Muslim Boy Conquers Fear of Hate Crimes in Children's Book --- http://www.prweb.com/releases/Muslimamerican/childrensbook/prweb423693.htm
Jensen Comment
The innocents are the tear-jerking victims of excessive reactions to media lies and incitements by extremists at both ends of the hate spectrum.

The Connecticut race and Republican spinmeisters will be troublesome for Democrats. But the growing public awareness provides Democrats the opportunity to reshape our party to help America meet the challenges ahead. For Republicans, it signals the end of using patriotism to cover up for persistent failures to deal effectively with pressing national security issues.
Wesley K. Clark, "A Judgment on Iraq, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115517305852131715.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Jensen Comment
The problem is that both political parties lack leadership to truly "meet the challenges ahead." The GOP will attempt to turn any terror tragedy into political gain, and the cut-and-run Democrats are poised to to turn Iraq over to Iran in a single-issue election influenced by an electorate that is influenced by highly biased worldwide media. What's also clear is that a biased media is very much to blame for U.S./U.K. flagellation, encouraging terrorists, and minimizing our victories in reconstructing Iraq (see below).

Biased Media Update
The latest offense by the Washington Post is another example of news manufacturing concocting stories in contravention of facts. Here's the letter Gen. Bill McCoy - who's in charge of construction projects in Iraq -- sent to the Washington Post on Sunday. They haven't printed it yet. Will they ever?
Jed Babbin, "A General Fed Up With The MSM, "RCP Blog," August 8, 2006 --- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/blog/2006/08/a_general_fed_up_with_the_msm.html

Sunday, 06 August 2006
From Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy Jr.
To the Editor of the Washington Post

After spending almost three days traveling with and being interviewed by one of the co-writers of a very poorly written article ("Much Undone in Rebuilding Iraq, Audit says", Washington Post, August 2, 2006), I'm astounded at how distorted a good story can become and what agenda drives a paper to see only the bad side to the reconstruction effort here in Iraq. Instead of distorting the facts, let's get to the truth.

There is no flailing reconstruction effort in Iraq. The United States has rightfully invested $20 billion in Iraq's reconstruction - in the opinion of many here, we should do more. This massive undertaking is part of a wider strategy for success in Iraq that involves the establishment of a democratic government, the development of professional Iraqi security forces, and the restoration of basic essential services and facilities to promote the sustained economic development of this new country.

Yes, this reconstruction effort has been challenged occasionally by security, poor materials, poor construction program management practices, and in some cases poor performance by contractors for a variety of reasons. The Department of State and Defense professionals over here, many of them civilian volunteers, and the Iraqi associates who risk their lives every day to have a future that approximates what America has today, continuously see the challenges and develop and implement solutions. This is a core part of managing construction anywhere in the world and, while somewhat more complex here, it is successfully being accomplished. Have we been guilty of poor planning and mismanagement? The answer to that is, at times, yes. But professionals constantly strive to overcome challenges that arise and we are succeeding and making Iraq better every day!

The heart of the article rests on several old statements by the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction which infer these are recent or recurring problems. The SIGIR knows that, in fact, program management, construction quality, progress, and accountability have all improved significantly since the early days of the effort some three years ago. Yet, the reporters' "project problems" comments infer that these are recent issues. Such actions inflame public opinion in the United States and create resentment by the very people so many conscientious Americans over here are trying to help here in Iraq and worse, embolden our very enemies.

When I arrived here a year ago we planned to complete 3,200 reconstruction projects. Today we are focusing on the completion of 3,700 projects. We've started 3,500 of those projects and completed almost 2,800...and work is continuing! This is not a failure to meet our commitment to the Iraqi people as the article states. In some cases we are not executing the same projects - we have changed to meet new priorities of three government changes in Iraq since our arrival - but in all cases, rest assured, these projects will be completed. We discussed this at length with the reporter...and he was taking notes and recording our conversations.

We told the reporter that, while 141 health clinic construction projects were taken away from a U.S. contractor who failed to perform, they were re-awarded to Iraqi contractors who are already demonstrating progress, have improved quality and shown their great desire to work with the United States to help Iraq improve ... and they are doing so phenomenally!

We did talk to the reporter about on electricity. Three-quarters of Iraq gets twice as much electricity today as they did before the war. Furthermore, we are working with the Minister of Electricity to improve the situation in Baghdad daily and have doubled the hours of power from four to eight in the capitol in the last six months in spite of the fact that demand is markedly increased with Iraqis' new ability to buy personal electrical products.

What is truly amazing to me is that we took the reporter to the Nasiriyah prison project and, while it is true that we terminated the prime U.S. contractor for failure to perform, the Iraqi sub-contractor continues to work there (now directly for us) and his progress and quality have improved significantly ... and he saw that! We are not turning unfinished work over to the Iraqis as he stated in his article; we are fulfilling the U.S. commitment to the people of Iraq and using Iraqis to do it!

The reporter didn't tell you about the hundreds of dedicated military and civilian professionals he saw over here working to make Iraq better, or the Iraqis who come to work every day at their own peril because they believe in what we, and they, are accomplishing together.

He failed to tell you about Aseel or Salah who worked for the Corps of Engineers since we arrived in 2003, because they wanted to make their country like ours, but who were recently brutally murdered in the streets because they worked for the Americans.

He never wrote about the Water Treatment Plant he visited that will provide fresh potable water to over half a million people in southern Iraq in just two more months, or the one in northern Iraq that is providing water for the 330,000 citizens of Irbil.

He never told folks back home about the thousands of children that are now in 800 new or rebuilt schools, or about oil production now being back to pre-war levels and getting better everyday, or raw sewage being taken out of the streets and put back in the pipes where it belongs, or about the thousands of miles of new roads, or post offices, police stations or courthouses or... well, he just left a great deal out now, didn't he?

Why?

Perhaps it's because some in the press don't want the American people to know the truth and prefer instead to only report the negative aspects of the news because "it sells papers."

We deserve better from those who claim the protection of the Constitution we are fighting to support and defend.

America, don't give up. You are doing much better over here than all too many of your press will tell you. If you are tired of fighting for freedom and democracy for those who so strongly long for the country we have, then think of the alternatives for a moment. Iraq will be better for our efforts and so will the world. And you are making it happen. Be proud and keep supporting this vital effort. It is the most important thing America can do.

Thank you. I invite you and your staff to come over at any time to get the facts. I took a risk with Mr. Mosher and obviously got what I consider to be a very unbalanced representation of what he saw, personally. But I still believe in general in the press and will always be open to helping you tell a balanced story.

Essayons! Deliverance!

Maj. Gen. Bill McCoy
Commanding General Gulf Region Division U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Multi-National Force-Iraq

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Video of Photo (Media) Fraud Lebanon --- http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp
(Video includes fakes published by Associated Press, Reuters, U.S. News, and The New York Times)

And today, the Jew-hating bigot of the moment is unquestionably a man of the press himself ostensibly unbiased Robert Novak. In every generation there arises a radical new anti-Semite who uses the pulpit of the popular media to explain (in the most dramatic and seductive terms) how the current world crisis can be explained in just three words: "It's the Jews."
Jackie Mason, Jewish World Review, August 11, 2006 --- http://jewishworldreview.com/0806/mason081106.php3 
Jensen Comment
Hollywood's Mel Gibson is milk toast in comparison with columnist Robert Novak. Born Jewish, Novak lost his faith in college and converted to Catholicism in 1998 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Novak

Question
Why is the media so biased against Israel and U.S. successes in rebuilding Iraq?

August 11, 2006 message from Dick Wolff

An LGF reader who worked for Associated Press TV News sent me the following article explaining how APTN works, and suggesting a reason why their coverage of the Middle East is so overwhelmingly biased against Israel:

Dick

Disproportionately Negative Coverage of Israel

Anything involving Israel is a favorite with Gulf Arab states for showing to their viewers. Could this be the reason why Israel receives such a disproportionate amount of particularly negative coverage especially and increasingly ever since the early 1970’s? HonestReporting ( http://honestreporting.com/ ) is usually unable to decide which is most biased: AP or BBC. As the BBC is often using APTN footage, the difference is minor. A significant twist to what is seen, concerns what is not seen. Footage such as the Palestinian mob joyfully lynching two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000 is held by APTN’s library: any attempt to license this film for reshow is carefully vetted. Requests for the use of “sensitive clips” are referred directly to the Library director. This is not the case with clips that paint Israel in a bad light. Likewise, the re-showing of Palestinian celebrations on 9/11 is considered “sensitive”.

The way in which raw footage such as APTN’s is compiled into a news report and sent round the world has also been analyzed. The Second Draft ( http://www.seconddraft.org/ ) gives a comprehensive view of how editing can make all the difference. APTN is the gatekeeper that sits between you and the actual event. You will never see what the editors at APTN see before they compile your evening news. What do you think is cut out?

The Wrap-Up

Was this organization set up with this in-built bias on purpose? Is there some way that the expensive payments made by Gulf state governments form part of a deliberate attempt to skew the media?

In “Islam and Dhimmitude” (2002) by Bat Ye’or on p294-296 she recounts how decisions were taken in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 to try to put across an anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist message. Successive conferences resolved to contribute vast sums “to universities, centers for Islamic studies, international communications agencies, and private and governmental organizations in order to win over world opinion.” (p296).

The messages from these conferences stressed an addition to the more familiar violent jihad: they also emphasized the importance of jihad by the written and spoken word—what we would recognize as classic propaganda. Without question APTN’s interesting business model represents a concrete example of an ongoing financial “contribution” to an important communication agency promoting a pro-Arab bias.

Continued in article

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George Will said this: "Elections have brought the Muslim Brotherhood into government in Egypt. Elections turned Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories. . . . It could be that there are moments when sampling and empowering the popular will is going to empower extremism." And Time claims, "[E]lections [in the Middle East] are producing governments more hospitable to extremism, not less. Exhibit A was the election of Hamas . . ."
Peter Wehner, "Democracy an Its Discontents Birth pangs of freedom in the Middle East," The Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008771

Give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a pulpit and no prizes for guessing how he will use it. So it was no surprise to see the Iranian President take advantage of a visit to Malaysia last week to champion the Jewish state's destruction once again. Peace can come to the Middle East "only when there will be no Israel there," Mr. Ahmadinejad declared . . . "The question of having a dialogue with Tel Aviv does not arise," Malaysia's Mr. Abdullah responded over the weekend. Even as much of the Middle East has opened diplomatic relations with their long-time adversary in recent years, Malaysia and Indonesia -- which both refuse to countenance any kind of formal ties with Israel -- still side with the Islamic hard-liners on this point. Both countries offered last week to send peacekeepers to join any new United Nations force in Lebanon. But now that their leaders have shown themselves so willing to look the other way as Mr. Ahmadinejad calls for Israel's destruction, it will be difficult to trust their forces not to do likewise as Hezbollah uses its rockets to seek to accomplish that goal.
"As It Spreads Hatred in Asia," The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2006 --- Click Here


Mike Wallace lands an exclusive and rare interview with the president of Iran. In the wide-ranging interview, the Iranian leader comments on President Bush’s foreign policy, the lack of relations between Iran and the U.S., Hezbollah, Lebanon and Iraq. Robert Anderson is the producer --- Click Here

Jensen Comment
Mike Wallace never had control of this interview at any point in the double length segment of CBS Sixty Minutes aired on August 13, 2006. President Ahmadinejad, a college professor with a doctoral degree in engineering, never deviated from his controlling script and simply ignored any of Mike's sensitive questions such as:

• Do your really mean Zionists be literally "wiped off the face of the earth"?
• Why the Holocaust truly an "overblown fairytale"?
  See Iran's Holocaust cartoon exhibition ---
  http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6332204D-7694-40B2-B134-06ADB6A47CD3.htm
• Why is Iran "supplying insurgents in Iraq with roadside bombs"?   

Ahmadinejad's prepared script was predictable --- Zionists (meaning Jews) have no legitimate right to reside anywhere in the Middle East; the U.S. is the world's immoral oppressor; the U.N. and European nations are puppets controlled by the U.S., and terrorism is a legitimate weapon of Islamic fundamentalism. Because Ahmadinejad's "advisors" were obviously nearby and made their presence repeatedly known during the interview, I was continually reminded of Baghdad Bob, although in fairness Ahmadinejad is more articulate, intelligent, educated, and dangerous than Baghdad Bob whose collected quotations are at http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/baghdad_bob.htm

There may be something of Iran's social principle of "taarof" in Ahmadinejad's more extreme comments. I will take up the topic of taarof in the forthcoming August 20 edition of Tidbits. Clearly Ahmadinejad's comments are widely off the mark regarding the U.N. (which usually votes against the U.S. on anything except motherhood and apple pie) and Europe (which has a hostile media on matters related to the U.S. and almost always opposes U.S. readiness to fight terrorists with force).

In reaction to Ahmadinejad's comments on the Holocaust, the United States Senate passed a unanimous resolution condemning his "harmful, destructive, and anti-Semitic statements." and "hate and animosity toward all Jewish people of the world" --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad
Iran's Holocaust cartoon exhibition ---
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6332204D-7694-40B2-B134-06ADB6A47CD3.htm

Probably the Most Important Point Ignored by the Anti-Israel Media Five Years After 9/11
Even if there were no Israel, these people would still hate us as an embodiment of everything they consider unholy. . . . The disappearance of Israel would do nothing to prevent such [9/11-styled] attacks.
Norman Podhoretz in the New York Post as quoted by James Taranto and Ira Stoll, The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2001
Jensen Comment
What Islamic fundamentalists consider the most "unholy" is the attraction of Western lifestyle, capitalist globalization, fashion, media/network freedom, and equal rights for women --- unholy trends deemed far greater threats to Islam than Zionists. Islamic spokespersons are now, for political purposes in 2006, trying to blame terrorism on U.S./U.K. support of Israel, but accusations from true Al Quieda terrorists themselves repeatedly extend well beyond Israel and U.S. presence in Iraq. Al Quieda to date directed most of its attacks against Western influence in Saudi Arabia and other Moslem nations that are not forcefully resisting creeping Westernism within their own borders. Al Quieda terrorists targeted Bali and Saudi Arabia and African sites where few, if any, Zionists were the main targets. Islamic terrorists are not targeting Zionists in India. They're targeting Western-styled economic successes in India (India has more Moslem citizens than either Pakistan or Iran).

Here is what we want to do in the wake of the arrests in Britain. We want to understand as much as possible about what terrorists were planning. To talk about airport security and how to make it better. To find out what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther. It would be a blessed moment in modern American history if we could do that without turning this into a political game plan.
Editorial, "The London Plot," The New York Times, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/opinion/11fri1.html
Jensen Comment
"To find out what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther." Yeah right! See the WSJ editorial below.

Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.
"'Mass Murder' Foiled A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose," The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008785
What Britain can teach America about counterterrorism ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008794

Many Jews are in my position -- the children and grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians, antiwar protestors -- instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes. However, the world as we know it today -- post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity -- is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself -- with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.
Thane Rosenbaurm, "Red State Jews," by , The Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2006; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115508199528130506.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Also see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5630339
Also see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5627457

From NPR
Jewish Americans Share Israel's Pain --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5630339

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"Liberal McCarthyism," by Lanny J. Davis, The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2006; Page A10 --- Click Here

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing -- in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years -- with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage -- I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman: • "Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby" (by "rim," posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

• "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).

• On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

• "Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife's name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover" (by "gerrylong," posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).

• "Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot" (by "greenskeeper," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

And these are some of the nicer examples.

One Sunday morning on C-Span I debated Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel on the Lieberman versus Lamont race. Afterwards I received a series of emails -- many of them in ALL CAPS (which often suggests the hyper-frenetic state of these extremist haters) -- that were of the same stripe as the blog posts, and filled with the same level of personal hate.

Continued in article

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To every Democratic Senator and Congressman who continues to back Bush's War, allow me to inform you that your days in elective office are now numbered. Myself and tens of millions of citizens are going to work hard to actively remove you from any position of power. If you don't believe us, give Joe a call.
Michael Moore, "It's All About Who You Sleep With" --- http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=197

Right-wing Jew fooled no one this time. Wednesday, August 09, 2006 -- Voters in Connecticut reject three-term Sen. Lieberman for a political newcomer in the nation's first major test of the depth of anger over the Iraq war. Americans who are sick of this lying right-wing punk in the White House and his damn supporters gased Bush's Jew at the polls. God in heaven, it is my prayer that You will punish these ungrateful, omnipotent fools so harshly that even those like myself, who despise the ground they walk on, will feel sorry for them.
Bob Miller, "The Kiss of Death, Out2.com, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.out2.com/
Jensen Comment
Apart from the repulsive wording typical of many extremist writers about Senator Lieberman, it's strange that Miller would call Lieberman a "right-wing Jew." Jews are seldom right-wing, and Senator Lieberman is one of the more liberal members of the Senate, especially in terms of support for poverty and other social programs. The Democratic Primary outcome in Connecticut illustrates how one-issue platforms are misleading when appealing for votes. Lieberman may possibly be re-elected as an independent since Democrats only comprise about a third of the voters in Connecticut where half the voters are "independents" and the remainder are either Republicans or Don't-Cares. Fiscal conservatives are hoping Lieberman drops out of the race for re-election since his seniority in the Senate gives him greater power to push for liberal spending.

Lieberman is possibly the least libertarian member of the United States Senate: An infinite-state liberal who always found ways to oppose Social Security reform . . . questions the Republicans' apparent strategy of doubling down on support for the Iraq war, and wonders who will take Lieberman's place as the Senate's killjoy in chief.
Tim Cavanaugh, "Adios, Vinegar Joe A gleeful obituary for a loathsome politician, Reason Magazine, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.reason.com/hod/tc080906.shtml 

Democratic Party embraces Ned Lamont, it must also embrace his antiwar message: It proved a winning strategy for Connecticut, and will be for the mid-term elections.
Editors, "Lamont Wins," The Nation, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/editors
Jensen Comment
It should be footnoted that "it proved a winning strategy" for 52% of registered democrats in Connecticut where registered democrats comprise about one third of the voting populace.  The remainder of this populace will have a voice in November.
Murtha's re-election bid in Pennsylvania is also an antiwar test ---
http://www.house.gov/murtha/
http://www.bootmurtha.com/MurthaUpdates/AUG2006/08-12-06.htm
The activist liberal media like The Nation, however, is more uncomfortable with Murtha's support for increased funding of a formidable U.S. military.

But let's not overstate the blogs' role in this (defeat of Lieberman). They get both credit and blame for driving the Democrats to an antiwar platform. But there was never any real resistance from the party elders. The people atop the party provided the energy and intellectual content to the last famous antiwar movement, against Vietnam. Events like the massive protests in Washington and elsewhere between 1969 and 1971 were in part about events in Vietnam, but there was also a huge amount of narcissistic self-indulgence in the movement. People joined in the expectation of being around an "event" -- part rock concert, part street theater, the rush of being part of a morally unblemished belief system. Sort of like the Web. This politics produced two major candidacies -- Eugene McCarthy's challenge to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and George McGovern's to Richard Nixon in 1972. Both got blown out.
Daniel Henninger, "Democrats Knifed Lieberman on Eve Of Airliner Plot," The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2006; Page A12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115525798214832893.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Old Hippies Have Their Day --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/oldhippie.htm 
(If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on.)
In the aftermath of the (Connecticut) primary, Democrats settled on the idea that Lieberman fell because of his support for the Iraq war. This was technically true, in the same way that a 95-year-old man might technically be said to die from pneumonia; there were, to say the least, underlying causes. The war was a galvanizing issue, but Lieberman's loss was just the first major victory for a larger grass-roots movement. While that movement is identified with young, online activists, it is populated largely by exasperated and ideologically disappointed baby boomers. These are the liberals who quietly seethed as Bill Clinton worked with Republicans to reform welfare and pass free-trade agreements. After the ''stolen'' election of 2000 and the subsequent loss of House and Senate seats in 2004, these Democrats felt duped. If triangulation wasn't a winning strategy, they asked, why were they ever asked to tolerate it in the first place? The Web gave them a place to share their frustrations, and Howard Dean gave them an icon. Iraq has energized these older lapsed liberals; for a generation that got into politics marching against Vietnam, an antiwar movement is comfortable space. But it was the yearning for a more confrontational brand of opposition on all fronts, for something resembling the black-and-white moral choices of the 1960's, that more broadly animated Lamont's insurgency. Connecticut's primary showdown (which now appears to be headed for a sequel in November) marked an emphatic repudiation not just of the war but also of Clinton's ''third way'' governing philosophy - a philosophy not unlike the Republican ethos of ''compromise'' and ''pragmatism'' that so infuriated Reagan conservatives.
Matt Bai, "What Are the Lieberman Foes For?" The New York Times Magazine, August 20, 2006 --- Click Here

In the mid-20th century the core constituencies of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties stood foursquare for America's prosecution of World War II and the Cold War. Today, as the Connecticut results suggest, it's different. The core constituency of the Republican Party stands foursquare for America's prosecution of the global struggle against Islamofascist terrorism -- and solidly on the side of Israel in its struggle against the same forces. The core constituency of the Democratic Party wants to stand aside from the global struggle -- and, as the presence of (anti-Israel leaders) Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at Mr. Lamont's side on election night suggests, is not necessarily on the side of Israel. It's not your father's Democratic Party.
Michael Barone, "Primary Colors, The Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115515847647431384.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

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

The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.
Celia Green as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-06-28-06.htm

Asked to define "truthiness," [Comedy Central's Stephen] Colbert tells [CBS Sixty Minute's interviewer Morley] Safer, "Truthiness is what you want the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support." --- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1553506.shtml

This is what makes Colbert's "truthiness" a perfect word for postmodernism and its postpositive critical theory:

In particular, a dominant trend in critical theory was the rejection of the concept of objectivity as something that rests on a more or less naive epistemology: a simple belief that “facts” exist in some pristine state untouched by “theory.” To avoid being naive, the dutiful student learned to insist that, after all, all facts come to us embedded in various assumptions about the world. Hence (ta da!) “objectivity” exists only within an agreed-upon framework. It is relative to that framework. So it isn’t really objective....
Scott McLemee, "The Power of Postpositive Thinking," , Inside Higher Ed, August 2, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/02/mclemee 

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"Who Needs Harvard? Competition for the Ivies is as fierce as ever, but kids who look beyond the famous schools may be the smartest applicants of all,"  by Nancy Gibbs and Nathan Ghornburgh, Time Magazine Cover Story (Complete with a cover photo of lots of green ivy), August 21, 2006 --- Click Here

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Academe is Just Not Cool
Time Magazine's selections for "The 50 Coolest Websites" ---
http://www.time.com/time/2006/50coolest/index.html?internalid=AOT_h_08-13-2006_50_coolest_webs

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Those phony emails pretending to be from banks and PayPal

"Revealing Fraud in E-Mail Addresses," by J.D. Biersdorfer, The New York Times, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/technology/10askk.html

Q. I get a ton of e-mail messages purporting to be from banks and Web sites that are obviously not from those institutions even though the return address looks real. Is there a way to find out where these messages actually came from?

A. Although you probably won’t be able to trace the fraudulent message directly back to its human sender, you can usually poke around inside the message’s full header field to see where it might have come from electronically. Check your particular e-mail program’s settings for displaying “full” or “long” message headers — in Outlook Express, for example, you can see the full header by right-clicking on a message in your mailbox window, selecting Properties and clicking the Details button.

The full header shows the path that message took across the Internet from sender to recipient. Even if the return address is forged with something like admin@irs.gov, if you look closely, odds are you’ll see other addresses in the “Received:” lines in the header that give some indication of the message’s origin. A detailed explanation of how to read e-mail headers is at spamlinks.net/track-trace-headers.htm.

If you receive spam that solicits your personal information, the consumer safety site OnGuardOnline.gov suggests forwarding it to the bank or institution used in the forged address and to spam@uce.gov.

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

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

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Few Working Couples Are Happy Says University of Minnesota Sociologist

"Study: Few working couples happy," PhysOrg, August 12, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74568891.html

A Minnesota researcher says middle-class couples are struggling to balance work and family in jobs designed for the days when men were the breadwinners.

Phyllis Moen, who holds a chair in sociology at the University of Minnesota, tracked 1,060 couples. She found that only one in six qualified as super couples -- with both partners reporting a good quality of life -- while more than half reported that neither was getting much enjoyment out of life.

Moen said couples are "stretched thin by 'work-friendly' jobs."

She presented her paper -- "Dual-Earner Middle-Class Time Convoys, Ecologies, and Life-Course 'Fit': Super Couples or Couples Stretched Thin?" -- at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting.

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Military Spending Fraud on an Unfathomable Scale
Of course, people have been decrying Pentagon waste and inefficiency for decades. But things have got significantly worse over the past five years, because Congress and the Bush Administration have thrown so much money at the Defense Department so fast. Studies of corporate behavior show that when companies are flush with cash they are more likely to make acquisitions that reduce their over-all value. The defense industry today, in fact, is much like Silicon Valley in the late nineties—when you give lots of money to an industry with no audits and no supervision, people lose discipline. They spend on bad ideas, gild every surface, and cheat. Is it really a surprise that billions of dollars meant for private contractors in Iraq seems to have been stolen?
James Surowiecki, "Unsafe at Any Price," The New Yorker, August 8, 2006 --- http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060807ta_talk_surowiecki

Question
Could there possibly be fraud in U.S. Government accounting?

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found. The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. Called the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion. The report by the inspector general’s office does not give a full accounting of all projects financed by the agency’s $1.4 billion budget, but cites several examples.
"Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects," by James Glanz, The New York Times, July 29, 2006 --- Click Here

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

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Create your own Web applications with ease using this free Zoho Creater software

August 7, 2006 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

Is this a MS Access-killer-app?

http://www.zohocreator.com/

"This free Web-based software handled the job -- but without the bells and whistles of Access that had baffled Mr Hughes. And since the program stored his data on the Web, his colleagues could tap into it easily with a browser. "To me it was like a godsend" says Mr. Hughes, operations manager at SoluChem. "
Robert A. Guth, The Wall Street Journal Online --- http://www.zohocreator.com/

Exclusive benefits of Zoho Creator  --- http://www.zohocreator.com/

	Create Apps from scratch Create your web application in minutes, not days. It's just a few clicks away.			Create Apps from spreadsheet Import your spreadsheet to create web application automatically.
	Browse, Copy & Customize Browse public applications. See something you like? Copy and customize to your needs.			No coding required Create web application without coding. You don't need to have HTML or PHP skills .
	Embed Forms/Views in website Embed Forms and Views easily into your website and blog.			Share your App Share your app with other users or keep it private among your friends, colleagues and clients.

 

Zoho Creator helps you to easily create personal and business web applications on your own by structuring and presenting your data in a lot of interesting and useful ways. You can view the data as a table, calendar or just as a summary. In addition to just viewing your data in many ways, you might also want to perform one or more of the following:

• Perform an action when a row is added successfully or detect when someone adds a row to a form. For example, you might want to receive email notifications as and when a row is added. Learn more

• Perform an action when a row is updated. For example, in the case of a bug tracker, you might want to receive email notifications whenever the status of the issue gets modified. Learn more

• Validate the form data before persisting it.

• Add a row only if it satisfies a certain criteria and reject the other entries. For example, in a recruitment application, accept only those applicants who have more than two years of experience. Learn more

• Define formulas for calculations. For example, assume a student database has marks obtained by students in all the subjects and you want to display the total and average marks also. Learn more

• Create complex filters in views. Learn more 

 With Zoho Creator, you don't have to write code to build a simple data collection and viewing application like a Contacts list. But, scripting will be indispensable for building a full fledged application with complex logic, for example, Library Manager.

Jensen Comment
Although this is not course management software, it can be used for authoring presentation lessons by instructors.

Bob Jensen's summaries of course authoring and course management software are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Also see Bob Jensen's summary authoring software ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

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"Students Getting Sticker Shock from Textbook Prices," AccountingWeb, August 4, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102424

Students entering college in 2006 can expect to pay more than $500 for textbooks for their first semester courses, a huge outlay of cash for many who have already taken out student loans to pay for tuition and fees. University of Connecticut freshman Ben March returned to UConn’s Co-op bookstore for an accounting textbook last February, after having already spent $400 on other textbooks. The book cost $101. “I was trying not to buy it, but I ended up needing it," March said, according to boston.com. “The prices are depressing, but you really don’t have a choice.”

Full-time students in a four-year public college paid $898 for books in 2003-2004, equal to 26 percent of the cost of tuition and fees, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued in 2005. Congress is looking at the problem, and Virginia and California have passed legislation, but these measures have had little impact on student costs so far.

Faculty members are now being asked by state legislatures to consider pricing in their selection of textbooks and study materials. Is it necessary, for example, for an introductory accounting course to use the latest edition of a text that comes from the publisher bundled with a CD-ROM and study aids, which jack up the price?

New editions, which now come out every three or four years, cost students up to 45 percent more, the Washington Post says. The most popular accounting textbooks have been through many editions, and changes from the previous editions may be limited to the use of color and graphics. Accounting, by Warren, Reeves and Fess, published by South-Western Press, is now in its 22nd edition.

Publishing companies market their wares directly to professors at regional and national meetings of groups like the American Accounting Association, where professors sign up to receive complimentary copies of new textbooks. Large sales teams from companies like McGraw-Hill, publisher of Principles of Financial Accounting, 18th edition, and Prentice-Hall, publisher of Introduction to Financial Accounting, 9th edition, attend the national meetings.

A survey conducted by the California Student Public Interest Research Group reported that faculty members in all disciplines at Stanford University said that the replacement of old editions by new ones was “rarely” or “never” justified. But many continued to order them for their classes anyway, according to the American Intelligence Wire. Eighty-seven percent of faculty surveyed in the entire California system favored publishing new information in the form of paperbound supplements.

A Textbook Task Force at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU), recommended not buying new editions or bundled products, but faculty peers did not endorse these proposals. The faculty senate, while acknowledging that textbook pricing was a persistent problem, did not agree with the Task Force’s opposition to bundling or to new editions, saying that educators in the professions use evidence-based materials and needed to consider the requirements of professional licensing.

The senate found that providing “faculty and students with more comprehensive, current pricing information in a timely, easily-accessible fashion is not only critical, but the most practical first step to take.” The WCSU task force recommendations and responses are published on the university’s Web site.

In fields like accounting, where older editions might work in introductory courses, professors have individual goals for more advanced courses, and texts should include current law, research or cases, instructors say. The text should be considered an investment, a reference that the student will want to keep. Additional resources may also prove a good investment for many students.

Publishers determine wholesale prices for textbooks, and college bookstores determine the final price for the book. The average mark-up college bookstores add to new books is 33 percent, and the mark-up for used books is 50 percent, Bruce Hildebrand, executive director at the Association for American Publisher says, according to MSNBC.

Peg Godwin, manager of the University of Idaho’s Bookstore, told the university newspaper, the Argonaut, that it is hard to break even. “If we buy 100 books, we have to sell 80 books just to pay for those books and then we have to sell another four or five books to pay for the freight on them. And then we have to pay all our salaries, and salaries run around 12 to 13 percent, so we have to sell those last three books.”

Most college bookstores have textbook buyback programs, but with new editions coming out so frequently, there are not many books stores can accept for resale. University of Texas Co-op President, George H. Mitchell, says that UT students buy an average of 40 percent used books, much higher that the national average of 25 percent, the Financial Times reports. The process is successful in Texas, says Jennifer Libertowsky, spokeswoman with the National Association of College Stores, because instructors provide lists of books that will be used in classes well in advance of the buying period.

Students are finding that purchasing online provides substantial savings on both new and used books, the Washington Post says. Popular sites, in addition to Amazon.com, include www.campusbookswap.com, which allows students to buy and sell used books directly, and www.textbookx.com.

And like other products, some textbooks are cheaper in Canada. In some cases savings can equal 90 percent of the U.S. retail price, the Post says, although AccountingWeb found prices for accounting textbooks were only slightly lower than U.S. prices. Shipping time is estimated to be three to six weeks. Buyers can go to www.amazon.ca.

But shop early or pay full price. As of August 1st, Amazon had only one new copy of Principles of Financial Accounting by Wild, Larson and Chiapetta, (Chapters 1-17) now in its 18th edition and selling for $113. McGraw-Hill does not list their price for the book. There were only four new copies of Introduction to Financial Accounting by Horngren, Sundem, Elliott and Philbrick available on Amazon for $106.70. The book lists on the Prentice-Hall Web site at $149.50 and costs $165 with Peachtree software.

And the most successful textbook in history, according to Amazon, Warren, Reeves and Fess’s Accounting, published by South-Western Publishing in a number of different formats, is also nearly sold out. Amazon says they have more copies of all of these books on order.

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

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Question
How do good readers differ from bad readers?

"Metaphors We Read By," by Laurence Musgrove, Inside Higher Ed, August 4, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/04/musgrove

As I continued to examine these drawings, especially those including imaginative representations of reading, I began to investigate the various ways reading is analogized and to make a list of these metaphors.

Here is a sample of 20 from my ever-expanding collection.

• 1. Reading is grafting, and the reader connects new text to another text read.
• 2. Reading is dancing, and the reader follows the lead and steps of the text, including its rhythm, music, lyric, genre, and flow.
• 3. Reading is sorting, and the reader puts knowledge and experience and dramatic elements of text into categories.
• 4. Reading is surveying, and the reader examines the territory of the book, its surface, size, structure, scope, distinguishing features, divisions, boundaries, etc.
• 5. Reading is integrating, and the reader incorporates new knowledge into other knowledge; blending and kneading together.
• 6. Reading is counting, and the reader is concerned with the number of pages in the text or how many pages are left until they can escape the text (also envision the image of a prisoner marking off days on calendar).
• 7. Reading is soaking up, and the reader absorbs the text like a sponge.
• 8. Reading is a vehicle, and the reader travels to another place.
• 9. Reading is eating, and the reader consumes and is nourished (or poisoned) by the text.
• 10. Reading is a mirror, and the reader sees reflection in text.
• 11. Reading is a machine, and the reader feeds the text through a mechanical process.
• 12. Reading is a transaction, and the reader and text exchange value: the reader receives knowledge and experience, the text receives meaning, and the newly produced response is the receipt or proof of the transaction.
• 13. Reading is exercise, and the reader gains intellectual agility and strength.
• 14. Reading is mining, and the reader digs into the text for answers.
• 15. Reading is a good investment, and the reader’s efforts pay off.
• 16. Reading is planting, and the reader receives seeds of knowledge that grow into new understanding.
• 17. Reading is unwrapping, and the reader opens the text to reveal a hidden message.
• 18. Reading is translating, and the reader moves the meaning from one language to another.
• 19. Reading is a friend, and the reader enjoys the companionship of the text.
• 20. Reading is wrestling, and the reader struggles with the text.

In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson write, “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” In addition, they argue that these metaphorically-determinate conceptual frameworks are unconsciously meta-cognitive; that is, we reason and engage automatically without understanding the powerful metaphors shaping our interactions with each other and the world around us.

Thus, metaphorical concepts also impact students’ relationships with texts. My research so far suggests that many students have not developed adequate reading habits because they bring with them incapacitating conceptions or analogies of reading. They see it as torture or a lullaby. They also assign human agency to the text. They blame it for being hard to understand, when in fact they lack the understanding to engage the text successfully.

Rather than positioning themselves to become the reader the text wants them to be — to go out and find the knowledge the text assumes the reader already owns — students lash out at the unresponsive novel, poem, play, essay, or textbook chapter. They also sometimes see reading assignments as lifeless information to be transferred from one place to another (like the student described in the anecdote above copying highlighted words from one book to another), or as Paulo Freire analogizes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, they see knowledge as temporary commodities to be banked in their memories until withdrawn by an instructor at test time.

But these faulty conceptions of reading didn’t magically appear out of thin air. Students learned them, and many certainly learned them one way or another, implicitly or explicitly, in school. That so many of our students have come to hate reading (and writing, of course, too) is a cultural disgrace. Therefore, we need specific counter-cultural methods of instruction to adequately respond to the inappropriate metaphors of reading students bring to the classroom.

For my part, I want to discover which of my students have, knowingly or not, embraced these self-defeating notions of reading and then provide them the means to replace those conceptual roadblocks with more effective and empowering metaphors.

I also propose that professors across the curriculum actively identify and more effectively deploy metaphors of reading. In other words, rather than assume our students already know what it means to read in their disciplines, we should reflect on the kinds of reading we expect our students to practice, examine the metaphorical concepts at the heart of those reading strategies, and then present those metaphors in the classroom.

Continued in article

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"Brain imaging identifies best memorization strategies," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73843946.html

Exploring exactly why some individuals' memory skills are better than others has led researchers at Washington University in St. Louis to study the brain basis of learning strategies that healthy young adults select to help them memorize a series of objects. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers uncovered brain regions specifically correlated with the diverse strategies that subjects adopt. 

Brenda Kirchhoff, research associate in psychology in the University's School of Arts and Sciences, conducted this study in the then-Washington University lab of Randy L. Buckner, now a professor of psychology at Harvard University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Their findings have been published in the July 20, 2006, issue of Neuron. (Kirchhoff is the article's first author and Buckner is senior author.)

"Randy and I were interested in exploring individual differences in memory — why some people are better at learning new information than others," said Kirchhoff. "Our main goal was to determine the learning strategies that people use and their relationship to memory performance. Secondly, we wanted to know if individual differences in learning strategies were associated with individual differences in brain activity.

Continued in article

Also see "Researchers find new learning strategy," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73843691.html

Also see "Novelty aids learning," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73834337.html

Exposure to new experiences improves memory, according to research by UCL psychologists and medical doctors that could hold major implications for the treatment of memory problems. The study, published in Neuron on 3 August, concludes that introducing completely new facts when learning, significantly improves memory performance.

Researchers have long suspected that the human brain is particularly attracted to new information and that this might be important for learning. They are now a step closer to understanding why.

A region in the midbrain (substantia nigra/ventral tegmental), which is responsible for regulating our motivation and reward-processing, responds better to novelty than to the familiar. This system also regulates levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, and could aid learning. This link between memory, novelty, motivation and reward could help patients with memory problems.

Dr Emrah Düzel, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “We hope that these findings will have an impact on behavioural treatments for patients with poor memory. Current practice by behavioural psychologists aims to improve memory through repeatedly exposing a person to information – just as we do when we revise for an exam. This study shows that revising is more effective if you mix new facts in with the old. You actually learn better, even though your brain is also tied up with new information.

“It is a well-known fact amongst scientists that the midbrain region regulates our levels of motivation and our ability to predict rewards by releasing dopamine in the frontal and temporal regions of the brain. We have now shown that novelty activates this brain area. We believe that experiencing novelty might, in itself, have an impact on our dopamine levels. Our next project will be to test the role of dopamine in learning. These findings could have implications for drug development.”

Subjects took part in a series of tests. The first experiment assessed whether the brain prefers novel stimuli over familiar stimuli even when the familiar images are made significant because they are either rare or depict emotionally negative content. Subjects were shown images of indoor and outdoor scenes and faces, while their brain activity was analysed using an fMRI scanner. Some images rarely popped up and some were emotionally negative, such as an angry face or a car accident. Even the rare and emotional images did not activate the midbrain. It responded only to new images.

The second experiment, using fMRI, made some of the images more or less familiar to test how this relativity affected brain activity. It did not – only completely new images produced activity in the midbrain area.

Dr Düzel said: “We thought that less familiar information would stand out as being significant when mixed with well-learnt, very familiar information and so activate the midbrain region just as strongly as absolutely new information. That was not the case. Only completely new things cause strong activity in the midbrain area.”

Separate behavioural experiments were also conducted without the use of a scanner to test the subjects’ memory. Their memory of the novel, familiar and very familiar images they had studied was tested after 20 minutes and then a day later. Subjects performed best in these tests when new information was combined with familiar information during learning. After a 20 minute delay, subjects’ memory for slightly familiar information was boosted by 19 per cent if it had been mixed with new facts during learning sessions.

Dr Düzel said: “When we see something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. This potential that lies in new things motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential. For this reason, only completely new objects activate the midbrain area and increase our levels of dopamine.”

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Monetary policy resulting in a weak dollar is the culprit for high oil prices

"The Elephant in the Barrel," by Bret Swanson, The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2006; Page A8 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115534012451133869.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Nigerian pipeline explosions, Chinese demand, Arab angst, Venezuelan volatility, peak oil and a Putin premium: These are the usual explanations for high petroleum prices. But our discussion of the "energy crisis" has ignored the elephant in the barrel -- monetary policy. Today, high oil prices are the backdrop for Middle Eastern chaos and calls for bad energy policy. It was much the same in the 1970s, when high prices yielded similar violence against our fellow man and against economics. This is no coincidence. A weak dollar is the culprit, now as then.

When the Yom Kippur war was launched in October 1973, the price of oil had been rising for two years. For decades, oil's price had been remarkably stable, like the prices of most other goods. But in 1971 Richard Nixon broke the dollar's links both to gold and to key foreign currencies. Bretton Woods -- and the dollar -- collapsed, and a decade-long inflation began.

By July 1973, gold had deviated from its long-time price of $35 per ounce and soared to $120. Oil also responded quickly to dollar weakness and doubled in price by the early autumn. The Mideast nations complained that the Western oil companies were accumulating massive "windfall profits." Having negotiated agreements in the previous environment of price stability, the Arabs and Persians were stuck with much lower prices and royalty payments. You know the rest of the decade's news: embargoes, gas lines, inflation, wage and price controls, hostages.

* * *

Today, commodity prices across the board, from coffee to carbon fiber, remain near 25-year highs. High oil prices are not a unique phenomenon, but just another commodity whose price is determined primarily by the value of the dollar. Expensive oil isn't exclusively a monetary event, of course: Risk and demand matter, too. But in comparing oil to other commodities, especially gold, we find that elevated risk and demand explains only $10-$15 of the higher oil price; $30 of the price is explained by a weak, inflationary dollar. The entity most responsible for expensive oil is thus the Fed.

For more evidence of the centrality of the dollar's value, consider what happened to oil just a few years ago. In 1998 the price of crude plunged to $10 per barrel. At the time, China had been growing at 10% per year for 20 years, the U.S. economy was growing fast at 4%, and the Middle East was typically if not maximally volatile, with Saddam testing the U.N. inspection process and the U.S. sending Tomahawks back his way. Demand and geopolitical volatility were fairly high in 1998, and ominous "peak oil" theories had been around for a while; yet oil was just a seventh of today's price. Other commodity prices were also at multidecade lows, with gold sinking below $275 per ounce (versus today's $640). The common factor was a superstrong currency -- a severe shortage of dollars. This deflation roiled world markets and bankrupted many companies and nations with dollar debts: Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Argentina.

The deflationary dollar sent a struggling but oil-rich Russia over the edge into default. Russia today supposedly has some magical power to set world prices, yet in 1998 oil was $60 less expensive, and a desperate Russia was helpless to achieve higher prices. Even after 9/11 and the take-down of the Taliban, oil still traded at $20 per barrel. Adjusted for inflation, this was the price of oil in 1970 -- and in 1960, and 1950.

Then the Fed started making inflationary mistakes. Alan Greenspan's liquidity injections after 9/11 had mercifully relieved the deflation of 1997 to 2001, but the Fed overdid it. By leaving interest rates at 1% for far too long in 2003-04 and then raising interest rates far too slowly through 2006 -- even though the economy and commodity prices had long since recovered -- the Fed weakened the dollar and juiced oil prices. The Fed can make these mistakes because it watches old data like the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) deflator, possibly the most backward-looking of all price indicators. It can take five years or more before Fed actions find their way through the web of global commerce and contracts and finally show up in the PCE deflator. The dollar weakening of 1985-86, for example, did not cause a peak in measured inflation until 1990. By then the damage was done.

People say oil supply-lines are "tight," but that's what happens with all goods in an inflationary environment. Buyers buy before prices further rise. Monetary velocity -- the turnover of currency -- takes off. It looks like there are "shortages," but in fact there is only a shortage at the old price. The opposite happens with a strong, or deflationary, dollar. As currency becomes more valuable, buyers hold on to the money, waiting for cheaper prices later. Velocity plummets. The apparent result is "gluts" of goods. Markets and supply-lines appear "loose."

Because dollar weakness hits commodities first but eventually filters through every product, service and asset in the world economy, high oil prices won't yield as much real wealth to suppliers tomorrow as today. The prices of things they can buy with oil money will have risen as well. Rogue oil nations will thus not enjoy as much of an increase in power as it might appear today. Alternative fuel sources and schemes, supposedly now in play because of high oil prices, also become less economically feasible if most of the increased oil price is due to dollar devaluation. Moreover, if the Fed gets control of the dollar, the price of oil could fall substantially. It is these periods of transition, where the value of the currency is changing fast, but before price changes filter through all commerce and contracts, when financial and political disruptions often take place.

A third oil flashpoint dominates our thinking. We are told there is a race to secure scarce resources, a zero-sum struggle that points to an inevitable clash between the U.S. and China. But there is no inherent shortage of oil. One tiny shale formation right in America's backyard -- the 1,200 square mile Piceance Basin of western Colorado -- contains a trillion barrels, more than all the proven reserves in the world. Vast open spaces across the globe remain unexplored or untapped. None of this is to say we don't need more energy from more diverse sources. We do, and we should encourage the entrepreneurial pursuit of a range of new technologies. But basing our energy policies on a misunderstanding of why the oil price is so high could severely jeopardize our economy and international security.

Mr. Swanson is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

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Question
What's wrong with "earmarked" research funding?

"K Street and Colleges," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/09/earmarks

Four million dollars goes a long way at Glenville State College. It may seem unlikely that the tiny West Virginia institution would see that much federal money in a single spending bill, but that’s about what Glenville got in the 2006 appropriations legislation for science and other programs.

That was just one of dozens of earmarks in the bill, and one of several that set aside more than $1 million for institutions from Mississippi and West Virginia, homes of the Republican chairman and the ranking Democrat, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Whether earmarks — funds that a member of Congress directs to recipients without the peer-review process that federal agencies use to dole out most research funds — are dangerously and increasingly undermining peer review, or simply a way that legislators can look out for constituents, depends on who’s talking.

The question, however, has been put into greater relief for higher education officials in the wake of a letter from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) asking 111 institutions (a list is available here) to send him information on all of the money they have received from earmarks since 2000, and whether they have considered paying lobbyists to help secure the earmarks.

The letter from Coburn, a vocal opponent of earmarks, has been interpreted by some experts as an attempt to find examples of wasteful earmarks that might be used to combat the practice of earmarking — often derided as “pork-barrel spending” — altogether. John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, said that the senator is particularly interested in finding out whether there’s a “pay to play” system that forces colleges to waste money by “spending extravagantly” on lobbyists.

Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said that AAAS’s position is that peer review is the “highest quality way to allocate funds,” he said, “but we recognize that there are many different ways to allocate funds.”

Koizumi added that some federal objectives, such as building research capacity in geographical areas wihout huge research infrastructures, may not have the possibility of getting funded through a competitive grant process.

The Glenville State money, for example, was for science laboratories, equipment and programs, according to the legislation.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at

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Coffins Made of Heavy Steel
(IsraelNN.com) IDF officials admit that the biggest surprise of the ongoing war against Hizbullah is the ease by which terrorists have destroyed IDF tanks. At least 30 tanks have been totally destroyed or seriously damaged in bomb and anti-tank rocket attacks involving state-of-the-art Russian anti-tank rockets. About one-half of the military personnel killed in southern Lebanon were inside tanks.
Israel National News, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=109793

Since the beginning of the operation, Israel has scored some impressive successes. In addition to the long-range rockets that have been wiped out, the IDF has also destroyed Hizbullah's elite units, and killed close to 500 other gunmen. The operations of Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) in Baalbek, and of Shayetet 13 (Navy Commandos) in Tyre, were also impressive, demonstrating the IDF's long-arm capabilities. But alongside the success, the high-ranking officer admitted, it was difficult to ignore the difficulty Israel was having in defeating Hizbullah on the ground inside southern Lebanon. As of Thursday morning, 82 soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the operation. It was also difficult, he said, to ignore Israel's overall failure to stop the Katyusha rocket attacks, still close to 200 a day.
Yaakov Katz, "Security and Defense: Extended standstill," Jerusalem Post, August 11, 2006 --- Click Here

Ask senior officers about Israel's achievements in this war, and you will get an answer that usually includes the words "restored deterrence."

For six years - these officers will explain - Israel allowed Hizbullah to build up a formidable force on the other side of the border. The quiet along the north - they will assert - was deceptive; it was Israel that was scared of Hizbullah - not the other way around, not the way it used to be following Israel's wars of the past.

Continued in article

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Critics call the Deleting Online Predators Act an election-year stunt that could do lasting damage to youth culture and education.

"The Moral Panic over Social-Networking Sites," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, August 8, 2006 ---http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17266&ch=infotech

The social-networking site MySpace has 95 million registered users. If it were a country, it would be the 12th largest in the world (ranking between Mexico and the Philippines). But under a bill designed to combat sexual predators on the Internet, MySpace and similar sites would become countries that young people can't visit -- at least not using computers at schools or libraries.

The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in May by Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), was passed by a vote of 410 to 15 on July 26. It requires, with few exemptions, that facilities receiving federal aid block minors from accessing commercial social-networking sites and chat rooms, where they might encounter adults seeking sexual contact.

The bill has now moved on to the Senate. Critics from the worlds of educational technology and media studies say they're alarmed that the legislation has advanced this far. They warn that it would do little to stop sexual predators, but would deprive youth from poor areas of their only access to the online communities that are an increasingly critical part of teen culture. To these critics, the act is an election-year stunt designed to make any member of Congress who opposes it look "soft" on sexual predators.

It's a "monumentally ill-considered piece of legislation" that "by any rational measure" should never have left the House, says Henry Jenkins, professor of literature and director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. Jenkins believes the act plays on parents' lack of understanding, and their resulting fears, about their kids' activities on the Internet. "But the price of standing up to that fear may be too high for liberal Democrats," he says.

If the Senate approves a similar bill and the legislation reaches President Bush's desk, the price to young people will be even higher, say Jenkins and other critics. "If it would actually prevent predation, I would be fine with it," says Danah Boyd, a PhD candidate in the School of Information Management Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who is considered one of the leading scholarly authorities on social-networking sites. "But it's not going to help at all. Out of 300,000 child abductions every year, only 12 are by strangers. This is just going to stifle the social-networking industry and completely segment youth around economic status."

The impact on youth from economically disadvantaged families is what Jenkins worries about most. "Already, you have a gap between kids who have 10 minutes of Internet access a day at the public library and kids who have 24-hour-a-day access at home," he says. "Already, we have filters in libraries [required under the Child Internet Protection Act of 2001] blocking access to much of the Internet. Now we're talking about adding even more restrictions. It exaggerates the 'participation gap' -- not a technology gap, but a difference in access to the defining cultural experiences that take place around technology today."

From The Washington Post on August 8, 2006

Google says it reached a deal to become the exclusive search provider for MySpace.com. Approximately how many users does the online hangout have?

A. 10 million
B. 50 million
C. 100 million
D. 200 million
 

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How to Improve Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia for which anyone may write and edit, is now in its sixth year and has nearly 1.3 million articles in English. Recently, Wikipedians from around the world gathered in Cambridge, MA, to discuss, among other things, how to make the enormous online encyclopedia more accurate, more organized, and easier to use. Author and Web expert Lawrence Lessig referred to the conference, known as Wikimania 2006, as "the Woodstock of the 21st century."
Susan Nasr, "Cofounder Jimmy Wales updates Technology Review on Wikipedia," MIT's Technology Review, August 8, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17273&ch=infotech

Also see http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17264

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"Online Grocery Shopping: Way To Go? Susan Koeppen Tests Four Of The Bigger Services," CBS News, July 28, 2006 --- http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/28/earlyshow/living/ConsumerWatch/main1844539.shtml

You can almost anything via your computer, even your groceries.

But do the companies that provide the service deliver on their promises of quality?

On The Early Show Friday, consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen came through with the scoop on buying food the high-tech way.

She says the millions of consumers who do their grocery shopping online are expected to spend more than $4 billion on it this year.

Among them, Gennifer Calise, a working Manhattan mother of a ten-month-old, who summed up her reasons for going that route when she told Koeppen it's "quicker and easier."

Calise gets her shopping done in 15 minutes by clicking away, while a typical trip to the supermarket takes her about an hour. And that doesn't include much travel time: Calise buys online even though the supermarket she buys from is on the ground floor of her apartment building!

"I am not lugging my son to the grocery store and lugging him back," she says. "I can be here and play with him on the floor and be clicking online at the same time.

"These days, having a kid and a full time job, I don't do anything that isn't easy. S I wouldn't be doing it if it didn't make a difference."

Calise adds that most of her friends buy food online, and Koeppen notes that most of the consumers shopping online for groceries are women.

 

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Online shoppng facts:

In 2005, $3.3 billion was spent on online grocery shopping. That's projected to hit $4.2 billion this year, and double, to $8.4 billion, by 2010. Overall, groceries are a $640 billion business. There are currently five million people who shop online for groceries, and that's only makes up 2% of the online population.

 

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Koeppen herself gave four of the major online grocery providers a try, and reported on how she fared with each of them.

PEAPOD.COM

Koeppen's order came in grocery bags. She ordered many items in hopes of planning a fun family picnic. The hotdogs she ordered were not in the bags. There was no substitution in the bag, so no hotdogs. She received everything else on her grocery list. The prices online were all comparable to those in the brick and mortar supermarket. The site is user friendly. Customers are able to search for foods that are categorized by section. Once in a selected department, you can sort foods by price, specials, popularity, calories, fat, carbs, cholesterol, dietary fiber, kosher, organic, protein, sodium, and sugars. That's great for people who love to read labels! The site gives delivery times to choose from, and the order arrived right on time.

The good:

-The whipped cream and yogurts came cold
-The strawberries were all great looking

The bad:

-No hotdogs, no substitution offered
-Flowers: Ordered a bouquet of flowers. Online, they were pictured as purple. They arrived in white. This was probably a substitution.
-Cheese platter presentation was unattractive and the cheese was really warm. Looked like pieces of the cheese were missing.
-Beans: The can was dented. Susan wouldn't buy a dented can in the actual supermarket.

About Peapod.com:

-Largest online grocery store
-Since inception 17 years ago, has delivered to 8 million customers
-From June '05 to June '06, had 250,000 active customers
-12,000 customers a day go to the Web site
-Has perishables.
-Serves Connecticut, New York, Rhode island, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, the rest of the New England coast, Chicago and Milwaukee.
-Associated with Stop & Shop and Giant on East Coast. Those stores offer bonus packages and you can use that online to get additional discounts. The online site keeps your profile in its memory.
-Site organizes many of its products by nutritional value, sodium, fiber, calories. That's helpful to people on a variety of diets, and to picky eaters. You can also sort by price.
-Delivery: $100 and over is $6.95. $100 and under costs $9.95.
-Customers can save additional money online by using manufacturers' coupons and by selecting less desirable delivery times.
-Grocery packers aren't in stores, but warehouses, to control quality and out-of-stock items. If something is out-of-stock, customers have the option of substituting a similar item.
-There is a 100 percent guarantee on food. You can get a refund if you are not happy.

(CBS) FRESHDIRECT.COM

All groceries came in boxes, except for the frozen goods. On the Web site, they feature a link to different recipes. Customers have the option to buy all the ingredients to make that recipe. Koeppen loved that feature. She ordered the ingredients for ten-minute chili. The frozen food came in a separate bag. Everything inside the bag was cold. Two eggs out of a dozen came cracked. Everything was packaged tightly in different boxes, except for the frozen goods. The deli meats were also impressive. The site gives consumers the option to cube cheese, or have your deli meat cut regular, thin, or thick. All was done as ordered. The fruits were all very fresh. This site also offers nutritional information on its products. The site gives delivery times to choose from. The order came right on time. Company has return policy and will refund the money on the cracked eggs.

About FreshDirect:

-Freshness guarantee: Company prides itself in the high quality of its fresh food and packaged goods. It guarantees your satisfaction with every product, every time.
-Rapidly expanding. Currently serves most of Manhattan and locations in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and parts of Long Island, New Jersey and Westchester.
-Claims 25,000 - 35,000 unique shoppers come to the site each day
-Most popular items on the site: pizzas, fresh dining meals, stir fry kits, croissants, fruit (bananas, strawberries), Veggies (broccoli, carrots, cucumbers).

Rates:

Manhattan, and New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens: $4.95 delivery charge
Riverdale (a section of the New York City borough of the Bronx): $4.95 for orders over $100, and $6.95 for orders under $100
Westchester (northern suburb of New York City): $5.95 for orders over $100, $7.95 for orders $75-100, and $9.95 for orders under $75
New Jersey: $5.95 delivery charge

AMAZON.COM

Non-perishables: There were specialty items on this new grocery section. They did not have Poland Spring water, but they did have Zico Pure Coconut Water. Koeppen could not find one of her favorites: Hershey kisses. She did order Back to Nature all natural cereal, Kraft Easy Mac Cups, Milk Bone original dog treats, nuts, Bounty paper towels. All of these items are bought in bulk. Amazon offers free shipping nationwide with purchases over $25. Koeppen found the Web site more challenging to navigate than the others.

About Amazon.com:

-Features more than 14,000 non-perishable food and household items; lots of dry goods, such as packaged cereals and canned food
-Only shop organic? From Alter Eco to Wild Oats, from Wolfgang Puck soups to Sun Ridge Farms nuts, Amazon Grocery has nearly 7,000 organic products to choose from.
-Ships in Bulk
-Does not offer returns, but if there is a problem with the product, will send a replacement.

NETGROCER.COM

There were lots of organic and natural groceries on this site. Some prices higher than in the grocery store, such as that of protein bars. Others, such as baby food, were the same. All the items (non perishable) came via FedEx and were packed nicely, and you don't have to be home when the food arrives. Everything was fresh, but the bag of tortillas was crushed and the tortillas were ruined.

About Netgrocer.com:

-FedEx shipping, based on how many dollars are being spent
-30,000 items shipped nationwide and worldwide
-100,000 customers have used the site
-Return policy: 100 percent guarantee: refund or new shipment
-Non perishables right now, but will start offering perishables in about two months
-Since 1997, Netgrocer says, it has been the premier online provider of "hard-to-find" brands, regional favorites, and other specialty non-perishable groceries.

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Garth Barth Brooks Has Friends in Wal-Mart (video) --- http://www.walmartworkersrights.org/

Question
In economics, what is the Phillips Curve?

From Wikipedia --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Curve

The New Zealand-born economist A.W. Phillips, in his 1958 paper "The relationship between unemployment and the rate of change of money wages in the UK 1861-1957" published in Economica, observed an inverse relationship between money wage changes and unemployment in the British economy over the period examined. Similar patterns were found in other countries and in 1960 Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow took Phillips' work and made explicit the link between inflation and unemployment—when inflation was high, unemployment was low, and vice-versa.

It is little known that the American economist Irving Fisher pointed to this kind of Phillips curve relationship back in the 1920s. On the other hand, Phillips' original curve described the behavior of money wages. So some believe that the PC should be called the "Fisher curve."

In the years following his 1958 paper, many economists in the advanced industrial countries believed that Phillips' results showed that there was a permanently stable relationship between inflation and unemployment. One implication of this for government policy was that governments could control unemployment and inflation within a Keynesian policy. They could tolerate a reasonably high rate of inflation as this would lead to lower unemployment – there would be a trade-off between inflation and unemployment. For example, monetary policy and/or fiscal policy (i.e., deficit spending) could be used to stimulate the economy, raising gross domestic product and lowering the unemployment rate. Moving along the Phillips curve, this would lead to a higher inflation rate, the cost of enjoying lower unemployment rates.

The Phillips Curve makes a comeback at the Fed.
"A Pause That Digresses," The Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2006; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115508135412330481.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Your editorial on Chicago's recently passed living wage ordinance for retail workers ("The Red Lining of Chicago," Review & Outlook, July 31), suggests that Americans must choose between low prices and decent wages. That's a false choice. Cities such as Santa Fe and San Francisco, which have raised their local minimum wages to $9.50 and $8.82 respectively, have found that large retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Sam's Club and Toys "R" Us have adjusted, and are still offering consumers low prices.
Paul Sonn, "Prices Versus Wages: A False Dichotomy," The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2006; Page A9 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115534282730833937.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
Jensen Comment
Sonn's argument illustrates a type of anecdotal evidence that hardly negates Philips Curve theory. Higher minimum wages in two or even a few cities allows those cities to benefit as free riders on lower wages in nearly 4,000 Wal-Mart stores, numerous warehouses, and distribution networks across the U.S. Raising the minimum wage in all companies nationwide will have a much larger multiplier impact on pricing and/or job losses. Resisting a rise in the nationwide minimum wage is not politically correct, but it's naive to suggest higher minimum wages will not affect pricing, job losses, offshore manufacturing, and hiring of illegal aliens.

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Question
What is the new "Leopard Operating System?"

"Apple's Newest Bells and Whistles," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, August 8, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/TR/posts.aspx?id=17276

Yesterday Apple announced a partial list of the features to come with the newest version of its operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, due next spring. The announcement was made at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco (August 7-11), where more than 4,000 software developers have gathered to talk shop.

Here's a rundown of three improvements planned for Leopard. All 10 announced features can be found here -- you may need to download the latest version of Quicktime to view some features.

-- Boot Camp, the application that allows Windows to be run on a Mac, will be integrated into the new operating system. Currently, a test version of it is available for download at Apple's site. Those who have an Intel-based Mac can use it to switch between Mac OS X and Windows on the same computer. With Boot Camp embedded into Leopard, Apple may be removing the long-standing barrier that has kept many people from buying Macs.

-- Time Machine is a new application designed to make backing up a hard drive easier. According to Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, only about 26 percent of computer users back up their files, and only 4 percent use automated software to back up regularly. To keep all those photos and music files safe from a crash, Time Machine automatically saves everything -- pictures, music, documents, applications -- to an external hard drive or server. One can also pick and choose what to save, but the application's default setting saves an extra copy of everything. The added feature here is the ability to access every version of a file ever saved. Time Machine also provides a neat interface that "zooms" back in time as one looks for, say, a specific file that was saved months ago.

-- One of the useful advances in the previous Mac operating system, Tiger, is an application called Dashboard. It has "widgets" -- tiny applications that might include, say, a dictionary, weather map, or sports scores. They provide instant information from the Internet without using a web browser. In Leopard, widgets will be customizable, so that any web page, or part of a page, can be turned into a widget. It can be used to get instant access to, for instance, New York Times best sellers, eBay auction updates, or live Web cams.

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Question
What is Microsoft saying to hackers about "Vista?"

"Microsoft to Hackers: Try to Break Vista," MIT's Technology Review, August 4, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17267

After suffering embarrassing security exploits over the past several years, Microsoft Corp. is trying a new tactic: inviting some of the world's best-known computer experts to try to poke holes in Vista, the next generation of its Windows operating system. Microsoft made a test version of Vista available to about 3,000 security professionals Thursday as it detailed the steps it has taken to fortify the product against attacks that can compromise bank account numbers and other sensitive information. ''You need to touch it, feel it,'' Andrew Cushman, Microsoft's director of security outreach, said during a talk at the Black Hat computer-security conference. ''We're here to show our work.'' Microsoft has faced blistering criticism for security holes that have led to network outages and business disruptions for its customers. After being accused for not putting enough resources into shoring up its products, the software maker is trying to convince outsiders that it has changed. ''They're going directly to the bear in the bear's lair,'' says Jon Callas, the chief technology officer at PGP Corp., which makes encryption software and other security products. ''They are going to people who don't like them, say nasty things and have the incentive to find the things that are wrong.'' Due early next year, Vista is the first product to be designed from scratch under a Microsoft program dubbed secure development life cycle, which represents a sea change in the company's approach to bringing out new products. Instead of placing the addition of compelling new features at the top of engineers' priority list, Microsoft now requires them to first consider how code might be misused. A security team with oversight of every Microsoft product -- from its Xbox video game console to its Word program for creating documents -- has broad authority to block shipments until they pass security tests. The company also hosts two internal conferences a year so some of the world's top security experts can share the latest research on computer attacks. Cushman said the presentations have already paid off. One talk, delivered in March by a security expert named Johnny Long, detailed a new way to identify security holes using Google. Shortly after the talk, a Microsoft manager applied the technique and discovered a customer was at risk because it hadn't properly set up a computer that was running SQL, a database program that competes with business programs sold by Oracle Corp. But internal conferences are one matter. Taking Vista to Black Hat, where some of the world's foremost security gurus annually make sport of ripping through programming code to find bugs, is another. ''The fact that they're releasing it here is probably a bold statement,'' said Mike Janosko, a security expert with Ernst & Young who has been reviewing Vista for several months. On the Net: http://www.blackhat.com

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Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-2007 Edition --- http://www.bls.gov/oco/home.htm

For hundreds of different types of jobs—such as teacher, lawyer, and nurse—the Occupational Outlook Handbook tells you:

• the training and education needed
• earnings
• expected job prospects
• what workers do on the job
• working conditions

In addition, the Handbook gives you job search tips, links to information about the job market in each State, and more.

Accountants and Auditors --- http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos001.htm

Employment of accountants and auditors is expected to grow faster than average for all occupations through the year 2014. An increase in the number of businesses, changing financial laws and regulations, and increased scrutiny of company finances will drive growth. In addition to openings resulting from growth, the need to replace accountants and auditors who retire or transfer to other occupations will produce numerous job openings in this large occupation.

As the economy grows, the number of business establishments will increase, requiring more accountants and auditors to set up books, prepare taxes, and provide management advice. As these businesses grow, the volume and complexity of information developed by accountants and auditors regarding costs, expenditures, and taxes will increase as well. An increased need for accountants and auditors will arise from changes in legislation related to taxes, financial reporting standards, business investments, mergers, and other financial events. The growth of international business also has led to more demand for accounting expertise and services related to international trade and accounting rules, as well as to international mergers and acquisitions. These trends should create more jobs for accountants and auditors.

As a result of accounting scandals at several large corporate companies, Congress passed legislation in an effort to curb corporate accounting fraud. This legislation requires public companies to maintain well-functioning internal controls to ensure the accuracy and reliability of their financial reporting. It also holds the company’s chief executive personally responsible for falsely reporting financial information.

These changes should lead to increased scrutiny of company finances and accounting procedures and should create opportunities for accountants and auditors, particularly CPAs, to audit financial records more thoroughly. In order to ensure that finances comply with the law before public accountants conduct audits, management accountants and internal auditors increasingly will be needed to discover and eliminate fraud. Also, in an effort to make government agencies more efficient and accountable, demand for government accountants should increase.

Increased awareness of financial crimes such as embezzlement, bribery, and securities fraud will increase the demand for forensic accountants, to detect illegal financial activity by individuals, companies, and organized crime rings. Computer technology has made these crimes easier to commit, and they are on the rise. At the same time, the development of new computer software and electronic surveillance technology has made tracking down financial criminals easier, thus increasing the ease with which, and likelihood that, forensic accountants will discover their crimes. As success rates of investigations grow, demand also will grow for forensic accountants.

The changing role of accountants and auditors also will spur job growth, although this growth will be limited as a result of financial scandals. In response to demand, some accountants were offering more financial management and consulting services as they assumed a greater advisory role and developed more sophisticated accounting systems. Because Federal legislation now prohibits accountants from providing nontraditional services to clients whose books they audit, opportunities for accountants to offer such services could be limited. However, accountants will still be able to advise on other financial matters for clients that are not publicly traded companies and for nonaudit clients, but growth in these areas will be slower than in the past. Also, due to the increasing popularity of tax preparation firms and computer software, accountants will shift away from tax preparation. As computer programs continue to simplify some accounting-related tasks, clerical staff will increasingly handle many routine calculations.

Overall, job opportunities for accountants and auditors should be favorable. After most States instituted the 150-hour rule for CPAs, enrollment in accounting programs declined; however, enrollment is slowly beginning to grow again as more students become attracted to the profession because of the attention from the accounting scandals. Those who earn a CPA should have excellent job prospects. However, many accounting graduates are instead pursuing other certifications, such as the CMA and CIA, so job prospects may not be as favorable in management accounting and internal auditing as in public accounting. Regardless of specialty, accountants and auditors who have earned professional recognition through certification or licensure should have the best job prospects. Applicants with a master’s degree in accounting, or a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting, also will have an advantage. In the aftermath of the accounting scandals, professional certification is even more important in order to ensure that accountants’ credentials and ethics are sound.

Proficiency in accounting and auditing computer software, or expertise in specialized areas such as international business, specific industries, or current legislation, may be helpful in landing certain accounting and auditing jobs. In addition, employers increasingly are seeking applicants with strong interpersonal and communication skills. Because many accountants work on teams with others from different backgrounds, they must be able to communicate accounting and financial information clearly and concisely. Regardless of one’s qualifications, however, competition will remain keen for the most prestigious jobs in major accounting and business firms.

Bob Jensen's threads on accountancy careers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

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Rewarding Stupidity of Top Athletes

"Remove the Worm From the Apple," by Steve Bahls, Inside Higher Ed, August 8, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/08/bahls

The average Division I football and basketball player today comes to college with academic credentials that differ from those of their fellow students. Once they matriculate, athletes often cluster in a few choice majors — like interdisciplinary studies or recreation — more hospitable to the less than serious student. At many schools, athletes register before the average Joe or Jane, so they can skim off the cream courses recommended by their advisers.

Grade point averages in the big money sports often trail their non-sports campus peers, and graduation rates can be embarrassingly low.

These prized students often eat at exclusive “training tables,” with the phony justification that eating the same food available to regular students will not provide them with “the necessary nutrition.” Peruse the creature comforts of Division I athletics departments compared to those in philosophy, sociology or history. The former usually features state-of-the art facilities and technology; the latter is vastly more modest.

When colleges exempt athletes from the rules applicable to other students, the institutions shouldn’t be surprised that the athletes feel exempt from expectations of responsible conduct applicable to us all. Combine that with the media hype involving Division I athletics and it’s no wonder that there is a worm in the apple of big time college sports.

If I sound bitter, it is quite the contrary. As president of a Division III college, I am delighted to see the educational opportunities college sports offer to young men and women who otherwise may not get that most precious opportunity. I’ve seen how athletes grow in mind, body and spirit through their participation in sports and I greatly admire the lessons learned on the playing field. Likewise, I relish the concept that college sports teach a hard work ethic, the value of teamwork and the spirit of camaraderie.

But I do worry that Division I sports is ill-serving far too many young people. And I challenge the NCAA to accelerate the reform movement promised in the recent past. What has happened to cries of turning down the volume in college sports? The media won’t turn down the volume, so college presidents must exercise their leadership.

I strongly believe Division I sports can learn something from Division III, where the athletes play sans scholarships and typically without the promise of future sports riches. Most importantly, Division III athletes live and breathe not in the rarified air of a sports subculture, but, when they are out of uniform, just like other students on campus.

I don’t expect Michigan, Ohio State and UCLA to dismantle proud (and profitable) athletics programs, and I strongly believe that would be a foolish mistake. But I do believe the subculture of today’s big-time college athlete is a problem that demands open debate and sweeping solutions.

Here are five simple questions Division I sports administrators should ask of themselves: Are our athletes representative of the student body in terms of admissions and financial aid considerations? Are our athletes in revenue sports of football and basketball studying only in a select few majors? Is it uncommon for athletes to participate in other campus organizations or to take advantage of opportunities for international study? Are our athletes’ GPAs and graduation rates in line with the student body? Upon graduating, are our athletes prepared for graduate study and/or careers?

Continued in article

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

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Virtues and Values of Learning Accountability Assessments of College Graduates
Much of the emphasis on accountability measurement has as its premise the highly destructive goal of homogenizing the content and process of American higher education so that all students have the same experience and the same process. This centralizing drive comforts regulators, but it does not reflect the reality of the marketplace. As we have emphasized before, the American commitment to universal access to higher education requires a high level of variability in institutions, in the educational process, and in the outcomes. We do need good data from our institutions about what they do and what success their graduates have, but we do not need elaborate, centralized, homogeneity enforced by an ever more intrusive regulatory apparatus.
John V. Lombardi, "Virtues and Vices of ‘Value Added’," Inside Higher Ed, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/10/lombardi
John V. Lombardi, chancellor and a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

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

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The National Education Database Controversy
The president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities reiterated its intense opposition to the federal higher education commission’s proposal to create a federal database of student academic records in a letter to the panel’s chairman Tuesday. David L. Warren, who has been the most persistent and vociferous critic of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, said the “cradle-to-grave database” would invade students’ privacy and open sensitive information to security risks. The letter also urges the panel to abandon its calls to “dismantle” the federal student-aid programs and to try to compare all institutions using similar measures of student outcomes.
Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/09/qt

Also see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/07/unitrecord 

One by one, the members of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education offered their support for the panel’s report except for one dissenting skeptic
In some ways, Ward’s decision was not surprising; the cautious, evenhanded leader had expressed uncharacteristically vociferous displeasure about the first draft of the commission’s report, and some of his constituents — particularly the nearly 1,000 private colleges that are also members of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, led by its president, David L. Warren — have aggressively opposed many of the panel’s ideas. But Ward also knew that opposing the panel’s work could open him and higher education generally to the oft-heard charge (oft-heard, among others, from the commission’s chairman, Charles Miller) that colleges are reluctant to acknowledge their flaws and unwilling to undertake significant change.
Doug Lederman, "18 Yesses, 1 Major No," Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/11/commission

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

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College Officials Unhappy with MyRichUncle
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has released a new statement denouncing the advertising campaign being used by MyRichUncle, a new lender trying to shake up the student loan market. The aid group said that the new company’s campaign discourages students from trusting their aid officers. MyRichUncle’s ads suggest that aid officials at some campuses are trying to steer students to certain loans, based on cozy arrangements between lenders and aid officers.
Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/11/qt

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Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the 21st Century Academy
At the end of the day, the hope of these two kinds of projects — internal multicultural dialogue and external multicultural collaboration — is that we all come to value diverse groups, not just diverse individuals. We will do this by expanding the lesson of citizenship from one purely about individual rights to one about connectivity and responsibility — and the social embedding of individuality. We’ll learn that we are all in this together, and we can’t just make creating opportunity someone else’s project. If this works, then I believe that, at least in this regard, presidents will sleep at night, and, more importantly, universities will make a difference in promoting social justice and universal human rights.
Syracuse Presidential Address by Nancy Cantor, "Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the 21st Century Academy," Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/11/cantor 

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"Computer scientists put social network theory to the test," Inside Higher Ed, August 10, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74442289.html

Ever since 1969, when psychologists Jeffery Travers and Stanley Milgram first explained that everyone was separated by only six connections from anyone else, researchers have created theoretical models of the networks that societies create.

 Now, computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science have devised an ingenious experiment to put such theories to the test.

The findings, which appear today in the journal Science, have implications for many forms of social interaction, from disaster management to how many friends connect to your MySpace page. The Penn researchers have found that some of the simplest social networks function the most poorly and that information beyond a "local" view of the network can actually hinder the ability of some complicated social networks to accomplish tasks.

"Travers and Milgram's classic six degrees of separation experiment was one of the first large-scale attempts at studying a human network, but almost 40 years later the interaction between social network structure and collective problem solving is still largely a matter of theoretical conjecture," said Michael Kearns, a professor in Penn's Computer and Information Science Department. "Our goal was to initiate a controlled, behavioral component of social network studies that lets us deliberately vary network structure and examine its impact on human behavior and performance."

To empirically test a number of standard network theories, Kearns and Penn doctoral students Siddharth Suri and Nick Montfort gathered 38 Penn undergraduate students at a time to play a game of color selection on networked computers. The game required each of the students to choose a color that did not match the color of any person who was immediately connected to him or her in the network. The researchers changed the patterns of the networked connections -- that is, who was connected to whom -- in ways that corresponded to the theoretical models.

"This coloring problem models social situations in which each person needs or wants to distinguish his or her behavior or choices from neighboring parties", Kearns said. "A good modern example is choosing a ringtone for your cell phone. You don't want to choose one that is the same as a family member or a colleague in the next cubicle. But if there's a limit to the number of available ringtones, you may have a difficult collective problem of coordination. In our experiments, many of the networks were quite dense with connections, and the colors were very few, so they were hard coloring problems."

The tests allowed Kearns and his colleagues to examine, in real time, how well networks of people work together to solve coloring problems. They performed a number of trials based on each model, looking at the speed at which the trial was completed and varying how much information subjects had about what colors were being selected elsewhere in the network. The Science paper describes six different network models that were tested.

The first three of the tests began with a circular structure, like a 38-member daisy chain. These networks represent a "small world" network that models a local area, such as a small group in a single town, mixed with the occasional cross-town relationship. The simplest of these, a single circular chain, was actually the most difficult for the subjects, but the more connections made across the circle, the faster the test was completed.

The fourth model represented a more engineered or hierarchical structure: a circle with two individuals that have many more connections than the rest. This model proved the easiest for the subjects: once each of the two "commanders" picked a color, everyone else unwittingly fell into place, despite the fact that nobody was told anything about the network structure or could see anything but the colors of immediate neighbors.

The last two tests studied so-called preferential attachment models, well studied networks in which many parties are highly connected. These models look something like maps of the Internet. Unlike the more circular models, here Kearns found that a complete view of the color selections across the entire network actually led to confusion among members of the network.

"We see that social networks with more connectivity aren't necessarily more efficient, but that it depends strongly on the collective problem being solved", Kearns said. "Less connectivity and less information about the network can sometimes make the problem easier. But now we have an experimental framework in which we can systematically investigate how social network structure influences actual human performance."

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Privatization and Public Universities
The cover of Privatization and Public Universities features a brick campus wall with a “For Sale” sign taped to it. The collection of essays arrives from Indiana University Press at a time that many fear that public universities and their values may indeed be for sale — as states pull back from their role providing both funds and leadership for public higher education. Two scholars of higher education — Edward P. St. John of the University of Michigan and Douglas M. Priest of Indiana University — edited the collection and answered questions about its themes.
Scott Jaschik, "‘Privatization and Public Universities’," Inside Higher Ed, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/10/private

Large public universities are thinking about the P-word even though they avoid using it

"At Public Universities, Warnings of Privatization," by Sam Dillon, The New York Times, October 16, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/education/16college.html

Taxpayer support for public universities, measured per student, has plunged more precipitously since 2001 than at any time in two decades, and several university presidents are calling the decline a de facto privatization of the institutions that played a crucial role in the creation of the American middle class.

Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, said this year that skyrocketing tuition was a result of what he called "public higher education's slow slide toward privatization."

Other educators have made similar assertions, some avoiding the term "privatization" but nonetheless describing a crisis that they say is transforming public universities. At an academic forum last month, John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that during the years after World War II, America built the world's greatest system of public higher education.

"We're now in the process of dismantling all that," Dr. Wiley said.

The share of all public universities' revenues deriving from state and local taxes declined to 64 percent in 2004 from 74 percent in 1991. At many flagship universities, the percentages are far smaller. About 25 percent of the University of Illinois's budget comes from the state. Michigan finances about 18 percent of Ann Arbor's revenues. The taxpayer share of revenues at the University of Virginia is about 8 percent.

"At those levels, we have to ask what it means to be a public institution," said Katharine C. Lyall, an economist and president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin. "America is rapidly privatizing its public colleges and universities, whose mission used to be to serve the public good. But if private donors and corporations are providing much of a university's budget, then they will set the agenda, perhaps in ways the public likes and perhaps not. Public control is slipping away."

Not everyone agrees with the doomsday talk. Some experts who study university finance say the declines are only part of a familiar cycle in which legislatures cut the budgets of public universities more radically than other state agencies during recession but restore financing when good times return, said Paul E. Lingenfelter, president of State Higher Education Executive Officers, a nonprofit association.

"Let's not panic and say that the public commitment to higher education has fundamentally changed," Dr. Lingenfelter said. "Let's just say that these cycles happen, and get back to work to restore the funding."

But the future of hundreds of universities and colleges has become a subject of anxious debate nationwide. At stake are institutions that carry out much of the country's public-interest research and educate nearly 80 percent of all college students, and whose scientific and technological innovation has been crucial to America's economic dominance.

Continued in article

Privatization controversies in higher education are discussed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PrivatizationIssues

---

Question
What's a Yahoo, Wal-Mart online avatar?

"Yahoo, Wal-Mart Build a Virtual Catwalk Contest Puts the Retailer's Fashions on Users' Avatars," by Yuki Noguchi, The Washington Post, August 10, 2006 --- Click Here

It's a marketing pitch, of course: The biggest Web site in the world wants more users to think about developing an online profile, complete with an avatar, a cartoonish replica of oneself. And the world's largest retailer wants a chance to hook in with the fashionable Internet set.

At stake: Five (real) $100 Wal-Mart gift cards for the winners, and a shot at fame -- for their avatars.

As the Internet comes of age, more companies are trying to make it possible for Web users to give their online presence a lifelike personality -- or at least a lifelike appearance. AOL, for example, gives its users the option of choosing 3-D avatars that laugh, shake their heads and respond to things written during an instant-message conversation.

. . .

To compete in the Yahoo fashion show, an avatar must come decked out in Wal-Mart style. That is to say, the contestant must dress his or her avatar in clothes, swimwear, hats and shoes chosen from the online armoire provided by Yahoo and Wal-Mart.

There is, for example, the "orange and yellow Hawaiian swimsuit and sarong." A more modest avatar might chose the "long blue coat w/ fur collar." There is also the "brown business suit & newspaper," which hews more to the K Street commuter look.

Continued in article

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Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

Latest Headlines on August 5, 2006

• Fear Factor in Early Prostate Cancer
• U.S. Fire Deaths Down in 2005
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• Apple Juice May Boost Memory
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• Radioactive Therapy: Security Issue?
• Blood Clot Fibers Surprisingly Elastic
• Anesthesia Risk Rises in Afternoon
• Breastfed Babies Less Stressed Later?
• RSS WebMD Health News

Latest Headlines on August 8, 2006

• Even One Fatty Meal Affects Arteries
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• 'Club Drug' May Fight Depression
• Finding a Good Nursing Home
• Baby Einstein: Tots Can Do Math?
• Dads Get Postpartum Depression, Too
• RSS WebMD Health News

Latest Headlines on August 9, 2006

• Heart-Shock Machines: High Recall Rate
• Parkinson's Gene Boosts Risk 50%
• Mild High Blood Pressure: Exercise OK?
• Even One Fatty Meal Affects Arteries
• Lawn Mower Injuries Common in Kids
• Ultrasound Affects Fetal Brain in Mice
• Shopping Dangers Lurk for Kids
• Degrading Lyrics Linked to Earlier Sex
• 'Club Drug' May Fight Depression
• RSS WebMD Health News

Latest Headlines on August 10, 2006

• Stroke Patients Benefit From Lipitor
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• Many Teens Use Condoms Incorrectly
• Never-Married Penalty: Early Death?
• Flossing Needed to Fight Gum Disease
• Meditation May Help Brain Handle Pain
• Too Much Baby Fat?
• FDA OKs Generic Antidepressant Effexor
• Heart-Shock Machines: High Recall Rate
• RSS WebMD Health News

Latest Headlines on August 11, 2006

• ACE Inhibitors Help All Heart Patients
• Raising Superkids? Parents Show Stress
• Are Smart People Grumpier?
• Antidepressant Suicide Checkup Lacking
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• Centenarians Reveal Key to Long Life
• Sugary Drinks Linked to Obesity Rise
• Stroke Patients Benefit From Lipitor
• RSS WebMD Health News

Latest Headlines on August 12, 2006

• New Flight Rules: 11 Air Travel Tips
• 'Accept' Body to Fight Eating Disorder
• Exercise Keeps the Brain Fit
• Parenting in 'MySpace' Era Challenging
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• Chronic Stress May Make You Age Faster
• White Wine as Good for Heart as Red?
• ACE Inhibitors Help All Heart Patients
• RSS WebMD Health News

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Japanese Find a More Ethical Way To Create Human Stem Cells
Japanese researchers announced that they can make adult differentiated cells behave like embryonic stem cells, just by exposing them to four different proteins. The findings, reported yesterday in the journal Cell, could be the first step toward the holy grail of stem cell biology: a way to create stem cells without the use of human eggs.
"A New, More Ethical Way To Create Human Stem Cells?" MIT's Technology Review, August 11, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/TR/posts.aspx?id=17296

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"Kids need more time than adults give them, study finds," PhysOrg, August 9, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74358548.html

Further proof that children require more time comes via a study to be published today in Developmental Science asserting that the fast pace expected by adults - both parents and educators - can be beyond children's perceptual abilities.

"Children are increasingly being expected to provide an adult-level of detail and information," says David Shore, associate professor in McMaster University's Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour. "Adults have had years to hone their perceptual skills; children - even 10 year olds - are just starting out."

The study is the first to probe so-called change blindness in children, a hot topic in psychology circles especially when it pertains to gauging the veracity of children who are called upon to give eyewitness testimony in court.

The results surprised Shore.

"When it comes to many aspects of attention, an eight-year-old's skill is adult-like," says Shore. "But on this particular skill we never thought 10-year-olds would differ so dramatically from adults. Kids do not appear adult-like in this regard until their early teens."

Shore's study looked at the development of change detection in children ranging from ages six to 10 and found that, contrary to societal perception, even 10-year-olds cannot be relied upon to provide adult-like details. The reason is that children have undeveloped and, therefore, imprecise attention, he says. Their difficulties with eyewitness testimony may not stem from memory errors alone but may arise due to difficulty in perceiving some critical aspects of a scene in the first place.

"We expect children to be adult-like, because of their proficiency on computers or because they display adult-like speech," he says, "so we give them instructions and get impatient when they can't understand what we tell them the first time. Children learn through repetition, at a pace suitable to the child, not to the curriculum. Once upon a time, kids controlled their own pace; now that pace is controlled by adults."

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Meth Promotes Spread of Virus in HIV-Infected Users
"Meth reduces inhibitions, thus increasing the likelihood of risky sexual behavior and the potential to introduce the virus into the body, and at the same time allows more virus to get into the cell," said Nair, professor of medicine and a specialist in immunology in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. His research centers on dendritic cells, which serve as the first line of defense again pathogens, and two receptors on these cells -- HIV binding/attachment receptors (DC-SIGN) and the meth-specific dopamine receptor. Dendritic cells overloaded with virus due to the action of methamphetamine can overwhelm the T cells, the major target of HIV, and disrupt the immune response, promoting HIV infection.
"Meth Promotes Spread of Virus in HIV-Infected Users," PhysOrg, August 4, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73924348.html

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New Clues to Cell-Phone Health Effects
The way a living cell responds to radio waves from a cell-phone depends on the cell's genetic makeup. And these findings may suggest how the effects of cellular radiation vary from person to person. The study, which is the first to examine how the impact of cell-phone exposure might be affected by genomic differences, could also help to explain why attempts to replicate previous studies linking cell-phone use with health problems have failed, says Dariusz Leszczynski, head of radiation biology at the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Helsinki, who led the research.
Duncan Graham-Rowe, "New Clues to Cell-Phone Health Effects:  A study shows that the effects of cell-phone radiation may depend on your genes," MIT's Technology Review, August 4, 2006 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17258&ch=biotech

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Gambling Addiction is a Brain Disorder

"US study identifies brain's gambling chips," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73828763.html

US researchers have identified the part of the brain that is stimulated by making wagers, which they say could prove helpful in treating gambling addictions and certain mental health disorders.

 =In a new study led by researchers from the California Institute of Technology and published Thursday in the journal Neuron, subjects were asked to select two cards from a deck and bet one dollar on whether the first or second card would be a higher number.

At the same time, each subject's brain was monitored using magnetic resonance imaging to show which subcortical region was stimulated by risk-taking and the anticipation of a reward.

The study also located a sort of gambling zone in the brain, controlled by the neurotransmitter dopamine, which also plays a role in learning and motivation.

The study could help scientists understand "pathological behaviors" such as gambling addiction, as well as mental illnesses including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Continued in article

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"Report says teens don't often use condoms," PhysOrg, August 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news73831316.html

A study has found most sexually active U.S. teenagers do not use condoms, placing themselves at a higher risk of developing sexually transmitted diseases.

The study, done by the Washington non-profit research center Child Trends and reported by USA Today, used federal data collected in 2002 on unmarried teens ages 15-19.

The findings showed 47 percent of boys in the survey who had intercourse in the previous year said they always use a condom. Among girls it was 28 percent. The report is to be released Monday.

"Condom use declines a little with age and more serious relationships are less likely to use condoms," the report's co-author Jennifer Manlove was quoted as saying. "At first sexual intercourse, folks are more likely to use condoms for pregnancy and disease prevention but as they are more sexually experienced, they are more likely to switch to other methods of birth control."

One analyst told the newspaper the gender differences in condom use could be related to sex within a relationship rather than casual sex.

"My guess is you have teenage guys having more one-night stands, and guys are very likely to use a condom during a one-night stand, where with their girlfriends it's not as likely," she said.

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Association for Death Education and Counseling: Newsletter Resources --- http://www.adec.org/resources/Forum_articles.cfm

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Rett syndrome can strike males
"The common thinking in the past had been that Rett syndrome only affects girls, and that the genetic flaw would be so serious in boys that they would die before birth," Leonard said. "Worldwide there have only been 11 previously established cases in boys who have presented early in life with a severe clinical picture of progressive neurological decline and breathing abnormalities starting soon after birth," she said. "All but two had a family history of a girl in the family with Rett syndrome. This study has confirmed a further four cases with no family history." She said it's likely some baby boys with early severe progressive encephalopathy might go undiagnosed. "We encourage pediatricians to think about (Rett Syndrome) as a possible cause of severe neurological abnormalities."
"Study: Rett syndrome can strike males," PhysOrg, August 8, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74273943.html

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"Once were warriors: gene linked to Maori violence," Sydney Morning Herald, August 9, 2006 --- Click Here 

MAORIS carry a "warrior" gene that makes them more prone to violence, criminal acts and risky behaviour, a scientist has controversially claimed.

Dr Rod Lea, a New Zealand researcher, and his colleagues told an Australian genetics conference that Maori men had a "striking over-representation" of monoamine oxidase - dubbed the warrior gene - which they say is strongly associated with aggressive behaviour.

He says the unpublished studies prove that Maoris have the highest prevalence of this strength gene, first discovered by US researchers but never linked to an ethnic group.

This explains how Maoris migrated across the Pacific and survived, said Dr Lea, a genetic epidemiologist at the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research.

But he said the presence of the gene also "goes a long way to explaining some of the problems Maoris have".

"Obviously, this means they are going to be more aggressive and violent and more likely to get involved in risk-taking behaviour like gambling," Dr Lea said before his presentation to the International Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane.

Dr Lea said he believed other, non-genetic factors might also be at play. "There are lots of lifestyle, upbringing-related exposures that could be relevant here, so obviously the gene won't automatically make you a criminal."

The same gene was linked to high rates of alcoholism and smoking. "In terms of alcohol-metabolising genes we've found that Maori have a very unique genetic signature," Dr Lea said.

"That influences their drinking behaviour, so they're much more likely to binge drink than other groups …"

The researchers are now collecting thousands of DNA samples from Maoris to investigate these traits.

They can then work out precisely what role each gene plays and use this to explore these trends in the mainstream populations.

"With Maori it's easier to find the genes than it is in the broader Caucasian population so it's a great case study," Dr Lea said.

New Zealand's indigenous Maori population have reacted angrily to a researcher's findings that Maori have a high representation of a gene linked to aggression . . . Media reports of Lea's findings have outraged Maori leaders who said they only reinforced "Once Were Warriors" cultural stereotypes, a reference to a harrowing 1994 movie about domestic violence in poor Maori families.
Al Jazeera, August 9, 2006 ---
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AC4EE384-4F37-451B-81F4-E67DC0D5DF02.htm

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The erotic fiction contest --- a shot at a $2,000 grand prize --- Click Here

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Jonko Auto Repair Online --- http://www.jonko.com/index.htm

RepairClinic.com Launches Appliance Repair Tip Site at LifeTips.com --- http://www.prweb.com/releases/RepairClinic/LifeTips/prweb419901.htm

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"The Corporate Blogging Book,” a new book by Debbie Weil, engages practical-minded managers who don’t want to be bullied into adopting blogs as the next new thing.
"Debbie Weil's New Book Addresses Corporate Blogging Fears, Skepticism," PR Web, August 3, 2006 --- http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006corporate/8blogging/prweb420101.htm

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Question
What July was the hottest on record?

Folks who sweated through last month's blistering heat wave may be surprised to know it was only the second hottest July on record for the United States. More than 2,300 daily temperature records were broken from coast to coast, and the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states was 77.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Climatic Data Center reported Monday. July 1936 still holds the record at 77.5, while July 1934 fell to third place at 77.1, the agency said. The average July temperature is 74.3 degrees based on records going back to 1901. Overall, the first seven months of 2006 were the warmest January-July of any year in the United States on record.
"Sweltering July Was 2nd Hottest on Record," Breitbart.com, August 7, 2006 --- http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/07/D8JBQGQG0.html

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"How to Attain Student Respect in Your Classroom," PR Web, July 28, 2006 --- http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/7/prweb417083.htm

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Males vs. Females in Education Patent Trends
Women in the life sciences in higher education patent their work at a rate of 40 percent of their male colleagues, according to a study being published today in the journal Science. In a random sample of 4,227 life scientists over a 30-year period, the study found that 5.65 percent of the 903 women in the group (51 female patenters) produced only 92 patents. By contrast, 13 percent of the 3,324 male scientists in the sample (431 male patenters) amassed a total of 1,286 patents — nearly 14 times as many as their female colleagues.
Inside Higher Ed, August 4, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/04/qt

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"CUNY Seeing Fewer Blacks at Top Schools," by Karen Arenson, The New York Times, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/education/10cuny.html

The enrollment of black students at three of the most prestigious colleges of the City University of New York has dropped significantly in the six years since the university imposed tougher admissions policies.

One of the sharp declines has come at the City College of New York, CUNY’s flagship campus, in Harlem, which was at the center of bitter open admissions battles in the late 1960’s. Black students, who accounted for 40 percent of City College’s undergraduates as recently as 1999, now make up about 30 percent of the student body there, figures provided by the university show.

At Hunter, a competitive liberal arts campus on the East Side of Manhattan, the share of black students fell to 15 percent last year from 20 percent in 1999. And at Baruch, a campus that specializes in business, the proportion of black students slipped to 14 percent from 24 percent. Over all, the number of black undergraduates at CUNY, including those in associate’s degree programs, grew to 57,791 last year from 52,937 in 1999, the figures show.

University officials attributed the declines to several factors, from their admissions policies to greater competition for top minority students from other colleges to students’ own preferences about where they want to study. But Robert Bruce Slater, the managing editor of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which noted the trend at CUNY in its Weekly Bulletin last week, said, “The tougher admissions policy seems to have had a major impact.”

CUNY is not the only public university experiencing such changes. In California, which voted to end affirmative action at its public universities a decade ago, U.C.L.A. and Berkeley have both seen steep declines in the number of black students, even as the numbers at other campuses fell less and have recovered more over time.

CUNY put its tougher admissions policies in place in 2000 and 2001.

Continued in article

Saga of affirmative action at the University of Michigan --- http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/affirm.html

Bob Jensen's threads on affirmative action versus academic standards are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

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CEO Sees New Sources of Black Leadership
For decades, black religious figures and politicians have been seen as the primary leaders in the African-American community. But business figures and other role models are assuming as much of a leadership role, Ann Fudge says. She's the CEO of Young and Rubicam Brands, a worldwide marketing communications company.
"CEO Sees New Sources of Black Leadership," NPR, August 10, 2006 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5631920

NPR Commentary: The Problem of Black Leadership ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1766682

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Reality tempers South African women's hopes
Thousands of women have marked the 50th anniversary of a famed anti-apartheid demonstration, but the celebrations have been soured by the reality that poverty, Aids and crime have replaced political oppression as the scourge of South Africa . . . An estimated 75% of black women under 30 are jobless, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions. In 2002 women held only 14% of top management positions - although the proportion held by black women was only 2%.
"Reality tempers SA women's hopes," Al Jazeera, August 9, 2006 ---
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A49F03EF-B0ED-42BB-BD96-C9C5C1259711.htm

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The University of California Will Allow Google to Scan Library Books
It’s official: The University of California and Google have reached an agreement under which the university will become the seventh participant in the company’s controversial efforts to digitally scan the book collections of libraries, Reuters reported. UC, which has 100 libraries on 10 campuses, is the first party to join since groups of publishers and authors sued the company to stop the project.
Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/09/qt

Also see http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17281

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John McWhorter: How Welfare Went Wrong
Writer and linguist John McWhorter says that what's gone wrong in black America demands rethinking. His observation is that African-American leaders often excuse problems like crime and poverty, instead of solving them.
"John McWhorter: How Welfare Went Wrong," NPR, August 9, 2006 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5628075

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Haiti's Jean Bertrand Aristide stole liberally from the public purse

"New Jersey and Aristide, Perfect Together," by Mary Anastasis O'Grady, The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2006; Page A17 --- Click Here

There has never been a shortage of "off-the-record" allegations that Haiti's Jean Bertrand Aristide stole liberally from the public purse. But a case being heard in federal court in Newark, N.J. might actually prove it . . .

In court documents Mr. Jewett claims he was wrongfully fired because he objected to the agreement. The deal, as he describes it in his complaint, was also highly unethical because it facilitated the theft of Haiti's telecom revenues -- one of the few sources of hard currency for the starving nation.

Mr. Jewett's claim has enough credence that the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating it, according to his lawyer in court documents. But now federal magistrate judge Mark Falk has issued a blanket protective order prohibiting Mr. Jewett from talking to Justice about whatever IDT deems confidential in the discovery phase of the case. It leaves one wondering what IDT, which did not return phone calls for comment, doesn't want Justice to find out.

This case has implications that go far beyond the rights of the plaintiff. Based on what has already been revealed in the case, it seems quite possible that if he is allowed to tell his story, Mr. Jewett could help Justice get to the truth about Mr. Aristide's financial misdeeds, allegedly aided and abetted by IDT and other U.S. corporations during the decade that he controlled the country.

In the past two weeks at least 30 people have died in gang violence in Port-au-Prince and 300 others were forced to flee their homes. The Economist Intelligence Unit reported on Monday that "U.N. representatives fear that the recent attacks in the capital's slums may be designed to exert pressure on [President René] Préval to allow Mr. Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, to return to Haiti." U.N. peacekeepers may not be the most effective fighting force but they tend to be in the know about who is behind trouble. Their observations support the claim that until Mr. Aristide is convicted and put in jail for his many transgressions -- alongside Panama's Manuel Noriega -- Haiti cannot begin to stabilize.

The interim Haitian government of Gerard Latortue (March 2004-May 2006) compiled a mountain of evidence against Mr. Aristide, alleging the theft of revenues from the telecom monopoly Haiti Teleco. In a civil lawsuit filed in a federal court in Florida in November, Haiti alleged that Mr. Aristide had given foreign carriers preferential settlement rates in return for their agreement to place payments in offshore bank accounts belonging to him. This is precisely what Mr. Jewett's claim against IDT alleges.

Unfortunately, Haiti has withdrawn its case in Florida, citing troubles with legal fees. The case may be refiled, but until then, the keys to unlocking the wider truth of the Aristide telecom business lie with the Jewett case and the Justice Department.

Continued in article

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Study breaks ice on ancient arctic thaw
A new analysis of ocean-floor sediments collected near the North Pole finds that the Arctic was extremely warm, unusually wet and ice-free the last time massive amounts of greenhouse gases were released into the Earth's atmosphere - a prehistoric period 55 million years ago. The findings appear in the Aug. 10 issue of Nature. Current climatic evidence and computer models suggest the modern Arctic is rapidly warming, gaining precipitation and becoming ice-free because of carbon emissions. Scientists have been keen to unlock the mysteries of the Arctic when this last happened - an interval known as the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM. Researchers have long known that a massive release of greenhouse gases, probably carbon dioxide or methane, occurred during the PETM. Surface temperatures also rose in many places by as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit in the relative geological instant of about 100,000 years.
"Study breaks ice on ancient arctic thaw," PhysOrg, August 9, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74359045.html

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"Evolution Fight Shifts Direction in Kansas Vote," by Monica Davey and Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, August 3, 2006 --- Click Here

Several of the winners in the primary (Kansas) election, whose victories are virtually certain to shift the board to at least a 6-to-4 moderate majority in November, promised Wednesday to work swiftly to restore a science curriculum that does not subject evolution to critical attack.

They also said they would try to eliminate restrictions on sex education passed by the current board and to review the status of the education commissioner, Bob Corkins, who they said was hired last year with little background in education.

In a state where a fierce fight over how much students should be taught about the criticism of evolution has gone back and forth since 1999, the election results were seen as a significant defeat for the movement of intelligent design, which holds that nature by itself cannot account for life’s complexity.

Defenders of evolution pointed to the results in Kansas as a third major defeat for the intelligent design movement across the country recently and a sign, perhaps, that the public was beginning to pay attention to the movement’s details and, they said, its failings.

“I think more citizens are learning what intelligent design really is and realizing that they don’t really want that taught in their public schools,” said Eugenie C. Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education.

In February, Ohio’s board of education dropped a mandate that 10th-grade biology classes include critical analysis of evolution. Last year, a federal judge ruled that teaching intelligent design in the schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional. But Ms. Scott said that opponents of evolution were hardly finished.

“They’ve had a series of setbacks,” she said, “but I don’t think for one moment that this means the intelligent design people will fold their tents and go away.”

Supporters of intelligent design and others who had favored the Kansas science standards said they were disappointed in Tuesday’s outcome, but they said they had also won a series of little-noticed victories in other states, including South Carolina. There, supporters said, state officials decided this summer to require students to look at ways that scientists use data “to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.”

John G. West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a group in the forefront of the intelligent design movement, said any repeal of the science standards would be a disservice to students here, and an effort to censor legitimate scientific challenges to Darwin’s theories. Still, he said, no local political skirmish will ultimately answer the broad issue.

“The debate over Darwin’s theory will be won or lost over the science,” he said.

Continued in article

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But the evangelicals are winning nationwide
The United States ranks near the bottom (of 34 nations) in public acceptance of evolution

"Study: Evolution losing favor in U.S.," PhysOrg, August 11, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news74521886.html

 The study, led by University of Michigan researcher Jon Miller, found that 40 percent of Americans accept evolution, down from 45 percent over the past 20 years. Among the nations examined, only Turkey had a lower rate of acceptance of evolution, with 25 percent accepting it and 75 percent rejecting it.

The percentage of U.S. adults who overtly reject evolution also declined over the past 20 years, from 48 percent to 39 percent. The percentage of those who were unsure increased from 7 percent to 21 percent.

Miller said contributing factors to Americans' attitudes toward evolution include poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, livescience.com reported.

"American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close," said Miller.

In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution. In Japan, 78 percent of adults did.

The study is reported in the Aug. 11 issue of Science.

The Roman Catholic Church is more open to science
Benedict has at times appeared to favor intelligent design, describing the natural world as an "intelligent project" one day after the Kansas Board of Education voted last November to adopt new standards that cast doubt on evolution. But in January, an editorial published in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, questioned the validity of intelligent design, reaffirming Roman Catholicism's support for evolution.
"Pope to Dissect Evolution With Former Students," by Stacy Meichtry, BeliefNet, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.beliefnet.com/story/197/story_19764_1.html

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Question
What's a "stigmatized" parcel of real estate?

Real-estate professionals call homes tainted by murder, sex scandals or messy divorce "stigmatized properties." While they make up a sliver of the market, they have been the subject of academic research, provided fodder for lawsuits and posed a challenge for brokers. State real-estate agent and appraisal groups regularly include the subject in seminars, and the National Association of Realtors publishes a "Field Guide to Dealing with Stigmatized Property," offering insights on everything from how to market and sell stigmatized homes to dealing with buyer reluctance to own them. One scandal-dampening suggestion from the guide's "tool kit": Enhance the home's facade by painting it or replanting shrubs and flowers.
"The Scandal Effect:  Troy McMullen on how messy divorces, murder and mayhem influence the price of real estate," The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2006; Page W1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115465161303226436.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal

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Three Executives at Comverse Charged in Stock Options Case
Describing a brazen scheme to manipulate the granting of options, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged three former executives of Comverse Technology with mail, securities and wire fraud yesterday. The three executives, prosecutors said, used fictitious employees to create a secret slush fund of options to be distributed to favored employees. Two of the executives, David Kreinberg, the former chief financial officer, and William F. Sorin, the former general counsel, were arraigned yesterday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where they were released on $1 million bail each, secured by their homes.
Julie Creswell, "3 at Comverse Charged in Stock Options Case," The New York Times, August 10, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/business/10options.html

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

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Forwarded by Paula

"You know you're a redneck when...... "

01. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.

02. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.

03. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.

04. You burn your yard rather than mow it.

05. You think "The Nutcracker" is something you do off the high dive.

06 The Salvation Army declines your furniture.

07.You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it.

08. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.

09. You come back from the dump with more than you took.

10. You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.

11. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.

12. Your grandmother has "ammo" on her Christmas list

13. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.

14. You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.

15. You go to the stock car races and don't need a program

16. You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.

17. You have a rag for a gas cap.

18. Your house doesn't have curtains, but your truck does.

19. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-room's so clean.

20. You can spit without opening your mouth.

21. You consider your license plate! persona lized because your father made it.

22. Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

23. You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say "Cool Whip" on the side.

24. The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.

25. Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.

26. You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.

27. A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100,000 worth of improvements.

28. You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.

29. You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.

30. You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.