This is a shot of the White Mountains before the snow blanketed the mountain tops..

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

The Nutty Buddy is a revolutionary athletic cup designed by a pro baseball player for superior protection of your most valuable assets. The Nutty Buddy is stronger, more comfortable and more protective for athletes in any sport (play the video) --- http://thenuttybuddy.com/

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

The Battle Of The Books And Other Short Pieces by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) --- Click Here

**Like Father Like Son --- Well Maybe Not in Every Instance**
Here, for example, is how University of Rochester economics professor Steven E. Landsburg made the case for the volunteer army in his textbook "Price Theory and Applications." Under a military draft, he writes, "the Selective Service Board will draft young people who are potentially brilliant brain surgeons, inventors and economists -- young people with high opportunity costs of entering the service -- and will leave undrafted some young people with much lower opportunity costs. The social loss is avoided under a voluntary system, in which precisely those with the lowest costs will volunteer." Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, "Kerry Trips Over an Economic Truth, The Washington Post, November 4, 2006; Page A23 --- Click Here Only slightly more crudely put, the central idea underlying this theorem of what economists call "social welfare economics" is that if a nation must use human bodies to stop bullets and shrapnel, it ought to use relatively "low-cost" bodies -- that is, predominantly those who would otherwise not have produced much gross domestic product, the main component of what economists call "social opportunity costs." On this rationale, economists certify the all-volunteer army as efficient and thus good. Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, "Kerry Trips Over an Economic Truth, The Washington Post, November 4, 2006; Page A23 --- Click Here When our son, then a recent Princeton graduate, decided to join the Marine Corps in 2001, I advised him thus: "Do what you must, but be advised that, flourishing rhetoric notwithstanding, this nation will never truly honor your service, and it will condemn you to the bottom of the economic scrap heap should you ever get seriously wounded." The intervening years have not changed my views; they have reaffirmed them. Unlike the editors of the nation's newspapers, I am not at all impressed by people who resolve to have others stay the course in Iraq and in Afghanistan. At zero sacrifice, who would not have that resolve? Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, "Who's Paying for Our Patriotism?" The Washington Post, August 1, 2005 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101080.html "Casualty of war," by Jonathan Zebrowski, Princetonian, September 13, 2006 --- Click Here "Why?" Wilson School professor Uwe Reinhardt asked of his son, Marine Cpt. Mark Reinhardt '01 and another Marine officer as they sat in a bar in San Diego. "Why did you do this?" "Because no one else does," came the response from Mark. "There are all these kids from the barrio and the Dakotas and the farmland, great young guys going [overseas] to stand tall for America, and they need leaders." Mark, an economics concentrator and former Ivy Club president, had made up his mind to join the United States Marine Corps at the end of his junior year at Princeton. He entered the Officer Candidates School that summer. That decision eventually led to three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and to his receipt of a Purple Heart. After accepting a commission in the Marine Corps, Reinhardt became an artillery officer, finding himself in Iraq shortly after completing his final training. In Iraq, Reinhardt would have typically remained in the rear with the artillery batteries, his father said, but Mark wanted to be where the action was and secured an assignment as a forward observer, radioing in target coordinates from the front lines. Reinhardt's unit supported the initial invasion of Tikrit, and U.S. troops took control of the city in one night. "When we saw a picture [of Mark], that was the first time we knew he was alive, because you never know," Professor Reinhardt said.

"Learn While You Sleep: German researchers have found that by using the right timing and electrical stimulation, they can improve a person's ability to remember facts," by Jennifer Chu, MIT's Technology Review, November 6, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17732&ch=biotech

A Fraudulent Paper Published in Nature, a Prestigious Science Journal
Another Example of the Need for Better Replication in Research Reporting

"'Grape harvest dates are poor indicators of summer warmth', as well as about scientific publication generally," by Douglas J. Keenan, Informath, November 3, 2006 --- http://www.informath.org/apprise/a3200.htm

That is, the authors had developed a method that gave a falsely-high estimate of temperature in 2003 and falsely-low estimates of temperatures in other very warm years. They then used those false estimates to proclaim that 2003 was tremendously warmer than other years.

The above is easy enough to understand. It does not even require any specialist scientific training. So how could the peer reviewers of the paper not have seen it? (Peer reviewers are the scientists who check a paper prior to its publication.) I asked Dr. Chuine what data was sent to Nature, when the paper was submitted to the journal. Dr. Chuine replied, “We never sent data to Nature”.

I have since published a short note that details the above problem (reference below). There are several other problems with the paper of Chuine et al. as well. I have written a brief survey of those (for people with an undergraduate-level background in science). As described in that survey, problems would be obvious to anyone with an appropriate scientific background, even without the data. In other words, the peer reviewers could not have had appropriate background.

What is important here is not the truth or falsity of the assertion of Chuine et al. about Burgundy temperatures. Rather, what is important is that a paper on what is arguably the world's most important scientific topic (global warming) was published in the world's most prestigious scientific journal with essentially no checking of the work prior to publication.

Moreover—and crucially—this lack of checking is not the result of some fluke failures in the publication process. Rather, it is common for researchers to submit papers without supporting data, and it is frequent that peer reviewers do not have the requisite mathematical or statistical skills needed to check the work (medical sciences largely excepted). In other words, the publication of the work of Chuine et al. was due to systemic problems in the scientific publication process.

The systemic nature of the problems indicates that there might be many other scientific papers that, like the paper of Chuine et al., were inappropriately published. Indeed, that is true and I could list numerous examples. The only thing really unusual about the paper of Chuine et al. is that the main problem with it is understandable for people without specialist scientific training. Actually, that is why I decided to publish about it. In many cases of incorrect research the authors will try to hide behind an obfuscating smokescreen of complexity and sophistry. That is not very feasible for Chuine et al. (though the authors did try).

Finally, it is worth noting that Chuine et al. had the data; so they must have known that their conclusions were unfounded. In other words, there is prima facie evidence of scientific fraud. What will happen to the researchers as a result of this? Probably nothing. That is another systemic problem with the scientific publication process.

Bob Jensen's threads on research replication, or lack thereof in accounting research, are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#Replication

Tracking undergraduates into graduate school and into adult life
By 2003, 10 years after they had graduated from college, 40 percent of bachelor’s recipients in 1992-3 had enrolled in a master’s, first professional, or doctoral program, according to ” Where Are They Now? A Description of 1992-92 Bachelor’s Degrees Recipients 10 Years Later,” ( http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007159.pdf ) a report released Tuesday. The study, by the National Center for Education Statistics, looked a variety of demographic, educational, and employment characteristics, and surveyed graduates. The report also found that about three-fifths of the graduates viewed their undergraduate education as very important to their lives.
Inside Higher Ed, November 1, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/01/qt
Jensen Comment
I have to wonder why about 40% of those surveyed did not find their college education as important in their lives. The report suggests that undergraduate business majors are less likely to return to campus for advanced studies, which when you think about it is not surprising. Of course this no longer applies to accounting majors who must now enroll in graduate programs in order to sit for the CPA examination in most states.

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

Social Security Scam Warning
Denny Beresford sent me a message about the latest Social Security email scam. Always remember that government agencies like the IRS and the Social Security Administration, along with banks credit unions, do not send you email messages out of the blue seeking your privacy information or your money. These messages come from crooks, most of whom reside outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States. I don't even open email messages from these institutions.

The sad part is that these scams work so successfully!

Bob,

You might be interested in this - http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/colaPhishingScam-pr.htm
(This is a warning from the Social Security Administration! )

I'm receiving social security benefits now and I have to say that the email I received earlier this morning looked fairly official. However, it seemed unlikely that Social Security would make such a notification by email. So I found the announcement on the official Social Security site. While I'd bet that most people don't fall for the "wife of the former president of Nigeria" type of scam, this looks like one that might have a higher degree of success.

Denny

Free Fraud Alert Systems --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#Fraud%20Alerts

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

Bob Jensen's helpers if you think you've become a victim --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm

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

Jensen Comment
Even the familiar Nigerian-type scams are still enormously successful. These scams are the second most lucrative export (oil is number one) from Nigeria, and Nigeria is only one of many places in the world where such scams originate. Many also come from Eastern Europe where technology geniuses are always miles ahead of law enforcement and vendor security protection upgrades --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#NigerianFraud

Transparency International, a private antibribery group in Berlin, released its annual corruption perceptions index

"Voters Were Not the Only People to Notice Scandals," by Mark A. Stein, The New York Times, November 12, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/business/yourmoney/12count.html?ref=business

Transparency International, a private antibribery group in Berlin, released its annual corruption perceptions index, which gauges how people view the honesty of public officials in 163 countries.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Iraq’s reputation suffered this year. So did those of Brazil, Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Laos, Algeria and — er — the United States. America fell three spots, to tie for 20th with Chile and Belgium.

The pecuniary relationships that Jack Abramoff and other lobbyists had with certain members of Congress apparently took a toll on the country’s reputation.

And a substantial number of voters cited corruption as a factor in their decision in the midterm election last week.

But there is another side to the problem: the countries that pay graft to foreigners.

Transparency International uses this “supply side” of corruption to rank countries on a “bribe-payers index.” Here, the United States does better. It tied — again, with Belgium — in ninth place.

Question
What is the AICPA's feed the pig initiative?

November 8, 2006 message from Barry Rice [BRice@LOYOLA.EDU]

Who says CPAs don't have a sense of humor?

* * *

Feed the Pig is a new national public service campaign from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and The Advertising Council to encourage the 40 million Americans age 25 to 34 to take control of their personal finances. The campaign is a new component of the 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy effort, which offers free tools and resources to help Americans manage their finances through every stage of life.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the national professional association of CPAs, with approximately 330,000 members in business, industry, public practice, government and education. The AICPA sets the ethical standards for the profession and theauditing standards for private companies, non-profit groups, and federal, state and local governments.

The Advertising Council has produced thousands of PSA campaigns addressing the most pressing social issues of the day. The Ad Council aims to foster tremendous positive change by raising awareness, inspiring action and saving lives.

For more information about this campaign, please contact feedthepig@aicpa.org or visit www.feedthepig.org

Barry Rice

November 8, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hello Barry,

It's become a rare even to hear from the Founding Father of the AECM, and it's great to know that you're alive and well.

I'm old enough to remember when Bill Paton, a powerhouse on the University of Michigan campus, in the middle of the 20th Century, made a push to require basic accounting for every student on campus. In the 21st Century I would not advocate this for basic accounting, but I do think it is very important to require all students to take a course in personal finance and taxation. Even our accounting students (who do not face the short-skirt, fish net stockings dilemma mentioned by Catlin below) still are incredibly weak in personal finance and have difficulty managing their own financial affairs for the long-term future. For example, how many of them can effectively argue against the clever and highly misleading "investment advisor education infomercials and scams," the dirty tricks of credit card companies, and FICO fraud? Arthur Levitt claims says society is too easily seduced.

"I don't see frankly much out there that really does the job, and that's partially because investors are their own worst enemy," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt. "They refuse to invest skeptically, and are too easily seduced by all the purveyors of financial products that prey upon their worst instincts."
"Investor Education 101: How to Avoid Scams: Outreach Programs Target Most-Vulnerable Americans, But Success Is Hard to Assess," By Lynn Cowan, The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2006; Page D3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114713241888747241.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

My case is strongly supported by Catlin Petre's recent article in Newsweek Magazine, November 13, 2006, pp. 16-17 --- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15565824/site/newsweek/

When I got my first job after graduating,
I found that life's real tests start when final exams end.
My friends and I are incredibly lucky to have gotten the educations we have. But there's a discrepancy between what we learn in school and what we need to know for work, and there must be some way for universities to bridge this gap. They might, for example, offer classes in personal finance as part of the economics department.

When I got my first job after graduating, I found that life's real tests start when final exams end.
Nov. 13, 2006 issue - To think there was once a time when I thought nailing the interview was the hardest part of getting a job. I recently applied to be a cocktail waitress at an upscale bowling alley in Manhattan. After a brief interview, the manager congratulated me, saying I'd be a great fit. It was only a momentary victory. She produced a sheaf of papers, and my stomach turned flips. I knew what was coming—the dreaded W-4. I'd filled them out before, for various summer jobs, but I'd always been exempted from taxes because I was a full-time student. Now that I had graduated from college, this was the first W-4 I had to complete fully.

The manager watched as I hesitated. "Are you having trouble?" she asked as I squinted at the tiny print. "Oh, no, I'm fine." I stared at the form, trying to figure out how many allowances to claim—or what an allowance was, for that matter. I didn't want to admit that I was stumped, so finally I just took a guess.

Later I asked my friends to shed some light on the matter, but none of them knew any more than I did. Instead, they advised me to do what they did: make it up and hope for the best. So much for being a well-educated college graduate.

Having taken seminars on government, I could hold forth on the relationship between taxation and the federal deficit but was clueless about filling out a basic tax form. I'd graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in May, and had decided against going straight to graduate school. But while countless newspapers claimed that the job market for graduates was the best it had been in years, I had no idea how to take advantage of it. I couldn't imagine myself in an entry-level administrative position staring at a spreadsheet for eight hours a day—partly because it sounded dull, but also because in college I had never learned how to use spreadsheet programs. Cocktail waitressing seemed like a good way to make ends meet.

My friends and I are graduates of Wesleyan, Barnard, Stanford and Yale. We've earned 3.9 GPAs and won academic awards. Yet none of us knows what a Roth IRA is or can master a basic tax form. And heaven help us when April comes and we have to file tax returns.

My friends and I are incredibly lucky to have gotten the educations we have. But there's a discrepancy between what we learn in school and what we need to know for work, and there must be some way for universities to bridge this gap. They might, for example, offer classes in personal finance as part of the economics department. How about a class on renting an apartment? Granted, it might be hard to lure students to such mundane offerings, but the students who don't go will wish they had.

College students are graduating with greater debt than ever before, yet we haven't learned how to manage our money. We can wing it for only so long before employers start wising up to our real-world incompetence. In fact, they already are: a study released last month showed that hundreds of employers have found their college-graduate hires to be "woefully unprepared" for the job market.

All this raises a disturbing question: when I spent a ton of time and money on my fancy degree, what exactly was I buying? The ability to think, some might say. OK, fine, that's important. Still, my résumé would look odd if it read, "Skills: proficient in French, word processing, thinking." The thinking I did in college seems to be of limited utility in the "real world." The fact that I wrote a 30-page critical analysis of the function of shame in society did nothing to ease the sting when I spilled beer on a customer at the bowling alley.

That's not the only time I've found my education incompatible with real life. I had trouble getting used to my new uniform, which consists of a supershort '50s-style bowling skirt, boots and fishnet stockings. As I changed into it for the first time, I had a vision of the feminist philosophers I had read in college hovering over me, shaking their heads disapprovingly.

But it wasn't long before I began to see that the short skirt played a role in boosting my tips—a definite plus now that I was trying to rent an apartment, feed myself and buy the occasional book or new toothbrush.

So which to live by: the philosophers or the skirt? I'm trying to fashion some combination, one that allows me to retain my principles without having to file for bankruptcy. After all, the last thing I want is to be confronted with more confusing government paperwork.

My helpers for investors are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm

My advice on mortgages is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#mortgages

My warnings for on dirty secrets of credit card companies and credit rating agencies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#FICO

Hope to hear more from you in the future Barry!

Bob Jensen

When I got my first job after graduating,
I found that life's real tests start when final exams end.
My friends and I are incredibly lucky to have gotten the educations we have. But there's a discrepancy between what we learn in school and what we need to know for work, and there must be some way for universities to bridge this gap. They might, for example, offer classes in personal finance as part of the economics department.
When I got my first job after graduating, I found that life's real tests start when final exams end. Nov. 13, 2006 issue - To think there was once a time when I thought nailing the interview was the hardest part of getting a job. I recently applied to be a cocktail waitress at an upscale bowling alley in Manhattan. After a brief interview, the manager congratulated me, saying I'd be a great fit. It was only a momentary victory. She produced a sheaf of papers, and my stomach turned flips. I knew what was coming—the dreaded W-4. I'd filled them out before, for various summer jobs, but I'd always been exempted from taxes because I was a full-time student. Now that I had graduated from college, this was the first W-4 I had to complete fully. The manager watched as I hesitated. "Are you having trouble?" she asked as I squinted at the tiny print. "Oh, no, I'm fine." I stared at the form, trying to figure out how many allowances to claim—or what an allowance was, for that matter. I didn't want to admit that I was stumped, so finally I just took a guess. Later I asked my friends to shed some light on the matter, but none of them knew any more than I did. Instead, they advised me to do what they did: make it up and hope for the best. So much for being a well-educated college graduate. Having taken seminars on government, I could hold forth on the relationship between taxation and the federal deficit but was clueless about filling out a basic tax form. I'd graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in May, and had decided against going straight to graduate school. But while countless newspapers claimed that the job market for graduates was the best it had been in years, I had no idea how to take advantage of it. I couldn't imagine myself in an entry-level administrative position staring at a spreadsheet for eight hours a day—partly because it sounded dull, but also because in college I had never learned how to use spreadsheet programs. Cocktail waitressing seemed like a good way to make ends meet. My friends and I are graduates of Wesleyan, Barnard, Stanford and Yale. We've earned 3.9 GPAs and won academic awards. Yet none of us knows what a Roth IRA is or can master a basic tax form. And heaven help us when April comes and we have to file tax returns. My friends and I are incredibly lucky to have gotten the educations we have. But there's a discrepancy between what we learn in school and what we need to know for work, and there must be some way for universities to bridge this gap. They might, for example, offer classes in personal finance as part of the economics department. How about a class on renting an apartment? Granted, it might be hard to lure students to such mundane offerings, but the students who don't go will wish they had. College students are graduating with greater debt than ever before, yet we haven't learned how to manage our money. We can wing it for only so long before employers start wising up to our real-world incompetence. In fact, they already are: a study released last month showed that hundreds of employers have found their college-graduate hires to be "woefully unprepared" for the job market. All this raises a disturbing question: when I spent a ton of time and money on my fancy degree, what exactly was I buying? The ability to think, some might say. OK, fine, that's important. Still, my résumé would look odd if it read, "Skills: proficient in French, word processing, thinking." The thinking I did in college seems to be of limited utility in the "real world." The fact that I wrote a 30-page critical analysis of the function of shame in society did nothing to ease the sting when I spilled beer on a customer at the bowling alley. That's not the only time I've found my education incompatible with real life. I had trouble getting used to my new uniform, which consists of a supershort '50s-style bowling skirt, boots and fishnet stockings. As I changed into it for the first time, I had a vision of the feminist philosophers I had read in college hovering over me, shaking their heads disapprovingly. But it wasn't long before I began to see that the short skirt played a role in boosting my tips—a definite plus now that I was trying to rent an apartment, feed myself and buy the occasional book or new toothbrush. So which to live by: the philosophers or the skirt? I'm trying to fashion some combination, one that allows me to retain my principles without having to file for bankruptcy. After all, the last thing I want is to be confronted with more confusing government paperwork.

Fidelity Offers Free Online Retirement Planning Tool --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x55296.xml

1950s Iowa Nostalgia

Bill Bryson: Time Traveling in 'Thunderbolt Kid' --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6394288

Bill Bryson grew up during the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa where, he says, everything about his childhood was the best.
Bishop's Downtown was the best restaurant. Dahl's, the local supermarket, had a kiddie corral filled with comic books -- a kid could get swallowed up there. Younkers, the local department store, had a tea room that looked like a postcard of Buckingham Palace, and gave children little gifts wrapped in crisp white paper.

Bryson, the author of A Walk in the Woods, A Short History of Nearly Everything, and Notes from a Small Island, has written a memoir about his childhood called The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

Excerpt: 'The Life and Times of the Thunder --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6394288

Bob Jensen's tale about growing up in Iowa can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm

1950s Juke Box Tunes are free online at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm#JukeBox

Jerry Lee Lewis: 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6388855

Athletics creates a more vibrant environment,” said Terry Mohajir, associate athletics director. “There’s been a great deal of research on that.
As quoted by Paul D. Thacker, "If They Build It ...," Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/10/stadium

It's Still a Shell Game in Terms of Division 1-A Male Athletes
While the NCAA’s numbers do show that athletes in general graduated at a higher rate than other students at their institutions, Division I male athletes in general fell short of other male students (56 vs. 58 percent), and football players (55 percent) and men’s basketball players (46 percent) were lower still. And the numbers were even lower at the Division I-A level, the NCAA’s top competitive level, where 41 percent of men’s basketball players and 42 percent of baseball players earned their degrees in six years. (Granted, those numbers are all generally on the rise, as NCAA officials are rightly quick to note.)
Doug Lederman, "Graduation Rate Grumbling," Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/10/gradrates

This season’s crop of college sports scandals is already so rancid that just about everyone is riveted to the foulness of it

"The Faculty Bench," by Margaret Soltan, Inside Higher Ed, November 8, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/08/soltan

This season’s crop of college sports scandals is already so rancid that just about everyone is riveted to the foulness of it. Rent-A-Stripper night at Duke University is a whiff in the wake of the fumes pouring out of Auburn University (professors creating pretend courses for athletes), the University of Georgia (the canceling of classes for football games, trustee cronyism and malfeasance, NCAA violations, rampant fan alcoholism), Ohio University ( 17 football players arrested in the last 10 months, and their coach recently convicted of drunk driving), the University of Miami ( multiple on-field riots by players), and the other big stinkers.

hose who follow this stuff closely, like the Drake Group, know that almost every major sports program in this country’s universities is stewing in some mix of bogus coursework, endemic plagiarism, diploma mill admits, risible graduation rates, and team thuggery — and that’s just the players. Add two-million-dollar-a-year drunk coaches crashing their cars all over town; meddling and corrupt alumni boosters subsidizing luxury boxes in new stadiums with massively overpriced tickets and names honoring the local bank; trustees averting their eyes as students tailgate their way to the emergency room; and presidents disciplining on-field rioters by ever so lightly spanking their bottoms, and you get a problem difficult to ignore.

Or so you’d think. But tenured faculty — the one group doomed to wander the Boschean triptych of Athlete-Alumni-Administration forever and ever — seems to have noticed nothing. Duke’s faculty organized itself to protest the lurid thing its lacrosse team had become, yes, but where are Miami’s and Georgia’s professors, where things are much, much worse? It’s like that scene in Naked Gun when, with buildings exploding into flames behind him, Leslie Nielson tells the gathering crowd, “Nothing to see here! Nothing to see here!” Or that W.H. Auden poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” where atrocities rage in the background while in the foreground “the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse/ Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”

The psych professor pontificates to his class about Freudian denial, ignoring the fact that outside his window a group of recruits to the women’s soccer team, hazed to within an inch of their lives, has just vomited in loud and anguished unison and then passed out. The sociology professor deplores the country’s weak gun laws while half a block away, in student housing, pistol play breaks out on the basketball team. The political science professor decries corporate graft, his voice drowned out by a quarterback revving the Hummer he got as a token of a dealership’s esteem. The literature professor recites Keats’s “To Autumn” to herself as she trods the leafy paths of the quad, unaware that underfoot she’s crunching not leaves but beer cans left over from the football game the school has always called The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.

It’s not that the faculty bench has cleared; the faculty bench was always empty. Even as public revulsion grows at the sight of grosser and grosser campuses, the professors stay silent. Why?

Some professors, to start with, are themselves team boosters. They’re excited by the spectacle of game day, its bracing autumn weather, everyone wrapped in team-color scarves, the TV cameras trained on their guys, the shrieking advertising images on the stadium’s “Godzillatron” screen, generations of university grads gathered in the stands to scream so loudly the other side can’t hear its signals. These are the faculty members who find ways to rack up course credits for athletes who don’t attend classes. As teen nerds, these professors worshipped jocks and wished to serve them. Now they’re serving them.

And some professors are dupes. They actually think the sports program contributes significant money to the academic side of their university. In almost every case, they are wrong, and they could discover they’re wrong. Yet they remain in a sort of bad-faith fog about it. They don’t really quite exactly precisely know where all that money from tickets and TV and endorsements goes, but, hell, some of it’s gotta get to the library, right? A close look at the books (admittedly, sports program managers make such looks difficult) would probably reveal that sports at the dupe’s university drains money from the primary mission of the place. To say nothing of the reputational damage that’s being done to the institution by scandal after scandal.

Next, there are the truly oblivious. A lot of professors are eerily good at ignoring everything in the world. They’ve written 14 books with obnoxious children and harridan wives bedeviling them every step of the way. To call them “absent-minded” would be an insult. They are not there. The sports program has yet to be devised which is corrupt and homocidal enough to catch their eye.

Number four would be embarrassed. Professors have shaky egos and are, as a group, preoccupied with academic status. Already, if you’re at one of the big sports schools, you’re unlikely to be at an academic powerhouse; but you still think of yourself as a serious person, and you very much want to think of your university as a serious one. It’s humiliating to your sense of yourself and your institution to have to confront the overriding importance for almost everyone on campus of sports in general and the bad boy football and basketball teams in particular. Understandably, you will find ways to avoid this confrontation.

Now to class issues. Professors may be intellectual and social snobs, the sort of people who look down on yoyos whose face paint runs with Budweiser. Being excitable about anything strikes a lot of professors, whose approach to life tends to be tight-lipped irony, as tacky. And don’t forget ideology. It’s the rare women’s studies prof ready to squeal along with the pompom squad. The chair of peace studies will have quite a struggle with the naked aggression on the gridiron. The contempt all of these professors express is at least an emotion and not indifference. Yet the contempt is frozen. It conveys the belief that the situation’s too big and too crazy to do anything about.

There’s also, finally, the corporate outdoorishness of the venture. Professors have nothing against getting quietly tight in their own snug lodgings, but the idea of braving the cold and getting soppy with a bunch of fellow drunks is revolting. In general, professors are not team players — groups of any kind give them the heebie jeebies.

Given what looks like a pretty hardwired incompatibility between professors and sports programs, can we even begin to imagine a time when professors might take a bit of interest in the athletic scandals on their campuses? Myles Brand, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, recently extended an invitation to professors to become “fully engaged” in significant aspects of their universities’ programs.

Individual faculty resistance can sometimes have an impact. Here are two examples, both from 2004’s scandal-plagued darling, the University of Colorado at Boulder:

1.) Professor Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, left Colorado in disgust, citing — among other concerns — the irreparable academic damage its sports program had done and continued to do.
2.) Professor Joyce Lebra, a distinguished historian, refused a University Medal, one of the highest awards the university offers, writing in her rejection letter that she would never take a prize from a place whose “gross distortion of priorities” has made it an “embarrassment.” “The focus and priority on football,” she concluded, “has undermined the atmosphere of this university, which by definition should be dedicated to academic endeavor at the highest level.”

Both Wieman and Lebra got national coverage, and probably caused a modicum of shame among the trustees and administrators at Colorado. I don’t claim such gestures make a big difference, but they certainly get people’s attention. Group protest, of the sort Duke’s faculty expressed, is more effective, but more difficult to accomplish. Remember, professors don’t like to do groups.

Direct action has its attractions — showing up at trustee meetings and holding signs and insisting on being heard — but keep in mind a story the other day out of Western Kentucky University, one of many provincial institutions that convince themselves to become Division I-A football universities, because it’ll really put them on the map:

From The Courier-Journal: “Western Kentucky University’s board ran roughshod over faculty regent Robert Dietel last week, as it rushed to embrace Division I-A football.... WKU’s board told Dietel to shut up. Contempt dripped from [one board member]: ‘People on this board dedicate their time for free. They have better things to do than let some university professor just keep talking.’”

That idiot is what professors who get serious about their universities’ purulent sports programs are up against. Professors on some level understand this, and shy away.

But whether through principled exits, repudiation of academic awards, organized petitions and demonstrations, involvement in groups like Drake, or simply unrelenting ridicule, more professors should act upon the disgust that the stench from sports factories inspires in people who have not forgotten what universities are.

Margaret Soltan is a professor of English at George Washington University. Her blog is University Diaries.

Question
Do those "independent studies" for varsity athletes have respectable academic standards?

A panel at Auburn University has found that independent study courses that gave many athletes major boosts in their averages were apparently quite easy for non-athletes as well. While the report found key flaws in the way the courses were run, it didn’t find special treatment for athletes.
Inside Higher Ed, November 6, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/06/qt

Yes Bohunk: It's Still Possible to Sign Up for Basket Weaving
Athletes Seek Out Professors Who Will Pass Almost Any Athlete
Watkins says it is all too common to see athletes grouped in certain departments or programs under the sheltering wings of faculty members who appear to care more about their success on the courts, rinks and fields than in the classroom. Faculty members are often the most vocal critics of favoritism for athletes (the issues at Auburn were raised by one whistle blowing sociology professor against another), he says, but it is frequently professors who are responsible for the favoritism in the first place.
Rob Capriccioso, "Tackling Favoritism for Athletes," Inside Higher Ed, July 20, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/20/sports

While accusations of widespread abuse like that alleged at Auburn are unusual, “clustering” of athletes — in which large numbers of athletes at an institution major in a particular program or department, out of proportion to other students at the college — is common. A 2002-3 analysis by USA Today found that a large percentage of football players at Auburn and Duke University (a quarter and a third of the teams, respectively) majored in sociology, while tiny fractions of all undergraduates majored in that field. At North Carolina State, the University of Michigan and University of Southern Mississippi, the most popular major among football players tended to be sports management, also far out of proportion with their peer students.

Richard M. Southall, an assistant professor of sport and leisure studies at the University of Memphis, says that his own sports and leisure area is the second most popular major for athletes, just behind those who attend the institution’s University College, an “individualized and interdisciplinary” degree program.

Continued in article

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

Horrible (shell game) accounting rules for pension accounting
Over the past three decades, we have allowed a system of pension accounting to develop that is a shell game, misleading taxpayers and investors about the true fiscal health of their cities and companies -- and allowing management to make promises to workers that saddle future generations with huge costs. The result: According to a recent estimate by Credit Suisse First Boston, unfunded pension liabilities of companies in the S&P 500 could hit $218 billion by the end of this year. Others estimate that public pensions -- the benefits promised by state and local governments -- could be in the red upwards of $700 billion.
Arthur Levitt, Jr., "Pensions Unplugged," The Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2005; Page A16 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113159015994793200.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

This may be a helpful video to use when teaching the FAS 132(R) and the new 2006 FAS 158

"Can You Afford to Retire?" PBS --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/need/
Click the Tab "Watch Online" to view the video (not free)!

How many Americans working in the private sector have retirement plans?

What's the difference between employer-sponsored pension plans and 401(k) plans?

What are the advantages of 401(k) plans for employees?

What are the advantages of 401(k) plans for companies?

What are the pitfalls of 401(k) plans for employees?

What are the major mistakes workers make managing their 401(k)s?

What should be the combined employee/employer amount put into a 401(k) each year?

What can be done to make 401(k)s work well?

What happens when companies don't have enough money to fund their pensions?

How bad is the problem of corporations underfunding their pension trust funds?

Healthy companies are also freezing pension plans. How does that work?

What's being done to address the problem of underfunded pension trust funds?

Half of America's private sector workforce are not covered by any retirement savings plan; their retirement will be anchored only by Social Security and whatever they have managed to save on their own. The other 50 percent have one of the two main employer-sponsored retirement savings strategies: a traditional lifetime pension or a 401(k)-style investment plan. Today, twice as many workers have 401(k)s than have lifetime pensions, a complete reversal from 25 years ago, according to David Wray of the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America.
"PBS Frontline: Can You Afford to Retire," Financial Page, November 8, 2006 --- Click Here

PBS Frontline has rebroadcast a critical examination of the nation's retirement system. You can access the interviews and written material for the program at PBS Frontline: Can You Afford to Retire. One can also view the program on-line, from the referenced link.

The program highlights problems with both the Defined Benefit pension system (rapidly becoming obsolete) and the rising Contributory Benefit system, which brings with it a number of problems. The program considers:

Low levels of worker participation in these plans

Inadequate funding of these plans by workers

Poor investment results for most employees

The burden of self managing the plans

The program does not address the problem of high intermediation costs in the Contributory Pension system, or the preponderence of substandard investment vehicles (high cost annuities, load funds, and high cost active funds) in many employer provided plans.

While the program explores the underfunding and closing of Corporate Defined Benefit plans, it does not touch on underfunding in the government pension system, nor does it address the fatal flaw of Defined Benefit plans: the total lack of portability of these plans for the employee.

FAS 158 improves financial reporting by requiring an employer to recognize the overfunded or underfunded status of a defined benefit postretirement plan (other than a multiemployer plan) as an asset or liability in its statement of financial position and to recognize changes in that funded status in the year in which the changes occur through comprehensive income of a business entity or changes in unrestricted net assets of a not-for-profit organization. This Statement also improves financial reporting by requiring an employer to measure the funded status of a plan as of the date of its year-end statement of financial position, with limited exceptions.
FASB --- http://www.fasb.org/st/summary/stsum158.shtml

Bob Jensen's threads on pension accounting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#Pensions

Mortgage Professor's Tips on Whether or Not to Pay Off Your Mortgage Early --- http://www.mtgprofessor.com/early_payoff.htm

How Mortgages Work --- http://money.howstuffworks.com/mortgage.htm

What are current mortgage rates? --- http://biz.yahoo.com/b/r/m.html

Beware of the So-Called Investor Education Programs (especially beware of infomercials)

"I don't see frankly much out there that really does the job, and that's partially because investors are their own worst enemy," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt. "They refuse to invest skeptically, and are too easily seduced by all the purveyors of financial products that prey upon their worst instincts."
"Investor Education 101: How to Avoid Scams: Outreach Programs Target Most-Vulnerable Americans, But Success Is Hard to Assess," By Lynn Cowan, The Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2006; Page D3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114713241888747241.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

Where do over half of the science undergraduates end up?
More than half of those who graduated with science bachelor’s degrees in 2001 or 2002 were employed outside of science and engineering or unemployed, non-students by October 2003, according to a report released by the National Science Foundation. The report features numerous tables on the post-graduation work and education histories of science graduates.
Inside Higher Ed, November 8, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/08/qt

Do faculty change grades under pressure from administration?
A Washington Post investigative report Thursday detailed e-mails and faculty reports sent to the Board of Trustees suggesting that Gallaudet is admitting students with poor academic skills. The Post article also described incidents in which the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Science and Technologies, Karen Kimmel, sent e-mails to professors asking them to pass students who had failed a remedial math test. Professors later changed the grades, the Post reported.
Paul D. Thacker, "Standards Questioned at Gallaudet," Inside Higher Ed, November 10, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/10/gallaudet

Senator John McCain has resigned from the board of trustees of Gallaudet University, the world’s premier university for the deaf, after disagreeing with its decision to revoke the appointment of its incoming president, a university spokeswoman said. The chairwoman of the Gallaudet University board, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, has also resigned, the spokeswoman, Mercy Coogan, said. Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, wrote to outgoing President I. King Jordan on Monday, describing the board’s decision as unfair, Ms. Coogan said.
"McCain Quits Post at College for the Deaf," The New York Times, November 9, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/education/09gallaudet.html

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

"New sequential decision making model could be key to artificial intelligence," by Miranda Marquit, PhysOrg, November 8, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news82190531.html

“Decision making,” Mikhail Rabinovich tells PhysOrg.com, “is everywhere, and not just with humans. Animals use it, and robots do. But the traditional approach to decision making is too simple.”

Rabinovich and his colleague at the Institute for Nonlinear Science at the University of California, San Diego, Ramon Huerta, along with Valentin Afraimovich at the Institute for the Investigation of Optical Communication at the University of San Luis Potosi in Mexico, present a new model for understanding decision making. Their paper, titled “Dynamics of Sequential Decision Making,” has been published on Physical Review Letters.

The idea behind sequential decision making is fairly simple: if an intelligence has to decide between two items, something will follow, based on the decision made. “In the traditional, simplistic model,” says Rabinovich, the decision maker has to answer a simple question — left or right for instance — choosing between two attractors.” This results in a simple “if-then” equation. However, when real decision making is in question, there is more than a simple “if-then” at work. “In reality,” he says, “it’s much more complex and interesting.”

Rabinovich explains that a sequential approach is needed: an approach that combines dynamic and probabilistic steps. And that, he says, is precisely what he, Huerta and Afraimovich are proposing. “This is a new class of model,” he says. “We have found a window to consciousness, and now we can generalize this into other cognitive functions.” He lists sequential attention, working memory and planning as other cognitive areas that could be benefited by this research into sequential decision making.

But it’s not just the knowledge of how we humans might do something that makes Rabinovich and his colleagues’ work so interesting. “This can be applied to the artificial brain,” Rabinovich insists. “If we are going to create an intelligent brain for a robot, we have to think of these independent elements.” Basically, a process is needed for modeling a robot brain that could work as a human or animal brain. This is a model for getting there: “We have to be able to answer these questions in a qualitative way.”

Continued in article

Excel Tip
Hyperlinks aren't just for web pages. Using the Insert Hyperlink command in Excel, you can create hyperlinks within Workbooks and even on a single spreadsheet pointing to a specific cell or a range of cells. The hyperlink can appear as a label, such as Trial Balance or 30-Days Past Due Total, or it can just display the content of the selected cell.
AccountingWeb, October 31, 2006

Enron Investors and Their Lawyers Aiming at Deep Investment Banking Pockets
Andersen Coughs Up $72.5 More Millions for Enron's Investors
Lawyers representing Enron investors have already won settlements for $7.3 billion of the $40 billion shareholders claim they lost in Enron’s 2001 collapse. On Nov. 1, the latest settlement — an agreement by Arthur Andersen, Enron’s former accounting firm, to pay $72.5 million — was disclosed. But it is far from clear whether the testimony of Mr. Fastow, a convicted felon who masterminded some of the fraudulent transactions that hid the company’s poor financial health, will be enough to push the seven banks that have not settled to the negotiating table.
Lexei Barrionuevo, "Fastow Gets His Moment in the Sun," The New York Times, November 10, 2006 --- Click Here

Jensen Comment
The investment bankers, including Merrill Lynch, in the high rolling days of Enron succumbed to CFO Andy Fastow's extortion threats of taking Enron's business away if these investment bankers did not play ball his (corrupt) way. Now it's ironic how he's returning to make the banks restore millions to investors he destroyed.

You can read the following at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnronQuiz.htm#01

Why do auditors often lose professionalism?

For auditors the problem is more complicated, especially for those in charge of major local-office audits or those in charge of their entire firms of tens of thousands of employees around the world. Think of David Duncan who had the honor as a relatively young man to take charge of Andersen's audit of the huge Enron Corporation in 1997. David was not a shareholder in Enron and, unlike Andy Fastow, did not have greedy hands in the air while Enron's billions were swirling over his head.

David Duncan was torn apart by classical auditor conflicting responsibilities. On one side he had a huge responsibility to see that Enron abided by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) intended for fairness of information released to the investing public. He also was responsible for maintaining both internal and external public perceptions of Andersen's professionalism. On the other side he inherited hundreds of Andersen's Houston Office auditors and consultants working on Enron, some of whom were my former students. David Duncan was responsible for meeting the huge monthly payroll of his audit and consulting teams. Enron was a problematic client because there were higher than usual threats about taking Enron's business elsewhere if Andersen became too problematic in Enron's eyes. I might add that financial institutions like Citibank and Merrill Lynch faced similar problems of losing enormous cash flows from Enron if they did not overlook some of Andy Fastow's financial misdeeds.

Hundreds upon hundreds of Andersen's Houston Office professionals would've been fired if David Duncan lost Enron as a client. And these people were much closer to Duncan than unknown faces in the investing public. David Duncan violated GAAP responsibilities in favor of keeping Enron as a client. Not all Andersen auditors would've done the same. Carl Bass, who worked at a high level on the Enron audit, most certainly paid more homage to GAAP than David Duncan. But the buck stopped at Duncan's desk, and this is why Duncan forced Bass off the Enron audit.

What is discouraging is how the CEOs at both Enron and Andersen preferred to remain in the dark about accounting irregularities instigated by executives beneath themselves. Ken Lay at Enron preferred not to hear about accounting book cooking that helped to keep Enron share prices soaring. Several succeeding CEOs at Andersen resisted putting in quality controls on large audits around the world --- even when there were signs of bad auditing dating back to audit failures such as Waste Management. Art Wyatt, a former high-level executive partner with Andersen, captured the sentiment in his paper entitled "ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALISM --- THEY JUST DON'T GET IT" --- http://aaahq.org/AM2003/WyattSpeech.pdf

I attribute many audit failures in every large large CPA firm to the growth in size of the clients themselves. The U.S. auditing process is flawed in design by having CPA auditors both responsible to the public and beholding to fees paid to them by clients being audited. The potential for conflict of interest is self evident since huge clients can destroy local offices of large CPA firms by changing auditors.

The problem was not so huge years ago when firms had many small clients and could afford to lose a client in favor of standing on principles of professional responsibility. The problem is huge today because local offices of these firms often have a single enormous client like Enron, Exxon, Fannie Mae, or General Electric upon which the future of the entire office resides. Enron was paying Andersen's Houston office $1 million per week for auditing and consulting services. Imagine any single local office losing cash flow of $1 million per week!

Many theorists claim that the U.S. auditing model is so flawed that auditing should be put in the hands of the government. My response is that this would be even worse given the track record as U.S. government being the source of the biggest frauds in world history.

No auditing system will ever be perfect. All we can do is struggle to constantly make our profession better and increasingly ethical. We do have some help from the tort lawyers nipping at our heels (actually our heads). You can read more about the Future of Auditing at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#FutureOfAuditing

The day Arthur Andersen loses the public's trust is the day we are out of business.
Steve Samek, Country Managing Partner, United States, on Andersen's Independence and Ethical Standards CD-Rom, 1999.

University of Chicago Martin Marty Center (Religious Studies Think Tank) --- http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/

Fifty tools to help your write better --- http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/fifty-50-tools-which-can-help-you-in-writing.html

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

"Digital Photography Goodies in Vista, Part 1: A sneak peek at Vista features that cater to photographers." by Dave Johnson, PC World via The Washington Post, November 7, 2006 --- Click Here

Let's start at the beginning. Downloading photos from your digital camera will be a lot easier in Vista thanks to what amounts to a two-click photo-import wizard. Here's how it works: Plug your camera or memory card into your PC, and wait a moment for AutoPlay to appear. ClickImport Pictures using Windows, and you'll see the Importing Pictures and Videos dialog box .

What's that "tag" field, you ask? Well, if you want to, you can add descriptive keywords to your digital images, just like in Flickr, Adobe Photo Album, and a host of other tag-loving apps. When you import your files, the same tag is applied to all the photos in the batch, but you can fine-tune your tags later.

Click Import, and all your photos are automatically copied to a new subfolder in the Pictures folder. You can also click a check box to delete all the pictures from your camera when the import process is complete.

More goodies: If your camera has an orientation sensor (so it knows how you were holding the camera when you took the pictures), Vista automatically rotates your photos as they're imported. And even if you don't delete the photos from your camera, Vista is smart enough not to import the same images more than once.

After you import your photos, Vista automatically opens Windows Photo Gallery , a photo organizer similar to Microsoft Digital Image Suite. Here's what the interface looks like.

Here you can see the value of tags--you can add any number of tags to your photos, and then quickly organize and find photos using these descriptions. One way to search by tag is to type one into the search box at the top of the screen. When you do that, the main window automatically filters the view to display items that have that word in the file name, tag, or caption. Alternately, you can click a tag in the list on the left side of the screen--instantly, you'll only see the files with that tag. You can also nest tags in a hierarchy , so it's easy to see all your family photos or just shots of your cat.

You might like the idea of tagging your photos, but dread the thought of all that typing. Well, fear not: You need only create a tag once. From then on, just drag pictures from the main window onto the tag in the list. In fact, you can select dozens or hundreds of pictures at once and drag them to the relevant tags. I have about 10,000 pictures on my hard disk, and I managed to get all my photos tagged in one weekend. This is huge. I've been advocating the use of metadata like tags and keywords to organize photos for years, and now this ability is about to be baked right in to the Windows operating system, instead of slapped on top with a third-party photo organizer. How cool is that?

There's a lot more under the hood. Tune in next week for a peek at the remaining digital photo features, including a real photo editor.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

read_article.aspx?id=17772&ch=infotech

When Top Scholars Write Outside Their Realm of Expertise to Favor Executives at the Expense of Investors
To close, the appeal to authority is enticing because it gives the aura that those with brilliant minds adopt a particular point of view. While powerful rhetorically, this approach constitutes a logical error because authorities sometimes make mistakes, such appeals to authority do not address the subject under debate, and the opposing side can solicit its own bevy of experts. Worse, this strategy backfires when the list of experts do not really possess the requisite knowledge base in the field of battle. With such ignorant experts, the glamour of Hagopian's paper disappears. I could stop my critique at this point, but opponents of the expensing of employee stock options would continue their nonsense. Therefore, I shall resume the critique in the next column by reviewing the arguments by FASB and by Bodie, Kaplan, and Merton.
"Accounting for Stock Options: Reasoning by Authority: Part 1," by J. Edward Ketz, SmartPros, November 2006 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x55203.xml
Jensen Comment
Bravo Ed!

Bob Jensen's threads on the executive stock options accounting controversy are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/sfas123/jensen01.htm

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants announced a new associate membership category for all college and university accounting faculty who are not certified public accountants.
SmartPros, October 3, 2006 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x55364.xml

The AICPA News Release is at http://www.aicpa.org/download/news/2006/AICPA_Announces_New_Membership_Category_11-2-06.pdf

The New European Three Year Plan for Undergraduate Degrees
But 45 European nations have pledged to make three years the standard time for their undergraduate degrees by 2010. Under “the Bologna Process,” named for the Italian city where the agreement for “harmonizing” European higher education was signed in 1999, degrees are supposed to be sufficiently similar that they will be recognized from one country to the next, encouraging student mobility. What happens when some of that mobility involves graduate study in the United States?
Scott Jaschik, "Making Sense of ‘Bologna Degrees’," Inside Higher Ed, November 6, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/06/bologna

What are American universities doing? Many appear to be shifting — rapidly — away from systems that have been widespread in the past, in which three-year degrees were automatically rejected or in which graduates of three-year programs were granted provisional admission, on condition that they take certain courses or perform at certain academic levels.

Daniel D. Denecke, director of best practices for the Council of Graduate Schools, presented data from a recent survey showing that more institutions are shifting to policies in which degrees are evaluated for comparability or applicants are evaluated for whether they can do the work.

Graduate School Policies on 3-Year Degrees

Policy 2005 2006

Do not accept 29% 18%

Provisional acceptance 9% 4%

Evaluate degree for equivalency 40% 49%

Evaluate candidate for competence 22% 29%

The council also asked a question about non-European three-year degrees. The results indicate the universities with the largest foreign graduate populations are more likely to be open to accepting such degrees than are other institutions.

Graduate School Policies on Non-European 3-Year Degrees, 2006

Policy 25 Largest Institutions Other Institutions All

Accept 56% 44% 45%

Don’t accept 44% 56% 55%

To non-Americans, the figures suggest that American graduate schools just need to learn more about the qualities of foreign students. Joe Hlubucek, counselor for education and science at the Australian Embassy, said that students from his country generally have no difficulties getting admitted to American graduate programs that have had a decent number of Australians enrolled over the years. “They are very well prepared,” he said.

The skepticism tends to come from an institution that hasn’t had many Australians.

In most of the public sessions, the general theme was one of the need for American flexibility.

Continued in article

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

"SEC Chief Suggests Blogs for Disclosures," PhysOrg, November 7, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news82126753.html

In the first official communication posted to a blog by a chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox said he was intrigued by the idea of letting companies use Weblogs to disseminate important corporate information.

Cox has invited the chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc., avid blogger Jonathan Schwartz, to talk to the agency about the idea of allowing companies to disclose significant financial information through blogs.

The SEC chief showed interest in Schwartz's recent request for blogs to be used as a way to expand investors' access to information. His response to Schwartz, posted on Sun's Web site on Friday, caught the attention of the online world and even sparked envy from a Wall Street Journal blog.

A growing number of major companies now publish corporate blogs or online diaries. The SEC position is that current regulations do allow for blogs, like news releases, regulatory filings, Web sites and Webcasts, to be used to disseminate companies' financial information, provided a particular blog reaches a broad audience.

A 2000 rule known as Regulation FD, for Fair Disclosure, ended a long-standing practice by forbidding companies from providing significant information to stock analysts and other Wall Street insiders ahead of the public. The rule requires the method or methods used to be "reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public."

"The (SEC) encourages the use of Web sites as a source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to further discuss with us your views in this area," Cox told Schwartz in his posting on the CEO's blog. (He also sent Schwartz a letter by mail.)

Said Cox: "Assuming that the (SEC) were to embrace your suggestion that the 'widespread dissemination' requirement of Regulation FD can be satisfied through Web disclosure, among the questions that would need to be addressed is whether there exist effective means to guarantee that a corporation uses its Web site in ways that assure broad non-exclusionary access ..."

Cox has pushed several technology initiatives meant to give investors more useful and complete information about companies and mutual funds. His novel way of responding to Schwartz provoked jealousy on the part of The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.

"We're jealous," lead writer Peter Lattman huffed Monday on the blog. "SEC Chairman Christopher Cox posted a comment on a blog. But not the Law Blog. ...

"Shameless plea to Chairman Cox: We've got a serious case of the Monday morning blues and it would turn our day around if you posted a comment on the Law Blog. Don't worry, we don't want your thoughts on Reg FD or hedge funds. Keep it light: Tell us about the last movie you saw. Your favorite book? Thanksgiving plans?"

In a Sept. 25 letter to Cox, Schwartz noted that Sun's Web site, which gets an average of nearly a million user hits a day, includes the blog that he writes as CEO and those of thousands of employees of the Silicon Valley server and software maker.

"My blog is syndicated across the Internet by use of RSS technology," Schwartz wrote. "Thus, its content is 'pushed' to subscribers. This Web site is a tremendous vehicle for the broad delivery of timely and robust information about our company. ...

"We encourage you to look to the Internet to achieve the (SEC's) objectives of greater investor access to information," he told Cox.

Schwartz's letter didn't specify how many people read his blog, as opposed to the Web site in general, so more data would be needed to determine whether it meets the criterion of broad distribution under the regulation, in the SEC's view.

Schwartz, who recently started publishing his blog in French and nine other languages, has said it attracts 50,000 viewers a month. For him, he says, it has become "the single most effective vehicle to communicate" with investors, journalists and analysts.

Thirty Fortune 500 companies are now publishing corporate blogs, nearly double the number in December 2005, according to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki, a collaborative tracking site. Technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp. were early adopters, but senior executives at big industrial companies like Boeing Co. and General Motors Corp. also have embraced the trend.

In its unfiltered form, blogging allows CEOs to bypass the public relations department, journalists and industry analysts and speak directly to the public. Few company blogs are written by the chief executives, however.

Jensen Comment
No mention is made of XBRL, but this will one day be an opportunity for XBRL tagged disclosures. The FASB is undertaking a study for development of XBRL tags for qualitative disclosures. Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL

New Windows Media Player Shines
The 11th version of Microsoft's Windows Media Player hit Windows XP desktops Monday like an out-of-control city bus. No, we haven't got a wooden Keanu Reeves to save the day, but we do have some solid evidence of Microsoft's effort to bring sexy back to the media player.
Daniel Dumas, "New Windows Media Player Shines," Wired News, October 31, 2006 ---
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/reviews/0,72036-0.html?tw=wn_index_3

"Once You Experience Wide-Screen HDTVs, Hassles Seem Small," by Walter S. Mossberg, The New York Times, November 2, 2006; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/personal_technology.html

As the holiday season begins, many people will be shopping for a big-screen, flat-panel, digital television set, especially those capable of receiving high-definition television, or HDTV. But what's it like to own and use an HDTV set? Are the benefits as good as advertised? What, if any, are the downsides?

To find out, my wife, Edie, and I lived for several weeks with a big, beautiful HDTV, the Pioneer Elite PRO-1140HD, lent to us by Pioneer Electronics. It has a 50-inch screen, a long list of features and lists for $5,000, though you can find it for under $4,000 on the Web.

I tested the Pioneer with digital cable service from Comcast, my local cable provider. This service transmits high-definition programs where available and can record them to a digital video recorder (DVR) built into its set-top box. Comcast also has an on-demand feature that allows you to watch certain programs whenever you like.

The test demonstrated why people are so hooked on HDTV. The Pioneer Elite set performed brilliantly and was a joy to watch with HDTV programming. With HDTV, you are not only increasing the size of the picture, but its quality as well. On the Pioneer, colors popped, details I never saw before emerged, and the whole experience was almost cinematic. DVDs looked great, as did content from a computer plugged into the set.

But there is a hitch: Most TV programs aren't available in HDTV, and these non-HDTV shows can actually look worse on an HDTV set than they do on older, standard TV sets. So do most videotapes. Also, buying a big-screen HDTV carries hidden costs and hassles. You may well need help installing the set. You may also have to switch or upgrade your cable or satellite service, get a new DVD player and buy new furniture.

The Pioneer Elite model I tested happens to be a plasma TV, which is one of the three major types of HDTV sets. It works by stimulating a captive gas with an electrical charge. The other two are LCD, or liquid crystal display, which uses a screen like those on laptop computers; and "microdisplay" sets that project the image onto the screen from the rear of the set, mainly using two technologies: DLP, or digital light processing, and a form of LCD.

Plasma TVs tend to have the blackest blacks and the best ability to be viewed from all angles of a room. Their colors are warm and vivid. And they cost less than LCDs in large sizes. But their screens are more reflective and a bit darker than LCD screens. There is also a slight chance they can suffer "burn-in," the permanent embedding of an image, like a network logo, if you leave such an image on for a very long time without changing channels.

LCDs are bright, and they are the thinnest and lightest of the HDTVs. But their colors often seem cold and their blacks too gray. Their viewing angles aren't as good as with plasmas. And in some cases, fast motion can look blurry.

Microdisplay sets typically cost the least, but they are the thickest of the three types. They tend to have limited viewing angles and can display a "rainbow" effect, which causes problems for some people.

Our Comcast service gave us high-definition channels from all the big broadcast networks and some of the major cable ones. We immediately started watching shows like "Grey's Anatomy," "Desperate Housewives" and "Heroes" in high definition, and found they were greatly enhanced. Watching the World Series and NFL games was a great experience, with every clump of dirt, bead of sweat and blade of grass looking so much more real.

The Pioneer also did a great job with an Apple Mac Mini computer we plugged into it, displaying family photos and downloaded videos stored on the Mac.

The big downside was that only a small fraction of programming is high definition. At 8 p.m. on Tuesday night this week, there were just 13 high-definition programs available from Comcast, out of more than 230 total. The on-demand service had a smattering of additional high-definition shows and movies.

And standard TV shows on a high-definition set can look awful. They can be fuzzy. They also typically fill only a portion of the wide screen, with big black or gray bands on the sides. You can eliminate the bands using TV features that stretch or zoom the picture, but these modes either cut off too much or distort people so they look unnaturally short and stout.

Also, we ran into plenty of extra costs and hassles. We had to buy new furniture to hold the TV and all the gadgets that attached to it. We had to replace our DirecTV satellite service with Comcast cable, because the trees in our yard blocked the high-definition satellite signal -- which is beamed separately from another position in the sky. The Comcast digital service with high-definition costs more than the company's standard cable service and its DVR holds only 15 hours of high-definition programming versus 60 hours of standard programming.

Despite all these costs and limitations, we were won over by our HDTV test. After returning the test unit, we went out and bought our own HDTV. We decided that in the slow transition to high-definition programming, there's now enough content to make HDTV worthwhile. And once you get used to high definition, it's tough to go back to plain old TV.

Politics and Student Loans
The National Education Loan Network, known as Nelnet, and its executives top the list of contributors to the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to an analysis in

Policy	2005	2006
Do not accept	29%	18%
Provisional acceptance	9%	4%
Evaluate degree for equivalency	40%	49%
Evaluate candidate for competence	22%	29%

Policy	25 Largest Institutions	Other Institutions	All
Accept	56%	44%	45%
Don’t accept	44%	56%	55%