Tidbits on October 23, 2006
Bob Jensen

Every instructor should seriously consider Camtasia 4 --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
(this may be the most important learning/teaching software ever invented)

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

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

Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   
 

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

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

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

Getting Mooned on Halloween --- http://www.funnybunch.com/hal/starrynight.swf

Halloween Hangman --- http://dedge.com/flash/hangman/

Bat Flasher --- http://www.bluemountain.com/view.pd?i=149549234&m=4772&rr=z&source=bm

From the NY Public Library
Small Business Video Seminar --- http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/smallbiz/video.html

Celebrating 40 Years of Film in New York City --- http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/anniversary/anniversary_home.shtml

The World According to Sesame Street http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/worldaccordingtosesamestreet/index.html

From Scientific American:  Politicians caught on Internet candid cameras
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa001&articleID=51681A7C14879F9ECA39669DF858F75B

Do you have the potential to become a Top Gun?
The object of the game is to move the red block around without getting hit by the blue blocks or touching the black walls.? If you can go longer than 22 seconds you are phenomenal. The US Air Force uses this for fighter pilots. They are expected to go for at least 2 minutes. Give it a try!! --- http://www.rogerroger.com/secret2006/

Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

A Bay-Area Billionaire's Annual Gift of Music (Blue Grass) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6203140  

Steven Bernstein: Mixing the Strange and Familiar (Big Band Trumpeter) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5784063

A Beach Boys Classic Gets an R&B Makeover --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6204757

Folk and Rock Re-Interpreted for the Little Ones --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6210683

A Forgotten '80s Classic, Reissued at Last --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6197430

Regina Spektor in Concert --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6161219

Lifter Puller: Loud, Fast and Out of Control --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6190924

Art of the States --- http://artofthestates.org/

Italian Pop Star Takes on U.S. Music Market --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6209758

'The Information' Finds Beck at His Best (Punk Rock) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6212841

Computer Animated Music (link forwarded by Ed Scribner) --- http://www.animusic.com/downloads.html
 

Photographs and Art

Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) --- Click Here

Augusten Burroughs' Mother Speaks Out (poems with audio) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6209286

Adventure by Jack London (1876-1916) --- Click Here

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (1866-1946) --- Click Here

The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) --- Click Here

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music http://sscm-jscm.press.uiuc.edu/jscm/

Cheesemaking in Wisconsin: A Short History --- http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/WI/WI-idx?id=WI.Cheesemaking

Cardamom Bread, Wisconsin Style --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6268287

I asked [the ump] if he saw any pitches, because I didn't.
New York Yankee superstar Alex Rodriguez, on the Tigers' Joel Zumaya's 101 mph fastball.
As quoted in Newsweek Magazine, October 16, 2006, Page 27

Betamax fans still extoll its superior picture quality, but for most consumers V.H.S. was the better product; Betamax tapes could fit only an hour’s recording time, while V.H.S. could record an entire movie. Similarly, Edison’s attempt to make direct current the industry standard failed because alternating current was more reliable and allowed electricity to travel longer distances. Ultimately, the best way to make people believe your product will win is to have a better product.
James Surowiecki, "Standard-Bearers," The New Yorker, October 16, 2006 --- http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061016ta_talk_surowiecki
Surowiecki sees no end in sight in the war between Sony versus Toshiba for dominance in the DVD recorder/playback market.

God cannot alter the past, that is why he is obliged to connive at the existence of historians.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Butler_(novelist)

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.
Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce_Adams

Humanity is as it is, it's not a question of changing it but getting to know it.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Flaubert

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
George Burns (1896-1996) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Burns

Yet today most voters like him (former California Democratic Governor Jerry Brown), and he's gotten mostly glowing press for his nearly eight-year stint as Oakland's mayor; in 1999 he was even praised by the conservative City Journal for his crime-fighting in the troubled city. These days, just about the only newspaper regularly whacking him is the leftist Berkeley Daily Planet . . . As attorney general (if elected as such in California), Mr. Brown wants to target prisoner recidivism in California, where roughly 120,000 convicts are released annually, and 80,000 returned to prison annually. "They have 8th-grade reading levels, no skills, their attitudes are bad, many are addicted to drugs and they are coming back to disrupt the community," he says. "That's why I'm putting GPS bracelets on them in Oakland. Whether they are active enough that we can root them out of certain neighborhoods at curfew and enforce it -- well, I am at least attempting to compensate for the failed parole system." . . . "If you want to hear me be progressive, I can say this," he says. "I think people should get an education in prison. . . . We want people to succeed and reduce the return rate." He describes a city parolee program he admires, but ends with this: "I saw a body on the sidewalk right outside my building. The first time I heard it [gunfire], I thought it was firecrackers. But my wife said 'No, that's gunfire.' Now I know what it sounds like."
Jill Stewart, "Attorney General Moonbeam?" The Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2006, Page A6 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116078038638292552.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

A major theme of the report is that parents could do more to save, regardless of their income levels. Of parents in the survey, 58 percent say that they spent more on dining out or take-out food in the last year than on saving for college. In other categories of spending, 49 percent report that they spent more on vacations, 38 percent more on electronics, and 31 percent more on their children’s allowance than on saving for college. Such figures may explain why only 27 percent of parents in the survey believe that they will meet their goal for college savings.
Scott Jaschik, "Poor Grades for Saving," Inside Higher Ed, October 16, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/16/savings
Jensen Comment
Parents of outstanding students who are not saving enough should know that, unless they have low incomes, the opportunities for merit scholarships are declining --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#FinancialAidChanges

However, an article in The Times of London suggested a different plan. The group would recommend breaking Iraq up into “three highly autonomous regions.” According to “informed sources” cited by the paper, the Iraq group “has grown increasingly interested in the idea of splitting the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions of Iraq… His group will not advise ‘partition,’ but is believed to favor a division of the country that will devolve power and security to the regions, leaving a skeletal national government in Baghdad in charge of foreign affairs, border protection and the distribution of oil revenue. The Iraqi government will be encouraged to hold a constitutional conference paving the way for greater devolution. Iran and Syria will be urged to back a regional settlement that could be brokered at an international conference.”
Michael Young, "Breaking Up Ain't Hard to Do:  James Baker prepares the exits in Iraq," Reason Magazine, October 12, 2006 --- http://reason.com/hod/my101206.shtml
Jensen Comment
I fear there will always be war as long as oil in Iraq is the most treasured commodity. Opposing sides will probably never agree on how the oil revenues are split. Until Iran wins this war decisively , fighting over oil will carry on. The Coalition Forces, including the U.S., will probably soon decide that the oil is not worth the cost of its continued war with Iran in Iraq. But Iran may not ultimately relish its victory in the long run as the Arabs gear up for secular terrorism in Persia. Iraq will be caught in the middle of a Middle Eastern secular war. From a religious standpoint, the Shiites dominate only in Iran and Iraq which makes the majority of Iraq more closely aligned with Iran from a religious standpoint. However, the Shiites in Iraq are Arabic (speaking Arabic) whereas Iran is Persian (speaking Farsi). This makes Iraq more closely aligned with the Arabic nations from a language and cultural perspective. But most Arabic nations follow the Sunni Islam region. Allegiances are very complicated in Iraq, although in the current Shiite-Sunni struggle for dominance in Iraq, the Shiites are leaning on Iran for military support, especially roadside bombs. In the long-run Iran may have difficulty controlling Shiites in Iraq.

From the Pen of the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Actual capitalism departs from well-functioning capitalism--monopolies too big to break up, undetected cartels, regulatory failures and political corruption. Capitalism in its innovations plants the seeds of its own encrustation with entrenched power. These departures weigh heavily on the rewards earned, particularly the wages of the least advantaged, and give a bad name to capitalism. But I must insist: It would be a non sequitur to give up on private entrepreneurs and financiers as the wellspring of dynamism merely because the fruits of their dynamism would likely be less than they could be in a less imperfect system. I conclude that capitalism is justified--normally by the expectable benefits to the lowest-paid workers but, failing that, by the injustice of depriving entrepreneurial types (as well as other creative people) of opportunities for their self-expression.
"Dynamic Capitalism Entrepreneurship is lucrative--and just," by Edmund S. Phelps, The Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009068 

There are two economic systems in the West. Several nations--including the U.S., Canada and the U.K.--have a private-ownership system marked by great openness to the implementation of new commercial ideas coming from entrepreneurs, and by a pluralism of views among the financiers who select the ideas to nurture by providing the capital and incentives necessary for their development. Although much innovation comes from established companies, as in pharmaceuticals, much comes from start-ups, particularly the most novel innovations. This is free enterprise, a k a capitalism.

The other system--in Western Continental Europe--though also based on private ownership, has been modified by the introduction of institutions aimed at protecting the interests of "stakeholders" and "social partners." The system's institutions include big employer confederations, big unions and monopolistic banks. Since World War II, a great deal of liberalization has taken place. But new corporatist institutions have sprung up: Co-determination (cogestion, or Mitbestimmung) has brought "worker councils" (Betriebsrat); and in Germany, a union representative sits on the investment committee of corporations. The system operates to discourage changes such as relocations and the entry of new firms, and its performance depends on established companies in cooperation with local and national banks. What it lacks in flexibility it tries to compensate for with technological sophistication. So different is this system that it has its own name: the "social market economy" in Germany, "social democracy" in France and "concertazione" in Italy.

Dynamism and Fertility

The American and Continental systems are not operationally equivalent, contrary to some neoclassical views. Let me use the word "dynamism" to mean the fertility of the economy in coming up with innovative ideas believed to be technologically feasible and profitable--in short, the economy's talent at commercially successful innovating. In this terminology, the free enterprise system is structured in such a way that it facilitates and stimulates dynamism while the Continental system impedes and discourages it.

Wasn't the Continental system designed to stifle dynamism? When building the massive structures of corporatism in interwar Italy, theoreticians explained that their new system would be more dynamic than capitalism--maybe not more fertile in little ideas, such as might come to petit-bourgeois entrepreneurs, but certainly in big ideas. Not having to fear fluid market conditions, an entrenched company could afford to develop radical innovation. And with industrial confederations and state mediation available, such companies could arrange to avoid costly duplication of their investments. The state and its instruments, the big banks, could intervene to settle conflicts about the economy's direction. Thus the corporatist economy was expected to usher in a new futurismo that was famously symbolized by Severini's paintings of fast trains. (What was important was that the train was rushing forward, not that it ran on time.)

Friedrich Hayek, in the late 1930s and early '40s, began the modern theory of how a capitalist system, if pure enough, would possess the greatest dynamism--not socialism and not corporatism. First, virtually everyone right down to the humblest employees has "know-how," some of what Michael Polanyi called "personal knowledge" and some merely private knowledge, and out of that an idea may come that few others would have. In its openness to the ideas of all or most participants, the capitalist economy tends to generate a plethora of new ideas.

Second, the pluralism of experience that the financiers bring to bear in their decisions gives a wide range of entrepreneurial ideas a chance of insightful evaluation. And, importantly, the financier and the entrepreneur do not need the approval of the state or of social partners. Nor are they accountable later on to such social bodies if the project goes badly, not even to the financier's investors. So projects can be undertaken that would be too opaque and uncertain for the state or social partners to endorse. Lastly, the pluralism of knowledge and experience that managers and consumers bring to bear in deciding which innovations to try, and which to adopt, is crucial in giving a good chance to the most promising innovations launched. Where the Continental system convenes experts to set a product standard before any version is launched, capitalism gives market access to all versions.

Dynamism does have its downside. The same capitalist dynamism that adds to the desirability of jobs also adds to their precariousness. The strong possibility of a general slump can cause anxiety. But we need some perspective. Even a market socialist economy might be unpredictable: In truth, the Continental economies are also susceptible to wide swings. In fact, it is the corporatist economies that have suffered the widest swings in recent decades. In the U.S. and the U.K., unemployment rates have been remarkably steady for 20 years. It may be that when the Continental economies are down, the paucity of their dynamism makes it harder for them to find something new on which to base a comeback.

The U.S. economy might be said to suffer from incomplete inclusion of the disadvantaged. But that is less a fault of capitalism than of electoral politics. The U.S. economy is not unambiguously worse than the Continental ones in this regard: Low-wage workers at least have access to jobs, which is of huge value to them in their efforts to be role models in their family and community. In any case, we can fix the problem.

Why, then, if the "downside" is so exaggerated, is capitalism so reviled in Western Continental Europe? It may be that elements of capitalism are seen by some in Europe as morally wrong in the same way that birth control or nuclear power or sweatshops are seen by some as simply wrong in spite of the consequences of barring them. And it appears that the recent street protesters associate business with established wealth; in their minds, giving greater latitude to businesses would increase the privileges of old wealth. By an "entrepreneur" they appear to mean a rich owner of a bank or factory, while for Schumpeter and Knight it meant a newcomer, a parvenu who is an outsider. A tremendous confusion is created by associating "capitalism" with entrenched wealth and power. The textbook capitalism of Schumpeter and Hayek means opening up the economy to new industries, opening industries to start-up companies, and opening existing companies to new owners and new managers. It is inseparable from an adequate degree of competition. Monopolies like Microsoft are a deviation from the model.

It would be unhistorical to say that capitalism in my textbook sense of the term does not and cannot exist. Tocqueville marveled at the relatively pure capitalism he found in America. The greater involvement of Americans in governing themselves, their broader education and their wider equality of opportunity, all encourage the emergence of the "man of action" with the "skill" to "grasp the chance of the moment."

I want to conclude by arguing that generating more dynamism through the injection of more capitalism does serve economic justice.

We all feel good to see people freed to pursue their dreams. Yet Hayek and Ayn Rand went too far in taking such freedom to be an absolute, the consequences be damned. In judging whether a nation's economic system is acceptable, its consequences for the prospects of the realization of people's dreams matter, too. Since the economy is a system in which people interact, the endeavors of some may damage the prospects of others. So a persuasive justification of well-functioning capitalism must be grounded on its all its consequences, not just those called freedoms.

To argue that the consequences of capitalism are just requires some conception of economic justice. I broadly subscribe to the conception of economic justice in the work by John Rawls. In any organization of the economy, the participants will score unequally in how far they manage to go in their personal growth. An organization that leaves the bottom score lower than it would be under another feasible organization is unjust. So a new organization that raised the scores of some, though at the expense of reducing scores at the bottom, would not be justified. Yet a high score is just if it does not hurt others. "Envy is the vice of mankind," said Kant, whom Rawls greatly admired.

The 'Least Advantaged'

What would be the consequence, from this Rawlsian point of view, of releasing entrepreneurs onto the economy? In the classic case to which Rawls devoted his attention, the lowest score is always that of workers with the lowest wage, whom he called the "least advantaged": Their self-realization lies mostly in marrying, raising children and participating in the community, and it will be greater the higher their wage. So if the increased dynamism created by liberating private entrepreneurs and financiers tends to raise productivity, as I argue--and if that in turn pulls up those bottom wages, or at any rate does not lower them--it is not unjust. Does anyone doubt that the past two centuries of commercial innovations have pulled up wage rates at the low end and everywhere else in the distribution?

Yet the tone here is wrong. As Kant also said, persons are not to be made instruments for the gain of others. Suppose the wage of the lowest- paid workers was foreseen to be reduced over the entire future by innovations conceived by entrepreneurs. Are those whose dream is to find personal development through a career as an entrepreneur not to be permitted to pursue their dream? To respond, we have to go outside Rawls's classical model, in which work is all about money. In an economy in which entrepreneurs are forbidden to pursue their self-realization, they have the bottom scores in self-realization--no matter if they take paying jobs instead--and that counts whether or not they were born the "least advantaged." So even if their activities did come at the expense of the lowest-paid workers, Rawlsian justice in this extended sense requires that entrepreneurs be accorded enough opportunity to raise their self-realization score up to the level of the lowest-paid workers--and higher, of course, if workers are not damaged by support for entrepreneurship. In this case, too, then, the introduction of entrepreneurial dynamism serves to raise Rawls's bottom scores.

Actual capitalism departs from well-functioning capitalism--monopolies too big to break up, undetected cartels, regulatory failures and political corruption. Capitalism in its innovations plants the seeds of its own encrustation with entrenched power. These departures weigh heavily on the rewards earned, particularly the wages of the least advantaged, and give a bad name to capitalism. But I must insist: It would be a non sequitur to give up on private entrepreneurs and financiers as the wellspring of dynamism merely because the fruits of their dynamism would likely be less than they could be in a less imperfect system. I conclude that capitalism is justified--normally by the expectable benefits to the lowest-paid workers but, failing that, by the injustice of depriving entrepreneurial types (as well as other creative people) of opportunities for their self-expression.

Mr. Phelps, the McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia, was yesterday awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for economics. Click here to read a selection of his previous articles from The Wall Street Journal.

Under the GOP Anti-Trust is Becoming a Sham
AT&T is Once Again Emerging as a Telephone Monopoly (only this time an unregulated monopoly)
The Department of Justice approved AT&T’s purchase of BellSouth yesterday without imposing any concessions on the companies, angering consumer groups and leading the Federal Communications Commission to delay voting on the deal. Regulators were widely expected to sign off on the merger, one of the largest ever in the telecommunications industry, since AT&T and BellSouth do not compete directly for residential phone customers in their respective territories, and because they already operate several joint ventures, including Cingular Wireless.
Ken Belson, "Justice Dept. Approves AT&T-BellSouth Deal," The New York Times, October 12, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/business/12att.html

"Hong Kong Wrong:  What would Cowperthwaite say?" by Milton Friedman, The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009051

It had to happen. Hong Kong's policy of "positive noninterventionism" was too good to last. It went against all the instincts of government officials, paid to spend other people's money and meddle in other people's affairs. That's why it was sadly unsurprising to see Hong Kong's current leader, Donald Tsang, last month declare the death of the policy on which the territory's prosperity was built.

The really amazing phenomenon is that, for half a century, his predecessors resisted the temptation to tax and meddle. Though a colony of socialist Britain, Hong Kong followed a laissez-faire capitalist policy, thanks largely to a British civil servant, John Cowperthwaite. Assigned to handle Hong Kong's financial affairs in 1945, he rose through the ranks to become the territory's financial secretary from 1961-71. Cowperthwaite, who died on Jan. 21 this year, was so famously laissez-faire that he refused to collect economic statistics for fear this would only give government officials an excuse for more meddling. His successor, Sir Philip Haddon-Cave, coined the term "positive noninterventionism" to describe Cowperthwaite's approach.

The results of his policy were remarkable. At the end of World War II, Hong Kong was a dirt-poor island with a per-capita income about one-quarter that of Britain's. By 1997, when sovereignty was transferred to China, its per-capita income was roughly equal to that of the departing colonial power, even though Britain had experienced sizable growth over the same period. That was a striking demonstration of the productivity of freedom, of what people can do when they are left free to pursue their own interests.

The success of laissez-faire in Hong Kong was a major factor in encouraging China and other countries to move away from centralized control toward greater reliance on private enterprise and the free market. As a result, they too have benefited from rapid economic growth. The ultimate fate of China depends, I believe, on whether it continues to move in Hong Kong's direction faster than Hong Kong moves in China's.

Mr. Tsang insists that he only wants the government to act "when there are obvious imperfections in the operation of the market mechanism." That ignores the reality that if there are any "obvious imperfections," the market will eliminate them long before Mr. Tsang gets around to it. Much more important are the "imperfections"--obvious and not so obvious--that will be introduced by overactive government.

A half-century of "positive noninterventionism" has made Hong Kong wealthy enough to absorb much abuse from ill-advised government intervention. Inertia alone should ensure that intervention remains limited. Despite the policy change, Hong Kong is likely to remain wealthy and prosperous for many years to come. But, although the territory may continue to grow, it will no longer be such a shining symbol of economic freedom.

Yet that doesn't detract from the scale of Cowperthwaite's achievement. Whatever happens to Hong Kong in the future, the experience of this past 50 years will continue to instruct and encourage friends of economic freedom. And it provides a lasting model of good economic policy for others who wish to bring similar prosperity to their people.

Dr. Friedman, the 1976 Nobel laureate in economics, is a senior research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

Bob Jensen's threads on Milton Friedman's gloomy warnings entitlement programs in the U. S. are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm

About the Scholarship of Bob Woodward
Woodward's biggest critics seem to be his journalist peers

"So This Is Journalism? Bob Woodward takes a novel approach in his new book on the Bush administration," by Jonathan Karl, The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009071

It may seem like another lifetime, but just over five years ago China forced down an American EP-3 spy plane for venturing into Chinese airspace and held its 24-member crew hostage for 11 days. It was the Bush administration's first international crisis, and it was a big one. So how did the president's national security team deal with it? They called Prince Bandar.

At least that's what Bob Woodward tells us in one of the non-Iraq revelations in his latest blockbuster, "State of Denial." In Mr. Woodward's account of that tense stand-off with China, Secretary of State Colin Powell called Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., for help. Prince Bandar, Mr. Woodward tells us, "had special relations with the Chinese through various deals to purchase arms and missiles" and, of course, oil. With a few calls to the Chinese, which were monitored by the National Security Agency, Mr. Woodward says, "Bandar eventually got the Chinese to release the 24 hostages." He goes on: "Never modest about his influence, Bandar considered it almost a personal favor to him."

The story is classic Bob Woodward: fly-on-the-wall descriptions of super-secret discussions, details missed by every other reporter, a juicy scoop. But the account leaves lingering questions: Did Prince Bandar really get the Chinese to release the hostages? Was that the whole story? How does Mr. Woodward "know" all this? Could it be that Prince Bandar himself is making the claim? Your guess is as good as mine. Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us.

"State of Denial" is replete with similar Woodwardian reporting: secret meetings recounted in vivid detail, complete with lengthy, verbatim quotations of what key players said to each other as the story unfolded. Once again, it all reads as if Bob Woodward was lurking in the background as the meetings happened, taking exceptionally detailed notes. But of course he was not there. We learn not only what the president and all his men said but also what unspoken thoughts raced through their minds. But Mr. Woodward wasn't inside their heads either, it is safe to say.

Mr. Woodward attempts to write like a novelist, not a journalist: His books are scenic and dramatic and dialogue-driven, more sensationalism than history. Take, for example, this description of a conversation in May 2003 (two months after the Iraq invasion) between Gen. John Abizaid, then deputy military commander in the Middle East, and Gen. Jay Garner, the official briefly responsible for the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq:

"Garner told Abizaid, 'John, I'm telling you. If you do this it's going to be ugly. It'll take 10 years to fix this country, and for three years you'll be sending kids home in body bags.'

"Abizaid didn't disagree. 'I hear you, I hear you,' he said."

Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us where he got this verbatim account of a meeting that took place more than three years ago; he writes as if it is a simple fact that it unfolded as told, not someone's recollection. We cannot gauge whether the source, whoever it was, might have had a motive to put a certain spin on facts. The discussion neatly makes Gen. Garner look like the truth-teller who foresaw precisely what would happen and tried to do something about it. Maybe it's true or maybe it's the way Gen. Garner would like to remember it, but he said no such thing publicly at the time.

As more than a few people have noted over the course of Mr. Woodward's long career, his narratives are propelled in part by who talks to him and, just as important, who gives him the best, most detailed and colorful descriptions of what went on in all those secret meetings. And that brings us back to Prince Bandar.

Apparently Prince Bandar is an excellent source for Mr. Woodward, somebody willing to give blow-by-blow accounts of virtually every encounter he has had with top Bush administration officials, including the president and his family. In this book, Prince Bandar seems to be everywhere. He persuades President Bush to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, he educates President Bush on the ways of the Middle East, he warns against the invasion of Iraq. In Mr. Woodward's account Bandar is a central player, mentioned almost as often as Vice President Cheney and more often than British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Consider this typical anecdote:

"The elder George Bush was concerned about his son after 9/11 and he called Prince Bandar. 'He's having a bad time,' Bush told Bandar.

" 'Help him out.' "

Perhaps President Bush's father is the source of this nifty exchange. If so, it's an amazing revelation that he was so worried about his son that he tapped the Saudi ambassador for a personal intervention so soon after the attack on America carried out largely by Saudi citizens. Or maybe the source is somebody who says he was told about the conversation by either the elder Bush or Prince Bandar, in which case it's basically hearsay. Or maybe, just maybe, the source is Prince Bandar himself. Again, Mr. Woodward gives us no clue, instead describing the conversation as if he were there.

What does the author's faux-realism add up to this time around? His two previous books on the administration--"Bush at War" (2002) and "Plan of Attack" (2004)--were criticized for lavishing too much praise on President Bush and his national security team, who were portrayed, for the most part, as steadfast, competent leaders in the face of an implacable enemy. No more. Now Mr. Woodward portrays the president and his team as incompetent, out of touch and dysfunctional. The conventional wisdom has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years and Mr. Woodward with it.

At a time when nearly everyone seems to be blaming Iraq's problem on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--too few troops, not enough planning, too much arrogance--"State of Denial" presents him in an unflattering light, to say the least: demanding power over Iraq's reconstruction and deftly avoiding responsibility when things go badly. When Mr. Woodward goes mano-a-mano with Mr. Rumsfeld in an on-the-record interview, he puts himself into the narrative. He prods Mr. Rumsfeld and expresses exasperation and disbelief at some of the defense secretary's answers.

Yet it may be the best interview that Mr. Rumsfeld has given as defense secretary. He is combative and defensive but makes news. For instance, Mr. Rumsfeld tells Mr. Woodward that the phrase "mission accomplished" was in the original draft of the now infamous speech President Bush gave on the USS Lincoln after the fall of Saddam Hussein and he asked that it be taken out. The White House has always claimed that "mission accomplished" was coined by sailors who wanted to give the president a warm welcome on their aircraft carrier. More significantly, Mr. Rumsfeld says that he disagreed when the president, in a major speech on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, described U.S. strategy as "clear, hold, and build." Mr. Rumsfeld felt that "hold" and "build" were not for the Americans to do but for Iraqis: "I wanted them clearing. And then holding." It is a remarkable admission: the defense secretary and the president unable to agree on how to define U.S. strategy three years into the war.

Mr. Woodward also describes an interview with Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that shows how Mr. Woodward's legendary commitment to protecting his sources has evolved over the years. In the interview, which took place earlier this year, Gen. Pace stumbles when he describes the insurgency. Here is the book's version, beginning with Gen. Pace's words:

" 'They're on the ropes . . .if this parliament continues to function and this prime minister continues to function.' "

"'Okay,' I said, 'but are they on the ropes?'

"'Wrong word,' Pace said.

"'You're going to sound like Cheney,' I said. 'You want to retract that?'

" 'I do,' he said. 'I would like to retract that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate the courtesy.' "

Courtesy? Mr. Woodward recounts the whole thing, right there on page 475. Apparently for Bob Woodward, Peter Pace is no Mark Felt. Maybe Gen. Pace would have fared better with Mr. Woodward if he had given him a good scoop during a parking-garage rendezvous.

Mr. Karl is senior national security correspondent for ABC News.

"The Boring Fabulist "State of Denial" amazes me," by Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110009048

Thirty-two years into his career as a writer of books, Bob Woodward has won a reputation as slipshod ("Wired"), slippery ("All the President's Men," "The Final Days"), opportunistic ("Veil"; everything) and generally unaware of the implications even of those facts he's offered that have gone unchallenged. As a reporter he's been compared to a great dumb shark, remorselessly moving toward hunks of information he can swallow but not digest. As a writer his style has been to lard unconnected sentences with extraneous data in order to give his assertions a fact-y weight that suggests truth is being told. And so: On July 23, 1994, at 4:18 p.m., the meeting over, the president gazed out the double-paned windows of the Oval Office, built in October 1909 by workers uncovered by later minimum wage legislation, and saw the storm moving in. "I think I'll kill my wife," he said, the words echoing in the empty room. I made that up. It's my homage.

Mr. Woodward has been that amazing thing, the boring fabulist.

The Bush White House has spent the past five years thinking they could manage him. Talk about a state of denial.

Now he has thwarted me. I bought "State of Denial" thinking I might have a merry time bashing it and a satisfying time defending the innocent injured.

But it is a good book. It may be a great one. It is serious, densely, even exhaustively, reported, and a real contribution to history in that it gives history what it most requires, first-person testimony. (It is well documented, with copious notes.) What is most striking is that Mr. Woodward seems to try very hard to be fair, not in a phony "Armitage, however, denies it" way, but in a way that--it will seem too much to say this--reminded me of Jean Renoir: "The real hell of life is that everyone has his reasons."

His Bush is not a monster but a personally disciplined, yearning, vain and intensely limited man. His advisers in all levels of the government are tugged and torn by understandable currents and display varying degrees of guile, cynicism and courage. As usual, prime sources get the best treatment--the affable Andy Card, the always well-meaning Prince Bandar. Members of the armed forces get a high-gloss spit shine. But once you decode it and put it aside--and Woodward readers always know to do that--you get real history:

The almost epic bureaucratic battle of Donald Rumsfeld to re-establish civilian control of the post-Clinton Joint Chiefs of Staff; the struggle of the State Department to be heard and not just handled by the president; the search on the ground for the weapons of mass destruction; the struggles, advances and removal from Iraq of Jay Garner, sent to oversee humanitarian aid; the utter disconnect between the experience on the ground after Baghdad was taken and the attitude of the White House--"borderline giddy." This is a primer on how the executive branch of the United States works, or rather doesn't work, in the early years of the 21st century.

There is previously unreported information. Former Secretary of State George Shultz was top contender for American envoy to Baghdad, but there were worries he was "not known for taking direction." Spies called "bats" were planted in American agencies by American agencies to report to rival superiors back home.

After Baghdad fell, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who appears to be the best friend of everybody in the world, went to the White House and advised the president to fill the power vacuum immediately: The Baath Party and the military had run the country. Remove the top echelon--they have bloody hands--but keep and maintain everyone else. Tell the Iraqi military to report to their barracks, he advised, and keep the colonels on down. Have them restore order. Have Iraqi intelligence find the insurgents: "Those bad guys will know how to find bad guys." Use them, and then throw them over the side. This is advice that has the brilliance of the obvious, and not only in retrospect.

Mr. Woodward: "'That's too Machiavellian,' someone said. The Saudi notes of the meeting indicate it was either Bush or Rice."

It's isn't clear if "too Machiavellian" meant too clever by half, or too devious for good people like us. Either way it was another path not taken. The newly unemployed personnel of the old Iraqi government took to the streets, like everyone else.

To the central thesis. Was the White House, from the beginning, in a state of denial? I doubt denial is the word. They were in a state of unknowingness. (I have come to give greater credence to the importance, in the age of terror, among our leaders, of having served in the military. For you need personal experience that you absorbed deep down in your bones, or a kind of imaginative wisdom that tells you even though you were never there what war is like, what invasion is, what building a foreign nation entails.) They were in a state of conviction: They really thought Saddam had those WMDs. (Yes, so did Bill Clinton, so did The New Yorker, so did I, and so likely did you. But Mr. Bush moved on, insisted on, intelligence that was faulty, inadequate.) They were in a state of propulsion: 9/11 had just wounded a great nation. Strong action was needed.

Here I add something I have been thinking about the past year. It is about the young guys at the table in the Reagan era. The young, mid-level guys who came to Washington in the Reagan years were always at the table in the meeting with the career State Department guy. And the man from State, timid in all ways except bureaucratic warfare, was always going "Ooh, aah, you can't do that, the Soviet Union is so big, Galbraith told us how strong their economy is, the Sandinistas have the passionate support of the people, there's nothing we can do, stop with your evil empire and your Grenada invasion, it's needlessly aggressive!" Those guys from State--they were almost always wrong. Their caution was timorousness, their prudence a way to evade responsibility. The young Reagan guys at the table grew up to be the heavyweights of the Bush era. They walked into the White House knowing who'd been wrong at the table 20 years before. And so when State and others came in and said, "The intelligence doesn't support it, we see no WMDs," the Bush men knew who not to believe.

History is human.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father"

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Tullius_Cicero

Heil Bush:  Barf Alert from Islamic Scholar at the University of Wisconsin
Kevin Barrett, a controversial adjunct at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who believes the U.S. government was responsible for 9/11, is in hot water again. This time he is being criticized for an essay in which he wrote “like Bush and the neocons, Hitler and the Nazis inaugurated their new era by destroying an architectural monument and blaming its destruction on their designated enemies.” Politicians in Wisconsin are outraged by the comparison between President Bush and Hitler. The Associated Press quoted Barrett as saying Tuesday that he didn’t mean to compare Bush and Hitler personally, but was comparing events. He added that “Hitler has a good 20 to 30 IQ points on Bush.” The university issued a statement from Provost Patrick Farrell saying that it did not endorse Barrett’s views.
Inside Higher Ed, October 12, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/12/qt

Law and Economics Blog of UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge --- http://professorbainbridge.com/

YouTube and Politcs

Two very interesting news stories about YouTube.com. First, from the W$J we learn that:

One after another, embarrassing videos of U.S. senator for Montana, Conrad Burns, have been posted in recent months on YouTube.com by somebody identified only as "Arrowhead77." There was the one of the 71-year-old Republican lawmaker nodding off at a farm hearing. Another where he warned constituents about people who "drive taxicabs in the daytime and kill at night." A third showing Mr. Burns joking about the immigration status of the "nice little Guatemalan man" who works at his Virginia house. (See videos posted by Arrowhead 77.) ... "Arrowhead77" is a 23-year-old staffer on Mr. Tester's campaign named Andy Tweeten, who posts the videos from his iBook notebook, having mixed them with music and added titles. Mr. Tweeten gets his raw footage from a fellow Tester aide, 24-year-old Kevin O'Brien. Since April, Mr. O'Brien has put 16,000 miles on his gold Nissan Sentra stalking Montana's folksy senior senator with a Sony camcorder in hopes of capturing embarrassing moments on tape.

Regular readers might recall something that I wrote back in August:

I bet that Youtube gets the sort of massive political use in the 2006 and 2008 cycles that blogs did in 2004. I'd also be willing to bet it drives anti-free speech, pro-incumbent protection campaign finance "reformers" like John McCain, Russ Feingold, Trevor Potter, and Fred Wertheimer nuts. Which, as Martha might say, would be a good thing. Indeed, it would behoove all political bloggers to go buy a digital camcorder and editing software to start making our own campaign ads. (Just don't pull a Hamsher by embarrassing your candidate.)

Yet, Youtube may yet stymie its potential as a powerful new media tool for politicians and political junkies by rampant (and unfairly tilted) censorship. As the NYT explains:

Last week, as YouTube continued its recent campaign to spit-shine its image and, perhaps, to look a little less ragtag to potential buyers (including Google, which was said to be eyeing the upstart in the $1.6 billion range), the company took a scrub bucket to some questionable political graffiti on its servers, including a video entry from the doyenne of right-wing blogs, Michelle Malkin (michellemalkin.com).

As a private entity, Youtube is perfectly free to ban whatever they want from their website. Yet, just as Fox News emerged in response to a perceived left-wing bias in the MSM, a competitor to Youtube might make competitive inroads by promoting itself as a site in which free speech is given maximum effect.

Every instructor should seriously consider Camtasia 4 --- http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
(this may be the most important learning/teaching software ever invented)

October 4, 2006 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

What's New in Camtasia Studio 4?

Share with anyone, anywhere Get moving! For the first time, Camtasia Studio lets you publish videos and MP3 files for iPods and portable media players. Your message, lecture or training video will reach viewers everywhere – whether they're on a plane or a run.

Give your audience more playback choices No need to guess what your viewers want - you can simultaneously produce multiple kinds of videos. Whether they want to watch it on their laptop, their iPod, or any other portable media player, you've got it covered. As an added bonus, you can even attach a PowerPoint presentation!

Everyone can post online with Screencast.com Share with ease - post your videos, screencasts, and files online at Screencast.com! Deliver content directly to your viewers with RSS and iTunes output. With the new Screencast.com output, sharing with any audience is just a click away.

Improved audio Even in quiet rooms, unwanted noise can creep into your videos – but now Camtasia Studio can drastically improve video quality by editing out background sounds. Plus, it can also ensure consistently good sound by equalizing volume levels.

Compare before producing So many great file choices - which one is best for you? The new production preview feature lets you quickly compare the results of different formats and compression settings.

It's your video – customize it Choose from a variety of playback bars and Flash pre-loaders to create a presentation that looks exactly the way you want.

Interactive, quicker, easier · Find out what viewers really think Engage viewers and get valuable feedback with survey questions. Check out the quiz enhancements, too!

· Move on from PowerPoint – fast Camtasia Studio now processes PowerPoint recordings near- instantaneously, so you can continue your presentation without waiting.

· Produce in three clicks or less Publish videos quickly for the Web, iPod and portable media players. We created eight production presets of the most popular settings - edit or create new presets to save and share!

Richard J. Campbell
School of Business
218 N. College Ave.
University of Rio Grande
Rio Grande, OH 45674
Voice:740-245-7288
http://faculty.rio.edu/campbell

Jensen Comment
Another new (non-free) feature of Camtasia is that TechSmith will serve up your work (including video and PDF files) at a site called Screen Cast (in beta) --- http://www.screencast.com/
There's also a RSS feed at this site, an iPod feed, and a free trial offer.

Interesting Video from a Teacher --- http://video.techsmith.com/blog/screencasts/people/kc01/ohs_interview_0001.html
(The tax deductible comment only applies to K-12 teachers, not to college professors.)

Bob Jensen's Camtasia videos (using older Camtasia software) are included in the following sites:

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

"Video Searching by Sight and Script:  Researchers have designed an automated system to identify characters in television shows, paving the way for better video search," by Brendan Borrell, MIT's Technology Review, October 11, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17604&ch=infotech

Google's acquisition this week of YouTube.com has raised hopes that searching for video is going to improve. More than 65,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube each day, according to the website. With all that content, finding the right clip can be difficult.

Now researchers have developed a system that uses a combination of face recognition, close-captioning information, and original television scripts to automatically name the faces on that appear on screen, making episodes of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer searchable.

"We basically see this work as one of the first steps in getting automated descriptions of what's happening in a video," says Mark Everingham, a computer scientist now at the University of Leeds (formerly of the University of Oxford), who presented his research at the British Machine Vision Conference in September.

Currently, video searches offered by AOL Video, Google, and YouTube do not search the content of a video itself, but instead rely primarily on "metadata," or text descriptions, written by users to develop a searchable index of Web-based media content.

Users frequently (and illegally) upload bits and pieces of their favorite sitcoms to video-sharing sites such as YouTube. For instance, a recent search for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" turned up nearly 2,000 clips on YouTube, many of them viewed thousands of times. Most of these clips are less than five minutes and the descriptions are vague. One titled "A new day has come," for instance, is described by a user thusly: "It mostly contains Buffy and Spike. It shows how Spike was there for Buffy until he died and she felt alone afterward."

Everingham says previous work in video search has used data from subtitles to find videos, but he's not aware of anyone using his method, which combines--in the technical tour de force--subtitles and script annotation. The script tells you "what is said and who said it" and subtitles tell you "what time something is said," he explains. Everingham's software combines those two sources of information with powerful tools previously developed to track faces and identify speakers without the need for user input.

What made the Buffy project such a challenge, Everingham says, is that in film and television, the person speaking is not always in the shot. The star, Buffy, may be speaking off-screen or facing away from the camera, for instance, and the camera will be showing you the listener's reactions. Other times, there may be multiple actors on the screen or the actor's face is not directly facing the camera. All of these ambiguities are easy for humans to interpret, but difficult for computers--at least until now. Everingham says their multimodal system is accurate up to 80 percent of the time.

A single episode of Buffy can have up to 20,000 instances of detected faces, but most of these instances arise from multiple frames of a single character in any given shot. The software tracks key "landmarks" on actor's faces--nostrils, pupils, and eyes, for instance--and if one of them overlaps with the next frame, the two faces are considered part of a single track. If these landmarks are unclear, though, the software uses a description of clothing to unite two "broken" face tracks. Finally, the software also watches actors' lips to identify who's speaking or if the speaker is off screen. Ultimately, the system produces a detailed, play-by-play annotation of the video.

"The general idea is that you want to get more information without having people capture it," says Alex Berg at the Computer Vision Group at University of California, Berkeley. "If you want to find a particular scene with a character, you have to first find the scenes that contain that character." He says that Everingham's research will pave the way for more complex searches of television programming.

Computer scientist Josef Sivic at Oxford's Visual Geometry Group, who contributed to the Buffy project, says that in the future it will be possible to search for high-level concepts like "Buffy and Spike walking toward the camera hand-in-hand" or all outdoor scenes that contain Buffy.

Timothy Tuttle, vice president of AOL Video, says, "It seems like over the next five to ten years, more and more people will choose what to watch on their own schedule and they will view content on demand." He also notes that the barrier to adapting technologies like Everingham's may no longer be technical, but legal.

These legal barriers have been coming down with print media because companies have reaped the financial benefits of searchable content--Google's Book Scan and Amazon's search programs have been shown to boost book sales over the last two years.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

Question
What does Vander Wal call the "personal infocloud?"
Are we becoming glorified clerks?

The Media-Sharing Mirage
Many tools now exist for capturing and sharing data collected on mobile devices. Will they turn us into globe-trotting personal publishers--or glorified file clerks?
by Wade Roush
MIT's Technology Review
October 13, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17613&ch=infotech

Wireless laptops, home broadband connections, and camera phones are nearly ubiquitous, at least in urban parts of the industrialized world. And several Web-based media-sharing services--including eSnips, Nokia's Lifeblog, Motorola's Avvenu, and Six Apart's Vox--can fuse all the information those devices collect into online journals.

The vision is clear: multimedia diaries should document all our experiences and gather our favorite files so we can share them as widely as we wish.

The implementation, however, is flawed.

I've spent the last couple of weeks trying out one of the services, Vizrea. The company's first product, launched in February, was Vizrea Snap, software for Nokia camera phones that simplifies the transfer of photos between the phones, Vizrea's website, and users' home computers. Last month, the company added videos, blog posts, and podcasts to the mix. New social networking technology is also included that lets users view files from friends and swap comments. And they've also created a PC program for organizing these files and have made the system available for more types of phones.

"People who are really into social networking and use sites like Xanga, MySpace, or other services seem to get super-excited about being able to instantly share their content with their social network," said Vizrea CEO Mike Toutonghi. "We wanted to build a robust, seamless platform that allows content to move easily between various devices and end up where users want it to be, already organized."

While the idea is great, Vizrea's technology isn't nearly as robust and worry-free as it should be, especially if the company has its eye on the mass market. And it's a limitation common to all the latest media-sharing services I've used.

Vizrea can do a bunch of neat things. I took some pictures around the neighborhood using a Nokia N70 phone, which includes a surprisingly good 2-megapixel camera. Using the Vizrea Snap software on the phone, I uploaded selected pictures to a personal account I'd created earlier on Vizrea's website. I could add titles and descriptions to the photos and specify which album or "collection" they should go into. I also created blog posts and uploaded those to the Vizrea website. From that site, I could view all of my collections and blog entries, mark them as public or private, invite friends to visit my pages, and browse other Vizrea members' collections.

What's more--and this is what makes a service like Vizrea a real advance--I could view Vizrea blogs and collections from the phone. Up to now, most of our personal data has been stranded on islands. My songs are stuck on my laptop or my iPod. My photos, unless I make the effort to upload them, are stuck on my phone, my camera, or my PC. The TV shows I record are stuck on my DVR. But using Vizrea, I can upload my entire photo collection to the Web, then use the phone to show puppy pictures to friends when I'm traveling.

The same goes for podcasts and other audio clips, including MP3 songs. (While Vizrea doesn't encourage the sharing of copyrighted material, it's certainly possible.) If you don't have one of the 16 Nokia, Samsung, or Panasonic phones that support Vizrea's software, you can do most of the same things using a standard cell-phone browser and Vizrea's WAP interface.

It all represents a step toward what social media theorist Thomas Vander Wal calls the "personal infocloud": technologies that scatter your data across the Internet and reassemble them on demand, wherever you go and whatever device you happen to be using (see "The Internet is Your Next Hard Drive").

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on the Downsides of Open Sharing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/Theworry.htm

"The 10 Biggest Problems With Wireless and How to Fix Them: Missed calls, dead zones, surprise charges. What are cellphone companies doing about them? by Sarmad Ali, The Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2006; Page R1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116120231104396746.html?mod=todays_us_the_journal_report

Cellphones keep getting fancier. But the old problems never seem to go away.

Today, you can get gadgets that let you browse the Web, locate the nearest restaurant or even watch live TV. But customers are still griping about hassles that have plagued cellphones since day one. Networks often drop your calls, and coverage can be spotty, even in big cities. Then there are the nontechnical issues, like surprise charges, inscrutable bills and poor customer service.

"Despite having poured billions of dollars into their networks and call centers, wireless carriers continue to suffer from consumer frustration with their service, both in complaints to regulators and in customers switching to their competitors," says Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

The good news is that companies are scrambling to come up with solutions to those longstanding complaints. Cellular carriers are improving their networks, streamlining their bills and improving their customer service. And technology start-ups are pitching in, introducing gadgets that let consumers do everything from make their phones more durable to boost reception in their home.

Customer complaints are a big part of these efforts. But there's another trend at work: As more people get cellphones, carriers are starting to focus on stealing customers from each other rather than recruiting new ones, Mr. Golvin says. And that means offering better service than the competitors do.

Here's a look at how companies are addressing those chronic problems -- as well as some new ones that are cropping up as phones get more advanced.

SPOTTY COVERAGE

Just about every cellphone user has a gripe about bad reception and dropped calls. Take Danielle Sucher and her boyfriend, David Turner. When they moved to a Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment in April, they discovered that her Cingular cellphone works throughout the apartment. But his T-Mobile phone -- which works fine elsewhere in the city -- gets reception only when he is sitting on the back window sill.

"He really does curl up on the window sill to use his cellphone," says Ms. Sucher, an attorney. "He also often goes outside to get better reception, but that won't work out so well once winter comes."

Gaps in coverage crop up for a number of reasons. Sometimes cellphone companies can't find an ideal place to put antennas, or residents resist cellular towers as an eyesore. "Everyone wants great coverage for their cell service, but no one wants a cell tower in their backyard," says Michael King, an analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.

In big cities, "buildings can become obstructions that bounce waves all over the place," says Bill Ho, an analyst at Current Analysis Inc.

But most "white spaces," the industry term for coverage gaps, are in rural areas that aren't heavily populated, says Marina Amoroso, an analyst at Yankee Group. Since there are fewer potential customers to supply revenue, carriers often don't build infrastructure there.

The bad news: White spaces aren't going away. "These areas will decrease in size, perhaps by a little bit but it's not likely that carriers are going to cover 100% of the physical terrain of the U.S.," says Ms. Amoroso. "There is just no rational business reason to do so. However, they will do their best to cover close to 100% of the population."

Carriers are trying to improve the coverage picture on a couple of fronts. First, they're trying to close as many white spaces as they can by bulking up their networks. T-Mobile USA Inc., which is owned by Deutsche Telekom AG, says it has added more than 2,000 new cell sites across the country, including New York City. Sprint Nextel Corp. says it's investing approximately $7 billion to improve and maintain both its wireless and wire-line networks this year. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, says it spends an average of $5 billion annually to improve its network.

They're also making deals with roaming partners to lease coverage where it doesn't make sense for them to build towers. For example, Mr. Ho says, Alltel Corp. covers a good swath of territory, including the Great Plains states, that the national carriers don't. So many of them have roaming agreements with Alltel to provide seamless coverage for their customers in these areas.

Improving indoor coverage can be trickier, since it takes a powerful signal to penetrate the walls of a building, says Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis, a Washington, D.C., research firm. "If you don't have robust coverage outdoors throughout the suburbs and exurbs, it's even tougher to get a signal in that subscriber's living room," Mr. Greengart says.

Some carriers are pointing their antennas up to blanket high-rise buildings. Others are experimenting with a new technique: letting consumers make calls and receive them over their home Wi-Fi network instead of the regular cellular network. Customers can also boost cellphone signals by installing antennas and repeaters on the roof of their home; some of these devices work in cars as well. This equipment is available from companies such as Wireless Extenders Inc. of Norcross, Ga., Spotwave Wireless Inc., of Ottawa, and AlternativeWireless.com, of San Antonio.

Some companies are also building gadgets to help carriers. TensorComm Inc., of Westminster, Colo., has developed a tool to help cellphone carriers detect the source of interference in wireless networks and improve signal quality and data-transmission rates. The company says it has received interest from several wireless carriers, both in the U.S. and abroad. It expects to have its technology fully deployed by the end of 2007 or early 2008.

...AND NO COVERAGE

Carriers are attacking the coverage problem from another angle, as well. They're acknowledging that their service has gaps and advising customers to make sure they'll be able to get coverage before they sign up.

T-Mobile, for instance, says that it offers a service online and in retail outlets where customers can confirm that there's coverage in their area. Cingular Wireless has launched a similar online service that enables customers to enter their address and see coverage information for their area. And Cingular's retailers use the coverage map to check whether new customers will be off the network.

Continued in article

Corrupt Corporate Governance
For years, the health insurer didn't tell investors about personal and financial links between its former CEO and the "independent" director in charge of compensation
Jane Sasseen, "The Ties UnitedHealth Failed to Disclose:  For years, the health insurer didn’t tell investors about personal and financial links between its former CEO and the "independent" director in charge of compensation," Business Week, October 18, 2006 --- Click Here

"Gluttons At The Gate:  Private equity are using slick new tricks to gorge on corporate assets. A story of excess," by Emily Thornton, Business Week Cover Story, October 30, 2006 --- Click Here

Buyout firms have always been aggressive. But an ethos of instant gratification has started to spread through the business in ways that are only now coming into view. Firms are extracting record dividends within months of buying companies, often financed by loading them up with huge amounts of debt. Some are quietly going back to the till over and over to collect an array of dubious fees. Some are trying to flip their holdings back onto the public markets faster than they've ever dared before. A few are using financial engineering and bankruptcy proceedings to wrest control of companies. At the extremes, the quick-money mindset is manifesting itself in possibly illegal activity: Some private equity executives are being investigated for outright fraud.

Taken together, these trends serve as a warning that the private-equity business has entered a historic period of excess. "It feels a lot like 1999 in venture capital," says Steven N. Kaplan, finance professor at the University of Chicago. Indeed, it shares elements of both the late-1990s VC craze, in which too much money flooded into investment managers' hands, as well as the 1980s buyout binge, in which swaggering dealmakers hunted bigger and bigger prey. But the fast money--and the increasingly creative ways of getting it--set this era apart. "The deal environment is as frothy as I've ever seen it," says Michael Madden, managing partner of private equity firm BlackEagle Partners Inc. "There are still opportunities to make good returns, but you have to have a special angle to achieve them."

Like any feeding frenzy, this one began with just a few nibbles. The stock market crash of 2000-02 sent corporate valuations plummeting. Interest rates touched 40-year lows. With stocks in disarray and little yield to be gleaned from bonds, big investors such as pension funds and university endowments began putting more money in private equity. The buyout firms, benefiting from the most generous borrowing terms in memory, cranked up their dealmaking machines. They also helped resuscitate the IPO market, bringing public companies that were actually making money--a welcome change from the sketchy offerings of the dot-com days. As the market recovered, those stocks bolted out of the gate. And because buyout firms retain controlling stakes even after an IPO, their results zoomed, too, as the stocks rose. Annual returns of 20% or more have been commonplace.

The success has lured more money into private equity than ever before--a record $159 billion so far this year, compared with $41 billion in all of 2003, estimates researcher Private Equity Intelligence. The first $5 billion fund popped up in 1996; now, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Blackstone Group, and Texas Pacific Group are each raising $15 billion funds.

And that's the main problem: There's so much money sloshing around that everyone wants a quick cut. "For the management of the company, [a buyout is] usually a windfall," says Wall Street veteran Felix G. Rohatyn, now a senior adviser at Lehman Brothers Inc. (LEH ) "For the private equity firms with cheap money and a very well structured fee schedule, it's a wonderful business. The risk is ultimately in the margins they leave themselves to deal with bad times."

Continued in article

Insiders are still screwing the investing public
"Trading in Harrah's Contracts Surges Before LBO Disclosure:  Options, Derivatives Make Exceptionally Large Moves; 'Someone...Was Positioning'," by Dennis K. Berman and Serena Ng, The Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2006; Page C3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB115992145253481882.html

Bob Jensen's threads on "Corporate Governance" are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance

Bob Jensen's thread on "Outrageous Compensation" are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation

Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the Core" threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer, this morning was named winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy said that Pamuk, who was born and lives in Istanbul, was honored for his “quest for the melancholic soul of his native city” and work in which he has “discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.” Pamuk is known for his novels and also for his stands on human rights — with comments he made about the Armenian genocide leading to his prosecution by Turkish authorities, although the charges were dropped. Pamuk spent several years in the United States, as a researcher at Columbia University and as a writer in residence at the University of Iowa, through its International Writing Program.
Inside Higher Ed, October 12, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/12/qt

NPR's audio account is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6252463

A Harvard economics professor (Greg Mankiw) provides tips on how to write better ---
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-write-well.html

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

Student Volunteerism Is Up
More than 3.3 million college students engaged in volunteer activities in 2005, up 20 percent from 2002, according to a report released Monday by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Scott Jaschik, "Student Volunteerism Is Up," Inside Higher Ed, October 17, 2006 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/17/volunteer

"PROFILE OF A FRAUDSTER,"  by Lisa Eversole, LSU Accounting Faculty --- http://www.bus.lsu.edu/accounting/faculty/lcrumbley/fraudster.html

General characteristics of those who commit occupational fraud:

• Male
• Intelligent
• Egotistical
• Inquisitive
• Risk taker
• Rule breaker
• Hard worker
• Under stress
• Greedy
• Financial need
• Disgruntled or a complainer
• Big spender
• Overwhelming desire for personal gain
• Pressured to perform
• Close relationship with vendors/suppliers

Jensen Comment
I think Lisa is excluding certain types of fraud such as welfare fraud that is most often perpetrated by females. Among persons who fit the Lisa's above profile there are, in my viewpoint, two types of persons. The first is someone who does not commit fraud unless an opportunity arises somewhat serendipitously such as fraud opportunities that arose because of the billions being spent by government and by private citizens in the wake of hurricane Katrina. This type of person is heavily influenced by the amount involved and ease of getting away with fraud in a particular circumstance. This person does not always fit neatly into Lisa's profile.

The second type of fraudster is someone who deliberately seeks out opportunities in almost any circumstance. The latter type of fraudsters seem to get thrills apart from monetary rewards. It is in fact a game in which these lowlifes get their kicks win or lose. Some hackers get their thrills this way without intent to cheat or cause great damage.

There is also a huge follow-the-herd mentality among fraudsters. If others are seemingly getting away with it, there's a huge temptation to go with the flow. I think the huge KPMG tax fraud (the largest criminal tax fraud in history) illustrates an example of where some KPMG employees simply commenced to follow along when their colleagues were having such seeming success at cheating the IRS. The latter fraudsters did not necessarily fit Lisa's profile very well.

"Prosecutors in KPMG Tax Shelter Case Offer to Try 2 Groups of Defendants Separately," Lynnley Browning, The New York Times, October 5, 2006 --- Click Here

Last year, 16 former KPMG employees, as well as a lawyer and an outside investment adviser, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges that they conspired to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by creating and selling certain questionable tax shelters.

The proposal to split the group comes after Judge Kaplan raised concerns about some prosecutorial tactics in the complex case. KPMG narrowly averted criminal indictment last year over certain questionable shelters and instead reached a $456 million deferred-prosecution agreement. Judge Kaplan has criticized prosecutors for pressuring KPMG to cut off the payment of legal fees to the defendants.

His concerns how appear to extend to the indictments of the defendants.

According to a transcript of the hearing on Tuesday, Judge Kaplan said: “The government indicted 18 people knowing that the effect of doing that would be to put economic pressure on people, along with whatever else puts pressure on people to cave and to plead, because they can’t afford to defend themselves and because perhaps there are other risks involved in a joint trial. That is the patent reality of this case.”

A representative for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan did not have a comment on the letter yesterday.

The letter, which was not filed under seal but did not appear on the court’s docket, was confirmed by two persons close to the proceedings.

Under the proposal, the junior defendants would include Jeffrey Eischeid, the rising star who was in charge of KPMG’s personal financial planning division; John Larson, a former KPMG employee who set up an investment boutique that sold shelters; David Amir Makov, a onetime Deutsche Bank employee who later worked with Mr. Larson’s investment boutique, Presidio Advisory Services; and Gregg Ritchie, a former partner; among others.

The senior defendants would include Jeffrey Stein, a former vice chairman who was the No. 2. executive at the firm; John Lanning, a former vice chairman in charge of tax services; Richard Rosenthal, a former chief financial officer; Steven Gremminger, a former associate in-house lawyer; Robert Pfaff, a former KPMG partner who worked with Mr. Larson to set up Presidio Advisory Services; David Greenberg, a former senior tax partner; and Raymond J. Ruble, a former lawyer at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood; among others.

Lawyers for the defendants maintain that their clients did nothing illegal, while prosecutors contend that they created and sold tax shelters, some involving fake loans, that deprived the Treasury of $2.5 billion in tax revenue.

Bob Jensen's threads on this and other KPMG litigations are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud001.htm#KPMG

Some Firms Specialize in Pre-employment Background Checks ---
http://www.super-solutions.com/criminalbackgroundchecks.asp

Bureau of Justice Statistics --- http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

FBI Crime Statistics --- http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

White House Crime Statistics --- http://www.whitehouse.gov/fsbr/crime.html
(Many links are provided here)

State Crime Statistics from 1960 - 2005 --- http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics --- http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/

White Collar Crime Pays Big Even If You Get Caught ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#CrimePays

Bob Jensen's threads on consumer fraud are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm

Businesses, agencies, executives, anti-fraud professionals and private practitioners will soon have an effective new weapon in the fight against fraud - the ACFE's Fraud Risk Assessment Tool.

Austin, TX (PRWEB) October 2, 2006 -- Businesses, agencies, executives, anti-fraud professionals and private practitioners will soon have a new weapon in the fight against fraud. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the leading provider of anti-fraud training and education worldwide, announced today the acquisition of the Internal Fraud Vulnerability Assessment Tool.

Created by Larry Cook, CFE, president of Cook Receiver Services Inc in Lenexa, Kansas, the IFVAT has assisted users in the US, Canada, and United Kingdom as a web application. The ACFE has enhanced the IFVAT application to develop a comprehensive Fraud Risk Assessment Tool that empowers business owners and private practitioners to assess any organization’s risk factors and vulnerabilities to fraud.

“All organizations have a risk of internal fraud – any organization is susceptible,” Cook said. “A fraud risk assessment is the most effective measure an organization can take to identify its vulnerabilities and make informed, cost-effective decisions on how to prevent and detect employee theft and fraud.”

The Fraud Risk Assessment Tool uses a standard risk assessment methodology to identify an organization's vulnerabilities to fraud; the threats to the organization's assets; the probability of a fraud occurrence in the organization; and the impact of any loss event to the organization. The tool assists the user with developing cost-effective recommendations for measures to mitigate the risks from employee theft and fraud.

Cook created the program after recognizing the need for a standard, comprehensive fraud assessment tool, especially for small-to-mid-size organizations, Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs) and anti-fraud practitioners. Cook said that to hire an accounting firm for such a risk assessment can cost “five figures and up.” The Fraud Risk Assessment Tool provides a more cost-effective way to address the crucial need for fraud detection and prevention.

The Fraud Risk Assessment Tool is also simple to understand. The application can be used by business owners, auditors, accountants, or loss prevention personnel to self-assess the organization's vulnerabilities to employee theft and fraud. An employee with knowledge of the organization's accounting system and internal controls can complete the assessment. Additionally, the Fraud Risk Assessment Tool is even more effective when applied by an anti-fraud professional who can assist in developing effective measures to reduce, prevent, and detect fraud.

About the ACFE
The ACFE is the world's premier provider of anti-fraud training and education. Together with more than 38,000 members, the ACFE is reducing business fraud world-wide and inspiring public confidence in the integrity and objectivity within the profession. Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs) on six continents have investigated more than 2 million suspected cases of civil and criminal fraud. www.ACFE.com

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

Question
Did the Russian's cheat in world chess tournaments?

"Cheating in world chess championships is nothing new, study suggests," PhysOrg, October 10, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news79726823.html

World Chess Championship matches now taking place in Kalmykia, Russia, were suspended late last month amid allegations that Russian chess master Vladimir Kramnik used frequent bathroom breaks to cheat in his match with Bulgarian opponent Veselin Topalov. When play resumed, new allegations surfaced charging that Kramnik's moves seem suspiciously similar to those generated by a computer chess program. 

While it's doubtful that these allegations will be proven, new research from economists at Washington University in St. Louis offers strong evidence that Soviet chess masters very likely engaged in collusion to gain unfair advantage in world chess championships held from 1940 through 1964, a politically volatile period in which chess became a powerful pawn in the Cold War.

"We have shown that such collusion clearly benefited the Soviet players and led to performances against the competition in critical tournaments that were noticeably better than would have been predicted on the basis of past performances and on their relative ratings," conclude study co-authors, John Nye, Ph.D., professor of economics, and Charles Moul, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

"The likelihood that a Soviet player would have won every single candidates tournament up to 1963 was less than one out of four under an assumption of no collusion, but was higher than three out of four when the possibility of draw collusion is factored in," the co-authors wrote.

Continued in article

From the Scout Report on October 6, 2006

HandyFind 2.0.3 --- http://www.handykeys.com/

Are you searching for Kazakhstan? With HandyFind 2.0.3 you can find the word "Kazakhstan" and any other words you might desire in Word documents, webpages, and many other places. Visitors utilizing this program will find that as they are typing in any of the above (Word documents, webpages, etc.), the application will look for the word or phrase currently being typed, relieving them of the responsibility of relying on the normal "Find"

feature. Additionally, there are a number of keyboard shortcuts provided.

This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and XP.

---

Winamp 5.3 --- http://www.winamp.com/

Long-time Winamp users will appreciate this new release, and those unacquainted with the program will be glad to learn of its existence.

Visitors can customize this multi-faceted media player with a number of skins, and they can also view many different types of media, including streaming video and podcasts. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 98, 2000, and XP.

From the Scout Report on October 13, 2006

Widget Manager 1.3.1 ---  http://www.downtownsoftwarehouse.com/software/WidgetManager/

Widgets are fun and quite helpful, as they can be set up to periodically update users with everything from stock quotes to the score of the proverbial "Big Game". Of course, some users may also wish to find a way to wrangle those widgets in an organized fashion. Enter Widget Manager 1.3.1 which allows users to find out the version number of each widget, along with its exact location. This version is compatible with all computers running Max OS X 10.4.

---

OpenTalk 3.10 --- http://www.opentalklive.com/ 

Talking to various friends and associates on the internet just got a bit easier with the addition of OpenTalk 3.10. With this application, visitors can effectively chat via a text box, voice, or video. For some of these options, visitors will need to have a headset microphone or a webcam, but with these additions, all of these modes of communications become readily available. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 98 and newer.

 

International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism --- http://www.intbau.org/

Warren Buffett warns his top managers to beware of accounting gimmicks, even if other companies use them
"Buffett on Options Backdating," The New York Times, October 10, 2006 --- http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=8198

"Options backdating might never have happened if reasonable options accounting had been required years ago," by Floyd Norris, The New York Times, October 13, 2006 --- http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/?ref=business

Bob Jensen's threads on employee stock options accounting and scandals are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm

Private-Equity Firms Face Anticompetitive Probe
The Department of Justice has begun an inquiry into potentially anticompetitive behavior among some of the world's leading private-equity funds, according to people familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Justice Department officials have sent out a series of letters to a number of the industry's most well-known players including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Silver Lake Partners but likely not limited to those firms.
Dennis K. Berman and Henny Sender, "Private-Equity Firms Face Anticompetitive Probe:  U.S.'s Informal Inquiries Have Gone to Major Players Such as KKR, Silver Lake," The Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2006; Page A3 --- Click Here

From The Washington Post on October 11, 2006

In the past six years, how many telephone land lines have fallen out of use?

A. 2 million
B. 20 million
C. 50 million
D. 15 million
 

From The Washington Post on October 13, 2006

What can you do to prevent blur when taking digital pictures?

A. Zoom in
B. Increase the ISO
C. Close down the aperture
D. Slow the shutter speed
 

October 5, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ONLINE LEARNING

"The ultimate question for educational research is how to optimize instructional designs and technology to maximize learning opportunities and achievements in both online and face-to-face environments." Karl L.Smart and James J. Cappel studied two undergraduate courses -- an elective course and a required course -- that incorporated online modules into traditional classes. Their research of students' impressions and satisfaction with the online portions of the classes revealed mixed results:

-- "participants in the elective course rated use of the learning modules slightly positive while students in the required course rated them slightly negative"

-- "while students identified the use of simulation as the leading strength of the online units, it was also the second most commonly mentioned problem of these units"

-- "students simply did not feel that the amount of time it took to complete the modules was worth what was gained"

The complete paper, "Students' Perceptions of Online Learning: A Comparative Study" (JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION, vol. 5, 2006, pp. 201-19), is available online at http://jite.org/documents/Vol5/v5p201-219Smart54.pdf.

Current and back issues of the Journal of Information Technology Education (JITE) [ISSN 1539-3585 (online) 1547-9714 (print)] are available free of charge at http://jite.org/. The peer-reviewed journal is published annually by the Informing Science Institute. For more information contact: Informing Science Institute, 131 Brookhill Court, Santa Rosa, California 95409 USA; tel: 707-531-4925; fax: 480-247-5724;

Web: http://informingscience.org/.

Bob Jensen's threads on "Onsite versus Online Learning" are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineVersusOnsite

"Students prefer online courses:  C