Tidbits on September 2, 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/

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

 Music: U.S. Army Band recordings --- http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp           

             Patriotic concert band recordings --- http://www.ima.lee.army.mil/sites/band/concertSamples.asp

             Jazz ensemble recordings --- http://www.ima.lee.army.mil/sites/band/jazzSamples.asp

             Small group recordings --- http://www.ima.lee.army.mil/sites/band/smGroupSamples.asp

Nice, but so, so sad!
Hear Marilyn Nelson read her poem "A Wreath for Emmett Till" ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4818586

Not my favorites: 
Q Magazine's Greatest 100 Albums of All Time --- http://listsofbests.com/list/13/

Guess what the worst one is (Hint:  It's in Q Magazine's Top 100 List)?
Maxim Magazine's 30 Worst Albums of All Time --- http://listsofbests.com/list/64/

Train of Life (Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline) ---  
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/singingman7/TOL.htm

Please check on your bank account --- http://www.scottstratten.com/movie.html

The scammers (especially Web and telephone scammers) are already moving to get your cash that you intended to help Katrina victims.  For a discussion of how you can really help legitimate agencies, go to
http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/110/109835.htm?z=1727_00000_5024_hv_03

"Scammers Hit Web In Katrina's Wake," by Brian Krebs and Caroline E. Mayer, The Washington Post, September 1, 2005 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/31/AR2005083102574.html?referrer=email

Katrina bloggers shine --- http://www.internetweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=170102802

Many local communities housing victims (such as Houston and San Antonio) are seeking funds and other aid to help those victims.  Some of the local banks, churches, newspapers, and TV stations have set up ways to channel that support.  Avoid door-to-door scammers.

Where will all the college students forced out by Katrina find new colleges?
Hurricane Katrina kicked students out of New Orleans colleges, and institutions around the state and the country are welcoming them with open arms. Meanwhile, the closed colleges in Louisiana must wait for a time their students can return – and many hope that they will not have to abandon this semester.
David Epstein, "Finding New Homes or Temporary Home," Inside Higher Ed, September 2, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/02/katrina

Two brilliant explanations of what caused the catastrophic damages from Katrina

Were there rainbow flags whipping about in Louisiana and Mississippi last week?
In 1998 the city fathers of Orlando, Fla., decided to hang rainbow flags from lampposts in honor of Disney World's "gay day." Zany televangelist Pat Robertson issued an admonition: "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you." --- http://snipurl.com/GayCauses

*******************

Does Bobby, Jr. have any recollection of Galveston on September 8, 1900 when the world's horsepower was still energized by horses and not hydrocarbons?
Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence. . . . Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/afor-they-that-sow-the-_b_6396.html   

Question
What is the next big thing about to be announced from Apple Corporation?

Answer
Apple Computer Inc. has a tradition of tightly guarding its announcements, but the prevailing expectation among industry observers is that the event will be the unveiling of a long-awaited cell phone from Motorola Inc. that will contain built-in support for Apple's iTunes software, with a connection to Apple's popular online music store.
Mike Musgrove, "Tech World Awaits Apple's Latest 'Surprise'," The Washington Post, August 31, 2005 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001899.html?referrer=email
Jensen Comment:  Be careful with this.  You would not want the phone to answer a call from your boss with a rendition of Johnnie Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It."

From The Washington Post on August 31, 2005

When did DVD rentals surpass those of VHS tapes?

A. 2004
B. 2003
C. 2002
D. 2001
 

Photographs of the landscapes in the beautiful U.K. --- http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/apictureofbritain/

Smithsonian images of North American Mammals --- http://www.mnh2.si.edu/education/mna/

Appalachian Heritage http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/

"The Fate of Africa" (PublicAffairs, 752 pages, $35)
... is a heavy book, but it is light reading because it is so unfashionably straightforward. Martin Meredith has written a narrative history of modern Africa, devoid of pseudointellectual frills, gender discourse or postcolonial angst. He takes each of the larger African countries and tells you what happened there after independence. In chronological order. It is a joy. Africa's rulers will hate it.
Robert Guest, "So Badly Misled," The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2005 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112543868461627062,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Recolonizing Africa Radical Islam seeps into the neglected continent
For decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been treated as nothing more than a dumping ground for humanitarian aid -- an instrument the West occasionally employed to ease its collective guilt for slavery, colonialism and its own prosperity, only to turn its attention elsewhere as soon as that guilt was temporarily assuaged. This arrangement unfortunately obscured the mechanism by which the West might truly have invested itself in the region's well-being. The fact that the subcontinent is an important piece of the international security framework, due primarily to the level of Islamist penetration it has experienced, has yet to sink in.
David McCormack, "Recolonizing Africa," The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2005 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112544315528227170,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

"Pope Tells Catholics to Multiply," Agence France-Presse, September 1, 2005  http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050831/1/3un34.html

Current Population on Earth --- http://www.worldometers.info/

Projected Population Growth (it's already out of control) --- http://snipurl.com/9wu3

The Marriage Advantage — for Men
Male graduate students who have wives drop out less frequently and finish their Ph.D.’s more quickly than their single counterparts.
Scott Jaschik, "The Marriage Advantage — for Men," Inside Higher Ed, August 30, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/30/marriage

Malcomb Gladwell on Tipping Points and Moral Hazard
Gladwell: The home-run tipping-point notion is really quite fascinating. One of the things that always interests me in sports is how extraordinarily sensitive athletic performance is to social expectations. My favorite example is the four-minute mile. For years, no one even comes close. Then Roger Bannister breaks the record in 1954, and suddenly, everyone can break four minutes. Did runners get "better" in 1954? Not really. They simply became aware that running four minutes was possible. Same thing with baseball players and the Dominican Republic. Dominicans are not "better" infielders than everyone else. But if you are a nine-year-old kid playing in San Pedro de Macoris, you know that it's possible to be a major leaguer, in a way that the same kid growing up in Maine does not. When symbolic barriers are broken -- the first man from the Dominican Republic to make the majors, the first person to break four minutes -- the context in which we think of achievement changes dramatically.
Rob Neyer, "The interview: Malcolm Gladwell," ESPN Baseball, June 4, 2005 --- http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1390690.html

Jensen Comment:  Malcomb Gladwell is a clever writer who spent about 10 years with The Washington Post and, since 1997, is a staff writer with The New Yorker.  One of his best known works is The Tipping Point --- http://snipurl.com/TippingPoint .  His latest contribution is in the August 29, 2005 issue of The New Yorker where he laments the sad state of health care insurance in America --- "THE MORAL-HAZARD MYTH The bad idea behind our failed health-care system" --- http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact#top
I think moral hazard is in fact a much more serious problem than he concludes, but I like the way he writes about the problem.  Gladwell often take angles on things that are quite clever and is very articulate.  I might not agree with everything he writes, but I always like the way he writes it.

People without health insurance (in the U.S.) have bad teeth because, if you're paying for everything out of your own pocket, going to the dentist for a checkup seems like a luxury.
Malcomb Gladwell," The Terrible Tooth About America, The New Yorker --- http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact 

The British, of course, have socialized medicine, which we guess explains why they have such great teeth.
Carol Muller, Opinion Journal, August 30, 2005

The Perpetual Health Care Crisis:  There may be no public policy solution to health care --- http://www.reason.com/0507/cr.bd.the.shtml

Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World, by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick, Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield, 263 pages, $22.95

Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer, by Sally C. Pipes, San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 219 pages, $14.95

No more low riding cleavage teasers at Northwestern University
The new code asks students to keep midriffs covered, and to leave items like tank tops, hats, athletic shorts, and tops with spaghetti straps in the closet when they come to class. “In a professional environment, and with professional education, we’re not only concentrating on facts and didactic material, but professional behavior and appearance,” Wilson said. She added that, so far, she has not seen anyone in the halls in open defiance of the new code.
David Epstein, "Fashion Police," Inside Higher Ed, August 31, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/31/dress
Jensen Comment:  What fun is navel jewelry if it can't be displayed?  Now if we could only require ear muffs, at least among the male students.  Or have I become a fuddy duddy in my advancing years?

Long lost 1948 speech in the files of the American Association for Higher Education
When the American Association for Higher Education shut down this spring, many of its files went to Clara M. Lovett, its last president. She recently found a speech given in 1948 at the annual meeting of the higher education division of the National Education Association, which helped create the AAHE. Lovett thought the speech — about challenges facing higher education as the U.S. confronted the Cold War — had relevance today. With thanks to Lovett for the find and to the NEA for permission to reprint the text, we offer the following thoughts from an earlier generation.
Ernest O. Melby , "The Role of the University in Building World Peace," Inside Higher Ed, August 31, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/31/melby

Is soy everything that's promised?
Soy is widely considered to be something of a medicinal super food, touted as helping to prevent conditions as diverse as heart disease, hot flashes, osteoporosis, kidney disease, Alzheimer's disease, and even cancer. But a new government-sponsored review of soy research shows little to justify the hype. An analysis of close to 200 soy studies conducted over the past two decades showed only limited evidence of specific health benefits associated with eating soy products or taking soy supplements.
Salynn Boyles, "Jury Still Out on Soy and Health," WebMD, August 25, 2005 --- http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/110/109766.htm?z=1727_00000_5024_hv_03

Texas A&M is investing millions of dollars to win the trust of minority students
Tadesse, who graduated third in his class from the nearly all-black Jack Yates High School in Houston, is part of Texas A&M's bold effort to increase its minority enrollment without considering race in admissions. The goal is a student body that reflects the diversity of Texas. The state's second-largest university has invested millions of dollars to attract students who didn't have the luxury of wealth or the best schools. The campaign reversed a seven-year decline in the number of black and Hispanic freshmen last fall, and the university is projecting big percentage increases again as classes start today. Officials are pleased with the numbers, but realize that recruitment is a first step. Retention is another. For years, a lower percentage of black and Hispanic students have graduated within six years from Texas A&M than their white classmates. The university is staking a lot on Tadesse, knowing his success could help draw more minority students. He is resilient and earnest and does not plan to leave without a bachelor's degree. "People change in college because they haven't seen things in life," he said. "I feel right now that I'm a grown man."
Mathew Tresaugue, "Deeply rooted in tradition, Texas A&M is investing millions of dollars to win the trust of minority students," The Houston Chronicle, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3328964
Jensen Comment:  This initiative is above and beyond the huge influx of minority students at Texas A&M and the University of Texas arising from having to accept the top 10% of students from all public high schools in Texas irrespective of admission test scores and grades.

Florida Colleges Note Fewer Black Students
As (Florida's) state college students begin another fall term, many schools are reporting a decline in the percentage of black students admitted to one of Florida's 11 public universities. That trend has state Sen. Les Miller, D-Tampa, worried. As the Senate Democratic leader and a member of Florida Caucus of Black State Legislators, Miller said he is among those who questioned whether Gov. Jeb Bush's 1999 initiative to end race-based university admissions would ultimately hurt minority students.
Lloyd Dunkelberger, "Colleges Note Fewer Black Students," TheLedger, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050829/NEWS/508290317/1039

Florida A&M Students Returning To a College in Turmoil
After a year of scandals, investigations and financial difficulties at Florida A&M University, interim President Castell Bryant is intent on restoring the school's respect. Since she took over the school in January, Bryant has been faced with a slew of problems. The athletics program conceded nearly 200 rules violations, two professors were collecting paychecks while working full time out of state, the National Science Foundation investigated misuse of grant money and more.
Brent Kallestad, "FAMU Students Returning To a College in Turmoil," TheLedger, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050829/NEWS/508290321/1134

Bob Jensen's threads on how credit card companies are cheating you are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#FICO

"Did Credit-Card Issuers Collude to Force Arbitration? by Carrick Mollenkamp, The Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2005; Page C1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112553966818328701,00.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing

Many of the largest U.S. credit-card companies require customers to sign away their ability to take disputes to court and instead settle disagreements in arbitration.

Now that practice itself is under attack in court. A lawsuit filed recently in federal court in New York City alleges the credit-card companies held secret meetings where they colluded to promote arbitration, in violation of federal antitrust laws.

The complaint alleges that eight of the nation's biggest card issuers -- Bank of America Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley's Discover unit, Citigroup Inc., MBNA Corp., Providian Financial Corp. and HSBC Holdings PLC of the United Kingdom -- "combined, conspired and agreed to implement and/or maintain mandatory arbitration."

Some of the banks named allegedly convened a group in 1999 called the "Arbitration Coalition" or "Arbitration Group," the complaint says.

The suit, which was filed last month and is seeking class-action status, claims that bank representatives spoke or met at least 20 times from 1999 to 2003 to share experiences from arbitration as well as advice on how to set up arbitration agreements with consumers that would withstand challenges in court.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on how credit card companies are cheating you are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#FICO

"Applications Drop for 3rd Straight Year at M.B.A. Programs, Though Some Business Schools See Upticks,"
The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 10, 2005 --- http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/08/2005081004n.htm

U.S. Census Bureau definitions of income --- http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/definitions.html
Bob Jensen's links to accounting, finance, and economics glossaries --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbus.htm

Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award
Amazon.com, Inc. today announced the 10 nonprofit organizations that are finalists for the Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award. This award is designed to recognize and reward nonprofits whose innovative approaches and breakthrough solutions most effectively improve their communities or the world at large. Amazon.com, in partnership with the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a panel of expert advisors, selected the 10 finalists. These organizations will be featured on Amazon.com web site through September 30, 2005, and customers can vote for their favorites by making contributions at www.amazon.com/nonprofitinnovation.
Stanford University Graduate School of Business Newsletter, July 19, 2005

"Lessons for Google in Netscape downfall:  Search engine faces similar obstacles to those that haunted Netscape. Chief among them: Microsoft," by Elizabeth Montalbano, Infoworld, August 10, 2005 --- http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/10/HNlessonsforgoogle_1.html

Study Finds Most States Get Short End of Tobacco Deals
A study by Stanford Professor Jeremy Bulow indicates 29 states would have been better off passing a $4 excise tax on a carton of cigarettes rather than signing the multibillion-dollar tobacco settlement agreement.
"Study Finds Most States Get Short End of Tobacco Deals," AOL News, August 6, 2005 --- http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20050806085909990003&_ccc=2&cid=403 

"The Power Of Us:  Mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business," Business Week, June 20, 2005 --- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm 

Sharpe Point: Risk Gauge Is Misused
Past average experience may be a terrible predictor of future performance

The so-called Sharpe Ratio has become a cornerstone of modern finance, as investors have used it to help select money managers and mutual funds. Now, many academics -- including Sharpe himself -- say the gauge is being misused . . . The ratio is commonly used -- "misused," Dr. Sharpe says -- for promotional purposes by hedge funds. Bayou Management LLC, the Connecticut hedge-fund firm under investigation for what authorities suspect may have been a massive fraud, touted its Sharpe Ratio in marketing material. Investment consultants and companies that compile hedge-fund data also use it, as does a new annual contest for the best hedge funds in Asia, by a newsletter called AsiaHedge. "That is very disturbing," says the 71-year-old Dr. Sharpe. Hedge funds, loosely regulated private investment pools, often use complex strategies that are vulnerable to surprise events and elude any simple formula for measuring risk. "Past average experience may be a terrible predictor of future performance," Dr. Sharpe says.
Ianthe Jeanne Dugan, "Sharpe Point: Risk Gauge Is Misused," The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2005; Page C1--- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112545496905527510,00.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing

Bob Jensen's threads on valuation and risk are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm

Good news and bad news in the recent SAT results
"SAT Math Scores Are Up," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, August 31, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/31/sat

This fall’s college freshmen were the last to take the old SAT — and they did well on the mathematics portion, posting a 2-point gain, to an average of 520. Over the last 10 years, the average math score increased by 14 points, a gain that College Board officials said was significant and attributed to increases in the number of students taking rigorous math courses in high school.

But the statistics released by the College Board on Tuesday also had plenty of sobering news: Verbal scores were flat. And over 10 years, verbal scores increased by only 4 points, to an average of 508. In addition, over the last 10 years gaps in performance levels among members of ethnic and racial groups have grown. Over the last decade, for example, the average score for Asian Americans rose by 25 points on the SAT math test, while the score for black increased by an average of 9 points. That leaves the average for African American students, 431, at 149 points behind the Asian American average of 580.

The following table shows the breakdowns on scores and gains by racial and ethnic groups.

SAT Average Scores and Gains, by Race and Ethnicity, 2005

Racial/ Ethnic Group	% of SAT Takers	Verbal Average	1-Year Verbal Gain	10-Year Verbal Gain	Math Average	1-Year Math Gain	10-Year Math Gain
Native American	1%	489	6	9	493	5	17
Asian	10%	511	4	19	580	3	25
Black	12%	433	3	1	431	4	9
Mexican American	5%	453	2	0	458	5	5
Puerto Rican	1%	460	3	12	457	5	13
Other Hispanic	4%	463	2	-2	469	4	1
White	62%	532	4	7	536	5	15
Other	4%	495	1	-12	513	5	3
All students	100%	508	0	4	520	2	14

Continued in the article

William and Mary joining Yale and some other universities
The College of William and Mary has announced a new aid program that will cover all student costs for families with incomes of up to $40,000. Under the Gateway William and Mary Program, students will not be asked to borrow at all. William and Mary’s move follows those of other public universities, such as the Universities of Michigan, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Virginia, to increase aid packages for students from low-income families.
Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/29/qt

A highly innovative and interactive site for designing and building a home or other building --- http://www.architectstudio3d.org/AS3d/index.html

If you download files often and are frustrated by download times, you may be interested in the following software:
Download Accelerator Plus 7.5 --- http://www.speedbit.com/

Why States Shouldn’t Accredit
If such a provision becomes law, we will see exactly why some states refuse to recognize degrees issued under the authority of other states: It is quite possible to be state-approved and a low-quality degree provider.Which states allow poor institutions to be approved to issue degrees? Here are the Seven Sorry Sisters: Alabama (split authority for assessing and recognizing degrees), Hawaii (poor standards, excellent enforcement of what little there is), Idaho (poor standards, split authority), Mississippi (poor standards, political interference), Missouri (poor standards, political interference), New Mexico (grandfathered some mystery degree suppliers) and of course the now infamous Wyoming (poor standards, political indifference or active support of poor schools).
n L. Contreras, "Why States Shouldn’t Accredit," Inside Higher Ed, August 30, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2005/08/30/contreras

He should've just called her fluffy
Efforts to tackle soaring obesity rates in the US have taken a knock after a doctor was censured for telling a patient she was fat. Terry Bennett, of New Hampshire, told the woman her weight was harming her health, that her husband was obese and would probably die before her, and, given her weight, she would have problems finding another man. The doctor's comments became public at the same time as a new report that said more than 119 million Americans are now considered overweight or obese. The patient, who was reported to have weighed about 110 kilograms and to have been suffering from diabetes, was upset and reported Dr Bennett to state medical authorities. Her complaint, filed about a year ago, was investigated by a panel of the New Hampshire Board of Medicine, which recommended Dr Bennett be sent a confidential letter of concern. The board rejected the suggestion in December and asked the Attorney-General's office to investigate. Dr Bennett rejected that office's proposal that he attend a medical education course and acknowledge he made a mistake. "I told a fat woman she was obese," Dr Bennett said. "I told her, 'You need to get on a program and peel off the weight that is going to kill you' ." Trust for Americans' Health, an independent advocacy group that released this week's report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2005, says the nation has been let down by ineffective anti-obesity policies.
Francis Harris, "Doctor censured for telling patient she is dangerously fat," Sydney Morning Herald, August 27, 2005 --- http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/26/1124563027265.html

Epidemiologists are hot on the trail of the obesity pathogen
Watching the Detectives Epidemiologists are hot on the trail of the obesity pathogen," by Jacob Sullum,  Reason Magazine, August 26, 2005 --- http://www.reason.com/sullum/082605.shtml

So much for blowing the whistle on Halliburton
A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.
Erik Eckholm, "Army Contract Official Critical of Halliburton Pact Is Demoted," The New York Times, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/international/middleeast/29halliburton.html

Talk about conflicts of interest in auditing
Investors who are worried about the fate of the money they turned over to the Bayou Group, a Connecticut firm that is under investigation by federal and state authorities, will not be happy to learn that there were close ties between the firm and the auditor of its hedge funds. Public documents show that the chief financial officer and head of compliance for the Bayou Group was also a principal in an accounting firm that audited the hedge funds' books.
Gretchen Morgensen, "At Defunct Fund, Close Ties to Auditor," The New York Times, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/business/29bayou.html

Bob Jensen's threads on auditor independence are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#Professionalism

"Who Killed PayPal?  'Consumer advocates' can make life miserable for consumers," by Radley Balko, Reason Magazine, August/September, 2005 --- http://www.reason.com/0508/cr.rb.who.shtml
Jensen Comment:  Actually PayPal is not dead.  But its effort to be an independent company, apart from eBay, was killed primarily by the banking industry who used their favorite guns, in Washington, to block competition.

Question:
What is the most popular electronic supplement for successful textbooks?

Answer
Probably electronic test banks and homework assignments/solutions.  Automatic grading of homework and exams is becoming extremely popular.

"Text vs. Text vs. Text," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, August 26, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/26/econ

The introductory economics textbook business can be a lucrative one. Principles of Economics, by N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard professor, brought an advance of $1.4 million in 1997, and has since become common shelf material in college bookstores.

Several other intro texts have made professors rich. The new books, for which only microeconomics portions have been unveiled so far, are from authors on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Krugman is famous for his anti-Bush tirades in The New York Times, while Hubbard was on the Bush administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, helping to engineer tax cuts. For the most part, though, the content of their books may not be startlingly different from each other, or from the books already out there.

“It’s like adding Pepsi to the shelf with Coca-Cola. You have more choices. You might have Shasta and Canada Dry, too, but it’s mostly more of the same,” said Fred Gottheil, an economics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who teaches intro courses and is the author of his own textbook, Principles of Economics.

The book publishers, however, beg to differ. They say the books are unique, from each other and from other texts on the market. “Each chapter is going to follow a real case of a real business,” said David Hakensen, a spokesman for Prentice Hall, which published Microeconomics, which Hubbard wrote with Anthony P. O’Brien, an economics professor at Lehigh University.

Krugman’s book, Economics, which he wrote with his wife, Robin Wells, also a Princeton professor, “takes a story-driven approach that focuses on real-world economics at work,” according to the Worth Publishers Web site.

Both books will sell in the range of $100, give or take $20 depending on the markup. Hakensen noted that a digital, SafariX version of Hubbard’s text is available. What about the Krugman competitor? “With Aplia, students can use the digital book and professors can give homework online,” said Craig Bleyer, publisher for economics at Worth Publishers.

Some professors don’t think the digital options really break new ground. “I’m on the bloody Internet, on your screen answering questions,” Gottheil said of an option to which book owners can log in for help via video. “What’s Krugman going to do new, tell jokes? Unless he comes on 3-D. Then, OK, he beat me.”

In fact, Krugman did show up in person to the University of Pittsburgh last year, where Shirley Cassing, an economics professor, was promised a visit if she tried using his book during testing last year. “It was so cool. He’s not very dynamic or flamboyant in person,” she said, “but the sheer force of his ideas made it engaging.” Cassing is a fan of Krugman’s book. “We’re all familiar with his writing,” she added. “Even if you don’t share his views, the writing in the book is still really good, and there’s no obvious bias.”

Cassing said the Aplia option allowed her to assign homework that is done online and graded automatically to her 200 students. She credits that for part of improved student performance over the past, when she used Mankiw’s book and homework was essentially optional because all 200 problem sets could not be graded.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment:  Computer grading of essays will probably be the next big utility offered by textbook publishers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Essays

Being an academic may make you ineligible to be the Chancellor of the State University System
Six of the seven members have no professional experience in higher education, though many serve on the board of governors that oversees the (Florida) state's universities. Political allies of Gov. Jeb Bush, including big GOP donors such as Fort Lauderdale physician Zachariah P. Zachariah and St. Joe Corporation president Peter Rummell, dominate the search committee. And Rummell, who chairs the search committee, made it clear during the group's initial conference call Thursday that an academic background is not especially critical for the new chancellor. The qualifications drafted by Rummell for posting at the state's Web site seem to favor a political background more than university experience: "The successful candidate must possess significant demonstrated and proven effective leadership experience -- specific experience in the state of Florida political and educational environment being a plus -- that would prove beneficial for leading the State University System."
"Academics for Universities' Chancellor?," TheLedger.com, August 28, 2005 --- http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050828/NEWS/508280337/1036

God vs. Darwin: No Contest Natural selection debate gets even dumber --- http://www.reason.com/cy/cy080905.shtml

My brain/genes/hormones made me do it” catch-all excuse
The keynote address was given by renowned Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker, who described a neuromorality of personal responsibility. In Pinker’s view, the worry that a biologically based understanding of human behavior will turn into a “my brain/genes/hormones made me do it” catch-all excuse stems from a basic fallacy: the assumption that bad acts deserve to be punished only if they result from some fully autonomous “free will” exempt from biological or other causation. How can we “salvage the core of responsibility” without such mystical notions? For Pinker, the answer is to shift the focus from the unanswerable question of whether an act was truly “freely chosen” to whether the perpetrator has a normally functioning brain with a normal response to the stimuli of reward and punishment.
Cathy Young, "Soul Survival:  Is “the new neuromorality” a threat to traditional views of right and wrong?" Reason Magazine, August/September 2005 --- http://www.reason.com/0508/co.cy.soul.shtml 

Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton, by Martin Brookes (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing,2005)

Galton’s eugenics dreams were adopted with singular earnestness by others, most notoriously Nazi Germany. Less well remembered is the extent to which eugenics also became a significant factor in the policies of democratic nations such as the United States and Sweden. In the U.S., more than 60,000 people in 30 states received involuntary sterilizations under eugenics-based laws in the early and mid 20th century; they included the mentally ill or retarded, physically ill or disabled, and others deemed socially inadequate. Eugenics also gave new impetus to immigration restrictions, racial segregation, and bans on interracial marriage. Largely in reaction against eugenics, the social sciences have veered sharply from biological and hereditary explanations during the last half-century. Today Galton’s specter rises again, as critics of biotechnology warn against a new era of eugenics it will supposedly enable.
Kenneth Silber, "The First Eugenicist:  Was Francis Galton wrong to want to improve the human race?" Reason Magazine, July 2005 --- http://www.reason.com/0507/cr.ks.the.shtml 

Question
Why are President Bush and the porn industry united against the proposed .xxx top-level domain?

Answer
Their conclusions are the same, but not their reasoning --- http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68640,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

Honey!  I'm home.

"Oh hi dear!  I'm glad you're home."
She then turned to the doll seated on her lap. "Hi, honey," Shackelford said gently to Amazing Amanda, a blond, blue-eyed figure bearing more than a remote likeness to its creator. "Hello, my name is Amanda," the doll replied as Shackelford smiled warmly at its rosy face. "We're going to have the best time together," the doll promised. Amazing Amanda, scheduled for release next month by Playmates Toys, is expected to cost $99, said Shackelford, the chief executive of J. Shackelford & Associates, a product and marketing company in Moorpark, Calif., that specializes in toys and children's entertainment. At that price, the same as Apple's entry-level iPod Shuffle digital music player, the 18-inch-tall doll promises -- right on the box it will be sold in -- to "listen, speak and show emotion." Some analysts and buyers who have seen Amanda say it represents an evolutionary leap from earlier talking dolls like Chatty Cathy of the 1960s, a doll that cycled through a collection of recorded phrases when a child pulled a cord in its back.
Michel Marriott, "A Doll That Can Recognize Voices, Identify Objects and Show Emotion," The New York Times, August 25, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/technology/circuits/25doll.html

Iz tryN 2 dev mor neg cap

"I and Your," by David Orr, The New York Times, August 28, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28ORRL.html

It's a pity, then, that brilliant letters are about as likely to be written by young poets today as odes to Psyche. This isn't the fault of the poets. The letter has always been an awkwardly balanced genre -- part practical necessity, part literary performance, part cowardly way to break up with your girlfriend -- and advances in technology have made the letter's modern incarnations smaller, faster, flatter and more ephemeral. These qualities enhance the functional side of letter writing at the expense of the casual, cloudlike accumulations of thought that often lead to the most incandescent poetic observations. And let's face it, the modern letter equivalent makes for a lousy read. Consider, for example, a text message version of Keats's famous explanation of ''negative capability'' (as originally set forth in a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, it's a kind of artistic disinterest):

JKEATS1: Iz tryN 2 dev mor neg cap

G&TKEATS: watz dat?

JKEATS1: dats bn N uncertainties -- misteries -- doubts w/o NE irritable reachN aftr fact & reasN : -)

G&TKEATS: kewl

There's nothing wrong with text messages -- they're terrifically useful and often very funny -- but they 8nt Xactly gud 2 look @. Even e-mail messages, which bear some resemblance to letters, are probably too short (not to mention too easily disposable) to maintain the letter's literary position.

So we're likely down to our last few poet correspondents. Fortunately, as ''A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $40) demonstrates, it's a formidable bunch. Wright, who died in 1980 at the age of 52, was born in the industrial town of Martins Ferry, Ohio -- and as a poet, he never entirely left it. Having graduated from Kenyon College with the assistance of the G.I. Bill, Wright began his career as an earnest, tender, technically adroit writer who embraced traditional forms, and he kept the earnestness, the tenderness and the technical polish even after he largely abandoned pentameter. Wright's letters (as chosen by his wife, Anne Wright, and Saundra Rose Maley) trace his development from young, poor Army enlistee scrambling for time to read Catullus (''he most deliciously soared upon his physical and spiritual consciousness'') to famous midcareer writer communing with fellow eminence Galway Kinnell (''I think you and I have always shared something so deep as to be terribly difficult to welcome into words''). Along the way are major correspondences with Donald Hall, Theodore Roethke, James Dickey, Robert Bly and others.

Continued in article

Labor Day Thoughts:  Democrats' new line of attack against the Bush tax cut policies
Now that the economy has created some four million new jobs over the past two years and the unemployment rate has fallen to a five-year low, the left's jabs about the Bush "jobless recovery" have lost their sting. So just in time for Labor Day, the Democrats' new line of attack against the Bush tax cut policies is "stagnant wages." The union-funded Economic Policy Institute alleges that wages are falling "at their fastest rate in 14 years." Middle-income families are said to be trapped on an economic treadmill sprinting ever faster just to avoid falling behind financially. Some critics have even trotted out contorted statistics which suggest that workers have made almost no income gains since the late "70s. It's a grim picture that suggests that the best days of the American worker are behind us and that The Brady Bunch lived better than Bart Simpson's family does today. But the reality is that the economic well-being of the American family has never been better -- as measured by income, consumption, and wealth (see nearby chart). And these gains have continued over the past five years, despite the recession and stock-market crash of 2000-01. The typical household today has a disposable income higher than any other time in history, and when taking into account all forms of benefits that workers now receive, compensation to workers is about 27% higher in real terms than 25 years ago. Workers earn in less than four days a week what their parents earned in five, and they make in three days on the job what their grandparents earned in five.
Stephen Moore, "The Wages of Prosperity," The Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2005; Page A9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112527218346525075,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Labor Day Thoughts:  What Women Want
Why have these changes occurred? Interviews conducted by sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas with more than 150 Philadelphia-area single mothers shed light on a dismal situation. Most of these women express a strong desire to marry and view extramarital childbearing as "second best." Yet almost all remained single. The authors' explanation: Expectations for marriage have risen across the board. A house, a well-paying job, and enough money for a nice wedding are now needed to tie the knot. But wages at the bottom have stagnated or declined, so few of the unskilled can afford to marry. The authors' message is clear: Out-of-wedlock childbearing is simply a matter of money. Raise economic prospects and the problem will fix itself. That objective is best addressed through government programs, not individual or community reform.
Amy L. Wax, "What Women Want," The Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2005; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112527883394625240,00.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Labor Day Thoughts:  Casualties of the increase in minimum wage barriers to entry
Buried within the good news in the recent U.S. job creation report is one sobering statistic: Unemployment among America's teenagers remains stubbornly high at 16%. Even more frustrating is that the jobless rate for African-American teens is close to 33% -- higher than during the Great Depression. To be sure, many of these teens aren't aggressively searching for jobs, so the official statistics somewhat overstate the problem. But what seems equally clear is that teens and unskilled workers face barriers to entry when they attempt to join the job market for the first time. The scandal here is that these barriers are created in large part by liberal policymakers who claim to represent the best interests of unemployed workers.
"Job Slayers," The Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2005; Page A8 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112527778040525221,00.html?mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Freview%5Fand%5Foutlooks

This is one tough way to stamp out a nation's drug abuse problem
Australian tourists visiting Bali's nightspots will face random urine tests under an escalating anti-drugs crackdown on the Indonesian holiday island. Bali police drug squad chief Bambang Sugiarto told The Sun-Herald he would adopt the hardline tactic, controversially trialled in recent raids on Jakarta clubs, to stamp out the drug trade.
Mark Forbes, "Random drug tests for Aussie tourists in Bali," Sydney Morning Herald, August 28, 2005 --- http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/27/1124563063281.html
Jensen Comment:  We don't expect to see many professional baseball players from the U.S. passing through Bali.

Medical lab in a suitcase
Acting swiftly and efficiently, a flight attendant pulls a small device from the overhead compartment, takes a throat sample from the ailing passenger, and identifies the virus as the influenza. On landing, all the travelers are quarantined -- and the spread of the flu is thwarted. It's a scenario that may become a reality in the not-too-distant future, thanks to a group of researchers who've been working on ways to derive genetic information from human DNA more efficiently. Furthermore, if combined with a wireless network, it could track the spread of flu strains throughout the world.
Sarah J. Heim, "Lab on a Swab," MIT's Technology Review, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/08/wo/wo_082905.asp?trk=nl

Steinem on a Balance Between Nature and Nurture
So I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe that a unique core self is born into every human being -- the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again. The truth is, we've been seduced into asking the wrong question by those who hope that the social order they want is inborn, or those who hope they can write the one they want on our uniquely long human childhoods.
Gloria Steinem, "A Balance Between Nature and Nurture," NPR, August 22, 2005 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4805246

New Challenge to Evolution
A group of Christian schools sued the University of California in federal court last week, charging that it engages in religious discrimination by refusing to certify certain high school courses at religious schools as meeting the system’s admissions requirements.  The courses in question teach alternatives to evolution, including creationism and “intelligent design.” But the dispute goes beyond science to other courses taught from a “Christian perspective.”
Scott Jaschik, "New Challenge to Evolution," Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/29/ucsuit

Southern Illinois University must recognize a Christian group
A federal appeals court has ordered Southern Illinois University to recognize a Christian group — regardless of the fact that the group’s procedures may violate other anti-bias rules at the campus. The ruling granted an injunction that restored the recognition for the campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society at the university’s Carbondale campus. The order by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit was not a final decision on the case. But the ruling — and a strongly worded dissent — provide a good indication of the thinking of the appeals court on the debate over religious groups at public colleges.
Scott Jaschik, "Conflicting Rights," Inside Higher Ed, August 29, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/29/siu
 

Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis --- http://www.usc.edu/dept/chepa/ 

Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle:  Telling it like it is
Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.
Sharon Waxman, "Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle," The New York Times, August 24, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/NYT824

Multimedia Evidence of Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
There's new evidence suggesting the majestic ivory-billed woodpecker, once thought to be extinct, is indeed alive in eastern Arkansas. Researchers have captured the sounds of bird calls and woodpecker rapping that reinforces earlier videotaped evidence of the bird in flight.
Christopher Joyce, "Audio Evidence of Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," NPR, August 25, 2005 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4814860

The ACLU is on guard against prayers
A Georgia county is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union over its pre-meeting prayers. The suit claims one prayer at a recent Cobb County Commissioners' meeting ended "in the name of Jesus our Savior," which phrase, according to the ACLU, puts the invocation in violation of the Constitution of the United States. However, attorney Steve Crampton of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, protests that the Cobb County officials' prayers are entirely legal, and the commission members have the right to open meetings with prayers acknowledging Jesus if they so choose.
Allie Martin, Agape Press, August 26, 2005 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1472675/posts

Huffing and puffing for more burley
For Speaks and thousands of other tobacco growers in North Carolina, the nation's leading tobacco growing state, this is the first year in decades without the quota. Congress approved a $10.1 billion buyout of the Depression-era price support system last year, leaving most growers wrestling with market forces for the first time. For some growers in central and eastern parts of the state, it led to experiments with burley tobacco. Until this year, about 70 percent of domestically grown burley has come from Kentucky. "The tobacco companies use burley to enhance the taste of a cigarette," Speaks said. "It's like baking a cake. You need flour and sugar and flavorings to get just the right blend." The 2005 crop from Kentucky was expected to be the smallest in nearly 80 years, the result of a loss of producers after the buyout and a summer drought. That created a need that farmers elsewhere have rushed to fill, said Blake Brown, who studies the economics of tobacco at North Carolina State University. "With the buyout, it's now possible to grow tobacco anywhere and whatever kind you want to grow," Brown said. "When the companies found out they could not get the volume of burley they needed from states like Kentucky, they went elsewhere. They also are looking at Mississippi and Illinois and some other states."
Paul Nowell, "N.C. Farmers Experiment With Burley Tobacco," Yahoo News, August 25, 2005 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050825/ap_on_bi_ge/farm_scene_2

Where are the hacksaws?
There are times in a Wal-Mart store when customers need a little assistance from associates, but a request for help Tuesday by a Pittsburg teenager wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs had clerks calling police. “He asked them for a hacksaw,” said Conway Police Lt. Joe Faia. It turned out that Joha D. Turner, 18, had not escaped any official custody, but was instead pulling a prank. But now he’s going to court next month to answer a charge of disorderly conduct, after being freed on his own recognizance.
"Store prankster charged at Conway Wal-Mart," New Hampshire Union Leader, August 26, 2005 --- http://www.unionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=59609

Web cartoonists face jail after leader's lampoon goes too far
ANYWHERE else in Europe, political cartoons would be considered harmless satire, designed more to amuse than to undermine the State. Not so in Belarus. When animated mini films featuring President Lukashenko appeared on the internet, the KGB, the Belarussian security service, responded immediately. It raided three apartments in Minsk, confiscated 12 computers and interrogated Andrei Obuzov and Pavel Morozov, the two men who put the cartoons on their website for five hours. Prosecutors have begun legal proceedings against them and Oleg Minich, the creator of the cartoons, which could result in jail sentences of five years.
Jeremy Page, "Web cartoonists face jail after leader's lampoon goes too far," TimesOnLine, August 24, 2005 --- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1748367,00.html

Putting hate for the U.S. on the line
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called the United States the “most savage, cruel and murderous empire that has existed in the history of the world. They cruelly entice our youth with designer clothes and rock-and-roll music. They savagely flaunt their freedoms.” “Socialism is the only path to save a world threatened by the abundance of U.S. capitalism,” said Chavez. “Cuba is the model society. Castro has led his people away from Yankee materialism to a socially just equality of poverty. Chavez warned the U.S. not to mess with Venezuela. “We will resist imperialistic attempts to bring freedom to our land,” said Chavez. “We will drown the Americans in our blood.”
John Semens, "U.S. Is the “Most Savage, Cruel and Murderous Empire” in World History," The Arizona Conservative, August 26, 2005 --- http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm

Ice cream funding of anti-war protestors
Their bills are being paid for by True Majority, a non-profit set up by Ben Cohen -- of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream fame. Ben Cohen, True Majority: "People are willing to listen to her and we want to do as much as we can to make her voice heard." Cohen's group has teamed up with Berkeley based MoveOn.org, an anti-Bush group co-founded by Joan Blades.
Mark Matthews, "PR Machine Behind Cindy Sheehan?" KGO-TV/DT, August 25, 2005 --- http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=3382521 

If you believe this I've got some Arizona ocean front property for sale
The U.S. Forest Service admitted Wednesday to making a "serious'' mistake that allowed 17 acres to be logged inside a rare tree reserve as part of the salvage harvest of timber burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire. The logging inside the 350-acre Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area, created in 1966 to protect Brewer spruce and other rare plant species on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, was discovered last week by environmentalists after the Fiddler timber sale was harvested and a forest closure intended to bar protesters was lifted. Forest Service personnel mismarked the border of part of the Fiddler timber sale next to the botanical area — though just who did it or how it happened was not immediately clear, said Illinois Valley District Ranger Pam Bode. Normally trees are marked with stapled tags and paint to show the boundaries of timber sales and reserves within them. "It is the Forest Service's intent to manage the Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area to minimize human intervention in the ecological process,'' Bode said. "For us to have changed the ecology in that area through removal of these dead trees is a serious error. And we will do all we can to determine the best path to move forward from here.'' Barbara Ullian, conservation director of the Siskiyou Project group that discovered the damage, called for a formal investigation into the blunder and said it demonstrated the importance of allowing the public to monitor logging operations on national forests. "This is no small little slip across the border and a few trees,'' Ullian said.
Jeff Barnard, "Forest Service admits error," Albany Democrat-Herald, August 27, 2005 --- http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2005/08/25/news/oregon/state01.txt

Food for something other than thought

The August 25, 2005 Scout Report newsletter provided the following links about food:

Colleges Begin to Embrace Fresh Food Movement Fresh Gets Invited to the Cool Table [Free registration required]    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/24/dining/24school.html 

Schools get smarter about food  http://www.freep.com/features/food/junkfood23e_20050823.htm 

Food for Thought http://www.oudaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/08/24/430d2ef410467 

Farmtocollege.org http://www.farmtocollege.org/ 

Bonnies’ college grub again rated the ickiest --- http://snipurl.com/CollegeGrub

Quick Tips to Packing a Safe Lunch http://www.fightbac.org/school_press.cfm

Regard the past, arrogant youth
THE new political correctness of the ratbag right decrees that nobody must compare the unhappy result of the Vietnam war to the wonderful march of democracy in Iraq. Anyone who mentions the word quagmire can only be a pathetic baby boomer, dissolute and decrepit, pining for the bad old days of moratorium demos, Whitlamism, bell-bottom pants, Jane Fonda, etc. This view is trumpeted most loudly by the thirtysomething know-alls of the right-wing blogosphere, whose ferocious enthusiasm for the Iraq war is matched only by their reluctance to take part in it. (Perhaps they have other priorities, as Dick Cheney once explained his decision not to enlist for Vietnam.)
Mike Carlton, "Regard the past, arrogant youth," Sydney Morning Herald, August 27, 2005 --- http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/26/1124563025440.html 

Humor
Who says accountants are boring?

I StumbledUpon this one!
Bob from Accounting (a hilarious diary that is not the the Bob as in Bob Jensen) --- http://www.bobfromaccounting.com/archives.html
 

Are you lonely, single, tired of the dating scene? Do you want someone to help pay your children's medical bills because your ex husband is a lazy out-of-work deadbeat? If you're ready to be razzle-dazzled by the most eligible bachelor on the internet, follow the link to Bob's unofficial fan page and find out how you can make your dreams (and his) come true. Or just email Bob with a photo. Sorry ladies, only one entry per family.

Worst Case Scenario Handbook 1 --- http://www.bobfromaccounting.com/6_05/worstcasescenario.html

Worst Case Scenario Handbook 2 --- http://www.bobfromaccounting.com/worstcasescenario.html

More weird links at http://www.bobfromaccounting.com/archives.html  

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/.

International Accounting News (including the U.S.)

AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries --- http://www.accountingeducation.com/
        Upcoming international accounting conferences --- http://www.accountingeducation.com/events/index.cfm
        Thousands of journal abstracts --- http://www.accountingeducation.com/journals/index.cfm
Deloitte's International Accounting News --- http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
Association of International Accountants --- http://www.aia.org.uk/ 
WebCPA --- http://www.webcpa.com/
FASB --- http://www.fasb.org/
IASB --- http://www.fasb.org/
Others --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob1.htm

Gerald Trite's great set of links --- http://iago.stfx.ca/people/gtrites/Docs/bookmark.htm 

Richard Torian's Managerial Accounting Information Center --- http://www.informationforaccountants.com/ 

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