Ore Hill as
Seen from Our Front Lawn in Sugar Hill
I took the above picture in early
October two years ago. This year, late in September, the foliage is beginning to
look almost identical as the color season swings into being once again. You can
track New England fall colors colors by going to
http://www.visit-newhampshire.com/current_category.31/current_advcategory.294/companies_list.html
For travel guides see
http://gonewengland.about.com/od/fallfoliage/Fall_Foliage_in_New_England.htm
Hundreds of pictures are available at
http://photo.weather.com/interact/photogallery/results.html?activitiesCategory=4490&from=ffFeatures
If we look off to the southeast from
our front windows we see the two Kinsman mountains (North and South) in the
Kinsman Range about 10-20
miles away. In the foreground of the above picture is the much closer Ore Hill
less than a mile away that leads up to the iron ore mine that's now boarded up.
The iron mine was known as the Franconia Iron Mine even though the mine itself
is in our village of
Sugar Hill
rather than the larger village of
Franconia.
Part of the iron that remains can be
found in our well water. We have a water conditioning system in the basement to
filter out the iron in our water.
As far back as 1805, iron ore was
packed on mules from the mine down to the historic village of Franconia.
There the iron ore was smelted down into high quality iron that was then
fabricated into some of the best iron stoves ever manufactured. If you have a
Franconia Stove you have a valuable antique. The Franconia Heritage Museum
collected some early artifacts of the hauling, smelting, and manufacturing
processes. Parts of the 200-year old smelter are still visible across the Gale
River running through downtown Franconia ---
http://www.franconiaheritage.org/
The octagonal stone stack that is visible on the
far bank of the Gale River is all that remains of a 200-year-old iron
smelter shown on an 1805 map of Franconia. The New Hampshire Iron Factory
Company rebuilt the original furnace several times, adding hot blast after
1840 and extending the height to its present 32 feet.
Chiseled into one of the heavy stones in the west
arch opening is "S. Pettee, Jr. 1859". Pettee was a well-known iron master
who was associated with several blast furnaces in New England. He was the
last known foreman to operate this furnace.
The furnace was built of local granite. Its
interior is lined with firebrick, laid in a cylindrical shape. The space
between the firebrick and stone exterior is filled with clay.
Farmers burned trees to make charcoal to fire the
furnace. Iron production declined by 1865 as the ore and trees diminished
and as iron production in Pennsylvania progressed at less cost. The furnace
was abandoned with a belly full of once-molten iron. The furnace had been
inactive for twenty years when, in 1884, the shed that surrounded it burned
to the ground.
Visitors can see a scale model of the furnace and
the shed that enclosed it.
Also on display at the Interpretive Center are an
ore cart, stove, kettles and tools, as well as panels explaining the
process. The Franconia Heritage Museum offers additional displays of iron
and books on the subject.
For spectacular foliage trips I
recommend starting on Exit 32 of Interstate 93 in
Lincoln (about 20 miles from our cottage) and proceeding eastward on the
Kancamagus Highway (also
Click
Here). For mountain views you can then proceed north toward
Mount Washington and complete the loop back west through Bethlehem and South
through the
Franconia
Notch. Or, after you take the Kancamagus Highway to Conway, you can
head east on Highway 302 to the Route 1 coastal highway in Maine. You may have
to take some of the side roads to see some of the best foliage by the Atlantic
Ocean.
When I was on the faculty at the University of Maine for ten years (1968-1978),
we had a summer/autumn house about a mile east of the bridge that crosses
over to
Acadia National Park. This national park is spectacular in the autumn and is
best viewed, I think, from the
Cranberry Islands. Our kids loved
our beach even though the water was generally too cold for swimming.
Henry David Thoreau
Autumnal Tints
|
Tidbits on September 28, 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
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
What happens when a hungry polar bear goes after a team of
huskies for lunch? ---
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/audiogallery/soundseen.shtml
Trinity University, like many universities, has a
hypothetical "Last Lecture" series. By "hypothetical" I mean that each year
students invite an outstanding professor on campus to address them pretending
this was to be her/his last lecture. However, Linda Kidwell forwarded a last
lecture from a Carnegie-Mellon professor of Computer Science, Randy Pausch, who
quite literally gave his last lecture because he was dying.
He states: "I believe in the academy, not as a
transmitter of information, but as an exchanger of ideas, freely, uninhibited,
and uncensored."
Also "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
Incidentally, he shows us how to do push ups.
Also see the following links:
Last lectures of some business professors over the years ---
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/speakers_lastlectures.html
Jagdish Gangolly, who forwarded the above link, highly recommends the last
lectures of James G. March and Michael Spence.
One accountant (video) who went back to school in a doctoral
program and became a professor:
Accounting professor stars in AICPA Foundation video ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104022
The cars we drove in 1950s and 1960s ---
http://oldfortyfives.com/CarsWeDrove.htm
Funny: Moma Nem is my kind of lawyer ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnuUhVDQQl8
Here's some Total Momsense ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlY8STkhopc
Not Funny: A friend forwarded the hate-crime link (Jena video) at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuoiZnr4jLY
Also see
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/21/jena
SpiralFrog.com, an ad-supported
Web site with a terrible name that allows visitors to download music and videos
free of charge, commenced on September 17, 2007 in the U.S. and Canada
after months of "beta" testing. At launch, the service was offering more than
800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos for download ---
http://www.spiralfrog.com/
Other video search helpers are
given at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Video
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell (dancing at its
best) ---
Click Here
The most popular combination is probably the one
known as "Cav-Pag": Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I
Pagliacci. Both operas are lurid, Italian dramas centering on illicit lust and
murder — a pair of verismo potboilers ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14535210
Grandma Faith (Boogie Through Life) ---
http://www.members.shaw.ca/grandmafaiths2/boogie.htm
Jolson Sings Again - Trailer (1949) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHyjBSPEh2E
Willie Nelson
(Video)
Waylon Jennings
Merle Haggard
Artie Dean Harris Live ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKb_kl-Dik
Vasectomy (humor) ---
Click Here
The cars we drove in 1950s and 1960s (history I remember) ---
http://oldfortyfives.com/CarsWeDrove.htm
409 (Beachboys) ---
http://www.barb-coolwaters.com/cw001/409.html
SpiralFrog.com,
an ad-supported Web site with a terrible name that
allows visitors to download music and videos free of
charge, commenced on September 17, 2007 in the
U.S. and Canada after months of "beta" testing. At
launch, the service was offering more than 800,000
tracks and 3,500 music videos for download ---
http://www.spiralfrog.com/
Other video
search helpers are given at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Video
Photographs and Art
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
How to Publish in Top Journals ---
http://www.roie.org/how.htm
Books in Depth (including downloads of
sample chapters) ---
http://www.booksindepth.com/
Magazine, Periodical and Website Book Reviews from around the World ---
http://www.booksindepth.com/period.html
Third Coast, one of the nation's premier
university-based literary magazines, is published twice annually by the
Department of English at Western Michigan University ---
http://www.wmich.edu/thirdcoast/
Digital Humanities Journal ---
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/index.html
The Milton Reading Room from
Dartmouth ---
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/
Ralph Waldo Emerson ---
http://www.rwe.org/comm/
The Complete
Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson ---
http://www.hti.umich.edu/e/emerson/
A Pair Of
Blue Eyes
by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) ---
Click Here
Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling
---
Click Here
Billy Budd by Herman Melville ---
Click Here
The possibility that we will try to take out the nuclear capabilities of Iran
are very real, grave, and probably strategically dumb since all sides in these
disputes already have nuclear arms (e.g., Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea,
China, Europe, Russia, the U.S., etc.). Our only worry is that a madman (like
Hitler) gets control of nukes. A mad person is one who will sacrifice most
his/her own people for vengeance. I don’t think the current people running these
countries are that insane unless we do something to make them insane with
vengeance obsessions. In his bunker at the end of World War II Hitler was a
madman who would have destroyed the rest of Germany himself if his remaining
followers had obeyed his orders.
But today at Columbia University we might learn more about the academic side
of why the U.S. will not take out Iran’s nuclear developments:
“Maths proves US won't attack” ---
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22355111-1702,00.html
I hope his QED is infallible.
I worry more about setting the spark off with smaller but nevertheless
horrible weapons. I don’t think the following French AFP news item has been
verified, but it’s scary in the tensions on the border of Israel:
The French news agency AFP and others reported this week that dozens of
Iranian weapons engineers and Syrian troops were killed in a July (accidental)
explosion in northern Syria. Jane's Defense Weekly, a reputable British journal,
quoted Syrian military sources as saying "VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard
blister agents" were involved in the explosion, which occurred as engineers were
installing a warhead on a Scud missile. "Syria's WMDs," RepublicanAmerican,
September 20, 2007 ---
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2007/09/21/opinion/285725.txt
It’s time to come to our senses about reducing the tensions on all sides. How
this can be done is quite another matter. The simple suggestion is
“negotiation,” but if this simply means throwing money at all warring sides, the
money may simply be spent under the table on more horrific weapons. The tensions
seem to have been temporarily defused by “negotiating” with North Korea, but I
think the two-ton gorilla at that table was China. It may take the forces of
more two-ton gorillas like the U.S., Russia, and China to cooperate in diffusing
tensions in the Middle East that are increasingly dangerous with greatly
increased oil revenues for arms races.
Is such cooperation possible? Possibly when the interests of all sides are
truly at stake, and this may not be far off. Hopefully nobody will set the spark
off prematurely.
Bob Jensen
Israeli warplanes last week bombed and destroyed a
northern Syrian missile base that was financed by Iran, an Arab Israeli
newspaper reported on Wednesday. Citing anonymous Israeli sources, the Assennara
newspaper said that Israeli jets "bombed in northern Syria a Syrian-Iranian
missile base financed by Iran ... It appears that the base was completely
destroyed." Syria on Tuesday lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations
over the "flagrant violation" of its airspace last Thursday, during which it
said its air defenses opened fire on Israeli warplanes flying over the northeast
of the country.
"Israel Reportedly Hit Syrian Base Financed by Iran," AFP
Jerusalem Newswire, September 12, 2007 ---
Click Here
Fox News version ---
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296939,00.html
Jensen Question
Note that Israel claims the Syrian missile sites destroyed were intended nuclear missile sites
funded by Iran
---
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3448829,00.html
The Sept. 6 attack by Israeli warplanes inside Syria
struck what Israeli intelligence believes was a nuclear-related facility that
North Korea was helping to equip, according to current and former American and
Israeli officials. Details about the Israeli assessment emerged as China
abruptly canceled planned diplomatic talks in Beijing that were to set a
schedule to disband nuclear facilities in North Korea. The Bush administration
has declined to comment on the Israeli raid, but American officials were
expected to confront the North Koreans about their suspected nuclear support for
Syria during those talks.
Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper,
"Israeli Nuclear Suspicions Linked to Raid in Syria," The New York Times,
September 18, 2007 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/asia/18korea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
So it's more than a little telling that the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz chose, in the wake of an Israeli Air Force raid on Syria on
Sept. 6 dubbed "Operation Orchard," to give front-page billing to an op-ed by
John Bolton that appeared in this newspaper Aug. 31. While the article dealt
mainly with the six-party talks with North Korea, Mr. Bolton also noted that
"both Iran and Syria have long cooperated with North Korea on ballistic missile
programs, and the prospect of cooperation on nuclear matters is not
far-fetched." He went on to wonder whether Pyongyang was using its Middle
Eastern allies as safe havens for its nuclear goods while it went through a U.N.
inspections process. How plausible is this scenario? The usual suspects in the
nonproliferation crowd reject it as some kind of trumped-up neocon plot. Yet
based on conversations with Israeli and U.S. sources, along with evidence both
positive and negative (that is, what people aren't saying), it seems the
likeliest suggested so far. That isn't to say, however, that plenty of gaps and
question marks about the operation don't remain.
Bret Stephens (former editor of the
Jerusalem Post), "Osirak II?" The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2007
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119007716759630639.html
Bret Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. He
joined the Journal in New York in 1998 as a features editor and moved to
Brussels the following year to work as an editorial writer for the paper's
European edition. In 2002, Mr. Stephens, then 28, became editor-in-chief of the
Jerusalem Post, where he was responsible for its news, editorial, electronic and
international divisions, and where he also wrote a weekly column. He returned to
his present position in late 2004 and was named a Young Global Leader by the
World Economic Forum the following year.
It is error alone which needs the support of
government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson ---
Click Here
Vice is such a hideous creature, that the more you
see of it the better you like it.
Finley Peter Dunne ---
Click Here
Man had just completed 87 months in prison for 1995
robbery --- Federal authorities say an Indiana man robbed a Chicago bank just
hours after he was released from jail for a bank robbery conviction. FBI
spokesman Ross Rice says 39-year-old Kenneth Cunningham was arrested Wednesday
in Portage, Ind..
"Fresh from jail, suspect robs bank," Indystar.com,
September 20, 2007 ---
Click Here
Brussels (read that all of Europe)
tries to tax the CO2 emissions of non-European airlines .
. . This is hardly the first time Europe has tried to foist its regulations on
the rest of the world. From antitrust policy to its over-the-top chemical safety
regime, Europe often uses its status as an important market to make everyone
else play by its rules.
"Cap and Fly," The Wall Street Journal, September
17, 2007 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118998042762829004.html
Jensen Comment
Sounds like a good time to impose a CO2 tax on all incoming and outgoing
European carriers that land and take off in the U.S. and Canada and anywhere
else in the world outside the EU. We could even play the game: "Our tax is
bigger than your tax."
Fact 1) Gasoline contains 116,000 BTU's/gal, and
takes around 22,000 BTU's/gal to find, drill, transport, and refine. NET
POSITIVE BTU? 94,000 BTU's or a little bit short of 5:1 leverage, or, put
another way Return on BTU Investment. Corn based ethanol contains 76,000 BTU's/gal,
and takes 98,000 BTU's/gal to plant, grow, harvest, and refine. NET POSITIVE
BTU? Ugh --- None. -22,000 actually. Less than payback. Kinda like saying
"we lose money on every deal but we make it up in volume". I implored the oil
and gas lobbying organizations to NOT attack ethanol subsidies by pointing out
this physical limitation to lawmakers, because farmers get knee jerk defensive
when you try to rip their snouts away from their Pork Trough, an item so
important that it nearly is equivalent to a breathing tube... they cannot exist
wihtout it anymore... and hell, the negative BTUs are gonna come from
hydrocarbons anyway, Heh, Heh . . .
Attributed to a cynical oil company executive named "Open Choke"
who wins either way. Forwarded by Dick Haar, September 21, 2007
Jensen Comment
Ethanol producers are becoming the largest natural gas consumers of the nation.
If it were not for the government subsidies, corn farmers would have to go back
to selling corn for meat and vegetables.
After all, if they don't understand the basics
(supposedly learned in prerequisite courses), they
surely won't get the next step. And I simply don't have the time to review
everything they're supposed to know from the class they supposedly already
passed. After all, they ARE mostly finance majors.
Unknown finance professor who runs the "Financial Rounds" blog,
September 16, 2007 ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Jensen Comment
This sounds so familiar it makes be happy that I've retired from teaching.
Unveiling his domestic reform agenda in Paris
Tuesday, Nicolas Sarkozy called for "a new social contract" for France. His
proposed revision of French socialist tradition going back to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau is nothing short of revolutionary. His ability to deliver will make or
break his presidency. True to character, Mr. Sarkozy came out swinging. The new
President declared that France's generous welfare state is "unjust" and
"financially untenable," "discourages work and job creation," and "fails to
bring equal opportunity." The result: France's jobless rate is the euro zone's
highest. The President wants "a new social contract founded on work, merit and
equal opportunity." He promised to loosen restrictions on working hours and
toughen up requirements for jobless benefits, to ease hiring and firing rules
and reduce incentives to retire early.
"French Revolution," The Wall Street Journal,
September 20, 2007; Page A12 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119025271641733388.html
Jensen Comment
The proposed new social contract sounds "sicko."
Alumni provide funds for U. of Illinois to promote
capitalist thought, with goal of creating public university equivalent of
Stanford think tank — and spreading model elsewhere. Some professors are
alarmed. Is it
an “academy” or a “fund"? The name of the new
Academy on Capitalism
and Limited Government Fund could be read either
way. And the way people at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are
reading the name has something to do with how they view it.
Supporters describe it as a fund created by alumni to
support interests they have at the university, in this case the study of Western
civilization and free market economics. But many professors see it as much more
— as a move by conservative alumni with influential national support to bypass
normal faculty governance, create new courses and impose ideological tests on
who gets certain pots of money.
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, September 20,
2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/20/illinois
Jensen Comment
This is just not politically correct!
Can you imagine giving money to support the study of capitalism. That should
never be allowed on a college campus. Shame! Shame! Such a
Center/Fund is just not politically correct in academe.
To reassure themselves that liberals are smart,
left-wing social scientists periodically conduct research that proves
conservatives are Neanderthals. Their latest foray, by New York University
researchers squandering $1.2 million in federal grants, concluded the usual
stuff — conservatives are simpleminded, less adaptive to change, etc. — plus
Ronald Reagan's brain worked like Adolf Hitler's and conservative drivers have
difficulty finding their way home when faced with a detour. Their conclusions
were based on research subjects' responses to reflexive tests, as if their
ability to answer an either-or question correctly in a fraction of a second is
predictive of their ability to think analytically.
"Researchers spread liberal mythology," American Republican,
September 21, 2007 ---
http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2007/09/22/opinion/285997.txt
Now this is politically correct research, and I think taxpayers got a terrific
deal for the $1.2 million in federal grants. Think of how valuable this will be
when it comes to admitting students to colleges. Those students who claim to be
Republicans, or at least lean toward conservative economics, can be
automatically rejected because they're known to be simple minded from the start.
Of course these research findings are not really surprising since 99% of the
graduates from PhD programs are liberals. That alone tells us that there aren't
many smart conservatives capable of earning doctoral degrees. John Kerry tells
us that since conservatives are so simple minded, they enlist in the military
rather than go to college. The NYU study, however, fails to explain why so many
liberals are forceful in trying to bring all these conservatives home from Iraq.
In truth, I really miss Senator William Proxmire's
Golden Fleece Awards. To view some of the Golden Fleece Awards, go to
http://www.taxpayer.net/awards/goldenfleece/history.htm
“HITS WITH THE
APPROXIMATE FORCE AND EFFECT OF ELECTROSHOCK
THERAPY” raved Roger Kimball’s review in The
New York Times, as quoted on the paperback
jacket of Allan Bloom’s
The Closing of the American Mind,
a surprise best-seller
in 1987 and the opening salvo in a ceaseless
conservative war against the academic and
cultural left. On the 20th anniversary of The
Closing, and 15 years after Bloom’s death, the
most salient issues concerning Bloom are his
role in neoconservative Republican circles and
his semi-closeted homosexuality, possibly
culminating — as in Saul Bellow’s thinly
fictionalized account in
Ravelstein —
in death from AIDS. In Bloom’s introductory
chapter to his 1990 collection of essays Giants
and Dwarfs, titled “Western Civ,” previously
published in Commentary, he responded to the
reception of The Closing as a conservative tract
by claiming that he was neither a conservative
("my teachers—Socrates, Machiavelli, Rousseau,
and Nietzsche — could hardly be called
conservatives") nor a liberal, “although the
preservation of liberal society is of central
concern to me.” He saw himself, rather, as an
impartial Socratic philosopher, above political
engagement or “attachment to a party” and
denying, against leftist theory, that “the mind
itself must be dominated by the spirit of
party.”A close re-reading of his books, however,
confirms that they are lofty-sounding
ideological rationalizations for the policies of
the Republican Party from Ronald Reagan to
George W. Bush.
Donald Lazere,
"‘The Closing of the American Mind,’ 20 Years
Later," Inside Higher Ed, September 18,
2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/18/lazere
You can read more about Allan Bloom (not to be
confused with Benjamin Bloom) at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Bloom
In
addition to noting his duties heading the Pentagon under
President Bush, the September 7 announcement from Hoover
emphasizes
Rumsfeld’s credentials as a two-time Fortune 500 CEO, member
of Congress, U.S. ambassador to NATO and former White House
chief of staff. Perhaps illustrating the
affiliated-yet-independent nature of the institutions’
relationship, the (much shorter) announcement from Stanford
several days later begins: “Former U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld, who resigned from the position last year
after coming under increasing fire for his management of the war
in Iraq, has been appointed a distinguished visiting fellow at
the Hoover Institution.” . . . The uproar against
Rumsfeld’s appointment
(visiting fellow to the Hoover Institute think tank at Stanford
University) began as a series of
e-mails fired over the “Faculty Against the War” listserv and
has evolved into an
online petition with more than 2,100
signatures from students, professors and alumni, which states in
part: “We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible
with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance,
disinterested enquiry [sic], respect for national and
international laws, and care for the opinions, property and
lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed.”
Andy Guess, "Mr.
Rumsfeld Goes to Stanford Inside Higher Ed,", September
21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/21/hoover
Also see
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200709210921.htm
Jensen Comment
Doesn't Stanford realize that this is just not politically
correct!
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace is
designed, since 1919, to study the roots of war and processes
for achieving peace by means other than war. What could a
despicable war monger like Rumsfeld bring to the study of war
and peace? Just think of the damage he might do to the
Institute's Honorary fellows, Distinguished fellows,
Senior fellows, Senior research fellows, Research fellows,
Other distinguished visiting fellows, Media Fellows, and
Visiting scholar. The Institute even had the audacity to invite
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush in for
short visits. What could Bush, Rice, and Rumsfeld possibly
add to study war, revolutions, and peace and the underlying
economies and cultures of nations.? Actually the Institute has a
history of inviting in leaders from most any powerful nation.
One of its most controversial residents was
Alexander Kerensky, a Communist revolutionary leader who helped
topple the Czar of Russia in the great revolution commenced
in 1917.
After the first government
crisis over Pavel Milyukov's secret note re-committing
Russia to its original war aims on May 2-4, 1917, Kerensky
became the Minister of War (read that
Secretary of Defense)
and the dominant figure in the newly formed
socialist-liberal coalition government. Under Allied
pressure to continue the war, he launched what became known
as the Kerensky Offensive against the
Austro-Hungarian/German South Army on June 17, Old Style. At
first successful, the offensive was soon stopped and then
thrown back by a strong counter-attack
(read that insurgency).
The Russian Army suffered heavy losses and it was clear -
from many incidents of desertion, sabotage, and mutiny -
that the Russian Army was no longer willing to attack
(read that wanted to withdraw its military without calling
it a surrender).
Kerensky was heavily criticized by the military for his
liberal policies, which included stripping officers of their
mandate (handing overriding control to revolutionary
inclined "soldier committees" instead), the abolition of the
death penalty, and the presence of various revolutionary
agitators at the front. Many officers jokingly referred to
commander in chief Kerensky as "persuader in chief".
On
July 2, 1917, the first coalition collapsed over the
question of Ukraine's autonomy. Following widespread unrest
in Petrograd and suppression of the Bolsheviks, Kerensky
succeeded Prince Lvov as Russia's Prime Minister. Following
the Kornilov Affair at the end of August and the resignation
of the other ministers, he appointed himself Supreme
Commander-in-Chief as well. He retained his other posts in
the short-lived Directory in September and the final
coalition government in October 1917 until it was overthrown
by the Bolsheviks.
Kerensky's major challenge
was that Russia was exhausted (sounds
familiar) after three
years of war, while the provisional government did not offer
much motivation for a victory outside of continuing Russia's
obligations towards its allies. Furthermore, Lenin and his
Bolshevik party were promising "peace, land, and bread"
under a communist system. The army was disintegrating due to
a lack of discipline, which fostered desertion in large
numbers.
Kerensky and the other
political leaders continued their obligation to Russia's
allies by continuing involvement in World War I - fearing
the economy, already under huge stress from the war effort,
may become increasingly unstable (now
its called oil dependency)
if vital supplies from
France and the UK were to stop. Some also feared that
Germany would demand enormous territorial concessions
(today its called turning Israel over to Hamas and Hesbolla)
as the price for peace
(which indeed happened at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk). The
dilemma of whether or not to withdraw was a great one, and
Kerensky's inconsistent and impractical policies further
destabilized the army and the country at large.
Furthermore, Kerensky adopted a policy which isolated the
right-wing conservatives, both democratic and monarchist
oriented. His philosophy of "no enemies to the left" greatly
empowered the Bolsheviks and gave them a free hand, allowing
them to take over the military arm or "voyenka" of the
Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. His arrest of Kornilov and
other officers left him without strong allies against the
Bolsheviks, who ended up being Kerensky's strongest and most
determined adversaries as opposed to the right wing, which
evolved into the White movement.
. .
.
Kerensky eventually settled in New York City, but spent much
of his time at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
in California, where he both used and contributed to the
Institution's huge archive on Russian history, and where he
taught graduate courses. He wrote and broadcast extensively
on Russian politics and history. His last public speech was
delivered at Kalamazoo College, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Kerensky's major works include The Prelude to Bolshevism
(1919) ISBN 0-8383-1422-8 , The Catastrophe (1927), The
Crucifixion of Liberty (1934) and Russia and History's
Turning Point (1965).
A scholarly reader points
out the following:
In your tidbits you
characterize Alexander Kerensky as "... a Communist
revolutionary leader". This is incorrect. He was indeed a
revolutionary, but he was never a communist nor was he ever
in any union with them. He joined the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party (infamous for the wave of
political terror unleashed in the early 1900), but after the
terror wave, and his followers in the party never followed
Marxism and rejected any union with the communists (his
opponents in the party split and set up a separate left
socialist revolutionary party which did support the
bolsheviks for a very short time). As a matter of fact, the
only semi-successful attempt on Lenin's life was perpetrated
in 1918 by Fanny Kaplan, a member of the Socialist
Revolutionaries.
A year after
an aborted invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
Iran’s president (and "Socrates of the Third Millenium"), to speak at Columbia University, he has another invitation.
Columbia announced that he would speak Monday as part of a series of talks by
world leaders that take place during their visits to the United Nations. Lee
Bollinger, Columbia’s president,
issued a statement in which he said that he would
introduce the event and would offer “sharp challenges” to the Iranian leader
about his statements denying the Holocaust and urging the destruction of Israel,
as well as his government’s policies denying women’s rights and imprisoning
scholars and journalists. Bollinger said that to fulfill Columbia’s mission in
“learning and scholarship,” the university must “respect and defend the rights
of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic
purposes.” He added: “Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact
with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious.
We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing
with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason.” Student
leaders from a number of organizations
issued a joint statement Wednesday praising the
invitation, but saying it should have been announced earlier so students could
organize protests or other activities.
Inside Higher Ed, September 20, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/20/qt
A research centre run by the office of the president
of Iran has released a 15-page document in which they define President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad as the "Socrates of the Third Millenium". The document has been
released just days before Ahmadinejad is due to visit New York. The Iranian
president will arrive in the city on Sunday to address the United Nations
General Assembly. In the document, various speeches and letters written by the
Iranian president are analysed and it concludes that "Ahmadinejad reasons and
discusses exactly as Socrates did in ancient Greece, by disarming other speakers
and through his sharp reasoning."
DNKRONOS, September 20, 2007 ---
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1325975030
Zebulon Simentov, the last Jew in Afghanistan, is
once again marking the Jewish holy day of fasting in solitude, in a deserted
synagogue in the capital of a devoutly Islamic nation.
Beatrice Khadige, Yahoo News,
September 22, 2007 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070922/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanreligionjews_070922044242
Jensen Comment
Socrates of the Third Millenium, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a
message to his troops in Iran requesting that Zebulon Simentov be bronzed as
soon as Simentov becomes the last Jew on earth.
Actress Kathy Griffin's
rant at the Emmy awards: "I guess
hell froze over. A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this. He had
nothing to do with this. ... Suck it, Jesus! This award is my god now," she
said. The statement brought an immediate reaction from Bill Donohue, president
of Catholic League. He called it a "vulgar in-your-face brand of hate speech"
from a self-described "complete militant atheist."
WorldNetDaily, September 22, 2007 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57772
Jensen Comment
This is a planned as opposed to being an off-handed remark.
Kathy
Griffin takes great pride in being a very militant atheist. Notice that Ms
Griffin was smart enough to malign Christians rather than Muslins. If she said
"Suck it, Allah" she might've bought the farm. I'm proud to say that I've never
seen Kathy Griffin act, and I will certainly try to maintain a perfect record
for the rest of my life. I fully respect her right, as is the right of every
American, to worship or not worship as she pleases. But insulting the faith of
others is in bad taste in general and is especially in bad taste when give the
privilege of being on national television. It pleases me to no end that that fat
"grew back" after her liposuction procedure.
Catholic bishops in Belgium have protested against a
TV ad depicting Jesus as a pot-bellied hippy picking up half-naked women in a
nightclub. The advertisement is being aired on the country's main TV channel to
promote youth channel Plug TV.
Frances Harrison, "Pot-bellied Jesus
ad irks Church ," BBC, September 21, 2007 ---
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7007816.stm
Jensen Comment
Kathy
Griffin says she'll play the part in drag if the clip is run on American
television. The manure-mouthed
Charlotte Church says she'll do the same for BBC television. I hope both of
their careers take immediate and precipitous nose dives.
Is the Detroit River the Rio Grande del Norte?
Over the past three weeks, 45 families and 31
individuals -- approximately 200 people -- entered Canada at the Detroit River
crossings and applied in Windsor for shelter and social assistance after filing
refugee claims with the Canada Border Services Agency. Municipal agencies
dealing with the sudden influx of mainly Mexican refugee applicants are renting
out hotel rooms and bracing for predicted thousands more to come. "We don't have
the means, ability or capacity to deal with this additional cost. We are not
able to deal with this potential crisis locally," Francis wrote Harper. "I don't
believe that Windsor's residents and taxpayers should have to foot the bill for
U.S. immigration policy," Francis told The Star. He was referring to the
suspected source of the problem -- a recently begun crackdown on illegal
immigrants in economically struggling regions of the U.S. South.
Doug Schmidt and Dave Battagello, "Refugees pose 'potential
crisis'," The Windsor Star, September 20, 2007 ---
http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/story.html?id=eb24c2f6-7372-4da6-abdc-806fad175d18&k=57287
Also see "Illegal Immigrants Chase False Hope to Canada," by Monica Davey and
Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, September 21, 2007 ----
Click Here
FedEx vs. Government Bureaucracy -- Newt Gingrich ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15D3ElV1Jzw
A Russian boy suffers head injuries after falling
from a window while trying to elude police. A North African man slips from a
window ledge and fractures his leg while fleeing officers. A Chinese woman lies
in a coma after plunging from a window during a police check. As France races to
deport 25,000 illegal immigrants by the end of the year — a quota set by
President Nicolas Sarkozy — tensions are mounting and the crackdown is taking a
toll.
Elaine Ganley, "France Races to Oust
Illegal Immigrants," Associated Press, September 22, 2007 ---
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g99NlCnUgYwBaDv3f3ixCpy5knxQ
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry Brooks Adams --- Click
Here
President Bush has had more Hispanics confirmed for
federal judgeships than any president in U.S. history, a record that earns him
praise from Hispanic organizations but is downplayed by the Democratic National
Committee.
Ken Herman, Cox News Service,
September 21, 2007 ---
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/5155928.html
The U.S. Senate voted this morning to express its
support for Gen. David Petreaus, commander of United States forces in Iraq, and
to condemn MoveOn.org for its New York Times ad last week calling him "General
Betray Us."
Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 20, 2007 ---
http://blog.cleveland.com/openers/2007/09/brown_refuses_to_condemn_moveo.html
Jensen Comment
How each Senator voted ---
Click Here
The fact that there were only 25 "nay" votes (out of 100
senators) supporting General Petreaus suprised me --- as were the abstainers of two
presidential candidates, Senators Biden and Obama, who strongly favor turning
tail in Iraq.
|
NAYs ---25 |
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
|
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
|
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
|
|
Not Voting - 3 |
Biden (D-DE)
|
Cantwell (D-WA)
|
Obama (D-IL)
|
|
|
Senator Feingold's separate bill to immediately "redeploy" troops in
Iraq only had 28 supporters that included Senator Obama ---
Click Here
I think there more nervous Democrats tuned to public opinion and worried that surrendering and "moving
on" from Iraq immediately is not necessarily a good political strategy at the
moment. This is in spite of an undisputed sentiment among Americans to turn tail
as soon as pulling out of Iraq can be achieved without leaving an Al Qaeda or Iranian stronghold
feasting in Iraq's oil in the
aftermath. What terror group will win in Iraq? That is the question.
To be, or not to be: that is the
question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
Hamlet
Question
What drastic move is the AACSB
International (accrediting body) taking to deal with the shortage of
graduating students from business doctoral programs (including accountancy
doctoral programs)?
Hint:
It's called a “Postdoctoral Bridge to Business”
Answer
With many business schools reporting difficulty attracting
Ph.D. faculty members, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
has announced the first participating institutions in new
“Postdoctoral Bridge to Business” programs —
short-term programs that will train new Ph.D.’s in fields outside business for
faculty jobs at business schools. The programs are starting at the Grenoble
Ecole de Management, Tulane University, the University of Florida, the
University of Toledo and Virginia Tech.
Inside Higher Ed, September 20, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/20/qt
September 21, 2007 reply from John
Brozovsky [jbrozovs@vt.edu]
Hello Bob:
Just so you know. Virginia Tech is NOT doing a
bridge (retread) program in Accounting. It is being done in Finance and
Marketing but not Accounting.
John
Bob Jensen's
threads on alleged reasons why there are such shortages in accountancy doctoral
programs can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
A cynic might conclude that this
is a correctional option for naive students who earned an economics PhD in an
Economics Department rather than lucky students who earned virtual economics
PhDs in accountancy doctoral programs.
A realist might term this the
"Bridge Over Troubled Waters" that leads to higher salaries for "90-Day Wonders"
in business/accounting education ---
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=90+day+wonder
I never had any respect for 90-Day Wonders in the military, and I think I
will have even less respect for them as teachers of accounting. How can anybody
without years of accounting courses and professional experience teach upper
division financial accounting, auditing, and tax courses? In the military, the
90-Day wonders were not total failures --- they learned how to salute and
marched pretty well by the 90th day! The best bet for economics PhDs might be
managerial accounting where the ties are a little closer between microeconomics
and managerial accounting, but it’s still a stretch even here. Bridged faculty
may be very helpful in joint research projects, but as teachers in our upper
division courses I’m a doubting Thomas!
This reminds me of the Harvard
math professor (I can't recall which one at the moment) who said:
"Accounting is a fascinating discipline. I think I might take a couple of hours
to master it."
Question
The faculty shortage in nursing schools is even more severe than that of
accounting schools. Why are there no "bridges over troubled waters" in schools
of nursing in the same context as the new bridges being built for non-accounting
PhDs mentioned above?
Answer with a Question
Would you really want an economics PhD who took a crash course in nursing
teaching the nurses who serve you?
Answer with an Answer ---
http://nln.allenpress.com/pdfserv/i1536-5026-028-04-0223.pdf
The fact of the matter is that the law of supply and demand works better in
schools of accounting than in schools of nursing. In general, accounting
educators are among the highest paid faculty on campus. The number of unfilled
tenure-track job openings in schools of accounting combined with starting
salaries in excess of $130,000 per year are the main reasons that the AACSB
International's "Postdoctoral Bridge to Business" just might work,
although I seriously doubt whether any of the bridged students will be able to
teach upper division financial accounting, auditing, and tax courses.
The law of supply and demand works lousy in nursing schools. In spite of
shortages of qualified faculty, nursing educators remain among the lowest paid
faculty on campus. A Nursing International's "Postdoctoral Bridge to Nursing"
probably would not work, and given my cynacism about 90-0Day Wonders it is some
comfort to me that there is no such bridge over troubled waters in nursing
schools.
Question
What do accounting schools and nursing schools have in common?
Why do accounting professors get paid so much more?
"The Nursing Education Dilemma," by Elia Powers, Inside Higher Ed,
June 22, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/22/nursing
The
market for nursing graduates remains hot, and plenty of
students are vying for those open positions. Enrollment in
entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs increased by
nearly 8 percent in 2006 from the previous year, which
marked the
sixth straight year of gains.
Community College programs are also
seeing increases in applications
and enrollments.
It’s all
positive news for the health care industry, which has
suffered from a well-documented nursing shortage since the
1990s, when many hospitals cut their staffs and some
colleges cut back their programs.
But for
colleges of nursing, the increasing demand to accommodate
more students presents a dilemma: Who will teach them?
When it
comes to clinical nursing courses, college programs are
bound to strict faculty-to-student ratios, set by individual
states. One instructor to every 10 or 12 students is a
fairly common ratio. So even as administrators and state
lawmakers seek more slots for students, there’s a ceiling on
expansion unless more faculty are recruited or produced.
That’s not
happening quickly. A survey released last year by the
American Association of Colleges of Nursing identified at
least 637 faculty vacancies at more than 300 nursing schools
with baccalaureate or graduate programs — or what amounts to
a nearly 8 percent faculty vacancy rate. The majority of the
openings are tenure-track positions that require applicants
have a doctorate, the survey shows.
Meanwhile,
there continues to be a backlog of students. In 2006, more
than 38,000 nursing school candidates deemed “qualified” by
the AACN were turned away from entry-level baccalaureate
programs, while a total of 50,783 nursing school applicants
enrolled and registered in courses. When the new students
are added to the pool of all students enrolled, total
enrollment rises to 133,578.
Nearly three
quarters of the colleges that responded to the AACN survey
pointed to faculty shortages as a reason for not accepting
the applicants. Community colleges are turning away 3.3
“qualified” applicants for every one turned away by
four-year institutions, said Roxanne Fulcher, director of
health professions policy at the American Association of
Community Colleges.
At many
nursing schools, wait lists are shrinking after years of
growth, officials say, not because slots are opening up, but
because students are becoming frustrated that their chances
of enrolling are dim.
Continued in article
Question
Given the dire shortages of doctoral students in accountancy, should the
requirement for doctoral degrees be eliminated in higher education?
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding
out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do
is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
Douglas Adams
There are two explanations one can give for this
state of affairs here. The first is due to the great English economist Maurice
Dobb according to whom the theory of value was replaced in the United States by
theory of price. May be, the consequence for us today is that we know the price
of everything but perhaps the value of nothing. Economics divorced from politics
and philosophy is vacuous. In accounting, we have inherited the vacuousness by
ignoring those two enduring areas of inquiry.
Professor Jagdish Gangolly, SUNY
Albany
The second is the comment that Joan Robinson made
about American Keynsians: that their theories were so flimsy that they had to
put math into them. In accounting academia, the shortest path to respectability
seems to be to use math (and statistics), whether meaningful or not.
Professor Jagdish Gangolly, SUNY
Albany
There are two
sides to nearly every profession (as opposed to a narrow trade). The first one
is the clinical side, and the second one is the research side. But this is not
to say that the twain do not meet.
I advocate
requiring that most (maybe not all) clinical instructors be grounded solidly in
research. Requiring a PhD is a traditional way to get groundings in research.
Probably more importantly is that doctoral studies are ways to motivate
clinically-minded students to attempt to do research on clinical issues and make
important contributions to the practicing profession.
I define
“research” as a contribution to new knowledge. Among other things a good
doctoral program should make scholars more appreciative of good research and
critical of bad/superficial research that does not contribute to much of
anything that is relevant, including research that should get
Senator William Proxmire's
Golden Fleece Awards. Like urban cowboys, our academic accounting
researchers are all hat (mathematical/statistical models) with no cows.
The problem with
accountancy doctoral programs is that they’ve become narrowly bounded by
accountics (especially econometrics and psychometrics) that in the past three
decades have made little progress toward helping the clinical side of our
profession of accountancy. This makes our doctoral programs very much unlike
those in economics, finance, medicine, science, and engineering where many
clinical advances in their disciplines have emerged from studies in doctoral
programs.
The problem with
higher education in accountancy is not that we require doctoral degrees
in our major colleges and universities. The problem is that our doctoral
programs shut out research methodologies that are perhaps better suited for
making research discoveries that really help the clinical side of our
profession. Accountics models just do not deal well with missing variables and
nonstationarities that must be allowed for on the clinical side of accountancy.
Humanities researchers face many of these same issues and have evolved a much
broader arsenal of research methodologies that are
verboten in accounting
doctoral programs --- (See below).
The related
problem is that our leading scholars running those doctoral programs have taken
a supercilious view of the clinical side of our profession. Or maybe it’s just
that these leaders do not want to take the time and trouble to learn the
clinical side of the profession. Once again I repeat the oft-quoted referee of
an Accounting Horizons rejection of Denny Beresford’s 2005 submission
I quote from
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession
*************
1. The paper provides specific recommendations for things that accounting
academics should be doing to make the accounting profession better. However
(unless the author believes that academics' time is a free good) this would
presumably take academics' time away from what they are currently doing. While
following the author's advice might make the accounting profession better, what
is being made worse? In other words, suppose I stop reading current academic
research and start reading news about current developments in accounting
standards. Who is made better off and who is made worse off by this reallocation
of my time? Presumably my students are marginally better off, because I can tell
them some new stuff in class about current accounting standards, and this might
possibly have some limited benefit on their careers. But haven't I made my
colleagues in my department worse off if they depend on me for research advice,
and haven't I made my university worse off if its academic reputation suffers
because I'm no longer considered a leading scholar? Why does making the
accounting profession better take precedence over everything else an academic
does with their time?
**************
Joel Demski
steers us away from the clinical side of the accountancy profession by saying we
should avoid that pesky “vocational virus.” (See below).
The (Random House) dictionary defines "academic" as
"pertaining to areas of study that are not primarily vocational or applied , as
the humanities or pure mathematics." Clearly, the short answer to the question
is no, accounting is not an academic discipline.
Joel Demski, "Is Accounting an Academic Discipline?" Accounting
Horizons, June 2007, pp. 153-157
Statistically there are a few youngsters who came to
academia for the joy of learning, who are yet relatively untainted by the
vocational virus.
I urge you to nurture your taste for learning, to follow your joy. That is the
path of scholarship, and it is the only one with any possibility of turning us
back toward the academy.
Joel Demski, "Is Accounting an Academic Discipline? American
Accounting Association Plenary Session" August 9, 2006 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm
Too many
accountancy doctoral programs have immunized themselves against the “vocational
virus.” The problem lies not in requiring doctoral degrees in our leading
colleges and universities. The problem is that we’ve been neglecting the
clinical needs of our profession. Perhaps the real underlying reason is that our
clinical problems are so immense that academic accountants quake in fear of
having to make contributions to the clinical side of accountancy as opposed to
the clinical side of finance, economics, and psychology.
Our problems with doctoral programs in accountancy are shared with other
disciplines, notably education and nursing schools.
Bob Jensen's threads on the role of academic accounting research in the
profession of accountancy can be found at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm
Question
Why are women leaving academic medicine in droves?
"Why Women Leave Academic Medicine," by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed,
September 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/21/women
Phoebe S. Leboy
was, she acknowledges, one of the lucky ones. It’s not that
things were easy for female scientists when she came of age
as an academic in the 1960s and 1970s; women earned a small
fraction of the Ph.D.’s in biology and chemistry at the
time, and they were an even rarer presence on medical or
dental school faculties (Leboy was the first tenured faculty
member at Penn’s dental school).
Things
may well be tougher for female basic scientists now, though,
Leboy told a gathering of researchers and others Wednesday
at a Washington area meeting of the
Association
for Women in Science, of which she
is the president-elect. The picture is better in some key
ways: In stark contrast to the physical sciences, where
women remain severely underrepresented in degree programs
and as doctoral candidates, women have largely gained parity
in the early parts of the biological sciences pipeline. They
earn nearly half of all Ph.D.’s awarded in fields such as
cell and molecular biology, and they are getting jobs as
postdocs and as entry-level non-clinical professors at
respectable if not nearly equitable rates.
But the
positives fade at later points in the process, where women
are increasingly leaving academe in droves, Leboy said at
the gathering of the association’s Bethesda chapter, held at
the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of
Medicine. “You’ve got postdocs who don’t end up in tenure
track positions, tenure track professors who don’t get
tenure, and tenured professors who don’t end up to be
department chairs, deans, and the like.
“It’s not
that they don’t come into the field,” she said. “It’s that
they’re dropping out because the pipeline gets so clogged
with crud that you can’t get through it if you’re a woman.”
Is “crud”
just another term for the sex discrimination that Larry
Summers got into trouble for saying didn’t exist for female
professors? No, Leboy said. While overt bias does exist, she
said, she seemed to lay the later-stage leaks in the
academic biomedicine pipeline much more at the feet other
sorts of obstacles, most notably a raising of the
expectations bar that affects both genders but hurts women
disproportionately.
Like any
good scientist, she started with the data to reveal the
perceived problem. Citing statistics she had collected on
the composition of faculties at 24 medical schools in 2006,
she found that in fields such as cell biology, biochemistry
and and neuroscience, the proportion of female assistant
professors lagged the Ph.D. pool in the disciplines from a
decade earlier by anywhere from 10 to 15 percentage points.
Focusing on
seven of the most elite medical schools — those at Harvard,
Johns Hopkins, Penn, Stanford, the University of Washington,
Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale — she found
that “they are not doing a whole lot of hiring of junior
[female] faculty at all,” and those that they are hiring
aren’t staying. Five of the seven biochemistry departments,
and four of the six cell biology programs, at those schools
have no junior women, Leboy’s study found. At Penn’s own
medical school, the number of female assistant professors in
the basic sciences had dropped from 14 a decade ago to four
now (representing a net loss in women, since the number of
tenured female professors had risen to 23 from 18).
Why are
women appearing to drop out of the pipeline early in their
medical school faculty careers? Leboy attributed the problem
largely to a set of obstacles that make the life
“unattractive.” She ascribed some of it to the traditional
explanation of family-unfriendly policies such as tenure
clocks that coincide with child-bearing years, a culture of
early and late meetings that are difficult for parents to
make, and leave policies that are improving but still
insufficient.
But perhaps
more interestingly, Leboy explained how the rising
“expectations and criteria for success” for non-clinical
researchers in the biomedical science are having a
disproportionate effect on women.
The average
male researcher, according to NIH data Leboy cited, has 1.4
basic research project grants, compared to slightly less
than 1.3 for women. While men and women earn new NIH grants
at roughly the same rate, women get “consistently fewer”
competing renewals grants than men do. And for every dollar
a male primary investigator receives, women get 80 cents.
Continued in article
347-328-4667
Question
Suppose you are on 122 South Sleazy Lane and need directions to 1200 Beacon
Street. How can you dial on your cell phone and get those directions? Voice
messages are free, but it gets a bit more complicated than that. See below:
This week I tried a service that cuts the time it
takes to get directions from a cellphone. It's called Dial DIR-ECT-IONS
(347-328-4667), and it works
as it sounds: You dial the word "directions" into a cellphone (347-328-4667) and
speak the address, name of business chain or event to which you need directions.
Step-by-step directions are instantly sent to your phone via SMS, or text
message. This isn't a substitute for phones that have GPS and can give real-time
directions, and it may not be ideal for those who need visual cues, like
turn-by-turn maps, but it is very convenient on the go and works on any basic
cellphone.
Katherine Boehret, "Directions Are a Cellphone Call Away," The Wall Street
Journal, September 19, 2007, Page D9 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119016119562031807.html
The service, from a determined start-up called Dial
Directions Inc., is free -- except for the cost of receiving text messages
on your phone. After the first 30 days of use, a one-line advertisement will
start appearing at the bottom of the last text message sent per set of
directions (some take multiple text messages to include all of the steps).
. . .
In many instances, I found using Dial Directions to
be helpful and efficient, a welcome change from squinting to see miniature
maps on cellphone screens. It's smart enough to ask you if you know how to
get to the highway, thus saving you from reading directions you already
know. I tried the service with a few different cities -- you don't have to
be in the city to use it because GPS isn't involved -- and valued the
instant gratification of returned results with so little effort.
Dial Directions is still a work in progress. The
service prides itself on superb voice-detection technology, but in one
instance, it interpreted "New York City" as "Newark, N.J.," and didn't stop
to check the accuracy of this, forcing me to hang up to restart. And the two
other aspects of the service, finding business chains and events, need just
a little more time to include a better variety of businesses.
The service was launched in July, but this week
marks its expansion to nine metropolitan areas, including New York City,
Washington, D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San
Diego and Sacramento, Calif. The service still isn't in major cities like
Boston and Philadelphia, but these cities and others will be included within
the next month, in the company's attempt to take the service nationwide.
Dial Directions also plans to add landmarks in the
next month. I tried asking for directions to the White House and Yankee
Stadium without any luck. General terms will also be better integrated into
the service. I tried saying "movies" but Dial Directions thought I was
saying "Mervin's" one time and "Arby's" the next. Just 40 terms, including
"hotel" and "gas station," are usable right now.
I called Dial Directions from a Motorola Razr
cellphone, a Research In Motion BlackBerry Curve and an Apple iPhone. All
worked well. Since SMS messages are limited to about 160 characters,
regardless of your phone, none of the directions came through in just one
message; most directions required from two to five text messages. Symbols
help to shorten the messages, like using "L @ Maryland Ave. SW" to tell a
user to turn left at Maryland Avenue Southwest.
To receive these directions, you must first tell
the service what you're looking for. The female voice representing Dial
Directions is friendly and doesn't sound stiff and robotic. She offers to
give instructions on how to use the service if you don't know how. After
telling her what you're looking for, she asks what city you're in and where
you're trying to go.
I tried a variety of addresses and intersections;
the system suggests not saying "Street" or "Avenue." In certain instances
when a highway was involved, I was asked if I knew how to get on the
highway, and if I did, that extra text wasn't included in my directions.
Once I confirmed what I was looking for, the voice said directions would be
on the way in a couple of text messages. Each time, they appeared on my
phone almost instantly.
In the case of business chains or general terms
like "hotel," the voice told me first of the closest one it knew, asking me
to confirm whether or not it had found the right place. If I said no, it
suggested four more that were the next closest. This worked well in most
cases, including searches for McDonald's, Bloomingdale's, Starbucks and
pizza. However, in a hunt for the closest Dunkin' Donuts, it couldn't find
four stores that were located a mile from my office in downtown D.C.;
instead, it thought the closest one was in Arlington, Va.
The company pledges that this and other faults will
be improved over the next month as its database is improved and as more
users report issues that can be corrected.
Directions to local events can be retrieved as long
as the event is posted on DialDirections.com. Then anyone can just say the
name of the event (like "DC Shorts Film Festival") to receive directions to
that event. But this feature, too, isn't what it should be right now. On my
way to a Washington Nationals game, I couldn't get the service to recognize
the name of my event, which was frustrating.
If the company can correct some of its hit-or-miss
aspects, this free service could be a big help, especially for people who
don't own smart phones. But even if you do own a smart phone, it's faster
than typing in data and waiting for a Web browser to retrieve the
directions. If this service can improve its ability to find nearby
businesses, this alone could be really useful.
When it knows about more locations, Dial Directions
will be a great service. As it stands now, it's helpful for directions from
one address to another in certain areas. Sometimes, the most straightforward
solutions really do work best.
Jensen Comment
Of course there are various totally free services like Google Maps and Mapquest
if you're connected to a computer. But the 347-328-4667 number is a new
option if you're not on a computer. It is certainly worth it when used on rare
occasions where you're really lost as I was lost on a street in Boston the first
time I drove my car into the city to pick up my wife at the hospital. The first
six people I asked in a not-so-good part of Boston could not tell me how to get
from where I was to Beacon Street.
PS The pleasant
sounding woman on the phone is pretty square --- she’s a computer. This type of
service has been available experimentally for years in certain metropolitan
areas like the Bay Area near San Francisco. These experimental services can also
tell you about traffic conditions and weather.
The company that started this
directions, traffic conditions, weather, and stock quotes phone service in the
Bay Area is called BeVocal ---
http://www.bevocal.com/corporateweb/
I don't think BeVocal offers this service anymore.
Below are three BeVocal recordings
that I've used in my education technology dog and pony shows for years. You must
have RealMedia installed to play them on your computer. Remember that this
"woman" is merely a computer voice:
Marc H. Raibert's "Good Writing" advice ---
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/Randy/raibert.htm
Recommended by computer scientist Randy Rausch ---
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07262/818671-298.stm?cmpid=MOSTEMAILEDBOX
Bob Jensen's links to writing helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
"IRS reaches out to foreclosure victims with
resource site," AccountingWeb, September 2007 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104028
Bob Jensen's mortgage helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#MortgageAdvice
"A new approach to Excel pivot tables,"
AccountingWeb, September 2007 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104011
Bob Jensen's videos on pivot table videos and
tutorials include the following:
"Human error and criminal cleverness still beating data security,"
AccountingWeb, September 2007 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104033
"Hackers control PCs while users unaware," by Jim Fink, The Washington
Post, September 21, 2007 ---
Click Here
A few weeks ago Candace Locklear's office computer
quietly started sending out dozens of instant messages with photos attached
that were infected with malicious software.
She was sitting at her desk, with no sign that the
messaging software was active. By the time she figured out what was going
on, several friends and colleagues had opened the attachments and infected
their computers.
It took eight hours for a technician to clean up
her computer. But because the malicious software worked so secretly, she's
still not convinced that all's clear.
"I'd like to think that it's gone. But I just don't
know," said Locklear, 40, a publicist in San Francisco. "That's what is so
frustrating."
Computer security experts estimate that tens of
millions of personal computers are infected with malicious software like the
one that attacked Locklear's machine. Such programs, generally classified as
malware, attack companies along with consumers.
Some are keyloggers, recording every key stroke
that the user enters -- sending valuable bank account information, passwords
and credit card numbers to hackers.
In July, hackers used keylogging software to gather
passwords to databases at the U.S. Department of Transportation, consulting
firm Booz Allen, Hewlett-Packard Co and satellite network company Hughes
Network Systems, according to British Internet security software maker Prevx
In
