I am an early riser. I used to be at may computer before 5:00 a.m. in my faculty office.
In retirement I'm at my computer before 4:00 a.m. in my front porch.
In all seasons I watch the sun rise up over the Presidential, Twin, and Kinsman Mountain Ranges.
Every sunrise is unique, and the best sunrises are aided by ever-changing cloud formations.
I hope that each sunrise in 2008 will bring more peace, sanity, and prosperity to the entire world.

 

Mt. Washington on January 3, 2007 [ Temperature -23.2 F, Winds (NW) 67.8 mph  -72.5 mph, Wind Chill -68.3°F ]

My December 31, 2007 edition of Fraud Updates is now available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Links to my other fraud modules can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

Auntie Bev, an avid Web surfer, forwarded "Fascinating Statistics" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FascinatingStatistics/Statistics.htm

Auntie Bev left one "fascinating statistic" out of the above list --- her age!
But guess what she's holding up in her (home) Florida birthday party picture?
Is she really telling the truth or should I also cross out the second number on the sign?
Zaba says she was born in 1940. I'm still trying to get verification of this from Snopes!
Hundreds of her forwarded humor messages over the past decade are available at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Thank you Bev for all the laughs and cheers you've shared with us via email over the years! Please keep hitting the Send button!

Happy New Year from Auntie Bev --- http://llerrah.com/newyearwishes.htm
Auld Lang Syne --- http://llerrah.com/auldlangsyne.htm
The Seven Ups of Life --- http://llerrah.com/sevenups.htm

 

Tidbits on January 4, 2008
Bob Jensen

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

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

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


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

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

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

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination

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

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

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

While working on the computer, Bob Jensen mostly listens to (free and without commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/

Google Maps Street View --- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy --- http://www.eff.org/wp/six-tips-protect-your-search-privacy

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

Google, on the heels of a report released this week that says most users—many of them college students—don’t worry about their personal information showing up through search engines, announced a new series of videos meant to educate users on Google’s privacy settings. The series, appearing on YouTube’s Google Privacy Channel, is part of the corporation’s effort to raise awareness about how users can control their personal information when using Google’s products, according to the Official Google Blog. The videos cover different topics, like how users can manage their search histories and adjust cookie preferences, enhancing users’ control over how their personal information is displayed.
Chronicle of Higher Education, December 20, 2007 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2629/google-teaches-users-about-privacy-by-youtube?at

Jeff Dunham  (watch his eyebrows late in the video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go
I WANNA BE LIKE OSAMA --- http://youtube.com/watch?v=eeDDb5VYwbY
Warning: Neither of the above humor videos is politically correct.

Danny Divito Says Amen to Investing More and More in a Shrinking Market --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c
(Link forwarded by the Financial Rounds blog on December 29, 2007 --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/  )

Shocking Economics --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJo7GG15kMU
(Link forwarded by the Financial Rounds blog on December 29, 2007 --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/  )

Alternate Ending to the Wizard of Oz --- http://portugueselotus.multiply.com/video/item/50

Partying Accountants (video links forwarded by David Albrecht)

David Letterman's Top Ten Accountant Pick-Up Lines --- http://www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/index/php/19980409.phtml#

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting humor are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#Humor

LocateTV will search over 3 million TV listings across all channels in your area
Type in the name of a TV show, movie, or actor
Locate TV will find channels and times in your locale
http://www.locatetv.com/

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

Indiana University Men's Choral Group has a very funny montage of Christmas music --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8

409 (Beachboys) --- http://www.barb-coolwaters.com/cw001/409.html

The cars we drove in 1950s and 1960s (video) --- http://oldfortyfives.com/CarsWeDrove.htm

The 45s of 1960s --- http://moreoldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm

Dion DiMucci used to sing rock 'n' roll hits: That's him on "Runaround Sue" and "The Wanderer." But he says he's always really been a blues singer. His new CD, Son of Skip James, is his second blues album --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17680145

Hank Williams Sr. --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams

Hank Williams Jr. --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams%2C_Jr.

Hank Williams III --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams_III

I Love It
Hank Williams Jr, and tiny Hunter Hayes (Jambalaya) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQPEsa5e7K0

Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/ 

Photographs and Art

Photographs to Make You Smile --- Click Here

Photographs to Make You Sad (From Time Magazine)
What the World Eats (and how much it costs) --- http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519_1373675,00.html
For those of you who may want to use this in class or in church, I archived the core of this at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Food2007/Food2007.htm

Subway Stations in Moscow --- Click Here

Women's Faces in Paintings (Video) --- http://miraulam.multiply.com/video/item/38

Europe (forwarded by Dan Gheorghe Somnea [dan_somnea@yahoo.com] ) --- http://dansomnea.tripod.com/touristic.html

The Year 2007 in Pictures from The New York Times --- http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/photo/2007_YIP_FEATURE/index.html#

Eye Fetch --- http://www.eyefetch.com/image.aspx?ID=633531

Fine Arts Blog --- http://allfinearts.com/very-beautiful-drawings/

Art Rocks --- http://oksushi.com/

Interactive Tattoo (Type your first name in the top box and any name in the second box. Then click "Visualizer") --- http://www.tatuagemdaboa.com.br/
If you wonder what happened to the last name, you've got to watch until the ending of the video.

 

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

Electronic Literature Directory --- http://directory.eliterature.org/

Million Book Project Reaches 1.5 Million Book Mark
From the Carnegie Mellon newsletter... http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/November/nov27_ulib.shtml 

Anthology of English Literature --- http://www.luminarium.org/lumina.htm

Book-a-Minute --- http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml

Famous Quotes --- http://www.citate-celebre.com/famous-quotes/albert-einstein-quotes/

Grandma's Washday Poem --- http://www.snopes.com/glurge/washday.asp

Fascinating Statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FascinatingStatistics/Statistics.htm

Pitchfork Media --- http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/

Find over 500 biographies of the most important writers --- http://litweb.net/

Internet Book List --- http://www.iblist.com/list.php?type=book&key=A&by=genre&genre=4

The Internet Classics Archives from MIT --- http://classics.mit.edu/

The Free Library --- http://www.thefreelibrary.com/

Eye on Europe: prints, books & multiples / 1960 to now --- http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2006/eyeoneurope/

Short Story Classics --- http://shortstory.byethost6.com/

“How many professors does it take to change a light bulb?”
Answer: “Whadaya mean, “change”?”
Bob Zemsky, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review,  December 2007 --- Click Here

No longer master of my fate,
No more the captain of my cash,
Soon I'll pass through the peon's gate,
But until then -- a plastic bash!
Dana Cimilluca, "Debt Poets Society: Credit Crisis Goes From Bad to Verse Financiers Pen Cheeky Odes On the Market's Mayhem; 'I Pass Through Peon's Gate'," The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2007; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119846198807948191.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

In the World War I trenches British and German troops sang Christmas carols to each other during a temporary holiday truce. They also played soccer before returning to their respective gun positions and began, under orders from their generals, to commence shooting at each other
Snopes --- http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/truce.asp
Jensen Comment
One has to wonder if the truce would've been extended if the generals were required to fight hopelessly in the trenches.

The Iowa Scam:  The undemocratic caucuses are a terrible way to choose a presidential candidate
It is quite astonishing to see with what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption—and the flagrantly anti-democratic character—of the Iowa caucuses. It's not enough that we have to read of inducements openly offered to potential supporters—I almost said "voters"—even if these mini-bribes only take the form of "platters of sandwiches" and "novelty items" (I am quoting from Sunday's New York Times). It's also that campaign aides are showing up at Iowan homes "with DVD's that [explain] how the caucuses work." Nobody needs a DVD to understand one-person-one-vote, a level playing field, and a secret ballot. The DVD and the other gifts and goodies (Sen. Barack Obama is promising free baby-sitting on Thursday) are required precisely because none of those conditions applies in Iowa. In a genuine democratic process, these Tammany tactics would long ago have been declared illegal. But this is not a democratic process, and besides, as my old friend Michael Kinsley used to say about Washington, the scandal is never about what's illegal. It's about what's legal.
Christopher Hitchens, "The Iowa Scam:  The undemocratic caucuses are a terrible way to choose a presidential candidate," Slate, December 31, 2007 ---
http://www.slate.com/id/2181008/
Jensen Comment
Unlike Iowa, New Hampshire has a true primary with a ballot available to every voter. New Hampshire's record is also better for selecting winners than the Corny State. Iowa hasn't voted in a winning candidate since Jimmy Carter in a year (1976) with little competition. Carter later failed in his bid for a second term. In 1980 Ronald Reagan totally ignored the Iowa causes. Reagan lost in Iowa, but ultimately beat the incumbent (Carter.)
Iowa had caucuses in the 1800s even before Iowa became a state in 1846. A Brief History of the Iowa Caucuses --- Click Here
One year, in 1916, Iowa instead held a primary election. Less than 25% of eligible voters bothered to vote. Iowa later returned to the caucus system where even less voters are allowed to  vote.

Normally, when politicians make predictions, events make them look foolish. But there's been one forecast from a politician in the past 12 months which has proved the prediction of the year. At the beginning of 2007, David Miliband was reflecting on the low ratings of then Prime Minister Tony Blair. He suggested that unpopularity was just a feature of incumbency. He predicted that within a year, people would be saying, "Wouldn't it be great to have that Blair back because we can't stand that Gordon Brown." Less than a year later, Mr. Miliband is foreign secretary in Gordon Brown's government. And their administration is so mired in unpopularity that it's actually below the level in the opinion polls Mr. Blair touched at his nadir. What makes this all the more ironic is the casual assumption of so many in the Labour Party that a simple change in personnel at the top, and a new direction in foreign policy, would revive their fortunes. The standard view on the left put Labour's unpopularity down to Mr. Blair's closeness to President Bush, his support for the Iraq war, and his subsequent solidarity with Israel during its war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. From the very moment Mr. Brown took over, he indicated a different foreign policy direction, one that acknowledged the legitimacy of the left's criticism against Mr. Blair.
Michael Gove, "Down at Downing Street," The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2007; Page A13 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119906051212458399.html

Barack Obama is a good and inspiring man. What a breath of fresh air! There's no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to trying to straighten things out in this country. But who is he? I mean, other than a guy who gives a great speech? How much do any of us really know about him? I know he was against the war. How do I know that? He gave a speech before the war started. But since he joined the senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place. He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan -- the same companies who have created the mess in the first place. He's such a feel-good kinda guy, I get the sense that, if elected, the Republicans will eat him for breakfast. He won't even have time to make a good speech about it.
Michael Moore, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around?" January 2, 2008 --- http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=220

Do you feel the same as me? That the Democratic front-runners are a less-than-stellar group of candidates, and that none of them are the "slam dunk" we wish they were? . . . I am not endorsing anyone at this point. This is simply how I feel in the first week of the process to replace George W. Bush. For months I've been wanting to ask the question, "Where are you, Al Gore?" You can only polish that Oscar for so long. And the Nobel was decided by Scandinavians! I don't blame you for not wanting to enter the viper pit again after you already won. But getting us to change out our incandescent light bulbs for some irritating fluorescent ones isn't going to save the world. All it's going to do is make us more agitated and jumpy and feeling like once we get home we haven't really left the office.
Michael Moore, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around?" January 2, 2008 --- http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=220
Jensen Comment
To be fair, the Republican front-runners are also a less-than-stellar group of candidates to a point where their campaigns have become down right boring.

After all, he (presidential candidate) John Edwards is one of those white guys who's been running things for far too long.
Michael Moore, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around?" January 2, 2008 --- http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=220

Mr. Edwards knows how to use words, and you'll notice that his rhetoric is aimed entirely at "big corporations" -- especially drug, insurance and oil firms -- on which he promises to impose new compensation limits and governance rules. He's promising that no "corporate lobbyist or anyone who has lobbied for a foreign government" will work in his White House. He made his case on our pages yesterday. But given his egalitarian impulses, we also wondered if the former Senator would include billionaire trial lawyers among those who'd have their earnings capped, et cetera. We called the campaign to ask, and a spokesman offered the following: "Entrenched interests are anyone lobbying for their own corporate greed against the best interests of America's middle class." We'll take that as a no.
"Very Special Interest," The Wall Street Journal,  January 3, 2008; Page A12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119932655046164015.html

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair on his way out of office identified a truism for our times: With the rise of the Web, judgment has fallen because less time is available to think. So one was struck during Sen. John McCain's visit to the Journal editorial page a few weeks ago, when he remarked that campaigns aren't adjusted day to day now, but "hour to hour." It may be that a Web-stoked media has demoted the office of the presidency itself as an animating idea and elevated the mechanics, the sport, of elections. The unpopularity of the Bush presidency aside, note how a presidential election, now entering its second year, has become a national obsession, which like most obsessions tends to induce disappointment. We are passing through a largely ideological age, exacerbated by the Web on the left and right. The left doesn't want to do politics with the other side but merely wants to eliminate it, and then run the country. The religious right, by and large, mainly wants someone to pay attention to them and acknowledge their legitimacy. None of this has much to do with finding a candidate who will make more right than wrong calls during four years in the Oval Office.
Daniel Henninger, "Dr. Freud, What Do Voters Want?" The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2007; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119872819542352213.html

More than half the 380 students at this unusual school outside Atlanta are refugees from some 40 countries, many torn by war. The other students come from low-income families in Decatur, and from middle- and upper-middle-class families in the area who want to expose their children to other cultures. Together they form an eclectic community of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, well-off and poor, of established local families and new arrivals who collectively speak about 50 languages . . . Soon this once mostly white suburb on the western side of Stone Mountain, a historical bastion of the Ku Klux Klan, had become one of the more culturally and ethnically diverse areas in the country.
Warren St John, "A School in Georgia as a Laboratory for Getting Along," The New York Times, December 25, 2007 --- Click Here
"You've Got to Be Taught to Hate and Fear" ---  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjWbd2a5FAI

Across [New York City], delis and bodegas are a familiar and vital part of the streetscape, modest places where customers can pick up necessities, a container of milk, a can of soup, a loaf of bread. Amid the goods found in the stores, there is one thing that many owners and employees say they cannot do without: their cats. And it goes beyond cuddly companionship. These cats are workers, tireless and enthusiastic hunters of unwanted vermin, and they typically do a far better job than exterminators and poisons.
Kate Hammer, The New York Times, December 22, 2007 --- Click Here

A group representing U.S. air travelers claimed victory Friday after a New York judge ruled that airlines in the state must provide essential services to passengers stranded for long periods of time. The decision means that from Jan 1, any passengers stuck in planes on runways at New York's airports for more than three hours must be given food, water, fresh air and given access to working toilets. Airlines face fines of up to $1,000 per passenger for not adhering to the new rules. Campaigners urged other states to follow suit, in what they hope will eventually become a nationwide bill of rights for air passengers.
Japan Today, January 26, 2007 --- http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/423436
Jensen Comment
I think this includes weather-related delays. I can't imagine the large airlines doing this for New York airports and refusing to do this at other airports in the U.S. Remember that in airline travel the squeaky (read that knowledgeable) wheels generally get oiled first. But judge's decision does not apply to people stranded inside the terminals such that this really will not be much of a big deal. Generally passengers stranded inside the terminal for non-weather related delays can squeak loudly enough for meal vouchers from the airlines and, if necessary, overnight hotel vouchers.

China is suffering its worst drought in a decade, which has left millions of people short of drinking water and has shrunk reservoirs and rivers, state media said on Friday. Hardest hit are large swathes of the usually humid south, where water levels on several major rivers have plunged to historic lows in recent months.
Reuters, December 21, 2007 --- http://in.news.yahoo.com/071221/137/6oplh.html

The free press has been demolished, elections are canceled and rigged, and then we hear how popular Mr. Putin is. Opposition marches are crushed, and we're told--over and over--how much better off we are today than in the days of the Soviet Union. This week Time magazine named Mr. Putin its 2007 "Person of the Year 2007." Unfortunately, there is no silver lining to Russia's descent into dictatorship. If anything there is a look of iron to it . . . Consider the timing of this announcement, right after the counterfeit parliamentary elections that added to Mr. Putin's record of eradicating democracy across Russia. The Time article will be trumpeted by Kremlin propaganda as an endorsement of Mr. Putin's policies. The man on the street will be told that even America, constantly blasted by the Kremlin as an enemy, has been forced to recognize the president's greatness. Internationally, the focus will be on the myth that Mr. Putin has built a "strong Russia." In fact he and his cronies have hollowed out the state from within. Most of the power now resides in the super-corporations like Gazprom and Rosneft, and among the small group of loyalists who run them. The Putin regime has taken Russia from a frail democracy to an efficient mafia state. It was an impressive balancing act--behaving like a tyrant while at the same time staying in the good graces of the West. After each crackdown, with no significant international reaction forthcoming, Mr. Putin knew it was safe to take another step. As ever, appeasement in the name of realpolitik only encourages would-be dictators. And such moral weakness inevitably leads to very real costs in human life.
Gary Kasparov, "Man of the Year? Vladimir Putin will now use Time magazine's honor to enhance his," The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011031
Jensen Comment
And if Putin has his way in the rewriting of history, a drunken Joseph Stalin's exterminations of millions of Stalin's political opponents will be erased with white out while new monuments to Stalin will be erected throughout the Mother Country. Visitors may even be required to bow in respect. I hope editors of Time Magazine are invited to be the first to bow on their knees and kiss the newly white washed pavement that erased the stains and stench of Russian blood. Would monuments to Al Capone be erected if Time Magazine had instead honored the U.S. Mafia instead of the Russian Mafia?

If you think Hollywood's idea of a Christmas movie being one about the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is strange, even stranger is the plot line. "Charlie Wilson's War," which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote. Charlie Wilson was . . . widely known as "the liberal from Lufkin." To his credit, he did play a role in facilitating support to the Afghan mujahadeen. But it is he who should be the historical footnote. In his book, "Ronald Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime," Lou Cannon notes how Reagan "expressed revulsion of the brutal destruction of Afghan villages and such Soviet policies as the scattering of mines disguised as toys that killed and maimed Afghan children." He did not need much convincing to aid the Afghan resistance. . . . Wilson's chief ally in the film is CIA agent Gust Avrakotos who, like Wilson, is portrayed as a enthusiastic supporter of providing the Stingers. But Ikle says, the CIA bureaucracy initially fought against the idea and that Wilson was lukewarm on the matter. Ikle says both came around only after the rebels actually started bringing down the Soviet helicopter gunships. The movie also perpetuates the left-wing myth that the covert operation funded Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and ultimately led to the 9/11 attacks. Reagan-era officials such as Ikle say Osama never got funding or weapons from the U.S. and that he didn't launch his terror war until after U.S. involvement and the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. It was Ronald Reagan, not Charlie Wilson, who gave the order to provide the mujahadeen with the Stinger missiles that denied the Soviet air supremacy and turned the tide of battle after 1986. Yet in the movie, the likes of Dan Rather and Diane Sawyer (director Mike Nichol's wife) are more prominently mentioned. To be fair, the movie doesn't mention Jimmy Carter either. It was his naivete about Communist expansion that led the Soviets to invade Afghanistan in the first place. Had Reagan not beaten Carter in 1980 there would have been no Stingers and no victory in the Cold War. But don't expect a (Hollywood) movie about Reagan's victory over communism or Carter's surrender to it.
Investors Daily, December 24, 2007 --- http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20&artnum=1&view=1&issue=20071224 
Jensen Comment
To his credit Charlie Wilson himself also admits in public that the movie overplays his part in defeating the Russians in Afghanistan. But Tom Hanks makes it a good, albeit phony, yarn.

Between 2000 and 2006 the U.S. Government issued $1.3 trillion of brand new debt. During that same time period U.S. based investors (pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, etc.) lightened their net holdings of U.S. Treasury securities by $300 billion. What these statistics point out is that not only have foreign investors purchased EVERY single dollar of debt that the United States has issued during those six years, but they also bought $300 billion of outstanding debt too. Americans do not appreciate in a robust fashion how dependent the U.S. has gotten on foreign investors lending us money. And it's not just U.S. Treasury debt, but also a host of corporate, mortgage & asset backed products as well as all kinds of structured securities. Without that demand for our debt, prices will fall and long-term interest rates will rise. So the breaking of these subprime obligations will not be free. These foreign investors will demand a higher "risk premium" to invest in U.S. instruments, which will make it more expensive for future borrowers to get loans. And you can be guaranteed that many of them will sue to get the payments they thought they were owed, which will drive up mortgage banks' expenses even further. Moreover, the courts and bureaucrats will be tied up for years in a struggle to define exactly who deserves loan forgiveness. People who are making payments on time will naturally demand to get something out of the deal since why should they essentially suffer for being responsible? As the cost of the bailout goes up, there is little doubt that state and federal governments will float bonds to pay the refinancing fees and, of course, the interest payments on those obligations will be paid by all citizens.
Mike Gasior [michael@afs-seminars.com] , December 10, 2007

Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax. The idea -- dubbed the "fair tax" by proponents -- has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier . . . Still, the proposal inspires grass-roots passion, in large part because it would replace or abolish the Internal Revenue Service, one of the most hated federal agencies and a symbol of intrusive government in some conservative circles . . . Huckabee and Fairtax.org call for a 23% tax on virtually all purchases in place of federal income taxes, as well as payroll taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare. To ease the effect on the poor, they propose a "prebate" -- a monthly cash payment to every family -- to cover sales taxes on spending up to the federal poverty level.
Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2007 --- http://www.latimes.com/la-na-salestax24dec24,0,5286232.story?coll=la-home-center
Jensen Comment
Unless the "fair tax" is accompanied by differential (low) debt interest rate currently enjoyed by schools, towns, counties, and states due to "tax-exempt bond" investment alternatives for income tax purposes, the "fair tax" will be a disaster from the standpoint of massive added  interest costs for such things as K-12 schools, colleges, roads, etc. At the moment, poor people in the U.S. pay no income tax. The poor folks are bound to favor Huckabee's version of the "fair tax" since they will then  receive prebates well in excess of what they pay out. But it will hurt families if the prebates are spent on more booze and gambling rather than the higher prices for food and heat due to the fair tax imposed on goods purchased. There also is the enormous problem regarding a fair tax on services such as doctors' office visits and legal counseling.

"In the United States, every year since 1970, when only 196,429 persons were in state and federal prisons, the prison population has grown. Today there are over 1.5 million in state and federal prisons. Another 750,000 are in the nation’s jails,” said the report. “The growth has been constant—in years of rising crime and falling crime, in good economic times and bad, during wartime and while we were at peace. A generation of growth has produced prison populations that are now eight times what they were in 1970,” it continued. While prisons are overcrowded, crime rates are steady in many cities, but rising in others. Authors of the report, proposed shorter prison terms, and changes to laws that govern probation and parole violations to reduce numbers behind bars.
Nisa Islam Muhammad, "America's Prisons Hold More Than 1.5 Million," New Media, December 18, 2007 --- http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=22da3c94af4d6d140bd1caf903da7967 

Canada has challenged the Iranian government over concerns that weapons and bomb-making equipment are slipping across the border to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Tuesday. "We're very concerned that weapons are coming in from Iran," MacKay told reporters, while visiting Canadian troops with Gen. Rick Hillier in Kandahar province. "We're very concerned that these weapons are going to the insurgents and are keeping this issue alive. We've certainly made our views to the Iranian government about this known."
Allison Lampert, "Canada accuses Iran of being weapons pipeline," National Post, December 25, 2007 ---
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=196918

Iranian scientists said Monday that the country's first cloned sheep is thriving 15 months after birth, eating well and frolicking among a flock of normal sheep.
Ali Akabar Dareini, PhysOrg, December 31, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news118390006.html
Jensen Comment
Although some Christian fundamentalist groups oppose cloning, Islamic fundamentalists apparently have no objections.

Beyond the elections, Mr. Musharraf needs to move aggressively to confront the jihadists, and not the lawyers and civil-rights activists he has been jailing in recent months. Hundreds of Pakistanis have been murdered in recent months in terrorist acts perpetrated by fellow Muslims, and many of these perpetrators have, in different ways and at different times, been connected to the Pakistani government itself: as beneficiaries of the terrorist war Pakistan has supported over the years in Kashmir, or as beneficiaries of the support Pakistan gave to the Taliban until 9/11, or as beneficiaries of the ill-conceived "truce" Mr. Musharraf signed last year with Taliban- and al Qaeda-connected tribal chiefs in the Waziristan province. Worst of all has been the look-the-other-way approach successive Pakistani governments have taken to the radical, Saudi-funded madrassas throughout the country.
"Target: Pakistan Losing in the West, the jihadis hit Pakistan, with its nuclear prize," The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011053

As Benazir Bhutto herself observed in The Wall Street Journal http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110011046  --in an op-ed published the week after the earlier attempt on her life:

The attack on me was not totally unexpected. I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process--specifically that Baitul Masood (an Afghan who leads the Taliban forces in North Waziristan), Hamza bin Laden (an Arab), and a Red Mosque militant had been sent to kill me. I also feared that they were being used by their sympathizers, who have infiltrated the security and administration of my country, and who now fear that the return of democracy will thwart their plans.
Also see http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011053

 

Catholic Church bishops, priests and other Church leaders in Latin America were once a reliably of the left, owing to the influence of "liberation theology," which tries to link the Gospel to the socialist cause. Today the Church is coming to recognize the link between socialism and the loss of freedom, and a shift in thinking is taking place. In a region that is more than 90% Catholic, this change might have enormous implications. A Church that emphasizes liberty could play a role in Latin America similar to that which it played in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, as a counterweight in defense of freedom during a time of rising despotism. For proof of the change I refer to, consider a recent statement from the Catholic Bishops of Venezuela: It blasted the political agenda of President Hugo Chávez for its assault on liberty under the guise of helping the poor. It is morally unacceptable, the statement said, and will drive the country backward in terms of respect for human rights.
Robert A. Sirico, "Liberty Theology," The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2007; Page A12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119906274924358629.html

In the contest to be America's most spendthrift state, New York and California are typically ahead of the pack. But here comes the not-so-Golden State charging back in the lead. Last week Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he will declare a "fiscal emergency" in January, which he said has become "a common thing in California." No kidding. This budget crisis comes a mere five years after the last one. The bean counters in Sacramento are now projecting the state's budget deficit at $14 billion, and climbing. That's a big enough hole that if the state were to slash 10% from every public service -- from schools, to courts, to highway patrol units -- it would still be $2 billion in the red. There are lessons for other states in these recurring budget miseries, in case anyone still thinks California is a model to follow. Let's start with the culture of overspending in Sacramento. State outlays have nearly tripled to $142 billion this year from $51 billion in the early 1990s. After the technology bubble burst in 2001, the state's deficit swelled to $20 billion. Voters recalled Gray Davis from the Governor's mansion in favor of Mr. Schwarzenegger, who promised to "cut up the state's credit card." In Arnold's first year, the budget was held in check, but the state still issued $9 billion in "revenue bonds" rather than shrink the size of government.
"The Red Ink State," The Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2007; Page A12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119880325458954333.html
Jensen Comment
The Terminator terminates whatever was left of the credit standing of the State of California. How much of your savings will the presidential candidates promise these spendthrifts?

To hear the candidates talk, a repeat of 1930s-scale government job creation is dangerously overdue. John Edwards has proposed that government take the lead in creating types of jobs--"green collar" and "stepping stone"--to serve the two goals of protecting the environment and giving lower earners new skills. Dennis Kucinich is calling for a new green version of FDR's Works Progress Administration . . . A related problem was that the New Deal's emergency jobs were short term, lasting months, not years, so people could not settle into them. This led to further disruption. In the very best years of Roosevelt's first two terms, unemployment still stood above 9%. Nine percent is better than horrendous, but it hardly is a figure that induces hope . . . The relevant points for today are simple. The famous "multiplier effect" of public spending may exist. U.S. cities do indeed need new highways, new buildings and new roads, maybe even from government. But these needs should be weighed against damage that comes when officials create projects and jobs for political reasons. An emergency such as a Great Depression, a Sept. 11, a Katrina, can serve as a catalyst for an infrastructure project and for job creation too. But the dire moral quality of that emergency does not guarantee that the project undertaken in its name will be more efficient than your standard earmark. In other words, candidates may want to be careful as they climb onto FDR's shoulders. The New Deal edifice may look solid, but it doesn't form a good basis for the American future.
Amity Shlaes, "The New Deal Jobs Myth:  The candidates keep touting Depression-style public works programs. Why?" The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2007 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011064
Jensen Comment
Most of the success of the WPA in the New Deal era of the Great Depression lies in the valued trade skills of the unemployed that were put to work by the WPA. Most were carpenters, brick layers, plumbers, electricians, farmers, and other workers who brought value added to WPA projects. Workers with these same skills today are not unemployed if they are good workers. In fact employers are desperate to hire good workers with such skills. Today's hard core unemployed are unskilled and/or drug addicted and unmotivated workers who bring little value added to the private sector or to government-financed make-work projects promoted by Edwards and Kucinich. There really is such a thing as the dreaded Industrial Reserve Army of Labour bemoaned by Karl Marx in his dreams for a better working world --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_reserve_army
In the days of Karl Marx alcoholism was the main drag on many poor workers. Today this is expanded to almost every addictive drug imaginable. And there's more money is selling drugs on the streets than in working for "green dollar" and "stepping stone" jobs dreamed up by naive populast presidential candidates grasping at straws for campaign slogans.

"The State of Jihad: 2007," by Bill Roggio, The Long War Journal, January 8, 2008 ---
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/01/the_state_of_jihad_2.php

The US and her allies in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond have witnessed both stunning successes and dramatic setbacks in the Long War during 2007. Pakistan has continued its slide towards a failed state, with the government having relinquished control over additional territory to the Taliban and, thus, al Qaeda. Suicide bombings and attacks on all segments of the state plagued Pakistan as the Taliban and al Qaeda cemented their new safe havens. Iraq, which seemed all but lost at the end of 2006 as the US appeared to lose the all-important political will, has turned around with the change in counterinsurgency plan and the surge of troops US and Iraqi troops. Al Qaeda and the Iranian-backed Shia terrorists are losing ground and local support in Iraq. Afghanistan has seen its worst year of violence since the Taliban was defeated in late 2001; suicide bombings and IED attacks skyrocketed due to the problems in Pakistan.

The war also continues in dozens of lesser theaters. India suffered numerous blows from Pakistani-based terrorists. Al Qaeda has revitalized itself in Algeria and greater northern Africa. A brutal insurgency is being waged in Somalia after the Islamic Courts was ousted at the end of 2006. The Philippines saw some progress against Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah in the southern provinces. Thailand's Islamist insurgency ballooned in 2007. Al Qaeda is attempting to revive the jihad in Chechnya and the greater Caucasus. Saudi Arabia and Yemen continue to breed the next generation of al Qaeda fighters.

This link provides a roundup of the major developments in the most active theaters across the globe in the Long War.

Nowadays, this region of what is today northwest Pakistan is variously called "Al Qaedastan," "Talibanistan" or, more properly, the "Islamic Emirate of Waziristan." Pakistan gave up South Waziristan to the Taliban in spring 2006, after taking heavy casualties in a failed four-year campaign to consolidate control of this fierce tribal region. By the fall, Pakistan had effectively abandoned North Waziristan. The nominal truce--actually closer to a surrender--was signed in a soccer stadium, beneath al Qaeda's black flag . . . Muslim society will have to reform far more profoundly than Akbar Ahmed concedes if the worst is to be avoided. Our best option may be to reintroduce somehow the Aligarh University tradition of liberal learning and merit-based employment (independent of kinship ties) to the Muslim world. With our strategy in Iraq now reinforcing tribalism, the obvious front to try this is Europe, where concerted efforts must be made to assimilate Muslims to Western values. Globalization may then work for us, as cultural changes bounce back to the Middle East. Even in the best case, we face a long-term struggle. Simmering tensions between modernity and Muslim social life are coming to a head. Yet all our present recent schemes are patchwork. And someday, perhaps at the peak of a post-emergency civil war between the army and the Islamists in Pakistan, the military steamroller may be called upon to settle the Waziristan problem once and for all. Who knows if, even then, it will work.
"Tribes of Terror:  A guide to the wilds of northwest Pakistan," by Stanley Kurtz, The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2008 ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110011067 .

From Opinion Journal on December 31, 2007

Best of the Web Today - December 31, 2007 By JAMES TARANTO

Liberals Against Diversity http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/business/30kristol.html

The New York Times op-ed page is trying to go from bad to diverse. The page has hired William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, as a weekly columnist, starting next Monday. The Politico http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7613.html reports that word of the hiring "caused a frenzy in the liberal blogosphere Friday night, with threats of canceling subscriptions and claims that the Gray Lady had been hijacked by neo-cons":

*** QUOTE ***

But Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal sees things differently.

Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand "this weird fear of opposing views."

"The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual--and somehow that's a bad thing," Rosenthal added. "How intolerant is that?"

*** END QUOTE ***

It is tempting to make fun of Rosenthal for discovering liberal intolerance at this late date, but we're bigger than that. Instead, we'd like to chew over one particular liberal plaint about Kristol's hiring, from Katha Pollitt http://www.thenation.com/blogs/anotherthing?bid=25&pid=263993 of The Nation:

*** QUOTE ***

What ever happened to meritocracy? For Kristol to get a Times column--after being fired from Time magazine no less--is as meritocratic as, um, George W. Bush becoming the leader of the free world. A pundit, even a highly ideological one like Kristol, has to be (or seem) right at least some of the time. But what's striking about Kristol is that he's has been wrong about everything! . . . And it's not as if he's a great prose stylist, either. At least David Brooks can occasionally turn a phrase. Kristol just churns out whatever the argument of the moment happens to be, adds jeers, and knocks off for lunch.

What this hire demonstrates is how successfully the right has intimidated the mainstream media. Their constant demonizing of the New York Times as the tool of the liberal elite worked. (Maybe it also demonstrates that the people in charge of the decision aren't so liberal.) I'm sure we'll hear a lot about the need for balance at the paper--funny how the Wall Street Journal doesn't feel the need to have even one resident liberal, but fine, let's have balance. Let's have a true leftist on the oped page--someone as far to the left as Kristol is to the right. Noam Chomsky, anyone? (and why does he seem just totally out of bounds but Kristol does not?) Barbara Ehrenreich? Naomi Klein? Susan Faludi? Gary Younge? me?

*** END QUOTE ***

So Pollitt's gripe is (in part) that she didn't get the gig! We'll give her points for candor, but doesn't she sound for all the world like one of those dead white males complaining about being passed over in favor of an affirmative-action hire?

Don't get us wrong. We don't mean to suggest that conservatives qua conservatives have civil rights. If the Times had a policy of refusing to hire conservative columnists, we might criticize or mock the paper for it, but we would never argue that the law should compel it to treat right-leaning job applicants equally.

Yet Pollitt's complaint runs directly counter to the standard liberal argument for affirmative action. In his influential split-the-difference opinion in University of California v. Bakke http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=438&invol=265 (1978), Justice Lewis Powell opined that racial preferences in college admissions could be justified in the interest of "the attainment of a diverse student body." In Grutter v. Bollinger http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=438&invol=265 (2003), a 5-4 Supreme Court majority endorsed Powell's view. Writing for the majority in Grutter, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that corporate America had embraced the diversity rationale:

*** QUOTE ***

The [University of Michigan] Law School's claim of a compelling interest is further bolstered by its amici ["friends of the court" who filed briefs in support of the university's position], who point to the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity. In addition to the expert studies and reports entered into evidence at trial, numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and "better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals." . . .

These benefits are not theoretical but real, as major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.

*** END QUOTE ***

If we define "affirmative action" broadly as the pursuit of diversity, almost everyone can support it, even those who reject racial preferences as a means to that end. In this sense, then, the Times's hiring of Kristol is an instance of affirmative action that no one should find invidious. He was hired without regard to race or other suspect classifications, evidently because his viewpoint is underrepresented on the Times op-ed page

Yet Pollitt objects to Kristol's hiring precisely because it promotes diversity. She would rather his slot had gone to her or someone else who would have been the Times's eighth or ninth liberal rather than its second conservative. Look at this column http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061106/pollitt or this online debate http://www.slate.com/id/2000105/entry/1000998/ , and you'll see that she approves of racial preferences. When it comes to affirmative action, then, she favors questionable means so long as they do not further the worthy end.

You will never catch NBC hiring a conservative or even allowing a conservative point of view to be aired. Alternative points of view are worse than Al Qaeda.

40 Most Obnoxious Quotations in 2007 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1947682/posts 

16) "Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda — worse for our society. It’s as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was." --
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann hoping that Congress will declare war on Fox News.

 

Jensen Comment
Particular departments in universities often have the same problem with such a extreme lack of diversity in politics and scholarship that reflects a great fear of exposing students to conservative points of view.

Not Even One Conservative for Tokenism:  Duke is for Democrats and so is the University of Iowa
The University of Iowa's history department and Duke's history department have a couple of things in common. Both have made national news because neither has a Republican faculty member. And both rejected the application of Mark Moyar, a highly qualified historian and a Republican, for a faculty appointment. Moyar graduated first in the history department at Harvard; his revised senior thesis was published as a book and sold more copies than an average history professor ever sells. After earning a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in England, he published his dissertation as "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965" with Cambridge University Press, which has received even more attention and praise. Moyar's views of Vietnam are controversial and have garnered scorn and abuse from liberal historians, including the department chair at the University of Iowa, Colin Gordon. Moyar revealed on his resume that he is a member of the National Association of Scholars, a group generally to the right of the normal academic organization. Gordon and his colleagues at Iowa were undoubtedly aware of Moyar's conservative leaning and historical view. Moyar is undoubtedly qualified. He is unquestionably diverse; his views are antithetical to many of the Iowa professors' views. Yet the Iowa department hired someone who had neither received degrees from institutions similar to Cambridge and Harvard nor published a book despite having completed graduate school eight years earlier (history scholars are expected to publish books within approximately six years of finishing their doctorates). In the Iowa history department there are 27 Democrats and zero Republicans. The Iowa hiring guidelines mandate that search committees "assess ways the applicants will bring rich experiences, diverse backgrounds and ideology to the university community." After seeking a freedom of information disclosure, Moyar learned that the Iowa history department had, in fact, not complied with the hiring manual. It seemed that Moyar was rejected for his political and historical stands. Maybe it was an unlikely aberration. But Moyar told the Duke College Republicans earlier this fall that he is skeptical because an application of his a few years ago at Duke for a history professorship progressed in much the same way it proceeded in Iowa.
The Duke Chronicle, November 1, 2007 --- Click Here

"The Liberal Skew in Higher Education," by Richard Posner, The Becker-Posner Blog, December 30, 2007 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

It is no secret that professors at American colleges and universities are much more liberal on average than the American people as a whole. A recent paper by two sociology professors contains a useful history of scholarship on the issue and, more important, reports the results of the most careful survey yet conducted of the ideology of American academics. See Neal Gross and Solon Simmons, “The Social and Political Views of American Professors,” Sept. 24, 2007, available at http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~ngross/lounsbery_9-25.pdf (visited Dec. 29. 2007); and for a useful summary, with comments, including some by Larry Summers, see “The Liberal (and Moderating) Professoriate,” Inside Higher Ed, Oct. 8, 2007, available at www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/08/politics (visited Dec. 29. 2007).) More than 1,400 full-time professors at a wide variety of institutions of higher education, including community colleges, responded to the survey, representing a 51 percent response rate; and analysis of non-responders indicates that the responders were not a biased sample of the professors surveyed.

In the sample as a whole, 44 percent of professors are liberal, 46 percent moderate or centrist, and only 9 percent conservative. (These are self-descriptions.) The corresponding figures for the American population as a whole, according to public opinion polls, are 18 percent, 49 percent, and 33 percent, suggesting that professors are on average more than twice as liberal, and only half as conservative, as the average American. There are interesting differences within the professoriat, however. The most liberal disciplines are the humanities and the social sciences; only 6 percent of the social-science professors and 15 percent of the humanities professors in the survey voted for Bush in 2004. In contrast, business, medicine and other health sciences, and engineering are much less liberal, and the natural sciences somewhat less so, but they are still more liberal than the nation as a whole; only 32 percent of the business professors voted for Bush--though 52 percent of the health-sciences professors did. In the entire sample, 78 percent voted for Kerry and only 20 percent for Bush.

. . .

My last point is what might be called the institutionalization of liberal skew by virtue of affirmative action in college admissions. Affirmative action brings in its train political correctness, sensitivity training, multiculturalism, and other attitudes or practices that make a college an uncongenial environment for many conservatives.

"The Liberal Skew in Higher Education," by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, The Becker-Posner Blog, December 30, 2007 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

The study by Gross and Simmons discussed by Posner in part confirms what has been found in earlier studies about the greater liberalism of American professors than of the American population as a whole. Their study goes further than previous ones by having an apparently representative sample of professors in all types of colleges and universities, and by giving nuanced and detailed information about attitudes and voting of professors by field of expertise, age, gender, type of college or university, and other useful characteristics. I will try to add to Posner's valuable discussion by concentrating on the effects on academic political attitudes of events in the world, and of their fields of specialization. I also consider whether college teachers have long-lasting influences on the views of their students.

. . .

Given the indisputable evidence that professors are liberal, how much influence does that have on the long run attitudes of college students? This is especially relevant since some of the most liberal academic disciplines, like the social sciences and English, have close contact with younger undergraduates. The evidence strongly indicates that whatever the short-term effects of college teachers on the opinions of their students, the long run influence appears to be modest. For example, college graduates, like the rest of the voting population, split their voting evenly between Bush and Kerry. The influence of high incomes (college graduates earn on average much more than others), the more conservative family backgrounds of the typical college student (but less conservative for students at elite colleges), and other life experiences far dominate the mainly forgotten influence of their college teachers.

This evidence does not mean that the liberal bias of professors is of no concern, but rather that professors are much less important in influencing opinions than they like to believe, or then is apparently believed by the many critics on the right of the liberality of professors.

 

One of the least diverse (politically) academic associations is the highly liberal Modern Language Association. However, even the MLA could not muster up a vote critical of the firing of Ward Churchill by the University of Colorado.
While material distributed by those seeking to condemn Churchill’s firing portrayed him favorably, and as a victim of the right wing, some of those who criticized the pro-Churchill effort at the meeting are long-time experts in Native American studies and decidedly not conservative.
Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, December 31, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/mla
Bob Jensen's threads on Ward Churchill are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm

Hypocrisy in Academia and the Media --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Hypocrisy.htm 
 

40 Most Obnoxious Quotations in 2007 --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1947682/posts 

Fraud Alert on Purchasing/Selling Carbon Offsets

"Carbon Offsets: Government Warns of Fraud Risk," by Christopher Joyce, NPR, January 3, 2008 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17814838

There is something new to feel guilty about: carbon.

This new form of remorse is found among people who think that their lifestyle — driving, plane trips or maybe just leaf-blowing — adds too much climate-warming carbon dioxide to the air.

The guilty can now buy something called a "carbon offset." Essentially, you pay someone else to reduce or "offset" carbon emissions equal to your own.

It's a booming new trade, but the federal government is worried that consumers are getting ripped off. The Federal Trade Commission has announced it will investigate the offset business.

For the consumer, buying an offset is pretty straightforward. You go to a broker and pay a few bucks for every ton of CO2 you want to offset. The average amount each American adds to the air is about 20 tons annually.

The broker promises that your money will pay for a project somewhere that will reduce carbon emissions, say, by growing trees that soak up that CO2 or building a solar energy plant.

Pankaj Bhatia of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, says the business is hot. In fact, trade in this offset market is figured to be about $100 million a year and growing fast.

Bhatia's job is to assess carbon footprints — how much carbon you or your business emits. He says he's been very busy.

"Today, I got a phone call from a group that is managing concerts," he says, "and they wanted to know how they could quantify emissions from the transportation by helicopters of their equipment." The concert promoters wanted to buy offsets to neutralize the CO2 their concert produced.

How Much and For What?

But how do people know they are getting what they are paying for? After all, this is a market that trades in a gas, or more accurately, units of a gas that are not produced.

In the United States, the trading is voluntary and nobody is in charge. That worries people whose job it is to protect consumers.

"Our concern is that because these claims are very hard to substantiate and consumers can't easily tell they're getting what they pay for, there is the real possibility of fraud in this market," says Jim Kohm of the FTC's enforcement division.

Kohm says he does not know yet if there is much fraudulent carbon trading. But he is suspicious. "There's been an explosion in green marketing," he says. "There are claims that we didn't see in the market 10 years ago. Carbon offsets are one of those new claims."

There is a raft of new "carbon-neutral" products. For instance, there are potato chips and rock concerts that are advertised as "clean" because their makers or sponsors have bought offsets to counterbalance their emissions.

What the FTC Is Looking For

One of the things the FTC will investigate is "double selling," Kohm says. "So, for example, if I have solar panels on top of my store and then I sell somebody else the right to claim that carbon scrubbing, I can't then claim the carbon scrubbing for myself, as well."

"And if somebody were selling that two or three times, then that would be a deceptive practice that the FTC would need to take action on."

Another hangup is whether the carbon savings you are buying would have happened anyway. For example, what if a company cuts back on the electricity it uses simply to save money? Can that company then claim it has created an offset and then sell it? Climate experts say no. The offset market, they say, is meant to pay for carbon reductions that would not have happened otherwise.

Some environmental groups say that instead of buying carbon offsets, Americans should do the hard work themselves: use less electricity, switch from coal to wind power, drive less.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

"Novel mechanism for long-term learning identified by Carnegie Mellon researchers," PhysOrg, January 3, 2008 ---
http://physorg.com/news118592975.html 

Practice makes perfect — or at least that’s what we’re told as we struggle through endless rounds of multiplication tables, goal kicks and piano scales — and it seems, based on the personal experience of many, to be true. That’s why neuroscientists have been perplexed by data showing that at the level of individual synapses, or connections between neurons, increased, repetitive stimulation might actually reverse early gains in synaptic strength. Now, neuroscientists from Carnegie Mellon University and the Max Planck Institute have discovered the mechanism that resolves this apparent paradox. The findings are published in the Jan. 4 issue of Science.

The mechanism further explains how brain synapses strengthen in response to new experiences. Previous research by Carnegie Mellon researcher and lead author of the study Alison Barth has shown that there is a connection between synaptic plasticity, or changes, and learning and memory. However, little was known about the mechanisms that underlie learning that occurs over longer timeframes, with continuing training or practice.

Scientists have shown that N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors are required to initiate synaptic plasticity in this mechanism, a fact that holds true in many areas of the brain. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that these receptors are required for the kind of synaptic strengthening that occurs during learning.

Barth and colleagues discovered that the NMDA receptors undergo a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde transition after an initial phase of learning. Instead of helping synapses get stronger, they actually begin to weaken the synapses and impair further learning. According to Barth, scientists knew that logically, after an initial learning or training experience, this change in receptor function and resulting synapse deterioration would mean that learning would stop, and perhaps with continued stimulation neural processes might even degrade – but experience showed that that wasn’t the case.

“We know intuitively that the more we practice something, the better we get, so there had to be something that happened after the NMDA receptors switched function which helped synapses to continue to strengthen,” said Barth, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the university’s Mellon College of Science.

Barth chose to look at the cortex, an area of the brain responsible for a slower form of learning that can improve with additional training, or experience. She notes that this brain area may use very different molecular mechanisms than other forms of short-term, episodic memory like those that may occur in the hippocampus.

In a series of experiments the researchers blocked different receptors, including NMDA, to see the receptors’ effect on long-term neural stimulation. They found that while the NMDA receptor is required to begin neural strengthening, a second neurotransmitter receptor — the metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptor — comes into play after this first phase of cellular learning. Using an NMDA antagonist to block NMDA receptors after the initiation of plasticity resulted in enhanced synaptic strengthening, while blocking mGlu receptors caused strengthening to stop.

The Carnegie Mellon researchers tracked the changes in the neurons by using a transgenic mouse model that Barth created. In the model, a mild sensory imbalance is created by allowing the mouse to sense its surrounding through only one whisker. Whiskers are useful in studying sensory plasticity because, like human fingers, each whisker is linked to its own unique area of the brain’s cortex, making it easy to monitor activity and changes. Limiting the mouse’s ability to sense its surroundings through only one whisker causes a sensory imbalance leading to increased plasticity in the cortex.

“The neural mechanisms of learning and memory have been poorly understood,” said Barth. “Establishing the relationship between NMDA and mGlu receptors will allow us to better understand how we learn and perhaps may help us better understand diseases where learning and memory is lost, as in Alzheimer’s disease.”

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

Look for a Year of E-Textbooks in 2008
Over the past year, a consortium of major textbook publishers and several competing ventures have been getting ready for a new push in what is becoming a small but steadily growing fraction of the overall market for college students. “Those efforts are starting to crack the surface of digital content being a serious growing enterprise in higher education,” said Evan Schnittman, vice president of business development and rights for Oxford University Press’s academic and U.S. divisions. McGraw-Hill Education, for example, offers almost 95 percent of its textbooks as e-books, and the publisher has seen a steady growth in interest over the past several years, albeit from a small base. Their logic seems unassailable: With laptops now an ubiquitous presence on college campuses and textbook prices ever on the rise and suddenly a hot issue, technologically inclined students seem poised to change their study habits — and save a lot of money — by forgoing scribbles in the margin and trading in their highlighters for cursors.
"E-Textbooks — for Real This Time?" Inside Higher Ed, January 3, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/03/ebooks 

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

Bob Jensen's links to free online textbooks and other electronic literature --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

January 3, 2008 reply from Don Ramsey [dramsey@UDC.EDU]

Students may have access to computers, but not all have laptops. I used an e-book for a year, hoping to pioneer the cost savings (free, at freeloadpress.com), but found that students would not bring their books (laptops) to class. They could not follow the problems being demonstrated, nor others picked spontaneously, not to mention various illustrations. In a class of perhaps 25, I would see 3 or 4 laptops in use. At first I tried printing handouts for the classroom problems, but that got to be a real chore very quickly.

A related problem was that they could not study or do homework anywhere but where their computer is located; e.g., between classes, at lunch, etc.

Some would print the chapters. This got to be a lot of work and fairly expensive. (A real hoot: The free textbook is supported financially by internal advertising. Some students would go to Kinko's to print. Kinko's software absolutely would not print the text legibly. Letters would be run together, etc., etc. I checked with a Kinko's technician who had several years experience with .pdf files, and he could not make it work. So, guess who is one of the major advertisers within the book? Bingo--Kinko's, naturally! And I doubt they have fixed the problem.)

There were other problems less significant individually, but more so in the aggregate. Students would fail to make the download promptly. We reproduced Part I on disks, but some still procrastinated or had last-minute (i.e., pre-exam) installation problems. Downloads are long for those with dial-up access. University labs can suffice for those not having their own computers, but there are limitations of location away from home (all our students are commuters) plus administrative approval for installation.

A major issue arose in that other sections did not use the same textbook; so I have decided to rejoin my colleagues with their conventional textbook. This is particularly important in standardizing chapter coverage for assessment purposes.

So, I am back to the good old portable textbook. The half-year version, which at least weighs less than the complete boat anchor.

I still have a major issue with every textbook I have seen, in that the question banks (which I believe tend to validate performance on a national level) are woefully inadequate. There ought to be a plenitude of objective questions on every subtopic, so that the question bank can be used for quizzes and examinations without duplication. Some publishers' question banks are barely adequate; some are downright spotty as to topical coverage. To expect sufficient questions for two semesters without duplication is apparently utterly unrealistic. I have a strong suspicion that neither the "editors" (marketers) nor the authors pay attention to the content supplied by the contractors who write the question banks.

The software houses that provide generic exam software would do well to add a feature that allows the instructor to keep track of which questions have already been used, so as to avoid using the same question on an exam that had already been used in a quiz. (Actually I used to give two quizzes per chapter, pre- and post-.)

Of course, when we reach saturation, or nearly so, of laptop ownership, the whole picture would change. Publishers who anticipate that situation are to be congratulated. The price of conventional textbooks is outrageous. (But at e-book prices, would authors be motivated to write?) Perhaps our school is behind the curve, laptop-wise. Clearly the market for distance courses, at least, is made to order for the e-book.

Finally, there is the problem of students who are determined to avoid the textbook entirely, electronic or not. I have one colleague who says his course gets easier every time the student takes it.

Wishing you all an excellent 2008!

Cheers,

Don Ramsey

"Top 10 Gadgets of the Year," by Rob Beschizza, Wired News, December 21, 2007 --- http://www.wired.com/gadgets/gadgetreviews/multimedia/2007/12/YE_gallery_gadgets_top10gadgets

"The Year in Energy:  Advanced biofuels, more-efficient vehicles, and solar power top the most notable energy stories of 2007," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, December 27, 2007 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19981/?nlid=773

"The Year in Hardware:  The past 12 months have featured touch screens, context-aware gadgets, autonomous vehicles, and brain-computer interfaces," by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review, December 26, 2007 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19976/?nlid=770&a=f

From Business Week on November 28, 2007
This Year's Tech Pioneers --- Click Here

The 2007 Economy in Review (Audio)," by Jim Zaroli, NPR, December 31, 2007 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17716248

From WebMD on January 2, 2008 --- http://www.webmd.com/

Top Ten Stupid Criminals of 2007 --- http://www.neatorama.com/2007/12/18/the-top-ten-stupid-criminals-of-2007/
(One stole a car in order to turn himself in. Wouldn't a phone call to the police have been easier?)

"Record Data Breaches in 2007," by Mark Jewell, PhysOrg, December 31, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news118300607.html

The loss or theft of personal data such as credit card and Social Security numbers soared to unprecedented levels in 2007, and the trend isn't expected to turn around anytime soon as hackers stay a step ahead of security and laptops disappear with sensitive information.

And while companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of data with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, the investment often is too little too late.

"More of them are experiencing data breaches, and they're responding to them in a reactive way, rather than proactively looking at the company's security and seeing where the holes might be," said Linda Foley, who founded the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center after becoming an identity theft victim herself.

Foley's group lists more than 79 million records reported compromised in the United States through Dec. 18. That's a nearly fourfold increase from the nearly 20 million records reported in all of 2006.

Another group, Attrition.org, estimates more than 162 million records compromised through Dec. 21 - both in the U.S. and overseas, unlike the other group's U.S.-only list. Attrition reported 49 million last year.

"It's just the nature of business, that moving forward, more companies are going to have more records, so there will be more records compromised each year," said Attrition's Brian Martin. "I imagine the total records compromised will steadily climb."

But the biggest difference between the groups' record-loss counts is Attrition.org's estimate that 94 million records were exposed in a theft of credit card data at TJX Cos., the owner of discount stores including T.J. Maxx and Marshalls. The TJX breach accounts for more than half the total records reported lost this year on both groups' lists.

The Identity Theft Resource Center counts about 46 million - the number of records TJX acknowledged in March were potentially compromised. Attrition's figure is based on estimates from Visa and MasterCard officials who were deposed in a lawsuit banks filed against TJX.

The breach is believed to have started when hackers intercepted wireless transfers of customer information at two Marshalls stores in Miami - an entry point that led the hackers to eventually break into TJX's central databases.

TJX has said that before the breach, which was revealed in January, it invested "millions of dollars on computer security, and believes our security was comparable to many major retailers."

Continued in article

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

"2007 a Year of Weather Records in U.S.," by Seth Borenstein, PhysOrg, December 31, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news118241280.html

When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder. January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.

And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!"

In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days - a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.

Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming, scientists always say. However, "it's the run of them and the different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.

Worst of all - at least according to climate scientists - the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.

2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen were suddenly honored. Former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of thousands of scientists. The climate panel, organized by the United Nations, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions of lives.

Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.

Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.

More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken - regardless of the date - either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center.

For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.

Daily triple-digit temperatures took a toll on everybody, public safety director George West recalled. The state had 15 heat-related deaths in August.

Continued in article

"Predictions for 2008:  The un-parodiable state of civil liberties in America," by Radley Balko, Reason Magazine, December 21, 2007 --- http://www.reason.com/news/show/124055.html 

"Common blunders: Personal finance resolutions for 2008,&