
Bear Cubs Making Themselves at Home in a
Dumpster.
It's not smart to stand there taking their picture!
I did not take this picture.
From Celine
What a
Wonderful World ---
http://www.barb-coolwaters.com/c004/wonderful_celine.html
From Sachmo
What a Wonderful World (Louis
Armstrong) ---
http://oldbluewebdesigns.com/wonderfulworld.htm
Man has been endowed with reason, with the
power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up
to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep
disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the
climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
Anton Chekhov, Uncle
Vanya, 1897 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov
When we understand that man is the only
animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral
nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the
problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with
nature in order to experience his own being.
Ernest Becker ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Becker
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or
spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
Helen Keller ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller
If a man walks in the woods for love of
them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a
loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off
those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed
an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
I had a wooden pole
in the barn where I hang heavy old suits that I really should give to charity
since I've not worn a suit for over a year in retirement (nobody close died or
got married this year). To make a long story short, the pole broke and I did not
notice it for several weeks in that part of the barn. When I eventually replaced
the pole with a steel pipe and commenced picking up my fallen clothes, at the
bottom of the pile I found a badly chewed up blue blazer serving as a nest for
about a dozen baby mice. Each
wiggly
baby with unopened eyes was about the size of a thimble. I didn't have the heart
to hurt the babies or move the nest. In a few months, however, I may put some
mouse baits in the barn with messages that "field mice" are supposed to live in
fields.
Once in May I
put out three bird feeders on the back deck. The next morning all three were
torn down. We can't feed birds up here, because the favorite food of White
Mountain black bears is bird seed. If I try again this winter, I will put out a
sign by the bird feeder stating that bears are supposed to dine in fancy hotel
dumpsters.
Lon Henderson and
his wife own the
Sunset Hill House
Hotel down the road.
They took their family camping last week. Upon their return , I sent a message
that it was a good thing that the bears concentrated on the hotel's dumpster
rather than their sleeping bags in the woods. Lon wrote back as follows:
I heard the bears peeled our
dumpster lid back like foil (only the middle was chained, not the ends as
the guys working at the inn are supposed to do). No bears where we were
camping, but a mouse ate all of Mary Pearl’s Kit Kat bar .
Unless threatened, our
black bears are not dangerous and aggressive unlike their brown relatives in
other parts of the world. That does not mean that our bears cannot be
frightening and
obnoxious. Our friends who live outside a nearby village called Easton reported
that, while they were working in the yard in broad daylight, a black bear simply walked past them
in their
driveway and helped herself to the garbage bags inside the garage. We never
leave garbage outdoors up here except when some dumb accounting professor (who
retired from Texas) did so the first night after moving into his cottage. We
heard a commotion in the night and turned on the flood lights. What we then saw
was a furry black butt sticking out from our largest trash can.
Another friend had
family visiting for Thanksgiving. They looked up from the dinner table and saw a
bear inside one of their cars helping itself to some food inadvertently left inside the unlocked car. The bear actually opened
the car door without damaging the car.
Our physician up here is a
woman named Virginia Jeffryes. She reported that her mother put a sack of
garbage temporarily in a back room. When she later opened the door, she saw the
window broken and the screen torn off. In the yard was a black bear dragging
that sack of garbage toward the woods.
I have a friend who is a
professional "bear chaser." This means people hire him and his specially trained
dogs with radio collars to chase a bear into some distant part of the mountains.
Only on very rare occasions is he hired to kill a bear. Most of us prefer to
live and let live as far as all animals are concerned except when they need to
be thinned out for their own good as is the case on occasion with deer in
various parts of the world. In my opinion up here in the White Mountains, paying
somebody to chase bears off is a waste of time and money. Bears easily find
their way back in a very short period of time. But on occasion a bear might
prefer its new habitat, and this can be beneficial to prevent inbreeding. And
there may be some better dumpsters in the bear's new locale.
Actually, dumpster
diving is not the main way bears survive up here. Although they eat most all
kinds of nuts and berries, the staple for them up here is acorns. The supply of
acorns is somewhat weather related and varies from year to year. We see more
bears wandering about if it happens to be a bad acorn year. Otherwise bears are
quite shy and prefer to live deep in the woods. And their hearing and smell
senses are so sensitive that hikers rarely encounter them in the woods. Sadly
our bears are still hunted down and killed by grownups with nothing better to
brag about.
Tidbits on August 26, 2007
Bob Jensen
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
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Set up free conference calls at
http://www.freeconference.com/
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
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
Four Hands Guitar (amazing) ---
http://www.jibjab.com/view/175903
Link forwarded by Vidya
A great video that captures the essence of the global shift to the knowledge era
and it's implications for us in the education community.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Related Link (Size Matters) ---
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/shifthappens
Saddam's Secrets ---
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1sx7x_saddams-secrets_news
Stock Market Report by John Klee (Monty Python, Humor)
---
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9ZrCkBJVlm4
The Money Program (John Klee-like Humor) ---
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DkhOhUkhIFA
Pres. George W. Bush Parody by a kid
---
Click Here
From the WSJ: Bribes in New Orleans (not funny) ---
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/8_0004.html?bcpid=86195573&bclid=212338097&bctid=1144206605
To find YouTube videos of your favorite singers, use Google.
For example, to find music videos of Bette Midler, enter "Bette Middler" AND "YouTube"
in the search boxes at
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Kurzfilme is German for short films and maybe thats
interesting for your "Online multimedia" section.
You can find netzwelt Kurzfilme at
http://www.netzwelt.de/divxvideo/divxkurzfilme.html
KPMG partners with major league baseball to bring baseball to inner city kids
--- http://kpmginfo.com/rbi/
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Find music and audio books from Akuma ---
http://www.akuma.de/
Google Hacks (search for music) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hacks
Four Hands Guitar (amazing video) ---
http://www.jibjab.com/view/175903
I Just Don’t Look Good Naked Anymore (video) ---
http://www.rushfrisby.com/youtubedotnetdemo/GetVideo.aspx?VideoID=Z06vdR8W3VM
Humor Music Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm#Humor
The Hypnotic Handrum (video) ---
http://www.groovygrooves.com/video/the-hypnotic-handrum
Max Roach was the hottest drummer in New York by
the time he was 20 years old. By the time he died at age 83, he was truly one of
the giants of jazz. ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12847242
Born and raised among the jazz greats of New
Orleans, trumpeter Terence Blanchard honed his skills in the early 80s when he
replaced Wynton Marsalis on trumpet for Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12840737
Puccini's 'The Girl of the Golden West' ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12819446
Vasectomy Song ---
Click Here
Selected YouTube Music Videos ---
Click Here
The Rose (Bette Midler
Video)
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYWAYLZWZBg
Bette Midler - Boogie
Woogie Bugle Boy (Jumpin')---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUxUbYUHExs
Elvis Presley - In The Ghetto...(Video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmVFnhO3A98
Elvis Presley - Blue Suede Shoes (Video of Elvis live in 1969)
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpYL08wVJUo
Barbra Streisand - Woman in Love (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHqAllSQ_eM
Video: Johnny Cash - Kris Kristofferson - Willie Nelson -
Wayloon Jennings - Me and Bobby McGee ---
Click Here
To find YouTube videos of your favorite singers,
use Google. For example, to find music videos of Bette Midler, enter "Bette
Middler" AND "YouTube" in the search boxes at
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
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
Download the Internet Safety for Kids book ---
http://www.packet-level.com/kids/
How to Publish in Top Journals ---
http://www.roie.org/how.htm
Writing World ---
http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/
Venice is a seductive city that has bewitched artists from all
over the world. One writer who has settled in "the city on stilts" is the
American author Donna Leon. The sinking Renaissance jewel is the backdrop of her
"Commissario Brunetti" detective stories. Leon recently gave a visiting reporter
a tour of her Venice. The story is part of a series, Crime in the City, about
crime novelists and the places they and their characters inhabit ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12878560
Tibet Writes (Poetry) ---
http://www.tibetwrites.org/
Hebrew Poets in Old Spain ---
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10901
Espresso Stories (about consumerism) ---
http://espressostories.com/
Charlie Brown Quotes ---
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064107/quotes
Roderick Hudson by Henry James
---
Click Here
Watch And Ward by Henry James ---
Click Here
Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman
Melville ---
Click Here
Tom Sawyer Detective by Mark Twain ---
Click Here
"Tanzania Travels" Blog Honored (African Health Issues) ---
http://blogs.webmd.com/tanzania-travel/
Wisdom Quotes ---
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/
The Necronomicon of Alhazred, (literally: "Book of Dead
Names") is not, as is popularly believed, a grimoire, or sorcerer's spell-book.
It was conceived as a history, and hence "a book of things now dead and gone".
An alternative derivation of the word Necronomicon gives as its meaning "the
book of the customs of the dead", but again this is consistent with the book's
original conception as a history, not as a work of necromancy ---
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/necron/necron.htm#What
People who boasted that they had made a revolution
have always seen the next day that they had no idea what they were doing, that
the revolution made did not in the least resemble the one they would have liked
to make.
Friedrich Engels ---
Click Here
In the free market, those that made bad credit
decisions must be allowed to pay the price, and only by paying dearly can
lessons truly be learned. Borrowers who were unwitting and took on too much debt
must learn that there are consequences for their actions. Homebuilders that
built too many homes or overpaid for land need to face the consequences. Wall
Street firms that provided credit to all of these activities with too much
laxity must also pay a price. This is all part of a healthy correction. All of
these players reaped benefits during the housing boom that preceded the current
crisis. Certain homeowners were able to temporarily live above their means.
Homebuilder and bank profits have been exorbitant, and shareholders and
executives of these companies have profited mightily in the boom. To not permit
losses now would be a direct violation of the free-market ideals at the
foundation of our economy.
Ethan Penner, "Fannie, Freddie and
the Housing Bust," The Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2007; Page A11 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118723188037699335.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep
Far from being victims of Nazism, Aly argues, the
majority of Germans were indirect war profiteers. Requisitioned Jewish property,
resources stolen from the conquered, and punitive taxes levied on local
businesses insulated citizens from shortages and allowed the regime to create a
“racist-totalitarian welfare state.” The German home front, Aly claims, suffered
less privation than its English and American counterparts. To understand
Hitler’s popularity, Aly proposes, “it is necessary to focus on the socialist
aspect of National Socialism.” While underemphasized by modern historians, this
socialism was stressed in many contemporaneous accounts of fascism, especially
by libertarian thinkers. F.A. Hayek famously dedicated The Road to Serfdom to
“the socialists of all parties”—that is, Labourites, Bolsheviks, and National
Socialists. “It was the union of the anti-capitalist forces of the right and the
left, the fusion of radical and conservative socialism,” Hayek wrote, “which
drove out from Germany everything that was liberal.” Ludwig von Mises agreed,
arguing in 1944 that “both Russia and Germany are right in calling their systems
socialist.”
Michael C. Moynihan, "Hitler's
Handouts: Inside the Nazis' welfare state," Reason Magazine,
August/September 2007 ---
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120941.html
The State Children's Health Insurance Program bill
passed by the House of Representatives protects Medicare by reducing outlandish
overpayments to private plans that threaten the future of the entire Medicare
program ("The Schip Revelation," Review & Outlook, Aug. 9). What little benefit
some beneficiaries gain from these plans comes at the expense of the vast
majority of people with Medicare and with a price tag of $150 billion.
"SCHIP Shoulders Children's Health-Care in U.S.," The Wall
Street Journal, August 17, 2007; Page A11 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118731987268500669.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things
which escape those who dream only by night.
Edgar Allan Poe ---
Click Here
So far this year the Democratic House has approved
spending bills that include some 6,500 earmarks, not quite keeping pace with the
Republicans' record of nearly 16,000 in 2005 but more than twice the whole-year
total of a decade ago. Far from shaming legislators into fiscal restraint, the
Times reports, "the new transparency has raised the value of earmarks as a
measure of members' clout" and "intensified competition for projects by letting
each member see exactly how many everyone else is receiving." Congressional
shamelessness likewise may undermine the goals of the new Senate ban on
anonymous holds. A hold occurs when a senator refuses to let a bill or
nomination proceed by unanimous consent, thereby requiring the measure's
supporters to muster 60 votes to allow consideration of the measure.
Jacob Sullum, "Honest and Open Thievery: The
limits of Congress's ethics reforms," Reason Magazine, August 15, 2007
---
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121947.html
Obama is walking the same tightrope. He recently
said he would talk with the world's rogue-state leaders without preconditions.
But then he caused a furor by declaring that as president he would order raids
on terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan if there were "actionable intelligence" on
their whereabouts and if the Islamabad regime didn't do the job itself.
Democratic candidate John Edwards made a similar pledge last week in an
interview with U.S. News—to go after Osama bin Laden "wherever
he was." Edwards has been one of the most dovish
presidential candidates, at least on Iraq, but he knows he can't afford to be
seen as wobbly on defense . . . Actually, the party's problem goes back more
than 30 years. Historians say congressional Democrats dug themselves into a deep
hole when they forced the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and cut off money to the
Saigon government in its struggle against the Communists. Republicans argue that
since then the Democrats have shied away from using military force and have
appeared impotent. President Jimmy Carter hurt the party's image further; he
seemed naive about the intentions of the Soviet Union and was unable to win
freedom for U.S. hostages in Iran in the final year of his presidency. Kevin
Madden, spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, says too
many Democratic leaders are "liberal, antiwar internationalists" who aren't
willing to "make the tough decisions required to make the country safe." That's
a common view in the GOP—and a note that will be struck repeatedly in next
year's general-election campaign.
Kenneth T. Walsh, "The Dems'
Security Insecurity - New efforts to counter the GOP lead on national defense,"
U.S. News & World Report, August 19, 2007 ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883675/posts
Jensen Question
After President Obama and Vice-President Edwards get the last remaining G.I. out
of Iraq and commence sending the the U.S. Army into Pakistan, where would you
move to if you were the leader of al-Qaeda? No kidding --- Iraq? Will Obama and
Edwards re-invade Iraq?
Estimates vary, but up to 780 people were killed by
East German border guards for trying to flee to the West during the Cold War.
Yet Saturday's revelation of an official 1973 order that Stasi secret-police
agents "stop or liquidate" anyone trying to escape the socialist paradise has
stunned Germany. The story preoccupies the media and politicians alike. Granted,
the order is unique in its explicit inhumanity. "Do not hesitate to use your
firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and
children, which the traitors have often used to their advantage," the document
reads. Like other totalitarian regimes, East Germany's apparatchiks usually
referred to state-sanctioned murder in more ambiguous terms.
"Shoot to Kill," The Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2007;
Page A12 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118729864318700120.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, established
during the 1979 Iranian revolution, has evolved into a powerful and influential
organization that is believed to have custody over most or all of Iran's
chemical, biological and radiological weapons, Anthony H. Cordesman of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies says in a study to be published
in late September. The force has some 125,000 men, and has exported thousands of
rockets to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and shipped arms to various
Palestinian movements, including the Palestinian Authority, Cordesman writes in
``Iran's Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities.'' Some 5,000 of the group
are assigned to unconventional warfare missions as well as special Quds, or
Jerusalem, forces for operations overseas. They support the Palestinian militant
group Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and on the West Bank and
Shiites in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Cordesman, a former director of
intelligence assessments at the Pentagon.
Barry Schweid, "Analyst: Iranian
Force Gaining Power," The Guardian, August 17, 2007 ---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6855519,00.html
As Iran flexes its military and political muscle,
its talk of revolution worries neighbors. The notion that the Imam Mahdi, the
12th Shia imam, will reappear in the world to carry the Islamic Revolution
beyond Iran's borders, worries Iran's neighbors.
Mike Shuster, NPR, August 20,
2007 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12841320
Journalism is publishing what someone doesn't want
us to know; the rest is propaganda.
Horacio Verbitsky ---
Click Here
The New York Times has to work very hard to make the
performance of the economy during the past few years look bad. This morning,
David Cay Johnston did his part.
Tom Blummer, "NYT Twists Data: Makes
Great Personal Income News Appear Awful (UPDATE: Reporter Responds),"
NewsBusters, August 21, 2007 ---
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2007/08/21/new-york-times-twists-data-make-great-personal-income-news-appear-awful
There was no manger, Christ is not the Messiah, and
the crucifixion never happened. A forthcoming (BBC)
ITV documentary will portray Jesus as Muslims see him.
With the Koran as a main source and drawing on interviews with scholars and
historians, the Muslim Jesus explores how Islam honors Christ as a prophet
(as is Osama Bin Laden) but not as the son of God. …
Tom Gross, "Muslim Jesus” to get
primetime billing on British TV," National Review, August 19, 2007 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
BBC, on the other hand, would never have the courage these days to air a
documentary or other show critical of Muslim extremists. To do so would be most
unwise in the U.K. Fortunately it is still possible to be critical of
extremists of all religions and sects in the United States (see below).
CNN Explores Religious Fundamentalism:
Christiane Amanpour's work on the documentary series "God's Warriors" took her
directly to intersections of extreme religious and secular thinking. She
watched, fascinated, as demonstrators in San Francisco accused teenagers in the
fundamentalist Christian group BattleCry of intolerance in a clash of two
cultures that will probably never understand each other. Understanding is what
Amanpour is trying to promote in "God's Warriors," which takes up six prime-time
hours on CNN this week. The series on religious fundamentalism among Christians,
Muslims and Jews airs in three parts, . . .
David Bauder, Associated Press,
August 19, 2007 ---
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070819/D8R475UG0.html
YouTube is the latest propaganda vehicle for Hizb
ut-Tahrir, a hardline Islamic group which has been banned in Europe, China and
most of the Middle East — but not Australia. The group has posted a series of
professionally produced videos, which call for all countries with a majority
Muslim population to be run under Sharia law.
"Extremists unleash YouTube propaganda," Ninemsn, August
20, 2007 ---
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=287543
The view we show of life to ourselves, and to
whatever lost young men are watching, is not broad and inspiriting. It is
limited and dispiriting. It is every man for himself. We make it too easy for
those who want to hate us to hate us. We make ourselves look bad in our media,
which helps future jihadists think that they must, by hating us, be good. They
hit their figurative garbage bin lids on the ground, and smirk, and promise to
make a racket, and then more than a racket, a boom.
Peggy Noonan, "Hatred Begins at
Home: The NYPD looks at what turns young Westerners into jihadis," The
Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2007 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010480
The attacks of 9/11 generated a tide of commentary
on the origins and aims of anti-Western jihadism. Lately, however, events have
shifted attention to another, more long-standing feature of the Muslim world,
raising the question of whether Islamic militancy against the West is now of
lesser geopolitical significance than a stark, increasingly salient divide
within Islam itself. This is the ancient divide between the numerically dominant
Sunnis and a Shiite minority that is finally coming into its own.
Gal Luft and Anne Korin, "Islam's
Divide—and Us," Commentary Magazine, July/August 2007 ---
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10900
In war, as in famine and pestilence, one finds the
earthly basis for visions of hell. Wartime agony is immemorial, but the 20th
century brought the military arts of inflicting suffering and death to
diabolical perfection. For many in World War II, terror and death rained from
the skies: one did not have to be a soldier in order to suffer like one. The
bombers carried the war to civilian populations, and the names of cities ravaged
by air attack—London, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki—figure as
largely in the history of the war as the sites of monumental battles. Indeed,
apart from the Holocaust, it is principally the great bombing episodes that give
World War II its horrific blazing signature.
Algis Valiunas, "Fire from the Sky,
Commentary Magazine, July/August 2007 ---
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10902
Earlier this summer, Sheehan sold Camp Casey to Los
Angeles radio host and actress Bree Walker, who wants to continue using it as a
base for protests against Bush administration policies. Last week, the only
full-time residents to be found there were Canadian-born Carl Rising-Moore, 61,
an easygoing Vietnam veteran turned antiwar protester, and his dog, Sunny.
Rising-Moore says that many people drop by the camp to visit, including veterans
haunted by the horrors of war. Rising-Moore, who has studied the nonviolent
protest tactics of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., says he tries to
preach the power of nonviolence.
Michael A. Fletcher. "Keeping a
Lonely Vigil at Camp Casey," The Washington Post, August 20, 2007, Page
A3 ---
Click Here
Ron Mallia wants to build eight apartments and
condominiums on an empty parking lot next to his Mission District auto shop and
rent some of the apartments to his mechanics. ..."They don't want any
development at all in the Mission because any development makes the area better.
... They don't want that because they believe that by improving the area, the
cost of housing might go up," said Mallia, who has owned gas stations and car
repair shops in the Mission for 25 years.
Robert Selna, "Anti-gentrification
forces stymie housing development," San Francisco Chronicle, August 21,
2007 ---
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/21/BAFARK1GE.DTL
Jensen Comment
San Francisco town leaders are unlike most any town leaders in the world.
Is the preference for ugly and uninhabited? This is not green space!
The Atlanta Humane Society said they are receiving
donations from across the country -- and you’ll never guess what people are
sending. More than a dozen Michael Vick jerseys have been sent to AHS, and they
are putting them to good use (cleaning the floors of kennels).
WSBTV Atlanta, August 17, 2007 ---
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/13918614/detail.html
Jensen Comment
I don't think you will see too many Michael Vick jerseys tacked to the walls in
the offices of financial planners. Most certainly Michael Vick will not be
inducted into the Financial Planning Hall of Fame. Then again, he's almost a
shoe in for the Financial Planning Hall of Shame.
Search Hacks (learn to search like the geeks search) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hacks
"Please Do Not Use These Programs for Illegal Purposes:
Powerful new tools let you search for free software and music, zoom in on
landmarks and buildings, and add comments to news stories," by Steve Bass, PC
World via The Washington Post, August 21, 2007 ---
Click Here
I don't know what Google was thinking
when it allowed Google Hacks to be posted on the Google Code site. But it's
a sure bet most people won't abide by the "Please do not use this program
for illegal uses" disclaimer you'll find on thedownload site.
Google Hacks is a front-end GUI you can use as a
stand-alone app or as a browser toolbar. It performs searches you can
already do--if you know the syntax. For instance, if I wanted to search for
Dave Brubeck, I could pop the following into Google's search field:
But it's obviously a heck of a lot easier to type
into Google Hacks and choose the music category.
Google Hacks lets you search in any one of 12
categories--music, applications, video, books, lyrics, and others. But
there's a catch. The searches are indexes--Web site directories that haven't
been protected. Translation: You have to sort through lists of files and
some, if not most, could be unrelated to what you're searching for.
At the same time, you might hit the jackpot--loads
of files with just the content you're looking for. The showstopper is that
the content belongs to someone else who doesn't know how to hide it from
prying eyes. (And yes, I know, that person may have downloaded the music
illegally as well.)
BTW, credit for this masterpiece goes to Jason
Stallings, the author of Google Hacks. Jason doesn't work for Google, but
his program was released using Google'sfree code hosting service. You can
find more of Jason's code onhis Web site.
Dig This:Microsoft's entryinto the mobile phone
arena is sure to give Apple a run for the money--and promises to take the
nerd world by storm.
Microsoft's Photosynth is awesome--and addictive.
You can travel to Rome, zoom in on St. Peter's Basilica, and see
details--and I mean close, close up--that I guarantee will amaze you. (The
hardware requirements are stringent--more in a sec.) Don't believe me? Watch
this7-minute demonstration.
But wait a minute: Unless you have a heavy-duty
PC--you need Windows XP and the hardware needs to be Vista ready--save your
time. You just won't be able to use Photosynth. (My wife's out of luck;
she's been playing with Photosynth on my machine.) If you have the system
requirements, you'll also need to download a small ActiveX plug-in available
at the Photosynth site.
Photosynthis now up and running. (My friend Bill
Webb has a good write-up about it.)
Continued in article
Question
How do you decide on a small car (with half the gas mileage and over twice the
death risk for your family) relative to a SUV? This is one of those rock versus
hard place decisions, although more and more people are willing to risk higher
death risks with current fuel and car prices.
From the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
All small cars have driver deaths per million vehicles of 108 versus 70 for
midsize cars, 67 for large cars, and 55 for SUVs. No mention is made for the
ever-popular light trucks, but these probably are as good or better than SUVs in
terms of driver death rates.
"People buy small cars even though they can be deadly," by James R. Healey,
USA Today, August 20, 2007, Page 1B ---
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-08-19-small-cars_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Americans are buying more small cars to cut fuel
costs, and that might kill them. As a group, occupants of small cars are
more likely to die in crashes than those in bigger, heavier vehicles are,
according to data from the government, the insurance industry and the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
The newest small vehicles, of course, meet today's
strict safety standards and can be laden with the latest safety hardware,
such as stability control and side air bags. They are safer than ever. And
differing designs mean some small cars are safer than average. But even the
safest are governed by the laws of physics, which rule in favor of bigger,
heavier vehicles, even in single-vehicle crashes.
Lund was on an NAS panel that examined potential
safety impacts and other consequences of stricter fuel-economy regulations.
The panel's report, published in 2002, noted that there are safe,
cost-effective ways to boost mileage, but cutting the size and weight of
vehicles is not one of them. Years of statistics show that small cars "are
involved in more collisions than larger vehicles," and "Small vehicles have
higher fatality rates than larger ones," the NAS report said.
When the NAS report was published, small-car sales
were 13.7% of the new-vehicle market, and dropping. Today, they have climbed
to 15.4%.
High fuel prices, which topped $3 a gallon earlier
this year for the third-consecutive year and now average about $2.75, have
whipped up interest in fuel-saving small cars.
"With the price of gasoline, it's a fuel-economy
thing," says Robin Dey, 56, a nurse in Santa Barbara, Calif., who is
shopping for a Honda Civic small car for her daughter in college and drives
a Volkswagen New Beetle herself. She says prices got to $3.89 a gallon in
her area before they began declining.
"Small cars are more economical, which is important
to me because I do a lot of home health care and a lot of driving," she
says, running up nearly 100,000 miles on her 2001 Beetle.
Continued in article (with data graphs)
Jensen Comment
Decisions such as this depend a great deal on the type of driving intended for
the car and many factors other than death risks. For example, I drive less than
4,000 miles per year which greatly lowers my probability of an accident relative
to drivers who practically live in their cars. I also drive very few miles at
night. I could, in theory, chance a small car but it would not save me much
money since I use so little fuel.
And there is the moose/deer risk up here. A woman who lived less than 10
miles from us was killed in broad daylight when she hit a moose on August 20. A
heavy car greatly improves the odds, ceteris paribus, of living when
hitting moose and deer. It is much less common to hit a bear, although they're
nocturnal, black, and hard to see at night. We've see bears in the road on
occasion, but we do not hear as much about bear-car collisions relative to moose
and deer. Incidentally, the moose risk varies greatly with the time of year. In
the winter, moose conserve on energy by standing like statues 24/7 in the woods
and seldom venture near highways. In other times of the year, the moose are on
the move.
I live in deep snow country in a rural environment where the all-wheel
drive dealers nearby only offer SUV sales and service. I want an all-wheel drive
vehicle in the winter since this greatly improves my chances of not getting
stuck in deep snow.
The point is that factors to consider by me when buying a car (I never buy a
new car) differ greatly from things other people must consider for their life
styles and locales. Risk of death is one factor to consider along with fuel
economy.
Bob Jensen has been receiving messages from a Halliburton whistle blower
Sadly Persons Blowing the Whistle Do So at Their Own Peril
"Whistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties," by Deborah Hastings, Forbes,
August 24, 2007 ---
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html
One after another, the men and women who have
stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq
have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy
veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a
security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation
methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary
confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and
interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to
wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing
when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the
rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary,
he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American
soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry
employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company
he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.
"It was a Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news - people ) for
guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos
and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of
Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp
Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam
Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped
Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit
both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and
subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for
terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction.
Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the
country's oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30
billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared,
according to a government reconstruction audit.
Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble
outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such
cases by The Associated Press.
"If you do it, you will be destroyed," said William
Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso
and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
"Reconstruction is so rife with corruption.
Sometimes people ask me, `Should I do this?' And my answer is no. If they're
married, they'll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will
lose everything," Weaver said.
They have been fired or demoted, shunned by
colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed
against contracting firms.
"The only way we can find out what is going on is
for someone to come forward and let us know," said Beth Daley of the Project
on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates
corruption. "But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on
them. The message is, 'Don't blow the whistle or we'll make your life hell.'
"It's heartbreaking," Daley said. "There is an even
greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs.
It's a disgrace. Their lives get ruined."
Continued in article
Shut Up Even in the Case of Terrorist Suspicions
"If you see something suspicious, 'Shut up'," Las Vegas Review-Journal,
July 24, 2007 ---
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/8677417.html
Bob Jensen has been receiving messages from a Halliburton whistle blower ---
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing
Bob Jensen's threads on whistle blowing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing
"How This Year’s Frosh Will Make You Feel Older," by Scott Jaschik,
Inside Higher Ed, August 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/21/mindset
The class of 2011 is arriving at campuses all over
— and inspiring plenty of professors to wonder why the new students seem
younger every year. For a decade, Beloit College has been helping out with
its annual Mindset List of gentle reminders of what new students grew up
with and what they never experienced.
The list
is the creation of Tom McBride, Beloit’s Keefer Professor of
the Humanities, and Ron Nief, the public affairs director.
The 2007 list is being released today. The complete list,
along with past years’ lists, may be found
here.
Some highlights from this year’s list follow:
The Mindset for
the Class of 2011
- What
Berlin wall?
- They
never “rolled down” a car window.
- They
have grown up with bottled water.
- Nelson
Mandela has always been free and a force in South
Africa.
- Pete
Rose has never played baseball.
- Russia
has always had a multi-party political system.
- No one
has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of
“liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
-
Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears
and has always employed more workers than GM.
- When
all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a
possibility.
- They
grew up in Wayne’s World.
- U2 has
always been more than a spy plane.
- Fox has
always been a major network.
- Women’s
studies majors have always been offered on campus.
- Being a
latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
- They
learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from
Spike Lee.
- China
has always been more interested in making money than in
reeducation.
- The
space program has never really caught their attention
except in disasters.
- They’re
always texting 1 n other.
- They
will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male
professors in the classroom.
- Avatars
have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
- The
World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were
born.
Jensen Comment
And their grandparents mentioned somebody named Elvis.
Question
Where are the most beautiful college campuses in the United States?
Where are the happiest students?
Where are the most politically correct colleges?
What are the 2008 top-ranked party and or jock or weirdo schools in the United
States?
Hint: Chico and North Texas State have fallen from grace.
The No. 1 ranking colleges do not want is Princeton
Review’s annual designation in its college guide of the top party school. This
year’s winner is West Virginia University, followed by the University of
Mississippi, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Florida, and
the University of Georgia. While Princeton Review’s guide is not known for the
quality of its social science research (student surveys are the key tool), it
does win points for creative categories — particularly in playing off of
student’s studious or not-so-studious reputations, and their politics. Clemson
University is named the top jock school. Eugene Lang College of New School
University is named the place that educates “dodgeball targets.” Hampshire
College topped Bard College for the coveted “Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging,
clove-smoking vegetarians” award. Macalester College was deemed most accepting
of gay students while Hampden-Sydney won for “alternative lifestyles not an
alternative.” Another tradition about these rankings is for the top party
school’s president to question the ranking. Mike Garrison, president elect at
West Virginia, issued this statement: “I’ve talked to thousands of our students
over the weekend and during the first day of classes, and their concerns are
with their education, with their futures, and with the great year we have ahead
at WVU. I’m focused on the way this university changes people’s lives, the
research that we do, and the service we provide to the state of West Virginia.
This is a special place, and the whole state is proud of it.”
Inside Higher Ed, August 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/21/qt
Jensen Comment
There are many other categories at the Princeton Review site ---
http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankings.asp
| Check out the categories! |
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Question
Guess which parents most strongly object to grade inflation?
Hint: It's not the parents of the top students
Parents Say Schools Game System, Let Kids Graduate Without Skills
The Bredemeyers represent a new voice in special
education: parents disappointed not because their children are failing, but
because they're passing without learning. These families complain that schools
give their children an easy academic ride through regular-education classes,
undermining a new era of higher expectations for the 14% of U.S. students who
are in special education. Years ago, schools assumed that students with
disabilities would lag behind their non-disabled peers. They often were taught
in separate buildings and left out of standardized testing. But a combination of
two federal laws, adopted a quarter-century apart, have made it national policy
to hold almost all children with disabilities to the same academic standards as
other students.
John Hechinger and Daniel Golden, "Extra Help: When Special Education Goes
Too Easy on Students," The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2007, Page A1
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118763976794303235.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#GradeInflation
Bob Jensen's fraud updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
"Jane Austen, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda," by Devoney Looser, Inside
Higher Ed, August 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/08/21/looser
“I started Pride and Prejudice last week,” he told
me. “It’s one of those books I know I should have read, but I couldn’t get
past the first few chapters.”
“Really,” I replied, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, I just lost interest,” he went on. “I kept
thinking to myself, ‘Oh, brother. I think I know where this is going.’”
Was this disarming honesty or throwing down the
gauntlet? Was I being called out? Whatever it was, I shifted nervously as I
listened to the rest of his monologue: “My theory is that the novel can be
pretty much summed up as Elizabeth and Darcy meet, Elizabeth and Darcy hate
each other, Elizabeth and Darcy fall in love, yadda, yadda, yadda.”
Reader, I stared at him blankly. Of course, I spent
hours afterward constructing witty, cynical comebacks, such as “Yeah, I know
what you mean. I have that response to episodes of VH1’s ‘Behind the Music’
and to reading the Bible.” But in the moment, all I managed to spit out was
something clichéd and professorial resembling, “Hmm. That’s interesting. I
think maybe it takes a few readings of Austen to really appreciate her
fiction’s depth, humor, and irony.”
That’s also my stock answer to traditional-aged
undergraduates on the first day of class — 20-year-olds who confess that
they’ve signed up for a literature class on Austen and her contemporaries
because they absolutely love (or absolutely hate) her fiction — or maybe
just the film adaptations. Or Colin Firth or Keira Knightley or Clueless.
The Austen-haters often claim to be taking the course because they want to
understand what in the world is the big deal. A few of them end up seeing it
by the end of the semester, a few more don’t, and that’s fine. But the
yadda-yadda-yadda employee was a well-read, middle-aged guy with no
sophomore excuse for being sophomoric. My gut reaction to his confession
registered somewhere between crestfallen and incensed.
Continued in article
Questions
Why do information technology and computer science careers attract so few women
(29%)?
Why are veterinary medicine graduates 89% women in some of the leading
universities?
"With Labor Crunch in IT on the Horizon, Why Are Careers Failing to Lure
Women?" by Ben Worthen, The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2007; Page B5
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118765128825503463.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
While women hold 51% of all professional positions
in the work force, they only made up 26% of IT pros in 2006, down from 29%
in 2004, according to the National Center for Women and Information
Technology. Only 13% of corporate officers at Fortune 500 tech companies are
women. And Jenny Slade, communications director for the NCWIT, tells the
Business Technology Blog that women who do pursue IT careers tend to leave
them at a higher rate than men.
|
"Women feel discrimination in
IT," Ms. Slade says. Indeed, a recent survey of nearly 2,000 female
IT workers by Women in Technology International found that 48% say
that their views aren't as acknowledged or welcomed as those of
their male colleagues, and 44% say that they have fewer
opportunities to participate in or lead large initiatives.
Consequently, women feel they need to leave IT in order to advance,
says Ms. Slade. Over time this becomes self-perpetuating: Women say
that one of the main reasons they leave IT is that there aren't
other women in the field, says Ms. Slade.
It isn't just a
workplace-dynamics issue. Women are also losing interest in computer
science long before they choose a profession. Women only received
21% of computer science undergraduate degrees in 2006, compared with
37% in 1985, says the NCWIT. The number of incoming freshmen women
choosing to major in computer science dropped by 70% between 2000
and 2005.
And teenage girls seem less
interested in computer science than they are in other scientific
fields. Only 12% of the finalists in the 2005 Intel Science and
Engineering Fair, a national competition for high-school students,
were girls, compared with 54% of the finalists in biochemistry.
Similarly, only 15% of the high-school students taking the
advanced-placement computer science test in 2006 were girls,
compared with 48% of the students who took the AP calculus test. |
Schools of veterinary medicine are increasingly
struggling to recruit male students.
The Boston Globe reported that women made up 89
percent of last year’s new vet students at Tufts University and that at Michigan
State University and the University of California at Davis, women make up 88
percent and 81 percent, respectively, of incoming students.
Inside Higher Ed, August 22, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/22/qt
Women now make up more than 60 percent of all
accountants and auditors in the United States, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
That is an estimated 843,000 women in the accounting and auditing work force.
AccountingWeb, "Number of Female Accountants Increasing," June 2, 2006
---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102218
"Why Most Web Sites Receive Failing Grades," by Ben Worthen, The
Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2007; Page B5 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118765128825503463.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
Why Most Web Sites Receive Failing
Grades
Ninety-seven percent of the
1,000-plus corporate Web sites that Forrester Research Inc. has evaluated
received failing grades. Companies with bad Web sites are turning off
customers and leaving money on the table. And usually, Harley Manning, a
Forrester vice president, says it's due to common mistakes that can be
broken down into four categories.
1. Value. The first mistake
that companies make when they're designing a Web site is copying features
from competitors. Bells and whistles are worthless if they don't help a
customer. Mr. Manning says that too few companies take the time to sit down
with customers and find out what they're using a Web site for and what
information would make a site more helpful. A good example of a site that
does this well is Fidelity.com, the Web site for Fidelity Investments Inc.
There isn't a lot of extraneous information that investors don't need, and
information that investors want, such as ratings from Morningstar Inc., are
easy to find.
2. Navigation. Companies often
opt for cute menus instead of clear menus. For example, Merrill Lynch &
Co.'s site for individual investors has four menu items, including one
called BULLSEYE. That happens to be the name of Merrill Lynch's newsletter,
which contains all sorts of useful information. "But nobody knows that," Mr.
Manning tells this Blog. A Merrill Lynch spokesman declined to comment.
3. Presentation. Web sites
need to be easy to read and understand. Yet the majority of companies still
feel compelled to fit as much information into as small a place as possible.
"Automotive companies are the worst," Mr. Manning tells us. The text on
their sites is almost always too small, as if they're afraid that customers
won't scroll down to see more of the page. People will, provided they're
given visual cues. Mr. Manning cites New York Times Co.'s Web site,
nytimes.com, as a site that's easy to read. Also, avoid unclear icons.
Several of the icons on the booking page for the Hilton hotel in Times
Square are a good example of what not to do. A Hilton Hotels Corp.
spokeswoman says that Forrester conducted a review of Hilton's site and
rated its use of icons "acceptable" and that the company is "constantly
evaluating its overall site design."
4. Trust. People are concerned
about online privacy and security. Calling attention to your company's
privacy policy can actually help sales, Mr. Manning says. Also, a site's
speed matters, but not in the way you might expect. Customers don't sense
that a site is slow. Instead they conclude that the content isn't
interesting and that it's less secure.
Mr. Manning says that there's no
perfect Web site on the Internet. Forced to choose one, he picks Adobe.com,
the Web site for Adobe Systems Inc., which he says is easy to read and full
of useful information. More generally, it's easy to improve a site. And Mr.
Manning says that doing so is a no-brainer. "Many of these sites get
millions of visitors a year," he says. "If you can change your conversion
rate just a little you can get a huge payoff."
Jensen Comment
In my opinion most colleges and universities have terrible Web sites, although
professors within those systems sometimes, not often, have outstanding sites.
The test of a site first and foremost should be content that is easily accessed.
Much interesting content has now moved from open sharing Web servers to
non-sharing Blackboard, WebCT, and other password protected servers. Exceptions
are noted at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Question
What new online people finders are making it easier to find the whereabouts of
people in your past?
Hint: One of the sites has very large and pointed ears.
"Searching for Humans: Various websites are trying to make it easier to
find friends and colleagues online," by Erica Naone, MIT's Technology Review,
August 20, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19270/
Jaideep Singh,
cofounder of the new people-search
engine
Spock,
says he wants to build a profile for
every person in the world. To do
this, he plans to combine the power
of search algorithms with online
social networks.
Singh says he got the idea for Spock
while looking for people with
specific areas of expertise among
his contacts in Microsoft Outlook.
Although he has two or three
thousand people listed, he could
only find people he was already
thinking about.
Spock is designed to solve that
problem by allowing users to search
for tags--such as "saxophonist" or
"venture capitalist"--and then view
a list of people associated with
those tags. Singh could have
manually entered tags for each of
his contacts into Microsoft Outlook,
but capturing every interest of each
particular individual would be
time-consuming. Spock uses a
combination of human and machine
intelligence to automatically come
up with the tags: search algorithms
identify possible tags, and users
can vote on their relevance or add
new tags. Registered users can add
private tags to another person's
profile to organize their contacts
based on information that they don't
want to share. For example, a
contentious associate might be
privately labeled as such.
The
social-network component of the
website introduces an element of
crowd commentary into the search
process.
George W. Bush
is tagged
"miserable failure," with a vote of
87 to 31 in favor of the tag's
relevance as of this writing. Users
aren't allowed to vote anonymously,
and the tag links to the profiles of
people who voted.
Singh hopes
social networks will also help with
one of the main problems in people
search: teaching the system to
recognize that two separate entries
refer to a single person--a problem
called entity resolution. For
example, a single person might have
a
MySpace
page, a
Linked In
profile, and a write-up on a company
website.
Steven Whang,
an
entity-resolution researcher at
Stanford University, says that there
are several aspects to the problem:
getting the system to compare two
entries and decide whether they are
related, merging related entries
without repetition, and comparing
information from a myriad of
possible sources online. Finally,
Whang says, there is a risk of
merging two entries that should not
be merged, as in the case of a name
like Robin, which is used by both
men and women.
Many of the
people-search engines try to get
around these problems by encouraging
people to claim and manage their own
profiles, although Whang notes that
this is a labor-intensive approach.
Although there are many sites where
people could claim their profiles,
Singh says he thinks one engine will
eventually dominate, and people will
make the effort to claim profiles
there. Bryan Burdick, chief
operating officer of the
business-search site
Zoominfo,
says that 10,000 people a week claim
their profiles on Zoom, in spite of
having to provide their credit-card
numbers to do so.
Singh has also
introduced the
Spock Challenge, a
competition to design a better
entity-resolution algorithm. He says
that 1,400 researchers have already
downloaded the data set, and they
will compete for a $50,000 prize,
which will be awarded in November.
Continued in article
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Jensen Comment
More people finders and other specialized search engines are linked at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#SpecializedSearchEngines
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Good Writing Versus
Gobbledygook, Drivel, and Tripe
How to Publish in Top Journals, Edited by Kwan Choi, March 7,
2002 ---
http://www.roie.org/how.htm
Mike Kearl's guide to writing a research paper ---
http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/methods.html#rp
Adelberg, A. H. and J. R. Razek, (1984), "The cloze procedure: A methodology
for determining the understandability of accounting textbooks.," The
Accounting Review (January): 109-122 ---
http://maaw.info/TheAccountingReview.htm Click on the "Non USF User Link"
The Plain English Campaign
monitors good and bad language usage. They give out the Golden Bull Awards
-- awards for "the worst examples of written tripe" -- to people who offend
their sense of plainspokenness, as well as several other awards for clear
language usage. This year, they gave out seven Golden Bulls and 20 awards
for clear language. One of this year's seven Golden Bull recipients is
Australian writer and academician Germaine Greer. She won for a recent arts
column in The Guardian (London), in which she said, "The first attribute of
the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between itself and the
unsynthesized manifold."
"Gobbledygook, Drivel, and Tripe," by Erik Deckers, The Irascible
Professor, July 10, 2007 ---
http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-07-10-07.htm
He whose words are more abundant than his data, to
what is he like? To a tree whose branches are abundant but whose roots are few,
and the wind comes and overturns it, as it is written, For he shall be like the
tamarisk in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit
the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. But he
whose data is more abundant than his words, to what is he like? To a tree whose
branches are few but whose roots are many, so that even if all the words in the
world come and blow against it, it cannot be stirred from its place, as it is
written, He shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her
roots by the river,
and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall
be green; and shall not becareful in the year of drought, neither shall cease
from yielding fruit.
Eleazar ben Azariah,
as quoted on Page 7 of
"Aphorisms on Writing, Speaking, and Listening," by Eric Rasmusen,
September 11, 2006 ---
http://www.rasmusen.org/GI/reader/writing.pdf
Another dealer announced in a cheeky e-mail the
creation of a new structured product: a Constant Obligation Leveraged Originated
Structured Oscillating Money Bridged Asset Guarantee, or COLOStOMyBAG. One
trader noted on the product – a parody of the increasingly bizarre acronyms that
have become commonplace in the world of structured finance – “It’s basically
full of shit.”
David Oakley, "Traders turn to black humour," Financial Times,
August 17, 2007 ---
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7314e77e-4d05-11dc-a51d-0000779fd2ac.html
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Some college presidents aren't so honest when rating colleges (including
their own) for the U.S. News Rankings of Colleges
Editors at U.S. News acknowledge anecdotal evidence
that some colleges try to affect the rankings, but they insist it is not
widespread. The editors say they have added myriad safeguards over the years
from specific definitions of what counts as an application to adding questions
that can sniff out fudging. Some colleges used to drop athletes’ SAT scores from
their computation of incoming students’ scores in order to increase their
averages and make their institutions look more selective, Mr. Kelly said. In
response, U.S. News helped to create common definitions with organizations like
the College Board so that data reporting would be standardized and harder to
fudge. Still, critics say that the magazine, which does not verify information
submitted by the colleges, bears some responsibility for the litany of tactics
that colleges employ.
Alan Finder, "College Ratings Race Roars On Despite Concerns," The New York
Times, August 17, 2007 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/education/17rankings.html
Jensen Comment
Dropping out is the way some college presidents hope to eliminate the heat to
raise their rankings. Biased reporting is another way. The heat comes from alumni and faculty wanting a higher
quality pool of student applicants. Lower rankings becomes very stressful to
colleges that think they are in the Top 10 in their classification (particularly
national liberal arts colleges) who find themselves ranked much lower.
The Washington Monthly rankings of the top national universities
differs drastically from the US News rankings (which are based upon opinions of
college presidents rather than self-selected statistical criteria used by The
Washington Monthly.
From Inside Higher Ed, by Scott Jaschik, August 20, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/20/ccranking
Washington Monthly is known as a
liberal-leaning magazine, so the No. 1 national university, Texas A&M
University, may surprise some. But the magazine has a long history pushing
for national service by college students. The magazine’s use of ROTC in its
formula was a big part of Texas A&M’s top rating (and also helped Virginia
Military Institute gain the No. 5 slot among liberal arts colleges).
In the national universities category, the U.S.
News rankings yield a largely private group at the top and Washington
Monthly tilts public. Among privates, the Washington Monthly priorities also
tend to upset standard hierarchies. Here for example is the Monthly’s take
on the Ivies: “Harvard, Yale, and Princeton may make up the top three
finishers on this year’s U.S. News list, but by our measures they don’t
perform nearly as well. The alma maters of John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush,
and Brooke Shields come in at, respectively, 27th, 38th, and (yikes!) 78th
place. Our top Ivy? Humble Cornell, which places seventh, thanks to the
large number of its graduates who earn Ph.D.’s or join the Peace Corps.”
Here is the Washington Monthly’s
top 10 national universities, with their U.S. News
scores as well.
|
Monthly Rank |
University |
U.S. News Rank |
| 1 |
Texas A&M |
62 |
| 2 |
UCLA |
25 |
| 3 |
Berkeley |
21 |
| 4 |
UC
San Diego |
38 |
| 5 |
Penn State |
48 |
| 6 |
U
of Michigan |
25 |
| 7 |
Cornell |
12 |
| 8 |
UC
Davis |
42 |
| 9 |
Stanford |
4 |
| 10 |
South Carolina State |
n/a |
The Washington Times rankings of the top 30 community colleges are
causing even more of a stir in academe
The annual rankings frenzy each fall features rankings of
top colleges, party schools and everything in between. But the sector of higher
education where more than 40 percent of freshmen start — community colleges —
has been notably absent. The magazine ranked colleges using data in different
categories of the
Community College Survey of Student Engagement
(worth a total of 85 percent) and graduation rates (15 percent). While community
college leaders frequently complain that reporters ignore their sector, many are
not at all pleased with the new attention from Washington Monthly — even though
the magazine is full of praise for two-year institutions and features a cover
line that says “Community colleges that beat your alma mater.”
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, August 20, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/20/ccranking
Rankings of Universities in Terms of Doctoral Student
Placements
The journal PS: Political Science & Politics has just published
an analysis that suggests that there is not
a direct relationship between the general reputation of a department and its
success at placing new Ph.D.’s; some programs far exceed their reputation when
it comes to placing new Ph.D.’s while others lag. The analysis may provide new
evidence for the “halo effect” in which many experts worry that general (and
sometimes outdated) institutional reputations cloud the judgment of those asked
to fill out surveys on departmental quality. And while the analysis was prepared
about political science, its authors believe the same approach could be used in
other fields in the humanities and social sciences, with the method more
problematic in other areas because fewer Ph.D. students aspire to academic
careers.
Scott Jaschik, "A Ranking That Would Matter," Inside Higher Ed, August
21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/21/ranking
Jensen Comment
The big problem here is defining what constitutes "a top job" or a "a good job."
There are so many elements in job satisfaction, many of which are intangible and
cannot be quantified, that I'm suspect of any study that purports to identify
top jobs. Obviously prestigious universities have a bias for hiring prestigious
university graduates. But this is often due to the reputations of the graduate
student's teachers and thesis advisors. And the quality of the dissertation may
have a great deal of impact on hiring even if the degree is from No-name
University. Also prestigious universities tend to have the highest GMAT
applicants, but this is not always the case. Often the highest GMAT applicants
are really tremendous graduates.
In disciplines having great
shortages of doctoral graduates, especially doctoral graduates in accounting and
finance, findings from political science do not necessarily extrapolate.
Be that as it may, the findings of the above study come as
no surprise to me. Particularly in accounting, some prestigious universities
have taken a nose dive in terms of reputations of faculty supervising
dissertations. And students may not have access to the most reputable faculty,
especially faculty who are too busy with consulting and world travel. For
example, a few years ago I encountered a doctoral student in accounting at the
University of Chicago who claimed that it was very difficult to even find a
faculty member who would supervise a dissertation. But if he ever graduates from
Chicago, he will have the Chicago halo around his head. In fairness, I've not
had recent information regarding what is happening with doctoral students in
accounting at the University of Chicago. Certainly it is still a very reputable
university in terms of its business studies and research programs.
Also there is a problem in accountancy that
mathematics-educated accountancy doctoral graduates from prestigious
universities may know very little about accountancy and additionally have
troubles with the English language. On occasion prestige-university graduates do
not get the "top jobs" where accountancy is spoken ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Beyond Research Rankings," by Luis M. Proenza,
Inside Higher Ed, May 17, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/05/17/proenza
Controversies in media rankings of colleges are discussed at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/education/20colleges.html
Bob Jensen's threads on college rankings controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Hurricane Tracking Program ---
http://www.hcfcd.org/hurricanetracker.html
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for weather and travel related sites are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Travel
Valuation Resources
August 22, 2007 message from Jerry Peters
[jerry.peters@yahoo.com]
Dr.
Jensen
Your webpage
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
includes an index of resources available at ValuationResources.Com
under the heading "Valuation Resources For Business Appraisers ---
http://www.valuationresources.com/" This
index has been signficantly updated since you listed it on your
site--for example, the number of specific industries covered has
expanded from over 200 then to almost 400 now--and we encourage you
to include the latest index on your webpage. You will find the
latest index at
http://www.valuationresources.com/
Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
We appreciate your link to our site.
Jerry Peters, CPA, ASA, ABV
Valuation Resources, LLC
P.O. Box 5325
Evansville, Indiana 47716
Ph. 812-459-7742
jerry.peters@yahoo.com
Two valuation links of possible interest"
Bob Jensen's site mentioned above ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm
Bob Jensen's PowerPoint file on Fair Value
Accounting --- see the 10FairValue.ppt file at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/Calgary/CD/FairValue/
Questions
How can you protect your work in progress and finished works on your computer?
Why are some of these alternatives problematic for your college and/or your
employer?
Answer
One popular solution is to save the data on an external CD, DVD, or hard/flash
drive. To prevent theft loss, however, backups should be kept in a very secure
place and/or have multiple backups in different places. I generally store
important files on a backup computer and on CDs. I also store files on hard
drives in my university's system. My university, in turn, backs up all files in
the system, so chances of losing files are minimal.
It is generally
not a good idea to store files on a Web server unless you don't mind if Web
crawlers read your files. Most universities provide faculty and students with
space on both Web servers and password-protected servers. And universities
continuously back up both kinds of servers. The problem is that it's a pain in
the tail to constantly back up updated files. But it's important! Fire, theft,
and lost computers and flash drives are risks, but there's an even greater risk
that you will screw up a file, inadvertently delete a file, or have a computer
crash that makes it necessary to seek out your latest backup
"Gone With Two Flashes" by Risa P. Gorelick, Inside Higher Ed, August
20, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/08/20/gorelick
But then it happened — in a flash, so to speak —
and I couldn’t have been more wrong. I returned home from a night at my
boyfriend’s place and noticed a light left on and an interior door left
open. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I turned off the light and shut
the door. Then there were some items knocked over in the bathroom that I
picked up and wondered for a minute how it happened, but didn’t really stop
to think too long about it. Instead, I returned some phone calls, made some
strong coffee, and then decided it was time to get to some writing done. I
walked into my home office to turn on my computer and stopped short.
Where’s my laptop??? While it was a functioning
laptop, I hardly ever unplugged it from the wall and the DSL modem — I used
it mostly as a desktop, as it was much newer and faster than my dissertation
desktop that runs at a dinosaur’s pace. I had sent an e-mail right before
leaving the night before, so I know it was there on my desk when I left. But
it wasn’t there now. And I stood there dumbfounded.
I grabbed the phone but wasn’t sure who to call. I
finally managed to remember 911 and got a dispatcher, to whom I told what
had happened. The dispatcher connected me to the local police, who asked a
number of questions and then wanted to know if I was in the house. “Yes, I’m
in the house,” I said— “Should I not be?” I was told I may wish to wait
outside for the police to arrive. Given that I’d been in there an hour, if
someone was still in the house, I think I would have noticed. Still, I
opened up my front door and waited in front of my house for a few minutes
until they got there. The two officers went through my house and thought it
was odd that someone would come in only to take a laptop that was two years
old. My two back-up flash drives were also missing as was the power supply
to the laptop. But the person(s) who took my computer were kind to leave me
the DSL and printer connections and the other items in my office.
I told the cops that I am an academic and that all
of my research was on the computer and flash drives. They asked if someone
in the office was “out to get me” or if I had a disgruntled co-worker or
student. I had finished teaching two summer classes the week before and all
of the students had passed, so I didn’t think a student would attempt to rob
me. And if a colleague really wanted to get me, s/he would have his/her
chance as I was up for my fourth-year tenure review in a few weeks. As one
of two compositionists in my department, I doubt any of my colleagues would
want to sabotage my research or career. They’re mostly concerned that I
publish in blind peer-reviewed journals.
Upon further examination of my house, the robber(s)
stole my checkbook, cash, traveler’s cheques, some small electronics, a
majority of my jewelry and watches — and a pillow case off of my bed to put
the loot in as they left. What they didn’t take, they returned to the
drawers and closets, so I guess I’m fortunate that I had relatively
thoughtful and neat robbers. The police haven’t been very helpful, but I’ve
learned that there had been more than 20 robberies in my neighborhood in the
previous week or so. The police also told me that fewer than 13 percent of
robbery victims ever get any items recovered. While I was devastated that my
grandmother’s jewelry was gone, I was sickened that my scholarly research
had disappeared without a trace.
In the sleepless weeks following the robbery, I
have met more of my neighbors than I had in the previous three years of
living here. Some are nice; some seem rather odd; all are scared about
becoming the next victim of a burglary. My passport, Social Security card,
and birth certificate are locked in a safety deposit box at a nearby bank,
which means I can’t decide on a moment’s notice to grab a flight to Paris,
but I can live with that. I’ve also had an alarm system installed and no
longer think of opening up a window to let in some fresh air. I haven’t been
able to sleep more than two or three hours a night—even after the alarm
system was installed. I feel violated and angry, and wonder how much therapy
it will take before I am able to sleep through the night at home.
It’s hard to go back to the drawing board, so to
speak, and start working on the book project and revisions again — as much
of what I did is gone and would have to be started anew. Looming deadlines
float over my clouded head.
Perhaps those professors who put their
dissertations in the freezer were on to something, though the police said
that most thieves look in freezers and refrigera