decided to grow on-campus enrollments by about 150
students, to 1,500. And these moves — all of which involve creating
faculty slots as well — follow shifts involving even larger numbers of
students at places like Middlebury and Gettysburg Colleges. Other
colleges have resisted the trend. The president of Haverford College set
off an intense discussion on the campus last year with his suggestion
that the institution consider expansion. Plans circulated to add several
hundred students. With many students and professors opposed to the idea,
Haverford is staying put at 1,150.
Scott Jaschik, "Size Matters," Inside Higher Ed, February 24,
2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/24/libarts
February 24, 2006 reply from Susan Baker
In case you have not heard, Rice U is
proposing an increase of up to 30% in its undergraduate student
body.
Susan Baker
Wright said he does not fully agree with the
suggestion that Dartmouth is less visible. Still, he acknowledged that
the College's size and location might present challenges that its
larger, urban peers do not face. "We compete very well because we stay
focused on what we do," Wright said. "We understand that our niche is to
provide an exceptional undergraduate education -- the strongest in the
country." Wright said bigger institutions are not necessarily better and
that there was a particular "magic" about Dartmouth. He added that the
College has name recognition "for those people who count a lot" --
potential students and parents and faculty.
Dax Tejera, "Wright looks to future, $1.3 billion in fundraising,"
The Dartmouth, March 3, 2005 ---
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2005030301020
When you start the college search, there are
a lot of different qualities to look into when trying to find the ever
elusive "perfect school." You debate on the college's size, strong
majors and departments, location, and guy/girl ratio (something I should
have taken more careful notice to). But who looks into the "unofficial
campus day of nakedness?" I know I sure didn't. It was definitely a
surprise to me, coming in as a wide-eyed freshman, when I was approached
by a few smug upperclassmen, asking me if I was going to participate in
May Day. May Day? Who cares about May Day? It's just another weird
holiday marked down in my planner book. I never got off from school for
it; why should it be significant to me? And when they further explained
this phenomenon that seems to happen only in Chestertown (well, at least
in terms of college campuses), I was pretty shocked. How did it start?
Where did the idea come from? And why is getting naked a factor in this
whole crazy day? I decided to go to the most reliable source in order to
find the answer to my questions: a giant mass blitz to all four grades.
Surely somebody had to know something; there had to be some knowledge to
be passed on. Only moments later, I started getting my first responses
back; after a couple of hours, I had a little over a dozen. The answer?
"Talk to Professor Lamond."
Sara Wuillermin, The Collegian, May 2002 ---
http://collegian.washcoll.edu/may02/may.html
Jensen Comment
The above piece by Sara Wuillermin is also interesting from the
standpoint of her poetry class and nudity events on campus.
And just because I love my readers so much
(yes, all five of you are very special to me) I took the next step
and approached the founding father who gave us a day of freedom from
synthetic fabrics and itchy clothes. After my afternoon chat with
the good professor, my eyes were opened to all things May Day.
It began in 1968 in a 10:30am Forms of Lit.
and Comp. class. Spring had found its way to Chestertown, and it was
the perfect time for Professor Lamond's class to study "Carpe Diem"
poems-Herrick's "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May," "Corrina's Gone A
Maying," Hopkins's "Spring." Who knows if it was the poetry that
inspired one of Lamond's students or if it was the whole idea of
seizing the day, but, at any rate, Peter Hellar seized the
opportunity (horrible pun intended) to ask the question that changed
Washington College forever: "Instead of just reading about these
poems, why don't we do these poems?"
So Lamond made his way to Fox's Five and
Dime to buy crepe paper in order to decorate the first May Pole. The
students helped in the preparations as well. One student brought his
guitar to provide music, while another walked throughout Chestertown
and picked a single flower from every lawn. And when the time came,
the class made their way to the site where the May Pole stood, a
spot that was not directly on campus at the time, where the CAC and
Fine Arts center now are. There were strawberries, there were Chips
Ahoy cookies, there were beverages, but was there nudity? Not unless
you count bare feet.
I know, I know you're waiting for the "good
parts" (aren't I the ultimate jokester with the puns?) when May Day
got crazy and became the foundation for students today who like to
bare all and be free. But that wasn't in the agenda on this first
celebration on campus. It happened the second time around, but not
during Lamond's class time frolic. We can thank for the nakedness a
half dozen guys who decided to show more than their free spirits
after the official festivities were over.
When Lamond's class was done May Daying it
up, they decided to leave their May Pole standing, as a symbol of
their celebration. Plus it looked too damn nice to tear down. Hours
later, a group of males students decided to transport the pole to
the front of Hodson Hall, where they stripped down to their bare
nothingness and showed their own appreciation of the rejuvenation of
spring. (There's still speculation as to whether or not these
gentlemen were Sigs ...) Ever since this point, the spirit of this
liberating tradition seems to ring true through many of the students
of WAC. It wasn't until the mid-70s that the women finally started
participating in the event, and, as always, the ladies made sure to
show up the men's efforts. Jaime Lang remembered hearing, "a girl
rode down what used to be the old caterwalk naked, on a motorcycle,
with her friend, arms outstretched on the back" Lamond confirmed the
story, noting, "They revved their way right up".
Nicole Mancini recalls how she first heard
about the day: "I think I originally heard about May Day's origin
freshmen year. A bunch of us were sitting around in the Dining Hall
(back when we actually liked the food) talking about it ... I
remember hearing stories of the 'Naked Games' and things like that."
And her thoughts about the modern day
attempts? "Now it seems that a lot of the fun has disappeared due to
so many lacking the confidence to 'strut' their stuff. But the
craziest May Day happening? When that naked guy fell down the
flagpole and had to be rushed to the hospital. Talk about ... uhh
... entertainment!"
Stephanie Coomer was skeptical when she
first heard about the event: "My dad went to WAC, too, and he was
the first person to tell me about May Day. I didn't really believe
him 'cause he tends to be a fibber, but when I was a sophomore, I
finally realized the truth about May Day (I was sleeping out for HFS
festival tickets freshman year). The first thing I saw when I walked
out of the dorm was a naked Jay Maschas ... That's when I knew it
was real."
Catherine Dowling praises the grand spring
event: "May Day is great. I lived in Kent, the dorm which I feel
best captures the spirit of May Day every day. Anyone who has lived
there knows what I'm talking about: Kent is like its own country.
And May Day is the national holiday. The Kent people usually didn't
feel weird about doing May Day because it was a part of life there."
But Dowling has some pet peeves about the
day as well: "My least favorite part of May Day is all the people
who come to the flagpole just to watch. I understand that the naked
people have it coming because, let's be honest, who wouldn't be
curious about such a spectacle? But it is still kind of creepy to
have that huge sea of people just standing there staring. C'mon, put
down those cameras, and join in! Don't be afraid, let loose and
enjoy one of the few moments in life when you can run around buck
ass naked and not get arrested. I know some people hate May Day, but
it is not meant to offend. It's all in fun, and it's just about
doing something crazy and a little naughty before you get out in the
real world, where I hear they don't condone public nudity."
Our Kent correspondent also recalls some
May Day legend: "The craziest story I've heard is that one year a
naked guy made the mistake of being naked in the street and got
arrested. Apparently his friends surrounded the police station,
yelling "free naked guy!" until the police let him go. I don't know
how much of this is true, but I like the happy ending."
Well Catherine, it is true. The boy was
known as Miami, and while trying to cross Washington Avenue, a car
swerved to miss his nakedness. Miami was charged for his public
display of nudity and for causing the accident, and was taken in,
still completely in the buff. Upon hearing the news, one of the
Deans went down and gave the boy his sweater, which did everything
but cover up what needed to be. Soon, a fully- clothed group of
students followed the Dean to the station and screamed to the
officers, "Free Miami!" But the story doesn't end there The Kent
County News heard of the protest and ran a story in the paper about
the naked rioting in Chestertown. Suddenly, wires were sent all
over, and not only did this whole community learn of the incident,
but it reached Chestertowners vacationing in Ireland and even the
local Catholic priest who was in Hawaii at the time (If only I could
think of some sort of witty quip to comment on this, but for once,
I'm at a loss, as I'm sure the good Father was).
But, I hope with this new background to
this day, my fellow WAC chums will realize this magical day is not
just about seeing fellow students in a whole new light, but it's
also a celebration of life, love, and seizing the day. So before you
go out and strut you stuff, find a couple minutes, read "Gather Ye
Rosebuds While Ye May" and appreciate its meaning then go rent "8
minute abs."
A U.S. security expert
who devised an application that can fill an iPod
with business-critical data in a matter of
minutes is urging companies to address the very
real threat of data theft.
Abe Usher, a 10-year
veteran of the security industry, created an
application that runs on an iPod
and can search corporate
networks for files likely to contain
business-critical data. At a rate of about 100MB
every couple minutes, it can scan and download
the files onto the portable storage units in a
process dubbed "pod
slurping."
To the naked eye, somebody
doing this would look like any other employee
listening to their iPod at their desk.
Alternatively, the person stealing data need not
even have access to a keyboard but can simply
plug into a USB port on any active machine.
Question
What's the "Rubber Room" in Detroit? Hint:
It has nothing to do with tires.
"Detroit's Symbol of Dysfunction: Paying Employees Not to Work: Cost
Tops $1.4 Billion a Year As Layoffs Fill 'Jobs Bank'; A Dismal Facility
in Flint Mr. Mellon Takes a Long Nap," by Jeffrey McCracken, The Wall
Street Journal, March 1, 2006; Page A1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114118143005186163.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
In his 34 years working for General Motors
Corp., one of Jerry Mellon's toughest assignments came this January.
He spent a week in what workers call the "rubber room."
The room is a windowless old storage shed
for engine parts. It is filled with long tables, Mr. Mellon says,
and has space for about 400 employees. They must arrive at 6 a.m.
each day and stay until 2:30 p.m., with 45 minutes off for lunch. A
supervisor roams the aisles, signing people out when they want to
use the bathroom.
Their job: to do nothing.
This is the "Jobs Bank," a two-decade-old
program under which nearly 15,000 auto workers continue to get paid
after their companies stop needing them. To earn wages and benefits
that often top $100,000 a year, the workers must perform some
company-approved activity. Many do volunteer jobs or go back to
school. The rest must clock time in the rubber room or something
like it.
It is called the rubber room, Mr. Mellon
says, because "a few days in there makes you go crazy."
The Jobs Bank at GM and other U.S. auto
companies including Ford Motor Co. is likely to cost around $1.4
billion to $2 billion this year. The programs, which are up for
renewal next year when union contracts expire, have become a symbol
of why Detroit struggles even as Japanese auto makers with big U.S.
operations prosper.
While GM often blames "legacy costs" such
as retiree health care and pensions for its troubles, its Job Bank
shows that the company has inflicted some wounds on itself.
Documents show that GM itself helped originate the Jobs Bank idea in
1984 and agreed to expand it in 1990, seeing it as a stopgap until
times got better and workers could go back to the factories.
"The bank was designed for a different
time, a time when we were growing," says Pete Pestillo, a former
Ford executive who oversaw union talks. The Jobs Bank has failed to
stop the outflow of jobs at Detroit's unionized auto makers. Since
1990, GM's union payroll including former subsidiary Delphi Corp.
has fallen to about 137,000 from 358,000. Many have retired, died or
found other jobs. The rest are in the Jobs Bank.
Mr. Mellon, a 55-year-old father of two,
was born in Flint. He joined GM in 1972, following his grandfather
and his father, a plant foreman who spent 37 years at GM. Through
the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Mellon held jobs designing electronic
systems for vehicle prototypes. In 2000, GM merged two engineering
divisions, and he wasn't needed anymore.
Since then, except for a period in 2001
when he worked on a military-truck project, GM has paid him his full
salary for not working. That is currently $31 an hour, or about
$64,500 a year, plus health care and other benefits.
Continued in article
GMermany German businesses are profiting from
cost-cutting measures, an improved global outlook and better sentiment
at home. But the fundamental problems remain the same as in Gerhard
Schröder's seven years at the helm. Labor laws are too rigid, though
firing rules were relaxed for the first two years of employment. Taxes
rates are high and complicated, the bureaucracy onerous, the schools and
universities subpar and health-care and pension costs exploding. For all
the current optimism, Germany looks more like GM than Toyota or Porsche.
In the next 100 days, if she is serious about fixing her country's
deeper problems, Ms. Merkel will need to shift into higher gear.
"GMermany," The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2006 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114116202709985718.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Last week I appeared on a radio show with
an author named John Perkins. This man is a frothing conspiracy
theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense, and yet his book, "Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man," is a runaway best seller.
The world, says Mr. Perkins, is governed by
a shadowy "corporatocracy," an invisible empire of wealth and greed
that deploys a combination of bribes, assassins and seductive women
to enslave the poorest countries. Mr. Perkins served this empire as
an "economic hit man," a consultant who bamboozled unsuspecting
Asians and Latin Americans into borrowing too much, so puncturing
their sovereignty. The loans financed lucrative contracts for
American construction firms. Needless to say, Mr. Perkins is certain
that they did not help poor people.
Even if you believe the stories of seducers
and assassins, which other journalists have questioned, Mr.
Perkins's basic contentions are flat wrong. Sure, developing
countries (like rich countries) borrow too much sometimes. But the
poor don't always lose. Nor are corporations all-powerful.
Mr. Perkins likes to invoke Indonesia, the
scene of his first hit-man assignment. The way he tells it, the
development economists who persuaded Indonesia to borrow money
around 1970 were peddling a ludicrous idea -- that Indonesia's
economy could spring from the dark age to the modern age in a mere
generation. Well, Indonesia's infant mortality and adult illiteracy
rates each fell by two-thirds over the next three decades, and life
expectancy shot up by 19 years.
The same point holds for the developing
world generally. The adult illiteracy rate in the poor world was
halved between 1970 and 2000, and since 1980 the number of people
living on less than $1 a day has fallen by about 200 million, even
as the world's population has expanded rapidly. That is a stunning
achievement given that the ranks of the poor had previously been
swelling steadily, at least since 1820.
The poor have made these gains because Mr.
Perkins's second contention is equally wrong: The corporatocracy is
neither evil nor omnipotent. Survey after survey has shown that the
multinational companies vilified by Mr. Perkins pay better wages
than their local rivals in poor countries: One study of 20,000
Indonesian manufacturing plants found that the average pay in
foreign-owned factories was 50% higher than in local ones -- and
also that foreign competition pushed local wages upward. As Martin
Wolf remarks in his book, "Why Globalization Works," multinational
firms induce a race to the top more than a race to the bottom.
Mr. Perkins has tapped into a widespread
fear. Thanks to the Bush administration, the mere mention of
Halliburton is enough to prove the anticorporate case to many
bookshop audiences. But the truth is that corporations do not rule
the world, and intensifying global competition has rendered them
more vulnerable.
Ernst and Young should go ahead and pony up
for its own suite of transparency services. The accounting firm
failed to disclose a high profile loss of customer data until being
confronted by The Register.
Ernst and Young has lost a laptop
containing data such as the social security numbers of its
customers. One of the people affected by the data loss appears to be
Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who was notified that his social
security number and personal information have been compromised.
While pushing all out transparency for its customers, Ernst and
Young failed to cop to the security breach until contacted by us.
"We deeply regret that a laptop containing
confidential client information was stolen, in what appears to be a
random act, from the locked car of one of our employees," said Ernst
and Young spokesman Charles Perkins. "The security and
confidentiality of our client information is of critical importance
to us. The computer was password-protected, and we have no reason to
believe the data itself was targeted or that the information was
accessed by anyone. We are notifying those clients whose information
was contained on the computer."
Ernst and Young declined to comment on
whether or not McNealy was affected.
However, at lat week's RSA security
conference, McNealy noted that he received an e-mail from an
"anonymous partner" detailing a loss of his private data. "We
determined that your name and social security number were among the
data (lost)," the partner wrote to McNealy.
"This is an organization that we spend an
enormous amount of money on to determine whether we are
Sarbanes-Oxley compliant," McNealy said.
"Six Reasons to Kill Farm Subsidies and Trade Barriers: A
no-nonsense reform strategy," by Daniel Griswold, Stephen Slivinski,
and Christopher Preble, Reason Magazine, February 2006 ---
http://www.reason.com/0602/fe.dg.six.shtml
America’s agricultural policies have
remained fundamentally unchanged for nearly three-quarters of a
century. The U.S. government continues to subsidize the production
of rice, milk, sugar, cotton, peanuts, tobacco, and other
commodities, while restricting imports to maintain artificially high
domestic prices. The competition and innovation that have changed
the face of the planet have been effectively locked out of America’s
farm economy by politicians who fear farm voters more than the
dispersed consumers who subsidize them.
The time is ripe for unilaterally removing
those distorting trade policies. In 2006 Congress will begin to
write a new farm bill to replace the protectionist and subsidy-laden
2002 legislation that is set to expire in 2007. Meanwhile, the Bush
administration will be negotiating with 147 other members of the
World Trade Organization to conclude the Doha Round before the
president’s trade promotion authority expires in mid-2007. Congress
and the administration should seize the opportunity to do ourselves
a big favor by eliminating farm subsidies and trade barriers, a
change that would benefit all Americans in six important ways.
Continued in article
Remedial Math for the President The administration's reductions in tax rates
have been a success, so the first part of that claim is fine. After
that, it goes downhill. President Bush's previous budgets increased
spending by a dramatic 48.7 percent in six years. Defense spending
increased by 67 percent while non-defense spending increased by 49
percent. It sometimes seems as if things are getting worse with each
passing year. This year, total spending is increasing by 9.6 percent and
has reached 20.8 percent as a percentage of GDP, up from 18.4 percent
when President Clinton left office—that's a $909 billion increase in six
years. The administration has been arguing that much of the increase in
non-defense spending stemmed from higher homeland-security spending.
However, the fact is that over half of all new spending in the past two
years is from areas unrelated to defense and homeland security.
Véronique de Rugy, "Remedial Math for the President The only thing
missing from the 2007 budget is fiscal responsibility," Reason
Magazine, February 7, 2006 ---
http://www.reason.com/hod/vdr020706.shtml
Scholar's Dictionary Of Aztec Language May Take a Lifetime An American anthropologist has made it his
life's work to create perhaps the most extensive archive of Nahuatl, the
language spoken by Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest . . . Word
by word, Mr. Amith is creating an extensive archive of Nahuatl, the
language spoken by the Aztecs at the time of the 16th century Spanish
conquest and now the first language of 1.5 million Mexican Indians. He
records fables and personal histories, collects plants and insects, and
keeps up a nonstop patter with locals, searching for information to add
to a Web site he is building that is part dictionary, part encyclopedia
and part storybook.
Bob Davis, "Scholar's Dictionary Of Aztec Language May Take a Lifetime:
To Find the Words, Mr. Amith Collects Bugs, Folk Tales, Endures Village
Rivalries," The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2006; Page A1
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114075216418482236.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
A Girl in Science: High school student finds new protein A 16-year-old Glenelg, Md., high school
student has received a patent for a protein that reportedly might help
fight one of the world's deadliest diseases. Serena Fasano, a junior at
Glenelg High School, told the Baltimore Sun the patent officially
is owned by the University of Maryland, but she will be allowed to name
it, although she's not allowed to call the protein Serena, or name it
after any of her friends. Instead, it will need a scientific name
indicating it is a probiotic -- a beneficial protein. A 16-year-old
Glenelg, Md., high school student has received a patent for a protein
that reportedly might help fight one of the world's deadliest diseases.
"High school student finds new protein," PhysOrg, February 22,
2006 ---
http://www.physorg.com/news11114.html
Globe Goes Digital As the pace of
modernization accelerates around the globe, so too has computer usage
and access to the internet. The latest Pew Global Attitudes poll found
substantially more people using a computer and going online now than in
2002. And it is not just the young who are increasing their use of
technology; in many countries computer use has accelerated most rapidly
among people over 50. In each of the 13 countries for which historical
comparisons can be made, more people now use computers at home, school
or work than in 2002. The rise is dramatic in Turkey, Russia, India and
Poland, where the number of those who say they use a computer at least
occasionally has risen by 13 percent to 16 percent in the three years
between surveys. Great Britain has seen the largest increase in computer
use, up 17 percent since 2002. More modest gains have been made in the
U.S. and the rest of Western Europe, where majorities already reported
using computers in 2002 although even in these countries the use of such
technology has increased significantly. Internet use is also on the rise
in both industrialized societies and developing countries, with the
greatest increases among the British, Poles and French. However, there
is a stark divide between those countries with high rates of internet
use and those with less access to this technology. Read the full report
at
http://pewglobal.org/ Pew Research 2/21/06
February 23, 2006 message from Aaron Konstam
TO PUT THE OIL PRICE INTO PERSPECTIVE:
COST BELOW ARE FOR A BARREL..... (42
GALLONS)
Crude Oil: $60
Coca Cola: $78.73
Milk: $126
Evian Water: $189.90
Orange Juice $251.16
Snapple Juice: $267.12
Perrier Water: $328.67
Lemon Oil: $390.88
Crisco Oil: $435.12
Scope Mouthwash: $826.65
Sunflower Oil: $971.04
Olive Oil: $1,324.38
Real maple Syrup: $1,787.52
Sesame Oil: $2,535.61
Jack Daniels Bourbon: $4,133.26 (Oh
No!)
Tannin Oil: $4,290.05
Visine Eye Drops: $32,202.24 (and
most of that is inert filler)
Flonase Prescription Nasal Spray:
$238,133.21 (and most of that is inert filler)
Glenn Kroger replied: Inkjet inks (based on typical HP 10 ml black
cartridge) $178,000
Jensen Comment
And gasoline costing $2.39 at the pump comes to slightly over $100 for
42 gallons after being extracted from crude and shipped to the corner
gas station. Of course oil companies also extract many other valuable
commodities out of that $60 barrel of crude oil.
Turn Off File Sharing In Google Desktop
Tech research firm Gartner Inc. is recommending
that enterprises turn off the file-sharing feature in Google Inc.'s
desktop software. In a research posting on its site, Gartner said
businesses allowing employees to use Google Desktop 3 Beta, which was
released Feb. 9, should start using the enterprise version of the
software immediately. In addition, it said businesses should disable the
Search Across Computers feature.
Antone Gonsalves, "Gartner: Turn Off File Sharing In Google Desktop,"
InformationWeek, February 17, 2006 ---
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180204161
"Fulfilling Technology's Broken Promise: A Perspective on
Educational Technology,"
by Robert Bilyk, co-founder of lodeStar Learning Inc. and Cyber Village
Academy, T.H.E. Journal, February 2006 ---
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/17933/
The Broken Promise of
Technology
The one inarguable difference between now and then
has been the promise that technology holds for the
classroom teacher. In the early 1980s, I worked with
stand-alone machines that could render stick figures
on the screen and display text and numbers. The
state of the art in audio was a few timely beeps.
Nevertheless, I could envision the promise and began
creating things that I could use in the classroom to
help kids.
Over the course of time,
more and more educators have turned to technology to
help kids—but only to be disappointed time and
again. Computers were expensive, they broke or
became obsolete, they didn’t talk to one another,
and they divided teachers’ allegiance through the
great schism of Macs vs. PCs. Then there was the
software that sat in shrink-wrapped packages unused.
Integrated Learning Systems (ILS) were also
expensive and inflexible. If a teacher didn’t like
the pedagogy or content of a particular lesson, she
could do little to change, add, or delete content.
Teachers had to accept the bad with the good: ILS
perpetuated the existence of the stick figure;
computers threatened the existence of the teacher.
At least, that was a common apprehension.
And despite the greater use of technology,
studies such as the Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study from the National Center for Education Statistics
have shown that our students still weren’t achieving well in math
and science compared to their European and Asian counterparts.
Fortunately, today’s educators are on the cusp of a tremendous
realization: The promise that computers held for increased student
achievement are finally being realized.
The New Promise of Technology
A teacher today who dares to imagine the possibilities that current
technology affords won’t be disappointed: The total cost of
ownership of a computer continues to decrease. Software is cheap and
oftentimes free. Access to the Internet and all of the educational
content that it holds is practically ubiquitous in American schools.
Standards permit dissimilar computers to communicate with one
another, and for educational content to be searched and shared.
Therefore, technology needs to be met halfway. Lead teachers, mentor
teachers, curriculum directors and administrators—teachers in
general—must dare to dream again. Schools must place networked
computers in classrooms, libraries, lobbies, and wherever else they
can be safely accessed. Accessibility to computers is essential.
Teachers need to be trained—not once but often. Professional
development is also essential because teachers need to support each
another. Ideally, teachers from common disciplines would network
with one another. The use of instructional technology by teachers to
improve student achievement must become habitual. And finally, all
roads must lead to the teacher. That is, all student performance
data must flow effortlessly to the teacher.
To fulfill the promise, computer use by
teachers must become habitual, and computer use to improve student
achievement must become habitual. The advent of learning management
systems like Microsoft Class Server, Blackboard and Desire2Learn has
enabled teachers to manage the student online learning experience.
Often, school districts direct this usage to the exception—offering
activities to children who are ill, replacing snow days with online
days, and providing a class to a home-schooled child.
The snow day example was my favorite. The
online snow day was designed by well-intentioned educators, but it
had its flaws. In this example, the school trained its entire staff
on an LMS so that one day, when it snowed, students could access
their courses online. On the day it snowed, the untested system
failed; staff were out of practice in creating, assigning, and
grading; and students could hardly remember how to log on. This
example might seem a little extraordinary, yet variations on this
same theme are commonplace. Rather than integrating online
curriculum into the example, schools flirt with technology at the
edges, addressing the “unusual situation” so that the business of
integrating the class with technology does not become “habitual” and
second nature for teachers.
I have spent time in these classes
reflecting on the role of the teacher. (I am mostly retired and
teach one accounting class online.) The most effective classes are
those that invlove two way communication with the students.
Technology and lectures are poor substitutes for this dialogue. The
electricity that sparks in the classes as the students offer ideas,
the instructor says give me more, other students say "I never
thought about that" is something to behold. I feel sorry for those
(including my students) who have to try to get an education without
this kind of enriching excitement.
Not Politically Correct: Media Outlets Ignore Saddam's Uranium
Bombshell Tape recordings released over the weekend show
that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program at least as
recently as 2000 - but the press has decided the bombshell development
isn't newsworthy. Speaking at the Intelligence Group Summit in
Arlington, Va., Saddam tapes translator Bill Tierney revealed that in
one recorded conversation, the Iraqi dictator can be heard discussing a
plan to enrich uranium using a technique known as plasma separation.
Though U.S. weapons inspectors found that 1.8 tons of Saddam's 500 ton
uranium stockpile had been partially enriched, they failed to turn up
any evidence of an ongoing enrichment program.
Carl Limbacher, "Media Ignore Saddam's Uranium Bombshell," NewsMax,
February 20, 2006 ---
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/20/85636.shtml?s=ic
Graduation Rates Unacceptably Low More than a third of high school students in
the state scheduled to graduate last June failed to do so, State
Education Commissioner Richard P. Mills said yesterday, calling the
figure "unacceptable." Among boys, the numbers were even worse, Mr.
Mills said, calling them "particularly disturbing." Statewide, 59.4
percent of boys graduated on time in 2005, compared with 69.2 percent of
girls. In New York City, the gap was more pronounced, with 37.3 percent
of boys and 49.8 percent of girls graduating on time last year.
Elissa Gootman, "High School Graduation Rates Unacceptably Low, State
Says," The New York Times, February 14, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/nyregion/14graduates.html?ex=1140757200&en=cb082ee38532272b&ei=5070
Are young women really drinking more alcohol? Therefore, we were disappointed to see that you
based your page-one article "Mixed
Company: As Young Women Drink More, Alcohol Sales, Concerns Rise"
(Feb. 15) on a Datamonitor study that purports to
show an increase of 33% in consumption of alcoholic drinks by volume
among young women aged 21 to 24. That would be big news in an industry
that measures market share progress in 1% upticks and downticks over the
years.The Datamonitor study inexplicably measured "liquid" volume, not
"alcohol" volume, an invented statistic used, to the best of our
knowledge, by neither government nor industry in the U.S. Put simply,
under the Datamonitor scenario, if an ounce of alcohol was added to five
ounces of orange juice, they counted this as six ounces of alcohol, a
false and completely meaningless measure of alcohol consumption. There
is no 33% alcohol volume increase in the U.S.; in fact, drinking by
women aged 18 to 25 has been flat in recent years, according to the
National Survey on Drug Use and Health. And, of course, drinking by
young adults aged 18 to 21 years is illegal.
Francine I. Katz, "Young Women Are Not Drinking More," The Wall
Street Journal, February 24, 2006; Page A13 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114075292613582249.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
The Renewed Upward Trend in Portable Electronic Books Richard D. Warren, a 58-year-old lawyer in
California, is halfway through Ken Follett's novel Jackdaws. But he
doesn't bother carrying around the book itself. Instead, he has a
digital version of Follett he reads on his Palm Treo each morning as he
commutes by train to San Francisco from his home in Berkeley. He's a big
fan of such digital books. Usually, there are around seven titles on his
Treo, and he buys at least two new ones each month. "It's just so
versatile," he says. "I've tried to convert some friends to this, but
they think it's kind of geeky." Geeky? For now, maybe, but not for much
longer. Many experts are convinced that digital books, after plenty of
false starts, are finally ready for takeoff. "Every other form of media
has gone digital -- music, newspapers, movies," says Joni Evans, a top
literary agent who just left the William Morris Agency to start her own
company that will focus on books and technology. "We're the only
industry that hasn't lived up to the pace of technology. A revolution is
around the corner."
"Digital Books: Start A New Chapter Lighter devices, better displays,
and the iPod craze could make them best-sellers," Business Week,
February 27, 2006 ---
Click Here
1. Many of these "free" books are books that
have been dropped by publishing firms or were never accepted by
publishing firms in the first place. If they were dropped, they have
met a rigorous reviewing process and may have made money for the
authors. In fact they might have been dropped simply due to the
all-to-frequent process of publishing company mergers that left
publisher oligopolists with too many textbooks on a given topic.
2. Whereas the end consumer makes many
choices about whether to use a product with advertising (e.g.,
magazine subscriptions, newspaper purchases, Google searches, etc.),
the choice of a textbook is usually in the hands of instructors
rather than end user students. In general, students are ceteris
paribus grateful for free textbooks even if they must endure a
certain amount of advertising. It's the "ceteris paribus" part
that's a problem. Those new textbooks costing students $90 or more
(without advertising) provide incentives for authors to make careful
revised editions. Also publishing firms have the revenues to provide
improved supplements (most of which really need improving in the
accounting textbook market sector). As of yet free textbooks, with
or without advertising, provide little monetary incentive to authors
or free-book publishing firms to constantly improve the product.
3. Free textbooks are not available in hard
copy. Some electronic publishers offer hard copy versions, usually
at prices cheaper than photocopying entire books would cost. Many of
us, and I mean me especially, prefer a hard copy version to read and
an electronic version to search. Good electronic versions also
provide convenient hypertext links and possibly even some
multimedia. Although Cybertext does not offer free textbooks, I like
the Cybertext option to also buy a hardcopy version. And I like the
hot links in the electronic versions and the option to take quizzes
online with results being graded and sent to instructors ---
http://www.cybertext.com/
Publishers of free textbooks are never likely to offer such services
unless advertising revenues become very successful. I don't think
any of them are at that point yet.
4. We should all be grateful that free
textbooks exist even if we do not ourselves adopt them for our
courses. In this age of price gouging by publisher oligopolies, the
free textbook alternatives may be about the only serious competition
that publishers face, especially when, not if, textbook publishers
finally invent a way to eliminate the used textbook market in their
own books.
February 14, 2006 message from a distributor of
free textbooks (that do have advertising)
To date our free textbooks have been made
possible by a combination of angel investor money and by the
principals in the company, who have invested both their time and
money. We have some advertisers (download a book and you'll see) and
seek more. We are actively pursuing sponsorships. More investment
has been promised. Authors receive a percentage of our revenues --
"net receipts"-- per book. They sign on because of their confidence
in our business model and in us.
We sell the paperback copies pretty much at
cost. Regardless, those monies are very limited, inasmuch as only
about 5 percent of students, thus far, end up buying the print book.
What propels our business is the widespread
perception that text prices are unreasonable. We are addressing this
situation in an innovative way. Moreover, we do not skimp on
instructor support; all our titles come with ancillaries available
to adopters.
In this case, "free" really does mean free.
This is not the proper forum, but I can provide testimonials and
contact information for many people who already have benefited from
this service.
Publisher Launches Ad-Supported Online Text
HarperCollins has announced a new program that will make book
content available free online,
supported by advertiser links that share the page with the text.
Officials from the publisher said the Harper program will focus on
nonfiction and reference books, noting that advertisers are likely
not as interested in paying to support literary fiction. The first
book offered in the program, "Go It Alone! The Secret to Building a
Successful Business on Your Own" by Bruce Judson, was published in
2004 and later released in paperback. One test of the program will
be whether ad sales offset lost sales, according to Murray, group
president of HarperCollins. Despite the ongoing squabbles over
online access to books, supporters of the idea still believe it has
potential. Author M.J. Rose said that no one wants to read an entire
book online but that if they have easy access to a text on the Web
and they like it, they will be encouraged to buy a copy. Associated
Press, 6 February 2006 Edupage, February 06, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060206/ap_en_bu/publishing_free_text
From the Wharton School blog at the University of Pennsylvania:
Where's Adobe Headed? With its acquisition of Macromedia on
December 3, 2005, Adobe Systems has become the fifth largest software
company in the world. It currently controls two of the dominant formats
for electronic content -- the Adobe Acrobat PDF format for electronic
documents and the Flash SWF format for interactive web content. Looking
ahead, CEO Bruce Chizen's goal is to have Adobe provide the interface
for any device with a screen -- "from a refrigerator to an automobile to
a video game to a computer to a mobile phone." Such ambitions put Adobe
squarely in the sites of Microsoft, which currently dominates desktop
software development. In a recent interview with Knowledge@Wharton,
Chizen spoke about the Macromedia acquisition, his plans for developing
the next-generation application platform and his views on the challenges
presented by Microsoft.
"After Acquiring Macromedia, What's Next for Adobe? Ask Bruce Chizen,"
Knowledge@Wharton, February 2006 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1399
There's just no limit on what Bush will agree to spend America's largest companies expect the
federal government to pay them about $4 billion over the next four years
to help keep their retiree health plans alive at a time when such
benefits are increasingly on the chopping block, according to a new
study by Credit Suisse First Boston. The money is due to start flowing
to employers this month as part of Medicare's new prescription drug
benefit. When Congress authorized the Medicare drug benefit, it also
agreed to start subsidizing the drug component of employers' retiree
health plans, to keep them from shifting their retirees into the
government program.
Mary Williams Walsh, "U.S. to Pay Big Employers Billions Not to End
Their Retiree Health Plans," The New York Times, February 24,
2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/business/24retire.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
From Wharton (with audio): A Million Little Embellishments: Truth
and Trust in Advertising and Publishing The disclosure that author James Frey lied in
his best-selling book, A Million Little Pieces, and the furor
that followed raise numerous questions about truth in advertising, trust
between sellers and buyers, brand image and reputation, as well as two
themes that Frey himself focused on in his now-discredited memoir of
recovery from substance abuse -- suffering and redemption. How
widespread is deception, when is stretching the truth acceptable, how
jaded are consumers towards the claims made by advertisers, and how
credible was Oprah's response to the Frey incident? Wharton experts
offer their views on truth and fiction.
"A Million Little Embellishments: Truth and Trust in Advertising and
Publishing " Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania,
Knowledge@Wharton , February 20, 2006 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1391
Television host Oprah Winfrey did a
commendable job redeeming herself and repairing her damaged personal
brand by apologizing to her audience for continuing to endorse the
book after it was learned that it contained fabrications, according
to Wharton faculty members who specialize in marketing, trust and
ethics. Although Frey suffered when Winfrey used her TV show to
scold him for embarrassing her by writing a book laden with
falsehoods, he came off ill-prepared and less than forthcoming. He
has tried to salvage his reputation by offering a written
explanation for his actions, which his publisher is now distributing
with new copies of his book. In the author's note Frey acknowledges
that he "embellished many details about my past experiences" and
that he wanted to create "the tension that all great stories
require." But Frey's statement may be too little, too late. It
remains uncertain whether he has fully redeemed himself and whether
many readers will buy future non-fiction books written by him, the
Wharton experts say.
Frey's publisher, Doubleday, and Winfrey
are not entirely out of the woods yet, either. Each must take
additional steps if they wish to restore entirely the trust that
existed between them and readers before "The Smoking Gun" website
posted an article on January 8 that debunked many of the statements
made in Frey's book. Several Wharton faculty members suggest that
Oprah, Doubleday and other publishers wishing to avoid Doubleday's
fate establish fact-checking procedures or take other measures to
ensure that claims made by memoirists are valid prior to marketing
or endorsing such books in the future.
Maurice E. Schweitzer, professor of
operations and information management, says there is simply no
question that writers of memoirs must stick to the facts because
that is what readers expect. To do otherwise risks an erosion of
trust between buyers and sellers similar to what happened after the
reporting scandals at the New York Times (Jayson Blair in 2003) and
the Washington Post (Janet Cooke in 1980) as well as any number of
similar controversies over the last 30 years. These include article
fabrications in the 1990s by Stephen Glass, a writer for The New
Republic magazine; Alex Haley's admission that he fictionalized
parts of his 1970s bestseller Roots; a phony biography of
billionaire recluse Howard Hughes by Clifford Irving in the 1970s
that landed Irving in jail; controversy over "historical" films by
director Oliver Stone; and the recent disclosure that Hwang Woo-suk,
a Korean scientist, had completely fabricated data in a research
paper on stem cells.
"People want to read The New York Times
because they want to get an accurate representation of what's going
on around them," says Schweitzer, who has written about trust and
unethical behavior. "People want to read memoirs because they seek
guidance about what an individual can or can't do, and they want to
be inspired by that. There are clear benefits if something is true."
In Schweitzer's view, Winfrey made two
mistakes. First, she endorsed A Million Little Pieces to members of
Oprah's Book Club in 2005 without checking its veracity. She later
made a bigger error in defending her choice of the book in a
telephone call to "Larry King Live" following "The Smoking Gun"
revelations. Winfrey told King that the controversy was "much ado
about nothing" because "the underlying message of redemption in
James Frey's memoir still resonates with me, and I know it resonates
with millions of other people who have read this book."
But Schweitzer says Winfrey made a
"fantastic" recovery from these missteps on a subsequent program,
aired January 26, 2006, on which Frey and his publisher, Nan A.
Talese, appeared. Winfrey apologized to viewers and posed
hard-hitting questions to Frey and Talese about the whole affair.
Frey admitted to extensive fabrications.
"If you could write a script for trying to
recover from those mistakes, she followed it," says Schweitzer.
Frey, however, "gets no marks for being forthcoming. At no point in
this process did he initiate an apology. It seemed the very point at
which he recanted he was prompted by somebody else. He didn't take
the initiative in promoting the truth. He comes off looking like a
very untrustworthy person. I don't see how he can recover from
that."
According to marketing professor Barbara
Kahn, the controversy represented a "branding crisis" for Winfrey.
Winfrey "violated the trust with her audience by saying the truth
didn't matter when she called the Larry King show. It was a
violation of a contract she had with her audience. If you think of
the brand 'Oprah,' the reason people put trust in it is she has the
resources to ensure something is true. That was violated."
Kahn adds that Winfrey had more to lose
than Frey as a result of the controversy, in part because he had
already reaped a fortune from the book's sales of some two million
copies. Says Kahn: "She is a brand name. She made a guarantee [by
initially endorsing the book] and her reputation was more at stake.
The cost was greater to her than to him."
The Right Way to Frame the Issue
Katherine A. Nelson, a Philadelphia-area
ethics consultant who teaches in Wharton Executive Education
programs, believes that Winfrey was not at fault for taking an
author's word about the truth of his book because the publisher
ostensibly had already done so. However, after doubts had been
raised, Winfrey "should not have called Larry King without doing
some fact-checking of her own. But once she learned more about Frey
and the 'facts' of the book, she did the right thing and made
lemonade out of the lemons she was handed by Frey. And she was right
to give him a few lemons of her own when she confronted him on her
show."
Wharton ethics professor Thomas W. Dunfee
says Winfrey's mistake in phoning Larry King was similar to errors
made by managers in many businesses: She did not see an ethical
problem because she did not "frame" the issue in the right way. As a
result, she missed seeing the larger issue and its risks.
Continued in article
From Wharton (with audio): Carl Icahn's Take on Time Warner and
Corporate America Carl Icahn's battle for Time Warner has just
intensified. Icahn, the corporate takeover specialist attempting to win
control of the media giant, held a press conference yesterday to
announce a plan to break Time Warner into four separate companies and
buy back $20 billion in stock -- all part of his crusade to oust
management for the benefit of shareholders. His press conference
followed a speech last week at the 2006 Wharton Economic Summit in which
he denied that he is an "imperial shareholder" out to rip companies
apart for quick gains. Icahn was responding to remarks made earlier at
the Summit by corporate lawyer Martin Lipton, who argued that a new
breed of aggressive shareholder is pressuring companies to produce
short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth.
"'If He Ruled the World': Carl Icahn's Take on Time Warner and Corporate
America," Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania,
Knowledge@Wharton , February 20, 2006 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1392
Google's Brilliant Philanthropist Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have tapped
Dr. Larry Brilliant to spend up to $1.1 billion of the outfit's money on
what ails the world Business Week, February 22, 2006 ---
Click Here
From NPR: Hedge Fund HedgeHogging (with audio) The hedge fund industry is one of the
fastest growing corners of the investment world. Now Wall Street insider
Barton Biggs has exposed the industry's cast of characters to scrutiny
in the book HedgeHogging.
Jim Zaroli, "Barton Biggs Shines a Light on Hedge Funds," NPR,
February 20, 2006 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221329
Online broker Charles Schwab Wednesday
issued a guarantee against any and all losses from unauthorized
account access, the latest online trader to calm customers' jitters
about phishing scams and identity theft.
As of Wednesday, all Schwab customers are
100 percent covered against loss, the San Francisco-based company
said. They need take no action unless they suspect that their
account has been accessed without their permission or knowledge,
Schwab added.
"It has always been our practice to make
clients whole in cases of unauthorized account activity. Our new
security guarantee turns that historic practice into a public
promise," said chief executive Charles Schwab in a statement. "Given
rising public concerns over identity theft and cyber-fraud, we think
adding a clear and simple guarantee will contribute to even greater
peace of mind for our clients."
Schwab follows rivals in posting a
guarantee; in January, New York-based ETrade launched what it called
"Complete Protection Guarantee" to cover all losses originating from
fraud.
Banks, online brokers, and other financial
institutions have been worried of late about fraud in general and
identity theft in particular, as online users have turned skittish
in reaction to a rise in e-fraud. Several polls taken in 2005, for
example, noted that U.S. consumers were becoming less likely to
conduct financial transactions over the Internet.
Even the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) has expressed concern about the trend. In September, it issued
a guide on the dangers that identity thieves posed to online
brokerage accounts.
Stalin's Executioner From then on, neither the U.S.S.R. and its
satellites nor the world communist movement were ever the same. Mao and
other unrepentant Stalinists saw Khrushchev as an arch-revisionist and a
renegade, the gravedigger of communism, though it took another few
decades for it to die. In his speech, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's
"cult of personality," which was a euphemism for the horrors inflicted
on his country and region during the three decades that the Georgian
stayed in power. His audience was dumbfounded. Many felt liberated,
others betrayed and offended. The four-hour discourse documented
Stalin's "grave abuse of power," his murderous persecution of the party
elite, his leading role in the Great Terror, the ferocious treatment of
major party personalities, and his failures as a military commander.
Khrushchev declared the worshipped leader, in life and in death, guilty
of the destruction of so many human lives, the brutal deportations of
whole ethnic groups, the absurd agricultural schemes that starved
millions in Ukraine and other rural regions to death, and his "loathsome
adulation" masquerading as "party history."
Validimir Tismaneanu, "Stalin's Executioner," The Wall Street Journal,
February 24, 2006 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114072888526881720.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
International Accounting Database Statistics We have updated our
Database of Statisticsthat, we believe,
provide clear evidence of the globalisation of the world's capital
markets and of the need for global financial reporting standards.
Updates include latest data about cross-border listings on the World
Federation of Exchange member exchanges, London, NYSE, and NASDAQ, and
some data on cross-border lending. IASPlus, February 20, 2006 ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
Piracy Losses Put at $606 Million
As part of its annual report to the U.S. Trade Representative, the
International Intellectual Property Alliance estimated that illegal
copying of books abroad cost the book industry about $606 million in
2005, roughly the same level as 2004. Losses for all copyrighted
intellectual property to piracy topped $15.8 billion last year, the
IIPA estimated. AAP president Pat Schroeder said that while progress
has been made in fighting book piracy abroad, more work needs to be
done. Asia continues to be a piracy hot spot, even though
enforcement has improved in such places as Hong Kong and Taiwan,
Schroeder said. "Even where enforcement is at least partially
effective," Schroeder noted, "court delays remain, especially in
countries such as India and the Philippines.Legal developments in
Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea and elsewhere continue to deny
effective protection to book publishers, and enforcement mechanisms
so effective for other industries in countries such as Pakistan have
not yet been employed against book pirates." Schroeder further
observed that market access barriers continue to make it difficult
for publishers "to make genuine product available in relevant
markets such as China." PW 2/14/06
www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6307509.html?display=breaking
China's Accounting Standards in Line with IFRS In our news story of 16 February 2006,
we reported that the Ministry of Finance (MOF) of the People's Republic
of China has announced that it has adopted a new basic standard and 38
new Chinese Accounting Standards that are substantially in line with
IFRSs. MOF has also adopted new auditing standards that are
substantially in line with International Standards on Auditing (ISAs).
The MOF has issued a
Press Release(PDF 17k) elaborating on the
new accounting and auditing standards. In December 2005, the Chinese
Auditing Standards Board (CASB) and the International Auditing and
Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) had released a joint statement in
which the CASB states that the fundamental principle of drafting Chinese
auditing standards is to improve the Chinese auditing standards system
and to accelerate its convergence with the IAASB's ISAs. Click for
China-IAASB Joint Statement(PDF 988k)),
which we had reported in our news story of 23
December 2005. IASPlus, February 20, 2006 ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
Global warming could have more than
quadrupled, with temperature rises of as much as 15C, if we continue
burning fossil fuels
Sea levels will still be rising at the end
of this millennium and the total increase could reach 11.4 metres.
This dwarfs estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change that sea levels will rise by between 16cm and 69cm by the
2080s
Anything more than a two-metre rise would
flood large areas of Bangladesh, Florida and many low-lying cities,
and displace hundreds of millions of people
Abrupt climate changes are possible even
after emissions cease because changes may be set in motion that
cannot be stopped
The acidity of the oceans will fall
significantly, posing a threat to marine organisms such as corals
and plankton. That, in turn, would affect the whole marine ecosystem
The changes could be even greater than this
if the climate turns out to be more sensitive to greenhouse gas
emissions than the study assumes
Continued in article
Terrorists Increasingly Turn to the Internet: The Internet is increasingly being exploited by
terrorist groups, who are using the medium to multiply the effectiveness
of their planning, recruitment, and propaganda, says an Israeli
researcher. For instance, such groups have become sophisticated enough
to build sites "narrowcasted" to women and children. Dr. Gabriel
Weimann, professor of communication at the University of Haifa, Israel,
has done empirical research into the evolving nature of terrorist use of
the medium, which he describes in a forthcoming book, Terror on the
Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges. And some of his findings
may surprise Americans.
David Talbot, "Terrorists Increasingly Turn to the Internet: Terrorist
groups are using the Internet with more success, according to studies by
an Israeli researcher," InternetWeek, February 21, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16385,258,p1.html
February 20, 2006 message from Linda Kidwell, University of Wyoming
[lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]
In my endless pursuit of interesting audit
reports to use with my classes, I came across a treasure trove last
week. Credit Acceptance Corporation has had an interesting set of
reports in the recent weeks. If you look them up in Edgar, here's
some of what you'll find:
1) an 8-K dismissing Deloitte over
accounting disagreements an internal control report with a
material weakness
2) unqualified opinions on the financials from Grant Thornton
with an explanatory paragraph over restatements resulting from
the DT dispute
3) a change in GAAP application insisted upon by DT, after
consultation with the SEC, despite DT having issued an
unqualified opinion in the past on that prior treatment
4) a disclaimer by GT on the internal control report over a
scope limitation
It is a fun case for use with audit classes
as they try to piece together this puzzle.
Clooney has one divorce in his background,
but no scandal beyond clipping David O Russell round the ear on the
set of Three Kings, which is the kind of thing that plays well in
the Red states - much like shooting lawyers in the face. His
youthful indiscretions pale against the current incumbent's
binge-drinking, DUI convictions, perpetual bailings-out, not to
mention draft-dodging. Clooney might merely be expected to apologise
for Revenge Of The Killer Tomatoes and for his never-released debut
movie, co-starring the louchely Kennedyesque Charlie Sheen. He'd be
the first single president, well, since Michael Douglas in The
American President, which would make him a bit like the skirt-hound
Kennedy, though Clooney appears not to be the almost neurotic
priapist JFK was. One of Kennedy's more famous conquests was Angie
Dickinson ("the most unforgettable 60 seconds of my life," was her
post-coital verdict), better known as the original Mrs Danny Ocean,
so there's a whiff of that retro-Camelot glamour for you right
there. Like Reagan, Kennedy and Clinton, he'd probably be a grating
presence to a good half of the American electorate, but it didn't
kill them and it wouldn't kill him.
Politically, a Clooney presidency would
probably strive to return sanity to the national debate. The
American right has long smeared Clooney as just another loopy
Hollywood liberal, but there's no evidence that he's anything but an
old-fashioned American centrist. His political movies, particularly
this Friday's Syriana and Good Night, And Good Luck, are hardly
radical agitprop. They (and Three Kings and Clooney's TV remake of
Fail Safe) may have the slightly worthy air of civics lessons, but
they certainly suggest the guy is engaged with his times. A
good-looking, independently minded, lapsed-Catholic, clean-and-sober
actor versus a bought-and-paid-for, dry-drunk fundamentalist and
four-decade failure of a human glove-puppet?
Voters, the choice is clear!
Jensen Comment
Clooney is not asking for an endorsement from Michael Moore. Below is a
tidbit from the February 13 edition of Tidbits.
Clooney is quite sniffy about
Moore, whose modus operandi he finds obnoxious
and counter-productive. He uses his name as a verb - "I don't
Michael Moore this shit," he says. "I don't come out and go, 'Look
what these fuckers do.'" He thinks subtlety - class - gets better
results. He is no doubt right, but it seems a little unfair given
that dissent is a lot more palatable when it comes in the shape of
George Clooney. His response to the traitor incident was to put
together a montage of prominent people on the anti-war side,
including the pope, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and Pat Buchanan (a
hard-right commentator in the US) and drape the word "traitors"
across them, too. "Then I made 800 fliers anonymously and sent them
to everyone in the media. And I waited. And Dan Rather [CBS news
anchor] called me and said, have you seen this flier that's going
around? And I said, 'My quote would be, the Pope and I can take it,
but don't pick on Pat Buchanan.'" He grins. "You know, the truth is
. . . it is not merely your right but your duty to question your
government. You can't demand freedom of speech and then say, but
don't say bad things about me. You gotta be a grown-up and take your
hits." "'I've learned how to fight' ," The Guardian,
February 10, 2006 ---
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1706303,00.html
1. Who is the first president alphabetically, by last name?
2. Who is the last president alphabetically, by last name?
3. Which last names are shared by two presidents?
4. What's the most common first name among U.S. presidents?
a) George
b) John
c) James
d) William
Who was president ...
5. ... when the Civil War began?
6. ... when we received the Statue of Liberty?
7. ... during World War I?
8. ... when World War II ended?
9. ... when the last two states joined the union?
10. ..when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon?
Historically speaking
11. Who was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms?
a) Thomas Jefferson
b) Grover Cleveland
c) Franklin D. Roosevelt
d) George H.W. Bush
12. Who was the only president never elected president or vice
president?
a) Martin Van Buren
b) Chester Arthur
c) Gerald Ford
d) Richard Nixon
13. Who was the first president to appoint a female to his Cabinet?
a) Thomas Jefferson
b) Franklin D. Roosevelt
c) John F. Kennedy
d) Dwight Eisenhower
14. What's the president's annual salary?
a) $200,000
b) $400,000
c) $500,000
d) $1,000,000
Honors (and dishonors)
15. Whose faces appear on Mount Rushmore?
a) Abraham Lincoln
b) Franklin D. Roosevelt
c) Thomas Jefferson
d) Teddy Roosevelt
e) George Washington
f) all of the above
16. Which president is on the highest-denomination bill of U.S.
currency in public circulation?
17. Which president is on the highest-denomination U.S. coin in
circulation?
18. Which three presidents have received a Nobel Peace Prize?
a) John Hancock
b) Abraham Lincoln
c) Teddy Roosevelt
d) Woodrow Wilson
e) Jimmy Carter
f) Bill Clinton
19. Which president wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book before taking
office?
20. Name two presidents who were impeached by the House of
Representatives?
Personally speaking
21. Who was the youngest president?
a) Teddy Roosevelt
b) Jimmy Carter
c) George W. Bush
22. Who was the oldest president?
a) George Washington
b) Zachary Taylor
c) Ronald Reagan
23. Who was the tallest president?
24. Who was the shortest president?
25. Which president had the most children?
26. Which president(s) had the fewest children?
27. How many bachelors were elected president?
a) Millard Fillmore
b) James Buchanan
c) Grover Cleveland
d) all of the above
28. Which presidents were assassinated in office?
29. How many others died in office?
30. Which president and first lady were both lawyers?
______
Answers:
1. John Adams.
2. Woodrow Wilson.
3. John Adams and John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison and
Benjamin Harrison, Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt
and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush (1
point for each correct answer; maximum 5 points).
4. There have been six named James: Madison, Monroe, Polk, Buchanan,
Garfield and Carter. Tied for second are John (Adams, Quincy Adams,
Tyler and Kennedy) and William (Henry Harrison, McKinley, Taft and
Clinton).
5. Abraham Lincoln in 1861.
6. Grover Cleveland in 1886.
7. Woodrow Wilson was president during the 1914-1918 conflict.
8. Harry Truman in 1945.
9. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959.
10. Richard Nixon in 1969.
11. Cleveland was president from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.
12. Ford was appointed vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned in
1973, and became president in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned.
13. FDR named Frances Perkins secretary of labor in 1933.
14. $400,000.
15. Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and George
Washington (1 point for each correct answer; maximum 4 points).
16. Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill.
17. John F. Kennedy on the half-dollar.
18. Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Jimmy Carter
in 2002 (John Hancock, of course, was never president).
19. John F. Kennedy penned "Profiles in Courage."
20. Andrew Johnson in 1867 and Bill Clinton in 1998. (Both men
subsequently faced trials in the Senate and were found not guilty of the
charges against them.)
21. Teddy Roosevelt was 42 when he assumed office after McKinley's
assassination in 1901. (John F. Kennedy was the youngest elected
president at 43.)
22. Ronald Reagan was 77 when he left office.
23. 6-foot-4 Abraham Lincoln.
24. 5-foot-4 James Madison.
25. John Tyler had 15 children.
26. James Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor, James K. Polk was married
but had no children, and Warren G. Harding had no children with his wife
but was rumored to have several illegitimate children. (1 point for each
correct answer; maximum 3 points.)
27. Buchanan never married, and Grover Cleveland was married in the
White House. (1 point for each correct answer; maximum 2 points.)
28. Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley
in 1901 and John F. Kennedy in 1963. (1 point for each correct answer;
maximum 4 points)
29. William Henry Harrison in 1841, Zachary Taylor in 1850, Warren G.
Harding in 1923 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. (1 point for each
correct answer; maximum 4 points.)
30. Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton
Your score:
36 or more: A True Patriot. Congratulations! You're either a history
teacher or could be one.
26-35: A Civic Salute. You know more than most people do about the
men who have occupied the Oval Office.
16-25: Bipartisan Support. Regardless of your political leanings, you
demonstrate knowledge about both sides of the aisle.
6-15: Historically Hit-or-Miss. You know a thing or two about our
commanders in chief, but there's plenty of room to bridge the gaps in
your knowledge.
Fewer than 6: A presidential pardon? Your forehead is probably
bruised because you smacked it so often going over the answers.
Sources: "The Essential Book of Presidential Trivia" by Noah
McCullough; "A Call to America" by Bryan Curtis; The Franklin Institute
Online
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134 Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu
Online Video
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
From Opinion Journal on February 28, 2006 In an item yesterday on "Tom and Jerry," we
mentioned "The Ducktators," a 1942 Looney Tunes short depicting an anatine
Hitler and an anserine Mussolini. It turns out a video (albeit of rather
poor quality) is available through Google; click here
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1633673673225697900
In the past I've provided links to various types of music
and video available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Uknakkahhapssshefauknallahpsehefhpa _ _ _
uknakkahhapssshefauknallahpsehefhpa Supreme Court Judge Ruth Ginsburg
commenting on a case in progress.
"Snorer in the court? Ruth Bader Ginsburg snoozes Justice dozes off
during political redistricting hearing, colleagues let her sleep,"
WorldDailyNet, March 1, 2000 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49070
Women who seek to be equal with men lack
ambition.
Bumper Sticker
Veni, Vidi, Velcro. I came, I saw, I stuck.
Bumper Sticker
Veni, Vedi, Visa: I Came, I Saw, I shopped.
Bumper Sticker
Damaged people are dangerous; they know they
can survive.
1993 movie 'Fatale', directed by Louis Malle, screenplay
by David Hare.
Deterrence is the art of producing, in the
mind of the enemy, the fear to attack!
1964 movie "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb" screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry
Southern and Peter George.
Residents of one Hartford neighborhood hope
Beethoven and Mozart will help drive drug dealers and prostitutes out of
a local park.
Newsday, March 4, 2006 ---
Click Here
I don't skinny dip,
I chunky dunk!
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
I can't jog anymore,
The rubbing of my thighs sets my tights on fire. Forwarded by Auntie Bev
They lied! Hard work killed lots of people.
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands.
Forwarded by Auntie Bev
Once upon a time I called the florist and
ordered some flowers delivered to my wife at work . As she carefully
explained to me, in some cases the value of a gift is negated when there
is minimal effort involved. Scott Bonacker, CPA
Springfield, Missouri
The teacher's aide accused of raping a
4-year-old at a Queens day care center told authorities she thought the
boy was a willing partner. Herbert Lowe,
Sun-Sentinel, March 3, 2005 ---
Click Here
Wafa
Uproars, including street protests, often depend on the source rather
than the content A rabbi's criticisms of the Jewish faith might sometimes be
considered anti-Semitic when coming from anybody other than a rabbi.
Catholic priests have more latitude when criticizing the Roman Catholic
Church. For decades use of the word "queer" was absolutely forbidden in
academe until gay leaders, writers, and Hollywood gave it acceptability.
Video can be aired in the Arab media that would cause riots on the
streets if initially aired in the Western media. An example of such a
video is linked below. It's a strongly pro feminist video that attacks
how Islamic fundamentalists treat women. You probably will not find any
reference to this video in the mainstream Western media. The Western
media powerhouses most likely consider it more explosive than publishing
a Danish cartoon. The academic academy wants no part of it because of
this feminist atheist's "trashing" of Islam.
The early part of the above video itself claims that the main woman
speaker is an Arab-American Psychiatrist. I did not know where her
home is, although the Arab-American depiction of her suggested to me
that she’s living in America. After discovering this video I later
learned a bit more about this Arab-American Psychiatrist whose name
is purportedly
Wafa Sultan. She's an atheist
Syrian expatriate. One of her papers is entitled "Who
Are The Muslim Brotherhood Trying to Fool?" She' also expounds a
"rhetoric
against Zionists, Yankees, Imperialists, Crusaders."
I think it speaks well for Al
Jazeera to have even aired the video. I visit Al Jazeera
daily and find it to be sometimes well rounded and balanced in its
article. Al Jazeera seems to be quite supportive of the
democratic movement in the middle east. You can judge for yourself
at
http://english.aljazeera.net/homepage
Al Jazeera also broadcasted an interview with Wafa Sultan
that you can read about at "LA psychiatrist clashes with Algerian
jihadist over Islamic teachings and terrorism" ---
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/007434.php
MEMRI translations of the Arab media
are a source of controversy. The MEMRI home page is at
http://www.memri.org/
Brian Whitaker's Selective Memri is an
example of selective journalism. Disregarding the Guardian's own
code - "A newspaper's primary office is the gathering of news" -
Whitaker has simply recycled inaccurate and previously published
material.
Two days before his piece appeared on the
web, he called our Washington office to ask for the Arabic original
of an article translated by Memri from the London daily Al-Hayat. He
could have used this opportunity to check his facts. He chose not to
do so.
MEMRI accused of biased selections of what to translate rather
than the translations themselves
Because the primary criticism that is leveled at MEMRI is nothing to do
with the quality of its translations, but with the fact that it
deliberately selects the most extreme articles and opinions from Middle
Eastern news media, and presents them as being representative of the
Arab and Muslim world in general. I’m not sure how important it is to
emphasize that the individual articles cited by MEMRI are true (i.e.
accurate translations), if the purpose of translating them is to use
them collectively to make a point that is not true.
Lawrence of Cyberia Blog, January 4, 2006 ---
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/01/jewish_criminal.html
March 27, 2006 Update MEMRI claims to be an independent nonpartisan
research institution. One of the co-founders of the organization, Yigal
Carmon, is a retired Israeli military intelligence Colonel. Checking the
MEMRI website, I found it served up blatant, unbalanced propaganda and
was littered with inflammatory articles aimed to incite hate and bigotry
toward any person whom MEMRI considers anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist.
"Speakout: MEMRI's systematic distortion," by Rima Barakat, Rocky
Mountain News, March 27, 2006 ---
Click Here
March 10, 2006 message from a friend
Bob,
A friend sent me the Wafa Sultan video,
MEMRI translated (link below). It read well as a transcript when you
posted it, but the video is 4x more powerful. An impressive and
courageous woman--worth spending 4 minutes watching.
The Jerusalem Post reported an interview with
Wafa Sultan ---
Click Here
Dr. Wafa Sultan's Life Threatened
"Muslim's Blunt Criticism of Islam Draws Threats," by John M.
Broder, The New York Times, March 11, 2006 ---
Click Here
LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago,
Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist
living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about
her fellow Muslims.
Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and
provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an
international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some,
and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.
In the interview, which has been viewed on
the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of
hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly
criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders
who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the
Koran for 14 centuries.
She said the world's Muslims, whom she
compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of
self-pity and violence.
Dr. Sultan said the world was not
witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between
modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent,
reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
In response, clerics throughout the Muslim
world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has
filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for
saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television
network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in
private.
"I believe our people are hostages to our
own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in
her home in a Los Angeles suburb.
Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater
and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes
and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense
words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking.
Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong
beliefs."
Perhaps her most provocative words on Al
Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted
to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have
come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with
their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with
their crying and yelling."
She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew
blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single
Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by
killing people."
She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend
their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and
destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The
Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before
they demand that humankind respect them."
Continued in article
2006 Update on Wafa Sultan Then again, she did have strong opinions about
Islamic extremism, and she was utterly unafraid to express them. So if
Al Jazeera wanted to talk to a wife and mother in Los Angeles about this
important subject, sure, why not? Wafa accepted. What no one could have
guessed was that she was about to become a controversial new voice in
the Islamic world -- and for many moderate Muslims, a model of courage .
. . It was Wafa Sultan's second appearance on Al Jazeera, last February,
that brought her worldwide notoriety. This time, she debated Dr. Ibrahim
Al-Khouli, an Egyptian cleric, and once again gave no quarter. "The
clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or
a clash of civilizations," she declared. "It is a clash between two
opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that
belongs to the Middle Ages and another that belongs to the 21st
century." To Al-Khouli, she added, "You can believe in stones, brother,
as long as you don't throw them at me." . . . Wafa has also paid a price
within the Muslim community in Los Angeles. Before she became a known
activist, she had a busy social life with other Middle Eastern women.
Today, few of her old friends remain. "They begged me to stop," she
explains of the women in her circle. Some feared for her life; others
reviled her message. Wafa summarizes their reaction this way: "You can't
make any change, so why are you risking your life?" Kerry Howley, "Breaking the
Silence One woman is risking her life to speak the truth about radical
Islam," Readers Digest, December 2006 ---
Click Here
Sometimes I am brought up short by the
clarity and courage with which someone else -- with more to lose
than I have -- states a truth. I am a Catholic Christian, who often
dismisses “secular humanists”. But I’m in awe of people like
Canada’s Irshad Manji, the “Muslim refusenik”, who had the courage
in her book The Trouble with Islam to directly confront the
horrors done in Allah’s name -- in, as she put it, “Pick a country,
any Muslim country.”
Another is Wafa Sultan, an Arab woman
practising psychology, now living in the States. A self-professed
“disbeliever in the supernatural”, she has posted essays on the
Internet in Arabic, including research into the fate of women under
various Islamic regimes. She has willingly and ably confronted
Muslim fanatics on Arab TV, most recently on Feb. 21st, when she
debated Dr Ibrahim Al-Khouli on Al-Jazeera. A transcript and video
clips with English subtitles were made available this week by the
Middle East Media Research Institute (“Memri”) -- an indispensable
institution, based in Israel, that distributes hard information and
accurate translations of documents from the Arab world. (It is
useless to condemn it as “Zionist” -- everything Memri publishes is
sourced and checkable.)
With great bravery, Dr Sultan confronts the
“tu quoque” (“you too”) arguments of the apologists for Islamic
terror -- refusing to let them change the subject from what they
have done, said, and approved, to misty rhetoric against Zionists,
Yankees, Imperialists, Crusaders. Boldly on Al-Jazeera, last week,
she said what our Western politicians, media flaks, and academic
celebrities won’t say, from cowardice in its many forms. Excerpt:
“The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash
of religions, or a clash of civilizations. ... It is a clash
between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and
the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash
between freedom and oppression, between democracy and
dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one
hand, and the violation of these rights, on the other. It is a
clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who
treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash
of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.”
The sparkling TV host interrupts to ask if
Dr Sultan insinuates the clash is, “between the culture of the West,
and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims”. Dr Sultan
replies, “Yes, that is what I mean.”
The host reminds her that this phrase,
“clash of civilizations”, came from Samuel Huntington, not Osama bin
Laden. Dr Sultan reminds him that Islamic books and curricula, going
back to the Koran, are full of calls for “fighting the infidels”.
When her opponent, Dr Khouli, claims he
never offends people, Dr Sultan reminds that among other things he
calls Westerners “al-Dhimma” (i.e. the Muslims’ natural slaves),
that he routinely compares them to apes and pigs, that he calls
Christians “those who incur Allah's wrath”, and so forth.
He asks if she is a heretic. Dr Sultan
says, he can call her what he likes. He continues, “If you are a
heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have
blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran!” She replies,
“These are personal matters that do not concern you. ... Brother,
you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me.”
And after the usual banter about Zionism,
she notes that since the Holocaust, the Jews have made the world
respect them by their work and knowledge, not their crying and
yelling. “We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German
restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church.”
Likewise, though professing Muslims turned ancient Buddha statues
into rubble, “We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque,
kill a Muslim, or torch an embassy.”
Since the 9/11 attacks on New York and
Washington, many thousand other barbaric acts have been reported,
around the world, each one performed explicitly in the name of
Allah. This is fact, not prejudice, and our refusal to make Islam an
issue plays directly into the fanatics’ hands.
It is not our business to “define Islam”,
as so many Muslims aver. It is the Muslims’ duty to define it, in
such a way that we will not mistake it for a sword held to our own
throats. For when it is presented as a sword, it becomes our
business.
If you do a Google search on
Wafa Sultan you will
get hundreds of hits (mostly on blogs) ---
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
You will notice that blog hits are frustrating. Google will take you to
the blog site but not to the entry about your topic. It pays to know the
date your topic appeared on the blog.
Ignorance is not bliss: 10 million children in the Arab world are
out of school Half of the women in the Arab world are
illiterate and more than 10 million children in the region do not go to
school, a report has revealed. The report on the status of children and
women, produced by the Arab League and the UN Children's Fund (Unicef),
said many Arab countries have made progress on child rights and
protection, but that more still needs to be done. "More than 10 million
children in the Arab world are out of school, most of them in Egypt,
Iraq, Morocco and Sudan," said the report, although it gave no figures
for the total number of school-age children in the region.
"Report: Half of Arab Women Illiterate," Al Jazeera, April 12,
2005 ---
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/30E03A5E-9BA1-4BE4-B718-BE08BF8A05D8.htm
Murdering Women For "Honor" Today we are witnessing the globalization of
honor killing, as the West has become the perpetual scene of immigrant
Arab women being murdered by their immigrant families. A distinguished
panel joins us today to discuss what causes this violence against women,
how it is directly connected to the terror war, and why the Western Left
is so deafeningly silent about a mass crime that violates one of its
supposed sacred values . . .
Jamie Glazov, "Symposium: Murdering Women For 'Honor',"
FrontPageMagazine.com, June 10, 2005 ---
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18370
Meanwhile in Nigeria
They all have one thing in common, the determination to liberate Muslim
women, who they claim, were still relegated to the background in utter
disregard for their rights and priviledges as set forth in the Islamic
legal code, Sharia. With the issue of stoning to death, caning and
amputation, remaining the dominant Muslim news in national dallies, the
Women of Hounour, as the are referred, women had decided to reverse the
trend and restore dignity to such oppressed members of the society.
Alhaja Sikiratulahi Atinuke Atobajaye (Iya Suna of Nigeria, President
General, Nuru-ul-Islam International Alasalatu of Nigeria), Alhaja
Fausat Taiwo Afolabi, Director, Office of Local Government
Administration, Lagos State, Alhaja Fariat Tinubu, Director, Personnel
Management, Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area, and Sayyidah Zeenat
Abiola Kalejaye, all members of the Aenu Rahmat Faedot Tijani-yyat of
Nigeria, were so deservingly honoured for championing the crusade
against the plight of Muslim women in Lagos, recently.
"'ISLAM ACCORDS MEN, WOMEN EQUAL STATUS'," by Andrew Ahiante, Lagos,
PeaceWomen, October 13, 2003 ---
http://www.peacewomen.org/news/Nigeria/October03/equalstatus.html
In pursuit of Arab reform
This special report is concerned with the
increasingly pressing demand for reform in the Middle East. While few
harbour any illusions over the need for such a compelling change, the
disagreement centres on the question: How?
"In pursuit of Arab reform," Al Jazeera, May 20, 2004 ---
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/967715B8-276C-4708-AC08-7FD102E13BA7.htm
The Koran and the Kafir
The chapter on the Koran and Moslem women gives us some idea on Islam's
injunctions on Moslem women. They should cover their bodies from head to
foot. Khomeini's Iran forces the women to go under the 'chador'. They
must not go outside to work where other men might see them. They may not
be rulers or judges in an Islamic state. Women lawyers are frowned upon
in today's Pakistan which is an Islamic state. But such regulations are
valid for Moslem women only. The non-Moslem or kafir women are to be
handled differently, as the Islamic codes are not birding on them. The
kafir women are considered to be the property of Moslems; they are their
'slaves'' and the wife or daughter of a 'zimmi' can be molested by a
Moslem with impunity in a Moslem state ruled by the 'Sharia' or Islamic
jurisprudence. The idea comes from the treatment meted out to kafir
women who were captured in the battlefield. The first fifth of all booty
went to the prophet or the caliph or whoever happened to hold the
position of the amir-ul-mominin. It could be the Moslem king of the land
or even a petty chieftain. This so called leader 'examined' all booty,
inspected and sometimes 'felt' by touching it. The women, all of them
were paraded in front of the leader, naked or scantily clad, so that the
leader could make his choice. These women were NOT brought in front of
the 'amir-ulmominin' dressed in 'chadors'. It was thus that the prophet
himself used to inspect his captives and chose Rehana and Juwairiya'
both Jewish women whose male relatives were all killed by the Moslems.
Juwairiya eventually gave up her religion and married the prophet and
became one of the ten or eleven wives of his harem. Rehana was a
courageous lady and she did not give up her Jewish faith and so was
turned into a concubine of the prophet. She thus took her place on the
side of Mary, another slave woman, and a Christian, who after Khadija
gave birth to a male child fathered by the prophet.
"The Koran and the Kafir," by A. Ghosh ---
http://islamreview.org/KoranKafir/chapter11.html
National Organization for Women President
Kim Gandy said the women of Iraq will lose
hard-won rights under the new constitution,
and the U.S. will share the blame for
trading away women's rights.
"Iraqi women will have far fewer rights
under this constitution than they have
enjoyed for decades, and for this reason all
Iraqi women should pause to consider whether
they will vote for it," Gandy urged in
August. "Adoption of this constitution will
likely result in the loss of rights gained
over past decades. Conservative Sharia law
as the basis for the country's family law
system threatens to send Iraqi women back to
the Middle Ages."
. . .
Critics say that Sharia law is inherently
misogynistic: In some sects, divorce is easy
for men who are allowed multiple wives, and
custody of children goes to the father. A
conservative dress code requires many women
to cover most or all of their bodies; women
may be restricted to the home and are
frequently not allowed to speak to men other
than relatives. Women are not allowed to be
clergy or religious scholars and may be
restricted from certain jobs where they
might come into contact with men.
Worst of all, most interpretations of Sharia
law allow beating of "disobedient" wives.
This permission has led to the practice in
many Muslim cultures of so-called honor
killings where women are beaten or murdered
if the family believes that the woman has
'dishonored' the family with an extramarital
affair.
When is surgery the right choice for back pain? Americans get surgery for lower-back pain at a
higher rate than any other country. Whether that's too many, too few --
or just right -- is a hotly debated subject in orthopedics. At the
center of the debate is how to decide who should get surgery for lower
back pain . . . Each consulted Dartmouth Medical School's Dr. James
Weinstein, one of the nation's leading experts on back pain. In fact,
Weinstein has had back pain himself. . . . The bottom line right now:
Patients need to be involved in deciding whether to have surgery.
Weinstein says it may even help their outcome, whatever they decide.
Weinstein is heading a federally financed study of 1,200 patients with
chronic lower-back pain to compare the benefits of surgery and
nonsurgery. Results are due this summer.
"For Back Pain, Few Easy Answers on Surgery," by Joanne Silberner,
NPR, March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5240537
Jensen Comment: My wife has had eight surgeries
on her spine. Each surgery seems to make the pain worse. The
Dartmouth Medical Center (called Hitchcock) is now proposing that she
have a huge ninth surgery to put rods in front of and in back of her
spine. The rods put on just her backside failed and had to be removed.
Headaches 40% more common among women taking birth-control pills
Some women have migraines during menstruation,
when levels of estrogen drop, Dr. Karen Aegidius of the Norwegian
National Headache Center in Trondheim, the study‘s lead author, told
Reuters Health. These women also are more likely to have migraines while
taking oral contraceptives, she added, explaining that these pills can
boost estrogen levels up to four-fold above normal, resulting in a
particularly steep estrogen drop-off with menstruation.
Anne Harding, "Study confirms oral contraceptive-migraine link," Reuters
Health via News One, March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.newsone.ca/piercelandherald/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=152680
Question
Who's Harvard's dapper hombre feminists love to hate? Hint: It's not Larry Summers. In fact this Harvard hombre implies
Larry Summers is a wimp.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- "Defend yourself."
That's the lesson Harvey Mansfield drew for Larry Summers the week
before Harvard's president was forced to resign. Mr. Mansfield, a
73-year-old government professor and conservative elder statesman of
the university, went on to suggest that Mr. Summers's capitulation
to those he offended (when he said women might be biologically less
inclined to succeed in the hard sciences) is not simply a craven
kowtow to political correctness, but proof, also, of a character
flaw. Indeed, Mr. Mansfield continued with a mischievous smile, "He
has apologized so much that he looks unmanly."
Perhaps this seems like a quaint insult,
but Mr. Mansfield means something very particular by it. He would
like to return the notion of manliness to the modern lexicon. His
new book, "Manliness" (manfully, no subtitle), argues that
the gender-neutral society created by modern feminists has been bad
both for women and men, and that it is time for men to rediscover,
and women to appreciate, the virtue of manliness.
Mr. Mansfield's former office in the grand
neoclassical Littauer Hall just off Harvard Yard seemed better
suited to his project, but the government department moved into a
new building this year and he has been relegated to a spare, modern
room in which even the blinds are operated electronically. The
professor, with his elegantly tailored suits and sharp fedoras,
looks out of place in his ungracious surroundings. (The poster-size
portrait of Machiavelli, about whom he has written extensively,
doesn't seem to fit in either.)
But after more than a half-century at the
university -- as undergrad, grad student and professor -- Mr.
Mansfield seems to have settled into his role as campus gadfly. This
is not to say that scholarship and teaching do not occupy his time.
In the past 40 years, he has published more than a dozen books,
including a translation of Tocqueville, as well as groundbreaking
studies of Machiavelli and Burke.
But it is his combat with campus liberal
orthodoxy that has brought him a more public profile. To drive home
his crusade against grade inflation, he began giving students a real
grade (what he actually thinks of their work) and an "ironic grade"
(which goes to the registrar). More controversially, Mr. Mansfield
argues that grade inflation is the result of the university's
affirmative-action program -- admitting too many underqualified
minority students and then not wanting to give them poor marks.
Of all the enemies Mr. Mansfield has made,
none has he more consistently provoked than feminists. It's been 20
years since he voted against the proposal for a women's studies
major at Harvard (the only faculty member to do so), arguing that
"it is not possible to study women except in relation to men." And
he has not let up since.
"I've had a lifelong interest in women,"
Mr. Mansfield purrs in his smooth classical-radio-announcer voice
when I ask why he decided to embark on his manliness project. Joking
aside, he explains that "I always wanted to write a book on the
woman question, and one reason, perhaps the main reason, I see is
that we are embarked on a great experiment in our society, something
very radical: to make the status of men and women equal, or, better
to say, the same."
Mr. Mansfield's contention that women and
men are not the same is now widely supported by social scientists.
The core of his definition of manliness -- "confidence in a risky
situation" -- is not so far from that of biologists and
sociologists, who find men to be more abstract in their thinking and
aggressive in their behavior than women, who are more contextual in
their thinking and conciliatory in their behavior.
Question
Increasingly I am receiving requests from teachers and students in Africa,
Asia, and elsewhere around the world. Often they are asking some very basic
accounting and finance questions. What are the most efficient ways to help
them with these basic, and sometimes advanced, questions?
Answer from Bob Jensen
As most of you know, my Web documents and multimedia tutorials on two
servers have become huge. Even I have finding my own stuff unless I use
Google in search of my own deeply embedded modules. Most of my tutorials and
other helpers in accounting and finance were written for my graduate
students and my off-campus audiences in my traveling dog an pony shows.
Unfortunately I do not have Web documents for elementary tutorials. And at
the advanced level, there are many topics that I have not covered in
tutorials.
How do I help with things that I've not covered in my tutorials? It
finally dawned on me to check for Wikipedia links when people write to me
for help. You might consider this same approach to save time when trying to
help people who make inquiries around the world. When people write to me for
help with basic concepts, I now check the quantity and quality of what has
been written about these concepts in Wikipedia. The Wikipedia modules are
often very good, often better than my tutorial would have been if I took the
trouble to write my answers to the hundreds of inquiries I receive from
around the world.
My skill in helping others has largely been in knowing what terms or
sub-terms to search for on the Web. Now I use these skills to first search
for Wikipedia modules. Then I do a search for other helpers that I can find
in my own sites and in other sites on the Web. But first I check on
Wikipedia for explanations and links ---
http://www.wikipedia.org/
By way of an illustration, I recently received an email from an
accounting teacher in a developing country. He/she asked some very basic
questions. A sample of part of my long reply to this teacher is shown below:
People often ask why I've poured thousands of hours in developing my
accounting and finance tutorials that I share with the world on two Web
servers. Answering inquiries from teachers, students, reporters,
practitioners, and others has become my great joy in life. But since I
receive hundreds and hundreds of inquiries I must resort to efficiency
measures. My main efficiency measures are as follows:
Put as
much of you own stuff, documents, audio, and video, as possible on your
Web servers so that you can simply point to research and other answers
that you’ve previously prepared. Sometimes new inquiries inspire me to
improve my tutorials.
Learn the sites on the Web that provide a lot of great answers,
particularly the Wikipedia site. Unfortunately I've been negligent in
improving Wikipedia modules and creating new modules. Perhaps I will
find time to this after I've retired on May 13, 2006.
Belong to listservs and forums of specialists who are willing to
answer questions that you yourself cannot answer. I've been blessed with
some of these, notably one called the AECM.
It will make you feel good to help strangers who send you questions about
technical issues in your craft. Try to help these people in need, but you
must become efficient in providing high quality answers. And by all means
admit your own ignorance when you cannot answer something. Don't try to
waste their time by pretending or getting them lost in technical documents
only remotely related to the questions raise.
Question
Is Byetta a weight loss miracle for diabetics?
The users call the drug Lizzie, the Big Brother
or sometimes Gilly. On blogs they rave over its uncanny ability to melt
away pounds, although some are wary of its side effects, which can
include nausea and strange welts.
The users are not fad dieters or
methamphetamine addicts, but people with diabetes. And the subject of
their rhapsodies is not a gray-market diet pill sold on late-night
television but Byetta, a federally approved diabetes medicine, available
only by prescription, whose popularity and sales have soared since its
introduction last June.
For diabetics, the weight loss caused by Byetta
comes as a welcome contrast to the weight gain that often accompanies
insulin and other diabetes medicines; the extra pounds can eventually
worsen the disease. Some patients say Byetta has reversed the course of
a disease that can lead to severe complications like amputations,
blindness and kidney failure and even death.
Question
What really fueled Hitler's regime? Hitler's Bank Bares Its Dark Past
Dresdner's self-financed study reveals that
greed rather than ideology inspired its zealous support for the regime, even
to helping build Auschwitz. There's no way to put a positive spin on German
industry's collaboration with the Nazi regime before and during World War
II, so Dresdner Bank Chief Executive Herbert Walter didn't try. Presenting
the results of an independent study of Dresdner's role in the Holocaust,
Walter admitted: "It confronts us with bitter historical truths. We accept
these truths, even when they are painful."
Jack Ewing, "Hitler's Bank Bares Its Dark Past: Hitler's Bank Bares Its
Dark Past," Business Week, February 22, 2006 ---
Click Here
Painful is hardly a strong enough word.
According to the study by a team of historians from German universities,
Dresdner functioned as the house bank to Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS),
lending more money than any other bank to the organization that was at
the forefront of the most ghastly atrocities. Dresdner, co-founded by
Eugen Gutmann, who was Jewish, quickly expelled its Jewish employees
after the Nazi takeover and arbitrarily cut the pension payments of
Jewish retirees. The bank even owned a stake in the construction company
that built the crematorium at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
It has become almost a ritual for big German
companies to finance detailed studies of their Nazi collaboration.
Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler (DCX ), Siemens (SI ), and even menswear
maker Hugo Boss (HUGSF ) have owned up to their histories. Part of the
motivation may be genuine remorse, but companies also have learned that
attempts to spin history can backfire.
MONEY MOTIVE
Bertelsmann suffered severe embarrassment in 1998 when a German
journalist, Hersch Fischler, punctured the myth that the Gütersloh-based
media giant had resisted the Nazis and suffered a shutdown of its
book-publishing business as a result. In fact, the company later
conceded, Bertelsmann had profited handsomely from supplying
morale-building books to German troops and was shut down near the end of
the war only to save paper.
Since then, companies have learned that it's
better to confront the past themselves than to wait for an enterprising
historian or journalist to do so. The self-examination is a prerequisite
to being a global player from Germany. "Apparently, they expect to be
more involved in the global community in the next decade. They want to
start in a clear position," says Cees B.M. van Riel, a professor who
teaches corporate communications at RSM Erasmus University business
school in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
As Walter conceded in a statement, Dresdner
suppressed its own history until the mid-1990s when, under pressure from
critics, it commissioned the study. Dresdner's close ties to top Nazis
were already well-known; Chief Executive Karl Rasche, an SS member, was
tried and sentenced to a prison term at Nuremberg.
But the study makes clear that Dresdner's
wartime culpability was much deeper, and the motive was money rather
than politics or Nazi pressure. The bank "took advantage of all the
business opportunities opened up by the aggressive and racist policies
of the Third Reich," study co-author Johannes Bähr concludes.
OVERZEALOUS COOPERATION
Despite the bank's own Jewish origins, it played a key role in the
persecution of German Jews, according to the study. After Jewish
employees were expelled in 1933, Dresdner exceeded even Nazi race laws
in cutting their pensions or severance payments. As Jewish businesses
were being "Aryanized," the bank hired thuggish "business consultants"
to intimidate owners and seize control.
After the war began, bank executives knew early
on about crimes taking place in concentration camps, according to the
study. Dresdner provided banking services to numerous SS facilities. The
bank was a major shareholder in a construction company, based in Breslau
(now the Polish city of Wroclaw), which built crematoriums at the
Auschwitz death camp. "Particularly in the case of its most
reprehensible activities, the bank could have operated differently,"
Bähr writes.
Continued in article
Everybody Should Read This:
Evil Doers of the Future Extend Well Beyond Islamic
Fundamentalists
Extremism, Terror, and the Future of Conflict
By Michael J. Mazarr Michael J. Mazarr is professor of national security
strategies at the U.S. National War College and adjunct professor of
security studies at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his
own and do not reflect the policy or position of the U.S. government or the
National Defense University.
When they briefly stated an intention to begin
referring to a “global struggle against violent extremism,” certain
officials in the Bush administration did more than implicitly acknowledge
the vacuity of the idea of a “global war on terror.” They hinted, however
obliquely, at something far more profound: a radical shift in the nature of
conflict, what it means to be “at war.” From traditional notions of armies
fighting armies in vast confrontations, the new concept seems to imply, the
warfare of the future will look very different — twilight struggles against
non-state networks of evildoers. This notion mirrors an emerging...
II
he
theory of war that undergirds realpolitik
is straightforward. For thousands of years, warfare has
meant a clash of wills between opposing military forces
on the field of battle, from which one side usually
(though not always) emerged as a recognizable winner.
The causes of such wars were the combination of an
anarchic system of self-help that opened the way for
aggressive and imperialistic campaigns of conquest,
bitter competitions over scarce resources, escalating
mutual security fears, and misperception and
miscalculation. Conducting war meant the mobilization of
resources and military units to defeat enemy forces in
the field. It is from this basic concept — states at war
employing organized military units — that most of the
hallmarks of modern military science flow: the moral and
physical clash of wills; the role of the decisive battle
in a campaign; and the endless search for the enemy’s
“center of gravity” and the “culminating point” of a
conflict.
But we have
been moving away from this paradigm for some time.2
Centuries ago, military forces were very nearly divorced
from the societies on behalf of whom they fought: crowds
of adventurers out at the frontier and beyond, staging
highly ritualized über-duels on grassy plains, while the
home society went on farming and hunting and
carpentering. To be sure, these armies would affect the
surrounding societies in profound ways: They would
recruit or dragoon young men who otherwise would be
farming or cobbling; they would pillage the surrounding
landscape as they passed through it; and they would
sometimes draw abundant camp-following crowds. But the
basic model was one of a quasi-independent army marching
off to find its counterpart and slaughter it. Even by
Napoleonic times, armies remained remarkably separable
from their peoples, grand militarized playthings moving
around the chessboard of strategy.
And
playthings they were, because armies and navies were the
instruments of their leaders — sometimes individual
kings or tyrants, sometimes collective groups, but
always leaders in search of some self-defined material
end, the governing power goal of realpolitik.
Philip of Macedon could decide that the time had come to
unify the Greek city-states, and off went his army to
battle. The Romans could elect to subjugate yet another
frontier people, and the legions gathered up their
equipment. Kings and princes in early modern Europe,
reflecting perhaps the apotheosis of this practice,
marshaled bands of expensive knights and attendants in
what looks to modern eyes almost like an elaborate game.
Even when wars emerged without clear power-seeking
intent, issues of security dilemmas and power rivalries
always hung about the proceedings.
In such a
context, the enemy’s forces in the field embodied very
nearly the entirety of the conflict. When they were
destroyed, the enemy was vanquished. What “the people”
thought about it, hacking away at their farms a thousand
miles from the battlefield (or even right next door to
it), usually had little or no bearing on the outcome —
except when especially reckless leaders bankrupted the
home front to such a degree that they were overthrown
while on campaign. Even when forces became nimbler and
strategy emphasized moving between, around, and behind
an enemy to get at his capital or his industrial
heartland, these supposedly indirect strategies mostly
ended up in force-on-force butchery.
In its
actual practice (as distinct from its consequences,
which frequently transformed societies from the roots
up), then, war stood apart from society, independent,
self-regarding. Warfare was armies against armies, and
when it became something more than that — the
destruction of whole societies, for example — it
remained largely in service of the narrower goal: to
cripple the enemy’s military instrument, and thus compel
his surrender. The character of war in this theory was
fierce and brutal, built as it was around the organized
employment of violence to break an enemy military’s
will.3
All of this
made sense in a world governed by the doctrine of realpolitik.
From Thucydides onward, the concepts of a realist
approach to world politics were clear enough: States
sought power; there was no world authority to govern the
resulting conflict; stronger states took what they
could, weaker ones succumbed or hid under the protective
umbrella of alliances. Above all, military power and the
diplomatic and political influence that flowed from it
was the coin of the realm for the players in the
international game, the sine
qua non in whose absence no
other state powers or goals could be reliably sustained.
For
centuries, perhaps millennia — from the Peloponnesian
War through the German advocates of machtpolitik — this situation was not only
admitted, it was frequently celebrated. The world was a
great Darwinistic struggle and courageous peoples sought
power and used it. Warfare was welcomed as a means of
stiffening national character and a route to glory for
individuals and cultures alike — a perverse notion that,
sadly, has not quite been put to rest.4
Later, British and American realists mourned the reality
of power politics and warned against imperial expansion,
but pronounced both of them unavoidable given the twin
natures of world politics and human nature. Either way,
as a positive doctrine or an empirical analysis, realism
spoke to a world governed by unconstrained power
rivalries, tragic misunderstandings, and, ultimately,
force-on-force military confrontations.
III
ith
this background, it becomes clear that one claimed shift
in the nature of war does not, in fact, describe any
change at all. It goes under the current name of
“transformation,” but even the concept is hardly new.
Transformation is the child of the Revolution in
Military Affairs (RMA) — itself a grandson of maneuver
warfare and blitzkrieg,
which have their roots in the renewal of strategic
thought following the First World War. As one analyst
explains it, attrition warfare (an especially
slaughterous variant of the canonical force-on-force
style) aspired to the annihilation of enemy forces.
Maneuver warfare targets
the
coherence of the adversary’s combat systems,
methods, and plans. The hope is that a very
selective action can have a cascading effect — an
effect disproportionately greater than the degree of
effort. An analogy from architecture would be the
removal or destruction of the keystone of an arch .
. . the removal of which disrupts the stability of
the system, resulting in its destruction.5
But the
“system” is still the enemy military capability.
Maneuver warfare is just a more elegant way of dealing
with the usual force-on-force confrontation.
And so are
its descendants. The Soviet theorists of the
“military-technical revolution” — who were themselves
influenced by American writings, and whose concepts
Americans then translated into the RMA — were interested
in more or less the same things as the German blitzkriegers:
slicing up, destabilizing, and defeating enemy forces,
only this time with weapons energized by a revolution in
microelectronics, computing power, precision strike, and
automation. Radical new concepts of command and control,
“networked” organizations, “information dominance” —
this and much else on the Defense Department’s
transformation menu — therefore reflects the latest and
most efficient elaboration of the principles of maneuver
warfare. Some of the documents of the Office of Force
Transformation point to a broader agenda,6
but if we look at the
practical efforts of the
Defense Department — where its budget goes, what its
troops are trained to do, how its operations are
conducted — the emphasis remains stubbornly on the
force-on-force route to military victory. The primary
modernization agendas of the services today speak to the
same deep-rooted goal: finding tanks, planes, ships, and
people that belong to the enemy and making them explode.
Transformation advocates have grown dextrous in the use
of bold terms. They call the whole enterprise
“network-centric warfare” and speak of “information
superiority” and “shared awareness.” They refer to
“systems of systems” and “linked platforms of sensors,
shooters and commanders in seamless webs,” and talk of
the increased speed and greater lethality with which
military operations will now operate.7
But whatever the language, network-centric warfare
reflects principles that have governed force-on-force
warfare for centuries: Rapid, effective command and
control that allows you to get inside an enemy’s
“decision loop” has been the goal of the great captains
of history for centuries; precision-guided weapons are
just the latest and most effective effort to hit enemy
forces as accurately as possible.
Some
elements of the transformation agenda speak to so-called
“information warfare.”8
Like notions of transformation and “network-centric
warfare,” accounts of information warfare generally say
very little about what the thing actually is.9
Some writers have used the term “cyberwar,” by which
they appear to mean the by now conventional idea that
warring powers will try to destroy the computer systems
of their opponents.10
One account points to the rise of domains that do not
require physical force to attack, and the resulting
extension of warfare “beyond the traditional military
realm.”11
This is not
the first time military strategists have pointed to the
potential of new technologies to overcome age-old truths
about war. Yet Clausewitz wrote the epitaph of “perfect
information dominance” some time back: fog and friction.
There will never be sensors numerous, accurate, or
reliable enough to create a perfect information picture.
There will never be information architectures capable of
sharing the resulting information widely, perfectly, or
quickly enough to allow forces in the field to rely on
it.12
As partial
evidence, we have a number of recent examples. In
Kosovo, the Serbs managed to accomplish a vast amount of
movement and operations without NATO knowledge.13
In the Iraq War, despite the full-scale application of
sensor and communications technologies greatly more
advanced than those of Operation Desert Storm, the most
frequent military engagement may have been the venerable
“movement to contact” — steaming ahead until you
encounter the enemy, then groping your way around the
battlefield until you find the right tactical answer for
him. The Third Armored Division famously stumbled into
the biggest conventional battle of the war without
advance warning. Iraqi commanders were able to move huge
units around the battlefield without being seen or
detected, until more Americans on “movement to contact”
orders plowed into them. The immense success of the U.S.
and allied drive to Baghdad was far more a product of
the tactical skill of middle-level U.S. commanders than
it was a victory for sensors and “network-centric
operations.”
IV
t
is hardly surprising that all of this transformational
and network-centric jargon would add up to so little in
the way of truly new theories of warfare. These concepts
are all about tactics and implementation; they have
nothing to say about the
causes of war, or the
strategic implications of those causes.
From a
definitional standpoint, there are at least three
concepts at work in any discussion of “warfare.”14
First is the character ofbattle — the clash of arms where one army
physically meets another. This is the meeting point that
generates statements about the “unchanging nature of
war” — violence, blood, courage, willpower, and so
forth. At a second level we find the form ofwarfare,
the tactics and operational art governing units in
battle — infantry war versus
blitzkrieg, insurgency versus
classical force-on-force duels. Whereas the character of
battle may be eternal, the form of warfare constantly
evolves, responding to new technologies, new tactics,
and new social organizations. But then we come, finally
and most fundamentally, to
the nature of conflict. This
is the highest strategic level of analysis and deals
with the causes and character of severe
political-military-socioeconomic disputes in the
international system. International conflict generates
the context for warfare, but also much else —
Schellingesque bargaining games, coercive diplomacy,
deception and artful dodges short of warfare and battle.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
What frightens me is the possible breakdown in confidence that our nation
states can protect us. This may give rise to an explosion of militias with
war lord mentalities. The becomes much more frightening with the possible
availability of cheap dirty bombs and biological weapons.
Nancy's latest scars from constituency spurs in her side (see "shout
down" highlighted below) San Francisco leaders have passed a resolution
calling for President Bush’s impeachment on the accounts of bringing the
country into war, sanctioning torture, spying on citizens and bungling the
response to Hurricane Katrina. Members of the city’s board of supervisors
have asked Congress to conduct a complete investigation of the
administration's purported transgressions and hold offenders accountable
with criminal prosecution or impeachment.
Joanna Wypior, "San Francisco Leaders Calling For Bush’s Impeachment,"
All Headline News, March 5, 2006 ---
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002653797
Jon Stewart's "Donkey Show"
Normally I'm not a big fan of Jon Stewart, but I left The Daily Show
on tonight while I worked on a couple of other tasks. Stewart
reviewed the pandering done by Hillary Clinton and Ray Nagin
yesterday, as well as the shout down
Nancy Pelosi received on Saturday when
she (rationally) suggested to her constituency that their concerns
on the war would best be addressed electorally in 2006 during a
visit to San Francisco. At the end of the segment, titled "Donkey
Show", Stewart noted this: So the Democratic platform appears to be
... Democrats are our government's slaves [Hillary added to graphic]
... New Orleans can't be rebuilt without Willy Wonka [Nagin added to
graphic] ... and voting (to surrender in Iraq)
is for pussies [Pelosi added to graphic].
Good luck in 2006, everybody!
Captain Ed, Captain's Quarters, January 16, 2006 ---
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/006173.php
Jensen Comment
Latest Jon Stewart Videos ---
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml
Jon Stewart Comedy Central Homepage ---
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml
Jon Stewart Intelligence Page ---
http://www.jonstewart.net/
San Francisco and India Have One Thing in Common:
They will both fumigate after a visit by President Bush Hindu priests who look after the memorial of
Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi conducted a purification ceremony
at the shrine after a visit from President Bush. But it wasn't the president
who offended them, it was the sniffer-dogs who scoured the area ahead of his
visit. After the dog visit, the memorial was cleansed with water brought
from the Ganges river, which Hindus consider holy, the Hindustan Times
newspaper reported Sunday.
"Priests Purify Shrine After Bush Visit," ABC News, March 5, 2006 ---
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1688828&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
Why linking pay to stock prices is liable to do more harm than good
In the arena of executive compensation, two
recent developments stand out against the backdrop of continuing
looting. First, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced plans
to make corporations more fully disclose executive pay. Second, a study
by Mercer Human Resource Consulting found that more companies were
imposing performance targets on the stock and options they granted to
C.E.O.'s.
To the uninitiated, these events may suggest
that some moderation is in the offing, but ultimately neither will help
much. Any benefit from shining the cleansing light of day on executive
greed will probably be outweighed by the inflationary effect of
additional disclosure, which will provide more ammunition for executives
and consultants seeking to justify additional increases. They have to
keep up with the Joneses, they'll say.
Tying pay more firmly to performance won't
help, either. Boards will find ways around the requirements if
performance isn't up to snuff, and they will continue to bid
irrationally for unduly coveted executives.
As Rakesh Khurana showed in his insightful
book, "Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for
Charismatic C.E.O.'s" (Princeton University Press, 2002), there is a
much wider pool of potential chief executives than soaring pay levels
would seem to imply. But companies insist on bidding for a savior, not a
capable leader who knows the business at hand, which may be why typical
C.E.O. tenures are now so short. Even in the boardroom, charisma carries
you only so far.
Indeed, linking pay to stock prices is
liable to do more harm than good. A
stock price isn't much of a measure of executive performance, anyway. A
huge part of that price reflects industry conditions; energy companies
soared not because they were run by paragons of diligence or insight,
but because of world events beyond any executive's control. In hard
times, moreover, a company's stock may take a hit, but those are
precisely the times when good leadership is most difficult — and
valuable.
Other performance metrics can be equally
troublesome, encouraging executives to massage earnings, sacrifice
long-term strength for higher short-term sales and profits and otherwise
act in ways detrimental to everyone but the C.E.O., his family and a few
lucky divorce lawyers.
Perverse incentives notwithstanding, this focus
on metrics is a sad acknowledgment by corporate directors that they
cannot control themselves or the pay they hand over to their top five
executives. In one study, two professors, Lucian A. Bebchuk of Harvard
and Yaniv Grinstein of Cornell, found that from 2001 to 2003, such pay
totaled roughly 10 percent of corporate profits at public companies.
It's a bizarre twist on the tradition of tithing, one that benefits the
rich instead of the needy and conscripts America's shareholders as
involuntary donors.
Although more disclosure and
pay-for-performance requirements won't dampen runaway C.E.O.
compensation, both are useful for illustrating a larger lesson: that
it's naïve to place too much faith in the power of rules to limit human
behavior. Indeed, the problem of C.E.O. compensation suggests that, as
in many aspects of modern life, few mechanisms of constraint are as
effective as one on which we relied so often in the past. That mechanism
was shame.
You'd think that more disclosure would produce
more shame, and thus less pay, for C.E.O.'s and other top executives.
Unfortunately, disclosure of a few more million here and there won't
fundamentally change a hiring system that actively recruits the most
grasping and hubristic candidates. Consider the incentives: by offering
lavish pay and perks that would make royalty blush, corporate directors
today are perhaps unwittingly selecting C.E.O.'s for shamelessness and
egotism rather than leadership.
HISTORY teaches that there is no ultimate
solution to the so-called agency problem, or the tendency of those who
merely work in an enterprise to act in their own interest rather than
that of the owners. Rules and incentives can help, of course, but they
cannot take the place of an honest sense of obligation, duty and loyalty
— values that ought to run in all directions in any decent corporate
culture.
The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained
international fame with this cartoon," said Bolkhari. "It is still shown
throughout the world. This cartoon maintains its status because of the
cute antics of the cat and mouse – especially the mouse.
"Some say that the main reason for making this
very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was
prevalent in Europe."
According to the professor, "Tom and Jerry" was
created to irradicate the association between mice and Jews created in
the minds of Europeans by Hitler.
"If you study European history, you will see
who was the main power in hoarding money and wealth in the 19th
century," continued Bolkhari. "In most cases, it is the Jews. Perhaps
that was one of the reasons which caused Hitler to begin the
anti-Semitic trend, and then the extensive propaganda about the
crematoria began. ... Some of this is true. We do not deny all of it.
"Watch 'Schindler's List.' Every Jew was forced
to wear yellow star on his clothing. The Jews were degraded and termed
'dirty mice.' 'Tom and Jerry' was made in
order to change the Europeans' perception of mice. One of terms used was
'dirty mice.'
Continued in article
March 6, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob, your tidbits this week contains the
following quote under your headline "What Jewish conspiracy is allegedly
behind the historic "Tom and Jerry" cartoons and movies?": "The Jewish
Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon," said
Bolkhari. "
But you don't comment on the blatant
inaccuracies of the media report you quote. I urge my students anytime
they quote a known erroneous media report to at least acknowledge the
wrong information, lest they be guilty of also promulgating falsehood,
and lest their credibiilty suffer by repeating false information.
First, Tom and Jerry is not a Disney cartoon.
Tom and Jerry was created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, who
later produced many other cartoons as "Hanna-Barbera". Tom and Jerry
cartoons have never had any affiliation with Disney.
Second, the creators of Tom and Jerry insisted
until the end of their lives that there was no political or other motive
behind the cartoon beyond pure fun with animation.
Third, Disney was most certainly NOT a "Jewish"
company in 1940 when the Tom and Jerry cartoons were created by Hanna-
Barbera, and even more certainly not with the creation of Mickey Mouse.
Walter Disney was a tyrannical manager (not necessarily a bad thing!),
and kept tight control on the creative processes at the company until
his death, -- and Walt Disney was ... an active Congregationalist! Not
Jewish.
While the Disney company has recently had some
top management with Jewish-sounding names (who possibly could even be of
Jewish extraction, or even practicing Jewish religion for that matter, I
just don't know and don't care), I doubt seriously that any of them are
exercising near the control that Walt Disney did on the creative
processes.
To quote a news media report with such glaring
errors in it without calling attention to the unfactual information is
to (shudder, wince) imitate the WSJ and NYT! I respect your tidbits and
would hate to see them sinking to that low a level...
;-)
David Fordham
Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the foiled attack on a Saudi
Arabian oil facility at Abqaiq Aljazeera, February 25, 2006 ---
Click Here
Also see The New York Times account on February 25, 2006 ---
Click Here
Question
What really fueled Osama bin Laden's 9/11 attack and other more recent
attacks?
In what nation can he claim his only success in winning masses of new
converts? Hint: That nation is a long distance from the Middle East.
Answer
The money mostly came from Osama bin Laden's wealth in excess of $1 billion
in family money. His initial goal is to topple virtually all governments of
Muslim countries. His only success purportedly has been in Indonesia. Most
other Muslim nations have not demonstrated increased allegiance for Osama
bin Laden, although his El Quida cells lay hidden in all Muslim nations and
most Western nations as well.
Yenny Wahid is an eloquent (and elegant) foe of Muslim
fundamentalists. After 9/11, many Americans assume that the radical
Islamic agenda is to destroy the U.S. The reality is that attacks on Western
targets are designed to function as brutal propaganda coups that will
attract recruits to the cause of violent revolution. The main goal of
ideologues like Osama bin Laden is to topple the governments of Muslim
countries, including, most famously, the Wahabi royal regime of Saudi
Arabia. But the real strategic plum, Ms. Wahid says, would be her native
Indonesia and its 220 million citizens--with the largest Muslim population
on earth. "We are the ultimate target," she told me in Washington during a
trip to the U.S. earlier this month. "The real battle for the hearts and
minds of Muslims is happening in Indonesia, not anywhere else. And that's
why the world should focus on Indonesia and help."
Nancy De Wolf Smith, "Daughter of Islam: An eloquent (and elegant) foe of
Muslim fundamentalists," The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2006
---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008016
Iran official says U.S. behind al-Qaeda attacks Iran’s Interior Minister accused the United States
of using its infiltrators in al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks that
would serve its interests, government-owned newspapers in Tehran reported on
Saturday. Radical Shiite cleric Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said that Iran had
“specific intelligence” proving that the U.S. had infiltrated al-Qaeda and
ordered its cells to carry out terrorist attacks to convince other members
of the group that they are genuine devotees. “We have specific intelligence
that America has infiltrated al-Qaeda with certain individuals and has even
given [its cells] the orders for terrorist strikes in order to strengthen
their position”, Pour-Mohammadi told a meeting of local officials in the
southern city of Kerman. He also blamed “foreigners” for being behind a
spate of bombings in the south-western Iranian oil-city of Ahwaz in order to
destabilise the country.
"Iran official says U.S. behind al-Qaeda attacks," Iran Focus, March
4, 2006 ---
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6067
But Wait! That's not so. Israel is behind all terrorism in the world
including its secret deployment of al-Qaeda
Israel is behind all the violence in the world and is using its secret
service agencies to fuel the insurgency in Iraq to direct international
attention away from the Palestinian conflict, claims a senior leader of the
Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization. "The Israeli secret services
are behind everything in the world, not only in Palestine or in Iraq. So one
of the objectives would be to direct the attention of the world to Iraq
instead of what is happening in [Israel],"
Abu Nasser, Al Aqsa's leader in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49110
Rahmatullah Hashemi was the Taliban's chief spokesman abroad. So how
did he end up at Yale?
Why does he prefer a Jewish dining hall?
In terms of life experience, Rahmatullah is way
ahead of his classmates at Yale, but he grew up fast and skipped that
quintessentially collegiate phase of just hanging out and cracking jokes
with friends in a dorm room
Chip Brown, "The Freshman: Talib in Luce Hall ," The New York Times,
February 26, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/magazine/26taliban.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Has the anti-war movement been hijacked?
Indeed, some of the major "anti-war" groups are
intimately connected with terrorist states like North Korea, as well as
terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Some, like the international
A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, are closely allied with known communist
organizations. One prominent group discussed in the April Whistleblower
advocates that activists "physically shut down financial centers which
regulate and assist the functioning of U.S. economy," engage in "large-scale
urban rioting" so as to cause "massive unrest and even state of emergencies
declared in major cities across the country," and "actively target U.S.
military establishments within the United States … [using] any means
necessary to slow down the functioning of the murdering body."
"ANTI-WAR OR ANTI-AMERICA? Exposing the violent, revolutionary leadership of
today's 'peace' movement, Whistleblower ---
http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=1170
MINNEAPOLIS--Something momentous is happening
here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American
families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the
district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage
of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half
of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.
As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing
both raw numbers of students and "market share." In 1999-2000, district
enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it's about 38,600. Enrollment
projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of
families moving into the district accounts for part of the loss, as does
the relocation of some minority families to inner-ring suburbs.
Nevertheless, enrollments are relatively stable in the leafy, well-to-do
enclave of southwest Minneapolis and the city's white ethnic northeast.
But in 2003-04, black enrollment was down 7.8%, or 1,565 students. In
2004-05, black enrollment dropped another 6%.
Continued in article
Supermarkets adopt portable scanners that let shoppers total their
purchases themselves --
and foil Italian elbow queens who have mastered cutting in line.
If you've ever tried to stand in line in Italy,
you'll understand why self-service scanning at supermarkets has taken
off.
Something in the Italian character simply
refuses to stand in an orderly fashion and wait. Women in fur coats park
baskets near the checkout, disappear, come back and add items, and when
they are done, cut in with the banshee wail: "I am in line!" For
dignity's sake, one must swiftly elbow her out and hope a carabiniere
husband isn't waiting in the parking lot.
Hence the appeal of quick,
orderly DIY checkouts. Self-scanners have long
been called the
next big thing
in supermarkets, but perhaps because of the
hellish line situation, Inferno-familiar
Italians were quick to adopt them. A
Tuscan-based chain started experimenting in
1998, and two out of three supermarkets in my
neighborhood in Milan had self-scanning programs
before I decided to give them a try.
Continued in article
Making your food look and act more like toys Last week, we took a look at the wonderful ways in
which technology has improved our food without making it healthier or better
tasting. This week, we're doing more of the same, starting with a product
that will delight people who wish their toaster waffles more closely
resembled plastic toys.
Lore Sjöberg, "You Can Play With Your Food," Wired News, March 1,
2006 ---
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70306-0.html?tw=wn_index_2
From The Washington Post on March 1,
2006
What year was the first television patent issued?
U.S. Is Settling Detainee's Suit in 9/11 Sweep The federal government has agreed to pay $300,000
to settle a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian who was among dozens of Muslim
men swept up in the New York area after 9/11, held for months in a federal
detention center in Brooklyn and deported after being cleared of links to
terrorism. The settlement, filed in federal court late yesterday, is the
first the government has made in a number of lawsuits charging that
noncitizens were abused and their constitutional rights violated in
detentions after the terror attacks.
Nina Bernstein, "U.S. Is Settling Detainee's Suit in 9/11 Sweep," The New
York Times, February 28, 2006 ---
Click Here
Does this characterization of William Jennings B sound like anybody
you know about today? Yet this left-leaning Bryan had, in Hofstadter’s
account, no meaningful program for change. He was merely a vessel of rage.
Incapable of statesmanship, only of high-flown oratory, he was a relic of
the agrarian past –- and the prototype of the fascistic demagogues who were
discovering their own voices, just as Bryan’s career was reaching its end.
"Doing the Lord’s Work," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, March 1,
2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/03/01/mclemee
The world has long looked upon the Dutch as the
very model of a modern, multicultural society. Open and liberal, the
tiny seagoing nation that invented the globalized economy in the 1600s
prided itself on a history of taking in all comers, be they Indonesian
or Turkish, African or Chinese.
How different things look today. Dutch borders
have been virtually shut. New immigration is down to a trickle. The
great cosmopolitan port city of Rotterdam just published a code of
conduct requiring Dutch be spoken in public. Parliament recently
legislated a countrywide ban on wearing the burqa in public. And listen
to a prominent Dutch establishment figure describe the new Dutch Way
with immigrants. "We demand a new social contract," says Jan Wolter
Wabeke, High Court Judge in The Hague. "We no longer accept that people
don't learn our language, we require that they send their daughters to
school, and we demand they stop bringing in young brides from the desert
and locking them up in third-floor apartments."
What's going on here? Weren't the Dutch
supposed to be the nicest people on earth, the most tolerant nation in
Europe, a melting pot for minorities and immigrants since the
Renaissance? No longer, and in this the Dutch are once again at the
forefront of changes in Europe. This time, the Dutch model for Europe is
one of multiculturalism besieged, if not plain defunct.
This helps explain Europe's unusually robust
reaction to the cartoon crisis, which continued last week with riots in
Nigeria and Pakistan that have left over 100 dead. There were apologies,
to be sure, for causing offense after a small Danish paper published a
dozen cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. But on one point European
leaders were united and bluntly clear: they would not tolerate any
limits on European newspapers' rights to publish. "Freedom of speech is
not up for negotiation," declared Commission President Jose Manuel
Barroso, summing up a consensus that has only grown stronger as the
cries of outrage from the Muslim world grow louder.
Continued in article
More Americans abducted along Mexico border than in Iraq LAREDO, Texas – This border area is one of the
least publicized international crisis zones. More Americans have been
kidnapped just in this area than in all of Iraq by Islamic terrorists.
Twenty-six Americans are now officially listed as missing in the
Laredo-Nuevo Laredo region of the U.S.-Mexico border—in addition to the more
than 400 Mexicans reported to be suffering a similar fate. The number of
American civilians missing or kidnapped in Iraq since the beginning of the
war is 23 as of last September, the latest figure released by the State
Department . . . “They had 176 murders in Nuevo Laredo last year, and none
of them have been solved. In the first less than six weeks of this year,
there were another 27 murders. Again, none solved. At the rate they are
going, the death toll will be over 300 by year’s end.” If anything, Mr.
Flores said, the cartels have become more brazen, more willing to reach for
their guns.
Maxim Kniazkov, "More Americans abducted along Mexico border than in Iraq,"
Insight Magazine, February 27, 2006 ---
http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/laredo_0.htm
Meanwhile, schools are racing to block the site
at the campus firewall. "Some argue that it's educationally valid,
others say they're seeing kids beat up over it," says David Trask, a
junior high teacher and technology director at Vassalboro Community
School in Maine. "In my view, it doesn't have much (educational) value."
MySpace's rapid transformation into the largest
community of teens and twenty-somethings in history made a backlash
perhaps inevitable. In the three years since its launch, MySpace has
gathered over 57 million registered users (counting some duplicates and
fake profiles). As of last November, it enjoyed a 752-percent growth in
web traffic over one year, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
In July the site was purchased for $580 million
by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and late last year launched its own
record label in partnership with Interscope Records.
Concerns over the site fall generally into two
categories: unease over the type of content teens are posting, and fear
of the type of people they're meeting.
MySpace CEO Chris DeWolf says to his knowledge
the backlash hasn't caused any advertisers to drop their support of the
site. "We get phone calls from time to time, but when we describe the
safety measure that we've put into place generally the advertisers are
relieved and feel good about what we're doing."
I did it anyway. Should I be worried
that my teenage girl is linked to so many male "friends?"
What if she's linking to adult men?
That can't be good.
How should I talk to them about MySpace?
What is MySpace doing to protect its
users?
Travelers Insurance company says hybrid-vehicle owners tend to be
safer drivers, so they'll get a discount on their auto insurance,
Wired Blog, February 27, 2006 ---
http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/cars/
With a host of helpful features, Camino 1.0
will be a most welcome addition for Mac users everywhere. The interface
for the browser is quite elegant, and gives users the ability to pause
and resume downloads, along with enhanced security, and tabbed browsing.
This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.2. [KMG]
Many users may have dozens, if not hundreds, of
bookmarks located within their favorite browsers. It can be
time-consuming and quite tedious to check their validity, and this is
where this application can step in to help with this process. Link200
3.2.0.2 will go through bookmarks in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and
Netscape and remove those that are no longer valid. This version is
compatible with all computers running Windows 98 and newer.[KMG]
Consumers Beware of Unsuspected Automatic Billings
From The Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review of February
24, 2006
SUMMARY: The article describes issues consumers face in stopping
automatic payment arrangements. "...Consumers don't always know and follow
the rules for recurring payments, and banks say they aren't able to cancel
recurring credit-card charges when a consumer has signed a long-term
contract with a merchant..." In addition, consumers must devote significant
time to resolving issues. Accounting topics arise because the article uses
the terms debit and credit; questions ask students to understand the use of
these terms in banking transactions.
QUESTIONS:
1.) The article differentiates between debit card or bank account
transactions and credit card transactions. What is the difference between a
debit card and a credit card? How is a debit card similar to a checking
account?
2.) What are the issues in resolving payment disputes on automated
payment plans? Why do the issues differ between debit cards or bank accounts
used for automated payments and automated charges to credit cards?
3.) The article uses the terms credit and debit in the title and other
places, such as the statement that "Nancy Burleson's checking account was
debited an extra week's mortgage payment..." Do these uses of the terms
debit and credit correspond to the use of those terms in the balance sheet
equation? Support your answer.
4.) Refer again to the statement quoted in question 3 about debiting a
checking account. Describe how a customer checking account is classified on
a bank's balance sheet, including a definition of the term "demand deposit."
Explain how a demand deposit account is increased (with a debit or a
credit?) and decreased (again, with a debit or a credit?).
5.) How is a customer credit card account balance (say, on a MasterCard
or Visa account) classified in a bank's balance sheet? Explain how the
account balance is increased (with a debit or a credit?) and decreased
(again, with a debit or a credit?)
Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island
Finally cancer deaths are on the decline It didn't attract a lot of media fanfare, but two
weeks ago the National Center for Health Statistics announced some
spectacular news. The number of Americans dying from cancer fell for the
first time in decades. This achievement against one of mankind's most
dreaded diseases is the medical equivalent of putting a man on the moon.
Just a few years ago health officials warned of an epidemic of U.S. cancer
deaths. One and a half million Americans will be diagnosed with the disease
this year. And with a toll of half a million deaths a year, cancer is still
one of the leading killers in America -- partly because death rates from
infectious diseases have fallen precipitously over the past century. But the
National Cancer Institute rightly hails the new data as "powerful evidence"
that "we are on the right track to eliminating the death and suffering due
to cancer."
"Cancer Prognosis," The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2006; Page
A16 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114066413292580962.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Where are all the open-source companies headed? That Oracle, a company that has shown little
support for open-source software projects, has developed an appetite for
open-source acquisitions illustrates how much the worlds of commercial and
open-source software are colliding. IBM has proven open source can thrive
with the help of a large commercial developer, and now it's pushing its
open-source strategy further. The experiences of Sun Microsystems and CA
show how complicated the balance can get . . . Many in the open-source
community view big-business encroachment with trepidation; they worry that
Oracle, for example, is more out to kill a competitor than build a bridge.
Yet others note there's only so much that any heavyweight can dictate in the
open-source world. "The software stack and the communities around it, you
can't buy those," says Scott Kveton, a director at Oregon State's Open
Source Lab. If big vendors think they're buying customers with such deals,
they're throwing money in the wrong direction. "That's the old school
mentality of 'we're going to dictate where our customers go,'" Kveton says.
"... This is 'watch where your community is going, and get there.'"
Charles Babcock, "It's Open Season," Information Week, February 20,
2006, pp. 24-26 ---
Click Here
Witches May Overtake Science K-12 science achievement has
stagnated, according to the National Science Board’s
“Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006″ report, issued
Thursday. Witches, however, staged a big comeback in the
’90s before slipping a few notches.According to a section of
the report on pseudoscience, only around 14 percent of
Americans believed in witches in 1990, according to a Gallup
poll. Witches rallied for a decade, convincing over a
quarter of Americans of their existence by 2001, before
about 4 percent of those reneged, putting the believers at
just over 20 percent in 2005.
David Epstein, "American Ignorance," Inside Higher Ed,
February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/24/pseudo
All sparrows are not alike The bird world has many resplendent creatures that
are easy to spot. The appeal of sparrows is quite different. Most of them
look alike, and only ace birdwatchers can tell one species from another . .
. Depending on how you count them, there are at least 60 species of sparrows
in the U.S. and Canada, according to the University of Toronto's James
Rising, who has co-written two books on sparrows. Some, like the Spotted
Towhee -- with its black head, white belly, rusty flanks and spotted mantle
-- are distinctive. Many others, like the Song Sparrow or Savannah Sparrow,
can be told apart only by such clues as tiny facial markings, the length of
their tails and their flight patterns. What about the sparrows commonly seen
hopping around city streets? They are usually House Sparrows, and to
hard-core birders, they don't count. That is because the House Sparrow was
brought over from Europe, and although it resembles North American sparrows,
it isn't closely related.
Neil Templen, "Birdwatchers Find Sparrows Often Are A Tough Nut to Crack,"
The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2006, Page A1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114066223905080905.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
All Domestic Partners are Not Alike
February 23, 2006 message (with respect to the marriage tax on people
over 60)
from Scott Bonacker [cpas-l@BONACKER.US]
If "living together" is an euphemism for
extra-marital sex, it is maybe more of an example of the utilitarianism
of Western morality. I doubt that the traditional definition of sin has
been changed, just the way that society reacts to it.
However, if "living together" simply means
sharing a residence and combining resources, like roomies, then morality
probably isn't even an issue. Male/female co-housing has been acceptable
for 30-40 years at least hasn't it? When was Three's Company on TV?
Someone else can ask, though. I'm not going to.
Scott
February 23, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Scott,
Actually this is not a joking matter when it comes to employer
benefits put into place largely for gay and lesbian couples.
Some jurisdictions require that there be a sexual relationship
(actually worded as a "non-platonic relationship"). This is intended to
prevent benefits "selling." For example, a single professor with great a
great medical benefits package might otherwise "sell" his/her "domestic
partnering benefits" to a tenant in great need of expensive medical care
or perhaps even give the domestic partnering benefits to his/her live-in
relative.
Domestic partners must have sex to get benefits A requirement within a new domestic partner
benefit plan at the University of Florida — that participants “have
been in a non-platonic relationship for the proceeding 12 months” —
has left many employees feeling like the university was getting a
little too personal. Administrators have taken notice and said that
the policy will be changed within the next two weeks.
Rob Capriccioso, "Too Much Information on Sex at Florida," Inside
Higher Ed, January 24, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/24/florida
1. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Leo Tolstoy
(1886).
With fine brush strokes, Tolstoy paints the
portrait of an ambitious and upwardly mobile magistrate, Ivan Ilyich,
who suddenly comes down with a mysterious malady. The restrained prose
works to amplify a chilling message: Severe illness strips away life's
façade and forces us to examine our inner core. Ilyich, at the cusp of
death, realizes that he has squandered his life by pursuing what is
insubstantial. But Tolstoy affirms that while there may no longer be
hope for the body, there is, until the last breath, hope for the soul.
It is a lesson best learned while still healthy.
2. "The Cunning Man" by Robertson Davies
(Viking, 1994).
The Canadian writer Robertson Davies, who died
in 1995, is not widely read in the U.S., and that's a shame. He's a
master at capturing the multiple facets of character. In this novel,
Davies delves deeply into the mind of a doctor who is keenly aware of
not only the clinical problems of his patients but also their
psychological needs. "Patient autonomy" has become a popular mantra in
our culture, but Davies prompts us to consider that there might be times
when, buffeted by illness, we need the firm, guiding hand of the expert
physician. And he shows us how the placebo effect, with roots in ancient
shamanism and branches that extend to today's practice, can work for the
good.
3. "An Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver
Sacks (Knopf, 1995).
Neurology is (pun intended) a highly cerebral
field. Detailed knowledge of the anatomy of the brain, spinal cord and
peripheral nerves, and meticulous examination of the patient, lead the
astute neurologist to a clinical diagnosis. While elegant cerebration
may arrive at an answer, it does not necessarily bring a solution, since
there is often little effective therapy for neurological disorders.
Oliver Sacks is acutely attuned to this, and in these beautifully
written case histories--including those of a painter who has lost the
ability to see color and a man whose damaged memory leaves him living
perpetually in 1968--he shows us how human beings, even in the absence
of potent treatments, can find ways to surmount their debility and lead
fulfilling lives.
4. "The Man Who Grew Two Breasts" by Berton
Roueche(Dutton, 1995).
It should come as no surprise that Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a physician. Doctors
often find themselves in the role of detectives, sifting clues, weighing
evidence and melding deduction with intuition to identify the
culprit--as Roueche depicted over the course of nearly 50 years as a
medical writer for the New Yorker magazine. Modern medicine might rely
heavily on the sophisticated technology of MRI scans and the like, but
Roueche's stories of clinical enigmas, collected here and in other
books, show how much doctors can surmise by asking the right questions
and listening closely to the patient's responses. After numerous
fruitless tests, a physician finally cracked the case of the man in the
book's title by prompting him--through close questioning--to realize
where he had been unwittingly exposed to female hormones (I won't spoil
the mystery here). Words, and the doctor's laying on his hands, can
still be the key to solving medical puzzles.
5. "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
(Viking, 1974).
Doctors occupy a unique perch, witnesses to
life's great mysteries. They are both biologists and healers, fascinated
by the intricate geometry of tissues and organs while engaged in their
patients' struggle to find meaning in their plight. Physicians aim for
cure but more often come to compromise. The late Dr. Thomas embodies the
physician-scientist who examines the organelles of the cell along with
the aura of the spirit. A polymath, he draws connections between human
beings and the natural world in unexpected places: how our physiology
and our social behaviors are mirrored in termites and bees, wasps and
ants, sea slugs and giant squids. His essays communicate a deep sense of
awe, and his literary voice, like that of a physician at the bedside,
brings wisdom and solace.
Dr. Groopman is the Recanati Professor at Harvard Medical School.
His book on clinical decision-making will be published next year.
In the centuries before there were newspapers
and 24-hour news channels, the general public had to rely on street
literature to find out what was going on. The most popular form of this
for nearly 300 years was 'broadsides' - the tabloids of their day.
Sometimes pinned up on walls in houses and ale-houses, these single
sheets carried public notices, news, speeches and songs that could be
read (or sung) aloud.
The National Library of Scotland's online
collection of nearly 1,800 broadsides lets you see for yourself what
'the word on the street' was in Scotland between 1650 and 1910. Crime,
politics, romance, emigration, humour, tragedy, royalty and
superstitions - all these and more are here.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has
filed fraud charges against the owner of an Autosurf site who it accused
of running a $50 million Ponzi scam and pocketing nearly $2 million.
Less than two weeks ago, the
FBI
opened an investigation into 12dailypro.com's
promises of large returns on members' investments. In exchange for
buying $6 units -- up to a maximum of $6,000 worth -- 12dailypro.com
members were promised a 144 percent return within 12 days simply for
viewing a dozen Web ads daily.
The SEC dubbed 12dailypro.com a "paid autosurf
program" but said it was in reality an illegal Ponzi, a scam where
income from incoming members is used to pay existing members' returns.
"The defendants falsely represented that
upgraded membersSMQ-8217-SMQ earnings 'are financed not only [by]
incoming member fees, but also with multiple income streams including
advertising, and off-site investments,'" the SEC said in a statement
issued Monday. "In fact, at least 95 percent of revenues have come from
new investments in the form of membership fees from new or existing
members. The other 'multiple income streams' from advertising revenues
or off-site investments were either negligible or non-existent."
Johnson's scheme, said the SEC's complaint, had
raised more than $50 million from over 300,000 members since mid-2005.
Johnson, meanwhile, had transferred about $1.9 million from
12dailypro.com to her personal bank account, the SEC alleged.
The SEC asked the court to freeze Johnson's and
12dailypro.com's assets, as well as those of her payment providers,
which included StormPay, an online payment service based in Tennessee
that is under investigation by state authorities.
12dailypro essentially shut down after
StormPay, which said it suspected an illegal
scheme, turned off the payment spigot in late January. In less than two
weeks, StormPay was hit with a denial-of-service (DoS) attack that
knocked it offline for two days. The DoS attacker has not been
identified.
All of your ancestors may not be alike Advances in DNA testing are allowing people to
uncover information about their genetic ancestry and find out where some of
their ancestors came from. As an African American, I don't know where my
African ancestors originated from. The only geographic location I can point
to as my ancestral home is Tennessee. So I'm fascinated by the potential
knowledge I could gain from this new generation of tests for genetic
ancestry. But before I fork over more than $200 for such a test, the skeptic
in me needs some answers. What can a DNA test really tell me about where I
come from? How do these tests work? And can they be wrong?
Leslie O'Hanlon, "Tracing Your Ancestry DNA tests to find out your ancestry
are growing in popularity. But do they really work? And are they worth it?"
MIT's Technology Review, February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16421,312,p1.html
March 3, 2006 message from Denmark (and it's not about cartoons)
Dear Professor Jensen,
Recently here in Denmark several companies have
been added to Icelandic portfolios. For example Magasin Nord is now 83%
owned by the Baugur Group. Straumur-Burdaras and B2B Holdings. I have
been intrigued by the financing of these deals. I read that within the
space of four years Icelandic equity fund companies raised seven billion
dollars for purchasing companies and shares. It all seems bizarre and
dare I say it, “fishy.” On a cursory cruise through the company
web-pages I realised that the board members of all the top banks and
private holdings are connected. Here is one example, the Landsbanki is
chaired by the father of the chairman of Samson Holdings and connected
with Avion the air and shipping company. Interestingly the father was
charged with 450 cases of fraud and embezzlement in 1986 when he owned a
shipping company which went bankrupt. He was not found guilty except for
a book-keeping count –there was a ministerial tie-in. The son went to
New York to study business –then co-founded up a brewery in St.
Petersburg, Russia. That company Bravo was sold for 400 million to
Heineken. These connections are intriguing. I am sure Abraham Briloff
would agree. I almost feel that the Icelandic financial system is a
shell-game – what is your take on these shenanigans? Is it at all
possible that the Russian criminal organisations have a finger in the
honeypot or is that too fanciful?
I was speaker at a conference where Scott
(Dilbert) Adams was also a speaker. During
lunch all the speakers sat together. As you can imagine most the table
conversion was questions being asked of Scott. When asked why he became
a cartoonist his answer was that at age 12 he wanted to be either Hugh
Hefner, a supreme court judge or a cartoonist. Why? Because they all get
to work in their pajamas as they work. And, since he couldn't qualify
for the first two, he selected cartoonist.
A couple of years ago I was called for jury
duty. One of the jury interview question was: if you had a choice who in
the courtroom would you like to be? I said the judge--and I gave Scott's
answer assuming no one would then want a smart a** on their jury. It
didn't work.
SEC Says NetEase, Former Officers Settled Action Over Accounting The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a
settled enforcement action against Chinese online-games operator NetEase.com
Inc. and two former officers over alleged improper accounting in 2000 and
2001. The SEC alleged that NetEase "materially overstated its revenues and
understated its net loss by improperly recognizing revenue."
"SEC Says NetEase, Former Officers Settled Action Over Accounting," The
Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2006; Page B11 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114109787795885039.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
How Hollywood orchestrates publicity The current strategies hark back to the
Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s, when studios, movie stars and the press
worked hand-in-hand to create and maintain screen icons for worshipful fans.
Today, the coverage of the stars has exploded. According to the Audit Bureau
of Circulations, circulation of US Weekly stood at an average of 1,662,000
in the six months ending in January of this year, up 12.7% from the same
period a year earlier. Circulation at Bauer Publishing's InTouch climbed
15.5% to 1,178,000, and at Star rose 12.3% to 1,460,000. The magazines are
lucrative. US Weekly sells a million copies a week on the newsstand at $3.49
apiece. The magazine turns an operating profit of $50 million a year, says a
person familiar with its accounts. People, which has a circulation of 3.8
million, brings in by far the most revenue and profit of any of the 154
magazines owned by Time Inc., a division of Time Warner Inc. Network TV
programs like Access Hollywood, cable channels like E! Entertainment
Television Inc. and Web sites have added to the coverage. All these outlets
compete for photos documenting the daily lives of a small cast of
celebrities. These stars, in turn, seek to control their images without
appearing to, because doing so would ruin their mystique. "All those dirty
little secrets in Hollywood include tipping paparazzi off and playing games
with them," says New York-based public-relations professional Ken Sunshine,
whose clients include corporations and stars such as Ben Affleck and
Leonardo DiCaprio. He says people might find that "unethical" if they knew
about it, "but unfortunately it seems to be an accepted part of the
business."
Joe Hagan and Merissa Marr, "Caught in the Act! How Hollywood's bold-faced
names secretly steer the celebrity news machine," The Wall Street Journal,
March 4, 2006; Page A1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114143524125389337.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
NIJ is the research, development, and
evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and is dedicated to
researching crime control and justice issues. NIJ provides objective,
independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenges
of crime and justice, particularly at the State and local levels. NIJ's
principal authorities are derived from the Omnibus Crime Control and
Safe Streets Act of 1968, as amended (see 42 USC § 3721-3723) and Title
II of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
The NIJ Director is appointed by the President
and confirmed by the Senate. The NIJ Director establishes the
Institute's objectives, guided by the priorities of the Office of
Justice Programs, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the needs of the
field. The Institute actively solicits the views of criminal justice and
other professionals and researchers to inform its search for the
knowledge and tools to guide policy and practice.
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134 Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu
Online Video
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
"Video Guide: Securing Your Wireless Network," by Brian Krebs, The
Washington Post, March 9, 2006 ---
Click Here
In the past I've provided links to various types of music
and video available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Quick Page - this button will
automatically generate a Time Capsule page for you. - OR -
Advanced Page - this button will lead
you through a "wizard" that allows you to select specific headlines,
birthdays, songs, TV shows, toys, and books for the selected date. You
can edit the information, or even add your own information to the final
page!
Yesterday I had an opportunity to speak with Nobel Laureate Dr. Reinhard
Selten, and I asked him what advice he would give to PhD students. He
encourages students to be "courageous," and to resist the temptation to
pursue the kinds of incremental research that lead to quick publication
but lack impact and staying power. Mark Nissen in a
message forwarded by Bill McCarthy at Michigan State University
Jensen Comment
This speaks in favor of the initiative being considered at the
University of Michigan to extend time-to-tenure from seven years to ten
years.
It seems that Mr. Cheney sent the State of
Texas a check for $7.00 for a hunting license.
The State returned the check, saying that no license is needed in Texas
to shoot a lawyer! Author Unknown
The historian will tell your what happened.
The novelist will tell you what it felt like. E.L. Doctrow,
Time Magazine, March 6, 2006, Page 6.
We're all lifted up by the community of us.
Even in competition. E.L. Doctrow,
Time Magazine, March 6, 2006, Page 6.
Ending one strange political saga by
starting another, the clerk of New Orleans Criminal District Court,
Kimberly Williamson Butler, surrendered herself to an irate criminal
court judge Friday morning after a week of ignoring court orders and
arrest warrants, and then walked outside the courthouse to announce her
candidacy for mayor. Brian Thevenot,Times
Picayune, March 4, 2006 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment: I suspect this is one of the reasons for calling New
Orleans the "Big Easy." A criminal record is almost a prerequisite for
public office in Louisiana unless you never got caught. Released
inmates have to find work somewhere. Why not work for the city or the
state?
The saying 'Getting there is half the fun'
became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines. Henry J. Tillman
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about
diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go
on. Jean Kerr
If you want to remain on this detail, get
your ass over here and grab those bags. Hillary Clinton (To an Secret Service agent who
wanted to keep his hands free in case of a security threat.) ---
http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=1830
The tiny Rufous hummingbird is able to
recall where and when it last dined on the sweet nectar of flowers,
according to new research, proving bird brains are smarter than first
thought.
Yahoo News, March 7, 2006 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
So what's the big deal. I can do the same thing.
Some Good News and Bad News About
Heaven
Dual Covenant Theology: Thanks to the Cornerstone Church in San
Antonio Jews Can Now Get Into Heaven
An evangelical pastor and an Orthodox rabbi, both from Texas, have
apparently persuaded leading Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell that
Jews can get to heaven without being converted to Christianity.
Televangelist John Hagee and Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, whose
Cornerstone Church and Rodfei Sholom congregations are based in San
Antonio, told The Jerusalem Post that Falwell had adopted Hagee's
innovative belief in what Christians refer to as "dual covenant"
theology. Ilan Chaim, Jerusalem Post, March 1, 2006 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment: This news release actually ended up giving Jews
temporary false hopes.
Really bad news for Jews now that
it's a scientific fact that heaven does exist
Reverend Falwell denies that he ever once agreed that Jews can get
into heaven Evangelist Jerry Falwell has a beef with
the Jerusalem Post after the newspaper published an article
suggesting he's changed his beliefs about salvation, now thinking
Jews can get to heaven without becoming Christians first.
"Televangelist John Hagee and Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, whose
Cornerstone Church and Rodfei Sholom congregations are based in San
Antonio, told the Jerusalem Post that Falwell had adopted Hagee's
innovative belief in what Christians refer to as 'dual covenant'
theology. This creed, which runs counter to mainstream evangelism,
maintains that the Jewish people have a special relationship to God
through the revelation at Sinai and therefore do not need 'to go
through Christ or the Cross' to get to heaven."
"Falwell: Jerusalem Post 'fabricated' story on me Newspaper claimed
Christian evangelist had new tune on how Jews get to heaven,"
WorldDailyNet, March 1, 2006 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49063
While I am a strong supporter of the
State of Israel and dearly love the Jewish people and believe them
to be the chosen people of God, I continue to stand on the
foundational biblical principle that all people — Baptists,
Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ in order to enter heaven. Dr. Hagee called me
today and said he never made these statements to the Jerusalem Post
or to anyone else. He assured me that he would immediately contact
the Jerusalem Post and request a correction. Before today, I had
never heard of Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg or had any communications with
him. I therefore am at a total loss as to why he would make such
statements about me to the Post, if in fact he did.
"A GRACIOUS CORRECTION OF THE JERUSALEM POST," Jerry Falwell
Ministries, March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.falwell.com/?a=p&content=1141242068
Pastors
John Hagee and Jerry Falwell have both denied a report in The
Jerusalem Post earlier this week that they embrace the "dual
covenant" theology, which holds that Jews are saved through a
special relationship with God and so need not become Christians to
get to heaven.
"Hagee, Falwell deny endorsing 'dual covenant'," Jerusalem Post,
March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395523403&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Jensen Comment
Just goes to show you what might happen
to evangelism if just anybody can pass through the Pearly Gates.
Authorities are moving quickly to Plains, Georgia to have Jimmy
Carter settle this matter once and for all ---
Click Here
Seriously, one question that evangelists like Falwell and Hagee
do not treat well is the afterlife fate of people who had absolutely
no opportunity whatsoever to make a choice to accept the Christian
belief, including tiny children who die prematurely or people in
villages where no Christian missionary ever set foot into. Then
there are brain-damaged mental defectives who became serial rapists,
serial murderers, and Chancellor of the Third Reich. What happens
to them? God actually did not give any two people exactly the same
circumstances in life. Some had no chance whatsoever to get into
heaven under evangelist dogma. If God makes an exception for them
then the only humans at risk are sane adults who had an opportunity
to be Christian and failed the test. Gee
thanks! From a long run perspective, a lot can be said
for dying young or being totally insane. I think I'm beginning to
sound like Woody Allen.
March 2, 2006 reply from a Jewish
friend who is also an accounting professor
This
little tempest isn't sitting so great with the JPost
readers. One writes (in talkback to the article for which
you provide the url:
2. Explain
24 gates and 24 elders
David - Israel
03/02/2006 16:02
Falwell
should read his N. Testament. Revelations where John sees 24
elders before the throne representing 12 tribes of Israel
and 12 Apostles. Hmmmm, no replacement theology there. And
the new J-town has 24 gates; twelve for the tribes and 12
Apostles. Hmmmmm. Sounds like God can dual anything He
wants. And who said you can't meet Jesus and receive your
faith in Jesus after your dead? N. Test verses make case for
that. And every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. I
don't know how you force someone to do that? Sorry
Christians God is up to something far greater than just
saving you. Far greater.
A few weeks ago, Hemant Mehta posted an
unusual item for sale on eBay: a chance to save his soul.
The DePaul University graduate student
promised the winner that for each $10 of the final bid, he would
attend an hour of church services. The 23-year-old Mr. Mehta is an
atheist, but he says he suspected he had been missing out on
something.
"Perhaps being around a group of people who
will show me 'the way' could do what no one else has done before,"
Mr. Mehta wrote in his eBay sales pitch. "This is possibly the best
chance anyone has of changing me."
Evangelists bid, eager to save a sinner.
Atheists bid, hoping to keep Mr. Mehta in their fold. When the
auction stopped on Feb. 3 after 41 bids, the buyer was Jim
Henderson, a former evangelical minister from Seattle, whose $504
bid prevailed.
Mr. Henderson
wasn't looking for a convert. He wanted Mr. Mehta to embark with him
on an eccentric experiment in spiritual bridge-building.
The 58-year-old Mr. Henderson has written a
book for a Random House imprint and is currently a house painter. He
runs
off-the-map.org, a Web site whose
professed mission is "Helping Christians be normal." Mr. Henderson
is part of a small but growing branch of the evangelical world that
disagrees with the majority's conservative political agenda, and
wants the religion to be more inclusive and help the disadvantaged.
Continued in article
Sign that the end-times are drawing near
New Book About How Christians Think the End is Near Because of Radio
Frequency Chips Katherine Albrecht is on a mission from God.
The influential consumer advocate has written a new book warning her
fellow Christians that radio frequency identification may evolve to
become the "mark of the beast" -- meaning the technology is a sign that
the end-times are drawing near. "My goal as a Christian (is) to sound
the alarm," said Albrecht, in a conversation over tea at a high-end
grocery store. Albrecht hopes her new book, The Spychips Threat: Why
Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance, will be
embraced by the millions of Americans (59 percent of them, according to
a 2002 Time/CNN poll) who share her belief that the Book of Revelation
in the Bible forecasts events that are yet to come.
Mark Baard, "RFID: Sign of the (End) Times?" Wired News, March 2,
2006 ---
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70308-0.html?tw=wn_index_1
"The Da Vinci Hoax: A Tour de Distortion," Charles Colson,
Break Point, March 7, 2006 ---
Click Here
G. K. Chesterton famously said something to
this effect: When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe
in nothing—they believe in anything. A good example of this is
Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum, in which a group of
friends program a computer to “write” a book about secret hidden
knowledge. Titled The Plan, the book is the result of random links
between things like Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Knights Templar,
and other crackpot ideas. While The Plan was intended as a prank,
other people take it seriously, with tragic results.
Well, Foucault’s Pendulum shows us
how gullible unbelieving people are. And this is particularly so in
our postmodern age when truth doesn’t matter. This phenomenon partly
explains the remarkable success of The Da Vinci Code. Like
Eco’s novel, it’s about a heretofore hidden knowledge that promises
to let us in on the “true” history of Christianity.
Author Dan Brown gives us a Jesus who
neither died on the cross nor rose from the dead. Instead, He
married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. This “sacred blood
line” is the treasure safeguarded by groups like the Knights Templar
and the Masons. And the Catholic Church, in a desperate attempt to
cover up this secret, murders those who threaten to expose it.
Devotees of The Da Vinci Code—like the
fictional fans in Foucault’s Pendulum—have trouble distinguishing
fact from fiction. They visit places mentioned in the novel, and “Da
Vinci Tours” are a booming business. With the upcoming film,
interest in The Da Vinci Code will explode. Christians need to seize
this teaching opportunity, preparing ourselves to answer questions
readers are asking.
The first is: Are the historical events
portrayed in Brown’s story true? Brown claims to have done extensive
historical research and gives his readers no reason to doubt the
novel’s accuracy. Since the average person knows almost nothing
about Christian history, they’re vulnerable. For example, when Brown
says that Knights Templar were put to death by the Catholic Church
because they knew the “true story” about Jesus, people have no basis
to question it, never having heard of the Knights Templar. Or when
Brown says that at the Council of Nicea, the Vatican consolidated
its power, most people are unaware that the Vatican didn’t even
exist in A.D. 325.
It is our job to expose the falsehoods. We
can learn to answer Brown’s lies with the truth by reading books
like Darrell Bock’s Breaking the Da Vinci Code and Erwin Lutzer’s
The Da Vinci Deception.
People flock to stories like The Da Vinci
Code in part because all humans are searching for the secret
knowledge that answers the mysteries of life. And when The Da Vinci
Code debuts in May, millions more Americans will get a condensed
tour de distortion. Knowing our neighbors will see this film,
churches ought to begin to get ready now—preparing to answer
questions about it and to tell our neighbors that there is no secret
knowledge about God. It’s all in the Bible and all true.
The good news is that The Da Vinci Code
readers and viewers are seeking answers to the central questions of
life. The challenge is for us to supply the true answers.
Controversial Jesus-Pig Cartoon at the University of Saskatchewan
A newspaper cartoon targeting religion has once
again sprung into the spotlight -- this time in a two-frame jab at
Christianity in the University of Saskatchewan student newspaper, the
Sheaf. The newspaper is issuing a mea culpa after a cartoon depicting
Jesus performing a sex act on a capitalist pig was published in
Thursday's edition of the Sheaf.
"Cartoon spurs anger U of S student newspaper apologizes for 'mistake',"
The StarPhoenix, March 7, 2006 ---
Click Here
Muslims may "give their souls" by signing up at the Iranian
martyrdom suicide site The Iranian reformist Internet daily Rooz
reported on March 2, 2006 that "the Iranian martyrdom-seeking [i.e.
suicide] forces have launched a website,
http://www.esteshhad.com, called 'To Die
as a Martyr,' [1] and have declared an alert among the Iranian
martyrdom-seeking forces." The following are excerpts from the Rooz
report: [2] "Thousands of Young Martyrdom-Seeking Iranians are Counting
the Minutes Until They Can Give Their Souls"
"Iran's Martyr Recruitment Website," FrontPageMagazine, March 8,
2006 ---
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21558
Jensen Comment
I cannot get the
http://www.esteshhad.com site to work. It could be that Iran has
either moved the site or shut it down due to its discovery by the
Western media. Or it could be an elaborate hoax.
Question
What's the surest way to stop repeat offenders from more purse
snatching?
Free Citizen Information Center ---
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/ This site has a lot of consumer information and steers you through
government bureaucracy.
A Surprising Clue to Parkinson's Existing research already suggests that the
biggest clumps, known as inclusions, are helpful. Cells that form clumps
of the mutant Huntington protein, for example, survive longer than
clump-free cells. Now MIT scientists have discovered a compound that
increases clumps in cell models of Huntington's and Parkinson's disease
and makes the cells healthier. Scientists aren't sure how the compound
works, but they think it might be helping cells get rid of toxic forms
of the proteins floating around in the cell by isolating them into
clumps.
Emily Singer, "A Surprising Clue to Parkinson's: Drugs that boost the
protein clumping that occurs during neurodegenerative disease could
provide a new route to treatment," MIT's Technology Review, March
7, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16517,259,p1.html
U.N. Report: Jews are Terrorists, Not Palestinians Jewish settlers are terrorizing Palestinians
with impunity, attacking children on their way to school and destroying
farmers' trees and crops, a U.N. expert on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict said in a report. John Dugard, a South African lawyer, called
the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip last
summer a positive step. But the Jewish state effectively controls Gaza
through targeted killings and sonic booms from warplanes flying over the
region, Dugard said in a report prepared ahead of next week's annual
meeting of the 53-member U.N. Human Rights Commission.
"U.N. Report: Jews are Terrorists, Not Palestinians," NewsMax,
March 8, 2006 ---
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/8/91958.shtml?s=ic
Sigh! When I think of all those "spring breaks" I spent studying
in the library in my college days (no kidding) The American Medical Association is warning
girls not to go wild during spring break. All but confirming what goes
on in those "Girls Gone Wild" videos, 83 percent of college women and
graduates surveyed by the AMA said spring break involves
heavier-than-usual drinking, and 74 percent said the break results in
increased sexual activity. The women's answers were based both on
firsthand experience and the experiences of friends and acquaintances.
"Girls Gone Wild? Spring Breakers Admit More Sex, Drinking AMA Warns
Women Of Health Risks," ClickOnDetroit, March 8, 2006 ---
http://www.clickondetroit.com/health/7808929/detail.html
In “The Pill,” a record banned by many radio
stations in its day, she (Loretta Lynn) captured perfectly the power of
birth control to let women love without the passion-dowsing fear of
pregnancy: “The feelin’ good comes easy now since I’ve got the pill!”
Loretta Lynn Home Page ---
http://www.lorettalynn.com/bio/
Jensen Comment
Don't take this as a commentary against birth control. I'm all for birth
control and abortion rights. I'm not in favor of promiscuous and drunken
spring breaks. I applaud my students who will be in the Trinity
University Library next week.
Snagit is super for creating still images,
which allows you, in particular, capturing different areas of your
computer screen. Camtasia is a great product for producing videos.
Captivate is even a better Macromedia (currently Adobe) product to
quickly create great educational videos. Try it and you will love
it.
Tamara Rabinovich
Research and Learning Technologies Consultant
Bentley College
Academic Technology Center
168 Adamian Academic Center
175 Forest St. Waltham, MA 02452
March 6, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Tamara,
Thank you for the information about Captivate.
One thing I like about Snagit is that it will capture a paused
video image in a paused media player such as the Windows Media
Player. Paintshop Pro's capture utility will not capture such a
video image.
One thing I don't like about Camtasia is that it will not capture
a video/audio clip in a media player. Will Captivate let you save
clips of video along with the audio running in a Media Player on
your computer screen?
Bob Jensen
March 7, 2006 reply from
Hi Bob,
Neither Camtasia nor Captivate is meant to
be used to capture a streaming video file (video and audio). In
Captivate you can import video into your program; it gets converted
to .swf I believe (uses a flash wrapper). Whether the embedded video
is editable after you do this - I'm not sure. Or you can put in a
link that will allow streaming video to be played in the captivate
program from a server. Since Captivate actually is capturing single
slides, it may be possible to capture a streaming file but it would
probably be jerky. Never thought of doing this.
The newest version of Camtasia, however,
WILL let you capture embedded video, including the audio. My
colleague experimented with this today and it was a success.
"I was surprised that he was
gone by February of '06," said Mr. McClintick, and
"that it happened as rapidly as it did."
"How
Harvard Lost Russia" was
published in the January issue of Institutional
Investor magazine, a subscription-only
publication, about a month and a half before Dr.
Summers's resignation, which he announced last
Tuesday. The move came just two weeks after a Feb. 7
meeting when the president was challenged on several
issues, including his reaction to events described
in Mr. McClintick's article.
In roughly 18,500 words, (22,007 including
sidebars), Mr. McClintick chronicled financial improprieties by
those in charge of Harvard's Russia project, including Andrei
Shleifer, a professor of economics who is a friend and protégé of
Dr. Summers's, and Jonathan Hay, a Harvard-trained lawyer. The two
men were accused of making personal investments in Russia at a time
when they were working under contract to establish capitalism in the
former Soviet nation.
Their behavior led the United States
government to file civil charges against Harvard, Mr. Shleifer and
Mr. Hay for fraud, breach of contract and making false claims.
In a settlement reached last summer,
Harvard agreed to pay $26.5 million.
Mr. Hay was ordered to pay a fine based on his future earnings and
Mr. Shleifer agreed to pay $2 million, though none of the parties
admitted wrongdoing. Mr. Shleifer has not been subjected to any
disciplinary action from Harvard.
Some Harvard watchers attribute that to Dr.
Summers's influence, though he formally recused himself from the
matter, and they see the entire affair, assiduously detailed by Mr.
McClintick, as an indelible stain on
Harvard's reputation.
Mr. McClintick, 65, a 1962 graduate of
Harvard, is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the
author of several books, including "Indecent Exposure," which
investigated financial scandal at Columbia Pictures. That book was a
finalist for the National Book Award and helped solidify Mr.
McClintick's reputation as a meticulous investigator.
Continued in article
Update on March 8, 2006| Harvard University's faculty-ethics board
is investigating Andrei Shleifer, a star in its economics department
star who was caught up along with the school in a scandal that involved
investing in Russia, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Prof. Shleifer and Harvard last year paid nearly $30 million to settle a
civil suit brought by the U.S. government alleging that Prof. Shleifer
violated federal conflict-of-interest rules by investing in Russia. The
case dates back a decade when Mr. Shleifer headed a
U.S.-government-funded Harvard project to help Russia develop financial
markets
John Hechinger, "Harvard Investigates Conduct Of a Star Economics
Professor," The Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2006; Page A6
What about your secret, hush-hush,
Bankruptcy Risk Score that you don't even
know about?
Thanks to new laws, you can find out your FICO credit score. But
lenders are increasingly using a secret credit score on you that is
their secret alone. While most people are aware that their
credit score can have a large impact on their financial lives, there is
another score that the credit bureaus keep that most people are not
aware of - your Bankruptcy Risk Score Your credit score is made up
mostly of your history of obtaining credit and paying off debt. This
score helps determine what type of interest rate you receive on credit
cards or loans that you apply for. Most people assume that it is this
score alone is used by the financial institutions considering whether or
not to give you a loan. The truth is that a bankruptcy risk score is now
being used more and more when lending institutions are looking at a
person's credit history. The bankruptcy risk score has been around for
about 20 years, but has been kept fairly hush - hush. It measures how
likely a person is to file bankruptcy and uses information that makes it
more specific than a credit risk score. The bankruptcy risk score is
exclusively for lenders provided by the credit reporting agencies. This
bankruptcy score is supposedly a complex mix of your credit score plus
your spending habits. The credit agencies and those that use this report
(and have contributed to creating it) don't want to reveal the model
because they spend a lot of time and money developing it and if they
explain it, they are giving away part of it's value. Therefore little is
said about this report (and why you have never likely heard of it
before). You may be able to learn a bit more about it in the near
future. Experian is considering making its bankruptcy risk score
available to consumers. This is after they revealed a study last July
which ranked the states that had consumers who were most likely to file
for bankruptcy within the next year.
"Bankruptcy Risk Score - The Hidden Credit Score ," Jeffrey
Administrator, February 21, 2006 ---
http://www.savingadvice.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15148
The likelihood of suffering medical depression seems to be
increased among smokers,
especially those who smoke heavily, study findings suggest. Researchers in Norway who followed a
population-based group of adults for 11 years found that those who
smoked were more likely than non-smokers to become depressed, and the
risk climbed in tandem with the number of cigarettes smokers puffed each
day. Heavy smokers -- those who burned through more than 20 cigarettes a
day -- were four times more likely than people who'd never smoked to
develop depression. A number of factors the researchers considered --
including physical health, exercise and stressful life events -- failed
to explain the link between smoking and later depression. This suggests,
they say, that smoking may directly contribute to the development of the
mood disorder. For instance, nicotine may over time change brain levels
of the emotion-related chemical serotonin, which appears to be reduced
in people with depression, the study's lead author, Dr. Ole Klungsoyr,
told Reuters Health.
Amy Norton, "Smoking tied to risk of depression," Yahoo News,
March 3, 2006 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060303/hl_nm/smoking_depression_dc
Updates from WebMD (Note that for some people, coffee increases
heart risks)
Question
Will the President of Case Western University encounter the same fate as
Larry Summers?
The big difference is that Harvard did not suffer from deficits and red
ink!
Upon taking office, he has
pushed hard to attract more top students (spending too
much to do so, according to faculty critics) and
emphasized a commitment to undergraduate education
through a program called the Seminar Approach to General
Education and Scholarship, or
SAGES.The program replaces
many general education lecture courses that students
would normally take as freshmen or sophomores with
interdisciplinary seminars, all led by faculty members.
Professors have mixed views on the ideas behind SAGES,
but many who like the concept say that the president
didn’t adequately involve them before he turned a pilot
project into a full-scale, expensive commitment. The
bottom line, according to professors, is that the
president’s plans weren’t designed or executed well and
are leaving the university drowning in red ink. In his
e-mail to faculty members this week, Hundert
acknowledged a need to cut $17 million to balance this
year’s budget, as well as a $40 million “recurring
deficit” at the university.
Scott Jaschik, "Revolt at Case Western," Inside
Higher Ed, March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/02/case
ACLU views on the Supreme Court's agenda The Court already has on its docket a series of important civil
liberties cases involving abortion, free speech, the free exercise of
religion, search and seizure, the right to die, military recruiting on
university campuses, and disability rights.
ACLU ---
http://www.aclu.org/scotus/index.html
We disagree with the Court’s decision today
in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. Universities should not be punished by the loss of
their federal funding merely because they apply the same
non-discrimination policies to the military that they apply to every
other employer that seeks to recruit on campus.
ACLU ---
http://www.aclu.org/scotus/2005/rumsfeldv.fair041152/24377prs20060306.html
The American Civil Liberties Union today
expressed disappointment over a Supreme Court ruling that upholds a
federal law requiring colleges to allow military recruiters on
campus or else lose out on federal funding. The ACLU filed a
friend-of-the-court brief in the case, Rumsfeld v. FAIR, arguing
that it is unconstitutional for Congress to force law schools that
object to discrimination against gay people to give the military
access to their recruitment programs.
The following quote can be attributed to
ACLU Legal Director Steven R. Shapiro.
“We disagree with the Court’s decision
today in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. Universities should not be punished by
the loss of their federal funding merely because they apply the same
non-discrimination policies to the military that they apply to every
other employer that seeks to recruit on campus.”
“At the same time, the unanimity of today’s
decision strongly suggests that the Court did not think it was
changing any existing constitutional rules. Certainly, nothing in
today’s decision endorses the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
policy or any other form of discrimination against gay people.”
Questions
Wasn't Warren Buffet supposed to be infallible?
How did he lose billions? Warren Buffett, the second-richest man in America, is $1.8 billion
poorer this year due to bad bets - also losing billions for his loyal
following. The 75 year-old "Oracle of Omaha," considered by some as the
world's greatest investor, has suffered an embarrassing 2.36 percent
loss in returns on his huge Berkshire Hathaway empire in the past year.
The pricey shares skidded from their peak last December of $91,200
apiece to $87,490 yesterday. That represents a drop of nearly $4.7
billion in just three months for his shareholders.
Paul Tharp, "WARREN BUFFETTED FOR $1.8B IN '05," New York Post, March 4,
2006 ---
http://www.nypost.com/business/64599.htm
What are some of the real benefits of research? Academic research is often big business these
days. But the Association of University Technology Managers wants the
world to know that it’s about helping people, too. The group released a
collection of its version of heart-warming academic research stories, in
the hope that people will see it isn’t all about money or esoteric
discipline specific pursuits. “This is an initiative to build a better
understanding of the results of academic research,” said W. Mark
Crowell, past president of AUTM and associate vice chancellor for
economic development and technology transfer at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. The “
Better World Report” is basically a book of
short stories from the blockbuster discovery genre.
David Epstein, "Money Isn’t Everything," Inside Higher Ed, March
6, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/06/technology
A rain forest in Iowa? Give us a break Despite an initial $10 million donation by
Mr. Townsend and his Iowa Center for Health in a Loving Democracy
(Child) Institute, what is now called the Environmental Project bounced
around the state for years without gaining much traction, let alone
financial backing. That all changed in 2003, however, when Chuck
Grassley, Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a
self-described "fiscal conservative," tagged a massive energy bill with
a $50 million earmark to bring Mr. Townsend's dream here to Coralville,
a thriving Eastern Iowa community near the University of Iowa and the
Iowa 80 Truckstop (aka "The World's Largest Truckstop").
Michael Judge, "The Incredible Shrinking Rain Forest The strange odyssey
of Sen. Grassley's earmark," The Wall Street Journal, March 9,
2006 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110008064
When half the students get A grades, how can we tell which of the
A students are best? In the cat-and-mouse maneuvering over admission
to prestigious colleges and universities, thousands of high schools have
simply stopped providing that information, concluding it could harm the
chances of their very good, but not best, students. Canny college
officials, in turn, have found a tactical way to respond. Using broad
data that high schools often provide, like a distribution of grade
averages for an entire senior class, they essentially recreate an
applicant's class rank. The process has left them exasperated. "If we're
looking at your son or daughter and you want us to know that they are
among the best in their school, without a rank we don't necessarily know
that," said Jim Bock, dean of admissions and financial aid at Swarthmore
College.
Alan Finder, "Schools Avoid Class Ranking, Vexing Colleges," The New
York Times, March 5, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/education/05rank.html
There was a rumor that natural blondes were going extinct. Actually
they're just being reincarnated. A team of American-led divers has
discovered a new crustacean in the South Pacific that resembles a
lobster and is covered with what looks like silky, blond fur, French
researchers said Tuesday. Scientists said the animal, which they named
Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new
family and genus for it. The divers found the animal in waters 7,540
feet deep at a site 900 miles south of Easter Island last year,
according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea
Exploration.
"New Animal Resembling Furry Lobster Found," Yahoo News, March 7,
2006 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060308/ap_on_sc/france_new_crustacean
Natural blondes are going extinct. It's a published fact!
Suppose this study had actually been reported a leading accounting
research journal such as The Accounting Review.
Keep in mind that leading accounting research journals do not publish
replication studies.
As a result few accounting researchers conduct replication studies since
they cannot be published.
The logical deduction becomes that accountants would forever think that
natural blondes are going extinct.
I guess you can say that The Washington Post had a "bad hair
day."
From the WSJ Opinion Journal on March 6, 2006
"Media outlets around the world, from CBS, ABC and CNN to the
British tabloids" all fell for a hoax--a fake study from the World
Health Organization claiming blondes are going extinct.
"The decline and fall of the blonde is
most likely being caused by bottle blondes, who researchers
believe are more attractive to men than true blondes," said CBS
"Early Show" co-host Gretchen Carlson.
"There's a study from the World Health
Organization--this is for real--that says that blondes are an
endangered species," Charlie Gibson said on "Good Morning
America," prompting Diane Sawyer to say she's "going the way of
the snail darter." . . .
"We've certainly never conducted any
research into the subject," WHO spokeswoman Rebecca Harding said
yesterday from Geneva. "It's been impossible to find out where
it came from. It just seems like it was a hoax."
The health group traced the story to an
account Thursday on a German wire service, which in turn was
based on a two-year-old article in the German women's magazine
Allegra, which cited a WHO anthropologist. Harding could find no
record of such a man working for the WHO.
Hey, if you're a journalist, we've got a great human-interest
story for you: Did you hear about the blonde who invented the solar
flashlight? ---
http://www.zelo.com/blonde/no_brains.asp
Now you see how ridiculous the accounting
journal policy of not publishing replications becomes. Hopefully this
published story in a leading U.S. newspaper (I mean The Washington
Post that broke the Watergate scandal) the next time you read the
findings in a leading accounting research journal.
This is replication doing its job Purdue University is investigating “extremely
serious” concerns about the research of Rusi Taleyarkhan, a professor of
nuclear engineering who has published articles saying that he had
produced nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment,
The New York Timesreported. While the
research was published in Science in 2002, the findings have faced
increasing skepticism because other scientists have been unable to
replicate them. Taleyarkhan did not respond to inquiries from The Times
about the investigation. Inside Higher Ed, March 08, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/index.php/news/2006/03/08/qt
The New York Times March 9 report is at
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/science/08fusion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
March 7, 2006 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University
[fordhadr@JMU.EDU]
Bob Jensen responded: "Do you think these
hoaxes are all being planted by the Bush Administration just to
embarrass the administration's media nemesis? If not, maybe Julie
Nixon decided to wait until March 6, 2006 to get even."
Bob, I don't believe they are planted. i
believe the media cultivates them on purpose. They graft, they
propagate, they harvest, and cook and serve, because it helps
readership. Your liberal quotations of media reports are examples of
how sensation sells.
I think the same of the media that you
think of corporate executives and independent auditors when it comes
to fraudulent financial reporting. And for exactly the same reasons.
Both of these fields (public accounting and
news-reporting) are assumed by the public to be operating in the
best interest of the public. Both are assumed by the general public
to be reporting objective facts, clearly and concisely, with minimum
of bias, error, and falsehood.
Your posts on financial reporting scandals
point out that in many cases, the public's assumptions are false
when it comes to auditors and corporate executives. My posts point
out that in many cases, the public's assumptions are false when it
comes to so-called news media.
That you and I both bemoan the "increase"
in this environment is much more a factor of you and I getting old
than it is any real increase in the environment. Fraud and false
reporting has been with us since the beginning (read the account of
the Serpent in the Garden of Eden in Genesis - - even if you don't
accept the Bible as factual, it makes a good point about the origins
of fraud and false assertions and reporting!)
I have personal knowledge of a few
inaccurate accounting reports. But I also have knowledge of some
very accurate accounting reports. By contrast, I've not yet, not YET
in my life, ever personally experienced a situation and then read a
factual account of the experience in a news outlet that didn't have
some aspect(s) incorrect, and in some cases, out and out falsehoods
were injected mainly for the purposes of enhancing the "shock"
appeal, the "entertainment" appeal, or some other greedy purpose of
the news outlet, traceable directly to the profit motive or
reputation motive or both.
If accountants had the track record of
media journalists when it comes to accuracy and reliability of
reporting, there'd be more CPA's in jail than Carter has pills.
It is my experience that fraudulent
financial reporting is not the rule but the exception, where my
experience is that false news reports ARE the rule and not the
exception. The public is
hoodwinked, either way, but I believe the ramifications of false
news reporting is the more harmful of the two, and certainly is the
more ubiquitous.
Planted? I'm not sure. Cultivated, watered,
and fertilized? Yep. For Sure.
David
March 7, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi David,
You wrote "It is my experience that fraudulent financial
reporting is not the rule but the exception, where my experience is
that false news reports ARE the rule and not the exception."
Increasingly, I am concerned about "stretched financial
reporting" being the rule rather than the exception, especially for
giant clients. In many ways Enron was guilty of stretch accounting
as much as outright fraudulent reporting. I think the problem
increases with the size of the client. The auditing firm can afford
play hard ball with small and medium clients. Playing hard ball with
a giant client is tantamount to suicide. Thus we have "stretch
accounting."
Jason Williams in a recent Glass Lewis report entitled “The Hocus
Pocus of Hedge Accounting” reports on 40 companies that revised
their financial statements due to suspected willful violations of
FAS 133. FAS 133 is a prize because companies and their auditors can
always claim ignorance or error in applying such an impossibly
complex standard. But Williams (a financial analyst) suggests that
the violations, like your media violations, are in many cases
intentional. He states: “Some companies with the blessing of their
auditors have improperly applied the rules governing accounting for
financial instruments and derivatives ... “ (Page 2)
The problem is simple enough. Executives either want to smooth
earnings to please risk-averse investors or these executives want to
pad their bonuses. As far as the auditor is concerned, there's too
much fixed cost to recover and too much revenue dependence to buck a
giant client (rhymes) at the local office level.
Bob Jensen
Questions
Will our economy go Fannie up?
Are auditors ever going to be really independent when clients are too
huge to give up?
The Rudman Report on Fannie Mae recites
facts eerily similar to what we now know about Enron. According to
the report, the CFO of Fannie misled the board (and possibly the
CEO) about the financial position of the company. The CEO, head of
the corporate governance committee of the powerful Business
Roundtable, regularly misled Wall Street and the board, but may not
have understood the accounting. The
auditors (this time not Arthur Andersen) failed to stand up to the
management or didn't understand what was happening.
The board, primarily made up of independent
directors, and the audit committee, made up entirely of independent
directors, were unable to penetrate the scam and remained clueless
as earnings were manipulated. In Fannie's case there was also a
regulator, but the regulator did not begin to look into any problems
until it had been surprised by similar wrongdoing at Fannie's
smaller sibling, Freddie Mac.
What we should learn from this -- much of
which occurred after the adoption of Sarbanes-Oxley -- is that a
board made up primarily of independent directors, an audit committee
made up entirely of independent directors, a Big Four accounting
firm alerted to the dangers of accounting fraud, and a regulator
that claimed to be fully on top of what was happening, could not
prevent senior management from fudging the accounting and misleading
the board and investors. No surprise there. Many observers were
saying, both before and after the enactment of SOX, that a
management determined to defraud or mislead could evade the scrutiny
of all the gatekeepers.
This has important implications for the
legislation now before Congress to reform the regulation of Fannie
and Freddie and limit the size of their portfolios. Since dishonesty
and incompetence are an unavoidable fact of life, and gatekeepers
are unreliable, investors must protect themselves by diversifying
their investments. But there is good reason to believe that
diversification would not be available if dishonesty or incompetence
at Fannie or Freddie in the future resulted in the collapse or
financial incapacity of either.
Fannie and Freddie are not ordinary
companies. They have almost $1.5 trillion of debt outstanding, which
they borrowed to buy and carry portfolios of mortgages and
mortgage-backed securities; these portfolios expose both companies
to enormous interest-rate and prepayment risk. To hedge this risk,
Fannie and Freddie are parties to derivatives transactions with
notional values in the trillions, in which the counterparties are
some of the largest financial institutions; any failure of Fannie or
Freddie to meet its obligations would expose these institutions to
substantial losses. Fannie and Freddie debt is also held widely by
banks and other financial institutions, in some cases accounting for
more than 100% of their capital; a decline in the value of that debt
would seriously weaken these organizations and reduce their capacity
to lend.
Finally, both companies are central to the
real-estate financing market. If either of them could not function
normally, that market -- amounting to almost a third of the economy
-- would freeze up. As Alan Greenspan has pointed out for years, the
risks inherent in the portfolios carried by Fannie and Freddie add
up to huge systemic risk -- the danger that a failure at either
company will spread to the economy as a whole.
So here is the key difference between Enron
and either Fannie or Freddie. Dishonesty or incompetence in Enron's
management hurt shareholders and employees, both of whom could have
protected themselves through diversification of investments.
Dishonesty or incompetence in Fannie's or Freddie's managements
could throw the economy into chaos, and from that catastrophe
diversification provides no shelter. Faith in boards, audit
committees, auditors and even regulators has been shown to be
misplaced. Sure, Congress would likely come in and bail them out --
but immediately, without extended debate, and with trillions of
taxpayer dollars potentially at risk? Not a chance. And the damage
in the meantime would be devastating.
As reform legislation languishes in the
Senate, Congress should consider the lessons of Enron, Fannie and
Freddie: Despite our best efforts, error and fraud will occur.
That's why it's important to make sure -- by reducing the size of
Fannie and Freddie's portfolios -- that no future management failure
at either company will threaten the stability of the economy.
Mr. Wallison is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute.
Question
Do you want to install SiteAdvisor or don't you know at this point in
time?
"SiteAdvisor Adds Search Safety," by Brian Krebs, The Washington
Post, February 28, 2006 ---
Click Here
Since its inception, Security Fix has
warned Microsoft Windows users to be extremely wary of clicking on
Web links that arrive via instant messenger or e-mail, as these are
the most common ways that malware spreads online today. But the sad
truth is that for many Internet users, clicking on unfamiliar links
that turn up in Google, MSN or Yahoo search results frequently
expose users to security risks.
For the past few weeks I've been surfing
the Web with the help of the beta version of a browser add-on called
SiteAdvisor, a tool that offers users a fair amount of information
about the relative safety and security of sites that show up in
Internet searches. As I played around with this program, it became
clear that this is a tool that not only allows users to make
informed security decisions about a site before they click on a
search result link, but it also holds the potential to fuel a more
informed public dialogue about the often murky relationship between
Fortune 500 companies and the spyware and adware industry.
But more on the Fortune 500 stuff later.
SiteAdvisor is a browser add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer
that tries to interpret the relative safety of clicking on Web
search results. With SiteAdvisor installed, each listing is
accompanied by a small color-coded icon that indicates whether the
software developers have received any reports of scammy, spammy or
outright malicious activity emanating from the site.
The software gets its intel from a
proprietary "spidering" technology that crawls around the Web much
the same way as search engines do. The company's spiders browse
sites with the equivalent of an unpatched version of IE to see if
sites try to use any security exploits to install spyware or adware
on a visitor's machine.
"Our attitude is, if a site gives you an
exploit with an older version of IE, it's probably not one you want
to visit with a newer version," said Chris Dixon, one of
SiteAdvisor's co-founders.
If you use IE and try to visit any site
that the program has seen using security vulnerabilites to install
software, the program immediately redirects you to a SiteAdvisor
page offering more information on the threat posed by the site
(users can still chose to visit the site if they so wish after the
initial warning). All such sites will earn a big red "X" next to
their search listing, as will others that threaten to bombard
suscribers with junk e-mail or have questionable relationships with
third-party advertisers or shady Web sites.
Hover over the red "X" with your mouse
arrow and a small window appears urging you to exercise "extreme
caution" in visiting the site. If you then visit the site, a red
dialogue box emerges that offers a brief description of why
SiteAdvisor doesn't like it.
Spyware has emerged as the
bane of the Internet -- and finding solutions
represents a growing obsession of Web users and the
industry that serves them. The newest entrant in the
counteroffensive launches today: Boston-based
startup
SiteAdvisor is releasing
software that warns a user about potential spyware
and spam hazards.
The spyware and malware
problem is enormous. According to a recent Pew
Internet & American Life Project, the computers of
roughly 59 million Americans are infected with
spyware. And home computer users spent around $3.5
billion in 2003-04 to fix the problems, according to
a recent Consumer Reports investigation. Infected
machines often slow down dramatically and begin
generating error messages, and some types of spyware
code can steal passwords and other personal
information.
While many established
software products remove known spyware, the warnings
and advisories generated by SiteAdvisor are meant to
keep users' computers from getting infected in the
first place. So far, the company says it has
collected data on two million websites. While this
is a fraction of all websites, the company says
those it rates make up 95 percent of all online
traffic.
SiteAdvisor's Web-crawling
technology checks whether sites offer programs for
downloading, whether those programs carry
spyware-like software, and whether entering an
e-mail address in signup forms will generate spam.
The company stores the accumulated knowledge in its
databases, adds more information from website owners
and users, and offers the warnings via a browser
plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Fearing your student evaluations, how much time and trouble should
you devote to email questions from your students? For junior faculty members, the barrage of
e-mail has brought new tension into their work lives, some say, as they
struggle with how to respond. Their tenure prospects, they realize, may
rest in part on student evaluations of their accessibility. The stakes
are different for professors today than they were even a decade ago,
said Patricia Ewick, chairwoman of the sociology department at Clark
University in Massachusetts, explaining that "students are constantly
asked to fill out evaluations of individual faculty." Students also
frequently post their own evaluations on Web sites like
www.ratemyprofessors.comand describe
their impressions of their professors on blogs.
Jonathan D. Glater, "To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All
About Me," The New York Times, February 21, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/education/21professors.html
"Will Home Robots Ever Clean Up? Helen Greiner of iRobot talks
about how the company's Roomba vacuum cleaner succeeded -- and why they
don't have competitors," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review,
March 3, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16503,309,p1.html
Robotic 'pack mule' displays stunning reflexes A nimble, four-legged robot is so surefooted it
can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick. The
machine, which moves like a cross between a goat and a pantomime horse,
is being developed as a robotic pack mule for the US military. BigDog is
described by its developers Boston Dynamics as “the most advanced
quadruped robot on Earth”. The company have released a new video of the
robot negotiating steep slopes, crossing rocky ground and dealing with
the sharp kick. View the impressive clip here (28MB Windows media file).
“Internal force sensors detect the ground variations and compensate for
them,” says company president and project manager Marc Raibert. “And
BigDog's active balance allows it to maintain stability when we disturb
it." This active balance is maintained by four legs, each with three
joints powered by actuators and a fourth "springy" joint. All the joints
are controlled by an onboard PC processor.
"Robotic 'pack mule' displays stunning reflexes," New Scientist,
March 3, 2006 ---
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/dn8802.html
Jensen Comment
Do you suppose a Democratic Party donkey version with a controllable
mouth is being developed to replace Howard Dean?
Website that allows ex-wives to dish out dirt on their exes
They form Britain's least wanted list: an online database of men that
womankind has declared are to be avoided at all costs. Cads, lotharios
and bedhopping chancers all take their place on a new website set up by
cheated partners intent on sending out a warning to women around the
world.
Jonathan Thompson, "Caution: Don't date... him: Two-timed women have
hit back with a website that dishes the dirt on their exes," The
Independent, March 5, 2006 ---
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article349327.ece
Question
On our way to having one telephone company once again. Can you guess its
name?
The difference is that phone rates will not be regulated.
AT&T Corp. (read that SBC)
is planning to acquire BellSouth Corp., according
to several people familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be
identified because of the sensitivity of the talks. A merger of two of
the four remaining Bell phone companies would represent a huge step
toward recreating the monopoly that existed in the phone business before
the old AT&T was broken up in 1984. The companies are expected to
announce a deal as early as Monday.
Ken Belson, "AT&T Is Said to Be Near Deal for BellSouth," The New
York Times, March 5, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/business/05deal.html
Jensen Comment
I forgot my cell phone on a recent flight. It was a surprise that the
pay phones in the San Antonio Airport now let you phone anywhere in the
United States for $0.50 with unlimited time. I guess this is one of the
positive side effects competing in the era of cell phones that
eliminated most pay phone calls. But I rarely trust monopolies and am
said to see these mergers being allowed by our ineffectual trust busters
in Washington DC.
Is Canada's national health plan doomed? Canada's government-run national health system,
often held before Americans as a model method of delivering medical
care, has been gradually falling to pieces in recent years, and last
week it received what many fear will prove the knock-out blow. That blow
came from Alberta where the provincial Conservative government of
Premier Ralph Klein is defying federal laws intended to safeguard the
system against private medical practice. Klein unveiled a plan to
institute a controversial "two-tier system" in his province – meaning
two levels of medical care, one run by the government and delivered
without fee, the other delivered privately with a fee attached.
Ted Byfield, "The beginning of the end of socialist health care?"
WorldNetDaily, March 4, 2006 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49102
It is no secret that technology has had its
impact on teaching, but it is also no secret that there are times when
the "impact" is unwelcome, if not downright unpleasant. I am referring
to the habit, by now well established, in which students email their
professors at the click of a mouse -- and then expect the professor to
respond in a heartbeat. No request is too outlandish, as a recent
article in the New York Times demonstrated: One first-year student
emailed a calculus professor asking "If I should buy a binder or a
subject notebook?"; another explained that she was late for Monday's
class because she "was recovering from drinking too much at a wild
weekend party." The war stories rattled on and on as the article
explored the ways in which student e-mail have made professors not only
"approachable" but also "on call" 24/7.
Untenured professors have good reason to worry
if students perceive them as not responding swiftly enough -- no matter
how inappropriate or downright outlandish student requests might be.
After all, most students fill out evaluation forms at the end of the
semester and woe to the professor who is perceived as dragging his or
her heels when replying to student email. As a person who was once
chided for not returning student papers promptly -- this, long before
email became a fact of academic life -- I was glad that there was room
on the form for the student to explain that he expected his paper
returned at the end of the class in which he had turned it in. That, for
him, defined "promptly," and I didn't meet his definition.
No doubt every professor who skimmed the New
York Times article had an example or two drawn from personal experience.
I am hardly an exception. I remember, for example, the first-year
student who email me -- this, before our first meeting -- that she was a
member of the field hockey team and that she would be leaving class
early on a number of occasions (they were listed) and missing class
altogether for away games. No doubt she thought this was thoughtful of
her and only thought otherwise when I informed her that, at the college
she was now attending, academic work took precedence over athletics, and
that we ought to discuss the matter further in my office. I am happy to
report that my reply got her thinking but unhappy to report that her
"solution" to the problem was "make-up classes," ones I'd teach her
privately during moments when she wasn't chasing a ball with a stick.
Ironically enough, the last email I received
from a student had to do with the grade he got on a term paper (B-) that
was headed “A Grave Injustice.” I resisted the opportunity to tell him
that, if this was the largest 'grave injustice ' the world handed him,
he was a fortunate young man indeed. Instead, I began with the
formulaic, "I'm sorry you're upset but. . ." and went on to explain that
it is my job to assign grades and that is what I'd done, to the best of
my ability, in his case -- as my typed, half-page comments made clear.
My point in relaying this exasperating tale is to remind professors not
to get exasperated themselves. Volleying emails back and back is, well,
unseemly, something that immature students do but that professional
teachers don't.
My hunch is that the student email problem will
only get worse. That's why it will, I believe, become crucial to
establish an email policy -- call them guidelines, rules of etiquette,
whatever you will -- and add it to course syllabi. I was hardly alone in
making it clear on my syllabi that "Adults do not like to be called
after 10 PM" (some prefer 7), and if I were still teaching I would add
email to the mix.
Further, I would discourage students from
emailing me drafts of papers not only the night before they are due, but
also two or three nights before they are due. My policy, one that
usually worked well, was to inform students that, under normal
circumstances, I would be happy to comment on a one-page summary that
included a working title, abstract, and up to three paragraphs -- if the
single page document were turned in a week before the paper itself was
due. "Unusual cases" (papers with grades below a C-) were dealt with on
a case-by-case basis. Sometimes I would require that the paper be
rewritten after an office conference, sometimes I would ask that a draft
of the next paper be submitted at a mutually agreeable time.
Moreover, I think my etiquette rules would vary
depending on the class. First-year students are often nervous Nellies;
they want to do well but they lack confidence, sometime for good reason.
My advice would be to cut them some slack, at the same time that you
make it clear, in class, that some behavior is cheesy rather than
classy. Because I'm something of a ham, I'd ham it up from time to time
in my first-year seminar with tales, some real, some just made up, about
what I called "students from hell." Everybody laughed but got the point
about what not to do. If I were still teaching, I'd probably borrow the
example about the student who emailed about what binder to buy.
Question
Is your church or favorite charity violating its tax exempt status?
Among the prohibited activities, the
examiners found that charities and churches had distributed printed
material supporting a preferred candidate and assembled improper voter
guides or candidate ratings. Religious leaders had used the pulpit to
endorse or oppose a particular candidate, and some groups had shown
preferential treatment to candidates by letting them speak at functions.
Other charities and churches had made improper cash contributions to a
candidate's political campaign. The IRS said the cases covered "the full
spectrum" of political viewpoints.
"IRS Finds Charities Overstep Into Politics," SmartPros, February
28, 2006 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x51953.xml
The Washington Education Association (WEA)
is running radio and television ads decrying the fact that our state
is 46th in the nation for class size, and 42nd in the nation for
per-pupil spending. The ads, part of a campaign dubbed “Take the
Lead,” are meant to generate sympathy for increased education
spending.
Unfortunately, they’re misleading. And
shallow.
A moment’s consideration of the facts shows
us the WEA’s campaign is without substance. Consider the facts
behind two of the union’s claims (which are featured in television
ads this week):
1. Washington ranks 46th in the nation in
class size. Rankings are interesting, but they’re meaningless
without baselines. Ranking “high” or “low” doesn’t answer the real
question: What is Washington’s average class size? The WEA’s own
national affiliate admits that “no state-by-state actual class size
information exists.”
What we do know is that our state
legislature allocates funding to pay for a student/teacher ratio of
18.8 to one. And according to the Superintendent of Public
Instruction, the state employs 55.7 K-12 classroom teachers for
every 1,000 students, which means there is one teacher for every 18
students.
Many teachers will tell you their classes
are larger than 18 or 19 students. Yet the WEA doesn’t seem
interested in figuring out why this is and where current dollars are
going.
Further, while class sizes are certainly
important, they are only meaningful in context with the factors that
matter most in student learning: quality and experience of the
teacher, curriculum, school leadership, classroom discipline, and
parental involvement. Some teachers can handle larger classes
without difficulty; some subjects require more intensive interaction
than others; some students learn with more ease than others. Class
sizes should be determined by local teachers and administrators, not
mandated at the state level.
2. Washington ranks 42nd in the nation in
education spending. Again, rankings are interesting, but they don’t
tell us much without baselines. The important questions are: How
much is Washington spending per-pupil, and how much is enough?
According to the Superintendent of Public
Instruction, Washington spent an average of $10,103 per K-12 student
last year. That’s a lot of money. Is it enough to do the job? It’s
hard to answer that question without meaningful performance audits
of our K-12 schools, but it’s interesting to note that it rivals the
tuition at some of our state’s elite private schools.
It is well documented that higher education
spending doesn’t necessarily mean higher student achievement.
Washington, D.C. spends more than any state, yet has the lowest
student test scores. Utah spends less than most states, yet has some
of the highest student test scores.
It costs money to provide a quality
education, but how you spend that money is just as important as how
much.
There is no "one size fits all" savings prescription to acquire
this nest egg. You need to consider age, wealth, projected employment
income and other personal factors to establish a reasonable range for
what you can save before retirement.
The final critical factor affecting the
success of your retirement plan is the investment return from now
until you hang up your work clothes. Many investors and financial
advisors favor a simple approach to forecasting future returns,
taking the average 10.4% compounded annual return for large-company
U. S. stocks over the past eight decades. There are five reasons why
this is a bad idea:
• The return is not inflation-adjusted.
• Future returns are likely to be lower
than past returns.
• The return ignores expenses.
• The return ignores taxes.
• Most investors do not reinvest all of
their dividends.
Largest crater discovered in Sahara Researchers from Boston University have
discovered the remnants of the largest crater of the Great Sahara of
North Africa, which may have been formed by a meteorite impact tens of
millions of years ago. Dr. Farouk El-Baz made the discovery while
studying satellite images of the Western Desert of Egypt with his
colleague, Dr. Eman Ghoneim, at BU's Center for Remote Sensing. The
double-ringed crater – which has an outer rim surrounding an inner ring
– is approximately 31 kilometers in diameter. Prior to the latest
finding, the Sahara's biggest known crater, in Chad, measured just over
12 kilometers. According to El-Baz, the Center's director, the crater’s
vast area suggests the location may have been hit by a meteorite the
entire size of the famous Meteor (Barringer) Crater in Arizona which is
1.2 kilometers wide. El-Baz named his find “Kebira,” which means “large”
in Arabic and also relates to the crater’s physical location on the
northern tip of the Gilf Kebir region in southwestern Egypt. The reason
why a crater this big had never been found before is something the
scientists are speculating.
"Largest crater discovered in Sahara," PhysOrg, March 5, 2006 ---
http://www.physorg.com/news11417.html
"Google's Latest Bundle of Goodies Is Worth Opening," by Rob
Pegoraro, The Washington Post, February 27, 2006 ---
Click Here
The Pack (
http://pack.google.com/ )
consists of five Google
programs (Google Earth, Google Desktop, the
Picasa photo organizer, the Google Toolbar for
Internet Explorer and the new Google Pack
Screensaver), a version of Mozilla Firefox with
the Google Toolbar built in, the Ad-Aware SE
Personal spyware remover, a copy of Symantec's
Norton AntiVirus 2005 SE that includes six
months of updates and Adobe Reader 7. You can
also remove any of these components or add any
of four optional ingredients -- the Google Talk
and Trillian instant messengers, RealPlayer and
a gallery of art images to use as desktop
backgrounds or screensaver images -- before
beginning the download.
(The presence of so
much Googleware should explain why the Mountain
View, Calif., company isn't doing this just out
of charity; a Google Pack user will never be far
from links to Google sites and services.)
Continued in article
It's a little like encouraging burglars so security guards have
more opportunities "The job of security companies is to make the
Apple platform look insecure," said Enderle. "They're now convinced that
Apple is their next big revenue opportunity." According to Enderle,
that's what's behind recent security alerts and warnings, first for a
pair of worms -- which Apple argued weren't worms at all -- then for an
unpatched vulnerability that could let attackers hijack Macs. "I'm not
implying that there is collusion between security companies and
hackers," said Enderle, "but security companies only make money if there
are security exposures." But he did claim that there was a connection
between vulnerability disclosures and exploits, that the cause of the
second was actually the first.
Greg Keizer, "Analyst Dings Security Vendors For Exploiting Apple
Flaws: Rob Enderle is convinced that security companies see Apple as
their next big revenue opportunity," InformationWeek, February
27, 2006 ---
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181400660
Meanwhile, analyst
Rob Enderle--one of the IT industry's chief pot stirrers--asserts that
the security vendor community is, in effect,
feeding itself with all the warnings it issues,
Apple merely being the latest example. "By telling people about an
exposure, you're telling someone else how to [exploit] it. I think
security companies should spend more time catching criminals than
telling them how to become one," the ever-provocative Enderle says. His
view is, in turn, dismissed by Gartner security expert John Pescatore as
so much old news. But if security vendors didn't derive at least some
benefit from all the publicity surrounding vulnerabilities, they'd be
far less proactive in dishing out the information, advice, and expertise
every time a new one comes to light.
Tom Smith, "Apple, Security, And Disturbing Questions,"
InformationWeek Daily Newsletter, March 1, 2006
"Is OS X Truly Vulnerable? Only
one of three recent concerns about the security of Apple's operating
system is worth worrying about," by Daniel Turner, MIT's Technology
Review, March 1, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16444,300,p1.html
The Wall Street Journal Flashback, February 28, 1949
A nickel an hour. That's about the average wage
boost industrial workers will get this spring. The
administration sees an increase as necessary to keep
purchasing power up, but is concerned about inflation
and layoffs if pay rises too sharply.
A Quantum Encryption Breakthrough Researchers at the University
of Toronto have shown, in a study published in the
February 24 issue of Physical Review Letters, that one
of the present liabilities of quantum cryptography can
be turned into an advantage. Using "quantum decoys,"
Professor Hoi-Kwong Lo and
his team are increasing the distance that
quantum-encrypted data can be sent over fiber-optic
cable. Quantum cryptography uses particles of light
called photons to create and send keys used for coding
and decoding messages. A photon can transmit bits of a
key by representing a 1 or 0, depending on a property
called polarization. The sender of this key (physicists
call her "Alice") transmits a string of randomly
polarized single photons to the recipient ("Bob"), who
collects each photon, one at a time.
Kate Greene, "A Quantum Encryption Breakthrough: This
new technique dupes eavesdroppers," MIT's Technology
Review, March 3, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16505,300,p1.html
Practical Fuel-Cell Vehicles The future of fuel-cell vehicles is already
happening in an unlikely proving ground: forklifts used in warehouses.
Several manufacturers are testing forklifts powered by a combination of
fuel cells and batteries -- and finding that these hybrids perform far
better than the lead-acid battery systems now typically used. In some
situations, in fact, they could pay for themselves in cost savings and
added productivity within two or three years. The adoption of the
technology points to a promising hybrid strategy for finally making fuel
cells economically practical for all sorts of vehicles. While
researchers have speculated for years that hydrogen fuel cells could
power clean, electric vehicles, cutting emissions and decreasing our
dependence on oil, manufacturing fuel cells big enough to power a car is
prohibitively expensive -- one of the main reasons they are not yet in
widespread use. But by relying on batteries or ultracapacitors to
deliver peak power loads, such as for acceleration, fuel cells can be
sized as much as four times smaller, slashing manufacturing costs and
helping to bring fuel cell-powered vehicles to market.
Kevin Bullis, "Practical Fuel-Cell Vehicles: Hybrid vehicles operating
in an unusual environment are lifting the prospects of fuel cells,"
MIT's Technology Review, March 3, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16504,296,p1.html
Hawaiian Senators Block Genetic Modified Crops State senators have advanced two bills putting
limits on the genetic modification of taro and coffee, crops that are
key to Hawaii's identity. The bills that passed out of a dual committee
meeting Wednesday would ban until 2011 the field testing of strains of
both plants that have been engineered or spliced with the genes of other
organisms. The modified plants could, however, be grown in greenhouses.
The taro bill also would place a five-year ban on genetically modifying
Hawaiian varieties of the plant, whose roots are made into poi, one of
the state's best-known foods. In Hawaiian folklore, taro is considered
to be a sacred ancestor of Native Hawaiians, linking them to island
soil.
"Hawaiian Bill: No GM Coffee Plantations Hawaii Senate lawmakers advance
limits on genetic modification research," MIT's Technology Review,
March 2, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/TR/wtr_16486,323,p1.html
Who’s Afraid of David Horowitz? You would never know it from McLemee’s article,
but The Professors is not about any threat from left-wing ideas
as such. It is about the intellectual corruption of the university, and
the intrusion of political agendas into the academic curriculum. I know
this statement will come as a surprise to those familiar only with the
attacks themselves, so here is what the book actually says: “This book
is not intended as a text about left-wing bias in the university and
does not propose that a leftwing perspective on academic faculties is a
problem in itself. Every individual, whether conservative or liberal,
has a perspective and therefore a bias. Professors have every right to
interpret the subjects they teach according to their individual points
of view. That is the essence of academic freedom. But they also have
professional obligations as teachers, whose purpose is the instruction
and education of students, not to impose their biases on their students
as though they were scientific facts.”
"Who’s Afraid of David Horowitz?" by David Horowitz, Inside Higher Ed,
February 27, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/02/27/horowitz
Canadian
University Bans Wireless Networking, Citing Health Concerns
The president of Lakehead
University, in Ontario, says that he will not allow the
institution to deploy a wireless network on the campus out
of concern that the electromagnetic frequencies such systems
emit could endanger students' health.
The president, Frederick F.
Gilbert, became concerned about the health effects of
wireless networks after reading studies done by scientists
for the California Public Utilities Commission, said Marla
Tomlinson, a spokeswoman at Lakehead, a 7,000-student
institution in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The California
scientists concluded that people exposed to electromagnetic
wavelengths might be at risk of developing cancer and
recommended further investigation.
I am not a subscriber and was unable to
read the article. Our son had leukemia in the early 1980's(he is
currently OK and applying to PhD programs). The doctors did a lot of
testing in our house and neighborhood for electro-magnetic waves
including powerlines and electric blankets. The last I knew they
determined that these waves were not a factor in causing cancers,
either in our son or anyone else. I am interested in hearing about
any new research. (We abandoned our electric blankets, just in case,
and I still miss crawling into a warm bed.)
"How to Digitize a Million Books: Needed: scanning software
for 430 languages and a system to organize the next big leap in the
information age," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review,
February 28, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16434,300,p1.html
Over 600,000
books have been scanned: 170,000 in India, 420,000 in China, and
20,000 in Egypt. Roughly 135,000 of the books are in English;
the others are in Indian, Chinese, Arabic, French, or other
languages. Most of the books are in the public domain, but
permission has been acquired to include over 60,000 copyrighted
books (about 53,000 in English and 7,000 in Indian languages).
The books that
have been scanned to date are not yet all available online, and
no single site has copies of all the books that are available
online.
Twenty-two
scanning centers are operating in India, including four
mega-centers. Eighteen centers are running in China, including a
mega-center in a free-trade zone to avoid customs delays with
shipments of books from the U.S.
The National
Agriculture Library and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) have joined the project, along with academic
libraries in the United States that have large agriculture
collections. Agriculture has become a collection focus for the
project, and plans are being developed to create a knowledge
network aimed at improving rural community access to critical
agricultural information.
Significant
research is underway in the project, including OCR for Indian
and Arabic languages and scripts. The research also includes
developments in machine translation, automatic summarization,
image processing, large-scale database management, user
interface design, and strategies for acquiring copyright
permission at an affordable cost. Indian partners have developed
a translating and transliterating user interface. Partners in
Egypt are developing an interface that supports annotation and
highlighting. Partners in China have made remarkable progress on
content-based image retrieval and machine analysis of
calligraphic scripts. Carnegie Mellon has taken strides in
machine translation and automatic summarization.
Transferring
the books among partners is very difficult, largely because of
network bandwidth. Shipping books on disks does not work well in
China because of the need to make a customs declaration for
every book on the disk. Other challenges include providing a
flow of books commensurate with the capacity of the scanning
centers and resolving issues related to copyright.
India, China
and the U.S. agreed to join the Open Content Alliance (OCA),
recently initiated by Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive,
because the goals of the OCA are consistent with those of the
Million Book Project.
Library
Leaders Press Colleges to Archive Online Journals to
Avoid Loss of Data
Some library leaders are urging
colleges and academic libraries to take action to
preserve online scholarly journals, saying they could
vanish into oblivion should publishers go out of
business or face other calamities. A group of
librarians, college administrators, and scholars issued
a public call to action on the issue in October, in a
statement edited by Donald J. Waters, an official
specializing in scholarly communications at the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. The Association of College and
Research Libraries endorsed the message this month.
"Since most libraries do not actually own and store the
content of the journals they license in electronic form,
new models for preservation must be developed,"
association officials said in a statement. "Scholars may
face serious loss of access to published research if
libraries do not adopt effective
electronic-journal-preservation strategies."
http://www.diglib.org/pubs/waters051015.htm
Unlike print journals, which
libraries own and can keep forever, electronic journals
are provided to libraries under a kind of lease.
Libraries pay for the privilege of having access to the
journals online. But many libraries fear they will not
be able to retrieve back issues should that access
abruptly end -- if, for example, a publisher goes
bankrupt. This is of special concern now that libraries
are increasingly relying on electronic journals. The
association says it supports allowing libraries to
operate their own electronic archives or to form a
collective with other libraries to preserve electronic
journals. The archive would be made available to
scholars only when the publisher could no longer provide
access to the journals, or if the materials were no
longer protected by copyright. Chronicle of Higher
Education 2/24/06 http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/02/2006022401t.htm
.
Dutch Schools Strip Nobel Laureate's Name Dutch universities have stripped a late Nobel
chemistry laureate of honors, citing new evidence that he collaborated
with the Nazis to oust Jews from academic positions. The information
about Dutch-born Peter Debye, who won the Nobel in 1936, emerged a month
ago in a book, "Albert Einstein in the Netherlands." The book, by
Berlin-based author Sybe I. Rispens, cited letters Einstein wrote to
colleagues about his suspicions of Debye when the Dutchman moved to the
United States in 1940, where he lived until his death in 1966.
Aruthur Max, "Dutch Schools Strip Nobel Laureate's Name," Yahoo News,
March 3, 2006 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060303/ap_on_re_eu/netherlands_laureate_disgraced
If this passes, Ohio may no longer be the swing state in national
elections If a Youngstown lawmaker's proposal becomes
Ohio law, Republicans would be barred from being adoptive parents. State
Sen. Robert Hagan sent out e-mails to fellow lawmakers late Wednesday
night, stating that he intends to ``introduce legislation in the near
future that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from
adopting children or acting as foster parents.''
Carl Chancellor, "Plan would bar Ohio adoptions by GOP," Beacon
Journal, February 24, 2006 ---
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/13950130.htm
How many U.S. households are still
not online? Nevertheless, while many of us have embraced
the Web, hoping that it's making our lives easier, there's a significant
number of U.S. households that are not online—39 million,
according to researcher Parks Associates.
Not only do these homes not have Web connections, but only 2 percent of
the people living in them plan to subscribe to an Internet service this
year. As a result, it appears the nation has stalled in terms of
Internet penetration in the home. Now I could do a lot of hand wringing
and argue for getting these people online as soon as possible, but the
truth is I don't care. If these people are happy without blogs, portals,
search engines and iTunes, then I say stay away.
Antone Gonsalves, InternetWeek Newsletter, February 26, 2006
From The Washington Post on March 6, 2006
What airline plans to offer XM satellite
radio service on board its flights?
Jensen Question
When will the airlines ever learn that what we really want for our money
is a a good routing schedule, on-time arrival, and joy over the luggage
service. Why should we pay for frills that don't really matter?
A number of colleges and universities have
excellent sites dedicated to helping professors and other educators
learn more about effective teaching methods. In recent years, more
than a few community colleges have also adopted such techniques,
creating a plethora of websites geared towards assisting educators.
The first site profiled is from the Lansing Community College’s
Center For Teaching Excellence. From their page, visitors can take a
look through a number of useful documents, such as “Classroom
Strategies for Fostering Student Retention” and “Essays on Teaching
Excellence.” The site also contains their biannual newsletter,
“Spotlight on Faculty”, which features a number of teaching tips and
techniques developed by faculty at the college. The second site will
take users to the Teaching and Learning Center at Del Mar College in
Corpus Christi, Texas. Here visitors can find helpful “technology
tips” designed for incorporating technology into the classroom, and
a number of podcasts of interest. These podcasts deal with a number
of themes, ranging from mental health crises on campus to resource
challenges facing community colleges. [KMG]
Located at Harvard University, The National
Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) draws
on numerous scholars and experts to investigate the practice of
educational programs around the country that serve adults with
limited literacy and English language skills. Their various outreach
efforts include disseminating their research findings through
journals and policy reports, along with the leadership provided by
their Connecting Practice, Policy, and Research initiative. The
“Research” section of the site is a good place to start, as users
can learn about their most recent research projects and also read
publications authored by researchers working at NCSALL. Beyond this
section, visitors will also appreciate the “Publications” area,
which includes research briefs, reports, and selections from their
occasional papers series. One highlight here is the “Focus on
Basics” quarterly publication, which presents best practices and
current research on adult learning and literacy. Visitors can view
the current issue, and also scan through the archives, which date
back to 1997. [KMG]
There are a number of fine journals that
deal with policies oriented toward children in the United States,
and The Future of Children is certainly one of the best. The journal
is a publication of The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings
Institution. On this site, visitors can read the current issue of
the journal, and also browse their previous issues dating back to
1991. Each issue has a general theme, and past years have featured
issues dealing with adoption, health insurance for children, caring
for infants and toddlers, and domestic violence. For visitors who
may be pressed for time, each issue contains an executive summary
and article summaries. Additionally, users may also wish to sign up
to receive their free e-mail newsletter. [KMG]
Stanford Law Review: In Search of Fair
Housing In Cyberspace: The Implications of the Communications
Decency Act for Fair Housing on the Internet [Word]
http://www.clccrul.org/FHAandtheCDA.doc
"IBM's Chip-Shrinking Secret: New tricks with light and
lenses could produce the smallest microprocessors -- without revamping
the industry," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, February
27, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16425,295,p1.html
Langa Letter:
Another Hidden Gem: The Windows Disk Management Tool: Create,
delete, and format partitions; change drive letter assignments and
paths; help set up disk mirroring and RAID; and more--all with this free
Windows tool
by Fred Langa, InformationWeek, February 27, 2006 ---
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180207718
Windows' Disk Management Tool
You can access the Disk Management tool easily from any Admin-level
account. Click "Start/Control Panel/Performance" and
"Maintenance/Administrative Tools/Computer Management." When the
Computer Management interface opens, look in the left-hand pane
under "Storage" and click on "Disk Management." You should see
something like what was shown earlier in screen 2, although the
details for your system will, of course, be different.
Let me explain what you're seeing in the
screen shot: You can see my first hard drive-Disk 0-has seven
partitions and six logical drives on it. The tiny 8 Mbyte first
partition is for my boot manager, a tool that also gives me access
to a self-contained imaging/backup function that runs outside of,
and independently of, Windows. Because this partition is outside of
Windows' control, Windows shows it as an "unknown partition." If you
don't use a boot manager, your display won't show this kind of
partition.
My normal C: system drive is a 9 Gbyte NTFS
partition, sized because it fits conveniently on two DVDs for
backup. Windows and my most important data files live there. The
other partitions, D through H, are formatted in FAT32, which yields
slightly faster access than NTFS, albeit with a slightly greater
risk of data corruption or file errors. My less important files are
on these partitions, and they're backed up at less-frequent
intervals than my C: drive is. Because FAT32 is marginally faster
than NTFS, I've also put XP's pagefile on one of the FAT32
partitions, D. (If you're curious about why I've set things up this
way, there's a complete explanation here.)
In screen 2, also note that my system's two
CD/DVD drives are shown. Although our focus today is hard-drive
management, the Windows Disk Management tool does give you access to
these removable drives as well. This can be very handy when or if,
for instance, you need or want to change the drive letter assigned
to a CD or DVD drive.
Although the Disk Management tool is useful
for working on already installed disks, its best and main use is in
adding a new second drive to a system, or temporarily adding a
second drive as part of swapping out an older drive for a newer one.
The upper left portion of screen 3 shows
what you see when you open Drive Management after adding a new, raw,
unformatted hard drive to a system. (For clarity, I've resized the
Drive Management window to hide the CD and DVD drive information
because we won't be doing anything with them right now.)
Langa Letter: A Must-Have Repair And Recovery Tool
If you ever have to recover files from an unbootable drive or
try to bring a dead PC back to life, here's a free,
zero-footprint tool you shouldn't be without, Fred Langa says.
No Pro Bono: Mother Rented Her Daughters to Pay for Legal
Services An alert hotel clerk helped police nab a
fugitive lawyer facing charges that he paid for sex with two girls with
the approval of their mother. Prosecutors said Colliton had in effect
been renting the teenage girls from their 38-year-old mother. The lawyer
started with a 15-year-old daughter in 2000 and continued until 2004,
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.
"Fugitive Lawyer Arrested on Child Sex Charges," Fox News, March
4, 2006 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C186828%2C00.html
Rechargeable battery industry, dominated
by Asian giants like Sanyo, Sony, and Toshiba, is worth more than $6
billion a year. A123 - whose investors include Motorola, Qualcomm,
and the Pentagon's VC arm, OnPoint Technologies - aims to radically
expand that market, by both cutting the cords on conventional
plug-in tools and home appliances and powering brawny electric
versions of everything from lawn mowers to military surveillance
drones.
A123's real target, however, is your
car. Chiang says A123's cells could lighten a Toyota Prius'
100-pound battery by as much as 80 percent and help boost any
hybrid's performance. The quick recharging time - the M1 takes five
minutes to reach 90 percent capacity - plus high peak power also
would be ideal for plug-in versions of gas-electric vehicles. With a
bit more research, the world's roads may someday see fast,
zero-carbon autos that zip past gas guzzlers and tank up from the
grid faster than a rest-stop Starbucks can serve you a latte.
Continued in article
Forwarded by a good friend who is retired from the Army.
Ben Stein's Last Column
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's
World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means
I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL,"
and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for
so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this
column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a
person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale,
Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it
used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely
some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a
nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with
Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the
Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once
was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think
Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant,
friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated.
But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and
reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining
star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in
insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean
someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars
are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or
getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they
have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me
any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who
poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have
been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an
abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of
the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to
a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and
killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S.
soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of
unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He
pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a
family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have
lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even
after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and
stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of
our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military
pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in
submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and
die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such
poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending
that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the
policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no
idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring
in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for
surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into
caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in
hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the
World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea
of a real hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that
matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it
another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as
Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred
Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a
writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and,
above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This
came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son,
pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my
sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their
declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into
extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my
sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the
soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that
life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my
duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help
others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a
human.
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134 Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu
It took me less than ten seconds
I recommend that you download a patched Adobe Macromedia Flash Player now
--- Click
Here
"Adobe Warns Of Critical Flash Flaw, Drive-By Downloads: Users are urged to
update immediately to the patched 8.0.24.0 edition of the Flash player," by
Gregg Keizer, Information Week, March 17, 2006 ---
Adobe on Tuesday warned that multiple critical
vulnerabilities in its Flash media player put users at risk, possibly
from drive-by downloads, and urged all to update immediately to the
patched 8.0.24.0 edition.
Microsoft also issued a security advisory
Tuesday to tell customers of its Windows XP, Windows 98, and Windows
Millennium operating systems -- all of which are bundled with a flawed
edition of Flash -- to also update their players.
Security vendors quickly chimed in Wednesday.
Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia, for example, labeled the
threat as "highly critical," its second-highest
warning rating.
Online Video
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
A friend sent me the Wafa Sultan
video, MEMRI translated (link below). It read well as a transcript when
you posted it, but the video is 4x more powerful. An impressive and
courageous woman--worth spending 4 minutes watching.
Rental/Purchase Video Downloads from Amazon.com People familiar with the situation say the online retailer is talking
with movie studios including General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures,
Viacom Inc.'s Paramount and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. about making
their content available on its site, both
for Internet rental and purchase.
Negotiations are continuing, but a service could begin this summer. Amazon
declined to comment.
"Coming Attraction: Downloadable Movies From Amazon," by Sarah McBride and
Mylene Mangalindan, The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2006; Page B1
---
Click Here
In the past I've provided links to various types of music
and video available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
From NPR
Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the heart and soul of some of
the most recognizable songs of stage and screen: "Cabaret," "All That Jazz"
and of course, "New York, New York." ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5288642
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature
available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
B stands for bull's-eye. President Bush
noted that the vice president's full name is Richard B. Cheney, Fort
Worth Star Telegram, March 13, 2006 ---
Click Here
Baseball doesn't owe me a thing. I owe my
whole life to baseball. Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins
When I came up, you couldn't play if you
couldn't bunt, but home runs have pretty much taken over the game today.
You have to hit at least 25 homers to be a hero today. The game has
changed so much. People want to see homers. Look around the league.
Bunting has become a lost art. The baseball purists appreciate and
respect Tony Gwynn and "Boggsie", but your batting average doesn't
matter as much anymore. They want people who can put the ball over the
fence. Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins
I took care of him in many ways, but he took
care of me in so many ways. I demanded almost as much of our
relationship after his disability as before—basically telling him: ‘You
need to be my husband. I am there to support you; you need to support
me.’ I think it kept our relationship alive. Because if I had given up
and said, ‘Oh, you’re sick. I’m not going to ever ask anything of you,’
it would’ve belittled him. He was a willing and loving participant in
our relationship, and he was an incredible husband because of that.”
Dana Reeve ---
http://marriage.about.com/od/entertainmen1/a/reevequotes.htm
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right. Woody Allen
Why We Have Sex: It's Cleansing
Kerr Than, LiveScience, March 2, 2006 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment: I guess abstainers are left somewhere in limbo between
dirty (Allen) and clean (Than).
Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans
should do so by email, which has been specially invented for the
purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech. Auberon Waugh as quoted by
Mark Shapiro at
http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-03-01-06.htm
"I'm also tired of the camera moving all
over the place, with car chases so cut and edited you don't know what's
happening. "It's condescending. Audiences aren't so mindless as
movie-makers think." He added: "If you look at The Shining or Fargo,
they photograph it and let actors tell a story. That's the old-fashioned
way. I hope it comes back."
This is London interview with Anthony Hopkins on March 7
---
http://www.thisislondon.com/showbiz/articles/21912127?source=PA
The man was lost and then he was found and
now he's more lost than ever -- and he's taking us into the darkness
with him. It's time to remove him. Garrison Keillor calling
from Lake Woebegon for the impeachment of President Bush, Salon
---
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/03/01/keillor/index_np.html
If a Norwegian yells out in a forest will anybody listen?
After what I experienced with The Passion, I
frankly don't give a flying fuck about much of what those critics think. Mel Gibson, "Apocalypto Now,
WorldNetDaily, March 19, 2006 ---
Click Here
In reaction, the Sunni tribal leaders formed
their own anti-al Qaeda militia, the Anbar Revolutionaries. The group
has a core membership of about 100 people, all of whom had relatives
killed by al Qaeda. It is led by Ahmed Ftaikhan, a former Saddam-era
military intelligence officer, the Telegraph reported. The group claims
to have killed 20 foreign fighters and 33 Iraqi sympathizers. The United
States has confirmed that six of Zarqawi's deputies were killed in the
city of Ramadi in the province. The Associated Press reported yesterday
that an Anbar-based group has claimed it killed five top members of al
Qaeda and associated groups in Ramadi. The claim was posted on an
Islamist Web site and attributed to the Anbar Revenge Brigade, the AP
reported. It listed the names of four suspected al Qaeda leaders. The
fifth man, it said, was from Ansar al-Sunnah, a terrorist group
affiliated with al Qaeda. Iraq, which has suffered under a brutal
insurgency for nearly three years, more recently has been racked by
sectarian violence after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine Feb. 22 in
Samarra.
"Insurgents claim al Qaeda backers purged from Anbar," The Washington
Times, March 14, 2006 ---
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20060313-102837-7319r.htm
Why did a world-renowned liberal
atheist professor join the Presbyterian Church?
Hint: It's not because evangelists Falwell and Hagge declare it's the
only way through the Pearly Gates
My friend Bill Walker at Trinity
forwarded the following link to an article by Robert
W. Jensen from the Journalism
Department at the University of Texas (no relation to Robert E.
Jensen from Trinity University). Professor W
is on the controversial "101
Most Dangerous Professors" list compiled by David Horowitz.
Professor W (Robert W. Jensen) is
indeed one of the leading liberalism writers and peace activists of the
world. My main complaint about him is that he wants to deconstruct
global business without out any practical reconstruction suggestions
about how the world order conducts its economies. He's a journalist and
most certainly is not an economist.
I don't believe in God. I don't believe
Jesus Christ was the son of a God that I don't believe in, nor do I
believe Jesus rose from the dead to ascend to a heaven that I don't
believe exists. Given these positions, this year I did the only thing
that seemed sensible: I formally joined a Christian church. Standing
before the congregation of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin,
Texas, I affirmed that I (1) endorsed the core principles in Christ's
teaching; (2) intended to work to deepen my understanding and practice
of the universal love at the heart of those principles; and (3) pledged
to be a responsible member of the church and the larger community.
"Why I Am a Christian (Sort Of)," by Robert W.
Jensen, AlterNet. March 10, 2006 ---
http://www.alternet.org/story/33236/
Jensen Comment
Since Professor W is both an atheist
and a liberal activist, William F. Buckley would probably find Professor
W more suited for Yale than the University of Texas ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_and_Man_at_Yale
But I don't think Buckley anticipated an atheist who's becoming an
intellectual pillar of the Presbyterian Church. That makes Professor
W more suited to Princeton University.
The liberal media speaks out on
liberalism's pressing problems
1. Why the disconnect on religion is
one of liberalism's most serious problems.
The right-wing hijacking of the role of religion in our political
discourse is as undeniable as it is (constitutionally) inappropriate.
Eric Alterman explains the liberal media's willful ignorance on the
subject and why the disconnect on religion is one of liberalism's most
serious problems.
The moronic level of cable discourse
notwithstanding, missing from almost all discussions of the role of
religion in public life is what William James famously termed the
"varieties of religious experience." The right-wing hijacking of
religion's public role in our political discourse is as undeniable as it
is inappropriate, and represents one of liberalism's most serious
problems.
Eric Alterman, "With God on Our Side?" The Nation, March 2, 2006
---
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060320/alterman
The film's potential is lost, however, at
the point when the question is broached of why we are so uncomfortable
about homosexuality in America. In a totally unsophisticated manner,
Taylor presents a several-minute montage of laypeople lambasting
Christianity, culminating with Dan Savage calling the religion
"bullshit" that was made up by "some guy in a desert a few thousand
years ago." Granted, many Christians aren't exactly gay-friendly, and
there's a history of some Christians doing extremely hateful things to
homosexuals, but referring to someone's cherished beliefs with
expletives isn't the greatest way to make friends. The Michael Moores of
the world already have made enough self-congratulatory films for
progressives. If any movement is to be made in increasing tolerance of
homosexuality, we as liberals need to stop attacking Christianity
outright and instead focus on the values of compassion and love which
are common to us both. Many progressive brands of Christianity exist
that do not demonize gays, and there are movements within fundamentalist
denominations to become more tolerant. Taylor would do well to include a
bit of this balance rather than paint such a crude picture of a nuanced
and varied religion.
Jason Ketola, "Liberals, think WWJD! Progressives need to stop thinking
of Christianity as something against to battle against." The
Minnesota Daily, February 13, 2006 ---
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/02/13/67109
2. From The Nation: Is
patriotism a positive political force?
Todd Gitlin uses patriotism to wallop the radical left
In much of the
world, the answer is no or a highly qualified maybe. In Britain,
English patriotism verges on the comical (see the collected works of
Rowan Atkinson for more details), while the United Kingdom, an array
of feudal fiefdoms stretching from the Channel to the North Sea, is
far too antiquated a structure to stir up much patriotic passion in
anyone other than a far-rightist. Does the average cockney's heart
beat faster when contemplating the offshore bankers of Jersey or the
noble fishermen of Shetland pressuring Brussels for more favorable
cod quotas? Don't make us larf!
In France, la patrie is a political
concept, meaning that one's view of it is a direct function of one's
place on the left-right spectrum. If you're a Gaullist you may have
some lingering attachment to la France profonde; if you're a
liberal, you want to see it subsumed under the EU, while if you're
among the 10 percent of the electorate that voted Trotskyist in the
2002 presidential elections, the very word smacks of Pétainism and
the reactionary "integral" nationalism of Charles Maurras. In
Germany, patriotism is controversial due to certain nationalist
excesses of the mid-twentieth century, while in Italy it exists only
on a local level. In Canada, no one quite knows what it means, for
the simple reason that no one quite knows what Canada means other
than that part of North America that looks like the United States
but doesn't believe in capital punishment, mass incarceration or the
virtues of maintaining military bases in more than a hundred foreign
countries.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Obviously the patriotism card is an important trump card in American
politics --- possibly because we're always in hot wars or cliff-hanging
cold wars. Our wars never seem to take a recess like they do in Europe
and Asia. Patriotism is allegedly less important (see the above
quotation) in nations like Canada that are rarely threatened from the
outside. Nations do become more patriotic when they are under siege as
in the case of the recent bombings in London where even the "average
Cockney" did not "larf" much.
Many liberals will sigh or even "larf"
out loud when they listen to the following patriotism music. But these
songs that are repeatedly broadcast on hundreds of radio stations from
coast to coast bring tears to the eyes of millions of Americans who
elected George W. Bush on two occasions to be their President. The best
way to get an American voter to vote Republican is to dishonor the flag
--- which is most likely why presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton
conditionally supported a bill to make flag burning illegal (but
not unconstitutional). Republican candidates in 2008 will probably
voice support to make it unconstitutional.
Why do conservatives like Bush?
After all, even his defenders call him a
"big-government conservative,"
which was once an oxymoron. He's increased federal
spending 48 percent in six years, further centralized
education (which on this side of the pond we consider
both un-conservative and un-[classical] liberal),
inaugurated the biggest expansion of entitlements since
the profligate President Lyndon B. Johnson, lured
17 percent more people onto
the welfare rolls during five years of economic growth,
and
declared that "When somebody
hurts, government has got to move."
So why do conservatives who
grew up on Reagan like Bush? I can think of several
reasons:
1. Tax cuts. Defying the
establishment media and the class warfare of the
Democrats, he has persisted in the Reaganite mission
of cutting taxes, especially income tax rates.
2. The war. He stands up to the Islamo-fascists, as
Reagan stood up to the evil empire. And as long as
conservatives believe that the war in Iraq is part
of the war on terrorism, they will support Bush
there.
3. Religion. Conservatives like his willingness to
talk about his born-again faith and to bring
conservative Christian values (as he defines them)
to political issues such as abortion, gay marriage,
stem cell research, and government funding for
religious charities.
And finally,
4. As a nominating speech for President Grover
Cleveland once put it, "They love him most for the
enemies he has made." Conservatives love Bush
because the left hates him. If the New York Times
would run a front-page story headlined "Bush
Delivers the Big Government Clinton Never Did," and
the lefty bloggers would pick it up and run with it,
maybe conservatives would catch on.
So here's your challenge,
lefty bloggers: If you
don't like the tree-chopping, Falwell-loving, cowboy
president - if you want his presidency fatally wounded
for the next three years - then start praising him. One
good Paul Krugman column taking off from
that USA Today story on the
surge in entitlements recipients under Bush, one
Daily
Kos lead on how Clinton
flopped on national health care but Bush twisted every
arm in the GOP to get a multi-trillion-dollar
prescription drug benefit for the elderly, one cover
story in the Nation on how Bush has acknowledged federal
responsibility for everything from floods in New Orleans
to troubled teenagers, and maybe, just maybe, National
Review and the
Powerline blog and Fox News
would come to their senses. Bush is a Rockefeller
Republican in cowboy boots, and it's time conservatives
stopped looking at the boots instead of the policies.
March 17, 2006 reply in the Opinion Journal
We suspect, though, that it'd take a lot
more than a few contrarian pro-Bush columns or blog entries to
overwhelm the widespread Bush-hatred on the left. Sen. Russ
Feingold--whether acting out of that compulsion or pandering to
it--is proposing a resolution to "censure" the president for trying
to prevent another terrorist attack on America. Feingold apparently
has all of two supporters thus far for his initiative, Barbara Boxer
of California and Tom Harkin of Iowa, and, as the New York Times
(Click
Here) reports, the GOP is delighted:
*** QUOTE ***
Republicans, worried that their
conservative base lacks motivation to turn out for the fall
elections, have found a new rallying cry in the dreams of
liberals about censuring or impeaching President Bush. . . .
With the Republican base demoralized by
continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence
in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some
conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters
with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even
before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.
*** END QUOTE ***
The Angry Left is all too eager to
cooperate with Feingold's effort at boosting Republican turnout.
Markos "Kos" Moulitsas
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/15/9466/19457
yesterday posted a list of 21 "Democratic
senators [who] have come out for censuring the president," then
crankily observed, "Unfortunately, the president being censured was
Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush. Because, you know, these senators
had their priorities straight."
Alternative energy sources n.
New locations to drill for gas and oil.
Bankruptcy n.
A punishable crime when committed by poor people but not
corporations.
Class warfare n.
Any attempt to raise the minimum wage.
Climate change n.
The day when the blue states are swallowed by the oceans.
Compassionate conservatism n.
Poignant concern for the very wealthy.
Creationism n.
Pseudoscience that claims George W. Bush's resemblance to a
chimpanzee is totally coincidental.
DeLay, Tom n.
1. Past tense of De Lie; 2. Patronage saint.
Democracy n.
So extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted.
Fox News fict.
Faux news.
Free markets n.
Halliburton no-bid contracts at taxpayer expense.
Girly men n.
Males who do not grope women inappropriately.
God n.
Senior presidential adviser.
Growth n.
1. The justification for tax cuts for the rich. 2. What happens
to the national debt when Republicans cut taxes on the rich.
Habeas corpus n.
Archaic. (Lat.) Legal term no longer in use (See Patriot Act).
Healthy forest n.
No tree left behind.
Honesty n.
Lies told in simple declarative sentences--e.g., "Freedom is on
the march."
House of Representatives n.
Exclusive club; entry fee $1 million to $5 million.
Laziness n.
When the poor are not working.
Leisure time n.
When the wealthy are not working.
Liberal(S) n.
Followers of the Anti-Christ.
Neoconservatives n.
Nerds with Napoleonic complexes.
9/11 n.
Tragedy used to justify any administrative policy.
No Child Left Behind riff.
1. V. There are always jobs in the military.
Ownership society n.
A civilization where 1 percent of the population controls 90
percent of the wealth.
Patriot Act n.
The pre-emptive strike on American freedoms to prevent the
terrorists from destroying them first.
Pro-life adj.
Valuing human life until birth.
Senate n.
Exclusive club; entry fee $10 million to $30 million.
Simplify v.
To cut the taxes of Republican donors.
Staying the course interj. Slang.
Saying and doing the same stupid thing over and over, regardless
of the result.
Shit happens interj. Slang.
Donald Rumsfeld as master historian.
Voter fraud n.
A significant minority turnout.
Wal-Mart n.
The nation-state, future tense.
Water n.
Arsenic storage device.
Woman n.
1. Person who can be trusted to bear a child but can't be
trusted to decide whether or not she wishes to have the child.
2. Person who must have all decisions regarding her reproductive
functions made by men with whom she wouldn't want to have sex in
the first place.
"GOP Struggles To Define Its Message for
2006 Elections," by Dan Balz and Jonathan Weisman, The Washington
Post, March 20, 2006; A01 ---
Click Here
Every
effort so far to produce such a platform has stumbled.
In January, Bush laid out a modest menu
of ideas on health care and energy independence, but Congress
has made little movement on them. Senior White House officials
consulted with lawmakers earlier this year about jointly
crafting an agenda that would allow Bush and Republicans in
Congress -- both suffering from depressed public approval
ratings -- to get off the defensive. A Republican familiar with
the process said these discussions did not result in a
consensus.
New House Majority Leader John A.
Boehner (R-Ohio) has been wrestling with the same problem, so
far without success.
The struggles reflect philosophical
differences among competing factions within the party, but they
also underscore the political consequences of holding power.
Republicans insist they remain united around core principles of
smaller government, lower taxes and a strong national defense,
but can no longer agree on how to implement that philosophy and
are squabbling over their delivery on those commitments.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said the root
of the problem is a failure of Washington Republicans to stick
to principles, saying that his party risks losing power because
it has done "a pretty poor job" of executing its
small-government philosophy. "Republicans just need to take
stock, go back and realize that the American people elected them
because of their principles, and when you do not adhere to those
principles, the American people are just as likely to turn you
out and choose someone else."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
The Republican Contract With America is serious political reform that
makes sense to me. It's too bad more Republican politicians will not
support it where and when it counts ---
http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html
The Accoona Super Target search engine is at
http://www.accoona.com/ That being said, Accoona looks, at first
glance, not much different than other search engines — including Google
itself. Its bare-bones initial interface follows the same design: A
central search field with buttons that let you search the entire Web or
confine your search to news or business sources. Searching On Scott I
started with a general Web search on "Scott Joplin" on Accoona and
Google, and found quite a bit of disparity in the results (112,393 for
Accoona and 4,130,000 for Google). When I did a search on the phrase
"mp3 players," I got similar results: Accoona came up with 6,031,343
results, while Google boasted 187,000,000. Quite frankly, while I
appreciated Google's higher numbers, that alone wouldn't have made
Google my preferred search engine — how many people go past the fifth
page of results, anyway? There was also some variation in which sites
came up in what order, but again, there were no really important
differences. Interestingly, I found Accoona's results page easier to
read; Google has added so much advertising — plus news links — on top of
its listing that it's gotten a bit difficult to find where my actual
results begin. Accoona's results page was much cleaner; the results were
headed only by a "Tell me about Mp3 players" link that led to a
definitions page. Of course, when/if Accoona succeeds in attracting
advertising, that could change radically.
Barbara Krasnoff, "Accoona: A New Google Alternative? The latest search
engine to hit the Web, Accoona offers additional business info and a
nice filtering ability. But is that enough? InternetWeek, March
20, 2006 ---
http://internetweek.cmp.com/handson/183700172
Fee Based Google
Specialized Services (including an enterprise-level search appliance) Google Inc. added two beefier Minis to its line
of business search appliances. The Mountain View, Calif.company said Minisare now
available with capacities of 200,000
documents and 300,000 documents for $5,995 and $8,995, respectively. The
new versions were in addition to the current 100,000-document appliance
that sells for $2,995. Google also sells an enterprise-level appliance
that can search up to 15 million documents. The device starts at $30,000
for searching up to 500,000 documents.
Antone Gonsalves, "Google Unveils Two Search Appliances,"
InternetWeek, January 12, 2006 ---
http://www.internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.163237&articleId=175804113
Academics should remember that Google Scholar greatly narrows down
the search hits ---
http://scholar.google.com/
Holland launches the immigrant quiz
The U.S. just admitted 3,000 Muslims in one block from Russia
What do you think would happen if we applied a topless-woman test to
each immigrant in the U.S.? TWO MEN kissing in a park and a topless woman
bather are featured in a film that will be shown to would-be immigrants
to the Netherlands. The reactions of applicants — including Muslims —
will be examined to see whether they are able to accept the country’s
liberal attitudes. From this Wednesday, the DVD — which also shows the
often crime-ridden ghettos where poorer immigrants might end up living —
will form part of an entrance test, in Dutch, covering the language and
culture of Holland.
Nicola Smith, "Holland launches the immigrant quiz," London Times,
March 12, 2006 ---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2089-2081496%2C00.html
Jensen Comment:
Seems like this test will increase the number of male immigration
applicants from outside the Muslim world. Where are Holland's feminists
in all this?
Typical Diversity in Academe: Preaching to the Choir
Members of Amnesty International and Students for Social Justice
gathered in the Welles-Brown Room on Wednesday night to listen to three
UR professors chair a panel on the current war in Iraq. If they need
three profs to chair a panel, it must be because they want a variety of
viewpoints--left, middle and right--right? No, of course not. It's left,
left and left. But the funniest participant was the philosopher. Opinion Journal, March 9, 2006
"Professors speak against war," by: Matt Majarian, Campus Times,
March 3, 3006 ---
Click Here
After introductions and applause for each
member of the panel, Holmes took the microphone to address the
assembled audience and chastise the U.S. Government.
"We are in violation of international law
in the actions that we are taking," Holmes said. "In having attacked
Iraq and overthrown its government, we have committed the same
violations of the U.N. Charter for
which we killed many Nazis."
Too bad there wasn't a historian on the
panel to point out that Nazi Germany had fallen by the time the U.N.
Charter came in to existence. Opinion Journal, March 9, 2006
Jensen Comment
Is it bad we "killed so many Nazis?" And if it had been in violation of
a U.N. Charter, should we have waited for the an insane mass murderer to
control all of Europe and to exterminate millions more Jews,
homosexuals, and others deemed genetically undesirable among the master
Aryan race? To this we might add that Hitler was also working on WMDs
that may well have given him the early-on power to rule the entire
planet and to exterminate all people of color, including the despised
Jessie Owens. Following the World War I fiasco, going off to another
one of Europe's wars was not a popular idea in the United States in the
late 1930s and early 1940s. President Roosevelt secretly got the U.S.
deeply involved without legislative approval. I doubt that he would have
paid the least bit of attention to U.N. objections.
Seeing is not believing, at least not after visiting the following
site
The Computational Visual Cognition
Laboratory is part of the Perceptual Science Group, in the
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. CVCL is a new research
laboratory at MIT and is currently located in the 4th floor of the
NE-20 Building, above the MIT COOP, in the Kendall Square area of
Cambridge, MA.
Our research program concerns the
investigation of high-level human cognition and more particularly
real world scene understanding. Scenes are 3-dimensional complex
structures composed of a variety of objects, textures, colors,
materials and spatial layouts. Yet, we understand novel scenes
quickly and effortlessly. In the laboratory, we approach the scene
understanding problem from a computational stance (e.g., what are
the statistics in natural images that are relevant for perception
and categorization? How can we model scene categorization?); a brain
imaging approach (e.g., what are the neural correlates of scene and
space recognition?); and a behavioral viewpoint (e.g., how well do
humans recognize scenes under various perceptual conditions and task
constraints?).
Our current activities investigate the
psychological, formal and neural substrates of the representation of
visual complexity and visual simplicity in the context of real world
scenes; the representation of spatial envelope and spatial layout;
the relations between image statistic descriptors and the conceptual
representation of scenes and objects; the perception and modeling of
higher-level scene attributes; the mechanisms of scene recognition
in brief glances (gist) as well as mechanisms of attentional
deployment in complex scene. These research topics bring together
disciplines such as perceptual science, cognitive psychology and
neuroscience, photography, architecture and interior design, image
processing and computer graphics.
Students and visitors in the lab have the
opportunity to be trained in computational, brain imaging and
perceptual/cognitive aspects of a visual science topic, as well as
collaborating with researchers in the Boston area (BCS department,
CSAIL, Psychology Department at Harvard, Boston University, the
Visual Attention Lab at Harvard Medical School).
Facilities in the lab includes Dell and
Macintosh workstations, 3-D stereo equipments, eyetracker, panoramic
screen. Behavioral experiments, data analysis and modeling are all
based in Matlab.
US navy, 'pirates' clash off Somalia On March 15, the UN Security Council encouraged
naval forces operating off Somalia to take action against suspected
piracy. Pirate attacks against aid ships have hindered UN efforts to
provide relief to the victims of a severe drought in the area. The
pirate raids are part of the anarchy wracking Somalia, which has had no
effective government since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and
then turned on each other.
"US navy, 'pirates' clash off Somalia," Al Jazeera, March 19,
2006 ---
Click Here
Twelve suspects, including the wounded,
were taken into custody after the early morning gun battle , said Lt
Cmdr. Charlie Brown, spokesman for the US navy's 5th Fleet, on
Sunday.
The nationalities and identifications of
the suspected pirates were unknown.
The shootout early on Saturday ensued after
the navy ships, patrolling the area as part of a Dutch-led coalition
task force, spotted the suspect 30-foot-long fishing boat towing
smaller skiffs and prepared to board and inspect the vessels, Brown
told The Associated Press.
A statement from the Bahrain-based 5th
Fleet said the suspected pirates were holding what appeared to be
rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
When the suspects began shooting, naval
gunners on the US ships returned fire with mounted machine guns,
killing one man and igniting a fire on the vessel.
Field treatment
Three suspects were seriously wounded and
being treated on one of the navy ships, Brown said. A Dutch navy
medical team was en route aboard the HNLMS Amsterdam. No US sailors
were injured in the gun battle.
Pirate attacks surged to 35 last year from
two in 2004 (File pic)
The navy boarding teams confiscated an RPG
launcher and automatic weapons, the statement said.
The navy said the incident involving the
Norfolk, Virgina-based USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez occurred
at about 5:40 am local time, approximately 25 nautical miles off the
Somali coast in international waters.
The International Maritime Organisation has
warned ships to stay away from the Somali coast because of pirate
attacks, which surged to 35 last year from two in 2004.
Harvard Study Critical of Pro-Israel Lobby in the U.S. A new study, claiming that the pro-Israel lobby
in America caused the United States to skew its Middle East policy in
favor of Israel, is stirring controversy in the pro and anti-Israel
communities in the US. The 81-page report, written by John J.
Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt for the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, argues that the pro-Israel lobby in the US managed
to convince American lawmakers, officials and US public opinion to
support Israel, even though this support runs counter to America's own
national interests.
Nathan Guttman, "Study: AIPAC works against US interests," Jerusalem
Post, March 19, 2006 ---
Click Here
The American Association of University
Professors in February postponed an international conference on academic
boycotts that was scheduled to take place that month in Italy. Both the
participant list for the invitation-only session and the materials
distributed for the session had come under fire. AAUP officials defended
the invite list (which was criticized as anti-Israel by some) and
apologized for including in conference packets an anti-Semitic article
published in a magazine affiliated with Holocaust deniers . . .
Scott Jaschik, "AAUP Calls Off Boycott Conference," Inside Higher Ed,
March 21, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/21/aaup
But in a letter sent last week
to conference participants, association leaders said
that they could not go ahead with the conference.
The organizers wanted to hold the conference with
the original invitees, but realized, the letter
said, that such a course of action would “reactivate
opposition that has proved too severe to enable us
to go forward.” So instead, no conference will be
held, but written comments prepared by the invitees
for the meeting will be published by the AAUP in
Academe, its magazine.
The idea behind the
conference grew out of debates over a movement last
year by Britain’s main faculty union to boycott two
Israeli universities. The AAUP and many other
academic groups criticized the boycott as
antithetical to academic freedom and the boycott was
eventually rescinded. In the wake of that
controversy, the AAUP started drafting a statement
about academic boycotts (strongly opposing them) and
organizing the conference, which was to have been
held at Bellagio, in Italy, where 22 scholars from
around the world were to have gathered to discuss
academic boycotts.
Criticism of the conference initially focused
on those 22 scholars, a number
of whom were active in the movement in Britain to
boycott the Israeli universities. The critics said
it didn’t make sense for a conference trying to
outline an intellectual viewpoint against boycotts
to include prominent supporters of just the kinds of
boycotts it was trying to discourage. AAUP
officials, however, defended the invitations, saying
it was appropriate to talk to all parties.
Privately, some backers of
the conference characterized the controversy as
primarily the result of pro-Israel activists working
to discredit the meeting. While some pro-Israeli
scholars spoke out against the conference, others
who questioned the way the conference was organized
are in fact critical of the government there and are
not involved in pro-Israel activism.
The letter announcing that
the conference would not be held at all defended the
original invitation list and said it would be wrong
to alter the list now.
“Opposition to the
conference as originally planned, from those who
claimed it focused unduly and unfairly on the Middle
East, was intense even prior to our inadvertent and
careless inclusion of a paper from an anti-Semitic
Web site. Our error, though quickly discovered and
corrected by us, was then effectively cited by
those, within and without the association, who urged
postponement and reorganization,” last week’s letter
from the AAUP said. “This view persists. But to hold
the conference with a significantly revised set of
participants, as critics suggest, would unfairly
exclude some previously scheduled participants.
Moreover, altering the list of participants in order
to pacify our critics would imply that we had come
to accept their arguments about the direction and
composition of the conference. We have not.”
By publishing the thoughts of conference invitees in
Academe, the letter said, along with an
explanation of why the conference was designed as it
was, organizers hope to fulfill some of their
original goals. “Our goal then and now is a full and
frank exchange of views,” the letter said.
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has never been known as the
brightest bulb in Congressional chandelier, but with her seniority she
often is a difficult obstacle for Republicans. She faces a difficult
challenge of representing the most liberal anti-business and anti-war
district in the United States.
Why then has Nancy suddenly become the darling of the Editorial
Page of The Wall Street Journal?
Have America's entrepreneurs and corporate
leaders found a new voice of regulatory sanity in, of all people,
Nancy Pelosi? Apparently so, and that should be a wake-up call to
Republicans -- because like everything else in the free market, the
free enterprise agenda is up for grabs. In the recent "Innovation
Agenda" that the House Democratic leader and her party unveiled, Ms.
Pelosi acknowledges specifically the need to "ensure Sarbanes-Oxley
requirements are not overly burdensome," and endorses reform.
Meanwhile, the scourge of Wall Street, New York Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer, is criticizing Sarbanes-Oxley's "unbelievable burden
on small companies" and its possible role in "preventing some
initial public offerings."
Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats have been
quicker to recognize what many traditional champions of free
enterprise have been slow to see: the law's disastrous consequences
for our nation's ability to compete. Congress passed this law
hastily in 2002 after the egregious accounting frauds at Enron and
WorldCom. The intent was to hold publicly held companies and their
executives more accountable and weed out bad actors; but that's not
been the effect. Four years after passage, it is now evident that
the costs of Sarbox clearly outweigh the benefits.
Consider first the costs. Recent estimates
from the American Electronic Association, for example, show that
U.S. companies are spending $35 billion annually simply to comply
with the law as opposed to original federal estimates of $1.2
billion. A University of Nebraska study found that audit fees for
Fortune 1000 companies, on average, increased a staggering 103% from
2003 to 2004. The costs of being a U.S. public company are now more
than triple what they were before the law passed, according to a
study conducted by the Milwaukee-based law firm of Foley & Lardner.
Some smaller firms report that they are spending 300% more on Sarbox
compliance than on health care for their employees.
Based on a growing body of theoretical and
empirical research, the SEC's Advisory Committee on Smaller Public
Companies concluded that Sarbox places a disproportionate compliance
burden on small public companies, making it more difficult for them
to compete with foreign companies and to a lesser extent with larger
U.S. companies. Consider the survey by the American Electronics
Association, which found that companies with sales of $100 million
and under are spending 2.6% of their revenues on Sarbox compliance
-- enough to tip many of them from profitability into
unprofitability. This makes it something of a challenge for these
companies to innovate, compete or grow -- or even survive.
As a result of these burdensome costs,
enterprises are deciding not to go public, or else are opting to
back out of our capital markets. Explaining his company's absorption
into privately held Koch Industries, Peter Correll, the CEO of
Georgia-Pacific, said, "There is a lot of time spent by top
management on things that are not value-adding, but are simply
bureaucratic and are required by a raft of regulation." In fact, the
Foley & Lardner study found that 20% of public companies are
considering going private just to avoid Sarbox compliance. It's no
wonder, then, that the London Stock Exchange -- eager to exploit a
competitive advantage -- now promotes itself by reminding companies
that by listing on the LSE they are not subject to Sarbox.
Beyond the direct cost of compliance to
individual companies, a recent University of Rochester study
concluded that the total effect of the law has reduced the stock
value of American companies by $1.4 trillion. That is $1.4 trillion
that could be invested in infrastructure improvements, jobs,
innovative technologies or research and development. As Sun
Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy says, Sarbanes-Oxley throws "buckets
of sand into the gears of the market economy."
The true beneficiaries of Sarbox are the
nation's large auditing firms, which now maintain a regulatory
oligarchy composed of a handful of entrenched services corporations.
They will continue to champion Sarbox, since it provides a
guaranteed market for their services. Surely this law was not
intended by its authors to become a full employment act for the same
auditing industry which was implicated in the original malfeasance
of four or five years ago.
Apparent Proof of XP on Intel Mac Mac on Intel
has provided a link to a video that appears to show the full
procedure for installing, booting and using Windows XP on an Intel
Mac by narf2006. The contest sponsors are still testing the
procedure now.
You can see the video here or here. It's
fairly convincing stuff. The only possible way I can think to fake
this would be if they got into the iMac's internals and connected
its screen to an outside computer. I haven't messed with a
current-generation iMac, but it was certainly possible back when it
came in colors. If real, this is a pretty astounding accomplishment,
given that Microsoft won't be supporting EFI for years.
This comes on the same day that two readers
of MacWindows reported about their experiences with Q, the
cocoa-based port of QEMU, on their Intel Macs. Apparently, Win XP
SP1 and 98 run pretty darn well. Yes, you read that right.
"Mac Runs Both Windows XP, Mac OS X: A pair of Californians figured
out a way to dual-boot an Intel Mac with both Mac OS X and Windows XP,
winning a $14,000 prize. But the technique isn't for beginners," by
Gregg Keizer, Information Week, March 16, 2006 ---
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=183700267
After I retire I intend to shift to a Mac largely because of the
enormous protections it has against viruses, spyware, etc. relative to
infection-prone Windows operating systems. However, in recommending
this for everybody, there are some special considerations.
Walt Mossberg provides some help in this regard.
Especially note his last paragraph!!!
From The Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005; Page B4 ---
