Responding to a rumor that McDonalds added
moosebergers to the menu.
Adding moose lyrics to Bolero
Too old to cut the mustard anymore ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG1dIFRlV28
You can have her, I don't want her ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJfotPO_Xkk
More moose
pictures ---
http://www.douglloydphotography.com/8504.html
I've not yet
taken any pictures of a moose on my camera. Erika did see one feeding under the
snow in our yard last week at about 2:00 a.m. when the moon was full. About a
month ago, during rutting season, we had to stop for a large male in the middle
of the back woods road leading up to our home. The other night there was a moose
beside the highway (Route 116) on our way back from a dinner party. Twp years
ago, before I
retired from teaching and had to catch a plane in Portland, I had to stop for a
huge male about 5:00 a.m. on New Hampshire's
famous and very beautiful Kancamagus Highway ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kancamagus_Highway .
On average, over 200 cars hit moose each year on New Hampshire roads. Maine has
a much larger moose population and more than twice the number of collisions of
cars and moose ---
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1D81438F930A35755C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
Deer accidents are more common, but moose are harder on cars.
What's a moose?
--- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose
Although the average height of a moose is only about six feet at the shoulders,
the head reaches eight feet or higher. Some big bulls reach over ten
feet. One of our friends, Anita, at a dinner party said that, while walking alone with
her dog in a field, she confronted a huge female moose. Anita laid down off the
path while the moose
became agitated by her dog. The moose ignored Anita and charged down the path and into the
woods. My neighbor had trouble when a moose repeatedly walked right through his
electric horse fence (apparently the moose did not get much of a charge out of
it).
In the summertime,
moose feed mainly on leaves and vegetation in our many shallow ponds in these
mountains. They prefer underwater vegetation, which may account for why
their legs and head evolved to be so huge. In the wintertime our ponds are
frozen over. In order to conserve on energy consumption and a starvation diet,
moose stand like statues in the winter while they live on stored fat.
Bull moose have
been known, rarely, to fall in love with pastured farm cows. But I don't think
the romantic feelings are mutual. In recent years, moose are prone to a brain
disease
that makes them disoriented. Sometimes they swim endlessly in circles. At other
times they wander into town streets and back yards ---
http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=6922102
Two Bulls Gently
Sparing --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPa4Z69YYT0
Bull Moose in Anchorage ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8m5Kq2Bbzg
Moose Babies (the ears are huge for wireless reception) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9L_xYj6Ws
Woody Allen Shot a Moose ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmnLRVWgnXU
It was not Woody Allen that this moose attacked ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qD4xOOIkDc
Bear vs. a Moose ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ANqAZvT3uc
Face-in-Camera Female Moose ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIfA4nANfLI
Moose and Dog Video (the moose was eating Halloween pumpkins) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94sa7pGoRHk
Speed Painting in Watercolor ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL3flxa-QNQ
Moose Sings Da Blues ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_wqvGVhYxk
Rocky & Bullwinkle ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXEny-BzKc
Tidbits on November 29, 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/
Songza
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
I tried it for Arturo Toscanini, Stan Kenton, and Jim Reeves.
The results were absolutely amazing!
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Educational Multimedia Visualization Center (video) ---
http://emvc.geol.ucsb.edu/
BioEd Online: Food and Fitness ---
http://www.bioedonline.org/workshops/workshop.cfm?cme_activityid=72&cmepage=cme_info#cmeinfo
Small Business Administration: Free Online Courses (video) ---
http://www.sba.gov/services/training/onlinecourses/index.html
The New York Times Video (Menu of Available Videos) ---
http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp
CNN/YouTube Debate: Submit Your Question Today! ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R1oXCRY6pE
Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac
(audio) ---
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Bored Night ---
http://www.bored-night.com/?p=694
This footage was recently released on Russian television. A
Nikolaev, Russia businessman tipped off the police that he was about to be hit
and/or robbed by the mafia. The police set up cameras inside and outside the
businessman's apartment.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=868_1192540876
David Letterman Performs Naked (full-fronted) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UYHqPYIQJE
MIT's Video Lecture Search
Engine for Finding Topics Within Lectures: Watch the video at
---
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
Researchers at MIT have released a video and audio search tool that solves one
of the most challenging problems in the field: how to break up a lengthy
academic lecture into manageable chunks, pinpoint the location of keywords, and
direct the user to them. Announced last month, the MIT
Lecture Browser website gives the general public
detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the
university's
OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine
leverages decades' worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other
institutions to
convert
audio
into text and make it searchable.
Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, November 26, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19747/?nlid=686&a=f
Once again, the Lecture Browser link (with video) is at
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Find free video lectures from free
universities at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads on how to capture
streaming video ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia
From The Washington Post on
November 26, 2007
How many DVDs does Netflix ship per
day?
A.
500,000
B.
1.2 million
C.
1.6 million
D.
2.3 million
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Songza --- the best free music database I've
ever encountered
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
I tried it for Arturo Toscanini, Stan Kenton, and Jim Reeves.
The results were absolutely amazing!
Ear Chives ---
http://www.the-earchives.com/
A Thanksgiving Feast With Handel
Handel’s Oratorio 'Belshazzar' in Concert in New York City ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16465921
Verdi's 'Aida' From Houston Grand Opera (Act 1)
---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16505142
Giuseppe Verdi's 'Falstaff' From Houston Grand Opera ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8901076
Verdi's 'Macbeth'
(full concert) ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14058055
An opera dedicated to the trauma of Argentina's
Dirty War recently opened in the Argentine town of La Plata, a focus of
resistance during the dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16221023
As a part of Carnegie Hall's first major
international festival — Berlin in Lights — conductor Simon Rattle and the
revered Berlin Philharmonic have taken up a week's residency at the hall with
more than a dozen performances ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16227797
Lyle Lovett and His Big Band Go 'Large' ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16221831
Pepe Romero and the Art of the Spanish Guitar ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15203122
The March King: John Philip Sousa ---
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/sousa/sousa-home.html
Songs about alcohol and its effects are common
currency in country music. But in "Drinkin' Problem," Lori McKenna goes in a
different direction, sidestepping the usual moralistic dimension in favor of
getting under the skin of someone for whom the issue is an immediate concern ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16318418
Drummer Men and Women ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drummer
Listing of Notable Drummers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drummers
List of Notable Percussionists ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_percussionists
Listing of a Few Notable Jazz Band Drummers ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_drummers
Drumming Videos from Jazz Bands
Percussion ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percussion
Boston Pops ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Pops
Photographs and Art
Beautiful America ---
http://mybeautifulamerica.com/mybeautifulamerica.htm
NOAA Photo Lab ---
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/
Galeria Foto ---
http://www.galeriafoto.com/photos/showphoto.php/photo/33591/cat/556
Photograph Shows Soldiers at Camp
Dodge, Iowa in in 1918 forming a huge Statue of Liberty ---
http://www.snopes.com/photos/patriotic/liberty.asp
Georges Seurat: The Drawings ---
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/seurat/
Travel Photography ---
http://www.momentaryawe.com/
Modern Day Cave People ---
http://www.yousaytoo.com/user/kitty/4544
Pete Turner Photographs ---
http://www.peteturner.com/
"The Price of the Ticket It costs a
lot to see a Broadway show. Is it worth the expense?" by Terry Teachout,
The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2007 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010904
Time for
a pop quiz inspired by the stagehands' strike that shut down most of
Broadway. Who said this--and when did he say it?
"It is not for nothing that New York is the place
where the critics are the most powerful and the toughest in the world.
It is the audience, year after year, that has been forced to elevate
simple fallible men into highly priced experts because, as when a
collector buys an expensive work, he cannot afford to take the risk
alone: the tradition of the expert valuers of works of art, like Duveen,
has reached the box office line. So the circle is closed; not only the
artists, but also the audience, have to have their protection men--and
most of the curious, intelligent, nonconforming individuals stay away."
That quotation is from "The Empty Space," an
influential book about theater by Peter Brook, the avant-garde British
director whose celebrated version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," set in
an all-white space and played by actors who walked on stilts and swung
on trapezes, was one of the most admired Shakespeare productions of the
'60s. Mr. Brook wrote "The Empty Space" 39 years ago, when the top
ticket price on Broadway was $11, $64 in today's dollars. Nowadays it
will cost you anywhere between $51.50 and $121.50 to see "Young
Frankenstein"--unless you're prepared to fork out $450 for a
premium-priced weekend seat.
Speaking as one of the simple, fallible New York
critics Mr. Brook had in mind, I feel obliged to ask: Is Broadway really
twice as good today as it was in 1968? I recently looked up the theater
listings in the "Goings On About Town" section of the Nov. 23, 1968,
issue of The New Yorker. Zoe Caldwell was starring in "The Prime of Miss
Jean Brodie," Lee J. Cobb in "King Lear," Dustin Hoffman in "Jimmy
Shine," James Earl Jones in "The Great White Hope," Lotte Lenya in
"Cabaret," Donald Pleasance in "The Man in the Glass Booth" and Maureen
Stapleton in "Plaza Suite." You could also see new plays by Brian Friel
and Arthur Miller, as well as the long-running original productions of
"Fiddler on the Roof," "Hair," "Hello, Dolly," "Mame" and "Man of La
Mancha." Case closed? Well, maybe not quite. As I look back over my
pre-strike Broadway reviews of the past year or so, I find lurking amid
the dross a fair number of memorable shows, including Tom Stoppard's
"Coast of Utopia" trilogy and "Rock 'n' Roll," the Manhattan Theatre
Club's unforgettable revival of Mr. Friel's "Translations," the
Roundabout Theatre Company's "110 in the Shade" and "Pygmalion," John
Doyle's perception-changing rethinking of Stephen Sondheim's "Company"
and Frank Langella's sensational star turn in "Frost/Nixon." I would
gladly have paid a hundred bucks to see any one of these shows--but
would I have paid $1,800, not including dinner, to go to all of them
with a date?
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
World Wide Words ---
http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm
eScholarship Editions ---
http://content.cdlib.org/ucpress/
The Oscar Wilde Collection ---
http://www.oscarwildecollection.com/
Oscar Wilde Collection ---
http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/
Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac
(audio) ---
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
Magma Poetry ---
http://magmapoetry.com/poem.php?article_id=186
Rogue Scholars ---
http://roguescholars.com/opus/default.html
The Essays of Francis Bacon ---
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mike_donnelly/lottwo.htm
"Man Bites Dog," by Scott McLemee,
Inside Higher Ed, November 21, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/21/mclemee
Roger Gathman’s “The Academic Presses”
debuted on Sunday in The Austin American-Statesman with a discussion of
Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
(Princeton University Press) and James Simpson’s Burning to Read: English
Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents (Harvard University Press).
Gathman has contributed to The American Scholar, The New York Observer, and
Salon, among other publications. He has lived in Austin since doing graduate
work in the philosophy department at the University of Texas in the 1980s;
since then, aside from writing, he’s worked as a freelance editor and
translator.
His
inaugural piece was striking, not
just for the kinds of books it covered, but for how it
handled them. Academic publishing now includes a wide range
of more or less popular nonfiction – not to mention
cookbooks, or guides to state bicycle trails, or whatever
else must be done to pay the bills. But Gathman took on two
specialized (if controversial and widely discussed) works of
scholarship; and he engaged with their arguments in as much
depth as one humanly can, given the length restrictions of
any newspaper other than the New York Review of Books.
Austin is a university town, of course. Still, such a
venture as this is simply not supposed to happen nowadays.
As
everyone knows, book sections are
shrinking, when not disappearing entirely. But even pointing
out that obvious trend hardly begins to account for what is
happening.
A recent
commentary by Doug McLellan
(founder of
Arts
Journal and head of the National
Arts Journalism Program) stresses a point that has largely
been forgotten. The people running newspapers once
understood that it was a good thing to serve niches of
readers who don’t find their interests met elsewhere. And so
it made sense to have a bridge column for people who love
bridge, for example, and the comic strip “Nancy” for whoever
the hell it is that enjoys that enjoys “Nancy.”
Attract enough such niches, and give them a reason to be
loyal to your publication, and you might build up an
audience. But start jettisoning “niche content” — and just
about any cultural coverage not involving the mental health
issues of Hollywood celebrities is going to count as “niche
content” — and something bad starts to happen. The audience
has ever less reason to remain loyal. Why would anyone go to
a newspaper to learn about the meltdowns of the stars? Who
would want to read about it, anyway? That’s why
YouTube was invented, after all.
This paraphrase of McLennan has been
very loose indeed. For his ongoing discussion of mass media
and the audience for cultural coverage, check out his blog
Diacritical. One implication that
may follow from McLennan’s analysis seems counterintuitive:
Regular attention to academic titles might make a newspaper
far more appealing than reviews of the latest legal thriller
or movie novelization — in some markets, anyway.
I
wondered how it came to pass that the experiment was tried
in Austin. During all my years of residence there, the
American-Statesman never seemed like anything but a very
stolid and conventional newspaper. Whenever the Butthole
Surfers, a local punk band, was listed in an advertisement,
they became the B Surfers. Going against the current did not
seem in its nature. How did it come to pass that the paper
had made such an unexpected departure? It made sense to call
Roger Gathman and ask.
He had done a lot of freelance reviewing for the
Statesman, Gathman said, but the idea to launch a column
on university-press titles had not been his. It came instead
from Jeff Salamon, the books editor. “He thought it was a
way to liven the section up,” Gathman said, “to give it more
of a distinctive identity.” (I later tried to contact
Salamon, but he is on leave until mid-December.)
The
plan for now is to run “The Academic Presses” every couple
of months, focusing on two or three new books that Gathman
will choose. “The ones I wrote about for this first column
weren’t really related,” he said, “but in the future I’m
going to try to make selections that seem more connected.”
When asked if there were any discipline he would rule out as
a possible focus, he thought for a moment and said, “Well, I
don’t think I would cover ... accounting.” Other than that,
the door seems wide open.
His
next column, running in late December, will cover two
volumes on the history of science. I’ve agreed not to
mention the titles, but the odds of another newspaper
assigning them for review are roughly equal to those of an
asteroid hitting the city in the meantime.
It
turned out he has not been following Doug McLennan’s
reflections on newspaperdom and niche audiences, but some of
Gathman’s remarks during our chat sounded broadly similar in
their logic.
“Running articles about books,” he said, “is never going to
make money. It’s a loss leader. But it gets people to pay
attention. You have to give them something they can’t find
on television.”
For
newspapers to survive, he said, “the people making decisions
have to realize that it is in their interest to encourage
reading. They have to start thinking about the need to
generate an audience. At that level, it makes no sense for
all of your cultural coverage to point to activities that
don’t involve reading.”
So,
indeed, have I thought as well, from time to time — usually
in the spirit of Sisyphus trying to give himself a pep talk.
Gathman’s points would make perfect sense to anyone who gave
the matter two minutes of serious consideration. That
implies a very big “if,” however. Two minutes of thought
seems hard to come by when the sky is falling, which is how
it seems around most newspapers lately.
Whether or not anybody else ever imitates the
American-Statesman in this, it is entirely to the
paper’s credit that it is willing to take such a chance. But
if far-sighted people did follow its example, the pool of
possible contributors might be substantial. “There are a lot
of people like me,” as Gathman put it, “with loads of
cultural capital and no money.” You don’t say!
Which leading U.S. political party most represents the wealthiest people
in America?
The latest income data supplied by the Internal Revenue
Service said the Democratic Party, which likes to define itself as representing
poor and middle-income Americans, has become the party of the rich, The
Washington Times reported Friday. A state-by-state, district-by-district
comparison of wealth concentrations by the Heritage Foundation shows a majority
of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts are represented now by
Democrats. The Heritage study based on IRS data found that more than half of the
wealthiest U.S. households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats
hold both Senate seats. Contrary to the Democrats' tendency to define the GOP as
the party of the rich, the Heritage study says, "the vast majority of unabashed
conservative House members hail from profoundly middle-income districts," The
Times reports.
"Democrats Said No Longer Party of the Poor," SmartPros, November
26, 2007 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x59895.xml
Candace Jennings rescued Anna, an abused stray dog,
from the animal shelter. During a Thanksgiving Day fire, Anna returned the favor
— twice. Anna, a blond heeler, nudged Jennings about 3:30 a.m., whining and
howling. Jennings, who had fallen asleep on the couch, awoke to find her mobile
home engulfed in flames. "Anna woke me up," Jennings said. "I had an awful
headache. The place was filled with smoke." Jennings and Anna ran outside, but
then Jennings remembered items she couldn't let burn. "I'm a janitor in town,"
she told the Idaho Statesman. "I had everyone's keys in my backpack. I had to go
back and get them." She crawled back into her burning home in Idaho City, about
40 miles northeast of Boise. Anna followed her in, keeping close by her side.
But Jennings, an artist who has lived in the mountain town since 1975, said she
became disoriented and was quickly overcome by smoke. She tried to get back out
but crawled in the wrong direction, heading toward the pantry instead of the
door. Anna showed the correct way.
"Abused Canine Rescues Owner From Burning Mobile Home Twice,"
Fox News, November 25, 2007 ---
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312764,00.html
Also see
http://www.kivitv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7403394&nav=menu536_2
The term "heeler" for a dog refers to a herding dog that nips at the "heels" or
hocks. Best known are Australian blue heelers ---
http://www.tagalongprairie.com/herding-terms.shtml
Heeler
A dog that nips at the hind legs (heels or hocks rather than the meaty part
of the leg). Dogs can be low heelers (below the hocks), moderately low
heelers (at the hocks), body-biters, cherry pickers (genital area biters),
or tail riders (grabbing the tail).
Heeler Puppies in the Snow (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE7-Uidfwz0
In Deeper Snow (fun video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80WKcqXQY98
Patti Page (old video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-zXsqrA-9s
Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho,
Western Civ Has Got to Go
Jesse Jackson ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson
The
problem is that our students choose very bland, low nourishment diets in our
modern day smorgasbord curricula. Their concern is with their grade averages
rather than their education. And why not? Grades for students and turf for
faculty have become the keys to the kingdom!
Bob Jensen
The title of this week's column was a student
protest chant started by Jesse Jackson at Stanford University in the 80's. The
idea was to throw out the university's required courses on Western Culture
because they were filled with "European and Western male bias" and replace them
with courses that teach non-Western cultures and "works by women, minorities,
and persons of color." Jackson was successful - today almost all colleges and
universities stress A.C.B.W. (Any Culture But Western) courses and ignore the
classic teachings of Western civilization's "white men." Looking back now, over
two decades later, we can see the results of Jackson's efforts. How do you like
it? . . . So farewell to Plato, Galileo and Isaac Newton. Goodbye to St.
Paul, Gutenberg, Columbus, da Vinci and Michelangelo. So long St. Augustine,
Homer, Voltaire, Francis Bacon, Beethoven and Johann Bach. See ya, Einstein,
Pasteur, Shakespeare and Oliver Cromwell. Adieu to George Washington, Ben
Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Ta,ta Wright brothers, Thomas Edison and
Alexander Graham Bell. And rest in peace Judeo-Christian worldview. "Hey, hey,
ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!" It is. It's going. It's going fast. Jesse
Jackson will get his wish. As one of the songs say in the Broadway musical
Wicked - "I hope you're happy. I hope your happy now."
Greg Crosby, "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho,
Western Civ Has Got to Go," Jewish World Review, November 23, 2007 ---
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/crosby112307.php3
Jensen Comment
It's at last possible to avoid all these Western Civ classics in the new general
education smorgasbord of eligible courses and topics. See Page 20 of Stanford's
Course Bulletin at
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/registrar/bulletin/pdf/0708_Bulletin.pdf
The debate over smorgasbord collegiate education in the media focused more on
Harvard than Stanford, but in reality the general education smorgasbord quickly
became reality in most colleges and universities. Tom Brokaw is probably right.
Faculties changing the general education requirements were virtually all
impacted by the
Woodstock Countercultural Generation of the 1960s. For example, read Tom
Brokaw's Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today
ISBN 1-40006-457-0, hardback).
You can listen to the NPR account at
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16425745&ft=1&f=1032
Hey, Hey, Political Correctness
PC's Big Brother Decides What's Left for Us
I was distressed to read that the administration
(at Brandeis University) is assigning human
apparatchiks to monitor Brandeis classrooms to assure linguistic conformity and
political orthodoxy. Surely the administration knows that the technology of
authoritarian surveillance has advanced far beyond the primitive methods
employed by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Erich Honecker. A laptop and a
webcam can do the job far more cheaply and efficiently. Just position one unit
per class in the back of the room, then patch the feed into a mainframe
system... This simple expedient would not only provide an accurate audio-visual
record of conversational malfeasance by faculty and students, but the real-time
administration would allow the administration to dispatch agents immediately
into the classroom to stop the utterance of verboten words or ideas
Thomas Doherty as quoted by UD, "UD
Gives Thanks to Thomas Doherty," Inside Higher Ed, November 22, 2007 ---
Jensen Comment
This is McCarthyism in reverse. It makes look like free speech. UD envisions
this technology used in tandem with a new product called SynchronEyes. While, in
the back of the room, the university monitors speech, in the front of the room,
the instructor, outfitted with SynchonEyes technology, views the laptop screens
of all students who bring computers to class. SynchronEyes lets professors
“access thumbnails of every computer screen in the class and block websites”
they don’t like. You can read about the cause of all this fuss at
http://www.thehoot.net/?module=displaystory&story_id=2434&format=html
Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
Hey, Hey, New Russian History
Truth Becomes Putin's Mystery
Seventy-five years ago the Ukrainian people fell
victim to a crime of unimaginable horror. Usually referred to in the West as the
Great Famine or the Terror Famine, it is known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor.
It was a state-organized program of mass starvation that in 1932-33 killed an
estimated seven million to 10 million Ukrainians, including up to a third of the
nation's children. With grotesque understatement the Soviet authorities
dismissed this event as a "bad harvest." Their intention was to exonerate
themselves of responsibility and suppress knowledge of both the human causes and
human consequences of this tragedy. That is reason enough for us to pause and
remember . . . The Holodomor was an act of genocide designed to suppress the
Ukrainian nation. The fact that it failed and Ukraine today exists as a proud
and independent nation does nothing to lessen the gravity of this crime. Nor
does it acquit us of the moral responsibility to acknowledge what was done. On
the 75th anniversary, we owe it to the victims of the Holodomor and other
genocides to be truthful in facing up to the past.
Viktor Yushchenko, "The Holodomor," by The Wall
Street Journal, November 26, 2007 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119602928167703318.html
Jensen Comment
Vladimir Putin recently commissioned the rewriting of Russian history that
minimizes Russian genocide and whitewashes Stalin into a pretty nice guy in the
new Russian history. The blame for all the evils of the world is placed squarely
upon Hitler and the United States. I wonder if Historians will flock to at last
discover the real truth in history as blessed by Putin (who supposedly did not
even read the doctoral thesis that he plagiarized) ---
http://kosmopolit.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/rewriting-history/
Also see
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2007/10/02/rewritten-history/
Test yourself in the new Russian history ---
http://terraslon.blogspot.com/2007/07/test-yourself-in-new-russian-history.html
Large parts of an economics thesis written by
President Vladimir Putin in the mid-1990s were lifted straight out of a U.S.
management textbook published 20 years earlier, The Washington Times reported
Saturday, citing researchers at the Brookings Institution. It was unclear,
however, whether Putin had even read the thesis, which might have been intended
to impress the Western investors who were flooding into St. Petersburg in the
mid-1990s, the report said. Putin oversaw the city's foreign economic relations
at the time.
"Putin Accused of Plagiarizing Thesis," Moscow Times,
March 27, 2006 ---
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/03/27/011.html
Harvard's aims and aspirations are in many ways
admirable. According to this year's Report of the Task Force on General
Education, Harvard understands liberal education as "an education conducted in a
spirit of free inquiry undertaken without concern for topical relevance or
vocational utility." It prepares for the rest of life by improving students'
ability "to assess empirical claims, interpret cultural expression, and confront
ethical dilemmas in their personal and professional lives." But instead of
concentrating on teaching substantive knowledge, the general education at
Harvard will focus on why what students learn is important. To accomplish this,
Harvard would require students to take single-semester courses in eight
categories: Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding, Culture and Belief,
Empirical Reasoning, Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of
the Physical Universe, Societies of the World, and The United States in the
World. Unfortunately, the new requirements add up to little more than an
attractively packaged evasion of the university's responsibility to provide a
coherent core for undergraduate education. For starters, though apparently not
part of the general education curriculum, Harvard requires only a year of
foreign language study or the equivalent. Yet since it usually takes more than a
year of college study to achieve competence in a foreign language -- the ability
to hold a conversation and read a newspaper -- doesn't Harvard, by requiring
only a single year, denigrate foreign-language study, and with it the serious
study of other cultures and societies?
Peter Berkowitz, "Our Compassless
Colleges," The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2007; Page A17 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118895528818217660.html
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Berkowitz
Dr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Obviously, students these days wouldn’t use snail
mail for an actual letter. But as The New York Times reported, students love to
shop online and that has resulted in many college mailrooms receiving unusual
items for which the mailrooms were not designed. Among them: car tires, ant
farms, pool cues and air conditioners.
Inside Higher Ed, November 21, 2007
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/21/qt
Jensen Comment
Not to mention boats, canoes, bicycles, mattresses, skis, etc.
In 1991, Daniel Tavares Jr. stabbed his mother to
death. A plea bargain resulted in a 17-20 year sentence. After 16 years, the
Massachusetts prison system released Tavares because he earned "automatic good
time" off, according to the Boston Herald. But Tavares was no model prisoner.
From behind bars, he threatened to kill then-Gov. Romney and other state
officials - and scuffled with prison guards. Immediately upon his release in
June, Tavares was re-arrested on two counts of assaulting correctional officers.
In July, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman overturned two $50,000
bail orders on Tavares and released him on the condition that he work, live
in-state with his sister and call probation officials three times a week. This
month, Tavares was arrested in the grisly murder (to which he
confessed) of newlyweds Brian and Beverly Mauck in
Washington, reportedly after a dispute over a $50 debt. "It's because of the
stupidity of Massachusetts that my daughter is dead," . . . Beverly's father,
Darrell Slater, told the Herald. Assistant D.A. William Loughlin argued in court
that besides killing his mother, Tavares had been charged with robbery and
assault. As for the prison assault charges, Loughlin said, "He has a history of
crimes of violence, and he committed crimes of violence while he was even
serving a crime of violence." Loughlin asked Tuttman to order that Tavares wear
a GPS-tracking device. Tavares' attorney had said that his client requested a
monitoring device. But, a transcript shows, Tuttman concluded that there was "no
indication" Tavares presented a flight risk and refused Loughlin's request.
Debra J. Saunders, "Willie Horton
2008," San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2007 ---
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/11/27/EDCQTJ71Q.DTL
Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, said that Judge
Kathe M. Tuttman should never have freed Daniel T. Tavares Jr. on personal
recognizance in July, after he was charged with assaulting two prison guards.
Tavares, 41, was near the end of a 16-year sentence for stabbing his mother to
death in 1991 and had threatened in a letter —- intercepted by prison officials
in February 2006 — to kill Romney and other state officials, Fehrnstrom said. On
Monday, after five months in hiding, Tavares was arrested for allegedly shooting
to death Brian Mauck, 30, and Beverly Mauck, 28, newlyweds who lived near him in
a rural area south of Tacoma, police said . . . Romney is now seeking the
Republican presidential nomination, touting his record as governor. Some of his
female supporters have highlighted the number of women he appointed to the
judiciary. "‘There was a system-wide failure in this case starting with the
judge," Fehrnstrom said in a statement. "Her decision represented an
inexplicable lapse in judgment and was inexcusable. Unless there are facts
unknown to us, Governor Romney believes Judge Tuttman should resign."
Michael Levenson, "Romney calls on
judge to resign after releasing alleged killer Accused of murdering newlyweds,
Daniel T. Tavares Jr. threatened to kill former Mass. governor," Boston.com,
November 23, 2007 ---
Click Here
Also see
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312743,00.html
Jensen Comment
This begs the question about what this former murderer could do to be held
without bail? What are the odds that he will return to hiding and/or kill again?
I'd bet on it!
Rudy Giuliani can play a little rough at times, but
there are some moments when an inner light turns on and he turns downright
idealistic. One of those moments came on Oct. 10, 1996, as he stepped on the
podium at the Kennedy School of Government to deliver a speech on immigration.
“I’m pleased to be with you this evening to talk about the anti-immigrant
movement in America,” he said, “and why I believe this movement endangers the
single most important reason for American greatness, namely, the renewal,
reformation and reawakening that’s provided by the continuous flow of
immigrants.” Giuliani continued: “I believe the anti-immigrant movement in
America is one of our most serious public problems.” It can “be seen in
legislation passed by Congress and the president.” (Republicans had just passed
a welfare reform law that restricted benefits to legal immigrants.) “It can be
seen in the negative attitudes being expressed by many of the politicians.”
Giuliani said, somewhat unfairly, that the anti-immigrant movement at that time
continued the fear-mongering and discrimination of the nativist movements of the
1920s and the Know-Nothing movement of the 19th century. He celebrated Abraham
Lincoln for having the courage to take on the anti-immigrant forces. He detailed
the many ways immigration benefits the nation. Then he turned to the subject of
illegal immigration: “The United States has to do a lot better job of patrolling
our borders.” But, he continued, “The reality is, people will always get in.”
David Brooks, "The Real Rudy,"
The New York Times, November 23, 2007 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/opinion/23brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
To hear the candidates tell it -- especially those
on the stump in Iowa -- ethanol is the answer to America's energy-security woes.
And back in Washington, politicians since 1978 have been putting your money
where their mouths are: Ethanol is currently subsidized to the tune of 51 cents
per gallon when blended with gasoline. To make sure foreigners don't share the
ride on the ethanol gravy train, moreover, Congress has imposed a 54-cent tariff
on imported ethanol. President Bush, for his part, has targeted a 20% reduction
in gasoline use, mostly by substituting the renewable fuel . . . But the
emphasis here should be on the word "little." In 2005, the ethanol program used
about 15% of U.S. corn supplies but displaced less than 2% of gasoline use. Even
if all corn produced in the U.S. were devoted to distilling ethanol, the
renewable fuel would amount to about 12% of the gasoline demand in 2005. And the
more corn used to make alcohol, the greater the potential for collateral damage.
Beef producers, not to mention Mexico's tortilla makers, are already upset with
high corn prices. Environmentalists, too, seem to be waking up to the fact that
ethanol from corn is no panacea . . . Congress might never have bet so much of
the taxpayers' money on corn-based ethanol if an unbiased accounting of the
consequences had been available early on. We could use a separate agency,
shielded in part from political considerations, whose sole mission would be to
analyze the costs and benefits of regulations and government programs. Without
such an agency, interest-group logrolling will continue to trump science and
economics in major policy choices.
Robert Hahn, "Ethanol's Bottom
Line," The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2007; Page A10 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586796227702741.html
Mr. Hahn is executive director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center and was
co-chair of the U.S. Alternative Fuels Council under President George H.W. Bush.
The park, in a shallow sound between Sweden and
Denmark, testifies to the remarkable rise of wind energy — no longer a quirky
alternative favored by environmentalists in Denmark and Germany, but a
mainstream power source used in 26 nations, including the United States. Yet
Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is
coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain
that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who
question its reliability as a source of power . . . For starters, the wind does
not blow all the time. When it does, it does not necessarily do so during
periods of high demand for electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for
more dependable, if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas.
Moreover, to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where
the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must then be
carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in Germany and other
countries are strained and prone to breakdowns .
Mark Landler, "Sweden
Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws," The New York Times,
November 24, 2007 ---
Click Here
One week after a Chinese subcontractor manufacturing
computer hard drives for sale in America was discovered to have been placing a
Trojan horse on them that would upload users' passwords to a website in Beijing,
the manufacturer says it doesn't believe the Chinese government was involved . .
. The report first surfaced in Asia in a story by the Taipei Times, which said
some 1,800 Maxtor Basics 3200 hard drives manufactured in China contained two
Trojan horses programmed to upload secretly to websites in Beijing anything the
computer saves on the drive. Webopedia.com defines "Trojan horse" as "a
destructive program that masquerades as a benign application." Unlike viruses,
the site says, Trojan horses do not replicate themselves "but they can be just
as destructive."
WorldNetDaily, November 22, 2007 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58819
Thanks to lax background checks, even after 9/11,
the Hezbollah spy who managed to obtain sensitive jobs at the FBI and CIA is not
the first terrorist supporter to infiltrate the U.S. government. An alleged
al-Qaida operative also infiltrated the Environmental Protection Agency,
according to federal investigators and court documents obtained by WND. The
case, details of which are revealed here for the first time, involves Waheeda
Tehseen, a Pakistani national who obtained a sensitive position with the EPA in
Washington as a toxicologist even though she was not a U.S. citizen. Like the
Lebanese national suspected of passing secrets to Hezbollah, Tehseen lied about
her citizenship on her government application, a falsehood that the government
failed – in both cases – to catch in its security background investigation.
"Is U.S. gov't infested with terrorist moles? Intelligence official: 'FBI might
as well put out a sign – Double agents wanted'," WorldNetDaily, November
20, 2007 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58798
To activists concerned about AIDS and prisoners'
rights, it's an urgent, commonsense step that should already be nationwide
policy — letting inmates have condoms to reduce the spread of sexually
transmitted diseases behind bars. Yet their efforts have run headlong into a
stronger political force: Authorities' desire not to encourage inmates who flout
prison rules against sex. Only one state, Vermont, and five cities regularly
hand out condoms to inmates. Mississippi does so only for inmates receiving
conjugal visits from their spouses. Left out are the vast majority of America's
2.2 million prisoners — many held in facilities where sex between men is common
and the risk of STDs is far higher than in the general population.
David Crary, Yahoo News,
November 19, 2007 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_us/condoms_for_inmates
Al Qaeda in Iraq may be down, but it is not out.
While al Qaeda has suffered a major setback after US and Iraqi forces launched
multiple offensives throughout Iraq, the terror group still retains some
capacity to conduct attacks. Today, al Qaeda
attacked the Awakening movement two villages north and south of Baghdad.
The battles resulted in scores killed on both sides, including 10 al Qaeda
fighters. Meanwhile, Iraqi and Coalition forces have killed or captured several
senior al Qaeda leaders over the past week . . . As al Qaeda attempts to bring
down the Awakening movements, US and Iraqi Security forces continue to target al
Qaeda's leadership network nationwide. Over the past week, US and Iraqi forces
killed or captured three senior leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq's network. The most
senior leader captured this week was
Saadi Ibrahim, the oil minister in al Qaeda in
Iraq's Islamic State. Iraq police captured Ibrahim and "found several plans for
attacking Iraqi oil pipelines and fields in his possession." Ibrahim is the
second senior Islamic State of Iraq leader captured over the past five months.
In July, US forces
captured Khalid Abdul Fatah Da’ud Mahmud Al Mashadani,
also known as Abu Shaeed, the media emir for the Islamic
State of Iraq.
Bill Roggio, The Long War
Journal, November 22, 2007 ---
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/11/al_qaeda_attacks_the.php
Jensen Comment
By all means let's get out of Iraq as soon as possible so al Qaeda can have all
the oil and undo all the progress being made to date. It's is very difficult to
impatiently fight an enemy that hides among innocent civilians and never
surrenders just to have a better life for himself and those around him. His
ignorance and trusting in false promises of the pleasures that martyrdom sustain
his willingness to fight on. Fortunately, many in al Qaeda leaders are in it for
the money rather than religious fanaticism.
Patience is the support of weakness; impatience is the
ruin of strength.
Charles Caleb Colton
Patience, that blending of moral courage with
physical timidity.
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the
d'Urbervilles
We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg
than by smashing it.
Abraham Lincoln, White House speech
11 April 1865
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France
Patience is a bitter plant but it has sweet fruit.
German proverb
To be sure, Baghdad and the surrounding belts are
not yet safe. But culminating points are psychological events. What I witnessed
firsthand in Iraq was a shift in opinions and a transfer of will among Iraqis,
not a classic military takedown. This change was palpable and unmistakable.
Whether this military culminating point can translate into a political and
economic culminating point remains to be seen. But the campaign that took place
from spring until late summer reinforces the classic tenet of warfare, that
success on the ground sets the conditions for diplomatic and political success.
Gens. Petraeus and Ray Odierno have achieved success on the ground at an
unprecedented speed in the history of counterinsurgency warfare. Now it's time
to apply the same sense of urgency and commitment to the task of reuniting the
tragically fractured nation and bring it back from the brink of annihilation.
"Petraeus's Iraq," Retired General Robert H. Scales, The Wall
Street Journal, November 21, 2007; Page A18 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
Progress toward peace in Iraq comes at a very bad time before the 2008 election.
From the Wall Street Journal's Opinion
Journal on November 21, 2007
Could it be that we are watching the same
phenomenon with the whole global-warmest hysteria? Our bet would be yes.
One Cheer for (Bush/GOP hating) New York
Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/world/middleeast/20surge.html?pagewanted=all
So far as we know, pigs have not flown, and hell
has not frozen over. But something almost as unusual happened: The lead
story in today's New York Times--stretching two-thirds of the way across the
front page--is about Baghdad, and it's good news:
*** QUOTE ***
The security improvements in most
neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high
of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on
Baghdad's streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35
eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in
October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent
peak of 59 in March, the American military says.
As a result, for the first time in
nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this
city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that
while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni
and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In
the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also
dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at
a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside
in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi
Army.
Iraqis are clearly surprised and
relieved to see commerce and movement finally increase, five months
after an extra 30,000 American troops arrived in the country.
Just two months ago, the paper gave MoveOn a price
break to run an ad that accused General David Petraeus of treason and
perjury even before he testified about the security improvements. The
editorial board called Petraeus' testimony " empty calories
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/opinion/11tue1.html and
complained of his "broken promises and false claims of success" and asserted
that Petraeus had not given an "honest accounting" in his Congressional
briefings.
The Times waited until the success of
Petraeus could no longer be denied to publish the truth.
But pigs will fly and hell will freeze over before liberal commentator NBC
Keith Oberman will give any credit for progress in Iraq (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQT4JOYhNLg
And pigs will fly and hell will freeze over before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
stops trying to pull the plug on funding of military in Iraq even if all the
recent progress to date is wiped out by being too impatient for our surrender to
the retreating insurgents.
And what is the reaction of the war critics? Nancy
Pelosi stoutly maintains her state of denial, saying this about the war just two
weeks ago: "This is not working. . . . We must reverse it." A euphemism for
"abandon the field," which is what every Democratic presidential candidate is
promising, with variations only in how precipitous to make the retreat.
Charles Krauthammer, "On Iraq, a
State of Denial," Washington Post, November 23, 2007, Page A39 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201089.html
See the Bush impeachment promotion video at
http://freewayblogger28.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
Campaigning in northwestern Iowa on Saturday, Hillary
Rodham Clinton told voters that a Senate resolution on Iran she supported has
helped bring that country to the negotiating table while stemming the violence
in Iraq. Clinton said tougher economic sanctions have been "a contributing
factor to Iranians' backing off." Though brief,
Clinton's remarks were also a rare acknowledgment of progress in Iraq.
Louise Roug, "Iran sanctions are
getting results, Clinton tells Iowans," Los Angeles Times, November 25,
2007 ---
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-clinton25nov25,0,5128065.story?coll=la-politics-campaign
Abu Nawall, a captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, said
he didn't join the Sunni insurgent group here to kill Americans or to form a
Muslim caliphate. He signed up for the cash. "I was out of work and needed the
money," said Abu Nawall, the nom de guerre of an unemployed metal worker who was
paid as much as $1,300 a month as an insurgent. He spoke in a phone interview
from an Iraqi military base where he is being detained. "How else could I
support my family?"
Amit R. Paley, "Iraqis Joining
Insurgency Less for Cause Than Cash," Washington Post, November 20, 2007
---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/19/AR2007111902022.html
More than 40% of the foreign fighters who entered
Iraq to join the insurgency in the past year were citizens of Saudi Arabia,
America's key partner in the Middle East, according to detailed information
seized from a camp used by them. Documents and computers found by the US army at
Sinjar, on the Iraqi-Syrian border, revealed that the other single largest group
came from Libya, which is now being rehabilitated as a reliable western ally.
Overall, US officials reported that the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq
this year dropped from 80-110 a month in the first half of the year to around 40
in October, partly due to the Sinjar raid. After the raid the number of suicide
bombings in Iraq fell to 16 in October - half the number seen during the summer
months and down from a peak of 59 in March. US military officials believe that
90% of such bombings are by foreigners.
Guardian, November 23, 2007 ---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2215798,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/magazine/25tetouan-t.html
Overwhelmingly, with one exception, Democrats
supported the war in Afghanistan. We continue to support the war in Afghanistan.
Barnie Frank in a speech in the House of Representatives (video) ---
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bcaGHIM1ppI
The conflict in Afghanistan has reached "crisis
proportions," with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country
and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday. If NATO, the lead force
operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop
numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said. "The
Taliban has shown itself to be a truly resurgent force," the Senlis Council, an
independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a
study entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink."
"Resurgent Taliban closing in on Kabul: report," Yahoo News,
November 21, 2007 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071121/ts_nm/afghanistan_taliban_report_dc
Jensen Comment
This confirms what most leading Democrats have contended all along. Powerful
Democrats like Barnie Frank and Barach Obama have been arguing all along that we
should pull out of Iraq and take more troops into Afghanistan. Obama even made
an unpopular suggestion that troops be attack parts of Pakistan that hide
terrorists (video) ---
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dc4qnpu3N0M
We are thankful for the Washington Post, which
reminds us that a newspaper can be liberal without being as dreadful as the New
York Times has lately become. Today Post columnist Ruth Marcus devastates Times
columnist adviser Paul Krugman, whom she actually mentions by name. Marcus notes
a Krugman column from last week in which the former Enron adviser
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/20/AR2007112001651_pf.html
pooh-poohs concerns about the solvency of Social
Security.
Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, November 21, 2007
If you are very
lucky and honored, you may penetrate the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. This was the
home of the Great Leader when he was ordinarily alive, kept going in his later
years by a special diet of extra-long dog penises. Today, it is his mausoleum,
where he lives forever in the extraordinary fashion devised for him by whoever
actually controls this country. This is no mere Lenin’s Tomb but a temple of
awe, where devotees must have the dust blasted from their clothes and shoes
before approaching the sacred body and bowing deeply . . . North Korea is a
small, isolated, stagnant pond left over from the flood of Marxism-Leninism,
which long ago receded. But it has nowhere to drain away. Far too many people,
not all of them in Pyongyang, have an interest in keeping it as it is. It still
has the capacity to do terrible things but mainly to its own citizens. A serious
policy would aim to find a way to help it escape from the political and economic
trap in which it finds itself. Threats, name-calling, and the pretence that this
shambles of a country is a serious world power are unlikely to achieve this. It
is more to be pitied than to be feared.
Peter Hitchens, "Prisoners
in Camp Kim: Strange, secretive, and desperately poor, North Korea tests
the limits of social control," American Conservative, November 19, 2007
---
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_11_19/feature.html
“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that
a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can
move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.” In the
interview in Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, Williams makes only mild
criticisms of the Islamic world. He said the Muslim world must acknowledge that
its “political solutions were not the most impressive”. He commends the Muslim
practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of
God to be “built in deeply in their daily rhythm”.
London Times, November 25, 2007 ---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2937068.ece
Jensen Comment
No mention is made of U.S. efforts to stop genocide in Bosnia, Saddam's atrocities, 9/11
infernos, terror attacks in Britain subways and
elsewhere, boycotting of Jews in U.K. academia, or Tony Blair's recent abandonment of
the Archbishop in favor of Roman Catholicism.
Rowan
Williams consistently leans to the far left on virtually every issue. He's
criticized for being "loathsome
with Jews, complacent with Muslims" ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rowan_Williams/Archive_up_to_September_2007#Serious_Revision
When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin
Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just
an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over
the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into
great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we
have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." It
became very quiet in the room.
Discussion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rowan_Williams/Archive_up_to_September_2007#Colin_Powell
Several hundred
activists of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut Tahrir staged protests here
before the arrival of two ships of the US Navy for distributing relief supplies
among cyclone-affected people. Two warships, USS Essex and USS Kearsarge -- each
carrying 20 helicopters and 3,500 marines on board with emergency relief
supplies, medical and emergency evacuation teams -- are scheduled to enter
Bangladesh waters Saturday and Tuesday. The protesters Friday carried a banner
reading 'Prevent American ships from entering the Bay of Bengal in the name of
distributing relief' and chanted slogans 'Go back to America'...
"Islamists protest US naval presence for cyclone relief,"
Earth Times, November 24, 2007 ---
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/147173.html
Vicious Mexican-based gangs are increasing their
attacks on outmanned and outgunned law-enforcement authorities along the border.
And The Washington Times reports the enemy arsenal includes assault rifles,
high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, Global Positioning Systems and
low-tech Molotov cocktails. Since the agents are mired in a no-man's land, a
free-fire zone with little help from either side of the border -- yet continue
to soldier on -- Congress should mandate they be treated as active duty military
personnel and given all military benefits.
"Border wars," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, November 24,
2007 ---
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_539488.html
It is one of Emory University's most environmentally
friendly buildings, a hallmark of the institution's efforts to "go green." To
hear John Wegner describe it, it's also a slaughterhouse. The soaring glass
windows in Emory's Mathematics and Science Center reflect the woodsy view,
confusing hapless birds who smash into it at full speed. "The building killed 60
birds in the first year," said Wegner, Emory's chief environmental officer. "It
was the wall of death." Wegner, a professor in Emory's Department of
Environmental Studies, began documenting the deaths shortly after the building
opened in 2002. He found an average of two birds a day were losing their lives
during the height of the migration season. Magnolia warblers, Swainson's
thrushes, ovenbirds — no species was safe. After getting the brush-off from the
administration and architects, Wegner stuffed a couple of dead birds into his
pockets and whipped them out during a meeting with his boss. Suddenly, he had an
audience. Now Emory drapes parts of the $40 million building with black mesh
netting for about three months each fall, and migrating birds bounce off safely.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
November 23, 2007 ---
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2007/11/23/evbirds_1123.html
Much is being made of the fact that, in accepting
the administration's invitation, Syria apparently reversed a previous decision,
coordinated with Iran, to boycott the conference. This plays into the view that
Syria can be persuaded to abandon its 25-year-old ties to Iran and return to the
Arab fold, thereby severing the encircling chain that links Tehran to Damascus
to southern Lebanon to the Gaza Strip. High-profile ridicule of the conference
by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who called it "useless") and spokesmen for
Hezbollah and Hamas add to the impression that Mr. Assad may be prepared to
chart an independent course--all for the modest price of the U.S. agreeing (with
Israel's consent) to put the issue of the Golan Heights on the conference's
agenda. It really would be something if the Syrian delegation could find their
own road to Damascus on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. But that would require
something approximating good faith. The Syrians' decision to be represented at
Annapolis by their deputy foreign minister--his bosses evidently having more
important things to do--is one indication of the lack of it. So is the Assad
regime's declaration (via an editorial in state newspaper Teshreen) that their
goal at Annapolis is "to foil [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert's plan to
force Arab countries to recognize Israel as a Jewish state." And lest the point
hadn't been driven home forcefully enough, the Syrian information minister told
Al Jazeera that Syria's attendance would have no effect on its relations with
Iran or its role as host to the leadership of Hamas and other Palestinian
terrorist groups.
Bret Stephens, "Condi's Road to
Damascus: The price America will pay for her Syrian photo-op," The Wall
Street Journal, November 27, 2007 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010912
The Audrey Underwear company in Taizhong city named
November 21 Camisole Day to celebrate record sales. All 500 women working in the
firm’s headquarters were encouraged to wear only camisoles and knickers - much
to the excitement of their male colleagues. More than 90% of female workers
reportedly went along with the spirit of the day and worked in their underwear.
Huang Bihui, PR manager of the company, explained: “We introduced eight new
camisoles into market and sold more than 20,000 in less than two months so we
named the 21st as Camisole Day.” Employment lawyers said there was nothing
illegal in the move so long as it was voluntary but it had its critics. Wu
Juanyu complained: “Some women may feel forced to join in because of peer
pressure and job competition. I don’t know if the company is selling underwear
or women’s bodies.”
Daily Times, November 24, 2007 ---
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C11%5C24%5Cstory_24-11-2007_pg9_14
Wife's at a loss to find husband after he wins the lottery
A former beauty queen is suing her airline-mechanic husband, claiming he tried to hide his lottery jackpot from her.
Miami Herald, November 12, 2007 --- http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/313117.html
Econometric Haiku
From econometrician Keisuke Hirano (as linked by the Unknown Professor on
November 18, 2007) ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
T-stat looks too good.
Use robust standard errors--
significance gone.
The bonds ($3 billion worth issued in January 2006),
which mature in 2028 and until then pay 2.9 percent on their face value twice a
year, so almost 6 percent per annum, are trading at a steep discount (currently
about a 40 percent discount, which jacks up the yield to almost 10
percent--almost $6 for a bond that costs $60). This means that purchasers of the
bonds (which are actively traded) are demanding compensation for bearing a
substantial risk of default. The most interesting conclusion in Greenstone's
study is that, after correction for other factors, the surge is correlated with
a 40 percent increase in the bond market's estimate of default . . . There are
two general questions that Greenstone's interesting study raises. The first is
the relation between default risk and U.S. failure. . . The second general
question raised by Greenstone's paper is whether financial markets are better
predictors of the outcome of wars and other political crises than experts are,
including the experts who staff intelligence agencies.
Richard Posner, "Is the Bond Market
the Best Predictor of the Outcome of a War?" The Becker-Posner Blog,
November 18, 2007 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
Richard Posner was a highly regarded plenary speaker at the 2007 Annual
Meetings of the American Accounting Association Meetings in Chicago.
I agree with Greenstone and Posner that prices of
these bonds offer a valuable way to determine expectations about the stability
of the Iraqi government held by the savvy investors in the international bond
market who are placing substantial financial resources at risk. This does not
mean that these investors are never wrong, or do not change their views as the
evidence unfolds, but rather that bonds prices offers relevant information about
the assessments of Iraq's future by persons who have an important financial
stake in whether they are right or not . . . Whatever the final conclusions
about the evidence on the political future of Iraq provided by its bonds,
financial markets are an underutilized source of information about the
expectations of investors about political outcomes. To be sure, financial
expectations can be very wrong. For example, Eugene Lerner has shown that the
Confederate currency did not depreciate very rapidly (relative to the growth of
the money supply) until only a few months before the end of the Civil War, even
though historians are unanimous that the South had effectively lost the war long
before that. Still, I generally would have more confidence in the accuracy of
the expectations of persons with a serious financial stake in outcomes than in
the forecasts of most others who express their views on future political
outcomes.
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, "Is the
Bond Market the Best Predictor of the Outcome of a War?" The Becker-Posner
Blog, November 18, 2007 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
Where have all the top teams gone,
Long time passing?
Notre Dame, one of the most storied programs in college
football history, set a team record for losses in going 3-9. Why is this
happening? After Stanford, a 41-point underdog, defeated the perennial power
Southern California, the question was asked. After the third time a No. 1 team
lost to an unranked opponent, the question was asked again. Scholarship limits
have prevented programs from stockpiling talented players, leaving plenty of
players for previously overlooked teams. Spread offenses have neutralized larger
programs’ speed and size advantages. Increased coverage on television and the
Internet has created more interest among more teams and players. And more
universities have committed millions to enhancing their programs.
Pete Thamel, "Missouri, No. 1?
College Football Surprises Again," The New York Times, November 26, 2007
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/sports/ncaafootball/26bcs.html
Jensen Comment
Just proves the obvious --- academic standards are hazardous your competitive
edge.
See
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Athletics
MIT's Video Lecture Search Engine for Finding
Topics Within Lectures: Watch the video at ---
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
Watch the video demo at ---
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
"Searching Video Lectures A tool from MIT finds
keywords so that students can efficiently review lectures," by Kate Greene,
MIT's Technology Review, November 26, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19747/?nlid=686&a=f
Researchers at MIT
have released a video and audio search tool that solves one of the most
challenging problems in the field: how to break up a lengthy academic
lecture into manageable chunks, pinpoint the location of keywords, and
direct the user to them. Announced last month, the MIT
Lecture Browser website gives the general public
detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the
university's
OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine
leverages decades' worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other
institutions to
convert
audio
into text and make it searchable.
The Lecture Browser arrives at a time when more and
more universities, including Carnegie Mellon University and the University
of California, Berkeley, are posting videos and podcasts of lectures online.
While this content is useful, locating specific information within lectures
can be difficult, frustrating students who are accustomed to finding what
they need in less than a second with Google.
"This is a growing issue for universities around
the country as it becomes easier to record classroom lectures," says Jim
Glass, research scientist at MIT. "It's a real challenge to know how to
disseminate them and make it easier for students to get access to parts of
the lecture they might be interested in. It's like finding a needle in a
haystack."
The fundamental elements of the Lecture Browser
have been kicking around research labs at MIT and places such as BBN
Technologies in Boston, Carnegie Mellon, SRI International in Palo Alto, CA,
and the University of Southern California for more than 30 years. Their
efforts have produced software that's finally good enough to find its way to
the average person, says Premkumar Natarajan, scientist at BBN. "There's
about three decades of work where many fundamental problems were addressed,"
he says. "The technology is mature enough now that there's a growing sense
in the community that it's time [to test applications in the real world].
We've done all we can in the lab."
A handful of companies, such as online audio and
video search engines Blinkx and EveryZing (which has licensed technology
from BBN) are making use of software that converts audio speech into
searchable text. (See "Surfing TV on the Internet" and "More-Accurate Video
Search".) But the MIT researchers faced particular challenges with academic
lectures. For one, many lecturers are not native English speakers, which
makes automatic transcription tricky for systems trained on American English
accents. Second, the words favored in science lectures can be rather
obscure. Finally, says Regina Barzilay, professor of computer Science at
MIT, lectures have very little discernable structure, making them difficult
to break up and organize for easy searching. "Topical transitions are very
subtle," she says. "Lectures aren't organized like normal text."
To tackle these problems, the researchers first
configured the software that converts the audio to text. They trained the
software to understand particular accents using accurate transcriptions of
short snippets of recorded speech. To help the software identify uncommon
words--anything from "drosophila" to "closed-loop integrals"--the
researchers provided it with additional data, such as text from books and
lecture notes, which assists the software in accurately transcribing as many
as four out of five words. If the system is used with a nonnative English
speaker whose accent and vocabulary it hasn't been trained to recognize, the
accuracy can drop to 50 percent. (Such a low accuracy would not be useful
for direct transcription but can still be useful for keyword searches.)
Once again, the Lecture Browser link (with a
video demo) is at
http://web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/
Find free video lectures from leading
universities at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of
education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on how to capture
streaming video ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
Watch for this Jury Duty Scam
November 27, 2007 message from Georgia Lotz
JURY DUTY SCAM
This has been verified by the FBI (their link is
included below). Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book.
It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us
take summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their
civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced. The caller
claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never received a
summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social Security number
and date of birth so he or she can verify the information and cancel the
arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo; your identity
just got stolen. The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including
Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. This (scam) is particularly insidious
because they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into g
iving information by pretending they're with the court system. The FBI and
the federal courts system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites,
warning consumers about the fraud. Check it out here:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/j/jury_duty_scam.htm
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.ht
"Americans Are Reading Less," University of Illinois Issues in
Scholarly Communications Blog, November 19, 2007 ---
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/scholcomm/
The National Endowment for the Arts today released
an interesting and disturbing
report
of American reading today. Gathering and collating
available data, it reports that the data are simple, consistent, and
alarming. Although there has been measurable progress in recent years in
reading ability at the elementary school level, all progress seems to stop
as children enter their teens. There is a general decline in reading among
teenagers and adults and both reading ability and the habit of regular
reading have greatly declined among college graduates.
The report reaches three conclusions:
* Americans are spending less time reading.
* Reading comprehension skills are eroding
* These declines have serious civic, social, cultural, and economic
implications.
These conclusions are, as the report notes,
"unsettling." Clearly, more research is needed to explore factors that might
contribute to this trend and to weigh the relative effectiveness and costs
and benefits of programs to foster lifelong reading and skills development.
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Read This First
Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous
attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward
Book 2.0 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle
Then watch this video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKUKQ7QqOHw
Other Videos
$399 Amazon Kindle ---
Click Here
Read This Next
The Future of Reading (beyond mere hard copy and electronic books as we know
them)
"Amazon's Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can
improve upon one of humankind's most divine creations: the book itself.,"
Newsweek Cover Story, November 26, 2007 ---
http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983
"Technology," computer pioneer Alan Kay once said,
"is anything that was invented after you were born." So it's not surprising,
when making mental lists of the most whiz-bangy technological creations in
our lives, that we may overlook an object that is superbly designed,
wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than
any gadget in a Best Buy: the book. It is a more reliable storage device
than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. (No
instruction manual or "For Dummies" guide needed.) And, it is instant-on and
requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that
it can't be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to
the contrary.
"The book," says Jeff Bezos, 43, the CEO of
Internet commerce giant Amazon.com, "just turns out to be an incredible
device." Then he uncorks one of his trademark laughs.
Books have been very good to Jeff Bezos. When he
sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an
online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him,
dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking
their Amazon sales ratings. But as much as Bezos loves books professionally
and personally—he's a big reader, and his wife is a novelist—he also
understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media. "Books are
the last bastion of analog," he says, in a conference room overlooking the
Seattle skyline. We're in the former VA hospital that is the physical
headquarters for the world's largest virtual store. "Music and video have
been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized,
beginning with the early Web. But long-form reading really hasn't." Yet.
This week Bezos is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he
hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the
turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0. That's shorthand for a
revolution (already in progress) that will change the way readers read,
writers write and publishers publish. The Kindle represents a milestone in a
time of transition, when a challenged publishing industry is competing with
television, Guitar Hero and time burned on the BlackBerry; literary critics
are bemoaning a possible demise of print culture, and Norman Mailer's recent
death underlined the dearth of novelists who cast giant shadows. On the
other hand, there are vibrant pockets of book lovers on the Internet who are
waiting for a chance to refurbish the dusty halls of literacy.
As well placed as Amazon was to jump into this
scrum and maybe move things forward, it was not something the company took
lightly. After all, this is the book we're talking about. "If you're going
to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of
respects," says Bezos. "But we also have to look for things that ordinary
books can't do." Bounding to a whiteboard in the conference room, he ticks
off a number of attributes that a book-reading device—yet another
computer-powered gadget in an ever more crowded backpack full of them—must
have. First, it must project an aura of bookishness; it should be less of a
whizzy gizmo than an austere vessel of culture. Therefore the Kindle (named
to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge) has the dimensions of a
paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a
book's binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it
does not run hot or make intrusive beeps. A reading device must be sharp and
durable, Bezos says, and with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of
several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle's
six-inch screen posts readable pages. The battery has to last for a while,
he adds, since there's nothing sadder than a book you can't read because of
electile dysfunction. (The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a
charge, and recharges in two hours.) And, to soothe the anxieties of
print-culture stalwarts, in sleep mode the Kindle displays retro images of
ancient texts, early printing presses and beloved authors like Emily
Dickinson and Jane Austen.
But then comes the features that your mom's copy of
"Gone With the Wind" can't match. E-book devices like the Kindle allow you
to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book
can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold
several shelves' worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a
memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by
Amazon. Also, the Kindle allows you to search within the book for a phrase
or name.
Some of those features have been available on
previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle's real
breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered:
wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the
EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work
anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, "This isn't a
device, it's a service."
Specifically, it's an extension of the familiar
Amazon store (where, of course, Kindles will be sold). Amazon has designed
the Kindle to operate totally independent of a computer: you can use it to
go to the store, browse for books, check out your personalized
recommendations, and read reader reviews and post new ones, tapping out the
words on a thumb-friendly keyboard. Buying a book with a Kindle is a
one-touch process. And once you buy, the Kindle does its neatest trick: it
downloads the book and installs it in your library, ready to be devoured.
"The vision is that you should be able to get any book—not just any book in
print, but any book that's ever been in print—on this device in less than a
minute," says Bezos.
Amazon has worked hard to get publishers to step up
efforts to release digital versions of new books and backlists, and more
than 88,000 will be on sale at the Kindle store on launch. (Though Bezos
won't get terribly specific, Amazon itself is also involved in scanning
books, many of which it captured as part of its groundbreaking Search Inside
the Book program. But most are done by the publishers themselves, at a cost
of about $200 for each book converted to digital. New titles routinely go
through the process, but many backlist titles are still waiting. "It's a
real chokepoint," says Penguin CEO David Shanks.) Amazon prices Kindle
editions of New York Times best sellers and new releases in hardback at
$9.99. The first chapter of almost any book is available as a free sample.
The Kindle is not just for books. Via the Amazon
store, you can subscribe to newspapers (the Times, The Wall Street Journal,
The Washington Post, Le Monde) and magazines (The Atlantic). When issues go
to press, the virtual publications are automatically beamed into your
Kindle. (It's much closer to a virtual newsboy tossing the publication on
your doorstep than accessing the contents a piece at a time on the Web.) You
can also subscribe to selected blogs, which cost either 99 cents or $1.99 a
month per blog.
Continued in article
"Review: Amazon Reader Needs More Juice," by Peter Svensson,
PhysOrg, November 21, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news114878393.html
Business Week's review ---
Click Here
November 21, 2007 reply from Amy Dunbar
[Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]
Here’s a Chronicle of Higher Education link on
e-book readers.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2560/between-the-lines-of-a-new-e-book-reader?at
Amy Dunbar
November 22, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Amy,
The first electronic book reader I ever purchased was the Rocket eBook in
July 1999 ---
http://snipurl.com/rocketebooklibrary I plugged it into my desktop
computer and downloaded mostly free books, but it was also possible to
purchase new books and download them into the reader.
The reader held about thirty books. I found it the most useful on very
long flights such as flights to Asia. At home I didn’t use it much, and now
I’d have to really hunt just to find the reader and charger. I tend to read
downloaded books on my laptop rather than my Rocket eBook. Some of the
reasons are mentioned below.
My Rocket eBook weighed well over a pound mostly because the battery
weight. But the weight really did not bother me as much as critics are
finding fault with Amazon’s new Kindle weighing about ten ounces. My reader
would not display color and did a poor job with graphics because of low
resolution and screen size.
I do not yet have either of the two new state-of-the-art eBook readers
--- the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle. You can read more about these and
other earlier versions of electronic book readers (many of which are now
history) at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Do critics miss the main point? It’s hard to predict the future of eBook
readers. Certainly the Amazon Kindle stands the best chance to date because
it will have the largest library to choose from. I think the critics of
eBook readers miss the main point. They tend to dwell on such matters as
weight and used book markets. The Amazon Kindle weighs not much more and in
many cases less than hardcover books. I’d rather pay less for a new
electronic book than pay more for traditional book and worry about selling
it later on.
Battery life is a problem, but serious users can purchase spare
batteries.
The main point overlooked by critics is competition. Customers already
have video-playing laptop computers with larger screens, gigabytes of hard
drive, and screen capture capabilities from great software like Snag It.
Increasingly new releases of books can be downloaded in PDF format. Most
textbook publishers now offer electronic versions for laptop and desktop
computers.
Google and Microsoft are now putting hundreds of millions of books free
online from the major libraries of the world. For example, it astounds me
how much is already available for downloading free of charge ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Since so much new and old literature is available (fee and free) for our
laptops, selling alternative electronic book readers (eBooks) is a hard sell
from get go. Most of us already carry laptops on airplanes. Why burden
ourselves with other reading devices (actually I mostly read paper back
books and journal article photocopies while in flight)?
Electronic book readers (eBooks) would be almost as common as cell phones
if they were the only alternative for downloading new and old electronic
literature. But they’re not the only alternative except for very new
releases from some publishers who refuse to allow electronic versions in PDF
format for laptop downloading. Some, but certainly not all, of those
publishers will allow eBook downloading since copying from eBooks is
virtually impossible (while hardcopy can be photocopied and transcribed).
I would not invest in companies forging ahead in eBooks. If any company
stands a chance, however, it will be Amazon. Amazon stands the best chance
of building the largest library of electronic literature that cannot be
downloaded into anything other than eBooks. But I’m not crazed by purchasing
the newest of the new releases. If necessary I browse in the downtown or
university library and check out the latest and greatest new editions.
I am crazed with reading latest news on some Websites like those of
selected newspapers and magazines. I scan my favorites every day. Many of
these sites allow free reading of today’s news and charge for older
editions. So I scan today’s news like crazy and copy excerpts into my
computer while the reading is still free. For example, I will scan today’s
New York Times and copy what interests me into my computer before
downloadings of articles are no longer free (actually the NYT just made
archives free but this is not yet common for other newspapers and
magazines).
I thus have two choices. I can read today’s newspapers on my laptop or my
eBook. For my laptop, hundreds of newspapers are available each morning, and
I can cut and paste items of interest into my own files. Only a few
newspapers are available for my eBook, and I can’t copy anything from my
eBook into my computer files. The choice for me is a no-brainer, and I think
the critics of eBooks miss this main point. It’s legal to copy entire
articles into my laptop for personal use just like it is legal to copy
entire television shows and movies into my VCR. It’s not legal for me to
distribute my entire copies to the world, but I can distribute excerpts like
I often distribute quotations in my newsletters/blogs. I could not easily do
this if I downloaded literature into my eBook rather than my laptop.
Hence critics miss the point about why I prefer downloading into my
laptop as opposed to my eBook. I, for one, am not rushing out to “Kindle” my
library.
Bob Jensen
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic books are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on electronic literature are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
"Termite Guts Could Boost Ethanol Efficiency: A metagenomic
study could suggest ways to make cellulosic ethanol," by Emily Singer, MIT's
Technology Review, November 23, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19745/?nlid=683
A massive genomic study of the microbes living
within the termite gut has identified close to 1,000 possible enzymes that
break down wood. The plethora of cellulose-digesting proteins could shed
light on the insects' renowned wood-eating capacity and suggest cheaper,
more efficient methods for generating cellulosic ethanol.
"The hard part [in producing cellulosic ethanol] is
obtaining the metabolic intermediates from things like wood, but that's the
problem the termites have solved," says Frances Arnold, a scientist at
Caltech in Pasadena who was not involved in the research. "This paper
provides an explosion of information about the genes involved in wood
degradation in the termite."
Continued in article
"The Paperless Map Is the Killer App: Forget media downloads.
Cell customers really want GPS and navigation features," Business Week,
November 26, 2007 ---
Click Here
First, cell phones made the streetcorner pay phone
obsolete. Now they're doing away with the need to ask for directions. A
surge in phones with built-in satellite navigation capability has sparked a
wave of creative mapping and locating services. And it has set off a
multibillion-dollar scramble by companies to buy up digital navigation
technologies.
The number of navigation-ready cell phones will hit
162 million this year, or more than seven times the number of such devices
sold for use in cars or other nonphone gadgets, says researcher iSuppli. You
only have to scan phone company ads to see how they are touting navigational
features: The new N95 smartphone from Nokia (NOK ) plays music and videos,
but it also has a chip that receives signals from the government's Global
Positioning System satellites, enabling the phone to display maps. Research
In Motion (RIMM ) is already putting navigation features into its BlackBerry
smartphones. Other big phonemakers including Motorola (MOT ) and Samsung are
doing the same. Apple (AAPL ), having put a version of Google (GOOG ) Maps
on its iPhone, is widely expected to add GPS chips and live mapping in 2008.
Continued in article
Looming Online Security Threats in 2008
Web-based services, including social networks MySpace
and Facebook, are becoming prime targets for hackers seeking your personal
information. It's nearly enough to make you long for the days of typo-ridden
e-mails pretending to come from your bank. As Internet users display more of
their personal information on social networking Web sites, and office workers
upload more sensitive data to online software programs, computer hackers are
employing increasingly sophisticated methods to pry that information loose. In
many cases, they're devising small attacks that can fly under the radar of
traditional security software, while exploiting the trust users place in popular
business and consumer Web sites.
Aaron Ricadela, Business Week, November 12, 2007 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2007/tc2007119_234494.htm?link_position=link2
Bob Jensen's threads on computing and networking security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
Singing a New Zune: Microsoft's Retooled Player Marks a Vast
Improvement; However, It's Still No iPod," by Walter S. Mossberg and
Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2007; Page D1
---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119499777084691974.html
Last year, when Microsoft Corp. introduced its Zune
music player to take on Apple's iPod juggernaut, the software giant struck
out. While the Zune had a good user interface and a larger screen than the
iPod, it was bigger and boxier, with clumsier controls, weaker battery life
and more complex software. Its companion online music store had a much
smaller catalog, a more complicated purchase process and no videos for sale.
And the Zune's most innovative feature, built-in Wi-Fi networking, was
nearly useless and added little value to the players, which sold so poorly
that Apple barely noticed.
But Microsoft is nothing if not persistent, and
this week, the company is back with a second, improved round of Zunes. The
chunky, older 30-gigabyte model remains in the lineup, but it's joined by a
slimmed-down full-size Zune that holds 80 gigabytes, and by a much smaller
model that holds four or eight gigabytes. Prices range from $150 to $250.
The 80-gigabyte Zune is available only in black, and the others come in red,
green, black and pink.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, Apple hasn't been
standing still, either. It now has its own large-screen, wireless model, the
iPod Touch, with a radical "multi-touch" interface like the iPhone's. The
screen on the Touch is larger than the one on the bigger Zunes and is much
sharper. Its Wi-Fi allows you to browse the Web, watch YouTube videos and
even buy music without a PC -- none of which is possible on a Zune -- though
the Touch is $50 more and holds much less content than the new full-size
Zune.
Microsoft's new Zunes are directly aimed at the
iPod Classic, Apple's full-size, high-capacity model, and the iPod nano, its
compact version. But, here again, Apple has been on the move. The
80-gigabyte Classic, which costs the same as the 80-gigabyte Zune, is
slimmer than the Zune and has a flashy new interface, if a smaller screen.
And the eight-gigabyte nano, which costs the same as the eight-gigabyte
Zune, now plays videos and is much smaller -- yet has a larger screen.
Neither of these iPods includes Wi-Fi.
In addition, Apple has spiffed up its iTunes
software, adding various features, including the addictive Cover Flow, which
allows you to flip through all your albums with just a flick of the mouse.
Cover Flow also shows up on the nano, the Classic and the Touch. Even the
new Zune PC software has no interface as compelling.
And Apple still trounces Microsoft in the selection
of media it sells. The iTunes store offers more than six million songs,
about double what the Zune Marketplace offers, and dwarfs Microsoft's
selection of Podcasts and music videos, as well. Plus, Zune Marketplace
still doesn't sell any TV shows, movies or audiobooks, while iTunes does.
Radio Feature
Overall, we still don't think the Zune line beats
the iPods and iTunes. However, one of the Zunes, the full-size Zune 80,
could give the iPod some competition, especially among new digital-player
buyers who aren't invested in the iTunes ecosystem. For the same price, it
offers a significantly larger screen (albeit with the same resolution),
wireless syncing and sharing, and a built-in FM radio -- an existing Zune
feature that the iPod lacks.
We tested the $249.99 80-gigabyte Zune 80 against
Apple's iPod Classic with the same capacity and price and then did the same
for the $199.99 eight-gigabyte Zune 8 compared with the iPod nano
equivalent.
We didn't get a chance to test the battery life on
the new Zune models or that of the iPod Classic and nano. But Microsoft
concedes that unless you turn off Wi-Fi -- one of the Zune's key advantages
-- its claimed battery life is lower than Apple's claims. Microsoft
estimates as many as 19 and 24 hours of music playback with Wi-Fi on for the
eight- and 80-gigabyte, respectfully. Apple claims as many as 24 hours and
30 hours, respectively, on the competitive models, which lack Wi-Fi. In the
past, Apple has generally understated its battery claims, while last year,
Microsoft overstated its claims.
Easier Navigating
On both Zunes, the front hosts just three buttons:
the Zune Pad, a back button and a Play/Pause button. Its menus are divided
into Music, Videos, Pictures, Social, Radio, Podcasts and Settings;
navigating through this menu list and hundreds of songs is made easier with
the Zune Pad's touch functions. To zip through a list, we flicked a finger
up or down. The top, bottom, right and left sides each work as individual
buttons, as does the center of the Zune Pad.
The user interface is mainly unchanged from last
year and still works very well, requiring an economical number of steps for
each action.
Zune's black, red and green colors are fine, but
rather masculine -- the latter reminded us of camouflage. But the pink was a
glaring shade more appropriate for My Little Pony; it looks like an
afterthought.
We initiated wireless syncs with the Zune software
program, plugging the player into our PC the first time but leaving it
disconnected each time after that. Wireless syncing took a little longer
than with a cord and must be initiated by the user from within the player's
settings. One frustration: Presumably to save battery life, the Zune
disconnects from the network periodically and then must reconnect the next
time you want to use the Wi-Fi. Also, the Zune can't wirelessly sync if
you're at a public hot spot that requires you to log in or pay.
Intelligent Syncing
This year's Zunes also introduce a concept
Microsoft intends to build on: intelligent, or automated, syncing. If you
have your Zune set to sync only some of your music, not all, and drag an
artist's name onto the Zune icon in the PC software, the software will
thereafter automatically sync every song you add to the PC from that artist.
Microsoft believes many people would welcome such automation.
Continued in Article
Education Tutorials
Over 30,000 Free Academic Literature
and Multimedia Items from EServer (including some "Bad Subjects") ---
http://eserver.org
The Educational Multimedia Visualization Center (video) ---
http://emvc.geol.ucsb.edu/
Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age ---
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11896
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Flowering plants evolved very quickly into 5 groups
University of Florida and University of Texas at Austin scientists have shed
light on what Charles Darwin called the “abominable mystery” of early plant
evolution.
PhysOrg, November 26, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news115320018.html
Science NOW: The Latest News Headlines from the Scientific World ---
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/
The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science ---
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Exploratorium_Science.pdf
Interactives: The Periodic Table ---
http://www.learner.org/interactives/periodic/index.html
The Educational Multimedia Visualization Center (video) ---
http://emvc.geol.ucsb.edu/
Illuminating Study Reveals How Plants Respond to Light ---
http://physorg.com/news115053032.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
AllPsych Online: The Virtual Psychology Classroom ---
http://allpsych.com/
States in the U.S. Rated by Population and Poverty ---
http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/map.htm
eScholarship Editions ---
http://content.cdlib.org/ucpress/
BioEd Online: Food and Fitness ---
http://www.bioedonline.org/workshops/workshop.cfm?cme_activityid=72&cmepage=cme_info#cmeinfo
From the University of Chicago
The Harris School of Public Policy: Working Papers Series ---
http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/About/publications/working%2Dpapers/
BBC: Archaeology ---
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Math Tutorials
From Texas A&M University
College Algebra Online Tutorials ---
http://www.wtamu.edu/academic/anns/mps/math/mathlab/col_algebra/index.htm
Online Mathematics Textbooks
---
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
Math Teaching and Learning Center ---
http://www.uwstout.edu/cas/mathtlc/
Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching
http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/book8/book8int.htm
Mathematics for Economics: Enhancing Teaching and Learning (includes video
tutorials) ---
http://www.metalproject.co.uk/
Gizmo: Developmental Math ---
Click Here
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
History on the Year You Were Born ---
http://www.infoplease.com/yearbyyear.html
The Oscar Wilde Collection ---
http://www.oscarwildecollection.com/
The Battle of the Somme ---
http://www.iwm.org.uk/server/show/nav.00o
Henry M. Jackson
http://content.lib.washington.edu/jacksonweb/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Writing Tutorials
World Wide Words ---
http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
(many helpers here) ---
http://www.sfwa.org/writing/
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Small Business Administration: Free Online Courses (video) ---
http://www.sba.gov/services/training/onlinecourses/index.html
A Government Website for Helpers in Personal
Finance
MyMoney.gov is the U.S. government's website dedicated
to teaching all Americans the basics about financial education. Whether you are
planning to buy a home, balancing your checkbook, or investing in your 401k, the
resources on MyMoney.gov can help you do it better. Throughout the site, you
will find important information from 20 federal agencies government wide.
My Money.gov ---
http://www.mymoney.gov/
The AICPA's Financial Literacy Helper Site
---
http://www.360financialliteracy.org/
Bob Jensen's personal finance/investment
helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#Finance
Illustrated Cash Flow For Dummies ---
http://www.thetaoofmakingmoney.com/2007/11/05/540.html
Link forwarded by Jim Mahar
Bob Jensen's small business helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#SmallBusiness
President of Evangelical University Resigns
Facing accusations that he misspent university money to
support a lavish lifestyle, the president of Oral Roberts University has
resigned, officials said Friday . . . Mr. Roberts, the son of the televangelist
and university founder Oral Roberts, came under fire with the university after
three former professors filed a lawsuit last month that included accusations of
a $39,000 shopping tab for Mr. Robert’s wife, Lindsay, at one store; a $29,411
senior trip to the Bahamas on the university jet for one of Mr. Roberts’s
daughters; and a stable of horses for the Roberts children . . . Mr. Roberts
received a vote of no confidence last week from the university’s tenured
faculty.
The New York Times, November 24, 2007 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/education/24oral.html
Bob Jensen's threads on accountability and control in higher education are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Accountability
"U.S. Doctoral Awards in Science and Engineering Continue Upward Trend
," National Science Foundation, November 2007 ---
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08301/
U.S. institutions awarded 29,854 science and engineering (S&E) doctorates
in 2006, a record high. The 2006 rise in S&E doctoral awards, 6.7% over
2005, is the fourth consecutive increase (figure 1, table 1). S&E fields
reaching all-time high counts in 2006 were biological sciences, computer
sciences, mathematics, chemistry, social sciences, and engineering . . . the
increase in Ph.D. production in the sciences was driven largely by growth in
the biological sciences, chemistry, computer sciences, and electrical
engineering, all of which experienced growth of at least 200 doctorates
(mathematics and mechanical engineering also fared well). Psychology and
agricultural sciences suffered small declines.
Question
Is the disparity between liberals versus conservatives in academe due, in part,
to self selection by undergraduates to pursue doctoral degrees?
Is the shortage of doctoral graduates in some professions (e.g., accounting and
finance) due in part to tendencies of graduates in these professions to not seek
out academic careers?
"The Conservative Pipeline Problem," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
November 16, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/16/conservative
Colleges have been
increasingly competing
to offer “family friendly” policies — in the
hopes of attracting the best academic talent
from a pool of Ph.D.’s that includes both
more women than ever before as well as many
men who take parenting responsibilities
seriously. A
new study suggests
that such policies may be important for
another group that believes its needs aren’t
fully addressed in academe: conservatives.
...
The authors
of the study do not dispute that conservatives are a
distinct minority in academe and that the imbalance is
problematic. They also hold open the possibility — much
proclaimed by other authors at the conference of the
American Enterprise Institute where all of the work was
presented — that there may be bias against conservatives
(although they question whether this has been proven). But
the authors of the work on the pipeline say there is
considerable evidence that could show conservative
self-selection out of academic careers.
...
The
husband-and-wife social science team based their findings on
analysis they did from national surveys of freshmen and
seniors conducted by the University of California at Los
Angeles’s Higher Education Research Institute. They found
that in both choices of majors and in personal values,
conservatives seem to be taking themselves off the track for
academic careers well before graduate school. The authors
did not find evidence of statistically significant
differences in grades or measures of academic performance,
so most of the report is based on the premise that interests
and experiences are at play, not aptitude.
For
starters, the paper finds that conservatives are much more
likely to pick majors in professional fields — areas that
tend to put students on the fast track for an M.B.A. (or for
a job) more than a Ph.D. Only 9 percent of students on the
far left and 18 percent of liberals major in professional
fields, compared to 33 percent of conservatives and 37
percent of those who identify as being on the far right.
Further, the
study finds that not only (as has been reported many times
previously) do students who identify as liberal outnumber
those who identify as conservative, but that those who are
liberal are much more likely to consider a Ph.D. The UCLA
survey of seniors found that only 13 percent of all students
were considering a Ph.D. But the numbers were significantly
higher for those on the left (24 percent of the far left and
18 percent of liberals) than on the right (11 percent of the
far right and 9 percent of conservatives).
The study
also finds significant differences among colleges seniors in
values that they care about — including values that might
make someone more or less likely to enter a Ph.D. program.
For instance, in a values study, the seniors were asked to
rank certain experiences on a four-point scale (with 1 as
not important, 2 as somewhat important, 3 as very important,
and 4 as essential). The results show a divide.
Student
Values and Ideology
| |
Raising a Family |
Being Well Off Financially |
Writing Original Works |
Developing Meaningful Philosophy of Life |
|
Far left |
2.58 |
2.05 |
2.19 |
3.03 |
|
Liberal |
2.98 |
2.50 |
1.81 |
2.75 |
|
Moderate |
3.22 |
2.73 |
1.60 |
2.51 |
|
Conservative |
3.40 |
2.55 |
1.53 |
2.55 |
|
Far right |
3.39 |
2.79 |
1.63 |
2.53 |
It’s not
that conservatives don’t care about philosophy or that
liberals don’t like kids, the paper suggests, but different
underlying values that may frame decisions.
“Conservatives appear to be very practically oriented,” said
Woessner.
Kelly-Woessner
said that for many who want to raise a family, academic life
may be daunting — what with both graduate school’s relative
poverty and the long hours and stress of the tenure track.
“The path up to tenure is perceived as very hostile to
family,” she said, adding that colleges would do well — for
all kinds of reasons — to become more family friendly.
In keeping
with the overall paper, Kelly-Woessner suggested that a
cumulative effect may be visible in explaining lopsidedly
liberal departments. “You are just starting with the choice
of majors,” she said, and then go on to what students value
at the point of graduation.
In terms of
suggestions, the paper argues both for family-friendly
policies and for less politics in the classroom, expressing
hope that the latter might attract more conservatives to the
social sciences and humanities.
But the
authors stress that — to the extent liberals and
conservatives finishing colleges have different values —
imbalances among college faculties may be permanent.
“Ideology
represents far more than a collection of abstract political
values,” they write. “Liberalism is more closely associated
with a desire for excitement, an interest in creative
outlets and an aversion to a structured work environment.
Conservatives express greater interest in financial success
and strong desires to raise families. From this perspective,
the ideological imbalance that permeates much of academia
may be somewhat intractable.”
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the shortage of accounting doctoral students are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
Bob Jensen's threads on the liberal side of academe are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
From the Scout Report on November 21. 2007
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 7.5.503
---
http://www.grisoft.com/doc/downloads-products/us/crp/0?prd=triavw
While some things come and go in the world of
computers, viruses are pretty much guaranteed to be around forever.
Anti-virus programs are a "must have" in today's online world, and this
helpful free edition of the AVG Anti-Virus program is worth a look. The
features of this latest release include real- time protection as files are
opened and programs are run, along with free virus updates. This version is
compatible with computers running Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista.
TAMS Analyzer 3.50b14 ---
http://tamsys.sourceforge.net/osxtams/
Anyone who has tried to perform qualitative
analyses of various texts, interviews, and other documents knows how
difficult it can be. Researchers who do this type of work will be glad to
learn about the Text Analysis Markup System (TAMS) Analyzer 3.50b14. With
this program, users can assign ethnographic codes to text passages by
selecting the relevant text and double clicking the name of the code of a
list. This version is compatible with computers running Mac OS X 10.4 and
newer.
Call for prison reform draws attention from policy
makers and members of the law enforcement community U.S. Prison system a
costly and harmful failure
http://www.maconareaonline.com/news.asp?id=19050
California a leader in number of youths in prison
for life ---
Click Here
Crack cocaine sentence cut is stalled by
retroactivity
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07323/835088-85.stm
NPR: Should Sentencing Reform Be Retroactive? [Real
Player]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16327095
Unlocking America [pdf]
http://www.jfa-associates.com/publications/srs/UnlockingAmerica.pdf
Bureau of Justice Statistics [pdf]
http://ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html
From The Washington Post on November 26,
2007
How many DVDs does Netflix ship per day?
A.
500,000
B.
1.2 million
C.
1.6 million
D.
2.3 million
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
This is probably a good case to study in ethics courses!
Radioactivity's danger overstated?
Studies of some of the worst radiation incidents show
effects on workers and residents aren't nearly as severe as commonly thought, a
German newspaper said. From the dropping of U.S. atomic bombs on Japan in World
War II to a 1957 accident at a secret nuclear facility in Siberia to German
uranium mines to the nuclear radiation release at Chernobyl in 1987, researchers
are finding long-term dangers seem overblown, Der Spiegel reported Friday.
Instead of tens of thousands of deaths from those incidents, documented cancer
and other radiation-related deaths have been only in the hundreds, the German
newspaper said. Research shows health-related problems, including genetic
deformities, also were overstated. The research includes work done by GSF
Research Center for Health and the Environment in Neuherberg, Germany --
Europe's largest radiation protection institute -- for the European Union's
Southern Urals Radiation Risk Research project, and by the U.S. National Cancer
Institute, as well as a U.S.-Japanese epidemiological study. "For
commendable reasons, many critics have greatly exaggerated the health risks of
radioactivity," Albrecht Kellerer, a Munich
radiation biologist, told the newspaper. "But contrary to widespread opinion,
the number of victims is by no means in the tens of thousands."
PhysOrg, November 24, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news115099576.html
Question about calories and what it has to do with managerial accounting!
What are the nine most fattening foods (and drink) that are popular around the
Oktoberfest, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah Holidays?
See if you can name them before looking up the answers. Why are some of these
foods more of a problem in the autumn?
Hint: Don't dwell on meats and most other fatty foods that are
problems 365 days a year. Think more in terms of autumn, although a few winners
are not unique to autumn and winter.
Remember, it's not exactly what you eat as it is how much you eat of it. My
problem is that if it tastes really good, I want more!
Advice: Put a few more miles on the treadmill every day. And is quantity
of life really more important than quality of life?
"9 Frighteningly Fattening Fall Foods: Avoiding these rich fall favorites
can help you make it to Thanksgiving without gaining a pound," by Kathleen M.
Zelman, WebMD, November 2007 ---
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/9-frighteningly-fattening-fall-foods
Fall offers all kinds of delicious and nutritious
foods, from apples to root vegetables, but we have a knack for taking
healthy foods (think sweet potatoes) and making them decadently rich. When
simmered in cream, baked in pie crust, sautéed in butter, or topped with
cheese, these foods go from good to bad.
"Foods like apples, squash, nuts, and pumpkin are
super nutritious, but the nutritional goodness is masked when you add lots
of extra calories," says Tara Gidus, MS, RD, a spokeswoman for the American
Dietetic Association.
And don’t forget those game-day favorites, served
on a tailgate or in front of the television. If you're a typical sports fan,
you could find yourself seated on the couch for hours at a time on college
football Saturday, professional football Sunday, and again on Monday night.
Not only is that a big chunk of time to be sitting, but you could easily
devour a mountain of chips, nachos, hot dogs, pizza, wings, ribs, sausages,
and let’s not forget the beer.
"Eating and drinking for hours at a time coupled
with little physical activity is a perfect formula for weight gain," says
Gidus.
Oktoberfest adds another opportunity to celebrate,
with calorie-laden beer, sausages, and potato salads.
The Most Fattening
Foods of Fall
So what exactly are
the diet-spoilers to
watch out for this
season? Here are
nine fall foods that
can really pack a
caloric punch:
-
Halloween
candy. Long
before Halloween
arrives, bowls
of fun-size
candy bars are
all over the
office. And then
there are those
tempting bags
stashed in the
back of the
pantry. "When 3
p.m. rolls
around, it is
easy to get
enticed by those
bite-size
candies. But one
usually turns
into more, and
before you know
it, you have
eaten the
equivalent of a
full-size candy
bar," says Gidus.
Her advice:
Stash sweets out
of sight, and be
prepared to
satisfy your
midday hunger
pangs with
something more
nutritious. If
you must have
something sweet,
chew a piece of
sugarless gum.
-
Cream soups
and hearty stews.
Cream of baked
potato and
broccoli cheese
soups and beef
stroganoff may
seem like
perfect fall
foods, but
beware. "Warm
soups and stews
feel so
nutritious, but
if they are
loaded with
cream, cheese,
or meat, they
are also loaded
with calories,"
says Farrell.
Serving them in
a bread bowl,
atop rice, or
noodles, or
dunking big
portions of
bread into them
can put even
healthy soups or
stews over the
top, in terms of
calories, she
says. So avoid
these options,
and be sure to
choose broth and
vegetable based
soups and stews
to fill you up
for fewer
calories.
-
Root
vegetables.
While many are
super-nutritious,
root vegetables
can quadruple in
calories when
you cream them,
fry them, or mix
them with
cheese, cream,
butter, canned
soups, or crispy
bacon. A sweet
potato casserole
can easily have
500 calories per
serving -- 400
more than a
simple roasted
sweet potato.
Shave calories
by eating root
veggies
oven-roasted or
grilled. If you
just can’t pass
on the mashed
potatoes, skip
the gravy and
keep the portion
to 1/2 cup.
-
Seasonal
beverages.
Hot toddies may
keep you warm at
night, but these
hot drinks,
along with hot
chocolate,
pumpkin-spice
lattes, eggnog,
and apple cider
are a quick and
easy way to take
in lots of extra
calories. A
16-oz.
Starbuck’s
pumpkin spice
latte with 2%
milk and whipped
cream packs 380
calories, while
the same size
caramel apple
cider has 410
calories. "Be
careful with
hot, cold, or
alcoholic
beverages
because they are
additional
calories and
don’t affect how
much you eat,"
says Farrell.
One regular
12-ounce beer
has 150
calories, and
you can multiply
that by however
many you drink.
So try a hot cup
of green or
flavored tea,
rich with
antioxidants and
calorie-free.
When you choose
to drink
alcohol, opt for
light beer or
wine spritzers,
and limit
yourself to one
or two.
-
Apples dipped
in caramel.
An afternoon
snack of apples
with a thick
layer of caramel
and coated with
nuts can total
more than 500
calories, says
Gidus. Enjoy
crisp apple
slices with a
small container
of low-fat
caramel dip
(McDonald’s
version has 70
calories) for
the same great
taste with a
fraction of the
fat and
calories.
-
Apple, pecan,
and sweet potato
pies. These
fall favorites
start with
healthy
ingredients such
as heart-healthy
nuts or
antioxidant-rich
fruits and
vegetables --
but they also
include
high-calorie
ingredients.
"Rich, buttery
pie crusts,
sweet fillings,
and the
customary
whipped cream or
ice cream
topping make
these pies
decadent and
full of
calories," says
Farrell. Skip
the crust, add a
dollop of light
whipped topping,
and serve
yourself only a
sliver to enjoy
these yummy
desserts without
lots of extra
calories.
-
Stuffing.
There are so
many versions of
stuffing, most
containing
high-fat
ingredients such
as sausage and
butter. And the
calories keep
coming when the
stuffing is
served with a
ladle or two of
gravy. "You can
make a low-fat
stuffing using
fruits,
vegetables, and
stock, but you
still need to
keep the portion
small and try to
avoid smothering
it in gravy,"
says Gidus.
-
Macaroni and
cheese. It's
an all-time
favorite comfort
food for both
kids and adults,
but it can wreak
havoc with your
diet. At Boston
Market, a 7.8
ounce serving of
mac and cheese
has 320
calories. To
make it worse,
many recipes
call for extra
ingredients such
as high-fat
meats or
sausage.
"Modify the
recipe by using
a low-fat
cheese, low-fat
milk and add in
some veggies
instead of meat
to improve the
nutritional
profile and
still taste
great," says Liz
Weiss, author of
The Mom’s
Guide to Meal
Makeovers.
-
Pumpkin
desserts.
Pumpkin layer
cake,
cheesecake,
bread pudding --
there are so
many ways to
take the vitamin
A-rich pumpkin
and turn it into
a decadently
rich dessert.
"Be careful,
because if you
add tons of
cream and sugar,
you negate the
health benefits
of pumpkin,"
says Gidus.
Instead, she
says, "lighten
the other
ingredients, try
a crustless,
low-fat pumpkin
custard or
low-fat pumpkin
muffins, so you
can enjoy the
pumpkin without
sabotaging your
waistline."
Continued in article
As an aside, what state in the U.S. has the highest consumption of beer
per capita (the answer surprised me)?
Answer ---
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_state_drinks_the_most_beer_per_capita
Color Coded Map of the U.S. ---
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/view/S95RjIsOtha6bW-ifWIqI2-
Note that the map can be changed to wine consumption across the states.
Note the other data that can be visualized ---
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/browse/data
Jensen Comment
My New Hampshire makes it look like we're a bunch of drunks on wine and beer.
However, I have some questions about the data. Because of low prices and taxes,
out-of-state non-residents flock to New Hampshire and take huge hauls back to
their homes and sometimes businesses. For example, if the data concerns wine
sales, then much of wine sold in New Hampshire State Liquor stores is not
consumed in the State of New Hampshire. Instead it is headed for cellars in
Canada, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New York and other points west and south.
Somewhere along the way, New Hampshire's bureaucrats remembered that module in
college managerial accounting courses dealing with "Cost, Profit, Volume
Analysis" ---
http://www.bookrags.com/research/cost-volume-profit-analysis-eom/
Also watch the video ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7YPAtnSejE
Also see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEPtdbsX8JM
Advice: Instead of eating all those extra calories watch the YouTube
"Managerial Accounting" tutorials instead of doing all that eating and drinking
during the autumn holidays? Right! What is it I said about quality versus
quantity of life?
PS
New Hampshire may be the only state in the union that has Interstate exits that
only go to liquor stores and not anywhere else (without getting back on
Interstates 93 and 95).
"If You Overeat, Get Back on Track Fast," by Cheryl Wittenauer,
PhysOrg, November 21, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news114886681.html
It would take 27 minutes of walking to burn the 97
calories in an 8-ounce serving of cola. A really fast mile would burn 125
calories, Popkin notes.
But that barely dents the 2,000 to 3,000 calories
in an average Thanksgiving meal.
Three ounces of white turkey meat is only 130
calories, but a serving of sweet potato casserole is 330 calories; stuffing
is 107; a slice of pumpkin pie is more than 300, while a piece of pecan pie
is 500 calories.
On previous Thanksgivings, Patty Wade, 61, would
have helped herself to a piece of that pecan pie, along with a large serving
of corn casserole and potatoes. But things are different this year.
Wade, a senior analyst for a St. Louis hospital,
has lost 55 pounds since March, and doesn't plan to regain any of it despite
dealing with three Thanksgiving celebrations and four family birthdays this
month.
Now, she restricts herself to a reasonable portion
of meat, vegetables without high-calorie sauces, and a few bites of dessert.
She's bringing dessert to Thursday's feast, a "really good yellow cake that
doesn't require icing."
Dr. Robert Kushner, professor of medicine at
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, recommends having a
plan of action like Wade's, and visualizing the meal beforehand.
He suggests deciding ahead of time what can and
cannot be eaten, eating while sitting rather than standing and talking, and
from a plate not off a tray to keep things in proportion.
Take small bites and eat slowly. And, don't get
stuck in guilt if you've eaten too much.
"Feeling guilty just leads to 'I blew my diet, so I
won't start again until January,'" he said. "That's the worse thing you can
do."
For Amy Lottes, her plan includes a three-hour walk
when she takes her kids to the Saint Louis Zoo on Thanksgiving. Exercise and
portion control have helped the St. Louis-area mom keep off the 20 pounds
she lost four years ago with the help of a nutritionist and personal
trainer.
This Thanksgiving, the 41-year-old will forfeit
dessert and second helpings and have a second glass of wine instead.
Personal trainer Gina Pona-Norton said it's
important to stay active - not just busy - over the holidays. And don't
deprive yourself, just use moderation.
"If you get off track, get back on as soon as
possible," she said. "If you have a bad Thursday, Friday is the day of
eating perfect. Let it go. Let Thanksgiving go."
Working mums and overweight kids: is there a link?
New research from the University of Bristol shows that
children aged between 5 and 7, whose mothers work full time, are more likely to
be overweight at age 16. The impact on their weight is not immediate; rather,
children become more obese as they get older. There is no evidence that children
younger than 5 or older than 7 are more likely to be overweight at age 16 if
their mothers work either part time or full time.
PhysOrg, November 22, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news114955791.html
Jensen Comment
Maybe its because babysitting dads in front of the TV share their beer and
snacks with the kids. But the fact is that working mothers of overweight
children tend to be overweight themselves. Hence genetic flaws are more apt to
be the underlying problems according to the study.
What happens when dad looks after the kids?
According to new research from the University of
Bristol, some fathers do not provide their young sons with the same quality of
intellectual stimulation as mothers do. Boys who spend at least 15 hours a week
in their father’s care as toddlers perform worse in academic assessments when
they start school . . . There is evidence that boys – but not girls – who spent
at least 15 hours a week in paternal care when they were toddlers performed
worse on academic assessments when they started school. This cannot be explained
by parents’ economic or psychological characteristics, nor by the
characteristics of the child. This raises concerns that, on average, fathers do
not provide the same degree of mental stimulation to sons as mothers do. When in
charge, fathers may be more inclined to see their role as monitoring the child
and seeing to its physical needs and less inclined to devise creative activities
that develop a child’s intellectual skills.
PhysOrg, November 23, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news115050630.html
Cigarette smoke, alcohol damage hearts worse as combo
Tobacco smoke-filled air is bad for cardiovascular
health, and drinking alcohol at the same time only makes it worse, according to
researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Testing the theory that
moderate alcohol consumption provides some heart-protection benefits, the UAB
team said it wanted to take the idea further and look at the effects of smoking
and breathing second-hand smoke along with drinking. They reported that mice
exposed to smoky air in a laboratory enclosure and fed a liquid diet containing
ethanol, the intoxicating ingredient in alcohol, had a 4.7-fold increase in
artery lesions. That compares to mice who breathed filtered air and ate a normal
solid diet. Artery lesions are a common problem in heavy smokers and a key sign
of advancing cardiovascular disease. The results are published in the journal
Free Radical Biology & Medicine.
PhysOrg, November 21, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news114871366.html
Even minute levels of lead cause brain damage in children
Even very small amounts of lead in children's blood --
amounts well below the current federal standard -- are associated with reduced
IQ scores, finds a new six-year Cornell study. The study examined the effect of
lead exposure on cognitive function in children whose blood-lead levels (BLLs)
were below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) standard of 10
micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dl) -- about 100 parts per billion. The
researchers compared children whose BLLs were between 0 and 5 mcg/dl with
children in the 5-10 mcg/dl range. "Even after taking into consideration family
and environmental factors known to affect a child's cognitive performance, blood
lead played a significant role in predicting nonverbal IQ scores," says Richard
Canfield, a senior researcher in Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences and
senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. "We
found that the average IQ scores of children with BLLs of only 5 to 10 mcg/dl
were about 5 points lower than the IQ scores of children with BLLs less than 5
mcg/dl. This indicates an adverse effect on children who have a BLL
substantially below the CDC standard, suggesting the need for more stringent
regulations," he said.
PhysOrg, November 7, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news114782272.html
Drugs may not delay onset of dementia; and more
Researchers have examined the evidence in favour of
giving people considered to be close to developing dementia the drugs that are
most commonly used to treat the condition itself. They have concluded that these
drugs (cholinesterase inhibitors) do not seem to delay the appearance of
Alzheimer disease or other forms of dementia.
PhysOrg, November 27, 2007 ---
http://physorg.com/news115373448.html
BioEd Online: Food and Fitness ---
http://www.bioedonline.org/workshops/workshop.cfm?cme_activityid=72&cmepage=cme_info#cmeinfo
Three Strikes (Surgeries) on the Wrong Side of the Brain, But the
Hospital's Not Out
Rhode Island Hospital has been fined $50,000 and
reprimanded by the state Department of Health after its third instance this year
of a doctor performing brain surgery in the wrong side of a patient's head. "We
are extremely concerned about this continuing pattern," health department
director David R. Gifford said in a statement Monday. The hospital issued a
statement saying it was re-evaluating its training and policies, providing more
oversight, giving nursing staff the power to ensure procedures are followed,
among other steps. The most recent case happened Friday when the chief resident
started operating on the...
"Hospital fined after 3rd wrong-side brain surgery this year," Houston
Chronicle, November 27, 2007 ---
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/5331643.html
Also see
http://physorg.com/news115375599.html
Question
What does a surgeon tell a recovering patient with wrong-side brain surgery?
Answer
My wife used to work as a surgical technician (for over 20 years) mostly
assisting neurosurgeons. Once when there was a wrong-side brain surgery, the
surgeon immediately opened the other side of the brain and properly finished the
operation. Afterwards he told the patient the following:
"I've got good news and good news! We operated and removed the tumor. And
just to be sure, we opened up the other side to check for tumors. We think
you’re clean."
Jensen Comment
I wonder if the insurance company paid for all the extra “checking-it-out”
surgery.
From the AccountingWeb, November 2007
Making the right health care choices during open enrollment
The benefits packages have been delivered and may still be lying on your
desk at home or in the office along with the cover letter saying that if you
do nothing you will have the same health benefits as last year. Many
employees, looking for any excuse to procrastinate, may be asking
themselves, "How much could have changed from last year and do I really have
to read this?"
High health-care costs may result in fewer doctor's visits
As health care costs go nowhere but up, workers can expect employers to
shift more of the burden on them - again. Costs are expected to increase in
two ways: in the amount deducted from paychecks for monthly premiums (an 8.7
percent increase is projected by Hewitt Associates) and in out-of-pocket
expenses as deductibles rise. Many employees are getting this bad news now,
during open enrollment season for next year's benefits elections.
Workers may see new insurance option: HSAs
While the end of the year brings a flurry of shopping decisions (Can I get
away with buying Uncle Charlie another tie?), some choices are even more
daunting: health care plans. Fall is usually open-enrollment time, and
workers may see an option called a Health Savings Account, or HSA, for the
first time.
HSAs pave way for first-dollar preventive care coverage
Most health savings account plans cover recommended preventive benefits on a
first-dollar basis, according to a new survey released this week by
America's Health Insurance Plans.
Wellness programs: Well-intentioned, but too intrusive for some
Wellness programs have been popular with companies looking to lower their
health care costs for years, but some observers are starting to question
just how far these programs should go.
The Number of Special Education students in the U.S. increased by 46% to
over six million since 1989 ---
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-ERICchrtbk0704-24.html
First disabled students were segregated or not allowed in schools. Then came
the pressures and legislation to mainstream, with obvious exceptions, in
classrooms with regular students. Now a movement is underfoot to once again
segregate them, including autistic children, into their own classes.
"Parents of Disabled Students Push for Separate Classes," by Robert Tomsho, The
Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2007; Page A1---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119610348432004184.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
"Great Scots: The first minister of Scotland chooses works that reflect
the spirit of his native land," by Alex Salmond, The Wall Street Journal,
November 24, 2007 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/fivebest/?id=110010903
1. "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (1776).
With its espousal of freedom, industry and
self-determination, "The Wealth of Nations" is considered a founding
document of the Scottish Enlightenment, which deeply influenced the great
political and philosophical movements of the modern era. I prefer to think
of Adam Smith's seminal work as an economist's treasure trove. I have spent
countless hours delving into its arguments about taxation, trade, public
works and the division of labor, pausing for classic passages such as: "It
is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that
we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
2. "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" by
Arthur Herman (Crown, 2001).
To understand the central truths of Scottish
character and culture, from their origins to today, you could do no better
than to look into "How the Scots Invented the Modern World." Arthur Herman
covers it all: Scotland's contributions to democracy, capitalism and
banking, as well as to literature and the arts. From the Scottish
Reformation of the 1600s to David Hume and the Enlightenment in the 1700s,
from Robert Louis Stevenson in the 1800s to the devolution of 1997 that
restored the Scottish Parliament for the first time in nearly 300 years,
Herman conjures the spirit of a people rooted in education and reason. His
description of the opening of Edinburgh's first medical school in 1726 is
particularly telling: "Edinburgh taught its doctors to be hands-on
generalists, who could spot a problem, make a diagnosis, and apply treatment
themselves."
3. "Sunset Song" by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Jarrolds,
1932)
We Scots have our share of historical and literary
warrior-characters like William Wallace, the medieval Scottish patriot who
still stirs a fierce pride in his latter-day countrymen. My favorite
Scottish "warrior," however, is Chris Guthrie, a farmer's daughter in the
early years of the 20th century and the heroine of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's
"Sunset Song." In this first novel of Gibbon's "A Scots Quair" trilogy,
Chris's heart belongs to her family's farm, but the modern world has begun
to encroach on the nearby village of Kinraddie. Her husband dies in World
War I, and in the postwar years the sun begins to set on agrarian life in a
country that Chris has "loved and hated in a breath." But her ultimate
devotion to her land--her Scotland--transcends family, love, war and death.
4. "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame
(Scribner, 1908).
Edinburgh native Kenneth Grahame truly captures the
spirit of Scotland in this quintessential children's story about a lovable
animal quartet. The adventures begin when Mole warily accepts an invitation
from a water rat--Ratty--to join him in his row boat. "Believe me, my young
friend," Ratty says, "there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half so much
worth doing as simply messing about in boats." A friendship is born, and
soon the circle expands to include Mr. Badger and Mr. Toad, who likes
nothing half so much as messing about in motor cars. As the story unfolds,
the animals display their loyalty, humility, dedication, generosity and a
fighting spirit when confronted--all virtues esteemed in Scottish culture
and brought charmingly to life by Grahame.
5. "The Works of Robert Burns" (Wordsworth
Poetry Library, 1994).
For auld lang syne, I must pay tribute to Robbie
Burns (1759-96), who put those words into poetry and song. A Scots country
lad whose writing led him to the salons of Edinburgh, Burns took his love of
Scotland, its dialect and traditions and shared it with the world. Our
national bard may be most remembered around the globe on Hogmanay (New
Year), but we in Scotland recall his wit, his humor and his devotion to his
country every day, whether we stand in Parliament "gath'rin votes" or
worrying over the progress of "time or tide."
Mr. Salmond, a former economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland, is the
leader of the Scottish National Party
Forwarded by Dick Haar
We rarely get a chance to see another country's
editorial about the USA.
Read this excerpt from a Romanian Newspaper. The
article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title 'C'ntarea
Americii, meaning 'Ode To America' in the Romanian newspaper
Evenimentulzilei 'The Daily Event' or 'News of the Day' & nbsp;
~An Ode to America~
Why are Americans so united? They would not
resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all
the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations
and religious beliefs.
Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred
million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the
White House, the Army, or the Secret Service that they are only a bunch of
losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto
the streets nearby to gape about. Instead the Americans volunteered to
donate blood and to give a helping hand.
After the first moments of panic, they raised their
flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the
colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if
in every place and on every car a government official or the president was
passing. On every occasion, they started singing:'God Bless America!'
I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun
for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors
with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the
Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists
and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other
hundreds or thousands of people.
How on earth were they able to respond united as
one human being? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory
of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone
call, millions and millions of dollars were put into a collection aimed at
rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy.
What on earth can unite the Americans in such a
way? Their land? Their history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for
hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk
of sounding commonplace, I thought things over, I reached but only one
conclusion... Only freedom can work such miracles.
Cornel Nistorescu
“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that
a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can
move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.” In the
interview in Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, Williams makes only mild
criticisms of the Islamic world. He said the Muslim world must acknowledge that
its “political solutions were not the most impressive”. He commends the Muslim
practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of
God to be “built in deeply in their daily rhythm”.
London Times, November 25, 2007 ---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2937068.ece
Jensen Comment
No mention is made of U.S. efforts to stop genocide in Bosnia, Saddam's atrocities, 9/11
infernos, terror attacks in Britain subways and
elsewhere, boycotting of Jews in U.K. academia, or Tony Blair's recent abandonment of
the Archbishop in favor of Roman Catholicism.
Rowan
Williams consistently leans to the far left on virtually every issue. He's
criticized for being "loathsome
with Jews, complacent with Muslims" ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rowan_Williams/Archive_up_to_September_2007#Serious_Revision
When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin
Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just
an example of empire building by George Bush. He answered by saying that, "Over
the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into
great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we
have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." It
became very quiet in the room.
Discussion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rowan_Williams/Archive_up_to_September_2007#Colin_Powell
Several hundred
activists of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut Tahrir staged protests here
before the arrival of two ships of the US Navy for distributing relief supplies
among cyclone-affected people. Two warships, USS Essex and USS Kearsarge -- each
carrying 20 helicopters and 3,500 marines on board with emergency relief
supplies, medical and emergency evacuation teams -- are scheduled to enter
Bangladesh waters Saturday and Tuesday. The protesters Friday carried a banner
reading 'Prevent American ships from entering the Bay of Bengal in the name of
distributing relief' and chanted slogans 'Go back to America'...
"Islamists protest US naval presence for cyclone relief,"
Earth Times, November 24, 2007 ---
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/147173.html
Forwarded by Paula
Forget Rednecks, here is what Jeff Foxworthy has to say about folks from
Texas ...
You May Live In Texas IF:
If someone in a Lowe's store offers you assistance and they don't work there,
you may live in Texas
If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you may live in Texas .
If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a
wrong number, you may live in Texas .
If "Vacation" means going anywhere south of Dallas for the weekend, you may
live in Texas .
If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Texas
If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live
in Texas .
If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both
unlocked, you may live in Texas .
If you carry jumper cables in your car and your wife knows how to use them,
you may live in Texas .
If the speed limit on the highway is 55 mph -- you're going 80 and everybody
is passing you, you may live in Texas
If you find 60 degrees "a little chilly", you may live in Texas .
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/
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Three Finance Blogs
Jim Mahar's FinanceProfessor Blog ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
FinancialRounds Blog ---
http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
Karen Alpert's FinancialMusings (Australia) ---
http://financemusings.blogspot.com/
Some Accounting Blogs
Paul Pacter's IAS Plus (International
Accounting) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
International Association of Accountants News ---
http://www.aia.org.uk/
AccountingEducation.com and Double Entries ---
http://www.accountingeducation.com/
Gerald Trite's eBusiness and
XBRL Blogs ---
http://www.zorba.ca/
AccountingWeb ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/
SmartPros ---
http://www.smartpros.com/
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Shared Open Courseware
(OCW) from Around the World: OKI, MIT, Rice, Berkeley, Yale, and Other Sharing
Universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Free Textbooks and Cases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Mathematics and Statistics Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Free Science and Medicine Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Free Social Science and Philosophy Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Free Education Discipline Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Teaching Materials (especially
video) from PBS
Teacher Source: Arts and
Literature ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/arts_lit.htm
Teacher Source: Health & Fitness
---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/health.htm
Teacher Source: Math ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/math.htm
Teacher Source: Science ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/sci_tech.htm
Teacher Source: PreK2 ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/prek2.htm
Teacher Source: Library Media ---
http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/library.htm
Free Education and
Research Videos from Harvard University ---
http://athome.harvard.edu/archive/archive.asp
VYOM eBooks Directory ---
http://www.vyomebooks.com/
From Princeton Online
The Incredible Art Department ---
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/
Online Mathematics Textbooks ---
http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives ---
http://enlvm.usu.edu/ma/nav/doc/intro.jsp
Moodle ---
http://moodle.org/
The word moodle is an acronym for "modular
object-oriented dynamic learning environment", which is quite a mouthful.
The Scout Report stated the following about Moodle 1.7. It is a
tremendously helpful opens-source e-learning platform. With Moodle,
educators can create a wide range of online courses with features that
include forums, quizzes, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and surveys. On the
Moodle website, visitors can also learn about other features and read about
recent updates to the program. This application is compatible with computers
running Windows 98 and newer or Mac OS X and newer.
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu