Autumn Leaves (Frank Sinatra) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhB8H1YnRF0
Autumn Leaves (Nat "King" Cole) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY17gMP5QvI
Autumn Leaves (Andrea Bocelli) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAMy_hivbtk
Autumn Leaves (Jazz piano trio) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ZzjMNgkZg
Video of Roger Williams Playing Autumn Leaves --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_1tp2APNcg
Video of Roger Williams Playing Autumn Leaves --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5cueCo0No
 

Winter is in the air. The past few nights we've had hard freezes. Most of the maples and birches are bare, although some leaves still cling to other types of trees in the woods. All and all it's been a great foliage season. It's also been an exceptional year for the Boston Red Sox and the New England Patriots.

 

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George Eliot

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir

No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
John Donne Elegy IX--The Autumnal.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
Elizabeth Bowen

Every season hath its pleasures; Spring may boast her flowery prime, Yet the vineyard's ruby treasures Brighten Autumn's sob'rer time.
Thomas Moore Spring and Autumn.

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November.
Rose G. Kingsley The Autumn Garden.

Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.
William Cullen Bryant

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
Emily Dickinson Nature XXVII, Autumn.

A San Antonio friend and hero named Tex Hill died --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/TexHill.htm

 

Tidbits on October30, 2007
Bob Jensen

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.


Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

You can read about Erika's surgeries and see her pictures at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Erika2007.htm
Personal pictures are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Some personal videos are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/EdTech/Video/Personal/ 

Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
       (Also scroll down to the table at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )

Set up free conference calls at http://www.freeconference.com/
Also see http://www.yackpack.com/uc/   

If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops  --- http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/

Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Trinity University's Football Miracle  Play --- http://www.d3football.com/dailydose/2007/10/28/trinity-millsaps-and-the-must-see-moment
Also see --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkR9D4W1g8A&feature=bz301
Denny Beresford called my attention to this video..

"Some Basic Features You Should Demand When Buying a PC," The Wall Street Journal,  October 18, 2007; Page B1
Walt Mossberg's Wall Street Journal 2007 PC Buyer's Guide (includes video) --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119266187772362614.html

Computer Games on Campus is Being Used to Increase College Enrollment --- http://chronicle.com/media/video/v54/i09/gaming/

God Bless the USA (Chelsie Boyd at Fort Benning) --- http://youtube.com/watch?v=DXcpCzK5vy8
God Bless America (Lee Greenwood) --- http://youtube.com/watch?v=RssIN3ustUw
Bob Jensen's songs/messages of inspiration and patriotism --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm#Inspirational

Greatest hit songs of Accounting: --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSranciXOvs

Damon Scott & Bubbles --- http://www.biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=3076

New Solar Buildings on Campus (video from the Chronicle of Higher Education) --- http://chronicle.com/media/flash/v54/i09/solar/

Marching band and cheerleader mishaps --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGk4tmJuCkk

She's Ready (Hillary Dances) --- Click here: 2008
England's most downloaded YouTube video (Candid Video Part 1) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq8aopATYyw
England's most downloaded YouTube video (Candid Video Part 2) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMfUajhL24I

Hillary vs. Condi Ho Down (turn up your speakers) --- http://i.euniverse.com/funpages/cms_content/13180/HillaryCondi_HoDown.swf 

How Does This Button Work? (Geometry, Video) --- http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/4/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=1606

Decade Volcanoes --- http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0709/vesuvius/volcano-map.html

Screen Star Deborah Kerr Dies at 86 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15405463
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Kerr

Tim Conway

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

Remembering the Good Times (yes, I remember them well) --- http://www.bentbay.dk/in_oldDays.html

Debbie Boone (daughter of Pat Boone) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Boone

Pat Boone --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Boone

Bob Jensen’s 1950s and 1960s Nostalgia --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm#JukeBox

Atomic Platters: Cold War Music--- http://www.atomicplatters.com/

Charmed Life (Mick Jagger) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15524832 

"The Perils of Being a Child Prodigy:  Why Ervin Nyiregyházi never lived up to his potential," by Barbara Jepson, The Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010774

When 17-year-old Hungarian pianist Ervin Nyiregyházi arrived in the U.S. in 1920 for a concert tour that included his Carnegie Hall debut, photographers documented the occasion. In Europe, the slender prodigy had won acclaim for his keyboard prowess and youthful compositions, giving his first public performance at the age of 6, playing at Buckingham Palace at 8 and appearing as soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic at 12. By then, he had developed a taste for caviar and an unshakable sense of his own importance.

Many children who manifest exceptional musical talent at an early age develop justly celebrated, sustained careers. But despite his initial success here and abroad, Nyiregyházi (pronounced NYEER-edge-hah-zee) never achieved his full artistic potential, performing only sporadically after he moved to Los Angeles in 1928. And his life, unsparingly but empathetically recorded in "Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy," by Kevin Bazzana, illustrates other patterns all too commonly seen among those promoted as wunderkind. These include use of the child's gifts to raise the family's economic and social status, and emotional damage inflicted by a critical, controlling parent--in this case, young Ervin's mother.

In "Lost Genius," Mr. Bazzana provides an extensively researched, nuanced account of a spectacularly dysfunctional life. Nyiregyházi married 10 times, more than once for financial benefit. He cheated compulsively on his wives, patronizing massage parlors or prostitutes and having casual sex with both genders. He consumed vast quantities of alcohol. He was embarrassed about bodily functions.

. . .

By necessity and preference, Nyiregyházi lived in the seamier sections of Los Angeles and San Francisco, often without a piano, even after a well-publicized but short-lived comeback during the 1970s. Amazingly, two of his ex-wives continued to assist him financially, and his fifth wife allowed him to live with her for a time because his sixth wife lacked a private bathroom. (The author deconstructs each union, the only time this otherwise gripping biography sags.)

At his death in 1987 at the age of 84, he left more than a thousand largely unknown works. "I wouldn't make too many claims about Nyiregyházi's compositions, nor do I dismiss them," says Mr. Bazzana, "but as a pianist, he belongs at the very top."

Continued in article

Tow Nyiregyhazi Video Clips

 

Photographs and Art

Flowers Photo Gallery from Japan --- http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hana/monogatari/index-e.htm

Beautiful Photographs of Japan --- http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2007/01/beautiful-photographs-of-japan.html 

The Prettiest Images --- http://thefairest.info/top.html

Beautiful Photographs Slide Show --- http://www.slideshare.net/osvaldo.1/beautiful-photographs/

Jason Hawkes Aerial Views --- http://news.jasonhawkes.com/archives/2006/04/aerial_views_fr.html

Space Age German Parking Garage --- http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/a/256397.htm

Celebrity Mansions --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uKf3IyRwhI

Paintings of PowerPoint presentations might be better than the real thing.
I'm attending the Pop!Tech conference here in Camden, Maine. There are many remarkable speakers here, like Steven Pinker and Daniel Pink, but what I am most surprised by is the "human renderer" who sits in the upper-right balcony of the proceedings.
The artist paints images that convey the spirit of each talk in real time with color and words. I think the fact that each image is not a literal interpretation of the speaker's presentation feels fresh. Very iki.
John Maeda, MIT's Technology Review. October 19, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/maeda/21892/?nlid=616

Art Education 2.0 --- http://arted20.ning.com/

 

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

Poets & Writers --- http://www.pw.org/

Dylan Thomas 'Do Not Go Gentle' Analysis and Commentary --- http://poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/dylan_thomas___do_not_go_gentle_

Persuasion by Jane Austen (1775-1817) --- Click Here

A Photographer'S Day Out by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) --- Click Here

A Wonderland Miscellany by  Lewis Carroll --- Click Here

Photography Extraordinary by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) --- Click Here

The Red One by Jack London --- Click Here

The Assignation by Edgar Allan Poe --- Click Here

Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson --- Click Here

Tribute to the Great --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TributeToTheGreat.htm

 

Kindergarten Children should be Encouraged to Dance Naked & Masturbate (in groupies); Norwegian Child Expert  --- Click Here
A long quotation from the above article appears later on (below) in this edition of Tidbits.
Meanwhile in the Maine, birth control pills will now be distributed free in middle schools to children between elementary and high school --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15407239
The New York Times (October 21, 2007) reports much displeasure with this practice --- Click Here
Jensen Comment
The pills are only dispensed after private consultation with the school's health professionals. Given the high number of pregnancies in the early teens (over 17,000 per year in the U.S.), birth control pills are probably a good idea.

I will not comment on pre-schooling in Norway other than to say that such a groupie policy in the U.S. would most likely eliminate the current shortage of pre-school teacher job applicants.

The existence of this so-called "magic circle" of the Portuguese establishment, allegedly involved in an international paedophile ring using boys and girls from Casa Pia, was last week likened to an earthquake waiting to shake Portugal to its foundations. New allegations about the scale of the network will be put before the country's highest court within the next few weeks. Amid rumours of links to other paedophile gangs across Europe and the U.S., international experts on child sex crimes and murders are expected to be in court when the case re-opens, four years after a group of victims broke a silence lasting more than 30 years.
Andre Malone and Vanessa Allen, "Why Portugal is a haven for paedophiles - the disturbing backcloth to the Madeleine case," London Daily Mail, October 21, 2007 --- Click Here

The first Medal of Honor awarded for combat in Afghanistan will be presented Monday to the family of a Navy SEAL from Long Island, N.Y, who gave his life to make a radio call for help for his team. President Bush is to present the nation's highest military honor for valor to the family of Lt. Michael Murphy of Patchogue . . .  N.Y. Murphy, Luttrell and two other SEALs were searching for a terrorist in the Afghan mountains on June 28, 2005, when their mission was compromised after they were spotted by locals, who presumably alerted the Taliban to their presence. An intense gun battle ensued, with more than 50 anti-coalition fighters swarming around the outnumbered SEALs. Although wounded, Murphy is credited with risking his own life by moving into the open for a better position to transmit a call for help.
Devlon Barrett, "Family of Navy SEAL to Get Medal of Honor," AOL News, October 24, 2007 --- Click Here
Fox News Version --- http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Oct22/0,4670,MedalofHonor,00.html

The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
John Kenneth Galbraith --- Click Here

On October 18, 2007, Pete Stark made the following comments on the House floor: "Republicans sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement."
Pete Stark  later apologized under threat of almost certain censure by the House --- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/washington/23cnd-stark.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Pete Stark is a California Democratic Congressman --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Stark

He who takes medicine and neglects to dies wastes the skills of his doctors.
Chinese proverb quoted by University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School) professor on October 17, 2007 --- http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm;jsessionid=a830595f2dd3356c5f3a?articleid=1825
The article deals with Chinese turmoil over pros and cons of Western medicine.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away;
Philip K. Dick --- Click Here

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith

When the Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein's research nuclear reactor in 1981, the consequence was that Saddam Hussein pursued his program secretly. He began to establish a huge military nuclear program underground," he said. "The use of force can set things back, but it does not deal with the roots of the problem.
IAEA director and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as quoted by Robin Wright and Joby Warrick, "Photographs Said to Show Israeli Target Inside Syria," The Washington Post, October 24, 2007 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/23/AR2007102302577_pf.html
Jensen Comment
But the U.S. media keeps insisting that Saddam was not developing weapons of mass destruction. Who should we believe?

If only we were able to become united... how beautiful and near at hand the future would be
Ernesto (Che) Guevara --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Guevara

The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital . . . the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy."
John F. Kennedy --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

That makes it a three-peat: All of the leading Democratic contenders for President have endorsed higher taxes on stock ownership. Hillary Clinton is the "moderate" in that so far she'd merely raise the tax to 20% from the current 15% -- a 33% increase. John Edwards and Mr. Obama want to nearly double it, to 28%. This would repeal not only the Bush capital gains tax cut of 2003 but also the 1997 bipartisan tax cut signed by Bill Clinton, which cut the rate to 20% from 28%. In explaining his proposal, Mr. Obama ignores JFK's arguments about economic growth and instead plays the envy card: "For decades, we've seen successful strategies to ride antitax sentiment in this country toward tax cuts that favor wealth, not work." But it's not only the wealthy who will take a hit from higher capital gains taxes. Recent surveys indicate that roughly 52% of American adults own stock in some form, and last year 8.5 million of these investors paid a capital gains tax. The value of those assets will decline if capital gains taxes go up because financial markets instantly capitalize higher taxes on stock profits into lower stock prices.
"A Capital Gains Primer," The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2007; Page A22 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119240927948858793.html

. . . Nancy Pelosi wants to put a Windfall Tax on all stock market profits (including Retirement fund, 401Ks and Mutual Funds! and CREF accounts) . . . When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied "We need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities." "Windfall profits taxes could go a long ways to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as 'Americans'."
Free Republic, October 16, 2007 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1911844/posts
Jensen Comment
If this Windfall Tax becomes reality after the Democrats sweep the 2008 election, it will be too bad that you're locked into your retirement savings plans (e.g., CREF) that depend on the stock market, because the stock market will plunge south as soon as it even appears that Pelosi's Windfall Tax has a chance. But when the value of your retirement account plunges you won't have to pay as much Windfall Tax. Should you look at this as good news or bad news?

This is about as close as you can get to a retroactive tax without actually imposing a retroactive tax. Even the millions of employed minorities have to fear this egalitarian confiscation of their savings. Even if you shift your pension plan out of corporate equity investments (stocks), you will be liable for accumulated capital gains up to the date you shift to other investments.  For example, if you started saving for retirement in CREF 30 years ago, nearly all the value of your portfolio is capital gain subject to the Windfall Tax. My advice is to devote much more of your income to retirement savings now so you won't lose quite so much of your retirement income net of the Windfall Tax.

This may be a shot in the arm for the real estate market as investors cash in their corporate equity savings and invest in real estate. But it won't do the working poor or the unemployed any good as the corporations cut back on operations due to higher cost of capital. But don't panic yet! The Democrats have recently proved (Senator Reid in particular) that they're just as vulnerable, or possibly more vulnerable, to corporate lobbying powerhouses.

Effective January 1, 2008, the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax (taxable maximum) will increase to $102,000 from $97,500. Of the estimated 164 million workers who will pay Social Security taxes in 2008, nearly 12 million will pay higher taxes as a result of the increase in the taxable maximum.
AccountingWeb, October 2007 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104129
Jensen Comment
No kidding! Each worker will soon be supporting more than one retiree. And just think what will happen when Medicare is extended to everybody inside the U.S.  apart from just the old folks and those that now qualify for disability benefits. Soon after 2008 half to two-thirds your income or more will be taken by the government  to support retirees like me as well as everybody else in or sneaking into the U.S.A. You have a good day at work now and as of this moment in time cut out the latte in your life!

You can't say Charlie Rangel lacks for ambition. The House Ways and Means Chairman has been saying he wants to pass "the mother of all tax reforms," and even that doesn't do justice to the trillion-dollar tax baby he delivered unto Washington yesterday. No one thinks his plan has a chance of becoming law this year, but its beauty is as a signal of Democratic intentions for 2009. In proposing what would be the largest tax increase in history, Mr. Rangel is showing the world what he wants the tax code to look like if Democrats run the entire government. None of the Presidential candidates will admit this before November 2008, but give Mr. Rangel credit for having the courage of Hillary Clinton's convictions.
"Trillion-Dollar Baby Charlie Rangel's very revealing tax increase," The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010781

Last Thursday, the Senate voted 47-46 to cut $2 million from the budget of the Office of Labor Management Standards, which among other things collects so-called LM-2 forms. Revised in 2003 to require greater detail on union finances, these forms require unions to account for how they spend the tens of millions of dollars they collect each year. Under the Supreme Court's Beck decision, for example, union members can't be compelled to contribute to political causes they don't support. So the LM-2s are a way to shine the light of accountability on union leaders.
"Union Blinders," The Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2007; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119301682537566616.html

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States. Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.
Jonathan Weisman and Ellen Nakashima, "Senate and Bush Agree On Terms of Spying Bill:  Some Telecom Companies Would Receive Immunity," The Washington Post, October 18, 2007; Page A01 --- Click Here

Innocents were killed at Haditha, as they inevitably are in all wars--though that does not excuse or justify wrongdoing. Yet neither was Haditha the atrocity or "massacre" that many assumed--though errors in judgment may well have been committed. And while some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable. The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template. Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.
"What Happened at Haditha:  The massacre that wasn't, and its political exploitation," The Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010752

South America's cocaine pipeline is always adapting, particularly when the pressure is on. That pressure, applied in Colombia through an American-backed anti-drug campaign, has had an unintended effect: Colombian traffickers have set up shop in neighboring Venezuela. This has helped make Venezuela a major platform to ship drugs on to Europe and the United States.
Juan Forero, "Cocaine Finds a New Latin American Home," NPR, October 22, 2007 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15126818
Chávez’s Plan for Development Bank Moves Ahead --- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/world/americas/22bank.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Jensen Comment
The question is whether Chávez will help the poor of the U.S. through the long winter with both cheaper prices on heating oil and cocaine this year?

Journalistically, I was lucky enough to work at CBS News when it was still shaped by the influence of the Murrow boys. They knew and taught that "everyone is entitled to his own opinions"--and they had them--"but not his own facts." And I miss the rough old boys and girls of the front page, who'd greet FDR with "Snappy suit, Mr. President," who'd bribe the guard to tell them what the prisoner said on the way to the chair, and who were not rich and important but performed an extremely important social function. They found out who, what, where, when, why. And they would have looked at the half-baked, overcooked junior Hemingway of Scott Thomas Beauchamp and said, "That sounds like a buncha hooey."
Peggy Noonan, "Apocalypse No The New Republic's editors seem to have mistaken Vietnam movies for real life," The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010780 

They're right on policy, especially in their opposition to expanding Schip to upwards of 300% of poverty. But this exercise is largely political, with Democrats trucking out every last deception to portray Republicans as something out of Oliver Twist. The rhetoric reached a nadir on the House floor yesterday when California Democrat Pete Stark said the Administration was unwilling to pay for children's care (not true) but would instead spend money in Iraq where soldiers "get their heads blown off for the President's amusement."
"Child Offensive," The Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2007; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119275958218564468.html

The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made.
Groucho Marx --- Click Here

So determined are Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer to "do something" about subprime mortgages that they have come up with a proposal that is unnecessary, will do little to help distressed borrowers, and would increase the risk to taxpayers from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Other than that, it's a fabulous idea.
"Fannie More" The Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2007; Page A18 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119309741437967766.html

A defendant accused of forcing a prostitute at gunpoint to have sex with him and three other men got lucky, so to speak, last week. A Philadelphia judge dropped all sex and assault charges at his preliminary hearing. Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni instead held the defendant on the bizarre charge of armed robbery for - get this - "theft of services." . . .  Deni told me she based her decision on the fact that the prostitute consented to have sex with the defendant. "She consented and she didn't get paid . . . I thought it was a robbery."
Jill Porter, Philadelphia Daily News, October 12, 2007 --- Click Here

In August 1988, college junior Tim Keck borrowed $7,000 from his mom, rented a Mac Plus, and published a 12-page newspaper. His ambition was hardly the stuff of future journalism symposiums: He wanted to create a compelling way to deliver advertising to his fellow students. Part of the first issue’s front page was devoted to a story about a monster running amok at a local lake; the rest was reserved for beer and pizza coupons. Almost 20 years later, The Onion stands as one of the newspaper industry’s few great success stories in the post-newspaper era. Currently, it prints 710,000 copies of each weekly edition, roughly 6,000 more than The Denver Post, the nation’s ninth-largest daily. Its syndicated radio dispatches reach a weekly audience of 1 million, and it recently started producing video clips too. Roughly 3,000 local advertisers keep The Onion afloat, and the paper plans to add 170 employees to its staff of 130 this year.
Craig Beato, "Amusing Ourselves to Depth Is The Onion our most intelligent newspaper?" Reason Magazine, November 2007 --- http://www.reason.com/news/show/122453.html
You can read more about The Onion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion

Proponents of educational choice tend to focus on the underprivileged, which is understandable given that low-income kids are overrepresented in failing inner-city public schools. But an emphasis on the plight of the poor can leave the impression that middle-class public school students are doing fine. And that would be a false impression, according to a new book-length study by the Pacific Research Institute, "Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle-Class Needs School Choice." Conventional wisdom holds that upscale communities tend to have "good" schools, and parents often buy homes in expensive neighborhoods so their kids have a shot at a decent public education. But the PRI study, which focused on California, found that in nearly 300 schools in middle-class and affluent neighborhoods, "less than half of the students in at least one grade level performed at proficiency in state math and English tests."
"Worse Than You Think," The Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2007; Page A20 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119318401559369149.html

City leaders have scrapped plans to do away with the Sioux Gateway Airport's unflattering three-letter identifier - SUX - and instead have made it the centerpiece of the airport's new marketing campaign. The code, used by pilots and airports worldwide and printed on tickets and luggage tags, will be used on T-shirts and caps sporting the airport's new slogan, "FLY SUX." It also forms the address of the airport's redesigned Web site - http://www.flysux.com. 
"Iowa Airport SUX And That's OK, City Says," WCBSTV, October 22, 2007 --- http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/Sioux.City.airport.2.410671.html
Jensen Question
Is SUX pronounced "sucks" or "Sue?"

Index on Censorship --- http://www.indexonline.org/index.shtml

Reporters Without Borders (includes a press freedom index)  http://www.rsf.org

Iceland ranks Number 1
France ranks 31
United States ranks 48
Iran ranks 166
Russia ranks 168
Eritrea in East Africa replaced North Korea in last place at 169

"General Sanchez's Scream," The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2007; Page A16 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119267146111962965.html

Whatever happens in Iraq, this country at some point will have to think seriously (if possible) about the war's effects on its politics and its institutions. Gen. Sanchez's scream is as good a place as any to start.

With elided excerpts, I'll summarize what he said. Body armor recommended.

• The media. "It seems that as long as you get a front-page story there is little or no regard for the 'collateral damage' you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct. . . . [Y]ou assume that you are correct and on the moral high ground."

"The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry." "[T]actically insignificant events have become strategic defeats." And: "The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war."

• The Bush administration. "When a nation goes to war it must bring to bear all elements of power in order to win. . . . [This] administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power . . . and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people."

• Congress and politics. "Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the Republican and Democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. . . . National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. These partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives."

• The bureaucracies. Gen. Sanchez argues that "unity of effort" was hampered by the absence of any coordinated authority over the war effort of the bureaucracies: "The Administration, Congress and the entire interagency, especially the Department of State, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure."

"Clearly," he says, "mistakes have been made by the American military in its application of power. But even its greatest failures in this war can be linked to America's lack of commitment, priority and moral courage in this war effort…America has not been fully committed to win this war."

He says leaving Iraq is not an option, and he has no doubt about the threat: "As a nation we must recognize that the enemy we face is committed to destroying our way of life."

In sum, what Gen. Sanchez is describing here is a nation that is at risk and is in a state of disunity. Does disunity matter? He is saying that in war, it does.

In politics, a degree of disunity is normal. But in our time, partisan disunity has become the norm. The purpose of politics now is to thwart, to stop.

We may have underestimated how corrosive our disunity has been on the troops in Iraq, and how deeply it has damaged us.

Those of us in politics -- politicians, reporters, bureaucrats -- are largely inured to all this, and we seem to have assumed that the system shares our infinite capacity for antipathy and tumult. But is this occupational toughness natural to politics, or is it cynicism? I don't think the soldiers or the American people see the difference.

Arguably it is the proper role of politics to intervene, to question. But during Vietnam and again now, we haven't been able to avoid simultaneously putting troops on the battlefield while fighting bitterly amongst ourselves at home for the length of the war.

The U.S. officer corps is aware of this. While no one is talking about a stab in the back, they may conclude that the home front and its institutions are unable to, or will not, protect their back.

One may ask: Will we ever want to do this again? Are we able to undertake military missions that prove difficult? Or is the projection of U.S. military power into the world an idea that now irreparably divides the American people? Before November 2008, we had better have some answers, from our presidential candidates and from ourselves.

The End of the U.S., like the Roman Empire, is Near According to the Liberal Press --- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071029/holmes
This gloomy article offers no hope for any alternative for saving America, The U.S was a short experiment in Democracy before we become totally Orwellian --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian

"Liberals Debate Political Islam," The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 22, 2007 ---
 http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/840/liberals-debate-political-islam

“He gets very emotional. He gets very excited … a lot of spittle around the mouth and so on," says Ian Buruma of Paul Berman, kicking off the latest round of polemical bloodletting between the two liberal intellectuals.

The history of this spat is a bit tedious and more than a bit convoluted, but here it is in a nutshell: In February Buruma, a professor at Bard College, wrote a profile of the Swiss-born Egyptian scholar Tariq Ramadan for The New York Times Magazine. Buruma concluded that Ramadan's "politics offer an alternative to violence, which, in the end, is reason enough to engage with him, critically, but without fear."

Berman found that take dangerously naive and simplistic. In a 28,000 word response that ran across almost an entire issue of The New Republic, Berman delved deep into Ramadan's written work and biography to paint a far more complex -- and menacing -- picture of the controversial and wildly popular scholar of Islam. 

Buruma held his fire until late last month when he took after Berman and other "such tub-thumpers for Bush's war" as Christopher Hitchens and the French writer Pascal Bruckner in the course of a review of Norman Podhoretz's new book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. Buruma's central point was that he sees no difference between the views of "neo-left" thinkers like Berman and neoconservative thinkers like Podhoretz. (Bruckner and Buruma have tangled before on the related issue of when tolerance for cultural differences becomes tolerance for intolerance.)

Berman has just hit back with a letter to the editor in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, in which he claims that Buruma is for some reason incapable of seeing the fine distinctions that Berman feels he has drawn between his own position and that of President Bush's.

Berman and Buruma's ongoing spat -- which shows every sign of intensifying in the near future -- speaks to a much larger divide on the left over how to aid the cause of reform in the Muslim world.

Buruma's position is seconded by the New York University historian Tony Judt, most notably in this essay in the London Review of Books -- titled "Bush's Useful Idiots" -- and in this op-ed in The New York Times.

Elements of this debate have been playing out in the pages of The Chronicle Review. Earlier this year Tariq Ramadan made a case for what the West can learn from Islam. In 2004 Ian Buruma sketched out the origins of Occidentalism, which he defined as "a war against a particular idea of the West, which is neither new nor unique to Islamist extremism." And in 2003 Paul Berman implored intellectuals to ask themselves what they are doing to support "liberal values against the totalitarianism of the Muslim world and its defenders in the West."

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

 

Find out which questions (out of eleven) where the U.S. Presidential candidates are most aligned with your responses ---
http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

 

Up Up and Away:  Faculty and Administrative Salaries Soar
As of fall 2006, the average salary for a full-time professor at the University of Illinois (UI) was $95,700, up $13,400 or 16 percent since 2002. When comparing that average salary to those at the 21 institutions, the UI ranks third from the bottom, behind Michigan, Texas and North Carolina but ahead of Washington and Wisconsin....In recent years, as turnovers have occurred in high-level positions at the university, salaries for new employees have often risen well above the predecessor's pay. Four years ago, the UI's vice president for technology and economic development, David Chicoine, earned $262,500. UI College of Business Dean Avijit Ghosh will assume that post in January and earn $339,000....Of the more than 100 people who earn $200,000 or more at the UI, many are in the business and law schools. And many hold endowed chairs, meaning some of the salary is funded by a donor.Such top faculty earners include finance Professor Jeff Brown, who has the title of William Karnes Professor of Mergers and Acquisitions, and a salary of $245,000;
Christine Des Garennes, News-Gazette, October 28, 2007 --- http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/10/28/going_rate_is_going_up

Bob Jensen's threads on salary issues are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Salaries

Teaching versus Research versus Education

October 24, 2007 message from XXXXX

Bob,

I'm writing this to get your personal view of the relationship between teaching and research? I think there's lots of ways to potentially answer this question, but I'm curious as to your thoughts.

October 27, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi XXXXX,

Wow! This is a tough question!.
Since I know you're an award-winning teacher, I hope you will identify yourself on the AECM and improve upon my comments below.

Your question initially is to comment on the relation between teaching and research. In most instances research at some point in time led to virtually everything we teach. In the long-run research thus becomes the foundation of teaching. In the case of accounting education this research is based heavily on normative and case method research. Many, probably most, accountics researchers are not outstanding teachers of undergraduate accounting unless they truly take the time for both preparation and student interactions. New education technologies may especially help these researchers teach better. For example, adding video such as the BYU variable speed video described below may replace bad lecturing in live classes with great video learning modules.

Similarly, master teachers and master educators are sometimes reputed researchers, but this is probably the exception rather than the rule. Researchers have trouble finding the time for great class preparation and open-door access.

 

********************

Firstly your question can be answered at the university-wide level where experts think that students, especially undergraduate students, get short changed by research professors. Top research professors sometimes only teach doctoral students or advanced masters students who are already deemed experts. Research professors often prefer this arrangement so that they can focus upon there research even when "teaching" a tortured   esoteric course. Undergraduate students in these universities are often taught by graduate student instructors who have many demands on their time that impedes careful preparation for teaching each class and for giving students a lot of time outside of class.

Often the highest ranked universities are among the worst universities in terms of teaching.  See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DoNotExcel

When top researchers are assigned undergraduate sections, their sections are often the least popular. A management science professor years ago (a top Carnegie-Mellon graduate) on the faculty at Michigan State University had no students signing up for his elective courses. When assigned sections of required courses, he only got students if students had no choice regarding which section of a course they were forced into by the department head. This professor who was avoided by students at almost all costs was one of the most intelligent human beings I ever met in my entire life.

One of the huge problems is that research professors give more attention to research activities than day-to-day class preparation. Bad preparation, in turn, short changes students expecting more from teachers. I've certainly experienced this as a student and as a faculty member where I've sometimes been guilty of this as I look back in retrospect. A highly regarded mathematics researcher at Stanford years ago had a reputation of being always unprepared for class. He often could not solve his own illustrations in class, flubbed up answering student questions, and confused himself while lecturing in a very disjointed and unprepared manner. This is forgivable now an then, but not repeatedly to a point where his campus reputation for bad teaching is known by all. Yet if there was a Nobel Prize for mathematics, he would have won such a prize. John Nash (the "Beautiful Mind" at Princeton University who did win a Nobel Prize in economics) had a similar teaching reputation, although his problems were confounded by mental illness.

Then again, sometimes top researchers, I mean very top award-winning researchers, are also the master teachers. For example, Bill Beaver, Mary Barth, and some other top accounting research professors repeatedly won outstanding teaching awards when teaching Stanford's MBA students and doctoral students. I think in these instances, their research makes them better teachers because they had so much leading edge material to share with students. Some of our peers are just good at anything they seriously undertake.

But when it gets down to it, there's no single mold for a top teacher and a top educator. And top educators are often not award-sinning teachers. Extremely popular teachers are not necessarily top educators --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

In fact, some top educators may be unpopular teachers who get relatively low student evaluations. In a somewhat analogous manner, the best physicians may get low ratings from patients due to abrupt, impersonal, and otherwise lousy bedside manners. Patients generally want the best physicians even when bedside manners are lousy. This is not always the case with students. For example, an educator who realizes that student learn better when they're not spoon fed and have to work like the little red hen (plant the seed, weed the field, fend off the pests, harvest the grain, mill the grain, and bake their own meals) prefer their fast-food instructors, especially the easy grading fast food instructors.

********************

Secondly your question can be answered at an individual level regarding what constitutes a master educator or a master teacher. There are no molds for such outstanding educators. Some are great researchers as well as being exceptional teachers and/or educators. Many are not researchers, although some of the non-researchers may be scholarly writers.

Some pay a price for devoting their lives to education administration and teaching rather than research. For example, some who win all-campus teaching awards and are selected by students and alumni as being the top educators on campus are stuck as low paying associate professorship levels because they did not do the requisite research for higher level promotions and pay.

Master Educators Who Deliver Exceptional Courses or Entire Programs
But Have Little Contact With Individual Students

Before reading this section, you should be familiar with the document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

Master educators can also be outstanding researchers, although research is certainly not a requisite to being a master educator. Many master educators are administrators of exceptional accounting education programs. They're administrative duties typically leave little time for research, although they may write about education and learning. Some master educators are not even tenure track faculty.

What I've noticed in recent years is how technology can make a huge difference. Nearly every college these days has some courses in selected disciplines because they are utilizing some type exciting technology. Today I returned from a trip to Jackson, Mississippi where I conduced a day-long CPE session on education technology for accounting educators in Mississippi (what great southern hospitality by the way). So the audience would not have to listen to me the entire day, I invited Cameron Earl from Brigham Young University to make a presentation that ran for about 90 minutes. I learned some things about top educators at BYU, which by the way is one of the most respected universities in the world. If you factor out a required religion course on the Book of Mormon, the most popular courses on the BYU campus are the two basic accounting courses. By popular I mean in terms of thousands of students who elect to take these courses even if they have no intention of majoring in business or economics where these two courses are required. Nearly all humanities and science students on campus try to sign up for these two accounting courses.

After students take these two courses, capacity constraints restrict the numbers of successful students in these courses who are then allowed to become accounting majors at BYU. I mean I'm talking about a very, very small percentage who are allowed to become accounting students. Students admitted to the accounting program generally have over 3.7 minimum campus-wide grade averages.

This begs the question of what makes the two basic accounting courses so exceptionally popular in such a large and prestigious university?

Trivia Question
At BYU most students on campus elect to take Norman Nemrow's two basic accounting courses. In the distant past, what exceptional accounting professor managed to get his basic accounting courses required at a renowned university while he was teaching these courses?

Trivia Answer
Bill Paton is one of the all-time great accounting professors in history. His home campus was the University of Michigan, and for a period of time virtually all students at his university had to take basic accounting (or at least so I was told by several of Paton's former doctoral students). Bill Paton was one of the first to be inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame.

As an aside, I might mention that I favor requiring two basic accounting courses for every student admitted to a college or university, including colleges who do not even have business education programs.

But the "required accounting courses" would not, in my viewpoint, be a traditional basic accounting courses. About two thirds or more of these courses should be devoted to personal finance, investing, business law, tax planning. The remainder of the courses should touch on accounting basics for keeping score of business firms and budgeting for every organization in society.

At the moment, the majority of college graduates do not have a clue about the time value of money and the basics of finance and accounting that they will face the rest of their lives.

 

There are other ways of being "mastery educators" without being master teachers in a traditional sense. Three professors of accounting at the University of Virginia developed and taught a year-long intermediate accounting case where students virtually had to teach themselves in a manner that they found painful and frustrating. But there are metacognitive reasons where the end result made this year-long active learning task one of the most meaningful and memorable experiences in their entire education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
They often painfully grumbled with such comments as "everything I'm learned in this course I'm having to learn by myself."

You can read about mastery learning and all its frustrations at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching 

 

Master Teachers Who Deliver Exceptional Courses
But Have Little Contact With Individual Students

Before reading this section, you should be familiar with the document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

Master teachers can also be outstanding researchers, although research is certainly not a requisite to being a master teacher. Some, not many, master teachers also win awards for leading empirical and analytical research. I've already mentioned Bill Beaver and Mary Barth at Stanford University. One common characteristic is exceptional preparation for each class coupled with life experiences to draw upon when fielding student questions. These life experiences often come from the real world of business apart from the more narrow worlds of mathematical modeling where these professors are also renowned researchers.

Frequently master teachers teach via cases and are also known as exceptional case-method researchers and writers of cases. The Harvard Business School every year has some leading professors who are widely known as master teachers and master researchers. Michael Porter may become one of Harvard's all time legends. Some of the current leading master teachers at Harvard and elsewhere who consistently stand head and shoulders above their colleagues are listed at http://rakeshkhurana.typepad.com/rakesh_khuranas_weblog/2005/12/index.html

Some of the all-time great case teachers were not noted researchers or gifted case writers. Master case teachers are generally gifted actors/actresses with carefully prepared scripts and even case choreographies in terms of how and were to stand in front of and among the class. The scripts are highly adaptable to most any conceivable question or answer given by a student at any point in the case analysis.

Most master case teachers get psyched up for each class. One of Harvard's all time great case teachers, C. Roland (Chris) Christensen, admitted after years of teaching to still throwing up in the men's room before entering the classroom.

In some of these top case-method schools like the Harvard Business School and Darden (University of Virginia) have very large classes. Master teachers in those instances cannot become really close with each and every student they educate and inspire.

Some widely noted case researchers and writers are not especially good in the classroom. In fact I've known several who are considered poor teachers that students avoided whenever possible even thought their cases are popular worldwide.

Open-Door Master Teachers Who Have Exceptional One-On-One Relations With Students

Not all master teachers are particularly outstanding in the classroom. Two women colleagues in my lifetime stand out as open-door master teachers who were prepared in class and good teachers but were/are not necessarily exceptional in classroom performances. What made them masters teachers is exceptional one-on-one relations with students outside the classroom. These master teachers were exceptional teachers in their offices and virtually had open door policies each and every day. Both Alice Nichols at Florida State University and Petrea Sandlin at Trinity University got to know each student and even some students' parents very closely. Many open-door master teachers' former students rank them at the very top of all the teachers they ever had in college. Many students elected to major in accounting because these two women became such important parts of their lives in college.

But not all these open-door master teachers are promoted and well-paid by their universities. They often have neither the time nor aptitude for research and publishing in top academic journals. Sometimes the university bends over backwards to grant them tenure but then locks them in at low-paying associate ranks with lots of back patting and departmental or campus-wide teaching awards. Some open-door master teachers never attain the rank and prestige of full professor because they did not do enough research and writing to pass the promotion hurdles. Most open-door master teachers find their rewards in relations with their students rather than relations with their colleges.

Sometimes master teachers teach content extremely well without necessarily being noted for the extent of coverage. On occasion they may skip very lightly over some of the most difficult parts of the textbooks such as the parts dealing with FAS 133, IAS 39, and FIN 46. Sometimes the most difficult topics to learn make students frustrated with the course and the instructor who nevertheless makes them learn those most difficult topics even when the textbook coverage is superficial and outside technical learning material has to be brought into the course. Less popular teachers are sometimes despised taskmasters.

Your question initially was to comment on the relation between teaching and research. In most instances research at some point in time led to virtually everything we teach. In the long-run research thus becomes the foundation of teaching. In the case of accounting education this research is based heavily on normative and case method research. Many, probably most, accountics researchers are not outstanding teachers of undergraduate accounting unless they truly take the time for both preparation and student interactions. New education technologies may especially help these researchers teach better. For example, adding video such as the BYU variable speed video described above may replace bad lecturing in live classes with great video learning modules.

Similarly, master teachers and master educators are sometimes reputed researchers, but this is probably the exception rather than the rule. Researchers have trouble finding the time for great class preparation and open-door access.

And lastly, accountics researchers research in accounting has not been especially noteworthy, apart from case-method research, in providing great teaching material for our undergraduate and masters-level courses. If it was noteworthy it would have at least been replicated --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#Replication
If it was noteworthy for textbooks and teaching, practitioners would be at least interested in some of it as well --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession

 

"‘Too Good’ for Tenure?" by Alison Wunderland (pseudonym), Inside Higher Ed, October 26, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/10/26/wunderland

But what most small colleges won’t tell you — not even in the fine print — is that teaching and students often really don’t come first. And for the professors, they can’t. Once upon a time teaching colleges taught and research institutions researched. But these days, with the market for students competitive, and teaching schools scrambling for recognition, they have shifted their priorities. Now they market what is measurable — not good teaching, but big names and publications. They look to hire new faculty from top research universities who will embellish the faculty roster and bring attention to the school by publishing. And they can do this, because even job candidates who don’t really want to be at places like Rural College (although it is ranked quite well) are grateful to get a tenure-track position.

And here is where the problem is compounded. Small schools want books instead of teaching; and many new faculty — even the mediocre scholars — want to publish instead of teach. In the new small college, both win. Everyone looks the other way while courses are neglected for the sake of publications. What few devoted teachers will admit — because to do so would be impolitic — is that it is impossible to teach a 4-4 or even a 3-3 load effectively and publish a book pre-tenure without working “too hard.” What’s more, when you suggest that a small teaching college should prioritize teaching over publishing, what your colleagues hear you say is, “I am not good enough to publish.”

Sadly, many of the students also think they win in this scenario. They get good grades with little work. Once a culture like this is established, a new faculty member who is serious about teaching rocks the boat. And if she still somehow manages to excel in all the other required areas, she might be sunk. Unfortunately for the small schools, the best solution for her might be to jump ship.

"Teaching Professors to Be More Effective Teachers," Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, October 31, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/31/ballstate

David W. Concepción, an associate professor of philosophy, came to the first workshop series in 2003 wondering why “students in courses for some number of years said, ‘I get nothing out of the reading’” (specifically the primary philosophy texts). Discovering through student focus groups that what they meant was that they couldn’t ascertain the main points, Concepción realized that he needed to explain the dialogical nature of philosophy texts to students in his 40-person introductory philosophy course.

Whereas high school texts tend to be linear and students read them with the objective of highlighting facts paragraph by paragraph that they could be tested on, “Primary philosophical texts are dialogical. Which is to say an author will present an idea, present a criticism of that idea, rebut the criticism to support the idea, maybe consider a rejoinder to the rebuttal of the criticism, and then show why the rejoinder doesn’t work and then get on to the second point,” Concepción says.

“If you are reading philosophy and you’re assuming it’s linear and you’re looking for facts, you’re going to be horribly, horribly frustrated.”

Out of the workshop, Concepción designed an initial pedagogical plan, which he ran by fellow workshop participants, fellow philosophy faculty, junior and senior philosophy majors, and freshmen philosophy students for feedback. He developed a “how-to” document for reading philosophy texts (included in a December 2004 article he published in Teaching Philosophy, “Reading Philosophy with Background Knowledge and Metacognition,” which won the American Association of Philosophy Teachers’ Mark Lenssen Prize for scholarship on the instruction of philosophy).

Based on the constructivist theory of learning suggesting that students make sense of new information by joining it with information they already have, his guidelines suggest that students begin with a quick pre-read, in which they underline words they don’t know but don’t stop reading until they reach the end. They then would follow up with a more careful read in which they look up definitions, write notes summarizing an author’s argument into their own words on a separate piece of paper, and make notations in the margins such that if they were to return to the reading one week later they could figure out in 15 seconds what the text says (a process Concepción calls “flagging).

Concepción also designed a series of assignments in which his introductory students are trained in the method of reading philosophy texts. They are asked to summarize and evaluate a paragraph-long argument before and after learning the guidelines (and then write a report about their different approaches to the exercise before and after getting the “how-to” document on reading philosophy), turn in a photocopy of an article with their notations, and summarize that same article in writing. They participate in a class discussion in which they present the top five most important things about reading philosophy and face short-answer questions on the midterm about reading strategies (after that, Concepción says, students are expected to apply the knowledge they’ve learned on their own, without further direct evaluation).

The extra reading instruction has proven most beneficial for the weakest students, Concepción says — suggesting that the high-performing students generally already have the advanced reading skills that lower performers do not.

“What happened in terms of grade distribution in my classes is that the bottom of the curve pushed up. So the number of Fs went down to zero one semester, the Ds went down and the Cs stayed about the same in the sense that some of the former C performers got themselves in the B range and the Fs and the Ds got themselves in the C range. There was no difference in the A range, and not much difference in the B range.”

Meanwhile, in his weekly, 90-person lecture class on World Mythology, William Magrath, a full professor of classics, also saw significant drops in the number of Fs after developing targeted group work to attack a pressing problem: About a quarter of freshmen had been failing.

“I had been keeping very close records on student performance over the semester for the previous five or six years and noticed that there was a pattern wherein a lot of the freshmen were having real difficulty with the course. But it wasn’t so much that they weren’t performing on the instruments that they were given but rather that they weren’t taking the quizzes or weren’t taking the tests or weren’t getting the assignments in,” Magrath says.

Discovering that he could predict final grades based on student performance in just the first four weeks of class with remarkable accuracy, he divided the freshmen into groups based on their projected grades: the A/Bs, B/Cs and Ds/Fs (No – he didn’t call them by those names, but instead gave the groups more innocuous titles like “The Panthers.”)

Meeting with each set of students once every three weeks for one hour before class, he gave the A/Bs a series of supplemental assignments designed to challenge them. For instance, he would give them a myth on a particular theme and ask them to find three other myths connected to that theme for a group discussion. Meanwhile, the Ds/Fs took a more structured, step-by-step approach, completing readings together and discussing basic questions like, “How do you approach a story, what do you look for when you face a story, how would you apply this theory to a story?”

Meanwhile, Magrath says, the B/C students didn’t complete supplemental reading, but were instead expected to post questions about the readings or lectures that he would answer on the electronic class bulletin board – with the idea that they would remain engaged and involved in class.

In the end, Magrath found the smallest difference for B/C students. But the overall average of students climbed from 1.9 in 1999-2002, before the group work was put in place, to 2.4 in 2003-5. Of all the Fs he gave, the percentage given to freshmen (as opposed to upperclassmen in the class, who did not participate in the group work) fell from 63 to 11 percent.

When, in 2006, Magrath stopped conducting the group work in order to see what the effect might be, performance returned to earlier levels.

“The dynamic of this class is a large lecture class with the lights dimmed at night on Thursdays once a week. The kids feel anonymous almost right away. That anonymity gets broken by virtue of being with me,” Magrath says. He adds that while he has also replicated the group work format in the spring semester, the results weren’t as dramatic — suggesting, he says, that freshman fall is the critical time to get students on track.

“If what [first-semester freshmen] are experiencing in the classroom isn’t accommodating for them, they don’t know what to do. They genuinely don’t know what to do,” he says.

As for steps forward, Ranieri, the leader of the initiative, says that the Lumina grant – which included funds for faculty stipends of $2,400 the first year and $2,000 in subsequent years (faculty who participated in the first two years continued to participate in workshops and receive funding through the end of the three-year cycle) — has been exhausted. However, he hopes to expand a report he’s writing — which tracks retention and GPA data for students who enrolled in the “Lumina” courses as freshmen throughout their college careers — for publication.

So far, Ranieri says, the various professors involved have given 13 national or international presentations and produced four peer-reviewed publications.

“One of the biggest problems you have in higher education,” he says, “is allowing faculty members to be rewarded for this kind of work.”

 

October 30, 2007 reply from Linda A Kidwell [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU] 

There was an article in the Smith College Alumnae Magazine several years ago about one of my favorite professors at Smith, Randy Bartlett in economics. My second semester of senior year, I was done with all my required courses and swore I would not take another 8:00 class, but one of my friends told me to give his 8am Urban Economics class a try. He opened class that first day by reading Carl Sandberg's poem Chicago, and I was hooked -- back into an unnecessary 8 o'clock class by choice! And he was indeed a wonderful teacher. He read that poem again after a semester of urban econ, and it took on a whole new meaning.

Although I was unaware of his research activities at the time, the article I mentioned contained this wonderful quote I have kept on my wall since then:

"I carry out the research and publish because it keeps my mind lively. I can't ask my students to take on hard work without my doing the same."

When I wonder about the significance of my contributions to the field, I read that quote.

For those who don't know the poem, here it is:

CHICAGO

HOG Butcher for the World,  
      Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,  
      Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;  
      Stormy, husky, brawling,  
      City of the Big Shoulders:         5
 
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.  
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.  
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.  
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:  
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.         10
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;  
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,  
      Bareheaded,  
      Shoveling,  
      Wrecking,         15
      Planning,  
      Building, breaking, rebuilding,  
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,  
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,  
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,         20
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. and under his ribs the heart of the people,  
                Laughing!  
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Carl Sandberg 1916

Linda Kidwell University of Wyoming

October 30, 2007 reply from Patricia Doherty [pdoherty@BU.EDU]

You know, Linda, somehow your post brought to my mind something from my own undergraduate days at Duquesne University. I was a Liberal Arts student, and had to take, among other things, 4 semesters of history. I came into it dreading it - I'd hated history in high school - all memorization and outlining of chapters. The first college semester was no improvement - an auditorium lecture with hundreds of students, a professor lecturing for 50 minutes, and a TA taking attendance. Then came the second semester. I looked for, and found, a smaller class. The professor (whose name escapes me right now) was a "church historian," researching history from the viewpoint of world religions. He began the first class by reading an excerpt from Will Cuppy's "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody." Had us rolling in the aisles. He kept at it the whole term, interspersing history with Cuppy readings and anecdotes from actual history. I loved that class.

And Will Cuppy is on my shelf to this day. And that professor awakened in me a love of history. I read history, historical novels, watch history films (fiction and non) to this day. All because one professor thought history was a living thing, not a dead timeline, and managed to convey that to a bunch of jaded sophomores.

p

How to Teach With "Start" and "Remote Control"  and UserView in Windows
You should become very familiar with the Landmark Act before designing any course materials

For over two years, after we bought our retirement home in New Hampshire, and before I retired from Trinity University in Texas, I used GoToMyPC to remotely operate my desktop computer in Texas from hotel rooms and my home in NH during summers, holiday breaks, a sabbatical leave, and other visits to NH. GoToMyPC works great and did penetrate my university's firewall. This is an annual-fee based option for remotely controlling your office computer or the computer of a friend or student in a distant location --- https://www.gotomypc.com

I now use Cisco's VPN which is free to me when I want to download files into various servers on the Trinity University Network. But VPN is not quite the same as a remote control system for operating a distant computer --- http://compnetworking.about.com/od/vpn/p/ciscovpnclient.htm

Since I no longer have an office and desktop computer in Texas, I no longer use GoToMyPC. However, the other day I had call to use a free utility that is built into the Windows operating system. I simply clicked on "Start" and "Remote Control" and gave a Trinity University computer technician remote control of my PC (actually it's joint control since we both had control of my computer). This remote control can be granted for any specified amount of time (e.g., 20 minutes or two hours) and can be granted without having to give your password to the remote operator, although you can also choose the password-required option.

Note especially that the pre-specified time allotment is a key advantage over the free  "Start" and "Remote Control" alternative relative to the fee-based GoToMyPC alternative. However, GoToMyPC has some key advantages when the remote user is on public computers such as Internet cafes and public library computers.

The remotely located technician named Gabe and I were both on the telephone and jointly operating my computer. He performed some repairs and updates to my computer's email system while I watched. He also explained what he was doing on the phone. This saved us both a lot of time relative to the typical technical support phone call in which the technician asks you over the phone to do a sequence of complicated things on your computer. You have to fumble with your keyboard and phone at the same time, and the technician sits and waits doing nothing for periods of time. It is much faster to use "Start" and "Remote Control" and let the technician do the work while you watch and listen. I might add that I did not have to turn off my firewall for this, although firewalls may be a problem for some users.

It suddenly struck me that  "Start" and "Remote Control" might be a useful option for teaching one-on-one to a student at a remote site ranging from an on-campus dorm room to a site half way around the world. It would be much more efficient than trying to explain something technical on the phone with the student and then having to wait until the student makes it work on her/his computer.

This could be especially useful as a free alternative for remotely teaching certain types of handicapped students such as students having limited use of their arms or hands. Special course materials could even be designed with the  "Start" and "Remote Control" features in mind.

It also struck me that Gabe and other technicians are often doing the same things over and over with computer users. It would save a lot of money and time if technicians like Gabe and Microsoft made Camtasia videos explaining common repetitive solutions to computer problems --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

UserView --- http://www.techsmith.com/uservue/features.asp 
TechSmith has a newer product called UserView that really sounds exciting, although I’ve not yet tried it. It allows you to view and record what is happening on someone else’s computer like a student’s computer. Multiple computers can be viewed at the same time. Images and text can be recorded. Pop-up comments can be inserted by the instructor to text written by students.

UserView can be used for remote testing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus

Userview offers great hope for teaching disabled students such as sight and/or hearing impaired students --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Bob Jensen's threads on Technology Aids for the Handicapped and Learning Challenged are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
You should become very familiar with the Landmark Act before designing any course materials.

Question
What is the rate of growth in online enrollments in the U.S.?

"More Online Enrollments," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, October 23, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/23/sloan

More students than ever are taking courses online, but that doesn’t mean the growth will continue indefinitely. That’s the takeaway from the Sloan Foundation’s latest survey, conducted with the Babson Survey Research Group, of colleges’ online course offerings.

With results from nearly 4,500 institutions of all types, the report, “Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning”, found that in fall 2006, nearly 3.5 million students — or 19.8 percent of total postsecondary enrollments — took at least one course online. That’s a 9.7-percent increase over the previous year, but growth has been slowing significantly: last year, the jump was 36.5 percent.

But compared to the growth rate for enrollment overall (1.3 percent), the report notes, the online sector is still rapidly expanding. Most of that expansion is happening where online classes are already being offered.

“The number of new institutions entering the online learning arena had definitely slowed [by last fall]; most institutions that plan to offer online education are now doing so,” the report’s authors wrote.

The institutions surveyed seem to believe that the most important reason for offering online courses is to improve student access, while the top cited obstacles to more widespread online offerings are student’ discipline or study habits, followed by faculty acceptance.

The survey focuses solely on what it classifies as “online” courses: those offering 80 percent or more of their content over the Internet. As a result, trends in so-called “blended” or “hybrid” courses, in which students occasionally meet in person with their professors while also receiving considerable instruction online, are not covered in the report.

The importance of online courses varies widely depending on the type of institution. Public universities, for example, view online education as much more critical to their long-term strategies than private or even for-profit institutions. And not surprisingly, two-year colleges have shown the most growth, accounting for a full half of online enrollments over the past five years:

Four-Year Growt