Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research --- http://www.pier.org/index.shtml

Butterflies and Moths of North America --- http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/

Agricultural Communications Documentation Center at UIUC --- http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/index.html

Pre-assessment: Gauging students preparedness for sedimentary geology ---
 http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/sedimentary/activities/13842.html

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

U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Center for Drug Evaluation and Research --- http://www.fda.gov/cder/index.html

American Council on Science and Health --- http://www.acsh.org/

American Nuclear Society ---  http://www.ans.org/

Freelance Writing Resources --- http://www.fwointl.com/

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

Bracton Online (Medieval Law) ---  http://hlsl5.law.harvard.edu/bracton/

Bob Jensen's threads on law and law tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law

Preservation News (History) ---  http://iarchives.library.cornell.edu/collect/PRN/index.html

Two of Bob Jensen's history links are as follows:

• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
   
• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
  (Scroll Down)

Not-So-Great Movies Downloaded into Not-So-Great Vudu Box
This box, called Vudu, comes from a Silicon Valley company of the same name ( www.vudu.com ). Vudu's biggest strengths are its easy setup, good picture quality and simple user interface, easily navigated using a scroll-wheel remote control. If the director yelled "Cut!" right here, Vudu would be a box-office smash. But actually using this device is just one problem after another. For starters, though Vudu says it has relationships with the major Hollywood studios, many of the 5,000 titles it offers don't seem to be popular by mainstream standards. Lots of them are old or obscure. For instance, you won't find any of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, but how about a 1984 sci-fi/fantasy movie called "The Ice Pirates," instead? If you do find a movie that you'd like to watch, you must have a bandwidth speed of at least two megabits per second to download it instantly; millions of broadband homes have slower connections than that. Vudu offers to measure your bandwidth on its home page before you buy it. I tested Vudu for a week on a typical home-type DSL line, and my connection only clocks about 1.5 Mbps, so it took me about 45 minutes to download each movie. While Vudu's $399 price tag might take some getting used to, its fees for buying or renting each movie could be harder to swallow after a month's worth of use: as much as $80 if you bought one top-tier movie a week. Worse, you have to pay in advance. Rather than charging your credit card on a pay-as-you-go basis, Vudu customers must choose a $20, $50 or $100 amount at setup from which movie fees are deducted. When your account hits $0, the amount selected at setup is charged and the debit process begins again.
Katherine Boehret, "Downloadable Movies in a Box::  Where's the Magic? We Test Convenience Of Vudu System And Find Flaws," The Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2007; Page D5 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119196901013253993.html
Jensen Comment
No thanks! I'll take my cheap but great NetFlix subscription any day --- http://www.netflix.com/

Question
How can you get Instant Messaging (IM) for free without having to install any software?

First read about Instant Messaging at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Messaging

"Don't Tell Your Boss, But There Is a Way To IM Despite Blocks," bu Sarmad Ali, The Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2007; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119205933351855322.html

Just use an Internet-based service so that you can chat from a Web page without having to install any software, which might be blocked by a firewall. I tested two such services: Meebo at www.meebo.com  and KoolIM at www.koolim.com . Both are free.

These services let you simultaneously log in to multiple IM accounts -- and communicate with people with various services. If you have a friend who uses Yahoo Messenger, for example, and another who likes MSN Messenger, you can chat with either.

Another plus: Meebo and KoolIM are far less vulnerable to viruses than downloadable applications. They're also more efficient, saving users the hassle of installing multiple programs on a computer. This is especially handy for people with old computers that slow down when running several applications.

Meebo has a well-designed, sleek interface that makes it appealing to even the least tech savvy. From its home page, you simply sign in for different IM services—MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk (or Jabber) and AIM (or ICQ). Your buddy list will be combined automatically. You don't have to register, but if you do, you get perks such as a single sign-on for all of your accounts, and the ability to share files, save chat logs and store conversations.

I tried Meebo on my work Windows PC and my iBook at home, and it worked well on both. To start chatting, you just log in to any of the IM services by entering the screen name and password you already have with a service, or by picking a new name, password and services. Your buddy list will appear in a window on the right side of the page, with each name marked by an icon denoting the service the person uses. Once in your buddy list, you can add or delete a contact, message or join a group chat.

Continued in article

Google Introduces Instant Messaging
Google Inc. is joining yet another Internet turf battle, the one over instant communication. Google introduced today an instant-messaging service that lets users exchange text messages and make voice calls over personal computers. Google's move pits it against Internet giants such as Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. that dominate the market.
Mylene Mangalindan and Christopher Rhoads, "Google Introduces Instant Messaging," The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2005; Page B3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112482337312020777,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
See this IM service at http://www.google.com/talk/

Set up free conference calls at http://www.freeconference.com/  

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

October 14, 2007 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

I just wanted to let the list know that I've been using Meebo this semester for my undergrad financial accounting class and my grad AIS course. You can see the meebo widget on both of my webpages (wikis) that I use for the course at either: http://financialaccounting.wikispaces.com  or http://acg5405.wikispaces.com  and if I'm online feel free to say hello to see how it works.

I have always included my Yahoo ID in my syllabus so students could IM me with questions. In recent years I observed two things: 1) I tended to forget to start my IM more and more - I just wasn't using it that much, and 2) students weren't using it, as it required them to get a Yahoo account, download the IM software, etc.

Since using Meebo, and in particular placing the meebo widget on my web pages, student communication with me has increased at least 10 fold (anectodal not empirical). I'm convinced of the reasons: 1) Ease of Use - students just have to access the course web page, and the widget lets them know if I'm online, and if so they can just type away. 2) I don't forget to start it - since it's web-based I simply have the meebo webpage as one of my tabs in firefox and whenever I start my browser (first thing I do whenever I'm at my computer) meebo is there.

Meebo also has chat rooms (I haven't used these yet), that allow you to import almost any kind of media (audio/video) and you can invite your students to it to create a synchronous environment for viewing course material and discussing it as a group.

Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
College of Business Administration (407) 823-5739

When professors have the guts to call drivel, er ...  ahh, drivel!
But when is the critique more drivel than the passage being reviewed?

But my advisor is also a tough reader, and I find that after all these years of being a student I am still learning how to take criticism. To wit: in my recent draft, written in bold, red ink is one word that succinctly represents what he thinks of the passage — “drivel.” I quickly forgot all of the good things he had said about my argument as I focused on this one word, brutally penned in the margin. My incisive points, my elegantly constructed sentences, all reduced to a one-word judgment.
 Jason Pickavance, "On Drivel," Inside Higher Ed, October 8, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/10/05/pickavance

Jensen Comment
In the above article Jason respects his advisor for having the guts to write "drivel" in the margin of a page in Jason's thesis draft. What's interesting is how there's such a fine line between a reviewer that's respected by an author and a reviewer that the author considers a complete jerk. Most of the time the difference lies in the reviewer's ability to convince the author that the passage really is drivel. So often, however, reviewers are either too casual (assuming it should be obvious even to a moron why the passage is drivel) or try to back it up with opposing drivel. The latter two instances are where the reviewer becomes a jerk. Jerks seem to be part and parcel to the peer review process along with the good reviewers.

Faulty Towers:  Most Science Studies Appear to Be Tainted By Sloppy Analysis and Superficial Peer Reviews
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PeerReviewFlaws

Video:  Rob Sutton on how to deal with jerks ("assholes") at work
Should you hire at least one in your department?
Rob Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, talks about his "No Asshole Rule" and why he is trying to perfect indifference  --- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/article2393769.ece

In his literal last lecture at Carnegie-Mellon, Randy Pausch said something to the effect that if there’s a jerk you really don’t like, be patient and wait long enough and the jerk will most likely do something that you really like (other than dropping dead). That's truly been my experience, although jerks typically go back to being jerks.

October 7, 2007 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]

Bob,

Of course, in the long run any jerk will do something you like, but not because (s)he relishes your pleasant surprise, but because whatever is the issue resulting in your surprise reflects congruence of interests. My experience is that jerks are quite willing to (and often do) play the prisoner's dilemma games with you.

I have had more than my share of jerks over my career (to be frank, there seem to be more of them in the academia than in the industry -- often, idle mind is a devil's workshop, or may be they often think tenure confers the right to be a jerk). Usually, they are selfish, and revel in the misery of their colleagues. Isn't it a surprise Mahatma Gandhi said that humans are the only species that revel in the misery of fellow-beings?

I must say, I also have been blessed with many wonderful colleagues, and their company keeps me going in the academia. There is something mystical about bonds created through research that endure a long time; that is something I did not have in the corporate world.

Jagdish

 

Relativity Derived Without Calculus -- Possibly Centuries Ago
After Einstein developed his theories of special and general relativity, in 1905 and 1916, respectively, the world of physics changed dramatically. The theories, with their groundbreaking ideas on space and time, helped lead 20th century scientists to unlock the secrets of the atom and unleash the power of nuclear energy .Now Joel Gannett, a Senior Scientist in the Applied Research Area of Telcordia Technologies in Red Bank, New Jersey, has found that Einstein didn’t have to do the work the hard way. A researcher in optical networking technologies, Gannett has shown that the Lorentz transformations and velocity addition law can be derived without assuming the constancy of the speed of light, without thought experiments, and without calculus. In this case, Einsteinian relativity could have been discovered several centuries before Einstein. “Einsteinian Relativity is difficult to wrap your mind around,” Gannett told PhysOrg.com. “It does not help that Einstein's seminal 1905 paper, and many discussions of the topic since, start off with the wildly counterintuitive assumption that the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames. “My work shows that the essential strangeness of Einsteinian Relativity falls out of simple, intuitive assumptions using simple math. A pre-calculus high school student could have derived Einsteinian Relativity. Admittedly, some of the math in my paper might seem beyond the high school level, but that was because I was proving continuity from a boundedness assumption. One could bypass this math by simply assuming continuity, a logical step that would probably feel comfortable to most any high schooler or 17th century scientist.”
Lisa Zyga, PhysOrg, October 8, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news111075100.html

Lynn Brewer versus Sherron Watkins Whistleblowers at Enron

October 14, 2007 message from dberesfo@uga.edu

Bob,

There was a terrific story in Friday's edition of USA that unmasks a phony whistle blower at Enron who has established an "ethics institute." Sorry I'm out of town and don't have the link but I'm sure you can find it easily. Cynthia Cooper, who was a real hero in uncovering the WorldCom fraud, is coming out with a book in early December that is a grat read.

Denny

October 15. 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

Thanks Denny.

Lynn Brewer was never enough of a player to even mention in my threads on the Enron scandal --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

I’m glad Brewer and her book are being discredited --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnronBrewer.htm
Fortunately she was not a fourth woman on the cover of Time Magazine in 2002 (see below)
Here's what USA Today did to Lynn Brewer:
          Halloween Hangman (interactive video, hit the buttons)  --- http://www.dedge.com/flash/hangman/hangman.swf

I hope Lynn Brewer is added to Jude Werra's "Liars Index" (See Below for “Executives Making It by Faking It”)
But then again Lynn Brewer even lied about being an executive at Enron

 I’m sure you know that Sherron Watkins was an executive VP whistleblower at Enron who had more dirty words in her vocabulary than a rap star. The failure of Arthur Andersen’s top brass to act on her disclosures about Fastow’s SPE frauds became a huge embarrassment all the way to the top of Andersen.

"Time Names Whistle-Blowers as Persons of the Year 2002", Reuters, December 22, 2002 --- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=1948721 

Time Magazine named a trio of women whistle-blowers as its Persons of the Year on Sunday, praising their roles in unearthing malfeasance that eroded public confidence in their institutions.

Two of the women, Sherron Watkins, a vice president at Enron Corp., and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom Inc., uncovered massive accounting fraud at their respective companies, which both went bankrupt.

The third, Coleen Rowley, is an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In May, she wrote a scathing 13-page memo to FBI Director Robert Muller detailing how supervisors at a Minneapolis, Minnesota field office brushed aside her requests to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11th attacks, weeks before the attacks occurred.

"It came down to did we want to recognize a phenomenon that helped correct some of the problems we've had over the last year and celebrate three ordinary people that did extraordinary things," said Time managing editor Jim Kelly.

Other people considered by the magazine, which hits stores on Monday, included President Bush, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Vice President Dick Cheney and New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer.

Bush was seen by some as the front-runner, especially after he led his party to a mid-term electoral upset in November that cemented the party's majority in Congress.

However, Kelly said "some of (Bush's) own goals: the capture of Osama bin Laden, the unseating of Saddam Hussein, the revival of a sluggish economy, haven't happened yet. There was a sense of bigger things to come, and it might be wise to see how things played out," he added.

Watkins, 43, is a former accountant best known for a blunt, prescient 7-page memo to Enron chairman Kenneth Lay in 2001 that uncovered questionable accounting and warned that the company could "implode in a wave of accounting scandals."

Her letter came to light during a post-mortem inquiry conducted by Congress after the company declared bankruptcy.

Cooper undertook a one-woman crusade inside telecommunications behemoth WorldCom, when she discovered that the company had disguised $3.8 billion in losses through improper accounting.

When the scandal came to light in June after the company declared bankruptcy, jittery investors laid siege to global stock markets.

FBI agent and lawyer Rowley's secret memo was leaked to the press in May. Weeks before Sept. 11, Rowley suspected Moussaoui might have ties to radical activities and bin Laden, and she asked supervisors for clearance to search his computer.

Her letter sharply criticized the agency's hidebound culture and its decision-makers, and gave rise to new inquiries over the intelligence-gathering failures of Sept. 11.

Bob Jensen's threads on the Enron and Worldcom scandals are at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on whistle blowing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#WhistleBlowing

"Executives: Making It by Faking It:  Wisconsin headhunter Jude Werra's "Liars Index" of faked résumé claims hit a five-year high in the first half of 2007," Business Week, by Joseph Daniel McCool, Business Week, October 4, 2007 --- Click Here 

. . . Jude Werra. The president of Brookfield (Wis.)-based Jude M. Werra & Associates has spent the better part of 25 years documenting executive résumé fraud, credentials inflation, and the misrepresentation of executive educational credentials. It's something that has kept Werra pretty busy over the years, given the prevalence of such management-level chicanery and the fact that so many ambitious and transition-minded individuals have convinced themselves that it's their credentials—real or otherwise—that matter most.

Stopping at Nothing to Get to the Top Werra's semiannual barometer of executive résumé deception—his very own "Liars Index"—hit a five-year high, based on his review of résumés he received during the first half of 2007. He figures that about 16% of executive résumés contain false academic claims and/or material omissions relating to educational experience. That was up five percentage points from the levels he witnessed between July and December of last year.

And when you account for the fudging of claims of experience unrelated to academic degrees earned, it's easy to see why executive headhunters generally acknowledge that as many as one-third of management-level résumés contain errors, exaggerations, material omissions, and/or blatant falsehoods.

Some people will stop at almost nothing to get to where they want in their career. Still, Werra wonders why otherwise experienced executives would inflate their credentials or otherwise mislead with their résumé, in light of the potential career-ending consequences.

Checking References Isn't Enough Given the alarming levels to which they do attempt to mislead, he constantly reminds hiring organizations that it's critical that they verify what they read on résumés, even at the executive level. What's even more alarming—and more prevalent than people falsifying their backgrounds and qualifications—is the number of hiring organizations who fail to conduct a rigorous background check on their new management recruits. Far too many organizations figure that checking a few references is enough.

And even the most thorough reference checks won't uncover false claims that predate those references' own professional interactions with the individual executive. It's quite possible that a fabrication of one's education, certifications, and experience is what got the executive his first management job many years ago, leaving the trail cold unless it's reopened during the course of a diligent background check.

When it comes to executive-level hiring that's going to cost the organization into the high six figures, at minimum, when you factor in headhunting fees, the new executive's salary, and benefits, it becomes a matter of caveat emptor.

Let the Hiring Company Beware And while it may be tempting to believe that an executive recruiter will uncover any issues during the courtship process, it's ultimately up to the hiring organization to know exactly who it is that's being hired. Sure, misrepresentation will cost the unscrupulous executive, but it can also wreak havoc on a company's brand, workforce, and external relations teams.

Beyond the boundaries of checking claims made by an individual on his or her résumé, the hiring organization can trust that engaging the services of a professional background-screening consultant will pay off. These consultants often come with significant experience in law enforcement, and they can help uncover such things as criminal convictions, unpaid child support, and other hidden issues that should influence the hiring decision.

A thorough background check is an important insurance policy for the recruiting process, and headhunters will tell you that your organization risks getting burned if an executive it hires has, at any time in his or her past, decided to assume the risks of playing with fire.

Given the high cost of a bad executive hire, today's organizations simply can't afford not to do their homework.

Sixteen "Greatest Moments" on the Web

October 9, 2007 message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

PCWorld's listing of the Web's greatest moments. It will take you on a saunter down memory lane.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137824/article.html?tk=nl_wbxcol 

David Albrecht

To his credit, Professor Hornik (see video link below) at the University of Central Florida has been experimenting with a Second Life 3-D Accounting Model for accounting education. The PBS update called the "The Rise (and Hype) of Second Life" may be of interest to those of you who are thinking experimenting with Second Life

First read the definition of an “avatar” at --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar

Second read about Second Life at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

Second Life 3-D Accounting Model

July 13, 2007 message from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

Since there has been some interest regarding Second Life on this list from time to time, I wanted to share a demo of a model I created in Second Life that I will be using with my class this coming Fall. It's a 3-D interactive accounting model (A=L+E). If you are in Second Life and want to play with it let me know. It's currently on my Parcel in Sweetbay, but will be moving to Teaching 4, part of the New Media Consortium's archipelago, where University of Central Florida's accounting department has just leased a plot!

Link to blog post about the model:
http://www.mydebitcredit.com/2007/07/12/beginning-journey/ 

Link to YouTube video (no reading required):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4T4zTStVK6Y 

My Second Life Avatar is Robins Hermano if you wish to chat 'in-world'

_____________________________
Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
College of Business Administration
(407) 823-5739

From Media Shift (PBS) , October 11, 2007 --- http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/

The Rise (and Hype) of Second Life

While other worlds were withering, Linden Labs was developing a new world called Second Life, first launched in 2003. It languished for a few years until 2006, when Second Life grabbed the attention of the media and marketers who saw it as a new way of communicating and selling online. BusinessWeek ran a cover story called My Virtual Life, breathlessly explaining that “big advertisers are taking notice.” And Wired Magazine ran a special travel guide to Second Life, while Reuters assigned a full-time reporter, dubbed “Adam Reuters,” to cover news in the world (now there are two).

In Second Life, you can create your own objects and buildings in the world, and you own the intellectual property of what you build Plus, “Linden dollars” are a currency you can trade with real dollars; real-world businesses sell customized stores, avatar wear and just about any kind of “bling” you could want in the virtual world. Universities offer distance learning courses through Second Life, and bands play live shows and chat with fans in special in-world venues. Linden says it has registered nearly 10 million avatars for Second Life.

The buzz around Second Life led many people to explore virtual worlds for the first time, but many ended up disappointed. Even though computer hardware and bandwidth have improved since the ’90s virtual worlds, Second Life still requires high-end systems and a lot of practice to master the interface. The number of registered Second Life avatars is misleading: Many people simply try it out and give up, while others have multiple avatars. A more representative number for regular users is the number who have logged in during the past seven days, which was 338,068 as of October 7.

That lower number also presents a problem for the crush of marketers such as Coca-Cola and Adidas who have set up virtual spaces in Second Life, only to have them largely vacant. After Wired magazine hyped Second Life with its travel guide, the magazine then did an about-face and ran an article titled, How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life. Many marketers spent the money — in the tens of thousands of dollars — to build a virtual island as an experiment but then got little payoff. Residents are dispersed throughout the virtual world so it’s difficult to get their attention en masse, plus there’s a limit to the number of people who can congregate in one place without crashing Linden’s servers.

(For a detailed argument on Wired’s story and the problem of empty spaces in Second Life, check out this blog post by Wired editor Chris Anderson and the ensuing debate in the comments.)

"Professor Avatar," by Christopher Conway, Inside Higher Ed, October 16, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/10/16/conway 

Only the last portion of the article is quoted below:

In short, you cannot put yourself “on” the Internet for others to see without creating an avatar. So, as we do more with teaching technology, as we record and videotape ourselves, and make interactive C.V.’s and homepages, we become more and more avatar-ish. We make countless choices, conscious and otherwise, about what to reveal about ourselves and how to stylize ourselves. The end result is our avatar who speaks for us on the Web. We fundamentally change our relationship to our students, who become viewers and consumers of our avatars, and who may increasingly interact with us through avatars of their own, such as their Facebook and MySpace pages. We speak to students through instant messaging at 2:30 a.m. when we discover that we are both online on our course Web page at the same time. We discuss course material and issues through soundbites and dialogical fragments of text on class message boards. We e-mail more. And we insinuate ourselves into each other’s personal lives through facebook or myspace profiles, which also facilitate staying in touch with students when they leave our classes. True, sometimes the interactions feel less real or substantial in comparison to interacting in person, but other times I am surprised at how some students open up more in an internet environment than they do in person.

Academic avatars are also powerful teaching tools. Not in the sense that it is inherently good to substitute an authentic, teacherly self with a virtual one, but in the sense of allowing the live, teaching self to have more qualitative, spontaneous and fruitful interaction in the classroom. The Teaching Avatar, in his/her virtual environment, can be utilized to channel traditional pedagogies so that a live teacher can spend more time on dynamic activities like discussion and groupwork during the class period. My thinking here is informed by my own experience but also by a recent essay by José Bowen of Southern Methodist University titled “Teaching Naked: Why Removing Technology from Your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning.” In the essay, which has widely circulated on the Internet among teachers, Bowen writes that “The most obvious way to open up class time for those best ‘aha’ moments is to remove your recitation of content (the lecture) from the class room.... Most of your lectures (all of the ones covering ‘content’) can be turned into videos, but interactive discussion cannot.” In other words, take technology out of the physical act of teaching face-to-face and put it online. Become a Teaching Avatar so that you can be more authentic and receptive as a live teacher.

Indeed going virtual to free up class time for discussion has never been easier than it is now. I can record a lecture in audio on my laptop or even make a video of myself through the computer’s built-in webcam, export the media into easily accesible formats (such as.mpg for audio or quicktime for video), and post it on my course blog where students can acquire it. Programs such as Camtasia and Profcast, and free web productivity tools like Slideshare and Zoho Show, allow professors to marry their powerpoints with audio and preserve them for posting on websites. Some professors, like Veselin Jungic of Canada’s Simon Fraser University, have gone even further, producing original films for posting on youtube to aid student learning. Jungic has created cartoons starring an avatar called “Math Girl” for assisting students in first-year calculus.

In closing there is another way in which academic avatars may prove to be indispensable to faculty members from now on. At no other time in history have academics in specialized disciplines been able to get their work read around the world with so much ease. Faculty who avoid academic avatars and technology altogether are missing out. For example, the work I did as an assistant professor in Latin American studies was picked up from my research Web site by Civilization Magazine, a non-virtual publication of the Smithsonian Institution, and by several Chilean newspapers. The online version of the UK’s Guardian newspaper has linked my scholarship twice, three M.A. students from Europe are using my work because of my homepage and an editor at the Financial Times may or may not be thinking about quoting me in a major piece he is currently writing (but I know that he is reading me because he found me online and asked me for help procuring my scholarship.) Academic avatars may be problematic for many reasons, but they undoubtedly have great potential for making academic work connect.

All faculty now live in the age of academic avatars. As the professorate becomes younger, more Internet savvy and avatar-ish, professors who don’t use avatars may become marginalized. Students who shop for classes online may be drawn more to courses taught by faculty with avatars. Scholarship made available through avatars may garner some faculty more attention than others. Why turn down a chance to help your class make when it may typically have trouble with enrollments? Why turn down a chance to have your work read and disseminated? And why not take your lecture out of the classroom and put it on YouTube so that you can do something more creative in class? You don’t have to take pictures of yourself holding a martini and peering at your students like a creep in a bar, and post them on your faculty homepage right next to your publications, but you wouldn’t be the first if you did. And when and if you regret that sleazy avatar, you can discard it and start all over again, at the touch of a button.

Christopher Conway is director of the Spanish Program in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Texas at Arlington. A pathway to his avatars can be found here.

Recruiting directors might create some employee-accountant avatars to show a more human side of their employees to overcome the traditional and often distorted view of accountants as boring geeks.
The following link was forwarded by Ed Scribner.

"Accounting firms hit cyberspace with hip marketing," by Greg Barr, Houston Business Journal, October 5, 2007 --- http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2007/10/08/story6.html

Meet Katie.

She never forgets a face. She has sung at Carnegie Hall. She goes through a pack of gum half a stick at a time. And, by the way, she works for Pannell Kerr Forster of Texas PC.

Katie Shearin, a recruiting coordinator in the human capital department of accounting firm PKF Texas, is the new, fresh face of the Houston-based company. One of several new faces, in fact, that adorn the career section of the firm's Web site as part of a marketing campaign using younger employees to help reel in college recruits.

Employees are profiled highlighting likes and dislikes similar to what might appear on a dating Web site -- minus any mention of astrology signs or more intimate details. Such a strategy is meant to ensure that the words "boring" and "accountant" no longer pop up in the same sentence.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently approached Bloomfield about studying how to create financial accounting standards that will assist investors as much as possible, he quickly turned to the virtual world for answers.

"Theory Meets Practice Online: Researchers and academics are looking to online worlds such as Second Life to shed new light on old economic questions," by Francesca Di Meglio, Business Week, July 24, 2007 --- Click Here 

In fact, many economics researchers, including Bloomfield, professor of accounting at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, are using the virtual environment to test ideas involving staples of economics such as game theory, the effects of regulation, and issues involving money. Since 1989, Bloomfield has been running experiments in the lab in which he creates small game economies to study narrow issues. But when the Financial Accounting Standards Board recently approached Bloomfield about studying how to create financial accounting standards that will assist investors as much as possible, he quickly turned to the virtual world for answers.

"It would be very difficult to look at the complex issues that FASB is trying to address with eight people in a laboratory playing a very simple economic game," he says. "I started looking for how I could create a more realistic economy with more players dealing with a high degree of complexity. It didn't take me long to realize that people in virtual worlds are already doing just that."

. . .

At Indiana University, researcher Edward Castronova has posed the idea of creating multiple virtual economies to study the effects of different regulatory policies. At Indiana, Castronova is director of the Synthethic Worlds Initiative, a research center to study virtual worlds. "The opportunity is to conduct controlled research experiments at the level of all society, something social scientists have never been able to do before," the center's Web site notes (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/1/06, "Virtual World, Virtual Economies").

A virtual stock market is certainly not the only online entity that opens itself up to research. Marketers are already using the virtual world to test campaigns, packaging, and consumer satisfaction. Pepsi (PEP) famously tracks use of its products in There.com. Architects seek reaction to design. Starwood Hotels (HOT) test-marketed its new loft designs in Second Life (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/23/06, "Starwood Hotels Explore Second Life First").

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade in education technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
Bob Jensen's technology glossary is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm

Jensen Comment
Satellite broadband is great downloading alternative in the boondocks where cable and DSL connections are not available. But relative to cable and DSL broadband alternatives, satellite downloading is slower and satellite uploading is via a snail's pace landline telephone  --- http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question606.htm
 

Ethics Centers in Universities Devote Scant Attention to Ethics Breaches in Their Own Houses

"Ethics 101," by Peter Berkowitz, The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2007, Page A19 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119179910354751467.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

It should not be surprising that our universities generate interesting and urgent ethical challenges. After all, higher education is a big business. Scholarship is a demanding discipline. Teaching is a noble undertaking fraught with weighty responsibilities. And liberal education plays a crucial role in the formation of free citizens.

What may surprise is that, at the programs and centers devoted to the study of ethics and the professions that have been established over the last two decades at our leading universities, one profession whose ethical issues the professors generally ignore is their own.

The return to campus this fall brings sharp reminders of the confusion about their purpose that plagues our campuses, and so underscores the need for serious study of university ethics. In the recently published and already critically acclaimed book "Until Proven Innocent," K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. show how the Duke University faculty and administration collaborated with a reckless press and a lawless prosecutor in the rush to convict in the court of public opinion -- and, but for the superb work of their attorneys, in the criminal courts of Durham, N.C. -- three white lacrosse players falsely accused of raping an African-American stripper.

On Sept. 28, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, "Indoctrinate U," Evan Coyne Maloney's riveting documentary about the war on free speech and individual rights waged by university faculty and administrations enjoyed its Washington premiere. Also, in September, for crystal clear political reasons, following a faculty petition circulated mostly by women from the University of California, Davis, the UC Board of Regents withdrew a speaking invitation to former Secretary of the Treasury and former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

But don't expect the leading ethics centers -- Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Princeton's Program on Ethics and Public Affairs, or Yale's Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics -- to sponsor lectures, fund graduate student and faculty fellowships, or publish writings that examine these and numerous other ethical questions that stem from contemporary university life. While lavishing attention on legal, political and medical ethics, and to a lesser extent business ethics and journalism ethics -- worthy areas of inquiry all -- our leading university ethicists have shown scant interest in exploring university ethics.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary last spring, the Harvard University Program on Ethics and the Professions is among the nation's oldest and most distinguished. Yet of the more than 130 public lectures by eminent visitors sponsored over the last two decades by the Harvard ethics program, only three deal with the university -- one defending affirmative action, one defending the propriety of academics engaging in public debate and one defending academic freedom. The program's Web site lists more than 875 publications by over 120 ethics fellows and senior scholars. Hundreds of the writings deal with law and politics and ethics. Hundreds explore medicine and ethics. Dozens discuss business ethics. But only about 10 of the 875 publications, and five of the 120 authors, address university ethics.

Take away a few defenses of affirmative action and multiculturalism, and a few reflections on teaching ethics at the university, and little is left. All in all, after 20 years of generously funding research in practical or applied ethics, Harvard's program has made no discernible contribution to illuminating the challenges of university governance, and the variety of duties and conflicts confronted in their professional roles by professors and administrators.

Much the same holds true of the Yale Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics and the Princeton University Center for Human Values.

What explains the neglect by our leading university ethics programs of a vital topic that so plainly falls under their purview? The major cause is probably routine thoughtlessness: Surrounded by like-minded souls and therefore protected from questions that might rock the boat, and from research projects that might call for scholarly retooling, it may never occur to many ethics professors that, no less than law, medicine, business and journalism, their profession too is worthy of systematic scrutiny.

One cannot rule out that a few ethics faculty may have convinced themselves that professors and administrators, because of their peculiar virtue, already confront and wisely dispose of all the moral dilemmas and professional conflicts of interest that come before them. It would not be the first time that intellectuals, so aggressive in finding false-consciousness and self-interest in others, concealed or overlooked their own.

Nevertheless, if they are impelled or compelled to overcome disciplinary inertia and intellectual orthodoxy and turn their attention to their own profession, professional ethicists will discover a trove of fascinating and timely questions. Here are a few:

Is it proper for university disciplinary boards, often composed of faculty and administrators with no special knowledge of the law, to investigate student accusations of sexual assault by fellow students, which involve crimes for which perpetrators can go to jail for decades?

Should universities have one set of rules and punishments for students who plagiarize or pay others to write their term papers, and another -- and lesser -- set for professors who plagiarize or pay others to write their articles and books, or should students and faculty be held to the same tough standards of intellectual integrity?

How can universities respect both professors' academic freedom and students' right to be instructed in the diversity of opinions?

What is the proper balance in hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions between the need for transparency and accountability and the need for confidentiality?

What institutional arrangements give university trustees adequate independence from the administrators they review?

Is it consistent with their mission for university presses to publish books whose facts and footnotes they do not check?

In accordance with what principles may a university bar ROTC from campus because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy" concerning homosexuals, while inviting to campus a foreign leader whose country not only punishes private consensual homosexual sex but is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, and who himself denies the Holocaust and threatens to obliterate the sovereign state of Israel?

By exploring these and myriad other issues, our ethics programs would do more than fulfill their mandate. They would also vindicate liberal education by demonstrating the premium academicians place on ensuring that their own practice conforms to the proper principles.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a professor at George Mason University School of Law.

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

A Gender Bender
Deloitte Tries a Different Sales Pitch for Women

Nancy Camarota, a customer-relations executive at Allied Waste Industries Inc., said she thought it was odd when a Deloitte & Touche USA LLP consultant used an exclamation point in an email. "Guys do not use exclamation points," she thought. "Is he making fun of me?"  . . . Ms. Benko started exploring the issue while researching ways to retain and attract female employees. She teamed up with TrendSight Group, a Winnetka, Ill., consulting firm and after interviewing senior women executives and Deloitte employees, they concluded that the same discovery process women use when doing personal shopping applies to purchasing business services. A woman might go into a store for black pants, for example, but then see something else she likes and buy that, too, or change her mind. Men just buy the pants.
Erin White, "Deloitte Tries a Different Sales Pitch for Women," The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2007; Page B1---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119180210846051773.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
Jensen Comment
As John Stossel would say, "Give us a break." What does this make me? I use exclamation points all the time.

Report offers new analysis of strengths of countries in attracting the best foreign talent for higher education

"The Mobile International Student," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, October 10, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/10/mobile

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

VegCooking --- http://www.vegcooking.com/ 

Related Links
Bon Appetite Magazine
Bake Cookies
Cooking.com*
Gourmet Magazine
GourmetSpot
Pumpkin Soup Recipes
Spanish Tapas*
SpiceGuide
Spice World
Vegetarian

"The Accounting Cycle:  The Merrill Lynch-Enron-Government Conspiracy," by: J. Edward Ketz, SmartPros, October 2007 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x59129.xml 

October 2007 — If I were a getaway driver for a group of bank thieves, should I go Scot-free if I weren't the primary thief? I doubt that many people would answer yes. Then how come Merrill Lynch is on the verge of escaping the wrath of investors because of its involvement in some of Enron's corporate and accounting frauds?

The Securities and Exchange Commission lays out the facts in various documents such as Litigation Release No. 20159 and Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release No. 2619, and in the related Complaint in the U.S. District Court.

Managers at Enron needed to prop up the firm's net income and cash flows in 1999, so in December 1999 Jeffrey McMahon, then treasurer of Enron, negotiated with managers at Merrill Lynch to purchase an interest in Enron's Nigerian barges. Executives from Merrill Lynch balked because there were some significant issues about the value of this investment, so McMahon and other Enron officials sweetened the pot by giving an oral promise to repurchase the investment in six months, and they promised Merrill Lynch an annualized return of 22 percent.

The Merrill Lynch managers agreed to the transaction, which was consummated in mid-December 1999 and was reversed in late June 2000 when Merrill Lynch sold its investment in the Nigerian barges to LJM2, one of the infamous special purpose entities of Enron.

Litigation Release No. 18038 complements this discussion but it focuses on Merrill Lynch's involvement in this scheme. (Also see the related complaint). The SEC claimed that Merrill Lynch and senior managers Robert Furst, Schuyler Tilney, Daniel Bayly, and Thomas Davis committed securities fraud by assisting top-level Enron managers in depicting a loan as if it were an authentic sale of Nigerian barges, plus engaging in two energy option contracts that canceled each other out, but for which Enron improperly recorded income.

The SEC summed the case this way, "Based on their substantial assistance to Enron, defendants aided and abetted Enron's violations of the federal securities laws." Merrill Lynch the firm settled with the SEC by agreeing to pay disgorgement, penalties, and interest of $80 million.

In a 2004 trial, a jury found these four Merrill executives guilty of participating in a fraudulent scheme. The former Merrill managers appealed the verdicts, and amazingly the Fifth Circuit tossed them out. The appellate court held that those bankers provided "honest services" and that they did not personally profit from the deal.

That argument assumes that getaway drivers supply honest services to bank robbers; after all, an oral agreement to repurchase the investment at 22 percent return is a strong signal that something is amiss with the transaction. The argument also shows a lack of understanding how managers profit in the real world. Investment bankers advance their careers by bringing in business that generates income for the bank; Merrill Lynch's executives did that with the Enron barge transaction, thereby promoting their careers, their promotions, and their salaries and bonuses, even if in an indirect fashion.

Shareholders led by the University of California brought a class-action suit against Merrill Lynch and other banks, including Credit Suisse First Boston, who participated in several sham pre-pay transactions with Enron, and Barclays, who engaged in sham transactions with Enron via a special purpose entity named Colonnade. Other banks had settled with the plaintiffs, including Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (settling at $2.4 billion) and Citigroup ($2 billion). The trial never got off the ground, as the Fifth Circuit tossed it out on a 2-1 vote. With astounding hubris, the majority acknowledged that its decision did not "coincide … with notions of justice and fair play." Plaintiffs have appealed to the Supreme Court where those quaint notions may still exist.

This state of affairs stems from the 1994 case Central Bank of Denver v. First Interstate Bank of Denver. The Supreme Court decreed that professional advisers who knowingly aid and abet securities fraud are not liable to victims. The Court said that the securities laws do not extend that far and invited Congress to rewrite the securities laws if its members thought the provisions defining securities fraud should extend to professional advisers. The Congress extended it a bit, allowing the SEC to take modest actions against such culprits, but the Congress did not extend Section 10(b) provisions to aggrieved shareholders.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment: 
I double dare you to go to my "Rotten to the Core" threads and search for every instance of "Merrill" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

Bob Jensen's Enron Quiz is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnronQuiz.htm 

"Credit card fraud soars, despite new safeguards," AccountingWeb, October 11, 2007 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104098

New fraud-prevention technology has made credit card crime more difficult in the U.K., but it is increasing in other countries that have not adopted "chip-and-pin" safeguards. Chip-and-pin credit cards are cards containing electronic chips that contain the information otherwise found on magnetic strips. According to the Association of Payment Clearing Services (APACS), the U.K. clearing service, credit card crime in the U.K. dropped 4 percent in the first half of this year, compared with the

first six months of 2006. However, fraud on UK-issued cards, primarily in the U.S., rose 126 percent during that time. Chip-and-pin is not accepted universally, so cardholders' names and account numbers, expiration dates, and security codes are still stored on the magnetic strip of a credit or debit card, as well as on the microchip.

Criminals are copying the data on the strip to create a fake card that is then used in a country that has yet to upgrade to chip-and-pin technology, the BBC reported. All European Union members plan to upgrade by 2010.

Fraud patterns are changing. Last year, losses suffered by retailers, credit card users and financial institutions fell by 3 percent. But this year the numbers are rising due to the surge of cloned cards in the U.S. and elsewhere, along with a 44 percent increase in online and telephone fraud for the first half of this year, reported.

The good news in the U.K. is that online banking fraud is down, thanks to chip-and-pin and other security measures, as are losses from stolen cards being used to withdraw money from cash machines, which is down by 57 percent. When it comes to transactions where the cardholder is present, fraud has fallen 11 percent, FinanceWeek reported.

U.S. companies are boosting spending on credit card security, however, under the threat of fines. According to The Wall Street Journal, rules called the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standards discourage encoding customer information on the magnetic strips. The rules call for ways to encrypt information to make it unreadable to hackers and methods to control employee access to sensitive information. The rules are not new, but Visa has announced it would start levying fines of up to $25,000 a month to large merchants who aren't following the rules.

Forrester Research says that the biggest merchants in the U.S. are forecast to spend $400 million to $500 million this year on technology to meet the security standards.

Another technology is making its way into circulation in the U.K.: a bank card that allows shoppers to pay for inexpensive items without using a PIN or signature, The Times of London reported. These so-called contactless cards will be issued in London over the next couple of months. APACS estimates 5 million will be issued by the end of next year.

Contactless payment cards use short-range radio to exchange payment information with the register for items less than £10. Shoppers merely tap their debit or credit cards on a reader. A PIN will still be needed for more expensive items.

Robert Kenly of moneysupermarket.com, a price comparison site, told the Times: "There will be a number of checks in place and so long as cardholders remember to report lost cards immediately, they will always have any losses refunded. For some people it will perhaps seem too risky but, as with anything new, once people have tried it they may find that they actually like it."

Banks in the U.S. have been issuing contactless cards since 2003, with more than 10 million now accepted by 30,000 shops and restaurants, the Times reported.

Bob Jensen's threads on credit card scams are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ConsumerFraud

"American Electric Power Settles $4.6B Pollution Suit," NPR, October 9, 2007 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15117556

American Electric Power Co. is required to:
- Spend $4.6 billion on so-called scrubbers and other pollution controls to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, which cause acid rain and smog.
- Cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 69 percent by 2016, and reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 79 percent by 2018.
- Pay civil fines of $15 million.
- Pay $60 million in mitigation measures. The money includes $21 million to reduce emissions from barges and trucks in the Ohio River Valley; $24 million for projects to conserve energy and produce alternative energy; and $3 million for the Chesapeake Bay, $2 million for Shenandoah National Park and $10 million to acquire ecologically sensitive lands in Appalachia.

"Good Grief," by By Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, October 10, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/10/10/mclemee

Wilson (who had started using psychoanalysis as a means of interpreting literary works well before this was required by law) saw in the figure of Philoctetes something like an allegorical emblem for the artist’s inner life. Neurosis is the agonizing wound that leaves the sufferer isolated and bitter, while genius is the ability to bend the bow, to do what others cannot. Creativity and psychic pain, “like strength and mutilation,” as Wilson put it, “may be inextricably bound up together.”

Not such a novel idea, after all this time. And one prone to abuse — reducing artistic creativity to symptomatology. (Or, worse, elevating symptomatology into art: a phenomenon some of us first encounter while dating.)

In Wilson’s hands, though, it was a way through the labyrinth of a writer’s work, of finding hidden passages within it. The two longest studies in The Wound and the Bow were interpretations of Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling: two authors whose critical reputations had been nearly done in by their commercial success. Wilson’s criticism, while biographical in method, did not take the debunking route. If he documented the wound, he also showed the strength with which each figure could draw the bow.

Now, I’m not really sure that the archer serves all that well as a model of the artist. (The myths of Daedelus or Orpheus work better, for a variety of reasons, and cover much of the same analogical ground.) On the other hand, Philoctetes did tend to complain a lot — as did Charles Schulz, it seems. The cartoonist emerges from his biographer’s pages as a man of numerous griefs and grievances. His life was shaped by an upbringing that was economically secure but emotionally complex. His childhood was spent among among relatives who expressed affection through joking insults (to give things the most positive construction possible).

Michaelis, who has also written about the life of the painter N.C. Wyeth, offers numerous well-framed appreciations of Schulz’s artistry. The book is Wilsonian, in that sense. But any revaluation of “Peanuts” as cultural artifact is bound to be less a topic for conversation than the unveiling of details about his melancholia and his resentments.

An episode of the documentary series “American Masters” on PBS airing later this month will be tied to the book, which should reach stores any day now. Soon it will be common knowledge that everyone who met the cartoonist’s first wife had a pretty good idea where Lucy originated. Numerous “Peanuts” strips are embedded throughout the book — each of them echoing events or situations in Schulz’s life or some aspect of his personality and relationships. (Members of his family are complaining about the biography, a development to be expected.)

The cartoons themselves — however telling as illustrations of things the biographer has discovered about Schulz — are rich works in their own right. They fall somewhere between art and literature; but those categories really don’t matter very much, because they create their own little world. The biography derives its meaning from the cartoons and not vice versa.

So in an effort to restore some balance, I’d like to recommend some supplementary reading about “Peanuts” — an essay that says very little about Schulz himself. It focuses instead on what he created. How an artist becomes capable of bending the bow is difficult to understand. Biography is one approach, but it does not exhaust the topic. (In a way it only begins to pose the riddle.)

The piece in question is “The World of Charlie Brown” by Umberto Eco. It appeared in his collection Apocalittica e integrati, a volume that became rather notorious when it first appeared in 1964. Parts of the collection were translated, along with some later pieces, as Apocalypse Postponed (Indiana University Press, 1994)

Like other essays in the book, the analysis of “Peanuts” is part of Eco’s challenge to familiar arguments about “mass culture,” whether framed in Marxist or conservative terms. Either way, the theorists who wrote about the topic tended to be denunciatory. Eco, who was 32 when Apocalittica appeared, had published a couple of monographs on medieval intellectual history and was also working on semiotics and the philosophy of language. Aside from teaching, he paid the bills by working for a television network and a trade publisher. All the quasi-sociological hand-wringing about the media struck Eco as rather obtuse, and he did not hesitate to say so.

From the vantage point of someone who had written about the aesthetic theory of Thomas Aquinus, it was not self-evident that “mass culture” was the fresh horror that worried his contemporaries. He saw it beginning with the cathedrals — or at least no later than the printing press. The fact that Eco wrote about Superman and television worried some of the reviewers.

Continued in article

In The Wound and the Bow, Edmund Wilson analyzes how various writers, such as Dickens, Wharton, and Hemingway, used the central wound of their life as the major material of their art. Throughout her entire childhood, a writer I know worked fiendishly hard in the hope of becoming a professional ballet dancer. She entered the Harkness Ballet trainee program at eighteen, but she left after less than a year. It’s only right that her first book, published a couple of years ago when she was in her mid-forties, is a collection of stories set in the world of ballet, and her novel-in-progress is told from the point of view of George Balanchine. In Rocky, asked what he sees in dowdy Adrian, Rocky says, “She fills gaps.” I was a great child-athlete and I just assumed this play-paradise would last forever. It didn’t. Writing about it fills gaps.
"THE WOUND AND THE BOW," by David Shields, Believer Magazine ---  http://www.believermag.com/issues/200312/?read=article_shields

From the Scout Report on October 12, 2007

Joost 1.0 --- http://www.joost.com/ 

Some people may appreciate having a break from television while they are on the Internet, but this latest version of Joost offers no such rest to those potentially weary souls. Joost allows users to watch thousands of shows online, provided that they have a high-speed Internet connection. Along with popular programs, visitors can also search through the genre list to locate documentary and news channels. New users may also wish to look through the “Selected Picks” section as well. This version of Joost is compatible with computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2.  

---

Dugg-Digg Widget for Dashboard 1.1.5 --- http://web.mac.com/duncankeall/Dugg/Dugg.html 

Digg is perhaps one of the web’s best known sites, and it contains various content submitted by users from all over the world. Dugg 1.1.5 is a tiny widget that can help Digg devotees (and Digg neophytes) search and find content on Digg quickly. Visitors can view stories for specific topics or users and also check out what friends might be “digging”. This version of Dugg is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.3.

 

From The Washington Post on October 11, 2007

How many online searches are conducted worldwide every minute?

A. 5.6 million
B. 1.4 million
C. 870,000
D. 420,000
 

From The Washington Post on October 12, 2007

How many items did eBay list in the second quarter of this year?

A. 230 million
B. 336 million
C. 497 million
D. 559 million

From The Washington Post on October 16, 2007

What activity increased a person's likelihood of voting by about 4 percentage points?

A. E-voting option
B. Voice-mail message from candidate
C. Text message reminder
D. E-mail reminder

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

October 10, 2007 

• Banked Blood May Lose Key Gas
• Heart Risk From Prostate Therapy
• Obese Kids Need Long-Term Plan
• New Help for MS Nerve Damage
• Topamax May Treat Alcoholism

October 11, 2007

• Rising BP Tied to Diabetes
• Job Stress May Up Heart Risks
• Heart Risk From Prostate Therapy
• New Help for MS Nerve Damage
• Topamax May Treat Alcoholism

     Trends

• Common Cold & Flu Culprits
• Cancer Survivors Take Charge
• The Truth About Whole-Body Scans
• Bake Your Own Bread!
• Getting an Organ Transplant

October 13, 2007

• Spray Cleaners Up Asthma Risk
• J.C. Penney Recalls 70,400 Toys
• Arthritis Hinders Work for Many
• Steroids: Who’s Using Them?
• Appendix May Have a Purpose

October 15, 2007

• Group Says Lipsticks Have Lead
• Cholesterol Drugs May Help Lungs
• When Hip Fractures Happen Again
• Spoiled Produce Keep Nutrition?
• Appendix May Have a Purpose

October 16, 2007 

• Why Garlic Is Good for You
• Feel-Good Gene May Spur Snacking
• You Sleep Less Than You Think
• GI Woes Cut Work Productivity
• Gossip May Override the Facts

 

 

A Blood Test for Alzheimer's
Scientists at Stanford University have identified a set of protein biomarkers in the blood that can correctly identify people with Alzheimer's and predict which patients with mild cognitive impairment will go on to develop the disease. If replicated in larger studies, this protein profile could drastically improve on existing methods to diagnose the disease. Because cognitive symptoms don't usually appear until the brain has undergone significant damage, and no reliable physical symptoms have yet been identified, accurate diagnosis relies largely on cognitive testing and lab tests to rule out other problems. The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
Emily Singer, MIT's Technology Review, October 15, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/21881/?nlid=601 

For millions with eye damage, a new artificial cornea could prove a safer, more effective treatment
A novel artificial cornea that adheres to eye cells could bring new hope to the estimated 10 million people worldwide who are blind because of corneal damage or disease. The new design should relieve some of the complications--such as tissue rejection--that often accompany corneal transplants or the implantation of existing artificial corneas. The device, which has been extensively tested in rabbits, is expected to be in clinical trials early next year.
Brittany Sauser, MIT's Technology Review, October 10, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19490/?nlid=592

Study finds that people are programmed to love chocolate
For the first time, scientists have linked the all-too-human preference for a food — chocolate — to a specific, chemical signature that may be programmed into the metabolic system and is detectable by laboratory tests. The signature reads ‘chocolate lover’ in some people and indifference to the popular sweet in others, the researchers say.
PhysOrg, October 12, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news111389753.html

Condom Experts Told That Size Matters
As the world's top condom experts convene this week to update international standards, one American entrepreneur has a simple message: Size matters. It's shaking up an industry that has generally taken a one-size-fits-all approach. Frank Sadlo, founder of TheyFit, which makes what he claims are the world's first custom-fit condoms, is pushing for updated standards to allow greater variation in condom size. It's not just about well-endowed men in cramped prophylactic quarters, Sadlo told a meeting Thursday of delegates from 21 countries under the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization. When given a choice, he said many men prefer condoms smaller than the standard minimum 6.3 inches long, with more than half ordering those less than 5.12 inches. At the session in Seogwipo on South Korea's Jeju Island, more than 100 representatives - including leading manufacturers, government standards bodies and aid groups - pored over 42 pages of specifications and testing requirements for condoms. Standards are especially crucial - failure could mean the spread of potentially deadly diseases or unwanted pregnancy.
Burt Herman, PhysOrg, October 11, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news111342831.html

Farm kids have lower risk of asthma, study shows
Farm children appear to have a lower risk of asthma than their urban counterparts or even those living in a non-agricultural rural environment, according to a University of Alberta study. Analysis of two surveys involving 13,524 asthma–free children aged less than 12 years in the ongoing Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) showed that children living in a farming environment had a lower risk of developing asthma than their counterparts who resided in either non-farming rural environments, such as residential acreages and rural towns, or an urban environment.
PhysOrg, October 16, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news111766298.html

"In Diabetes, a Complex of Causes," by Amanda Schaffer, The New York Times, October 16, 2007 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/health/16diab.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

An explosion of new research is vastly changing scientists’ understanding of diabetes and giving new clues about how to attack it.

The fifth leading killer of Americans, with 73,000 deaths a year, diabetes is a disease in which the body’s failure to regulate glucose, or blood sugar, can lead to serious and even fatal complications. Until very recently, the regulation of glucose — how much sugar is present in a person’s blood, how much is taken up by cells for fuel, and how much is released from energy stores — was regarded as a conversation between a few key players: the pancreas, the liver, muscle and fat.

Now, however, the party is proving to be much louder and more complex than anyone had shown before.

New research suggests that a hormone from the skeleton, of all places, may influence how the body handles sugar. Mounting evidence also demonstrates that signals from the immune system, the brain and the gut play critical roles in controlling glucose and lipid metabolism. (The findings are mainly relevant to Type 2 diabetes, the more common kind, which comes on in adulthood.)

Focusing on the cross-talk between more different organs, cells and molecules represents a “very important change in our paradigm” for understanding how the body handles glucose, said Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, a diabetes researcher and professor at Harvard Medical School.

The defining feature of diabetes is elevated blood sugar. But the reasons for abnormal sugar seem to “differ tremendously from person to person,” said Dr. Robert A. Rizza, a professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. Understanding exactly what signals are involved, he said, raises the hope of “providing the right care for each person each day, rather than giving everyone the same drug.”

Last summer, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center published startling results showing that a hormone released from bone may help regulate blood glucose.

When the lead researcher, Dr. Gerard Karsenty, first described the findings at a conference, the assembled scientists “were overwhelmed by the potential implications,” said Dr. Saul Malozowski, senior adviser for endocrine physiology research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, who was not involved in the research. “It was coming from left field. People thought, ‘Oof, this is really new.’

“For the first time,” he went on, “we see that the skeleton is actually an endocrine organ,” producing hormones that act outside of bone.

In previous work, Dr. Karsenty had shown that leptin, a hormone produced by fat, is an important regulator of bone metabolism. In this work, he tested the idea that the conversation was a two-way street. “We hypothesized that if fat regulates bone, bone in essence must regulate fat,” he said.

Working with mice, he found that a previously known substance called osteocalcin, which is produced by bone, acted by signaling fat cells as well as the pancreas. The net effect is to improve how mice secrete and handle insulin, the hormone that helps the body move glucose from the bloodstream into cells of the muscle and liver, where it can be used for energy or stored for future use. Insulin is also important in regulating lipids.

In Type 2 diabetes, patients’ bodies no longer heed the hormone’s directives. Their cells are insulin-resistant, and blood glucose levels surge. Eventually, production of insulin in the pancreas declines as well.

Dr. Karsenty found that in mice prone to Type 2 diabetes, an increase in osteocalcin addressed the twin problems of insulin resistance and low insulin production. That is, it made the mice more sensitive to insulin and it increased their insulin production, thus bringing their blood sugar down. As a bonus, it also made obese mice less fat.

If osteocalcin works similarly in humans, it could turn out to be a “unique new treatment” for Type 2 diabetes, Dr. Malozowski said. (Most current diabetes drugs either raise insulin production or improve insulin sensitivity, but not both. Drugs that increase production tend to make insulin resistance worse.)

Continued in article

Office jobs may be hazardous to the hips
A new survey says working in an office may be hard on the waistlines of nearly half of U.S. workers.
PhysOrg, October 12, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news111396200.html
Jensen Comment
But nearby faculty clubs are more hazardous.

Does your phone have a halitosis meter?
With that in mind, a Japanese company has unveiled a prototype cell phone with a built-in bad-breath meter that will let you know if you need to reach for a mint. It also keeps track of your activity level, your pulse, and your paunch, thanks to a built-in pedometer, a pulse meter, and a body-fat analyzer, which sends a small electrical signal through your body to assess its composition.
Anna Davison, "A Cell Phone That Spots Bad Breath Among a new phone's health monitors is a "halitosis meter," MIT's Technology Review, October 12, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19569/?nlid=598

Jensen Comment
Your minimum, median, and maximum scores might be something you can add to your resume or you online dating module.

There’s a risk of being arrested for heavy breathing during phone conversations

Five Best Books About Newspapering

"Read All About It!, by Seth Lipsky, The Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110010669

Read All About It! A veteran reporter and editor's favorite books about newspapering.   1. "The Paris Edition" by Waverley Root (North Point, 1987). Between 1927 and 1934, the Chicago Tribune published an edition in Paris, a small sophisticated daily in a big city with a raging newspaper war. Never in the history of journalism, it was said, have so many men had such a wonderful time on so little money. In "The Paris Edition," Tribune reporter Waverley Root memorably evokes the era, not least with his classic account of Charles Lindbergh's Paris landing in 1927. The United Press hired goons to monopolize the phone booths at Le Bourget Airport, where Lindbergh was set to land; the Associated Press hired bruisers to attack them; all six phone booths were destroyed in the melee and reporters had to run their copy into town on foot. In this memoir, we also meet the Tribune's proprietor, Col. Robert McCormick, who, in a fit of pique, assigned his best correspondent, Floyd Gibbons, to a new beat: the Sahara. Gibbons set out to become the first person to cross the desert's expanse while carrying a fully unfurled American flag, which resulted not only in a newspaper series that gripped the world but also in an epic expense account. 2. "How I Got That Story" edited by David Brown and W. Richard Bruner (Dutton, 1967). Throughout my career, I have toted along "How I Got That Story," a collection of first-hand accounts of some of the greatest scoops of all time. Its authors are members of the Overseas Press Club of America. The volume starts with "Germany's Meekest Hour," about the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, in which the New York Sun's Burnet Hershey describes how he disguised himself as a German to get into a prisoner-of-war stockade in Paris, where he heard the German foreign minister tell the captured soldiers from his homeland: "We will rise from this shame." The book also includes New York Times reporter William L. Laurence's story of how he was brought inside the Manhattan Project by Gen. Leslie Groves so that he could write an eyewitness account of the bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. 3. "The Brass Ring" by Bill Mauldin (Norton, 1971). In Bill Mauldin's memoir, the G.I. cartoonist who created the soldiers Willie and Joe tells the story of the Stars and Stripes newspaper in World War II. "The Brass Ring" reprints many of Mauldin's famed cartoons, including one depicting two officers on top of an Alp, one saying to the other: "Beautiful view. Is there one for the enlisted men?" A Pulitzer Prize-winning illustration, from 1945, shows a group of bedraggled Yanks marching a group of bedraggled German prisoners in the rain and mud, with the caption: " 'Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners,' (News Item)." One of the cartoons--at a USO show, soldiers line up to get in while officers escort girls out a side door--is accompanied by Mauldin's priceless account of how it prompted a showdown between the cartoonist and an outraged Gen. George Patton, who accused him of demoralizing the troops. Mauldin also describes, in a moving section of the book, a military funeral in Italy in 1945 when Lt. Gen. Lucian Truscott turned his back on the dignitaries and addressed the dead. 4. "A Treasury of Great Reporting" edited by Louis L. Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Simon & Schuster, 1949). Here, in another anthology I have kept with me all my career, are reprints of classic pieces of journalism, as they were published--nearly 200 samples of "Literature Under Pressure, From the Sixteenth Century to Our Own Time," as the subtitle has it. You'll find the Boston News-Letter's dispatch on the Boston Tea Party as well as Homer Bigart's reporting for the New York Times on the trial of Adolf Eichmann (in the second edition, published in 1962). The volume has Horace Greeley's interview with Brigham Young. It contains Whitelaw Reid's coverage of the Confederate catastrophe of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg ("all the glory visible, all the horror of the fearful field concealed"). And the book covers the stories behind the stories in well-researched entries by the annotators. In the preface, veteran reporter and editor Herbert Bayard Swope says that the reprinted articles "will show why newspaper work is so eternally and irresistibly seductive." He's right. 5. "Newspaper Days" by H.L. Mencken (Knopf, 1941). This is the second of the three volumes of H.L. Mencken's "Days." The first, "Happy Days," about his youth, is the best. The last, "Heathen Days," is anticlimactic. The middle volume--about what happened after he walked into the Baltimore Morning Herald, at the age of 18, and presented himself to its city editor--is a newspaper classic. In one chapter, he discusses what he calls the "synthesis"--or fabrication--of news, including a bogus story by one reporter about the ill effects of sticking one's umbrella into an arc-light. Given the evidence presented, the book is also a reminder to regard the crime reporting of Mencken's day with caution. Like other newspapermen of his time given over to casual racism and cynicism, Mencken is not a wholly attractive character. But he demonstrates how a master craftsman turns out prose and how the gritty job of a reporting beat on a metropolitan newspaper can create the foundation for a career in literature of the highest order. Mr. Lipsky is the editor of the New York Sun.

 

Question
What's "institutional structure?"
What's the theory entwined in the works of the three 2007 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics?

Hint:
Nobel Prizes --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize
Nobel Prizes in Economics tend to go to mathematicians and/or conservative market theorists.
Nobel Peace Prices tend to reflect liberal political biases, perhaps even not-so-hidden Nobel agendas.
Nobel Prizes for accounting and mathematics are nonexistent, probably since both disciplines are built upon assumptions rather than reality. Actually this is also true for economics, although somehow an exception was made for this branch of astrology.

"A Market Nobel," by Peter Boettke, The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2007; Page A21 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119249811353060179.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Yesterday Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for their pioneering work in the field of "mechanism design." Strangely, some have used this occasion to disparage free-market economics. But the truth is the deserving recipients owe a direct debt to free-market thinkers who came before them.

Mechanism design is an area of economic research that focuses on how institutional structures can be manipulated by changing the rules of the game in order to produce socially optimal results. The best intentions for the public good will go astray if the institutional arrangements are not consistent with the self-interest of decision makers.

Mr. Myerson's work on how to design auctions to elicit information about the value of the good being auctioned -- and how to maximize the revenue extracted from the auction -- has informed numerous privatizations of publicly owned assets over the past quarter-century. Mr. Maskin also contributed to auction theory, and applied the idea of mechanism design to assess political institutions such as voting systems.

Mechanism design theory was established to try to address the main challenge posed by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. It all starts with Mr. Hurwicz's response to Hayek's famous paper, "The Use of Knowledge in Society." In the 1930s and '40s, Hayek was embroiled in the "socialist calculation debate." Mises, Hayek's mentor in Vienna, had raised the challenge in his book "Socialism," and before that in an article, that without having the means of production in private hands, the economic system will not create the incentives or the information to properly decide between the alternative uses of scarce resources. Without the production process of the market economy, socially desirable outcomes will be impossible to achieve.

In the mid-1930s, Hayek published Mises's essay in English in his book, "Collectivist Economic Planning." From there the discussion moved to the U.K. and the U.S. Hayek summarized the fundamental challenge that advocates of socialism needed to come to grips with. Hayek's argument, a refinement of Mises, basically stated that the economic problem society faced was not how to allocate given resources, but rather how to mobilize and utilize the knowledge dispersed throughout the economy.

Hayek argued that mathematical modeling, which relied on a set of given assumptions, had obscured the fundamental problem. These questions were not being probed since they were assumed away in the mathematical models of market socialism presented by Oskar Lange and, later, Abba Lerner. Milton Friedman, when he reviewed Lerner's "Economics of Control," stated that it was as if economic analysis of policy was being conducted in a vacuum. Lange actually argued that questions of bureaucratic incentives did not belong in economics and were best left to other disciplines such as psychology and sociology.

Leonid Hurwicz, in his classic papers "On the Concept and Possibility of Informational Decentralization" (1969), "On Informationally Decentralized Systems" (1972), and "The Design of Mechanisms for Resource Allocation" (1973), embraced Hayek's challenge. He developed mechanism-design theory to test the logic of the Mises-Hayek contention that socialism could not possibly mobilize the dispersed knowledge in society in a way that would permit rational economic calculation for the alternative uses of scarce resources. Mises and Hayek argued that replacing the invisible hand of the market with the guided one of government would not work. Mr. Hurwicz wanted to see if they were right, and under what conditions one could say they were wrong.

Those efforts are at the foundation of the field that was honored by the Nobel Prize committee. To function properly, any economic system must, as Hayek pointed out, structure incentives so that the dispersed and sometimes conflicting knowledge in society is mobilized to realize the gains from exchange and innovation.

Last year Mr. Myerson acknowledged his own debt to Mr. Hurwicz -- and thus Hayek -- in "Fundamental Theory of Institutions: A Lecture in Honor of Leo Hurwicz." The incentive-compatibility issue has highlighted the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection (perverse behavior due to incentives caused by rules that are supposed protect us and selection problems due to imperfect information). Mr. Hurwicz helped repair a mid-20th century neglect of institutions in economic analysis.

While we celebrate the brilliance of Messrs. Hurwicz, Maskin and Myerson, we should also remember that Hayek's challenge provided their inspiration. Hayek concluded that the private-property rights that come with the rule of law, freedom of contract, and freedom of association is still the one mechanism design that mobilizes and utilizes the dispersed information in an economy. Furthermore, it does so in a way that tends to capture the gains from trade and innovation so that wealth is continually created and humanity is made better off.

Mr. Boettke is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the Mercatus Center.

October 17, 2007 reply from Paul Williams [Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]

Bob, et al.

As I think I have mentioned before there is no Nobel Prize in economics. Alfred Nobel established his trust fund because of guilt over inventing dynamite. He awarded prizes only to those branches of intellectual endeavor that he believed had the potential to bring "goodness" to human kind and end wars forever (chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, and peace (essentially noble political acts because peace is largely about politics perhaps explaining why right- wingers don't tend to win the Peace Prize).

In 1964 the Nobel Committee agreed to include within the prizes The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Honor of Alfred Nobel, funded not by the Nobel Trust, but by financial interests. This was a political move to bring legitimacy to economic "science" whose scientific prescriptions for policy always manage somehow to benefit financial interests.

Apparently we have now "scientific" proof that labor is our punishment for the Fall from Grace. Science my a uh foot.

October 17, 2007 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]

Paul and Bob,

The controversies involving the economics prize include:

1. Theoretical v. Practical: Kantorovich, the Russian mathematician is supposed to have expressed disbelief at receiving one of the earliest economics Nobels (1975), since he had done virtually no work in economics except for laying the groundwork for what later became linear programming. But that was just a footnote in his life's work.

The same can be said of the work of Reinhard Selten, John Nash, and to an extent Janos Kornai. Later, a number of other theoreticians were also awarded the economics Nobel, leading to grumbling among the applied/ empirical crowd. Probably the series of Nobel's awarded to Milton Friedman and others later were a reaction to this criticism.

2. Left-wing v. Right-wing: In general, more Nobels have been awarded to quite-a-bit right-of-center economists, and hell has broken loose when one has been awarded to some one even an iota left-of-center. An example was Amartya Sen, who single-handedly revived the fascinating fields of economics of poverty and development.

Milton Friedman was awarded the prize in 1976 right after the controversy surrounding the 1975 award to Kantorovich.

I think economics Nobel's have generally tarnished the reputation of Nobels in general, but one feels good when some one like John Nash gets it. I was thrilled that Leonid Hurwicz got it this year, though I am not sure about Maskin and Myerson. With the latter two, it is way down hill from Selten, Nash, Harsanyi, Aumannn, Kantorovich, Arrow, Debreu, ...

So far as I know, one "accountant" has won the economics Nobel. It is Richard Stone, who worked in the area of national income accounting.

Incidentally, I stumbled upon a fascinating book titled "Against Mechanism: Protecting Economics from Science" By Philip Mirowski

One quote from the book:

"Contrary to popular misconceptions, I shall claim that economics needs protection from science, and especially from scientists such as Richard Feynman, or any other physicist who thinks he knows just what is needed for economists to clean up their act. Economics needs protection from the scientists in its midst, the Paul Samuelsons and the Tjalling Koopmans and all the others who took their training in the physical sciences and parlayed it into easy victories among their less technically inclined colleagues. And worst of all, economics needs protection from itself. For years, economics has enjoyed an impression of superiority over all the other "social sciences" in rigor, precision, and technical expertise. The reason it has been able to assume this mantle is that economics has consistently striven to be the nearest thing to social physics in the constellation of human knowledge."

Jagdish

A wonderful Message from George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much , and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! AND give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

If you don't send this to at least 8 people....Who cares?

George Carlin

Satchel Paige was one of the best baseball pitchers of all time --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satchel_Paige
These purportedly were his last words!

How to Stay Young

1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.

2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.

3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.

4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in Society. The social ramble ain't restful.

5. Avoid running at all times.

6. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.

What You Can Do With Vodka?

01. To remove a bandage painlessly, saturate the bandage with vodka. The solvent dissolves the adhesive.

02. To clean the caulking around bathtubs and showers, fill a trigger-spray bottle with vodka, spray the caulking, let set five minutes and wash clean. The alcohol in the vodka kills mold and mildew.

03. To clean your eyeglasses, simply wipe the lenses with a soft, clean cloth dampened with vodka. The alcohol in the vodka cleans the glass and kills germs.

04. Prolong the life of razors by filling a cup with vodka and letting your safety razor blade soak in the alcohol after shaving. The vodka disinfects the blade and prevents rusting.

05. Spray vodka on vomit stains, scrub with a brush, then blot dry.

06. Using a cotton ball, apply vodka to your face as an astringent to cleanse the skin and tighten pores.

07. Add a jigger of vodka to a 12-ounce bottle of shampoo. The alcohol cleanses the scalp, removes toxins from hair, and stimulates the growth of healthy hair.

08. Fill a sixteen-ounce trigger-spray bottle with vodka and spray bees or wasps to kill them.

09. Pour one-half cup vodka and one-half cup water in a Ziploc freezer bag, and freeze for a slushy, refreezable ice pack for aches, pain, or black eyes..

10. Fill a clean, used mayonnaise jar with freshly packed lavender flowers, fill the jar with vodka, seal the lid tightly and set in the sun for three days. Strain liquid through a coffee filter, then apply the tincture to aches and pains.

11. Make your own mouthwash by mixing nine tablespoons powered cinnamon with one cup vodka. Seal in an airtight container for two weeks. Strain through a coffee filter. Mix with warm water and rinse your mouth. Don't swallow.

12. Using a q-tip, apply vodka to a cold sore to help it dry out.

13. If a blister opens, pour vodka over the raw skin as a local anesthetic that also disinfects the exposed dermis.

14. To treat dandruff, mix one cup vodka with two teaspoons crushed rosemary, let sit for two days, strain through a coffee filter and massage into your scalp and let dry.

15. To treat an earache put a few drops of vodka in your ear. Let set for a few minutes. Then drain. The vodka will kill the bacteria that is causing pain in your ear.

16. To relieve a fever, use a washcloth to rub vodka on your chest and back as a liniment.

17. To cure foot odor, wash your feet with vodka.

18. Vodka will disinfect and alleviate a jellyfish sting.

19. To remove cigarette smoke in your home or office mix one part vodka and three parts water and spray the clothing, then launder and let dry.

20. Pour vodka over an area affected with poison ivy to remove the urushiol oil from your skin.

21. Swish a shot of vodka over an aching tooth. Allow your gums to absorb some of the alcohol to numb the pain.

After reading this, can you believe that some people drink the stuff?

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

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