Tomorrow is a Day for the United States Flag
The picture above from our front deck depicts a spot of sunshine and flowers with storm clouds moving in at a distance!

For America means a bit more than tall towers,
It means more than wealth or political powers,
It's more than our enemies ever could guess,
So may God bless America! Bless us! God bless
Author Unknown

The entire world anxiously awaits each 9/11 anniversary of the World Trade Center terrorism that killed over 3,000 innocent civilians and injured many more both on September 11 and the rest of their lives due to illness brought about by the explosions and subsequent cleaning up of the site.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Hopefully, it will be a day of peace and remembrance, a day to lick our wounds inflicted every hour of every day since September 11, 2001. But if our enemies are successful, innocent people will be burned up and blown up by the thousands or better yet, in bin Laden's eyes, by the millions.

Our own little village of Sugar Hill lost its Police Chief, Jose Pequeno Jr., to permanent brain disability from a roadside bomb in Ramadi. I knew Jose slightly and liked him a lot. Many residents of Sugar Hill and surrounding areas came together to build his wife and children a new house.
See        http://www.nhchiefsofpolice.com/Chief Jose Pequeno.htm
Also see http://www.caledonianrecord.com/pages/local_news/story/49bad61eb

A new video tape purportedly made by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has urged the American people to embrace Islam in order to stop the war in Iraq.
BBC, September 7, 2007 --- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6984102.stm

One conclusion to draw from the new Osama bin Laden video tape is that the mastermind of 9/11 apparently is worrying about his relevance these days . . . The new tape aside, it's hard to imagine that bin Laden is happy about what he's wrought in the last six years since 9/11. How can he not see that he is accountable for the death of tens of thousands of Muslims, nearly all of them believers, innocent of any crimes against Islam? Whether he intended it or not, bin Laden is largely responsible for destroying Iraq. And displacing two million Iraqi Muslims. Bin Laden has lost in the Kingdom. The Saudi royal family is still standing, having rooted out bin Laden's networks. Saudi Arabia is no closer now to the Islamic caliphate bin Laden envisaged than it was before 9/11. And Iraq has shown his vision of a supranational radical Islam to be more of a pipe dream than a reality. The same is true for the rest of the Middle East. Without exception, regimes across the Middle East, from Pakistan to Morocco, are more repressive than they were before 9/11. It's arguable they are more stable and better prepared to crush bin Laden's extremist interpretation of Islam.
Robert Baer, "Bin Laden Fights to Stay Relevant, Time Magazine, September 7, 2007 --- http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1660197,00.html

Jensen Comment
According to a transcript of the video obtained by ABC News on September 8, 2007 , bin Laden apparently says there are two ways to end the Iraq war. "The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you," bin Laden says, according to the transcript published by ABC. "The second is to do away with the American democratic system of government, "ABC said --- http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070907193243.l6cmzcim.html
Also see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14239653
 

In my own opinion bin Laden's messages (the last one is probably a forgery but others aren't so quick about calling it a fake) in hiding have softened, and he realizes his terrible mistake in executing 9/11 terror on U.S. soil before Al-Qaeda captured the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. The micro danger at the moment lies in splinter groups not directed by Al-Qaeda who think they're helping Jihad. Bin Laden himself has been marginalized except in the partisan politics of the United States. That's not to say that he's harmless, but he never can he emerge from a hole in the ground to collect any of his winnings. Al Qaeda terrorism, however, could fiercely rebound if it manages to establish a new headquarters in the power vacuum of Iraq when U.S. forces depart. The macro danger lies in the inevitable nuclear and biological warfare face off between Islamic fundamentalists (e.g., in Iran and Pakistan) versus opposing nuclear-armed nation. For a time Russia may continue to play both sides in a self-serving strategy.

A huge worry for survival of the world is that Russia may actually overplay it's own global conspiracy seeking an energy monopoly to first weaken and then bring down the United States.

 

Bob Jensen's patriotism message/music on September 10, 2007
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070910.htm 

Videos Lending Insight Into Leading Terrorists and Their Motives

Imagining Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah bravely standing knee deep in Jewish blood raising Hezbollah's yellow and green flag before masses of his fighters in Tel Aviv is sheer fantasy. Instead he'd have to bury himself much deeper than bin Laden and never show his head again in open air. Terrorism's a nobody-wins game! It's only a losing game of revenge.

For example, when retreating (literally sounding retreat on bugles) in August/September of 2007, British commanders admitted that they lost southern Iraq to Iranian snipers and roadside/vehicle bomb makers. These commanders specifically claimed the most troublesome clandestine terrorists were actually Iranian. The majority of American people want the U.S. to also retreat from all of Iraq even if it means giving all of Iraq to Iran. But Iranians may find collecting that prize is a terrorizing experience when the U.S. withdraws under its new president. Terrorism's a nobody-wins game!

Some Argue That the U.S. Military Under George Bush is Hopelessly Incompetent and Defeated

There are Some Who Argue That Our 9/11 Enemies Were Faked by Republican Party Puppets and
the Zionists Who Pull Their Strings

Some Argue That the U.S. Military, Israel, England, and U.S. Business Enterprises, Comprise an Evil Empire
That Needs to Be Either Defeated or Politically Dismantled

Jensen Comment
I believe that the United States is not an Evil Empire.
It's instead the beacon of hope for democracy and
freedom surviving against a totalitarianism war being
waged by a clever, albeit cowardly, enemy
hiding amongst and terrorizing innocent civilians!
As our allies retreat in surrender to fear of terror,
America may soon find itself standing alone in the
face of nuclear and biological terror of unbelievable magnitude.
But at the moment the only war we're really losing is the
propaganda and a dysfunctional partisan-political war!

Bravo America!
Tomorrow (September 11 Anniversary)  is a day we should honor our dead and wounded and
give thanks for those who bravely sacrificed so much for our freedom and well being.


Gen. Petraeus letter to the troops on September 7, 2007 ---
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/images/stories/CGs_Corner/070907_cg_mess.pdf

General Kevin Bergner is a spokesman for the Multi-National Force in Iraq and generally gives straight talk a world of distorted and biased media --- http://www.mnf-iraq.com/
Some of his favorite blogs are as follows:

Small Wars Journal --- http://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php
Blackfive --- http://www.blackfive.net/
The Mudville Gazette --- http://www.mudvillegazette.com/

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/

Bob Jensen's links to patriotic and inspirational music --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm

 

 

Tidbits on September 10, 2007
Bob Jensen

Videos From Bob Jensen's Personal Camera (the pictures are clear but some of them lost a bit in the video) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/Video/Personal/
The Tidbits.wmv video is narrated.

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

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

Stories from the Heart of the Land (audio) ---  http://www.nature.org/heart/about/

Glenn Beck's Favorite Commercials --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-a4-8Z52g

Space Toilet --- Click Here

Arab Tribes Fighting Each Other in Darfur --- http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=16a8fc7e09c85528299fffb15525bc4f69225159

National Capital Language Resource Center (quite a lot of multimedia available) --- http://www.nclrc.org/

John Tory shows 'Zero Respect' for the University of Ottawa --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FkXCkJnMUQ
Ontario’s Conservative Party leader, John Tory, is under fire for making a joke about the University of Ottawa on the campaign trail. In a video clip currently on YouTube, Tory refers to the institution jokingly as “the University of Zero.” Tory has since issued an apology of sorts ("I apologize if my remarks offended anyone"), in which he said he first heard to joke from an alumnus and considered it part of the way people tease one another about their alma maters.
Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/05/qt

Funny or Not, Here I Come
Fred Thompson on the Jay Leno Show --- Click Here

Why Don Imus? There are racists all over the media --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GpAafmhBHQ

There must be more to this than meets the eye
Kyla Ebbert says she wants an apology from Southwest Airlines after being told to get off a plane and change her clothes because what she was wearing was too revealing. Ebbert, 23, told the Today Show's Matt Lauer that an airline employee asked her to come up to the front of the plane just before the crew closed the plane's doors.
Pictures --- http://www.knbc.com/slideshow/news/14068161/detail.html
Video --- http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=154022

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

Bob Jensen's Favorite
Hope Has Place --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/pity.htm
If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on.
Enya's home page is at http://www.enya.com/

And Another All Time Favorite
 A Special Love Song (Charlie Rich) --- http://www.barb-coolwaters.com/c004/lovesong_rich.html

Opera great Pavarotti dead at 71 --- Click Here
Luciano Pavarotti on YouTube

Memory from Cats (Musical)

Memory - Kim Bum Soo --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i89DE5StBM
Winter Sonata (My Memory) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SEz_dW2wsI

Banjo Master Baugus Looks to Old Times --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14099046

Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Art of the Etude --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12361634

Like many jazz musicians, South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim grew up listening to gospel music. His grandmother played piano in the African Methodist Episcopalian Church --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13940226  

Uncle Earl: Old-Time Strings in Concert --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14004327

Already a superstar in Ireland, folk-rock singer-songwriter and Idaho native Josh Ritter is finally getting the recognition in America that he deserves. Ritter will headline a concert from WXPN and World Café Live in Philadelphia on Friday at noon ET --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13877719

Upon discovering Gregg Miner's Museum of Vintage, Exotic and Just Plain Unusual Musical Instruments in Tarzana, Calif., a couple years ago, Weekend Edition essayist Tim Brookes saw something called a harp guitar. Brookes humorously described it as a "combination guitar and wooden shoulder-mounted grenade launcher." --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13924188

Flight of the Conchords: Hilariously Deadpan --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11753727

Boogie with Eddie Bo:--- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14078460

Ira Gershwin Official Site --- http://www.gershwin.com/

From The Washington Post on September 7, 2007

How many pieces of music will the United Kingdom license to YouTube?

A. 1 million
B. 10 million
C. 25 million
D. 50 million
 

Send in the Clowns (History in YouTube Video for Bob Jensen's retirement theme song)
A song written in two days and never intended to be such a hit:

September 9, 2007 reply from Linda A Kidwell [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]

For me, the danger of YouTube is having too much fun clicking on related links (though it IS Friday afternoon)! Watching the Julie Andrews rendition, I followed the link to a simply wonderful joint performance of Julie Andews and Gene Kelly (my all time favorite), tap dancing and singing Supercalifragilistic. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1dmKyj9kN0 

My favorite YouTube entry so far is the Free Hugs campaign, first entry in the series here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 

The ones that followed demonstrate the positive power potential of the internet.

Linda Kidwell

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

Free Hugs Paris

Free Hugs New York City

Free Hugs China

Free Hugs Tel Aviv

Free Hugs World

 

Photographs and Art

Smithsonian American Art Museum: Interactive --- http://americanart.si.edu/interact/index.cf

Bryan Berg Cardstacker --- http://www.cardstacker.com/gallery.html

Don Marko, The Master Crayon Artist (Click on Gallery) --- http://www.themastercrayonartist.biz/Results.asp?category=0&pg=0

Ralph Goings, Four Decades of Realism --- http://www.ralphlgoings.com/

Chinese Paper Gods --- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/eastasian/paper_gods/index.html

John Bega Photography --- http://johnbega.com/home/home.html

Bolte Bridge --- http://gosu.co.za/

Auguścik & Hołownia (nice photography) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_IA6xDesyA

Clown paintings video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CEnwIXyck8

Clever Site (move your mouse about) --- http://www.logolalia.com/minimalistconcretepoetry/archives/marko-niemi/ariadne.html

University of Missouri Digital Library --- http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/
Includes photographs and art.

There must be more to this than meets the eye
Kyla Ebbert says she wants an apology from Southwest Airlines after being told to get off a plane and change her clothes because what she was wearing was too revealing. Ebbert, 23, told the Today Show's Matt Lauer that an airline employee asked her to come up to the front of the plane just before the crew closed the plane's doors.
Pictures --- http://www.knbc.com/slideshow/news/14068161/detail.html
Video --- http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=154022

 

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

From the British Library --- http://www.bl.uk/sacred
"The world's greatest collection of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy books."

University of Missouri Digital Library --- http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/
Includes such things as sheet music and photographs.

Bartleby.com: Nonfiction --- http://www.bartleby.com/nonfiction/

Great Books (Classics from the Access Foundation) --- http://www.anova.org/ 

From the British Library --- http://www.bl.uk/sacred
"The world's greatest collection of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy books."

Into the Wardrobe :: a C. S. Lewis web site --- http://cslewis.drzeus.net/

The Walt Whitman Archive --- http://www.whitmanarchive.org/

An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce --- Click Here

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) --- Click Here

The Lesson Of The Master by Henry James --- Click Here

Eve's Diary by Mark Twain --- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8525/8525-h/8525-h.htm

Song Lyric Quotes --- http://thinkexist.com/quotations/song_lyrics/

Deathbed Quotes and Epitaphs --- http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/quotes/deathbed/

 

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost --- Click Here

What's true of New Orleans is true of the entire gulf coast, increasingly a government subsidized set of bowling pins in the path of inevitable hurricanes.
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118895500527017646.html
Jensen Comment
The first Category 4 and 5 hurricanes of the 2007 season did not cause immense death and monetary damage because they hit relatively unpopulated costal areas in Mexico and Honduras. But here in the U.S. we're racing to populate the entire southern coast with government-insured bowling pins called "housing with a beach and a view "and casinos by the water.

A State Department report obtained by NPR gives fresh evidence that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is not only failing to stop officials from committing crimes, it's hindering its own watchdog agency from conducting investigations.
Debbie Elliott and Corey Flintoff , NPR, September 2, 2007 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14117853

British forces in southern Iraq have been fighting a "proxy war" against Iran, the commander of the troops who withdrew from Basra Palace has said. Frontline: Our troops in Afghanistan and IraqWhile the Army has frequently accused Iran of stirring violence across southern Iraq by arming Shia militias, no officer has been as blunt as Lt Col Patrick Sanders, commander of 4th Battalion The Rifles. Â British forces leave central Basra He told the BBC that 5,500 British soldiers still based at Basra...
David Blair, London Telegraph, September 9, 2007 --- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/06/nbasra206.xml

The federal government has already allocated a substantial amount of money to Gulf Coast reconstruction. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), as of July 2007 the federal government had appropriated $94.8 billion for Katrina recovery. Congress has allowed the National Flood Insurance Program to borrow another $17 billion from the government to cover the deficit it racked up paying out Katrina claims. The federal government has also created $16 billion in targeted tax breaks through Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone credits and other programs.So it's not a lack of funding that's the problem. It's spending the money. Under existing laws, FEMA can't simply write checks to Katrina victims. Some recipients would undoubtedly squander their funds, and there would be widespread fraud. This isn't idle speculation. According to the Government Accountability Office, immediately after Katrina hit, about a billion dollars of emergency aid—16 percent of the total—was lost to fraudulent claims. Even legitimately obtained pre-paid debit cards given to aid Katrina's victims were used to buy champagne, guns, tattoos, and porn.
Daniel Rothschild, "The Myths of Hurricane Katrina Myth number one: A lack of federal money," Reason Magazine, August 29, 2007 --- http://www.reason.com/news/show/122221.html

Kim Jong Il  is once again besting the U.S. in accomplishing his two central strategic objectives: staying in power and preserving his nuclear-weapons program. The working groups currently underway do nothing to achieve the proper ends of U.S. foreign policy. A few weeks ago in Shenyang, China, the "denuclearization" working group met without visible progress, even on permanently dismantling Yongbyon.
John R. Bolton, "Pyongyang's Upper Hand Thanks to feckless diplomacy, Kim Jong Il may preserve his nuclear program," The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2007 ---  http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010542

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.
Fred Allen --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Allen

A major Swiss political party has launched an anti-immigrant campaign that worries U.N. anti-racism officials. The party, which holds the largest number of seats in the Swiss Parliament, is pushing a number of controversial proposals, including a law that would expel an entire immigrant family if a child under 18 commits a crime. Ulrich Schluer, one of the party's leaders, wants to ban the building of minarets attached to Muslim mosques.
"Swiss Parliament Takes Aim At Immigrants," RightBias News, September 8, 2007 --- http://rightbias.com/Articles/090807up1.aspx

In a meeting today with Dennis Kucinich, US Democratic Presidential candidate, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that Syria would be willing to participate in a multinational conference and peacekeeping force to help Iraq to manage its transition from occupied country to sovereign nation. Assad made these assurances and other observations in a two-hour meeting with Kucinich, who traveled to Syria to discuss a peace initiative which has arisen out of his anti-war work in the House of Representatives. President Assad agreed with Kucinich that various US demands for the privatization of Iraq's oil and... (export of all Jews from the Middle East, export all Christians from Lebanon, provide Syria with advanced nuclear weapons, and give Syria all the oil of the Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Kucinich could easily deliver peace in the Middle East if he could only give Assad all of Persia as well).
"Kucinich Meets President Assad in Syria to Discuss Iraq Peace Plan," Yahoo News, September 2, 2007 --- Click Here
Jensen Comment
Makes us wonder why anti-war Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi did not accompany Dennis to meet Assad (for a second time). Since her first meeting with Assad she's been strangely silent about negotiations with Syria. I think powerful Jewish Democrats caught her attention afterwards.

In saying this, I am not criticizing liberalism, just explaining what it is. It is a form of political organization that is militantly secular and incapable, by definition, of seeing the strong claim of religion – the claim to be in possession of a truth all should acknowledge – as anything but an expression of unreasonableness and irrationality. Berlinerblau and Krattenmaker hold out the hope that secularists and strong religionists might come to an accommodation if they would listen to each other rather than just condemn each other. That hope is illusory, for each is defined by what is sees as the other’s errors. But surely, one might object, this is too categorical a statement. There are many who are liberal in their political views – they honor free expression, toleration, individual rights, free and frequent elections, and limited government – and are also people of faith. Yes there are, but the faiths they profess (at least publicly) must be the moderate and undemanding kind liberalism recognizes as legitimate. There are two answers presidential candidates cannot give to the now obligatory (and deeply offensive) question about their religious faith. A candidate cannot say, “I don’t have any,” and a candidate cannot say, “My faith dictates every decision I make and every action I take.” Rather, a candidate must say something like, “My faith generally informs my moral values, but my judgments and actions as president will follow from the constitutional obligations of the office, not from my religion.” In other words, I too believe in the public-private distinction and I will uphold it. I won’t insist that you adopt my values and I will respect yours. (In short, I’m a liberal.)
Stanley Fish, "Liberalism and Secularism: One and the Same,"  The New York Times, September 2, 2007 --- Click Here
Jensen Comment
Why must some candidates truly lie and hypocritically grit their teeth by attending weekly Christian church services during their campaigns?. Why can't they admit they are truly agnostic or atheist if that is the truly the case? Sadly candidates have no chance in modern times  if they're truly honest about everything!

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said Friday it has agreed to pay $198.1 million to settle 144 claims of sexual abuse by clergy, the second-largest payment by a diocese.
NewsMax, September 7, 2007 --- http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/catholic_abuse_priest/2007/09/07/30926.html

Lewis Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, has criticized proposals to bail out the so-called "subprime" lending industry. With potential losses hitting $100 billion, he said "Borrowers, lenders, and investors must be held responsible for their own mistakes."
AccountingWeb, September 6, 2007 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=103972
Jensen Comment
The subprime lending industry never once proposed a surtax on their excess profits when they were earning astronomical returns.

"I tell them: 'I am an engineer and I am a master in calculation and tabulation. I draw up tables. For hours, I write out different hypotheses. I reject, I reason. I reason with planning and I make a conclusion. They cannot make problems for Iran."' (Iranian President) Ahmadinejad has long expressed pride in his academic prowess. He holds a PhD on transport engineering and planning from Tehran's Science and Technology University and is the author several of scientific papers. The deeply religious President said his second reason was: "I believe in what God says."
"Maths proves US won't attack: Iran leader," Australia's News.com, September 3, 2007 --- http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22355111-1702,00.html 
Jensen Comment
Sadly President Bush is not known for math skills and probably cannot comprehend Ahmadinejad's QED! But then again, Einstein could not comprehend Ahmadinejad's QED once God is taken out of the equations.

A consortium of minority and women business leaders in the private equity, real estate, and investment management industries has announced the formation of the Access to Capital Coalition to oppose efforts in Congress to change tax laws in a way that would adversely affect minority and women entrepreneurs.
AccountingWeb, September 6, 2007 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=103975
Jensen Comment
Democrats face a real dilemma on this issue. The want to substantially raise taxes on upper-end and upper middle class taxpayers. But do they exclude upper-end and upper middle class taxpayers on the basis of gender and/or race?

American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year. They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States "leads the world in labor productivity." The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609. The productivity figure is found by dividing the country's gross domestic product by the number of people employed. The U.N. report is based on 2006 figures for many countries, or the most recent available.
"Americans Are World's Most Productive Workers, U.N. Report Finds," Fox News, September 3, 2007 --- http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295556,00.html
Also see http://www.worldnetdaily.com/biznetdaily/
Jensen Comment
One wonders if the nation of Technologia with a population of 100 people and 20,000 manufacturing robots will soon overtake the U.S. in terms of productivity per capita as computed above? My point is that the U.S. may do somewhat better per capita than other nations because of technology as well as worker motivation. Having said this, I do know that American workers tend to have longer hours and fewer vacation days than most other parts of the world, especially among nations with stronger labor unions.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is getting the endorsement of two unions, the United Steelworkers and the United Mine Workers of America, on Labor Day. Edwards is scheduled to be in Pittsburgh, home of the Steelworkers' international headquarters, for a Monday rally and will accept the endorsements there. "The members of the Steelworkers Union and the Mine Workers union are some of the country's hardest-working, bravest, most courageous workers," Edwards said. "It is their tireless hard work which has helped build a stronger America that benefits all of us. I honor what they do every day."
Jesse J. Holland, "Unions to endorse Edwards," Yahoo News, September 3, 2007 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070903/ap_on_el_pr/edwards_unions_1
Jensen Comment
Interestingly Edwards and McCain have almost identical stances on amnesty and other immigration reform proposals. This must not bother these labor unions that place a greater priority on high tariffs, class action lawsuits, restrained globalization, "free" national health care, soaring minimum wages, and an end to the Bill Clinton-sponsored NAFTA. A problem for Edwards, however, is that workers like their Wal-Mart prices on imported products, prefer longer-lasting Toyotas and Subarus, hate trial lawyers, vote against higher taxes on the middle class, despise amnesty for illegal immigrants, vote against welfare for drug addicts and lazy slobs, and often vote opposite of union recommendations. Hillary Clinton is probably not too worried about this union endorsement of her rival and knows that she will eventually get union support after she wins the Democratic nomination.

The Path to 9/11." The $40-million, five-hour ABC miniseries, which recently received seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined two-night audience of more than 25 million viewers, is for now on the path to nowhere . . . Last year, a Clinton spokesman referred to the ABC enterprise as "despicable," (because it bashes Bill Clinton rather than George Bush) and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and four other Democratic senators signed a letter to Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger stating that if the miniseries were shown it would "deeply damage" Disney's reputation. As a result of the tumult, ABC was unable to attract advertisers for the miniseries.
Martin Miller, "Blocking 'The Path to 9/11'," Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2007 --- Click Here

In the Hell Hath No Fury sweepstakes, groups like MoveOn.org are gearing up to take on a new set of perceived traitors in their midst--Democrats who have acknowledged some success from the troop surge in Iraq. Chief among the targets is Washington Congressman Brian Baird, whose indiscretion was recognizing progress on the ground, despite having initially opposed the surge and having opposed the war in the first place. After a recent trip to Iraq, Mr. Baird said: "One of the things that gets very little attention is that virtually every other country I visited says it would be a mistake to pull out now."
"MoveOn vs. Democrats:  Punishing Congressmen for reporting what they see in Iraq," The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010562

Thousands of Britons who have taken early retirement and moved to France are to lose free health care under radical reforms introduced by France's new president. In his drive to kick-start the French economy by creating a culture of hard work, Nicolas Sarkozy believes those who chose to retire early - under 65 - should not benefit from free health care. advertisementDuring his election campaign earlier this year Mr Sarkozy said: "If you think 53 makes you old enough to retire, then fine, go ahead and retire. But don't expect the state to pay for it." As a result, thousands . . .
Peter Allen, Telegraph, September 3, 2007 --- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml
Jensen Comment
Sounds "Sicko" to me! Since retirees pay taxes in France it's not at all clear that French health care is free to any person who pays relatively high taxes in France. It sounds more like double taxation to force the Brits to pay out-of-pocket for French health care and still pay taxes into the French health care system. They can get a better deal by learning Spanish instead of French and retiring in Cuba. Go for it!

As we reported at the time, the fight over Mr. Wolfowitz had little to do with his girlfriend and everything to do with his anti-corruption efforts. That truth is now coming into sharper relief, as a showdown looms over a series of reports about, and by, the bank's anti-corruption unit. Senior bank officials are especially eager to discredit, and if possible deep-six, a forthcoming internal report on corruption in a major bank-supported health care project in India. If that report ever sees the light of day, several top bank officials could lose their jobs, and rightly so. The India controversy began with a 2005 report by the bank's Institutional Integrity unit into pharmaceutical drug procurement as part of the bank's Reproductive and Child Health I Project (or RCH I). The 16-page report has never been made public. But we've seen a copy, and it's a stunner that readers can find in full here.
"World Bank Corruption:  Bribery in India, and a test for Bob Zoellick," The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010557

On Thursday, the Government Accountability Project, (GAP), a self-described public interest law firm, will release an unofficial report on the Department of Institutional Integrity, the World Bank's anti-corruption unit known internally as the INT. Next week comes a second, official report about the INT from a panel of worthies led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. By the end of the month the INT intends to release its own report on the Bank's health-related projects in India, where there is evidence of corruption running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. That third report is what the first two are really about. But whether its conclusions are ever acted on -- or so much as shared with the Bank's funders, including the U.S. Congress -- will depend on whether Mr. Zoellick has the courage to confront his entrenched bureaucracy.
Bret Stephens, "Mind the GAP," The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2007; Page A16 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118887092392916538.html

Veteran Boston political reporter Jon Keller also invites us to behold his native state . . . and shudder in dismay. In "The Bluest State," he argues that, although Massachusetts does not suffer alone from its notorious affection for liberalism, it is the incubator for "Massachusetts viruses" that infect the national Democratic Party. The viruses come in many forms: "addiction to tax revenues and a raging edifice complex couched in disrespect to wage earners; phony identity politics without real results for women and minorities; reflexive anti-Americanism in foreign affairs; vain indulgence in obnoxious political correctness; self-serving featherbedding; NIMBYism; authoritarian distortion of the balance of governmental power, all simmered in a broth of hypocritical paternalism."
Guy Darst, "Bay State Blues:  Massachusetts incubates the "viruses" that afflict the Democratic Party," The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010561
The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster (Hardcover) by Jon Keller (Author) --- Click Here 

Obnoxious political correctness? The school superintendent in Amherst put the kibosh on "West Side Story" as the annual high-school senior musical after a handful of complaints claiming that the work was racist in its portrayal of Puerto Ricans. (In fact, this modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet story is the most beautiful anti-racism work in American musical theater.) "Political correctness," writes Mr. Keller, "is the signature cultural statement of the ruling elites, undermining their moral authority and driving a wedge between them and the working class far more effectively than any right-wing demagogue could hope for."
Guy Darst, "Bay State Blues:  Massachusetts incubates the "viruses" that afflict the Democratic Party," The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010561
The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster (Hardcover) by Jon Keller (Author) --- Click Here 

Last week we noted a bizarre op-ed piece from Kathy Rudy, a professor of "women's studies" at Duke, who described herself as a supporter of animal rights but proceeded to defend erstwhile NFL player Michael Vick's involvement in illegal dogfighting on the ground that he is black . . . What's more, according to this page , Rudy was not among the 89 Duke faculty members (which included some who had been among the 88 and some who hadn't) who signed a " clarifying statement http://www.concerneddukefaculty.org/ " which said the ad had not been intended to prejudge the rape case--not a terribly believable assertion, but at least an implicit acknowledgment of error. Blogger KC Johnson http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2007/07/group-profile-kathy-rudy.html --co-author of "Until Proven Innocent," which is reviewed today by Abigail Thernstrom http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010564 and is available from the OpinionJournal bookstore has more background on Rudy, a tenured associate professor:
Opinion Journal, September 6, 2007

Violence is so intertwined with male sexuality that military pilots watch porn movies before they go out on sorties. The war in Afghanistan could not possibly offer a chance to liberate women from their oppressors, since it would simply expose women to yet another set of oppressors, in the gender feminists’ view.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, --- http://class.csueastbay.edu/ethnicstudies/Roxanne_Dunbar-Ortiz.php
As quoted among her assertions that the U.S. (where she lives and prospers) is an evil empire --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisyEvilEmpire.htm
Jensen Comment:  I wonder if Professor Dunbar-Ortiz researched current Afgan women before asserting as a fact that their life is no better now than under the Taliban that would not even allow women to become educated to a point of being able to read and write.  I'll just bet Professor  Dunbar-Ortiz never did a simple Google search to find http://www.rawa.org/ (a site that would have been banned by the Taliban under threat of execution).
 Professor Dunbar-Ortiz's official home page is at http://www.reddirtsite.com/
Professor Dunbar-Ortiz has a regular column at http://www.counterpunch.org/
 
On Tuesday, the Middle East Studies Association released two letters protesting what the group considers to be serious violations of academic freedom. One concerns Norman Finkelstein, the DePaul University political scientist who was denied tenure in June and who has since been placed on a paid leave, with his classes called off and his office shut down. The other concerns the decision by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs to call off a lecture by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, two scholars who have written a book that is harshly critical of the influence of Israel and its supporters on U.S. foreign policy.Today, Finkelstein is expected to stage a protest over his situation by teaching the class that the university canceled and then going to his old office, from which he has been barred. Finkelstein has vowed to enter the office, even if that gets him arrested, in which case he says he will go on a hunger strike
Scott Jaschik, "Middle East Tensions Flare Again (in U.S.)," Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/05/middleeast

Norman Finkelstein Professes His Solidarity With Hezbollah --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpFmxnwQ9Bw

Wednesday was supposed to be the day of the big showdown at DePaul University. Instead it turned out to be the day of the big compromise. DePaul and Norman Finkelstein, the professor to whom it had denied tenure, announced that he was resigning immediately. The university and Finkelstein even managed to say some nice things about one another. But while Finkelstein will be leaving, some at the university and elsewhere believe that significant academic freedom issues raised by his case are very much alive.
Scott Jaschik,  "Finkelstein and DePaul Settle," Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/06/finkelstein
Jensen Comment
Depaul University has always insisted that tenure was denied solely on the basis of a weak research and publication record for Professor Finkelstein. He countered by contending that it was his anti-Israeli activism that caused his tenure denial. His media ploys were most unprofessional.

Northeastern University likes entrepreneurial students, but prefers legal enterprises. The Boston Globe reported that two freshmen were expelled after one of them shouted out a dormitory window: “If you’re looking for weed, my roommate Ferrante has some for sale.” Plainclothes police officers heard, the students were arrested and they are no longer enrolled.
Inside Higher Ed, September 8, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/07/qt

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), British dramatist. As he lay dying in Paris --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

I'm so bored with it all.
Winston Churchill on his death bed --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

Is That All There Is? (Peggy Lee) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-hiDMpcN9Y

I've been invited to conduct a one-day education technology workshop for accounting educators in Mississippi hosted by the Mississippi Society of CPAs. My  Education Technology PowerPoint Files and Video Samplings in development are at --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/

I received this invitation from Wayne Nix [ WENix@mc.edu ] from Mississippi College

"YouTube Studies," by Elia Powers, Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/06/youtube

If you’re reading this article on a Tuesday or Thursday between noon and 1:10 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, then a class called “Learning From YouTube” is meeting right now at Pitzer College.

Not that the time or place really matters — you can experience this course anytime you want. For the first time this fall, Pitzer is offering a class about the popular video-sharing Web site, and every session is being filmed and posted on that site (not quite live, but close to it).

You can see it for yourself, more than 30 minutes of the opening class, right here on the course’s YouTube page. You can see the professor, who introduces herself to her students the same way she introduces herself to the online world, through a no-frills eight-minute video.

You can see a few students and hear their commentary. (And you thought it was tough to be the shy student in class before.)

Take, for example, this opening dialogue:

“We’re recording,” says Alexandra Juhasz, a professor of media studies who teaches the course. “You should know right now that if you don’t want to be seen on YouTube you should be somewhere behind the camera. We’re going to be recording all semester, so you better get used to it.”

“That’s so awkward,” someone in the class mumbles — even though students knew coming in of the arrangement.

For a professor, there’s nothing quite like the possibility of having your lectures or class discussions filmed and mocked on YouTube to turn you off to the medium. But Juhasz, describing the class in both her introductory video and in a phone interview as an “experiment,” looks at outside attention in a different way.

She welcomes it. In fact, she is hopeful that people outside the college will take the unusual invitation to peek inside a classroom and maybe even post their own video responses. (Though her instinct says most people won’t want to watch an hour of academic chatter.)

In the spirit of full disclosure, Juhasz even lists on the YouTube course page her interests, which include reading novels, watching movies, jogging, ballet, and protesting the war and [the Bush] administration — not necessarily in that order.

Faculty members have experimented with posting lectures and course material online before, and some have argued that YouTube is a helpful tool for academics, but the devotion of an entire course to the Web site and the all-access pass Pitzer is providing puts the liberal arts college on another plain.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Statistics Online Computational Resource --- http://socr.stat.ucla.edu/

A list of some useful links related to Statistics Education from Juha Puranen, Department of Statistics, University of Helsinki --- http://noppa5.pc.helsinki.fi/links.html 

 

Online Tutorials for Learning About Statistics and Research
Against All Odds: Inside Statistics ---  http://www.learner.org/resources/series65.html

 

Exploring Data (Statistics Tutorials) --- http://exploringdata.cqu.edu.au/

 

From Dartmouth College
Chance News --- http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/index.php/Main_Page
Tutorial on Statistics (focus is on learning exercises and how to view media reports critically)

Probability Tutorials --- http://www.probability.net/

Statistical Guide to Poker
"A Physicist's Guide to Texas Hold 'Em," PhysOrg, April 4, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news94907470.html

Bob Jensen's links to free mathematics and statistics tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

Making Digital Books Into Page Turners
Despite tepid response to its Reader, Sony sees potential in the market--and Amazon may agree

Nearly 10 Months After its debut, the Sony Reader is hardly a game changer. Reviews of the tiny handheld book-reading device have been tepid at best, and Sony Corp. has consistently declined to release sales figures, which just might tell you something. But Sony isn't backing away. In fact, as speculation continues in publishing circles that book e-tailing giant Amazon.com is planning to come out with its own portable reader, Sony is launching a number of initiatives to give its Reader more sizzle. The market for digital books is nascent, and Sony, despite the Reader's less-than-splashy debut, still sees its potential, believing people will eventually warm to reading on a flat screen everything from books to the magazine you're holding now. The half-inch-thick Sony Reader, which can store about 80 electronic books, allows readers to flip pages and adjust the type size. It sells for about $300, and digital book downloads range from $2 to $20 apiece.
Business Week, September 3, 2007 --- http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_36/b4048065.htm?link_position=link9

Sony Portable Reader System --- Click Here

There are millions of books, poems, and related electronic literature now available, or soon to be available, free to read on your PC --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on electronic book readers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm

E-paper with Photonic Crystals
Scientists in Canada have used photonic crystals to create a novel type of flexible electronic-paper display. Unlike other such devices, the photonic-crystal display is the first with pixels that can be individually tuned to any color. "You get much brighter and more-intense colors," says André Arsenault, a chemist at the University of Toronto and cofounder of Opalux, a Toronto-based company commercializing the photonic-crystal technology, called P-Ink.
MIT's Technology Review, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19337/?a=f


Dirty Tricks of Credit Card Companies on College Campuses
Politicians and college administrators are growing increasingly concerned about the damage that credit-card debt is causing students, and they're trying to crack down on some of the card companies' practices. They're limiting marketing on some campuses and trying to restrict the size of credit lines extended to students. Earlier this year, the state legislatures in Texas, Oklahoma, and New York moved to clamp down on credit-card marketing to college students (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/4/07, "Majoring in Credit-Card Debt").
Jessica Silver-Greenberg, "Confessions of a Credit-Card Pusher: One student's story of how he was recruited to peddle credit cards on campus and the troubles he found for himself," Business Week, September 5, 2007 --- Click Here

"Credit Card 101: Advice Before Shopping," AccountingWeb, November 22, 2006 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102824

Bob Jensen's threads on credit card company dirty tricks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#FICO

NASA: Rocket Activities (tutorials) --- http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/TRCRocket/RocketActivitiesHome2.html

Global Warming Test (forwarded by a neighbor) --- http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

National Institutes of Health: History of Medicine --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/
Includes books, reports, pictures, videos, etc.

Physics & The Detection of Medical X-Rays --- http://web.phys.ksu.edu/mmmm/piko/index.html

Medline Plus: Herbal Medicine --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/herbalmedicine.html#cat57

Medical Dictionary --- http://www.medterms.com/script/main/hp.asp

Get Body Smart --- http://www.getbodysmart.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science

Question
What is ray tracing?
Hint
An amateur (read that really amateur) photographer like Bob Jensen can really use ray tracing.

Adobe is focusing its efforts on ray tracing, a rendering technique that considers the behavior of light as it bounces off objects. Since it takes so long to render, ray tracing is typically used for precomputed effects that are added to films, computer games, and even still pictures before they reach the consumer, explains Gavin Miller, senior principal scientist at Adobe.
Kate Greene, "Animation for the Masses:  Adobe is developing software to let home users create movie-quality 3-D graphics," MIT's Technology Review, September 6, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19344/

The problem is that our students choose very bland, low nourishment diets in our modern day smorgasbord curricula. Their concern is with their grade averages rather than their education. And why not? Grades for students and turf for faculty have become the keys to the kingdom!
Bob Jensen

"Our Compassless Colleges," by Peter Berkowitz, The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007; Page A17 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118895528818217660.html

At universities and colleges throughout the land, undergraduates and their parents pay large sums of money for -- and federal and state governments contribute sizeable tax exemptions to support -- "liberal" education. This despite administrators and faculty lacking, or failing to honor, a coherent concept of what constitutes an educated human being.

To be sure, American higher education, or rather a part of it, is today the envy of the world, producing and maintaining research scientists of the highest caliber. But liberal education is another matter. Indeed, many professors in the humanities and social sciences proudly promulgate doctrines that mock the very idea of a standard or measure defining an educated person, and so legitimate the compassless curriculum over which they preside. In these circumstances, why should we not conclude that universities are betraying their mission?

Many American colleges do adopt general distribution requirements. Usually this means that students must take a course or two of their choosing in the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, decorated perhaps with a dollop of fine arts, rudimentary foreign-language exposure, and the acquisition of basic writing and quantitative skills. And all students must choose a major. But this veneer of structure provides students only superficial guidance. Or, rather, it reinforces the lesson that our universities have little of substance to say about the essential knowledge possessed by an educated person.

Certainly this was true of the core curriculum at Harvard, where I taught in the faculty of arts and sciences during the 1990s. And it remains true even after Harvard's recent reforms.

Harvard's aims and aspirations are in many ways admirable. According to this year's Report of the Task Force on General Education, Harvard understands liberal education as "an education conducted in a spirit of free inquiry undertaken without concern for topical relevance or vocational utility." It prepares for the rest of life by improving students' ability "to assess empirical claims, interpret cultural expression, and confront ethical dilemmas in their personal and professional lives." But instead of concentrating on teaching substantive knowledge, the general education at Harvard will focus on why what students learn is important. To accomplish this, Harvard would require students to take single-semester courses in eight categories: Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding, Culture and Belief, Empirical Reasoning, Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of the Physical Universe, Societies of the World, and The United States in the World.

Unfortunately, the new requirements add up to little more than an attractively packaged evasion of the university's responsibility to provide a coherent core for undergraduate education. For starters, though apparently not part of the general education curriculum, Harvard requires only a year of foreign language study or the equivalent. Yet since it usually takes more than a year of college study to achieve competence in a foreign language -- the ability to hold a conversation and read a newspaper -- doesn't Harvard, by requiring only a single year, denigrate foreign-language study, and with it the serious study of other cultures and societies?

Furthermore, in the search for the immediate relevance it disavows, Harvard's curriculum repeatedly puts the cart before the horse. For example, instead of first requiring students to concentrate on the study of novels, poetry, and plays, Harvard will ask them to choose from a variety of courses on "literary or religious texts, paintings, sculpture, architecture, music, film, dance, decorative arts" that involve "exploring theoretical and philosophical issues concerning the production and reception of meanings and the formation of aesthetic judgment."

Instead of first requiring students to gain acquaintance with the history of opinions about law, justice, government, duty and virtue, Harvard will ask them to choose from a variety of courses on how to bring ethical theories to bear on contemporary moral and political dilemmas. Instead of first requiring students to survey U.S. history or European history or classical history, Harvard will ask them to choose from a variety of courses that examine the U.S and its relation to the rest of the world. Instead of first teaching students about the essential features of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Harvard will ask them to choose from a variety of courses on almost any aspect of foreign societies.

Harvard's general education reform will allow students to graduate without ever having read the same book or studied the same material. Students may take away much of interest, but it is the little in common they learn that will be of lasting significance. For they will absorb the implicit teaching of the new college curriculum -- same as the old one -- that there is nothing in particular that an educated person need know.

Of course, if parents, students, alumni donors, trustees, professors and administrators are happy, why worry? A college degree remains a hot commodity, a ticket of entry to valuable social networks, a signal to employers that graduates have achieved a certain proficiency in manipulating concepts, performing computations, and getting along with peers.

The reason to worry is that university education can cause lasting harm. The mental habits that students form and the ideas they absorb in college consolidate the framework through which as adults they interpret experience, and judge matters to be true or false, fair or inequitable, honorable or dishonorable. A university that fails to teach students sound mental habits and to acquaint them with enduring ideas handicaps its graduates for public and private life.

Moreover, properly conceived, a liberal education provides invaluable benefits for students and the nation. For most students, it offers the last chance, perhaps until retirement, to read widely and deeply, to acquire knowledge of the opinions and events that formed them and the nation in which they live, and to study other peoples and cultures. A proper liberal education liberalizes in the old-fashioned and still most relevant sense: It forms individuals fit for freedom.

The nation benefits as well, because a liberal democracy presupposes an informed citizenry capable of distinguishing the public interest from private interest, evaluating consequences, and discerning the claims of justice and the opportunities for -- and limits to -- realizing it in politics. Indeed, a sprawling liberal democracy whose citizens practice different religions and no religion at all, in which individuals have family heritages that can be traced to every continent, and in which the nation's foreign affairs are increasingly bound up with local politics in countries around the world is particularly dependent on citizens acquiring a liberal education.

Crafting a core consistent with the imperatives of a liberal education will involve both a substantial break with today's university curriculum and a long overdue alignment of higher education with common sense. Such a core would, for example, require all students to take semester courses surveying Greek and Roman history, European history, and American history. It would require all students to take a semester course in classic works of European literature, and one in classic works of American literature. It would require all students to take a semester course in biology and one in physics. It would require all students to take a semester course in the principles of American government; one in economics; and one in the history of political philosophy. It would require all students to take a semester course comparing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It would require all students to take a semester course of their choice in the history, literature or religion of a non-Western civilization. And it would require all students to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language of their choice by carrying on a casual conversation and accurately reading a newspaper in the language, a level of proficiency usually obtainable after two years of college study, or four semester courses.

Such a core is at best an introduction to liberal education. Still, students who meet its requirements will acquire a common intellectual foundation that enables them to debate morals and politics responsibly, enhances their understanding of whatever specialization they choose, and enriches their appreciation of the multiple dimensions of the delightful and dangerous world in which we live.

It is a mark of the politicization and clutter of our current curriculum that these elementary requirements will strike many faculty and administrators as benighted and onerous. Yet the core I've outlined reflects what all successful individuals outside of academia know: Progress depends on mastering the basics.

Assuming four courses a semester and 32 to graduate, such a core could be completed in the first two years of undergraduate study. Students who met the foreign-language requirement through high school study would have the opportunity as freshman and sophomores to choose four elective courses. During their junior and senior year, students could devote 10 courses to their major while taking six additional elective courses. And students majoring in the natural sciences, where it is necessary to take a substantial sequence of courses, would enroll in introductory and lower-level courses in their major during freshman and sophomore years and complete the core during junior and senior years.

Admittedly, reform confronts formidable obstacles. The major one is professors. Many will fight such a common core, because it requires them to teach general interest classes outside their area of expertise; it reduces opportunities to teach small boutique classes on highly specialized topics; and it presupposes that knowledge is cumulative and that some books and ideas are more essential than others.

Meanwhile, students and parents are poorly positioned to affect change. Students come and go, and, in any event, the understanding they need to formulate the arguments for reform is acquired through the very liberal education of which universities are currently depriving them. Meanwhile, parents are too distant and dispersed, and often they have too much money on the line to rock the boat.

But there are opportunities. Change could be led by an intrepid president, provost or dean of a major university who knows the value of a liberal education, possesses the eloquence and courage to defend it to his or her faculty, and has the skill to refashion institutional incentives and hold faculty and administrators accountable.

Reform could also be led by trustees at private universities -- the election in recent years of T.J. Rodgers, Todd Zywicki, Peter Robinson and Stephen Smith to the Dartmouth Board of Trustees on platforms supporting freedom of speech and high academic standards is a start -- or by alumni determined to connect their donations, on which universities depend, to reliable promises that their gifts will be used in furtherance of liberal education, well understood.

And some enterprising smaller colleges or public universities, taking advantage of the nation's love of diversity and openness to innovation, might discover a market niche for parents and students eager for an education that serves students' best interests by introducing them in a systematic manner to their own civilization, to the moral and political principles on which their nation is based, and to languages and civilizations that differ from their own.

Citizens today are called on to analyze a formidable array of hard questions concerning war and peace, liberty and security, markets and morals, marriage and family, science and technology, poverty and public responsibility, and much more. No citizen can be expected to master all the issues. But liberal democracies count on more than a small minority acquiring the ability to reason responsibly about the many sides of these many-sided questions. For this reason, we must teach our universities to appreciate the aims of a liberal education. And we must impress upon our universities their obligation to pursue them responsibly.

Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, teaches at George Mason University School of Law. This commentary draws from an essay that previously appeared in Policy Review.

Where the Highest Ranked Colleges Don't Excel --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DoNotExcel

Our Under Achieving Colleges:  A Former Harvard University President's Dark View of the Sad State of Learning in Higher Education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Bok

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

A Desperation Effort by Monopoly Publishers to Beat Down Open Access to Scholarly Research Papers
What they never explain is why peer review cannot be accomplished for open access publishing of papers!
Open access simply means that the papers, especially research funded by taxpayers, themselves are eventually made available without having to pay publishing companies for an obsolete service?
It's time for libraries to boycott journal publishers extracting gigantic monopoly profits!

From the University of Illinois Issues in Scholarly Communcation Blog on September 7, 2007 --- http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/
SPARC on PRISM As reported in Open Access News... SPARC has released a letter to its members about PRISM, September 6, 2007. It was written by Heather Joseph, SPARC’s Executive Director. Excerpt:

I'm writing to bring to your attention the recent launch of an anti-open access lobbying effort. The initiative, called PRISM – the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine”, was launched with development support from the Association of American Publishers and specifically targets efforts to expand public access to federally funded research results – including the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy.
The messaging on the PRISM Web site, which is aimed at key policy makers, directly corresponds to the PR campaign reportedly undertaken by the AAP earlier this year. As Nature reported in January, AAP publishers met with PR “pit bull” Eric Dezenhall to develop a campaign against the “free-information movement” that focuses on simple messages, such as “public access equals government censorship,” and suggested that “the publishers should attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review”. News of this proposed campaign met with immediate and heavy criticism in the academic community.
 

The new PRISM Web site closely tracks with the recommended PR strategy, highlighting messages that include:


* Public access/open access will destroy the peer review system
* Public access equals government censorship
* The government is trying to expropriate publishers’ intellectual property
 

This campaign is clearly focused on the preservation of the status quo in scholarly publishing, (along with the attendant revenues), and not on ensuring that scientific research results are distributed and used as widely as possible. The launch of this initiative provides a timely opportunity for engaging faculty members, researchers, students and administrators in dialogue on important issues in scholarly communications.
To assist in this conversation, the Association of Research Libraries has prepared a series of talking points that explicitly address each of the PRISM messages listed above....
The reaction to the launch of PRISM by the academic research community has been immediate and quite strong. Of particular note are reactions by these important constituencies:
1) Some publishers have called for the AAP to post a disclaimer on the PRISM Web site, indicating that PRISM does *not* represent their views on the issues of open access and public access. (See open letter from Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press.)

2) Some journal editors have also expressed displeasure with the initiative. For example, Tom Wilson, Editor (and Founder) of the International Journal of Information Management, resigned from that editorial board in protest of Elsevier's involvement with PRISM.
Others, including Peter Murray Rust of the University of Cambridge (UK), have written to publishers with which they are affiliated as author or editor and asked them to take action to publicly disassociate themselves with PRISM.

3) Researchers are also questioning how their choices may result in unwanted association with PRISM. Some are calling for colleagues to register displeasure over publishers’ involvement with PRISM by reconsidering submitting work, reviewing, or editing for publishers who support the coalition (See ). Others are going even further, calling for a boycott of those publishers....
PRISM developments will be of interest to many on campus – including those who follow open access and anyone who is involved with PRISM publishers as an author, editor, or subscriber. Please feel free to share this information. To stay abreast of related news, visit the SPARC Web site or Peter Suber’s Open Access News blog....
 

Bob Jensen's threads on publisher rip-offs of scholarly communications are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals

"Beyond Merit Pay and Student Evaluations," by James D. Miller, Inside Higher Ed, September 8, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/07/miller 

What tools should colleges use to reward excellent teachers? Some rely on teaching evaluations that students spend only a few minutes filling out. Others trust deans and department chairs to put aside friendships and enmities and objectively identify the best teachers. Still more colleges don’t reward teaching excellence and hope that the lack of incentives doesn’t diminish teaching quality.

I propose instead that institutions should empower graduating seniors to reward teaching excellence. Colleges should do this by giving each graduating senior $1,000 to distribute among their faculty. Colleges should have graduates use a computer program to distribute their allocations anonymously.

My proposal would have multiple benefits. It would reduce the tension between tenure and merit pay. Tenure is supposed to insulate professors from retaliation for expressing unpopular views in their scholarship. Many colleges, however, believe that tenured professors don’t have sufficient incentives to work hard, so colleges implement a merit pay system to reward excellence. Alas, merit pay can be a tool that deans and department heads use to punish politically unpopular professors. My proposal, however, provides for a type of merit pay without giving deans and department heads any additional power over instructors. And because the proposal imposes almost no additional administrative costs on anyone, many deans and department heads might prefer it to a traditional merit pay system.

Students, I suspect, would take their distribution decisions far more seriously than they do end-of-semester class evaluations. This is because students are never sure how much influence class evaluations have on teachers’ careers, whereas the link between their distributions and their favorite teachers’ welfare would be clear. Basing merit pay on these distributions, therefore, will be “fairer” than doing so based on class evaluations. Furthermore, these distributions would provide very useful information to colleges in making tenure decisions or determining whether to keep employing a non-tenure track instructor.

The proposal would also reward successful advising. A good adviser can make a student’s academic career. But since advising quality is difficult to measure, colleges rarely factor it into merit pay decisions. But I suspect that many students consider their adviser to be their favorite professor, so great advisers would be well rewarded if graduates distributed $1,000 among faculty.

Hopefully, these $1,000 distributions would get students into the habit of donating to their alma maters. The distributions would show graduates the link between donating and helping parts of the college that they really liked. Colleges could even ask their graduates to “pay back” the $1,000 that they were allowed to give their favorite teachers. To test whether the distributions really did increase alumni giving, a college could randomly choose, say, 10 percent of a graduating class for participation in my plan and then see if those selected graduates did contribute more to the college.

My reward system would help a college attract star teachers. Professors who know they often earn their students adoration will eagerly join a college that lets students enrich their favorite teachers.

Unfortunately, today many star teachers are actually made worse off because of their popularity. Students often spend much time talking to star teachers, make great use of their office hours and frequently ask them to write letters of recommendation. Consequently, star teachers have less time than average faculty members do to conduct research. My proposal, though, would help correct the time penalty that popularity so often imposes on the best teachers.

College trustees and regents who have business backgrounds should like my idea because it rewards customer-oriented professors. And anything that could persuade trustees to increase instructors’ compensation should be very popular among faculty.

But my proposal would be the most popular among students. It would signal to students that the college is ready to trust them with some responsibility for their alma mater’s finances. It would also prove to students that the way they have been treated at college is extremely important to their school.

James D. Miller is an associate professor of economics at Smith College.

Jensen Comment
One-time "gifts" to teachers are not the same as salary increases that are locked in year after year after year until the faculty member resigns or retires. It is also extremely likely that this type of reward system might be conducive to grade inflation popularity contests. Also some students might ask why they are being charged $1,000 more in tuition to be doled out as bonuses selectively to faculty.

But by far the biggest flaw in this type of reward system is the bias toward large class sections. Some of the most brilliant research professors teach advanced-level courses to much smaller classes than instructors teaching larger classes to first and second year students. Is it a good idea for a top specialist to abandon his advanced specialty courses for majors in order to have greater financial rewards for teaching basic courses that have more students at a very elementary level?

Bob Jensen's threads on how student evaluations have greatly contributed to grade inflation are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation

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

Free Social Policy Tutorials

MDRC ---  http://www.mdrc.org/

UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center --- http://www.its.berkeley.edu/sustainabilitycenter/nonconfuels.html

Bob Jensen's threads on free tutorials in "Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy" are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

National Capital Language Resource Center --- http://www.nclrc.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on foreign language translation are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#ForeignLanguage

NewsLab --- http://www.newslab.org/

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

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser.
Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.
Brendan Francis Behan --- Click Here

In an educational system strapped for money and increasingly ruled by standardized tests, arts courses can seem almost a needless extravagance, and the arts are being cut back at schools across the country.

"Art for our sake:  School arts classes matter more than ever - but not for the reasons you think," by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, Boston Globe, September 2, 2007 --- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/02/art_for_our_sake/?page=full

In an educational system strapped for money and increasingly ruled by standardized tests, arts courses can seem almost a needless extravagance, and the arts are being cut back at schools across the country.

One justification for keeping the arts has now become almost a mantra for parents, arts teachers, and even politicians: arts make you smarter. The notion that arts classes improve children's scores on the SAT, the MCAS, and other tests is practically gospel among arts-advocacy groups. A Gallup poll last year found that 80 percent of Americans believed that learning a musical instrument would improve math and science skills.

But that claim turns out to be unfounded. It's true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation isn't causation, and an analysis we did several years ago showed no evidence that arts training actually causes scores to rise.

There is, however, a very good reason to teach arts in schools, and it's not the one that arts supporters tend to fall back on. In a recent study of several art classes in Boston-area schools, we found that arts programs teach a specific set of thinking skills rarely addressed elsewhere in the curriculum - and that far from being irrelevant in a test-driven education system, arts education is becoming even more important as standardized tests like the MCAS exert a narrowing influence over what schools teach.

The implications are broad, not just for schools but for society. As schools cut time for the arts, they may be losing their ability to produce not just the artistic creators of the future, but innovative leaders who improve the world they inherit. And by continuing to focus on the arts' dubious links to improved test scores, arts advocates are losing their most powerful weapon: a real grasp of what arts bring to education.

It is well established that intelligence and thinking ability are far more complex than what we choose to measure on standardized tests. The high-stakes exams we use in our schools, almost exclusively focused on verbal and quantitative skills, reward children who have a knack for language and math and who can absorb and regurgitate information. They reveal little about a student's intellectual depth or desire to learn, and are poor predictors of eventual success and satisfaction in life.

As schools increasingly shape their classes to produce high test scores, many life skills not measured by tests just don't get taught. It seems plausible to imagine that art classes might help fill the gap by encouraging different kinds of thinking, but there has been remarkably little careful study of what skills and modes of thinking the arts actually teach.

To determine what happens inside arts classes, we spent an academic year studying five visual-arts classrooms in two local Boston-area schools, videotaping and photographing classes, analyzing what we saw, and interviewing teachers and their students.

What we found in our analysis should worry parents and teachers facing cutbacks in school arts programs. While students in art classes learn techniques specific to art, such as how to draw, how to mix paint, or how to center a pot, they're also taught a remarkable array of mental habits not emphasized elsewhere in school.

Such skills include visual-spatial abilities, reflection, self-criticism, and the willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes. All are important to numerous careers, but are widely ignored by today's standardized tests.

In our study, funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust, we worked with classes at the Boston Arts Academy, a public school in the Fenway, and the private Walnut Hill School for the arts in Natick. Students at each school concentrate on visual arts, music, drama, or dance, and spend at least three hours a day working on their art. Their teachers are practicing artists. We restricted ourselves to a small sample of high-quality programs to evaluate what the visual arts could achieve given adequate time and resources.

Although the approach is necessarily subjective, we tried to set the study up to be as evidence-based as possible. We videotaped classes and watched student-teacher interactions repeatedly, identifying specific habits and skills, and coding the segments to count the times each was taught. We compared our provisional analysis with those the teachers gave when we showed them clips of their classes. We also interviewed students and analyzed samples of their work.

In our analysis, we identified eight ``studio habits of mind" that arts classes taught, including the development of artistic craft. Each of these stood out from testable skills taught elsewhere in school.

One of these habits was persistence: Students worked on projects over sustained periods of time and were expected to find meaningful problems and persevere through frustration. Another was expression: Students were urged to move beyond technical skill to create works rich in emotion, atmosphere, and their own personal voice or vision. A third was making clear connections between schoolwork and the world outside the classroom: Students were taught to see their projects as part of the larger art world, past and present. In one drawing class at Walnut Hill, the teacher showed students how Edward Hopper captured the drama of light; at the Boston Arts Academy, students studied invitations to contemporary art exhibitions before designing their own. In this way students could see the parallels between their art and professional work.

Each of these habits clearly has a role in life and learning, but we were particularly struck by the potentially broad value of four other kinds of thinking being taught in the art classes we documented: observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, and reflective self-evaluation. Though far more difficult to quantify on a test than reading comprehension or math computation, each has a high value as a learning tool, both in school and elsewhere in life.

The first thing we noticed was that visual arts students are trained to look, a task far more complex than one might think. Seeing is framed by expectation, and expectation often gets in the way of perceiving the world accurately. To take a simple example: When asked to draw a human face, most people will set the eyes near the top of the head. But this isn't how a face is really proportioned, as students learn: our eyes divide the head nearly at the center line. If asked to draw a whole person, people tend to draw the hands much smaller than the face - again an inaccurate perception. The power of our expectations explains why beginners draw eyes too high and hands too small. Observational drawing requires breaking away from stereotypes and seeing accurately and directly.

We saw students pushed to notice what they might not have seen before. For instance, in Mickey Telemaque's first design class of the term at the Boston Arts Academy, ninth-graders practice looking with one eye through a cardboard frame called a viewfinder. ``Forget that you're looking at somebody's arm or a table," Telemaque tells his students. ``Just think about the shapes, the colors, the lines, and the textures." Over and over we listened to teachers telling their students to look more closely at the model and see it in terms of its essential geometry.

Seeing clearly by looking past one's preconceptions is central to a variety of professions, from medicine to law. Naturalists must be able to tell one species from another; climatologists need to see atmospheric patterns in data as well as in clouds. Writers need keen observational skills too, as do doctors.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Some of my best students in accounting over the years had dual majors in music, math, and languages. Most of my top students were very active in extracurricular activities as well such as choir, orchestra, athletics, and part-time jobs. Their success with grade averages correlates with my own life experiences where I found that I was most productive when I was busy juggling a lot of things at the same time. My least productive times were two years spent in think tanks where my life was shielded from most outside duties. I was free to just "think" at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences on the Stanford University campus.

It seems like when I came to forks in the road in a think tank I was free to waste a lot of time exploring dead end trails. Sometimes pressure for closure is a good thing. Perhaps its a good thing that doctoral students are not give 20 years to write a dissertation in a think tank. Then again who knows? It is a fact that Nobel prizes for creative discoveries tend to go to researchers with very long publication records. In other words, Nobel Laureates are active scholars with noted closure abilities.

September 4, 2007 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

It has long been accepted that there is a positive correlation between music and math. Less well-accepted, but empirically supported, is the link between music and logic aptitude, including music and computer programming. Further, there also seems to be a correlation between music/fine arts and mental perspective (on life, on relationships, on self-cognition, etc.). And of course, the arts are closely related to "presentation", which in effect, is communication at a higher plane.

One of my favorite movies is "Mr. Holland's Opus", starring Richard Dreyfuss, Olympia Dukakis, Glene Headley and Alicia Witt, where one of the major plot lines is the school board's plan to cut back on music education in favor of the "more academic" pursuits. You have to watch the movie all the way through to get the synergy of the plot, even though it is tedious at times. If I remember correctly, Dreyfus might have won an Oscar for this movie... I highly recommend it, and some of the closing lines in the movie (by the state governor ... or governess) relate directly to this thread.

David Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University

September 4, 2007 reply from Ed Scribner [escribne@NMSU.EDU]

It’s hard to put your finger on it, but there’s something about a “college education” that sets accounting and other graduates apart from graduates of “get your business degree in 15 months” institutes. It seems worthwhile to keep up the struggle, and maybe studies like the above help a little.

BTW, I had a accounting student who took an opera [appreciation, not performance] course while he was at New Mexico State just because he thought it would be interesting, not because he thought it would be “useful.” Turned out that one of the clients at KPMG, where he worked, loved opera. Instant client rapport!

Ed Scribner
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA

September 4, 2007 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]

For some years now, I have been recommending my accounting students that they should seriously consider courses in voice, and also in visual arts. The students sound like drones while making presentations with ghastly ppt pages, and that prompted the advice.

I also have recommended reeal old-fashioned (as opposed to hyphenated faddish) English lit classes, and classes in "real" history and "real" philosophy courses to develop critical thinking skills.

The most well-rounded student I have ever had, now in a leadership position in one of the Big 4 firm used to read NY Review of Books and the writings of the likes of Stephen Jay Gould, while in the MS program. I do not know of many faculty who do the same.

Jagdish

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

54% of Accounting Students Admit to Cheating
SmartPros, August 31, 2007 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x58970.xml


Accounting majors are just as likely to cheat in college as other business students, according to a new study.

The academic study -- titled Do Accounting Students Cheat? A Study Examining Undergraduate Accounting Students' Honesty and Perceptions of Dishonest Behavior -- surveyed 569 undergraduate business majors, including 294 undergraduate accounting students, from seven universities in Georgia, Mississippi and Texas.

The study set out to find out if students who were accounting majors were as likely to cheat or act in an academically dishonest manner as were students with other business majors.

The authors of the study, David E. Morris of North Georgia College & State University, and Claire McCarty Kilian of the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, found that 54 percent of the accounting students they surveyed admitted to cheating, compared to 52 percent of business majors overall.

The study also found significant disagreement among accounting majors as to what constitutes dishonest behavior. Students were asked to review case studies and report if the individuals involved engaged in dishonest behavior. In three of the case studies, students disagreed on what constituted cheating or academically dishonest behavior. Interestingly, there was also disagreement among the accounting educators who reviewed the case studies.

Finally, 82 percent of accounting students who admit cheating in college also said they cheated in high school.

A copy of the questionnaire distributed to the students is available in the final report.

MBAs most likely (among graduate students) to cheat and make their own rules --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm#MBAs

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

Is your data safe? Survey reveals scandal of snooping IT staff
Results of a recent study reveal the hidden scandal of IT staff snooping at the confidential information of other employees. One in three of IT employees admit to snooping through company systems and peeking at confidential information such as private files, wage data, personal e-mails, and HR background.
AccountingWeb, August 31, 2007 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=103934
Jensen Comment
And sometime they're looking for commercial and homemade porn.

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

Question
What do drug dealers and software developers have in common?

Answer --- http://flor.nl/text/softdrugs.html

The frequent shame, and sometimes fraud, of Advanced Placement (AP) credit for incoming students

The College Board is in the process of completing an unprecedented audit of all Advanced Placement courses offered at high schools — a process designed to assure their quality as college-level offerings, but already drawing criticism where the board is rejecting some courses. The Washington Post reported numerous complaints from highly regarded high schools that some of their courses have been rejected — and that the identical syllabus submitted by two courses is sometimes accepted for one course and rejected for another. College Board officials told the Post that 51 percent of teachers who have been through the audit reported that the process improved their courses, and that 90 percent of more than 130,000 courses reviewed had been approved. Via e-mail, Trevor Packer, who runs the AP program for the College Board, cautioned that the numbers in the article were not complete. He said that an additional 14,000 courses still must be audited and that many of these “are the lower quality courses.”
Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/04/qt

Bob Jensen's threads on AP credit scandals are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AP

Question
Does this sound familiar?
What happens if "accountancy" is substituted for "political science" parts of  the article below?

"Changing Borders of Political Science," Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/04/polisci

The question from a professor in the audience suggested some worry about whether there was a good answer. A group of leading scholars at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association were talking about the state of the discipline. The panelists had various responses, but what the political scientist in the audience wanted to know was this:

If your provost came to you and asked whether the discussion of normative, contemporary political issues had “a home” in the university, what would you say?

Wendy Brown, a panelist who is a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, didn’t reassure with her answer to what she called “a very important question.” It’s actually “more and more difficult” to find such discussion in undergraduate political science programs, she said. Students who want that kind of education “don’t come near political science,” she said, and they get it “in the humanities” — a development that she said political scientists find annoying because the humanists don’t understand political science.

What is and isn’t part of political science was the topic of much discussion at the APSA meeting, which concluded Sunday, in Chicago. Among the topics of debate: how U.S.-focused the discipline is and should be, the impact of the hard sciences — especially genetics — on political science, and the ability of political scientists to teach with professors from other disciplines.

Too Parochial?

The session at which the question about the hypothetical provost was asked was actually about the issue of whether political science is too parochial — and most of the panelists focused on the question of the emphasis on American government within the field. Several said that American government’s place as a subfield inevitably skews the discipline, both in terms of what scholars study and teach, and how they do so. Some went so far as to call for the elimination of American government as a subfield, despite its popularity. (While not all political science departments use the same subfields, a standard division would be American government, political theory, comparative politics, international relations, and methodologies.)

David Laitin, a professor at Stanford University, said that American government is the “premier field” within political science — and a field that shouldn’t exist. He asked by way of comparison if the scholars could imagine psychology or economics departments having as their top subfield American psychology or American economics.

Anne Norton, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that while she believed the discipline would never abandon the American government subfield, she thinks its existence should be seriously debated. The lack of perspective of American political scientists makes them less effective, she said. “It makes us more stupid than we need to be.”

One major problem, Norton said, is that political scientists are not nearly as proficient as they should be in foreign languages. Not only are many departments minimalist about language requirements for graduate students ("we are substituting math for foreign languages,” she joked), but they discourage graduate students who want to take language study seriously. Departmental expectations on how many years it will take for a graduate student to finish “impose costs on our graduate students.”

When American political scientists read the works of theorists from other cultures, Norton added, they are more likely to view what they are reading as “raw material” to, for example, “find out what those Islamists think,” rather than viewing such writing as potentially offering important points of view worth considering in their own right.

Non-American political scientists are better connected than their U.S. counterparts are to politicians, civil servants, and the press, Norton said, and so have a more inclusive perspective from which Americans are isolated. Norton stressed that we wasn’t suggesting the abandonment of research on American government, but a change in how it is explored. “We understand America in isolation, and so we study it badly,” she said.

Stanford’s Laitin said he too did not mean to denigrate the study of the United States. In fact, he said that many of the most significant advances in the discipline — especially in the study of elections — are coming out of the American government subfield. His solution to this problem is to change the American government subfield to one focused on “the mechanics of democratic institutions.” Many of those institutions would be American, but not all of them, and the American institutions would be studied in a more sophisticated way, he said.

Others at the meeting gave a “yes, but” answer to the question of whether political science is too focused on the United States. Stathis Kalyvas, director of Yale University’s Program on Order, Conflict and Violence, said that it’s hard not to think about questions of parochialism when attending the APSA meeting, and hearing people on panels use “the plural we” to talk about the United States, or to hear professors offer views on “a good solution for Iraq” when they are really talking about good solutions for the United States in Iraq.

But he said he was also struck by the increasing influence of the hard sciences in political science as a countervailing force, given that its influence is not nation-specific. While it may be true that too many American scholars are effectively monolingual, Kalyvas also noted that many top departments are hiring more talent from abroad and English is the lingua franca for educated discussion worldwide. So some of the problems raised by others, he said, are increasingly mitigated.

Jack L. Snyder, a professor of international relations at Columbia University, said he too saw some causes for concern. Since the end of the Cold War, he said, area studies programs have had “leakage” of positions and he sees the leadership of many such programs passing from political scientists to humanities scholars.

But he rejected the idea that American scholars — at least in international relations — are teaching in a way that is too inwardly focused. He cited a survey conducted by researchers at the College of William & Mary that asked international relations professors in the United States and Canada about areas of the world to which they devote “substantial” attention in introductory courses. Americans were significantly more likely than Canadians to cover Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia and the Middle East. This suggests that American professors are more engaged with the rest of the world than critics believe, Snyder said.

Impact of Genetics

One disciplinary crossover visible at the conference was from the biological sciences. A number of papers explored the impact of neurology, biology and especially of genetics on political science. Several major research projects described at the meeting involved collaborations with medical researchers. At one session, one scholar noted that he had a Ph.D. in political science, but works in a genetics department. Another panelist interjected that the discipline is in danger if it loses such scholars to other fields.

James Fowler, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, described a major project in which he is involved and that runs counter to much of the political analysis about voter turnout. While the questions of why people vote or don’t are crucial to so much political work, research on the topic is of the “everything but the kitchen sink” variety, in which so many factors have been identified that there is little certainty about what really makes a difference.

The project Fowler described looked at the voting records of twins in Los Angeles. Because there is a large database of twins, which was cross-analyzed with voting records, the twins did not have to report their voting records, which eliminates the major problem of voting surveys in that many people don’t like to admit that they don’t vote.

The project found statistically significant differences in the voting patterns of identical and non-identical twins (identical twins being much more likely to have similar patterns on voting). And the differences continue when factoring in whether the twins were raised together. For years, many social scientists have assumed that similar voting participation patterns of parents suggested that voting was a learned behavior, but Fowler said that the twins study rebuts that.

The California researchers estimate that genetics makes up 60 percent of whether or not a person votes.

Many social scientists have been “reluctant to admit” the role of genetics in political decision making, Fowler said. But growing evidence makes that position harder to defend, he added. Behavioral sciences and genetics have left political science “on the verge of a new frontier,” he said.

Shakespeare, Child Development and Geography in the Poli Sci Classroom

Disciplinary boundaries were also hot topics in sessions on teaching, several of which focused on how to apply content from other fields to political science with the goal of helping students understand concepts that might otherwise be difficult.

William J. Ball, a political scientist at the College of New Jersey, discussed using geographic information systems in his courses on local politics. Ball typically has students do research about their hometowns, and finds that while the students know plenty, they also are incorrect about the geography, and the way geography intersects with policy.

Ellen Grigsby, who teaches political theory at the University of New Mexico, spoke about how she uses King Lear to change the way undergraduates understand some key texts. Grigsby uses Lear to draw out issues of movement and voice, the former being the way a perspective may change over time and the latter being the different perspectives that characters bring to a story.

When her undergraduates used to read Hobbes’ Leviathan or Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, they would tend to focus on a single concept that, to them, represented what they were supposed to get out of the text. They were uncomfortable with the idea that there were contradictions or nuances. But when Lear is taught first, the students are much more open to applying literary tools “to read against the superficial readings” of those works.

 

Continued in article

"Mixing Theory and Practice on Defense Policy," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, August 8, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/08/defense

Curriculum concerns about student engagement are expressed at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#StudentEngagement

Jensen Comment
There are some reasons that the above article perhaps does not apply as much to accountancy education in the U.S. as it might to political science and government education. First and perhaps foremost, accountancy students face certification examinations, especially the CPA examination, that drive the curriculum heavily due to what students want/demand from their accountancy curriculum. Secondly, top firms are going to go after top students who can be up and running in terms of U.S. GAAP and auditing standards of the U.S. Political science students need not be as "up and running" since most top political science majors are headed for three years of graduate study, particularly in law schools.

Of course much of this will change in accountancy as domestic GAAP is replaced by international GAAP in the near future. There will still be an issue, however, on how "parochial" to make the curriculum to suit students taking tough certification examinations and the profession that is hiring graduates from accountancy education education programs.

Sex Education at Princeton University

"Sexed-Up Sex-Ed," by Christian C. Sahner, The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007; Page A16 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118895511250817651.html

College freshman are now on campus or soon will be. If my experience arriving at Princeton University four years ago is any guide, the days ahead could be more than a little awkward for them. One event in particular sours many freshman orientations: sexed-up sex-ed.

At Princeton, the freshman class must attend "Sex on a Saturday Night" (SoSN) during its first week. It's a university-organized, student-performed play designed to warn about sexual assault and alcohol abuse. Many schools have similar programs. Its noble intentions are overshadowed, however, by a deleterious message: College is time to get busy (and not just in the library)!

SoSN revolves around Joe, a bookish upperclassmen, who is egged on by his peers to "score big" on his first date with Frances, a naïve freshman. Armed with condoms and the keys to an isolated lovepad on campus, he sets out. The play then turns to their sex-crazed friends, who spend their Saturday plotting about hooking up. Meanwhile, Joe and Frances get very drunk. She passes out and he, on the brink of a blackout, has sex with her on a coatroom floor. The next morning, in a poignant scene, Joe realizes he committed date rape.

If SoSN were only about preventing sexual assault, it would be a positive contribution to freshman year. But that's not its underlying lesson. The play spends much of its time glorifying the hook-up culture, and through crude jokes and jejune stereotypes, drowning out the message about rape. Every one of the play's 10 characters (including one gay couple) is sexually active, save for the token abstainer, who comes off as hokey (and owns a copy of Playboy).

Princeton does "not take a position on the sex lives of students," according to spokesman Eric Quinones, but the "anything goes" attitude of SoSN is a far cry from neutrality. For many Princetonians and their parents, the underlying message -- that it's perfectly healthy to be sexually active -- is hardly neutral. By presenting consent as the principle moral consideration before having sex, the play makes the important question of whether you should have sex in the first place seem irrelevant.

Princeton's administrators are intelligent people of good will, but what they sometimes miss is the big-picture perspective on how programs like SoSN can be harmful for students. Indeed, the play gives freshmen the false sense that virtually all of their peers are sexually active, with the resulting message that, "Maybe you should be too." But according to the 2002 National Survey for Family Growth, about 35% of 18-19 year olds have not had sex -- a figure that increases among those who come from intact families or have mothers with at least some higher education (true for most Princetonians). A 2007 senior thesis survey of 1,210 Princeton students looked at the issue more broadly, and found that around half of all freshmen have never hooked up (a hookup is here defined as any physical intimacy outside a committed relationship).

More worrying, the play doesn't seem to acknowledge that hooking up can be a risky contact sport, and rape isn't the only kind of collateral damage. SoSN is silent on the unplanned pregnancies and high rates of STDs on college campuses. And as University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox notes, "A growing body of research suggests that sex -- particularly sex with more than one partner -- puts young women but not necessarily men at risk of depression, suicide, and a loss of respect in the eyes of their partners." The Princeton survey bears this out: The vast majority of students report feelings of exploitation, discomfort, regret and guilt after a hookup, with rates higher among women.

SoSN also discards the golden rule of cultural sensitivity. Imagine how a student with traditional views of sex feels when he seems to be the only one not laughing at jokes about "screaming orgasms" or flavored condoms. You don't have to be religious or conservative to realize that these students probably feel forgotten and a little alienated at SoSN.

As an undergraduate, I and other concerned students discussed these objections several times with the administration. In a welcome effort to accommodate us, they offered to change one supporting character to seem realistically more abstinent. The big problems, though, were untouched. One university official worried that further changes would add too many messages to the play. Ironically, she either failed or refused to see that SoSN carries a lot of one-sided messages that already overpower the supposedly central lesson on rape.

If only SoSN were an isolated instance of poor judgment about sex-ed. Games of "Sex Jeopardy" for residential groups and scathing university-sponsored lectures like "The Religious Right's Obsession with Gay Sex" demonstrate a pattern of programs that either quietly encourage sex or unfairly denigrate traditional values.

I wouldn't trade my time at Princeton for anything, but it could have gotten off to a smoother start. Princeton can begin to improve things by changing SoSN, or at least make it not mandatory. It would be best to make freshmen attend an entirely new program that stayed focused on the evils of rape. But if the university wants to keep the play, it would do better to give a truly balanced portrait of sex, its ethics and risks.

Mr. Sahner, a 2007 graduate of Princeton University, was a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.

U.S. Senate student loan report is short on new charges, but fleshes out evidence that colleges often solicited benefits they got from lenders. more

The office of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) released a report Tuesday that scrutinizes a batch of practices and policies that in many cases, the senator alleges, violate federal laws and regulations governing dealings between colleges and lenders. Many of the findings build on accusations and revelations that have emerged in previous months: Kennedy’s Republican counterpart on the Senate education committee, Wyoming’s Michael B. Enzi, said the report “simply plows the same old ground,” and several targets of the report derided it as old news, since many of the lenders have now forsworn such practices in adopting the Code of Conduct that New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has promulgated.
Doug Lederman, "Ask and Ye Shall Receive," Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/05/kennedy

Bob Jensen's threads on collegiate lack of accountability and conflicts of interest are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Accountability
 

"Tough Liberal," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/05/mclemee

In the cartoons, an astonished character will at times need to grab his eyeballs as they come flying out of his head. Something like that happened to me a few months ago while going through the fall catalog of Columbia University Press. Buried deep in its pages – well behind all the exciting, glamorous titles at the bleeding edge of scholarship – was the listing for Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy by Richard D. Kahlenberg. (It has just appeared in hardback.)
This was a title one might reasonably expect to see issued by a commercial publisher: Shanker, who died in 1997, was for many years the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which he helped build into one of the strongest unions in the AFL-CIO. It now has more than a million members, including about 160,000 who work in higher education; even if only one in a hundred were interested in the union’s history, that is quite a potential audience.

At the same time, it was a surprise to find the book published by a press better known for titles in cultural theory: works embodying a certain abstract radicalism, several miles in stratosphere above the labor movement. And Shanker, besides being a union bureaucrat, was something of a hardboiled ideologue – a fierce Cold Warrior, but no less ardent a Culture Warrior, denouncing both affirmative action and multiculturalism in tones that were, let’s say, emphatic.

Such “tough liberalism,” as his biographer calls it, made the labor leader a punchline in Woody Allen’s post-apocalyptic comedy “Sleeper” (1973). A character explains that no one is quite sure how civilization ended, but historians think it all started when “a man named Albert Shanker got his hands on an atomic bomb.”

A lot has changed since the days when a new movie by Woody Allen was a major event. And in any case, no labor leader has emerged in recent decades with quite the cultural and political profile that Shanker once had. Yet his name still has the power to provoke. There are Shankerites and anti-Shankerites.

Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation in Washington, DC, admires Shanker and gives him the benefit of the doubt, more often than not. That tendency comes through, I think, in the IHE podcast we recently recorded. But Kahlenberg is not totally uncritical of Shanker. As we talked following the taping, Kahlenberg mentioned the passions stirred up by the leader’s memory.

. . .

So Kahlenberg has made a real contribution by telling the story of this charismatic and/or megalomaniacal labor leader’s career. I say that as a reader who did not pick up the biography with any admiration for its subject – nor put it down converted to Shanker-style “toughness.” (Actually it made me think maybe Woody Allen was right.) But it’s an engaging book, and essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Cold War liberalism and its complicated legacy.

Further reading (and listening): An excerpt from Tough Liberal is available at Columbia UP’s website. An early review of it appears in the latest issue of Washington Monthly. An extremely favorable treatment of the biography and of Shanker himself has recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal. For something altogether less laudatory, see the essay appearing ten years ago in the socialist journal New Politics. And by all means, lend an ear to the interview with Richard Kahlenberg, available as an IHE podcast.

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week.

Online Ethics Center at the National Academy of Engineering --- http://www.onlineethics.org/

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

NEW GOOGLE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY SERVICES

Google,Inc. recently announced two new services as part of its Google Research University program.

Google Search "is designed to give university faculty and their research teams high-volume programmatic access to Google Search, whose huge repository of data constitutes a valuable resource for understanding the structure and contents of the web." For more information and to register for the service, go to http://research.google.com/university/search/ 

Google Translate "offers tools to help researchers in the field of automatic machine translation compare and contrast with, and build on top of, Google's statistical machine translation system." For more information and to register for the service, go to http://research.google.com/university/translate/.

For an overview of all Google Research activities visit http://research.google.com/

Bob Jensen's search helpers for academe --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#Scholars 

How do scholars search for academic references?

Scholarpedia --- http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page

PLoS One --- http://www.plosone.org/home.action

Google Scholar --- http://scholar.google.com/
Not to be confused with Google Advanced Search which does not cover many scholarly articles --- http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Google Research --- http://research.google.com/

One Million University of Illinois (Free) Books to be Digitized by Google --- http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/PressRelease/LibraryDigitization/index.shtml
Google Digitized Books --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search?q=Accounting
For example, key in the word "accounting"
Then try "Advanced Managerial Accounting"
Then try "Joel Demski"
Then try "Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments"
Then try "Robert E. Jensen" AND "Accounting"

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces the availability of a newly-digitized collection of Abraham Lincoln books accessible through the Open Content Alliance and displayed on the University Library's own web site, as the first step of a digitization project of Lincoln books from its collection. View the first set of books digitized at: http://varuna.grainger.uiuc.edu/oca/lincoln/

Microsoft's Windows "Live Search" or  "Academic Search" ---
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?scope=academic&q=

Amazon's A9 --- http://a9.com/-/search/advSearch 

Beginning October 23, 2003, Amazon.com offers a text search of entire contents of millions of pages of books, including new books ---
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/ref%3Dsib%5Fmerch%5Fgw/104-3984945-7813514 

How It Works --- http://snurl.com/BookSearch 
A significant extension of our groundbreaking Look Inside the Book feature, Search Inside the Book allows you to search millions of pages to find exactly the book you want to buy. Now instead of just displaying books whose title, author, or publisher-provided keywords that match your search terms, your search results will surface titles based on every word inside the book. Using Search Inside the Book is as simple as running an Amazon.com search. 

Soon to be the largest scholarly library in the world:
Google Book Search --- http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search 

Answers.com --- http://www.answers.com/

Wikipedia (heavily used by scholars in spite of authenticity risks)--- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s

"Forget the Articles, Best Wikipedia Read Is Its Discussions," by Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2007; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118712061199497533.html

 

From the British Library --- http://www.bl.uk/sacred
"The world's greatest collection of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy books."

In the modern age of technology and distance education, Europe has led the United States in the granting of "professional doctorates." It's important in disciplines where there are extreme shortages of doctoral graduates, such as accountancy, finance, and nursing, to keep a close track on this trend in Europe. Some of Europe's programs are of questionable academic quality from the standpoint of research and scholarship. Everybody has life experience. Academic credentials require a whole lot more. Those prepared for "careers outside academia" may soon apply for jobs "inside academia." Vanity doctorates are not the same things as Vanity Press publishing.

The European University Association on Tuesday released an analysis of doctoral education, noting key trends in the region. One area of focus in the report is the growth of “professional doctorates” preparing students for careers outside of academe. The report said it was important to keep the quality of such programs as high as that of traditional doctorates, while also considering changes to reflect the differing goals. Given the debate over the legal status of graduate students in the United States, one item of interest in the report examined whether different countries classify them as students, employees or both. Ten countries consider them students only, 3 countries consider them employees only, and 22 consider that they have mixed status.
Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/05/qt

Jensen Comment
Here's an example of one such "professional doctorate" program.

Grenoble Ecole de Management's MBA program in France has AACSB accreditation of its MBA program. Once again I remind readers that the AACSB has never accredited doctoral programs in the U.S. or elsewhere.

The DBA program (administered jointly with Newcastle University in the U.K) is apparently a management technology doctoral program without tracks in functional fields like accounting. I do not think there are any accounting DBA tracks such as you will find in the Harvard Business School’s DBA program. I still do not know of any respectable online doctoral programs in accounting. Of course some Grenoble/Newcastle DBA students may have prior degrees and work experience in accounting. Admission requires an MBA degree plus three years of qualified business experience.

Purportedly there are nearly 100 DBA candidates which would make this program larger than most U.S. business doctoral programs. I would question the size of the program relative to the size of the research faculty. No PhD students are reported to date ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/04/full_time_profiles/escgrenoble.htm
This is a joint DBA program in partnership with Newcastle University in the U.K. ---
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nubs/postgrad/dba/

It is not clear how many faculty are available to work closely with so many DBA students, especially at the thesis stage where it is very difficult for a faculty member to supervise more than two or three doctoral theses at any one time

You can read the following at
http://www.grenoble-em.com/460-dba-with-university-of-newcastle-upon-tyne-business-school-2.aspx


Begin Quote
***************************
Delivery enables a work and study balance

·                 a research portal based on a proven virtual learning platform,

·                 a wide range of e-journals and other on-line information and data sources,

·                 an e-portfolio system for managing reflective learning.

 
During the first part of the programme four workshops are shared between Grenoble and Newcastle. This helps to maximise the sharing of ideas between students and faculty and provides cross cultural and global insights.

 Research Benefits for Organisations

Each candidate conducts a doctoral thesis on a management of technology, innovation or change issue which can be taken directly from their work experience. Organisations sponsoring candidates can therefore benefit directly from the research and study undertaken by their staff. Candidates are able to draw upon the research expertise of senior academics from both institutions. As research topics are usually based on organisations current and anticipated needs, the research outcomes of the thesis can provide real insight for the sponsoring organisation.


The DBA programme is structured to facilitate part-time study. Research training is provided in four one week blocks and research supervision is provided throughout the period. This innovative approach makes it easier for students to combine demanding careers with their doctoral research. The programme also provides a range of web-based resources including:
************************
End Quote

Bob Jensen's threads on nontraditional and online doctoral programs are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NontraditionalDoctorates

Online Doctoral Programs --- http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com/doctorate-degrees-online.html

There are several types of doctoral degrees online --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#CommercialPrograms

There are several types of doctoral degrees online:

  1. Diploma mills where you can simply buy a PhD and have a diploma within a matter of days. Warnings about Type 1 programs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
     
  2. Diploma frauds that give a lot of credit for life experience and perhaps have some minimal course or paper writing assignments that in reality are a sham.  Warnings about Type 2 programs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
     
  3. Diligent-effort programs that may require several years to complete but admit virtually anybody and have dubious academic standards even though a few teachers may try ever so hard to make it work.  Warnings about Type 3 programs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
     
  4. Diligent-effort programs have some admission standards and varied faculty participants that try to make the program respectable. Many of these faculty participants are moonlighting in online doctoral programs but are also full-time faculty in respected colleges and universities. A listing of Type 4 doctoral programs is provided at
    http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com/doctorate-degrees-online.html
     
  5. Major universities that have extended their onsite doctoral programs to online or partly online programs.

Type 5 programs are highly limited in number, especially programs that do not require at least one or two years of onsite residency. But there are a few programs such as the University of Colorado's online doctoral program in pharmacy. I do not know of any major universities that offer a similar doctorate in accounting and business.

Type 1, 2, and 3 programs are virtually frauds and are wasting the student's money and perhaps her/his time.

Type 4 programs are problematic. They offer genuine learning opportunities to students who, due to life's circumstances, are not able to enroll in onsite programs. But Type 4 programs do not yet have the status of degrees comparable with doctoral degrees of onsite programs of major universities.

Continued in article

 

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

REDUCING ATTRITION IN ONLINE CLASSES

"Attrition rates for classes taught through distance education are 10- 20% higher than classes taught in a face-to-face setting. . . . Finding ways to decrease attrition in distance education classes and programs is critical both from an economical and quality viewpoint. High attrition rates have a negative economic impact on universities."

In "Strategies to Engage Online Students and Reduce Attrition Rates" (THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATORS ONLINE, vol. 4, no. 2, July 2007), the authors provide a review of the literature to determine methods for "engaging students with the goals of enhancing the learning process and reducing attrition rates." Their research identified four major strategies:

-- student integration and engagement

Includes "faculty-initiated contact via phone calls, pre-course orientations, informal online chats, and online student services."

-- learner-centered approach

Faculty "need to get to know their students and assess each student's pre-existing knowledge, cultural perspectives, and comfort level with technology."

-- learning communities

"[S]trong feelings of community may not only increase persistence in courses, but may also increase the flow of information among all learners, availability of support, commitment to group goals, cooperation among members and satisfaction with group efforts."

-- accessibility to online student services.

Services might include "assessments, educational counseling, administrative process such as registration, technical support, study skills assistance, career counseling, library services, students' rights and responsibilities, and governance."

The paper, written by Lorraine M. Angelino, Frankie Keels Williams, and Deborah Natvig, is available at http://www.thejeo.com/Volume4Number2/Angelino Final.pdf. 

The Journal of Educators Online (JEO) [ISSN 1547-500X ]is an online, double-blind, refereed journal by and for instructors, administrators, policy-makers, staff, students, and those interested in the development, delivery, and management of online courses in the Arts, Business, Education, Engineering, Medicine, and Sciences. For more information, contact JEO, 500 University Drive, Dothan, Alabama 36303 USA; tel: 334-983-6556, ext. 1-356; fax: 334-983-6322; Web: http://www.thejeo.com/ .

Jensen Comment
Attrition rates are high because online students are often adults with heavy commitments to family and jobs. Initially they think they are going to have time for a course, but then the course becomes too demanding and/or unexpected things happen in their lives such as computer crashes, a change in job demands (such as more travel), family illness, marital troubles, etc. Sometimes online students initially believe the myth that online courses are easier than onsite courses and, therefore, take less time. About the only time saved is the logistical time waster of commuting to and from a classroom site.

Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side of education technology and online learning are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education alternatives are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

 

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS' IT EXPERIENCES

A new EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) research bulletin, "Impressions of Community College Students' IT Experiences," "highlights some of the similarities and differences between students attending four-year institutions and those attending community colleges, focusing on those areas where there are challenges and opportunities for using IT to improve students' academic experiences."

Since 2004, ECAR has studied undergraduate students and the impact of information technology on their academic experiences. Now in its third year, the study surveyed 96 institutions, including eight community colleges. Compared to students at four-year institutions, community college students reported:

-- "less use per week for most course-related activities, similar use for some social activities, and less use of social networking and instant messaging "

-- "fewer basic and fewer advanced skills with presentation software, spreadsheets, library resources, and CMSs"

-- "higher levels of ownership of PDAs, smart phones, gaming devices, digital cameras, and wireless hubs"

-- a high desire for computer labs, student IT training, and free access to software required for their courses

The research bulletin is available online at http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/ImpressionsofCommuni/44739  for all faculty, staff, and students from institutions that have subscribed to ECAR.

ECAR "provides timely research and analysis to help higher education leaders make better decisions about information technology. ECAR assembles leading scholars, practitioners, researchers, and analysts to focus on issues of critical importance to higher education, many of which carry increasingly complicated and consequential implications." For more information go to http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=4

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

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

RECOMMENDED READING

"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.

This month's recommendation is two essays by Philip Yaffe. Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and a marketing communication consultant.

"The Mathematics of Persuasive Communication" UBIQUITY, vol. 8, issue 28 (July 17, 2007 - July 23, 2007) http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v8i28_persuasive.html 

"At first glance mathematics and persuasive communication -- writing, and particularly public speaking -- would seem to have little in common. After all, mathematics is an objective science, whilst speaking involves voice quality, inflection, eye contact, personality, body language, and other subjective components. However, under the surface they are very similar."

"How to Improve Your Writing by Standing on Your Head" UBIQUITY, vol. 8, issue 33 (August 21, 2007 - August 27, 2007) http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v8i33_yaffee.html 
(Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries )

"Clear, concise, persuasive writing is a fundamental skill needed by every educated person whatever his or her profession. Unfortunately, very few people ever truly master it. Not because it is so difficult, but because schools seldom teach its true essence."

From the Scout Report on September 7, 2007

FoxyTunes 2.9.6 --- http://www.foxytunes.com/ 

Whilst surfing around the web with Firefox, it can be a bit annoying to switch back and forth between a music player and the website at hand. FoxyTunes 2.9.6 can help with that problem as it sits within the status bar, and is quite compact. Visitors can customize the interface mechanism as they choose, and it works with Winamp, Last.fm, iTunes, and a number of other popular media players. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 or XP and Mozilla Firefox 1.5.

Advanced RSS Mixer Personal 3.1.58 --- http://www.advancedrssmixer.com/software.asp#compare 

For those users who are finding their current RSS feed software a bit unruly, they may wish to check out this latest version of the Advanced RSS Mixer. The application can be used to combine different RSS feeds into one aggregate feed, and it also contains a built-in RSS keyword filter. The basic interface is quite easy to use, and for keeping track of RSS feeds, this application is most handy. This version is compatible with computers running Windows 95 and newer.

 

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

Smokers are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia
People who smoke are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia than nonsmokers or those who smoked in the past, according to a study published in the September 4, 2007, issue of Neurology. The study followed nearly 7,000 people age 55 and older for an average of seven years. Over that time, 706 of the participants developed dementia. People who were current smokers at the time of the study were 50 percent more likely to develop dementia than people who had never smoked or past smokers. Smoking could affect the risk of dementia through several mechanisms, according to study author Monique Breteler, MD, PhD, of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and member of the American Academy of Neurology.
PhysOrg, September 4, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news108094122.html

Are Nursing Shortages Causing Deaths?
A nonprofit group's report says more immigrant nurses and training programs are needed to ease patient suffering. The U.S. is facing a severe nursing shortage, and it's causing increased death and illness for American patients, says a report released on Sept. 5 by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), a free market-oriented nonprofit group. As baby boomers are aging and require more care, the U.S. could face a shortage of one million nurses by 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Moira Herbst, Business Week, September 4, 2007 --- Click Here

Sexual Orientation Revealed by Body Type and Motion, Study Suggests
An individual's body motion and body type can offer subtle cues about their sexual orientation, but casual observers seem better able to read those cues in gay men than in lesbians, according to a new study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and Social. "We already know that men and women are built differently and walk differently from each other and that casual observers use this information as clues in making a range of social judgments," said lead author Kerri Johnson, UCLA assistant professor of communication studies. "Now we've found that casual observers can use gait and body shape to judge whether a stranger is gay or straight with a small but perceptible amount of accuracy." Johnson and colleagues at New York University and Texas A&M measured the hips, waists and shoulders of eight male and eight female volunteers, half of whom were gay and half straight. The volunteers then walked on a treadmill for two minutes as a three-dimensional motion-capture system similar to those used by the movie industry to create animated figures from living models made measurements of the their motions, allowing researchers to track the precise amount of shoulder swagger and hip sway in their gaits.
PhysOrg, September 3, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news108047183.html

600 Million People Can Stop Biting Their Nails
Alain-Raymond van Abbe, a former health industry and cosmetics promoter, estimates the world's pathological nail biters number 600 million or more. He saw that onychophagy was so widespread that he has opened a business devoted to a cure. "In four weeks, nail biting can be over — and over forever," he says. Studies show around 45 percent of adolescents nibble their nails. That drops to about 20 percent as young adults learn to cope with their anxieties or become too embarrassed by their self-inflicted deformity.
Arthur Max, "Dutchman offers 'cure' for nail biting," Yahoo News, September 8, 2007 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070908/ap_on_he_me/nail_biting

National Institutes of Health: History of Medicine --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/
Includes books, reports, pictures, videos, etc.

Physics & The Detection of Medical X-Rays --- http://web.phys.ksu.edu/mmmm/piko/index.html

Medline Plus: Herbal Medicine --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/herbalmedicine.html#cat57

Medical Dictionary --- http://www.medterms.com/script/main/hp.asp

Get Body Smart --- http://www.getbodysmart.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science

Five Best Books on Religion and Politics
"Faith and State These literary works excel in their depiction of religion and politics," by Mary Ann Glendon, The Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2007 ---  http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110010551

 

1. "Antigones" by George Steiner (Oxford, 1984).

The myth of Antigone has captured the imaginations of political philosophers, rhetoricians and artists for more than 2,000 years. And small wonder, for her conflict with King Creon over the remains of her brother pits individual conscience against law, woman against man, youth against age, and respect for the dead against concern for the living. To some, her insistence on burying the traitorous Polynices in defiance of Theban law makes her a paragon of piety and family loyalty. Others, however, have viewed Antigone as selfishly indifferent to the common good and Creon as its virtuous protector. Although George Steiner does not wear his learning lightly, his erudition does enable him to produce a fascinating study of how the myth has been interpreted and re-interpreted in different cultural settings. Through Steiner's lens, various "Antigones" have much to reveal about the societies that produced them and "the tragic partiality, the fatal interestedness, of even the noblest deed."

2. "Barchester Towers" by Anthony Trollope (1857).

Anthony Trollope is the Magellan of mixed motives, exploring the countless ways that greed and self-deception get jumbled up with the high-minded inclinations of public servants, clergymen and lovers. It is hard to put down a book that begins with an elderly bishop on his deathbed while his devoted son and would-be successor agonizes in the knowledge that, if his father lingers much longer, the incoming liberal government will appoint a far more progressive churchman to the see of Barchester. The poor chap hardly knows what to pray for. It's not that he has his heart set on a sinecure. Rather, he longs for the opportunity of service. And, yes, the honor of a seat in the House of Lords: "He did desire, if the truth must out, to be called 'my Lord' by his reverend brethren." The goings-on in "Barchester Towers"--political, romantic and ecclesial--can still make one wince or smile with recognition.

3. "The Feast of the Goat" by Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001).

Trollope might regard politics, sex and religion as the stuff of high comedy, but they are also at the dark heart of Mario Vargas Llosa's portrayal of the last days of the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic. This brilliant study of tyranny is not for the squeamish. Yet the sickening detail enables one to grasp how terror combined with corruption can paralyze an entire society, stifling the merest impulse toward resistance. The novel's account of the dictator's increasingly brutal efforts to hold power alternates with the story of one of his victims, a young girl whose father delivered her to "the goat" for deflowering in hopes of regaining political favor. What lifts "The Feast of the Goat" into the front rank of political novels is the author's depiction of how, against all odds, probabilities were finally shifted in the direction of democracy. In Vargas Llosa's telling, a few courageous priests and sisters stand out as forces for decency, and a crucial turning point occurs when all five Dominican bishops issue a pastoral letter condemning the regime.

4. "Sugar Street" by Naguib Mahfouz (Doubleday, 1992).

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) draws one so deeply into the sights, sounds, smells and turmoil of a city in the throes of modernization that one is almost disoriented on emerging from its pages. "Sugar Street" is the last and most political novel in the 1988 Nobel Prize winner's "Cairo Trilogy," a saga that follows the members of a large Muslim family from the Egyptian struggle against British occupation to the political upheavals that led to the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952. Each of the patriarch's five children reacts differently to the crumbling of traditional society: One brother plunges more deeply into Islam, another withdraws into secular philosophy, while another embraces militant Marxism. The two daughters cannot imagine living the cloistered existence that their mother endured, but in the late 1940s they find no clear alternatives. In this portrayal of a postcolonial society where traditional religion is deteriorating and nationalism is on the rise, one glimpses the tangled roots of tragedies that were to come.

5. "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres" by Henry Adams (Houghton Mifflin, 1981).

"Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres" remains the single most informative and entertaining introduction to the statecraft, philosophy and religious spirit of the Middle Ages. Henry Adams (1838-1918) takes the reader, along with his ideal companion--an imaginary niece with a Kodak camera--on a trip to France that becomes a voyage back in time. We begin with the austere 11th-century Abbey on the Norman coast where the Archangel Michael presides, masculine and militant. Our principal destination, however, is the great cathedral at Chartres and the culmination of "the moment when society was turning from worship of its military idea, Saint Michael, to worship of its social ideal, the Virgin." Along the way, kindly, learned Uncle Henry brings to life the poems, politics, theology and philosophy of feudal society.

Ms. Glendon is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

 

 

Forwarded by Auntie Bev

The Cloud
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken        
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,        
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder. 

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,        
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,
In a cavern under is fretted the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;        

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,        
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.        

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead,
 

As on the jag of a mountain crag,        
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,        
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,        
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,        
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,        
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl;        
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,        
The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;        
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below. 

I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;         75
I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,         80

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

 

Stand-Up Comics' Funniest Lines --- http://www.rd.com/content/stand-up-comics-funniest-lines/1/ 

So they’re showing me, on television, the detergents getting out bloodstains. I mean, come on, you got a T-shirt with 
a bloodstain all over it. Maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem right now. 
-- Jerry Seinfeld 

At what age do you tell a highway it’s adopted? I think around seven because that’s when they start wondering, 
Hey, I don’t look like the Kiwanis Club. 
-- Zach Galifianakis 

Why are women wearing perfumes that smell like flowers to attract men? Men don’t like flowers. I wear a scent called 
“new-car interior.” 
-- Rita Rudner 

I had my identity stolen a few months ago, and my credit actually improved. I’m dating now, have a new car. Life is good. 
-- Steve Moris 

A new computer virus is going around. Office workers everywhere will now be forced to play solitaire with real cards. 
-- Craig Kilborn 

Your marriage is in trouble if your wife says, “You’re only interested in one thing,” and you can’t remember what it is. 
-- Milton Berle 

About a month ago, I got a cactus. And a week later, it died. I got really depressed because it was like, 
Damn, I am less nurturing than a desert. 
-- Demetri Martin 

The problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time. 
-- Robin Williams 

Michael Jackson is the spokesperson for people who cut off their noses to spite their face. 
-- Dennis Miller 

You know you’re getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work. 
-- Joan Rivers 

I called a discount exterminator. A guy came by with a rolled-up magazine. 
-- Will Shriner 

You don’t get married to get sex. Getting married to get sex is like buying a 747 to get free peanuts. 
-- Jeff Foxworthy 

Don’t touch that dial. And, if your TV has a dial, go buy a new one. 
-- Stephen Colbert 

I asked my brother-in-law why he was wearing my raincoat. He answered, “You wouldn’t want me to get your 
suit wet, would you?” 
-- Henny Youngman 

I had a linguistics professor who said that it’s man’s ability to use language that makes him the dominant 
species. That may be, but I think there’s one other thing: We aren’t afraid of vacuum cleaners. 
-- Jeff Stilson 

Men can read maps better than women. ’Cause only the male mind could conceive of one inch equaling a hundred miles. 
-- Roseanne 

I was raised half Jewish and half Catholic. When I’d go to confession, I’d say, “Bless me, Father, for 
I have sinned … and you know my attorney, Mr. Cohen.” 
-- Bill Maher 

When I was in London, I went to buy some chocolates. The cashier was like, “That will be ten pounds.” I’m like, “Rub it in, why don’t you?” 
-- Carol Leifer 

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do. 
-- Jason Love 

As long as there is algebra, there will be prayer in school. 
-- Larry Miller 

NASA says they have proof that parts of Mars were once submerged under water, which means it could have supported 
life. Of course, water doesn’t always mean intelligent life— you remember Baywatch? 
-- Jay Leno 
I am not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens. 
 -- Woody Allen 
What I need is to find a woman who loves me for my money but doesn’t understand math. 
 -- Mike Birbiglia 
Jews and blacks express our suffering differently—blacks developed the blues, while Jews complain. 
We just never thought of putting it to music. 
 -- Jon Stewart 
When I was a little kid, we had a quicksand box. I was an only child … eventually. 
 -- Steven Wright 
In high school, my sister went out with the captain of the chess team. My parents loved him. 
They figured that any guy that took hours to make a move was okay with them. 
 -- Brian Kiley 
First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me. 
 -- Steve Martin 
My problem is I belong to so many anonymous groups, everybody knows who I am. 
 -- Nancy Redman 
If carrots are so good for your eyesight, how come I see so many dead rabbits on the highway? 
 -- Richard Jeni 
What if there were no hypothetical situations? 
 -- John Mendoza 
Did you know that Americans spent $48 million on lottery tickets last year? “What are you doing for your retirement?” 
“Uh, Powerball.” 
 -- Wanda Sykes 
Women don’t want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think—in a deeper voice. 
 -- Bill Cosby 
Gay people invented sports. Think about it. Boxing: two topless men ... in silk shorts ... fighting over a belt. 
 -- Ant 
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, 
it would defeat the purpose. 
 -- Brian Kiley 
My wife has tons of credit cards. She has so many magnetic strips in her wallet, her purse points north. 
 -- Peter Sasso 
I didn’t understand NASCAR until I met some NASCAR fans. You talk to a couple of NASCAR fans and you’ll 
see where a shiny car driving in a circle would fascinate them all day. I can make fun of NASCAR fans because 
if they chase me, I just turn right. 
 -- Alonzo Bodden 
Batman never fights crime in neighborhoods that need it. I’d like to see Batman fight crime in my neighborhood. 
“Robin?”
“Yes, Batman?”
“Didn’t we park the car right here, man?” 
 -- Dave Chappelle

Have you seen the deer heads on the walls of bars, the ones wearing party hats, sunglasses and streamers? I feel sorry for them because obviously
they were at a party having a good time …
-- Ellen DeGeneres

Did you know babies are nauseated by the smell of a clean shirt?
-- Jeff Foxworthy


I’m on that diet where you eat vegetables and drink wine. That’s a good diet. I lost ten pounds and my driver’s license.
-- Larry the Cable Guy


How many people here have telekinetic powers? Raise my hand.
-- Emo Phillips

Garbagemen come at 5 a.m. Why? They’re picking up garbage. It’s not going to go bad again.
-- Dave Attell

I will clean house when Sears makes a vacuum you can ride on.
-- Roseanne

LEGO has announced that they are shutting down their U.S. factory and moving it to Mexico. LEGO employees say it’s their fault
because they made the factory too easy to take apart and rebuild somewhere else.
-- Conan O’Brien

I tried to walk into Target, but I missed.
-- Mitch Hedberg

You know, marriage is making a big comeback. I know personally that in Hollywood people are marrying people they never married before.
-- Bob Hope

I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, “I’d like some fries.” The girl at the counter said, “Would you like some fries with that?”
-- Jay Leno

I constantly walk into a room and I don’t remember why. But for some reason, I think there’s going to be a clue in the fridge.
-- Caroline Rhea

Have you ever noticed that anybody going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
-- George Carlin

You know, you get that tattoo of barbed wire when you’re 18. By the time you’re 80, it’s a picket fence.
-- Robin Williams
 

Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.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/.

Three Finance Blogs

Jim Mahar's FinanceProfessor Blog --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
FinancialRounds Blog --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Karen Alpert's FinancialMusings (Australia) --- http://financemusings.blogspot.com/

Some Accounting Blogs

Paul Pacter's IAS Plus (International Accounting) --- http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
International Association of Accountants News --- http://www.aia.org.uk/
AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries --- http://www.accountingeducation.com/
Gerald Trite's eBusiness and XBRL Blogs --- http://www.zorba.ca/
AccountingWeb --- http://www.accountingweb.com/   
SmartPros --- http://www.smartpros.com/

Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

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

Shared Open Courseware (OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing Universities --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Free Textbooks and Cases --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

Free Mathematics and Statistics Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

Free Science and Medicine Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science

Free Social Science and Philosophy Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

Free Education Discipline Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Teaching Materials (especially video) from PBS

Teacher Source:  Arts and Literature --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm

Teacher Source:  Health & Fitness --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm

Teacher Source: Math --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm

Teacher Source:  Science --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm

Teacher Source:  PreK2 --- http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm

Teacher Source:  Library Media ---  http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm

Free Education and Research Videos from Harvard University --- http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp

VYOM eBooks Directory --- http://www.vyomebooks.com/

From Princeton Online
The Incredible Art Department --- http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/

Online Mathematics Textbooks --- http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html 

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives --- http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/doc/intro.jsp

Moodle  --- http://moodle.org/ 

The word moodle is an acronym for "modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment", which is quite a mouthful. The Scout Report stated the following about Moodle 1.7. It is a tremendously helpful opens-source e-learning platform. With Moodle, educators can create a wide range of online courses with features that include forums, quizzes, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and surveys. On the Moodle website, visitors can also learn about other features and read about recent updates to the program. This application is compatible with computers running Windows 98 and newer or Mac OS X and newer.

Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

Accountancy Discussion ListServs:

For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to   http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)  http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/ 
AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc

Roles of a ListServ --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
 
CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/ 
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
 This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] 

 

 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone:  603-823-8482 
Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu