Tidbits on May 4, 2005
Bob Jensen at Trinity University 

Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 
Archives of Tidbits: Tidbits Directory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.

Bob Jensen's home page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Campaign for Trinity University --- http://www.trinity.edu/departments/public_relations/case_statement/index.htm 

Music:  In My Rear View Mirror (turn your speakers up) --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/rearview.htm

Fantastic wildflowers forwarded by Paula --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/wildflowers.htm

In the United States, more prisons are built each year than schools and colleges.
Jesús Sepúlveda
Jensen Comment:  I did not verify this claim.

Is it a good year or a bad year for women in terms of selections to the National Academy of Sciences?
A record 19 women are among those selected to become members of the National Academy of Sciences. The academy announced 72 new members Tuesday.
Inside Higher Ed, May 4, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/05/04/qt

From the Old War: 
New account of Hitler's last days from a living witness
Now, as the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe nears, Ms Flegel has spoken out for the first time about her experiences - of Hitler's final hours, of her friendship with the "brilliant" Magda Goebbels, and her jealous loathing for Eva Braun. Her testimony casts fresh light on the last days of the Nazi era and has never appeared in the countless books written about Hitler. . . . She is the last surviving female witness to have been inside the bunker. Traudl Junge - Hitler's secretary, whose memoirs provided the inspiration for the Oscar-nominated film Downfall, and who gave numerous interviews to journalists and historians - died in 2002. The only other survivor, 88-year-old Rochus Misch, Hitler's telephonist, refuses to talk.
Luke Harding, "'His authority was extraordinary. He was charming' - Hitler's nurse on his final hours:  Survivor of bunker tells of admiration for Goebbels' wife and hatred for Eva Braun," The Guardian, May 2, 2005 --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1474601,00.html

From the New War: 
General Tommy Franks called Feith “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth”
Fifteen hundred people report to Feith in the Pentagon, where he is known for the profligacy of his policy suggestions. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, has been much quoted as calling Feith “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth,” apparently for ideas he proposed to Franks and his planners. Franks’s view is not universally shared by the military. Marine General Peter Pace, who has just been nominated to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says of Feith, “Early on, he didn’t realize that the way he presented his positions, the way he was being perceived, put him in a bit of a hole. But he changed his ways.” Apparently, he became more consultative, particularly with his counterparts on the Joint Chiefs. Pace, who calls Feith a “true American patriot,” said he did not understand Franks’s attack. “This is not directed at any individual,” Pace said, “but the less secure an individual is in his thought processes and in his own capacities, the more prone they were to be intimidated by Doug, because he’s so smart.” (A spokesman for Franks, Michael Hayes, said in an e-mail that the General would not comment for this article: “What do you think he has to gain by talking about Feith?”) . . . He has the capacity, however, for self-deprecation. He told me that when Franks’s characterization of his brainpower became public he jokingly suggested to his staff that he call a press conference to deny that he was in fact the “fucking stupidest guy” on earth.
Jeffrey Goldberg, "A LITTLE LEARNING:  What Douglas Feith knew, and when he knew it," The New Yorker, May 2, 2005 --- http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050509fa_fact

History may one day judge the removal of Saddam Hussein as the spark that set off a democratic revolution across the Muslim world. But if Iraq disintegrates historians will deal harshly with the President and his tacticians, the men most directly responsible for taking a noble idea—the defeat of a tyrant and the introduction of liberty—and letting it fail. Feith, like his superiors in the Pentagon and the White House, is not given to public doubt, but in our last conversation he seemed uncharacteristically humble. “When I was in Vienna,” Feith said, “I went to the Ringstrasse, these enormous buildings, most of which were built twenty, twenty-five years before World War One. These buildings were built as the headquarters of a world empire, and they were built for the ages—enormous, imperially scaled buildings. They were built to last. But these people were absolutely on the verge of destruction of their empire, and they didn’t see it. And that was a humbling experience.

Maybe General Tommy Franks should've met this guy first
Police arrested a 21-year-old man early Saturday after he allegedly assaulted a pizza delivery driver who refused to take marijuana as payment for a pie, police said. The man, charged with robbery, was released from the Cass County Jail after posting $5,000 bond. Pizza Patrol driver Atif Yasin thought the man was asleep when he arrived to deliver a medium pizza and 20-ounce soda. After knocking a few times and calling the man on his cell phone, Yasin said he answered the door in his boxers. The man took the pizza, spent a few minutes looking for money and then offered to pay with marijuana, Yasin said.
"Cops: Man Tries to Pay for Pizza With Pot," ABC News, May 2, 2005 --- http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=720604

Will feminists buy into this one? 
The argument used to be that women were more apt to accept the most boring jobs
Women now outnumber men in managerial and professional positions, and most companies have installed policies that aim to help their leaders balance the demands of job and family. Yet three decades after a woman first became chief executive of a Fortune 500 company, fewer than 2 percent of the biggest corporations are run by women. Executive recruiters and corporate boards could be forgiven for asking themselves why. The answer, experts are beginning to conclude, has less to do with discrimination in the corporate suite or pressures at home than with frustration and boredom on the job. "Men will grit their teeth and bear everything, while women will say: 'Is this all there is? I need more than this!' " said Mabel M. Miguel, a professor of management at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Claudia H. Deutsch, "Behind the Exodus of Executive Women: Boredom," The New York Times, May 1, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/business/yourmoney/01women.html 

"Women are more confident about job security than men are, but women are less excited about work," Headlines, BizEd from the AACSB, January/February 2005, Page 8

According to the survey, 57.9 percent of women MBAs say they have job security, while 49 percent of men feel that way.  Most of these women find their work agreeable: 75.2 percent feel they have the ability to live according to their own values; 59.9 percent feel challenged by their work; 57.6 percent feel well-paid; and 56.3 percent feel satisfied.

Nonetheless, 41.4 percent of the women say they are not excited about their work, while 67.2 percent of the men with MBAs say they are.  Perhaps this is because 63.9 percent of women MBAs do not believe their work contributes to society in a valuable way, compared to 55.8 percent of men MBAs who feel that way.  Of those with MBAs, 56.8 percent of women are likely to be dissatisfied with their job's capacity to "make the world a better place," compared to 44.5 percent of men.

These survey figures are disturbing, says Anna K. Lloyd, executive director and president of C200.  "If women MBAs aren't linking their work to societal value, then fewer stellar women will be drawn to business careers; and those who are may not put their full energy and spirit into their work," she says.  She believes further research is necessary to determine what is causing the gap between men's and women's satisfaction with work--whether it's related to a discrepancy between the kinds of jobs men and women get, whether it holds true for entrepreneurial women as well as corporate women, and whether it's a general feeling among MBA women  that springs from other root causes.

Additional segments of the survey investigate how men and women rate themselves at executing specific business tasks, such as handling money and meeting deadlines, and whether they expect to be earning enough money to support a family or simply to provide for themselves.  For additional information about the C200 survey, contact Elizabeth Koons at Sommerfield Communications at elizabeth@sommerfield.com.

A controversial book by Warren Farrell entitled Why Men Earn More uses government wage data to show that the "pay gap” has become an ideological myth.  His latest controversial book is called The Myth of Male Power --- http://snipurl.com/MythOfMalePower 

Perplexing ethical questions in neuroscience?
The conferees are considering such issues as: If a brain scanning technology could reliably predict that someone will commit violence, should they be subject to prior restraint, or required to take medications that would moderate that tendency? Do people who have suffered painful abuse have an obligation to retain that memory or do they have the right to blunt it? Perhaps perpetrators of violence should be required to retain the memory of their evil, while victims would be allowed to moderate their recollections?
Ronald Bailey, "Minds on Brains Hobnobbing with neuroscientists and theologians," ReasonOnLine, March 22, 2005 --- http://www.reason.com/links/links041805.shtml

Philosophy of Science:  Darwinians may be their own worst enemy
Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University, occupies a distinct position in the heated debates about evolution and creationism. He is both a staunch supporter of evolution and an ardent critic of scientists who he thinks have hurt the cause by habitually stepping outside the bounds of science into social theory. In his latest book, ''The Evolution-Creation Struggle,'' published by Harvard University Press later this month, Ruse elaborates on a theme he has been developing in a career dating back to the 1960s: Evolution is controversial in large part, he theorizes, because its supporters have often presented it as the basis for self-sufficient philosophies of progress and materialism, which invariably wind up in competition with religion.
Peter Dizikes, "In the ongoing struggle between evolution and creationism, says philosopher of science Michael Ruse, Darwinians may be their own worst enemy," Boston Globe, May 1, 2005 --- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/05/01/evolutionary_war/

Question
What is the new meaning of "the world is flat?"

Answer
The metaphor of a flat world, used by Friedman to describe the next phase of globalization, is ingenious. It came to him after hearing an Indian software executive explain how the world's economic playing field was being leveled. For a variety of reasons, what economists call ''barriers to entry'' are being destroyed; today an individual or company anywhere can collaborate or compete globally. Bill Gates explains the meaning of this transformation best. Thirty years ago, he tells Friedman, if you had to choose between being born a genius in Mumbai or Shanghai and an average person in Poughkeepsie, you would have chosen Poughkeepsie because your chances of living a prosperous and fulfilled life were much greater there. ''Now,'' Gates says, ''I would rather be a genius born in China than an average guy born in Poughkeepsie.''
Fareed Zakaria, "'The World Is Flat': The Wealth of Yet More Nations," The New York Times, May 1, 2005 ---  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/books/review/01ZAKARIA.html

New technology for learning
Daniel Dormevil used to slog through sentences, sounding out words one at a time. Hindered by a reading disability and attention deficit disorder, he would often lose his place and forget what he had read soon after setting down the book. But since November, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School senior has been able to hear the words as he reads. Using a computer text reader, Dormevil no longer looks out the window or watches the words ''run off the page" during reading class. Listening to the text read aloud as he follows a digital highlighter that bounces from word to word, he can keep his place. Words that used to lay lifeless on the page now speak to him and create images in the 17-year-old's head. Dormevil belongs to an expanding group of students with learning disabilities who are using print-to-speech software programs to become better readers and writers. In Massachusetts, students with disabilities have begun using the programs to take standardized tests. This month, some 270 Massachusetts students, with various disabilities, in grades 6 through 10, will take the MCAS using text-to-speech software. Next year, elementary school students will likely be able to take the test on the software in Massachusetts, one of only a few states allowing the practice. While reading, these students often failed to recognize words they would use casually in conversation. But with the help of audio, highlighted words and phrases, and a built-in dictionary that pronounces and defines words at a point and click, weak readers receive the help they need to improve, educators and researchers say. ''Before, I would be able to read most of the words, but I wouldn't understand what the whole thing meant," Dormevil said. ''But it's a lot easier being able to hear it. I just learn better that way." Teachers liken the effect to runners who train with faster athletes to get used to a quicker pace. Students who used to get bogged down in chapter one can now read books cover to cover. It's because they can focus less on what the words are, and more on what the words mean.
Peter Schworm, "Hear words, see a difference," Boston Globe, May 1, 2005 --- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/education/articles/2005/05/01/hear_words_see_a_difference/

Graduate Education From US News --- http://www.usnews.com/usnews/home.htm

Education Best Graduate Schools Use our 2006 rankings and tools to compare programs in business, law, engineering, medicine, education, and more. Business Schools Law Schools Medical Schools Engineering Schools Education Programs Social Sciences & Humanities Programs Health Programs Public Affairs Programs Fine Arts Programs Science Programs Library Science Programs

Yet another deconstructionist with no vision of reconstruction
“One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal,” wrote George Orwell in 1945. He meant not the classical liberal who believed in individual freedoms and small government but the leftist liberal who glorified communist experiments and disdained middle-class life. To Orwell, the existence of intellectuals who loved the Soviet Union despite the purges, mocked “bourgeois liberty” despite the pleasing bourgeois circumstances of their own lives, and identified with revolutionary movements that would speedily ship them off to camps—this was a fact in need of explanation. The same puzzle is presented by today’s leading leftist intellectual, Noam Chomsky. For 40 years, in books, lectures, articles, and TV and radio shows, Chomsky has pioneered the leftist critique of Western imperialism, media conglomerates, and U.S.-style capitalism. The charges he raises are familiar—corporations subjugate the Third World, mass media peddle pro-capitalist propaganda, etc.—but he evidently has the ability to make them seem fresh; millions idolize him as the clear-eyed conscience of the times. Further to his advantage, while Chomsky’s discourse is extreme and accusatory, his demeanor is equable and deliberate. He is, after all, a distinguished professor at MIT and the most renowned linguist of the 20th century. For many, the combination of virulent radicalism and reasoned temperament is wholly seductive, and attacks upon Chomsky by conservatives and centrists have only granted him a martyr’s aura. Chomsky’s antipathy toward the U.S. government has never wavered. Even 9/11 was fitted to the theme of U.S. guilt. The killing of 3,000 Americans, accompanied by the “you had it coming” glee of some leftists abroad, put many American progressives on the defensive. But not Chomsky. In the weeks after the attacks, he systematically interpreted them as a logical outcome of U.S. history and policy.
Mark Bauerlein  "Deconstructing Chomsky:  America’s leading leftist intellectual sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest," ReasonOnLine, April 2005 --- http://www.reason.com/0504/cr.mb.deconstructing.shtml
On the The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, San Francisco: Encounter Books, 260 pages, $17.95
Bob Jensen's threads on "The Evil Empire" are at http://www.reason.com/0504/cr.mb.deconstructing.shtml

XBRL Update:  An Interview With Neal Hannon
If you don't know about XBRL, then you don't know the most important innovation in financial reporting and investment analysis taking place around the world.  Neal Hannon is interviewed about XBRL at http://ria.thomson.com/journals/zmcmart.pdf
Although articles in this journal are not normally free, the above article is a "free sample" from this journal at http://ria.thomson.com/estore/detail.asp?ID=ZMCM
I suggest that you download and read Neal's summary of the history and current state of XBRL.  Neal also uses this interview to make a case for management accountancy.
 

On the negative side I think the $230 subscription price for six issues makes the Cost Management journal itself another library rip off --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals 
In fairness, the journal is aimed more at the corporate world than academe under the strategy, I assume, that corporations can afford nearly $40 for each issue.  Like virtually all such exorbitantly-priced journals, the editorial board has some leading scholars from elite universities.

Neal Hannon is one of the early pioneers in XBRL and does us a great service in both promoting XBRL and communicating the latest and greatest advances in XBRL.  Some of his communications on this topic are quoted extensively at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL

May 3, 2005 reply from Roger Debreceny [roger@DEBRECENY.COM]

Many of the presentations from the 11th XBRL International Conference in Boston, Massachusetts have been uploaded to the XII website at http://www.xbrl.org/PastEvents/ 

A great RSS feed on XBRL is at http://www.xbrlspy.com/

Microsoft has a Solution Showcase and Video at http://www.microsoft.com/office/showcase/xbrl/default.mspx

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

Even for the middle class:  Housing price-salary gap widens
Housing prices are outstripping wage increases in many areas, meaning more people are either spending above their means or living in dilapidated conditions, according to a pair of studies being released today by the Center for Housing Policy, a coalition pushing for more affordable housing. It's generally accepted that a family should not spend more than 30 percent of its income on housing to ensure there is enough money for other necessities. But in a recent six-year period, the number of low- and middle-income working families paying more than half their income for housing has increased 76 percent. In 2003, 4.2 million working families spent more than half their income on housing, up from 2.4 million in 1997 . . . Meanwhile, the median-priced home in 2003 was $176,000, up more than 11 percent from 2001. During this time, national median salaries went up only 4 percent for licensed practical nurses (to $33,000), 3 percent for elementary schoolteachers ($43,000) and 7 percent for police officers ($45,000).
Stobhan McDonough, "Housing price-salary gap widens," NC Times, April 28, 2005 --- http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/04/29/business/news/12_12_054_28_05.prt 

Real life courtrooms no longer allowed to be like what you see on television
The Iowa Court of Appeals today threw out the first-degree murder conviction of a Des Moines man who claimed he didn't get a fair trial because prosecutors called him a coward several times and a liar. Jarmaine Allen said the description unfairly swayed jurors against him and amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. The court agreed.
Frank Santiago, "Court throws out 1995 Polk murder conviction," The Des Moines Register, April 28, 1005 --- http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050428/NEWS01/504280443/1001/NEWS 

Sex on Demand (or else)
Leaders of New Zealand’s 30,000-strong Muslim community have condemned a renegade group that says it is okay for men to hit their wives and that women should have sex whenever their husbands want it, a newspaper reported Sunday. The advice on the website of the Muslim Association of Canterbury (MAC) has outraged community and women’s support groups who say it misquotes religious texts to justify domestic violence and rape, the Sunday Star-Times reported. The website says it is not permitted for a woman who believes in Allah to forsake her husband’s bed, and that, though hitting is not the way to discipline a wife, it could be resorted to “when all other means are exhausted”, the paper said.
"Muslim federation condemns renegade group over wife-beating stance," Kahleej Times, May 1, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/SexOnDemand

A Three-year-old little boy was examining his testicles while taking a bath.

"Mama," he asked, "Are these my brains?"

Mama answered, "Not yet!"

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Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmark s go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 
Archives of Tidbits: Tidbits Directory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.

Bob Jensen's home page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

 

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