Bob Jensen's Tidbits

I recently sent out an "Appeal" for accounting educators, researchers, and practitioners to actively support what I call The Accounting Review (TAR) Diversity Initiative as initiated by American Accounting Association President Judy Rayburn --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR.htm

Outgoing President Rayburn has some parting comments in support of her TAR Diversity Initiative in the Summer 2006 edition of Accounting Education News --- http://aaahq.org/pubs/AEN/Summer06.pdf

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan --- FactCheck.org --- http://www.factcheck.org/

Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

For Accountants and Auditors (Fee-Based)
Sox (as in Sarbanes) Television (link forwarded by Ed Scribner) --- http://www.soxtelevision.com/

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

Abolishing of Christianity in England --- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) --- Click Here

Once hailed as the pioneers of citizen journalism, Internet bloggers are, according to a new survey, mostly self-indulgent diarists interested in one topic above all others: themselves.
"Blogging -- It's all about me: survey," PhysOrg, July 20, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news72617447.html

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said Sunday that scientific and medical advances in fields including embryonic stem cell research are being held back by a White House that puts ideology and theology ahead of facts and evidence. "The last 5 1/2 years have been hard on science ... and particularly hard because of the president's veto last week."
Mark Pratt --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671107/posts

He shall judge between nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Isaiah 2:4

Plowshares Collaborative Seeks Middle Ground in Conflict Resolution
The Plowshares Collaborative was formed in 2002 by Earlham College, Goshen College and Manchester College to develop the strongest, most distinctive undergraduate program in peace studies in the United States. Funded by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., this institutional collaboration is finding new, imaginative ways to address the problems of violence and related challenges that confront America and most of the world today. --- http://www.plowsharesproject.org/php/collaborative/index.php

Some 44 years ago, when Soviet missiles in neighboring Cuba threatened American cities, John F. Kennedy set one goal and ultimately prevailed in achieving it: Remove the missiles.
Bejamin Netanyahu, "No Cease-Fire," The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008694

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies.
Ehud Olmert before he became Prime Minister. He referred to his countrymen as "an exhausted people, confused and without direction." --- Click Here

"Rush Limbaugh needs to pick up a history book instead of a doughnut," Kerry added. "It was a Democratic president who first recognized the State of Israel. It was a Democratic president who first sold Israel defensive weapons. And it was a Democratic president who first sold Israel offensive weapons." Kerry continued: "The people of Israel and the Jewish community don’t need Rush Limbaugh to tell them who stands with them, and no one has time for right wing trying to score cheap political points while Israel fights to defend its very existence."
Senator John Kerry, "Kerry on Rush and Israel Idea that Republicans back Jewish state ruffles senator," World Net Daily, July 21, 2006 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51186

Senator Kerry Proclaims: "We have to destroy Hezbollah!"
Hezbollah guerillas should have been targeted with other terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida and the Taliban, which operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kerry said. However, Bush, has focused military strength on Iraq. "This is about American security and Bush has failed. He has made it so much worse because of his lack of reality in going into Iraq.…We have to destroy Hezbollah," he said.
Senator John Kerry, Drudge Report, July 23, 2006 --- http://www.drudgereport.com/
Also see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671133/posts
Jensen Comment
If we'd stayed out of Iraq and "destroyed Hezbollah" this probably would've entailed declaring war on Iran since Hezbollah is Iran. President Kerry would have declared war on Hezbollah if it entailed war with Iran? Yeah right! This sounds to me like political doublespeak. The Websites of antiwar Democrats Barbara Streisand, George Clooney, and Michael Moore are not criticizing current Israeli efforts to destroy Hezbollah, although Moore does bemoan the Israeli attack on the U.N. observer post. I guess these movie celebrities are not as much against all war as they are against the GOP. Even The New York Times is in favor of destroying Hezbollah with war.

Did Syria shrewdly engage the Israeli military to do Syria's dirty work in Lebanon?

"Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in their last meeting before Hariri's assassination, that if he pushed for Syria's withdrawal Assad would 'break' Lebanon."

It's hard to beat them because they're not afraid of anything as long as they can hide among children
Israeli troops returning from the front described Hezbollah guerrillas hiding among civilians and in underground bunkers two or three stories deep _ evidence, they say, that Hezbollah has been planning this battle for many years. "It's hard to beat them," one soldier said. "They're not afraid of anything." The soldiers, most of whom declined to give their names under orders from superiors, described exchanges of gunfire in between houses on village streets, with Hezbollah guerrillas sometimes popping out of bushes to fire Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles.
Kathy Gannon, "Arabs Press Syria to End Hezbollah Support," Breitbart, July 23, 2006 --- http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/23/D8J211SG0.html

Faisal Devji, author of Landscapes of the Jihad, explains how the London bombers were driven by pity – that most 'dangerous and bitter passion'.

Millions, perhaps even billions of words have been written about al-Qaeda since 9/11, all of them struggling to explain this network’s origins, belief systems and methods. Scores of books on Osama bin Laden and his henchmen have hit the shelves (many of which, for my sins, I have read), and thousands of articles have been published (some of which I wrote). For me, one of the most interesting of the many texts on al-Qaeda is Faisal Devji’s Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, published last year. Devji cuts through the two most common perceptions about al-Qaeda: that it is political or religious. In fact, he says, it cannot be understood as a political movement in any traditional sense; indeed, it has dispensed with ‘an old-fashioned politics tied to states and citizenship’ (1). It is not traditionally religious, either, he argues, in the sense that it does not follow any recognisable Islamic hierarchy and chops and changes the religious justifications for its actions.
Brendan O’Neill, "An explosion of pity," Spiked Online, July 21, 2006 ---
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1284/

How to get more science majors: Don't be so tough on grades and academic standards
Huge Differences Between Grades in English versus Math Courses
Science students get worse grades than non-science students. No comprehensive data for the distribution of grades around the nation by discipline exists, but in 1998 the College Board surveyed a representative sample of 21 selective institutions to find out how students who took Advanced Placement courses in high school were performing in college. The data show that, when students who got AP credit and were taking second-level college courses (as opposed to intro classes) were compared, non-science students got much better grades. In English courses surveyed, 85 percent of those high-achieving students that were surveyed received A’s or B’s. That’s compared to 54 percent of those students in math courses.Paul Romer, an economics professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, who has studied the issue, wrote in an article for Stanford Business that “the grades assigned in science courses are systematically lower than grades in other disciplines, and students rely heavily on grades as signals about the fields for which they are best suited.” Thus, he concluded, students usher themselves out of the science track.
David Epstein, "So That’s Why They’re Leaving," Inside Higher Ed, July 26, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/26/scipipeline

Hacking into a professor's computer to change grades of 300 students
Two students at California State University at Northridge have been charged by state authorities with illegally hacking into a professor’s computer account to change their grades and the grades of nearly 300 students, the Los Angeles Times reported. The students told authorities that they thought the professor was unfair.
Inside Higher Ed, July 26, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/26/qt

July 28, 2006 Update
Two students each face up to a year in jail for a prank that involved hacking into a professor's computer, giving grades to other students and sending pizza, magazine subscriptions and CDs to the professor's home. Chen, 20, and Jennifer Ngan, 19, face misdemeanor charges of illegally accessing computers. The pair, both students of California State University, Northridge, are scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 21.
"Students Face 1 Year in Jail for Hacking," PhysOrg, July 28, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73239464.html

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon's surface after Neil Armstrong, says space agency bosses covered up their UFO sighting

"MAN ON MOON: WE SAW A UFO: Astronauts' close encounter," by Mike Swain, The Daily Record, July 24, 2006 --- Click Here

Should Academic Left Defend Churchill?
The debate might be summed up in an analogy offered by one of the faculty panels that reviewed Churchill and found that he committed, intentionally, all kinds of research misconduct. Committee members said that they were uncomfortable with the fact that Colorado ignored serious allegations against Churchill for years, and took them seriously only when his politics attracted attention. The panel compared the situation to one in which a motorist is stopped for speeding because a police officer doesn’t like the bumper sticker on her car. If she was speeding, she was speeding — regardless of the officer’s motives, the panel said.
Scott Jaschik, "Should Academic Left Defend Churchill?" Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/24/churchill

Question
Should the academic freedom principles guarantee the right to teach astrology?

Jensen Comment
It has always seemed to me that professors should have extreme freedom to teach what fits within the constraints of the curriculum plan adopted by the college as a whole. Every college has what is tantamount to a Curriculum Council that approves contents of the curriculum. The fact that Barrett is allowed to teach that the President of the United States deliberately targeted the deaths of over 3,000 Americans on 9/11 implies that the University of Wisconsin has approved this nonsense in the curriculum plan.

Yotophoto is the first internet search engine for finding free-to-use photographs and images --- http://yotophoto.com/

Genetically engineered organisms can more efficiently produce ethanol
"Redesigning Life to Make Ethanol: Genetically engineered organisms can more efficiently produce ethanol from cheap and abundant sources of biomass, such as agricultural waste. It could make ethanol cost competitive," by Jamie Shreeve, MIT's Technology Review, July 21, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17052&ch=biztech

Congratulations to Paul Williams Wolfpack
Representing North Carolina State University, the team of Hannah Sadler, of Cary, N.C., and Jason Matthews, originally from Kansas City, Mo., and currently of Raleigh, N.C., were declared the winner of the Institute of Management Accountants’ (IMA’s) annual Student Case Competition following a live finalist presentation at IMA’s Annual Conference and Exposition. “IMA’s student Case competition is an excellent opportunity for accounting students to develop their strategic planning, decision making and presentation skills – critical skills required for success in the management accounting profession,” Sandra Richtermeyer, Ph.D., CMA, CPA, IMA’s Professor-in-Residence and a professor at Xavier University, said in a prepared statement announcing the winners. “We’re pleased to recognize the efforts of outstanding accounting students through this award presented to North Carolina State University.”
"NC State Wins Annual Student Case Competition," AccountingWeb, July 24, 2006 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102377

U.S. not allowed to drill for oil off Florida, but this does not stop Cuba and Venezuela

The U.S. is not alone with its illegal aliens: European Union plans emergency border squads and boats
A plan to create rapid reaction teams of border guards to deal with European Union immigration crises has been unveiled by the European Commission. The teams would be assembled by the EU border security agency, Frontex, from lists of experts in member states. The plan would help the EU respond to appeals for assistance, such as Spain's request in May for help dealing with African migrants in the Canary Islands . . . Some 11,000 migrants have arrived in the Canary Islands this year.
"EU plans emergency border squads," BBC News, July 19, 2006 --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5193116.stm

These plans don’t make much difference. The problem is less a lack of good will than a lack of connection to facts on the ground. Universities cannot remake the fundamental culture in which they exist, and that is a culture in which the availability of minority faculty and, to some extent, minority students, is decided years before a particular college or university can affect the situation by internal policies.
"Affirmative Inaction," by Alan L. Contreras, Inside Higher Ed, July 21, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/07/21/contreras

Question
Do many college financial aid directors make the best interests of students a priority?

“You should know the truth about financial aid offices,” an ad in last Sunday’s New York Times read. “They’re supposed to help you choose the best lenders. But in reality, they may steer you towards lenders that benefit them. Not you. Unless you check for yourself, how do YOU know you’re getting the best loan?” Well, that’s one way to grab attention. Not surprisingly, the ads have rubbed many people in the financial aid world the wrong way. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators is planning a formal response to MyRichUncle’s aggressive ad campaign, and is contemplating barring the company from its next annual meeting (MyRichUncle exhibited at NASFAA’s annual conference this month in Seattle and sponsored the opening session). MyRichUncle has even upset some financial aid officers and experts who are intrigued by the company’s philosophy and are otherwise fans.
Doug Lederman, "MyRichUncle, InYourFace," Inside Higher Ed, July 21, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/21/mru

"The Internet Is Your Next Hard Drive: New Web-based services don't just store your data online -- they keep it synchronized across your laptop, desktop, and mobile phone," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, July 24, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17195&ch=infotech

Question
How can colleges best mix on-campus and online delivery of instruction?

Sleep Less and Stay Fat
If you want to lose weight, get more sleep. In a new article appearing in the current issue of Obesity Reviews, University of Michigan researcher Michael Sivak presents calculations showing that replacing one hour of inactive wakefulness—such as watching television—with sleep can result in a 6 percent reduction in caloric intake. User rating 3 out of 5 after 5 total votes Would you recommend this story? Not at all - 1 2 3 4 5 - Highly “Caloric consumption in a society with readily available food is likely to be approximately proportional to the number of hours of being awake,” said Sivak, head of the Human Factors Division at the U-M Transportation Research Institute. “By replacing one hour of being awake with sleeping, we forgo a significant consumption of food because of the resulting reduction in the opportunity to eat.”
"Want to lose weight? Try sleeping more," PhysOrg, July 24, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news72978010.html

Jensen Comment
In 1957 when I was a first-year student at Iowa State University, I joined a national fraternity and moved into the fraternity house, one of a nationwide system of this fraternity's distinctive and attractive houses bright red doors. It was an era when hazing was an out-of-control ritual. At the end of my pledge period the pledges were not allowed to sleep for six days and five nights. In addition to being observed in class and the library by day to be sure we did not doze, we were required by night to build a long stone wall. One night we were also dumped 20 miles in the country and were forced to walk back to campus. The fraternity followed a hazing policy that declared that pledges deprived of sleep must eat more, and so we were fed great amounts of food in that six-day sleepless period. I concluded that, in spite of the great parties and social interactions of the fraternity, much of what we were required to do was silly, immature, and a danger to our health. I left the fraternity and never looked back. Today the hazing is more restricted by college officials, but the system is still one of forming unhealthy cliques that foster the "superior-person" ego mentality and too much drinking.

Appearance Versus Reality in Church Dogma and Education Integrity
“The future of Baptist higher education has rarely been more fragile,’’ R. Kirby Godsey, the former president of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., said in a speech in Atlanta in June. The Georgia Baptist Convention voted last November to sever ties with Mercer. The issues vary from state to state. But many Southern Baptist colleges and their state conventions have been battling over money, control of boards of trustees, whether the Bible must be interpreted literally, how evolution is taught, the propriety of some books for college courses and of some plays for campus performances and whether cultural and religious diversity should be encouraged. At the root of the conflicts is the question of how much the colleges should reflect the views of their denomination. They are part of the continuing battle among Southern Baptists for control of their church’s institutions.
Alan Finder, "Feeling Strains, Baptist Colleges Cut Church Ties," The New York Times, July 22, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/education/22baptist.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

From Germany With Debits and Credits: Outsourcing of Accounting
DaimlerChrysler may outsource some of its accounting work to countries that pay lower wages, German media sources reported.According to the company’s works council, the German-U.S. car manufacturer is considering the Czech Republic and India for some of the company's accounting work. The works council opposes the outsourcing plan and has threatened a veto. "We are saying without a balance of interest this simply won't fly," said Erich Klemm, head of the council, according to a report in Monday’s Stuttgarter Zeitung. He called the plan “the biggest restructuring program that there has ever been in the auto sector.” DaimlerChrysler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche, who hopes to save around $1.8 billion per year, wants to cut a fifth of the company's accounting, personnel and strategic planning staff worldwide, Forbes reported. In total, Daimler’s restructuring plan calls for cutting about 6,000 positions, including 3,200 in Germany, Accountancy Age reported.
"Daimler Plan to Outsource Accounting Sparks Opposition," AccountingWeb, July 13, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102343

Jensen Comment
For years I've used "GoToMyPC" which allows me to save files back and forth between remote clients computers and networked home computers. The real advantage of GoToMyPC is that no software need be installed on a client computer such that public remote computers such as those in public libraries, Internet cafes, and rented hotel computers can be used for file updating and interactions. GoToMyPC is not a free service, although I think prices are reasonable for this very ethical company --- www.gotomypc.com

Lately I've been using a "free service" provided to me by Trinity University (where I am an emeritus professor of accounting). This is called Cisco VPN networked file access. The drawback is that the remote computers must have VPN software installed by techies. It cannot be used on public computers that do not allow personal software installation. Access also is somewhat slow due to VPN's encryption processing.

Accounting Made Easy: BillMonk Formalizes IOUs
A new field of accounting has sprung forth from the software industry: “social money.” And a start-up company is servicing the recently identified market, helping college students and young adults track informal debt. “BillMonk helps you avoid the awkwardness of borrowing and sharing. We track the debts that might otherwise be forgotten, and we do the cumbersome money-math,” the company says. In short, BillMonk helps a circle of friends keep track of who owes how much to whom. For example, a user wants to report a debt like shared rent or an IOU to another person. He or she simply enters it on BillMonk.com. This is easy to do, says a review by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com, even for more complicated transactions, such as a bill shared among a lot of people. Simply input the amount of the bill and the e-mail addresses of those who participated. The BillMonk software keeps the balance and sends out payment reminders, says Business 2.0 Magazine. Now, when the check comes for dinner, the young party of five can avoid those awkward moments of dividing up the bill at the table. It gets paid by whomever has cash on hand, then BillMonk will let you know later who owes whom.
"Accounting Made Easy: BillMonk Formalizes IOUs," AccountingWeb, July 14, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102345

Question
What 's a recently measured non-human major contributor to global warming?

Gas escaping from the ocean floor may provide some answers to understanding historical global warming cycles and provide information on current climate changes, according to a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings are reported in the July 20 on-line version of the scientific journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Remarkable and unexpected support for this idea occurred when divers and scientists from UC Santa Barbara observed and videotaped a massive blowout of methane from the ocean floor. It happened in an area of gas and oil seepage coming out of small volcanoes in the ocean floor of the Santa Barbara channel –– called Shane Seep –– near an area known as the Coal Oil Point seep field. The blowout sounded like a freight train, according to the divers. Atmospheric methane is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere, according to the study's authors, all from UC Santa Barbara. "Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now," said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute. "Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout." Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.
Gail Gallessich, "Gas escaping from ocean floor may drive global warming," Eureka Alert, July 19, 2006 --- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/uoc--gef071906.php

How to get broadband Internet upload and download service in the boonies
WildBlue is lightning fast. Get download speeds up to 1.5 Mbps and upload speeds up to 256Kbps. WildBlue is available to virtually every home and small office in America. Just enter your zip code so we can verify your availability. Check out the minimum system requirements for the WildBlue service. With packages as low as $49.95 per month, WildBlue is very affordable. All of your ISP services like email and web space are included. Get this great value in wireless broadband today!
WildBlue --- http://www.wildblue.com/aboutWildblue/

Summary Information --- http://www.earleytech.com/wildblue.html
Also see http://www.direcway.tv/compare.htm

A negative review is at http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11524_7-6548891-2.html?messageID=2059058&tag=lst
or Click Here
That review focuses on possible downtime for maintenance and bad weather. WildBlue may still be the most cost-effective alternative for remote areas (e.g., for pig farmers) not covered by cable and DSL.

Why not stay for lunch?

Multnomah County deputies say a male inmate snuck into a female inmate's cell and had sex with her. He then pressed a call button, to ask a guard to allow him back into his own cell.
"Multnomah Jail Inmate Sex: Sheriff Waits A Month To Admit Problem," KOIN News, July 24, 2006 --- http://www.koin.com/news.asp?RECORD_KEY%5Bnews%5D=ID&ID%5Bnews%5D=4492

"Google profits, revenues rocket," PhysOrg, July 20, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news72632518.html

The Internet search leader said its net profit for the April-June period came to 721 million dollars, compared to 343 million dollars in the same quarter of 2005.

The figure translated into earnings per share of 2.33 dollars, well ahead of Wall Street's target of 2.22 dollars.

Revenue surged 78 percent to 2.46 billion dollars in the quarter as Google entrenched its dominance of Internet searches and the online advertisers they attract.

"Google grew at an impressive pace during a seasonally slower quarter," company chief executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement.

"We continue to deliver valuable new products and services to users around the world through our partnerships and investments in our business," he said.

"Our strong performance results from our clear focus on increasing the quality of user experience, particularly in search and ads."

Google's stellar performance came after its leading rival Yahoo Tuesday unveiled quarterly earnings that were merely in line with analyst forecasts.

Continued in article

Probing Question:
What are computer viruses and where do they come from?

Answer
PhysOrg, July 20, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news72632629.html

The history of medical viruses is outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus

The history of computer viruses is outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Virus

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

Identity Theft Resource Center --- http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.shtml

Bob Jensen's helpers for ID theft victims are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#IdentityTheft

Woodpecker (possibly nonexistent) halts Ark. irrigation project
A federal judge temporarily stopped construction on a $320 million irrigation project Thursday, ruling the changes could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that might or might not exist.
"Woodpecker halts Ark. irrigation project," PhysOrg, July 20, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news72620142.html

Denver choking on near record smog levels
Colorado is suffering through a summer of smog. With temperatures topping 100 degrees this month in Denver and elsewhere along the populous Front Range, routine activities like filling up at the gas station or mowing the lawn are releasing fumes into a perfect cauldron for creating ozone, a major component of smog.
"Denver choking on near record smog levels," PhysOrg, July 20, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news72627795.html

July 14, 2006 message from Ivy Banaag [ibanaag@ECNext.com]

Hello Bob,

My name is Ivy Carla, and I work for ECNext, Inc. After reviewing your website, specifically the Helpers for Searching the Web section, http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm, I wanted to propose you consider adding a new online textbooks site, iChapters.com.

iChapters.com offers brand new textbooks, in electronic & print formats. Electronic versions of college textbooks, including individual chapters, are available for immediate download at affordable prices. Only at iChapters.com can you choose to buy just what you need at the price you want to pay.

Students who frequent your website, especially those with a tight budget, will surely benefit from iChapters. I am hoping that you can help them find us by including iChapters (http://www.iChapters.com) on your Helpers for Searching the Web section.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me (ivy@ecnext.com) if you have any questions.

Ivy Carla
iChapters.com

July 17, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Ivy,

I added your message to the following documents:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

From The Washington Post on July 20, 2006

Which company will become the first to sell downloadable mainstream movies that will give customers a "Burn to DVD" option?

A. Apple
B. Blockbuster
C. CinemaNow
D. Netflix

Question
Do industry ties always have to be disclosed to peer-reviewed journals?

"Think Before You Research," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, July 17, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/17/faseb

Do industry ties always have to be disclosed to peer-reviewed journals? What stipulations should researchers put up with in return for money from the private sector?

These are just a few of the questions that the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology wants institutions and researchers to consider.

The federation released a report, “Shared Responsibility, Individual Integrity: Scientists Addressing Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Research,” which offers some ethical guidelines that FASEB hopes will spur widespread discussion and that might eventually lead to consensus on some ethical issues.

“This will be an unending issue for us,” said Leo Furcht, president of FASEB, who has been both a researcher, a physician, and an entrepreneur, and is head of the department of laboratory medicine and pathology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “The vast majority of researchers want to do the right thing, if they know what the right thing is but … some of the conflicts are not obvious.”

Though FASEB officials acknowledged the impossibility of rooting out all improprieties in biological research, they said that more clearly stated principles could go a long way in strengthening public trust in medical research, even as researchers embrace and often seek funding or consulting work with companies.

Among the 19 “guiding principles” in the FASEB report are: “Investigators shall not use federal funds to the benefit of a company, unless this is the explicit purpose of the mechanism used to fund the research,” and “Mentors and institutions should make trainees aware of their rights and responsibilities in industry relationships.”

Guiding principle number nine — “Investigators shall be aware of and adhere to individual journal policies on disclosure of industry relationships” — is particularly timely.

Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a note telling readers that many of the 13 authors of a study published in February, which showed that pregnant women who go off antidepressants can slip back into depression, have ties to drug companies, including antidepressant manufacturers, which they did not disclose. It’s the second time in two months that JAMA has had such an experience with unreported conflicts.

In a letter to JAMA, the researchers defended their work, saying that industry interests did not influence the work, and that because it was funded by the government, they did not think they had overlooked relevant disclosures.

A study by Harvard Medical School researchers, which was published in JAMA in May, found that about half of medical studies are now funded entirely by for-profit entities, and that such clinical trials are more likely to find a positive benefit from whatever drug or treatment is being tested.

Furcht said that many conflict of interest questions remain in a gray area, like how much equity, if any, a researcher should take in a company that funds research at their institution. “We think there needs to be a greater consensus,” Furcht said. He added that the attitude often taken is that “laissez faire is fine as long as it works out,” but that it is not fine right now. “We have fallen short of where we need to be.”

Robert Palazzo, president-elect of FASEB and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said that the medical research community is “relatively naïve about this terrain.”

Last August, some researchers showed their apparent naïveté in a Seattle Times investigation. Some researchers told the paper that they didn’t see a problem with sharing their impressions of a clinical trial — for which they had signed a confidentiality agreement — with select clients from investment firms prior to the completion and public dissemination of the study. The Securities and Exchange Commission and at least one of the institutions home to one of the researchers named began investigations immediately after the article appeared.

Furcht, who said he holds 30-40 patents, said that researchers also need to learn the ins and outs of the patent process so they don’t hurriedly make public results that could be patented and used to bring money to a university. Furcht recalled an assistant professor who published, without a patent, the discovery of a new signaling pathway in detecting whether prostate tumor cells are metastatic.

Palazzo echoed one of the guiding principles in the report when he emphasized the need for student protection. Confidentiality and pre-publication review stipulations made by corporate funders can delay or restrict a graduate student’s ability to publish, and hence to complete their degree. “There has to be clarity that the student needs to be protected,” Palazzo said. “It’s not something that pops into a junior professor’s mind when there’s a chance for funding.”

Some institutions have been proactive in outlining principles for years. Harvard’s Medical School has a comprehensive set of guidelines originally drafted in the 1980s, and reviewed every 8-10 years. A Harvard spokesman said that all researchers have to fill out a formal conflict of interest form every 12-18 months, and that if the forms show a conflict, Harvard insists that the researcher divest.

Bob Jensen's threads on research independence controversies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ResearchIndependence

"American Moguls: Top biographies of business titans," by David Nasqw, The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110008663

1. "Titan" by Ron Chernow (Random House, 1998).

Piety and ruthlessness are often conjoined as defining character traits in saints, sinners and moguls. John D. Rockefeller's life, as Ron Chernow shows us, was saturated by religiosity and rapacity in almost equal quantities. Chernow is a master at peeling back the layers of obfuscation and denial to get to the man himself. As the story unfolds, we see how this most unsociable of moguls was deeply embedded in an extended family. Part of the strength of the interpretation is Chernow's ability to use insights into Rockefeller's family life--as son, brother, husband and father--in tracking his evolution from clerk to titan. The trick in writing a mogul biography is to concentrate on telling the story, not judging the life or moralizing about it, and at this Chernow succeeds.

2. "Morgan" by Jean Strouse (Random House, 1999).

It's difficult to write the biography of a man as humorless, unpleasant and reticent as J. Pierpont Morgan, but Jean Strouse manages to do it by clearing away the apocryphal anecdotes, then starting over again. A fresh interpretation requires new material--and Strouse, an indefatigable researcher, located a number of sources that enabled her to round out the cartoonish, villainous portrait left by other biographers. Hers is a heroic account of one financier's attempts to rein in the excesses of speculative capitalism. But heroes have their flaws, and Strouse does not shrink from describing Morgan's. For those of us who avoided college economics courses, she provides a readable primer on matters financial.

3. "The Colonel" by Richard Norton Smith (Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

Robert Rutherford McCormick, the editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, was probably the most outrageously provocative critic of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Smith brilliantly captures McCormick's flamboyant theatricality as a newspaperman and judiciously reconstructs his rather outlandishly idiosyncratic political philosophy. This is a highly readable and judicious account of a madman mogul who reveled in excess, invective and ridicule long before it was fashionable. Smith is a master prose stylist. There is not a dull sentence in the book.

4. "Orson Welles" by Simon Callow (Viking, 1996).

This is the first of a two-volume biography in which Callow, an actor and director as well as a gifted writer, tells the story of the boy wonder in his glory years. Welles's appetites and ambitions were matched only by his talents. By his mid-20s, when this volume concludes, he had made his mark as a performer and innovator in a variety of media, displaying an uncanny ability to attract audiences and the admiration of critics. He directed dozens of theater pieces in New York, including an all-black "Macbeth" and a modern-dress "Julius Caesar" set in Mussolini's Rome. He also produced, directed and performed in some 100 radio dramas, including the notoriously successful "War of the Worlds" broadcast. He set off for Hollywood, intending to transform film as he had theater and radio. And then he ran into William Randolph Hearst and his watchdog, Louella Parsons. The resulting movie, "Citizen Kane," was premiered in New York City on May 1, 1941, five days before Welles's 26th birthday. After reading Callow's biography, we come to see that the megalomaniac captured on screen in "Citizen Kane" is much more Welles than Hearst.

5. "Why Sinatra Matters" by Pete Hamill (Little, Brown, 1998).

Frank Sinatra was not exactly a "mogul," and Hamill's book is not a biography per se, but it belongs here--as an astounding portrait of a 20th-century icon, his rise and fall and rise again. Sinatra embodied the mogul's gift for brutally focused self-invention. He understood his appeal--to women and men--far better than anyone else, and he capitalized on it to build a personal empire. He was the king, surrounded by courtiers and retainers and a usually adoring throng of subjects. This is a small book, but it brilliantly depicts how the skinny kid from Hoboken, N.J., became the "chairman of the board" and managed to exercise political, social and cultural influence totally incommensurate with his considerable talents as singer and actor.

Mr. Nasaw is the author of "The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst." His latest book, "Andrew Carnegie," will be published in October.

Judge Approves $36M Settlement Balance in PNC Accounting Scandal: $193 Million Out of $1.15 Billion
The separate suit against Ernst & Young is still pending
A federal judge in Pittsburgh has approved the last part of a settlement involving more than 73,000 shareholders who lost money in a PNC Financial Services Group Inc. accounting scandal. The shareholders are ready to receive about $2,600 each, for a total of $36.6 million, based on the $193 million settlement and interest. That amounts to 68 cents per share, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. It's not clear when settlement money will be distributed, and the final amount will be reduced by attorneys' fees. The last remaining portion of the class-action lawsuit was approved by U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone, July 13.
"Judge Approves $36M Settlement Balance in PNC Scandal," AccountingWeb, July 19, 2006 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102357

Earnings were restated, as required by the Federal Reserve, and the results were $155 million less than originally reported. The lawsuit contends that stockholders who bought the bloated shares between July 19, 2001, and July 18, 2002, lost an estimated $1.15 billion.

PNC paid $25 million to the U.S. Department of Justice to settle conspiracy to commit securities fraud charges in June 2003. The government ordered PNC to place $90 million into the $193 million restitution fund. Most of the rest of the escrow fund came from insurance companies and from AIG, which paid in $44 million.

A separate shareholder lawsuit is pending against Ernst & Young, which reviewed the questionable loan sales.

Continued in article

July 21, 2006 reply from MacEwan Wright, Victoria University [Mac.Wright@VU.EDU.AU]

Dear Bob,

The level of the judgement is to be expected. It is similar to the experience in Australia:

About 100 years ago, the State of Victoria founded a "State Bank", the State Savings Bank of Victoria. The main purpose of the bank was to provide housing loans for the citizens of Victoria, a function it performed well. With careful lending to established wage earners with historically sound savings habits, and secured by 1st mortgage, the operations of the bank were on a sound footing. In the 1980's the incumbent government decided that the bank should expand to operate as a normal commercial bank, with normal commercial lending programs. The problem was that the bank had no real experience in that type of lending. It sought to employ outside expertise, but not knowing how to vet the experts, made some really poor choices. These choices wrote some very very risky (some would say outright bad) business.

Probably because of fear of loosing the audit, the auditors did not highlight this risky lending and the growing underprovision for bad debts, until the bank ran out of capital.

The bank was wound up in a manner that protected most employees and all the depositors. The State Government sued the auditors for the amount of capital the govenment had lost, slightly over one billion, and settled for around 150 million. This was basically the amount the auditor's liability insurers were willing to pay. Had they gone to court, the government may have bankrupted the individual partners in the firm, but by settling, the partners were able to keep the house and BMWs (and therefore the wife). The net outcome was a steep increase in public liabilty insurance for audit firms (insurance hypothesis?)

Best wishes,
Mac Wright

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

Bob Jensen's threads on Ernst & Young are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Ernst

You can read about the Poincaré conjecture at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_conjecture

"Major Math Problem Is Believed Solved By Reclusive Russian," by Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2006; Page A9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115343370457612903.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

For six years, $7 million in prize money has lay unclaimed at the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., waiting for someone to solve any of the seven "millennium prize problems," the oldest of which has been kicking around since 1859. Despite periodic claims, it looked like the institute would hold on to the cash until after the sun burned out.

But the math world is abuzz over the very real possibility that one millennium problem, the Poincaré conjecture, has been proved by a mathematician in Russia. After nearly four years of scrutiny by other mathematicians, the work holds up, even though Grigori Perelman's work is decidedly unusual.

In 2002 and 2003, he posted two papers to an online archive. Usually, a posting serves a flag-planting function -- "I solved this first!" -- until the paper is published in a journal, which can take years. But as the math community waited for him to follow up his postings, a realization set in. Dr. Perelman, long affiliated with the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg, apparently has no intention of saying more. He probably feels he proved the Poincaré conjecture, mathematicians surmise, and has no interest in the $1 million bounty. (He did not respond to emailed requests for comment.)

Dr. Perelman's style is reminiscent of the Sid Harris cartoon of a board filled with equations and, at a key step, the words, "then a miracle occurs." One mathematician tells the other, "I think you should be more explicit here in step two."

The conjecture Henri Poincaré posited in 1904 is the most famous problem in topology, the branch of math that analyzes the shape of objects and space. He claimed, "if a closed 3-dimensional manifold has trivial fundamental group, [it must be] homeomorphic to the 3-sphere," as John Milnor of Stony Brook University puts it.

Translated, that means that if you wrap one rubber band around the surface of an orange and another around a doughnut, and shrink down both, the rubber bands act differently. The one around the orange keeps shrinking without tearing or leaving the surface. The one around the doughnut can't, without breaking itself or the doughnut. This difference says something profound about the structure of space itself.

Many mathematicians have claimed to prove Poincaré, but the claims flamed out immediately, their fatal flaws obvious. Dr. Perelman's proof has survived. The dilemma for the Clay Institute is that, according to its rules, a proof must be published in a refereed math publication. The archives aren't refereed.

Putting his proof online rather than in a journal is only one example of Dr. Perelman's iconoclasm. He admits that he gives only "a sketch of an eclectic proof of" a more general conjecture from which Poincaré's follows; he never mentions Poincaré. The papers are difficult to understand, and sketchy in the extreme. He asserts that one can prove something by a variation on an earlier argument, but it isn't clear what the variation is. "Perelman's papers are written in a style rather different from what would appear in a journal," says mathematician Bruce Kleiner of Yale University.

The sketchiness may reflect how a genius interacts with mortals. Dr. Perelman may believe some things are so obvious he needn't bother to explain them step by step, say mathematicians. If readers are too dumb to fill in the blanks, he doesn't care. Or, he has better things to do than justify every tortuous step, as proofs must.

Others have taken it upon themselves to explicate his work -- and find no major flaws. Like Torah commentaries, they dwarf the original. Dr. Perelman's 2003 paper is 22 pdf pages; the 2002 paper is 39. But "Notes on Perelman's Papers," in which Prof. Kleiner and John Lott of the University of Michigan explain them almost line-by-line, is 192 pages. A book on the papers is expected to top 300 pages. A "complete proof" of Poincaré, based on Dr. Perelman's breakthrough and published last month in the Asian Journal of Mathematics (which Prof. Milnor describes as throwing "a monkey wrench" into the question of who gets credit), is 328 pages long.

Oddly, either the book or the Kleiner-Lott paper might count as the "refereed" work the Clay Institute demands. If so, we would have the weird situation in which authors of the work that satisfies the prize requirement aren't the people who figured out the proof. But their efforts could win Dr. Perelman $1 million.

"It's definitely an unusual situation, but what's important is that the person who made the breakthrough put it out there so the community could scrutinize and analyze it," says institute president, James Carlson.

Dr. Perelman shuns the limelight, but is known through lectures in the U.S. and for getting a perfect score at the 1982 International Mathematical Olympiad, at age 16. He isn't expected at the quadrennial meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians, in Madrid. There, the Fields Medal, math's Nobel Prize, will be awarded to the "outstanding" mathematician 40 or under. Dr. Perelman is the odds-on favorite.

And the millennium prizes? "I don't think the other six will be solved in my lifetime," says Dr. Carlson. "But then, I didn't think the Poincaré conjecture would be solved either."

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The American Language --- http://www.bartleby.com/185/

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

At the Feet of Sociology Professor Phillip Rieff

"A Moralist of the Mind," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, July 19, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/07/19/mclemee

Rieff, who died on July 1, was for decades a somewhat legendary professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. To echo a point made elsewhere, I think the power of his influence greatly exceeded the reach of his reputation. Rieff didn’t want a large readership. He wrote in knotty apothegms — developing a set of terms that resembled sociological jargon less than it does the private language of some brilliant but eccentric rabbi. With his later texts (including My Life Among the Deathworks, just published by the University of Virginia Press) you do not so much read Rieff as sit at his feet.

But in his first book, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) — his dissertation from the University of Chicago, as rewritten with the help of his first wife, Susan Sontag — the knack for aphorisms had not yet hardened into a tic. He was still addressing a broad audience of educated readers, not disciples. And it was in the final pages of that volume that he sketched the concept of “psychological man.”

According to Rieff’s careful reading, the founder of psychoanalysis was no subversive champion of the id against bourgeois society. Rather, his Freud comes to resemble other Victorian sages who tried to create inner order as the established patterns of authority were dissolving. But along the way, Freud also helped foster a new system of values – one toward which Rieff would show deep and growing ambivalence.

The new “character ideal” that Rieff saw emerging in Freud’s wake was no longer inspired by religious faith, or a strong sense of civic responsibility. Psychological man would not even need to cultivate the sort of self-interested self control practiced by his immediate ancestor, homo economicus. (Think of Benjamin Franklin, making himself wealthy and wise by careful planning.) Psychological man need not fret over material security – being, after all, reasonably comfortable in an affluent society. His energies would turn inward, toward the care and maintenance of the self.

Rieff returned to the future of psychological man in his second book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Its final sentence verges on a prophetic statement, then carefully backs away:

“That a sense of well-being has become the end, rather than the by-product of striving after some communal end,” wrote Rieff, “announces a fundamental change in the entire cast of our culture – toward a human condition about which there will be nothing further to say in terms of the old style of hope and despair.”

It can be strange to read some of the earliest discussions of Rieff’s work, for there was occasionally a tendency to regard him as cheerleading “the triumph of the therapeutic.” This was wide of the mark. Eventually Rieff did find things to say about this cultural transformation “in the old style of despair.”

He became a cultural reactionary. I mean that term as a description, rather than a denunciation. He saw culture as a system of restraints (what he termed “interdicts”) that prevented the individual from being swamped by the excessive range of potential human desires and behaviors. Thrown into “the abyss of possibility,” man “becomes not human but demonic.” So Rieff put it in reviewing Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.

As the historian Christopher Lasch once put it, Rieff belonged to “the party of the superego.” (Lasch translated many of Rieff’s insights about psychological man into a neo-Marxist analysis of the “culture of narcissism” emerging in advanced capitalist society.) And it was the duty of any teacher worthy of the name to play the role of superego to the hilt. “Authority untaught,” Rieff declared in the early 1970s, “is the condition in which a culture commits suicide.”

His later writings are, in effect, a series of coroner’s reports. “We professionals of the reading discipline,” he stated in My Life Among the Deathworks, “we are the real police. As teaching agents of sacred order, and inescapably within it, the moral demands we must teach, if we are teachers, are those eternal truths by which all social orders endure.” And Rieff made it pretty clear that he did not think this was happening.

There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name. Rieff, for all his crotchety obliqueness, was one of them.(By the way, the ratio of philosophers to propagandists is hardly any better on the left.)

In scrutinizing the logic of contemporary culture, Rieff indirectly revealed some of the dark secrets of U.S. politics — which has been dominated by the right wing for at least a quarter century now. The therapeutic has triumphed in the red states as well as the blue. Any reference to how Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush proved themselves as great leaders by “helping America feel good about itself” confirms that psychological man is often happy to vote Republican.

But more than that, Rieff is of lasting interest for upholding an exorbitant standard of seriousness. The Feeling Intellect, a collection of his essays published by the University of Chicago Press in 1990, is rather awe-inspiring in the range and intensity of its erudition – though you do have to look past the strangely cultish introduction by one of the author’s devotees, Jonathan B. Imber, a professor of sociology at Wellesley College.

And his early polemic in the culture wars, Fellow Teachers, is some kind of cranky masterpiece. (It is now out of print.) One passage in particular has left a strong impression, lingering in my mind like the voice of a testy grandfather telling me to get off the Internet.

“Our sacred world must remain the book,” he says. “No, not the book: the page.... To get inside a page of Haydn, of Freud, of Weber, of James: only so can our students be possessed by an idea of what it means to study.... Then, at least, they may acquire a becoming modesty about becoming ‘problem-solvers,’ dictating reality. Such disciplines would teach us, as teachers, that it would be better to spend three days imprisoned by a sentence than any length of time handing over ready-made ideas.”

Reading this again, I feel guilty of a thousand sins. Which is, of course, the intent. There are qualities and opinions in Rieff’s work it is difficult to admire. But studying him has at least one good effect. It teaches you to think about the difference between a strong want and a justifiable need — and to keep a safe distance from anything tending to blur that distinction.

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. Suggestions and ideas for future columns are welcome.

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

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