Good Friday was not so good
Winds Howling and Snow Swirling
March 21, 2008 on the summit of Mt. Washington

Temp Wind Gust W. Chill
-8.9°F 291° (W), 104.3 mph 111.6 mph -53.0°F

When we first moved to New Hampshire in 2005 we attended a tiny Episcopal church about a half-mile down the road that is only open in the summer season. It has the distinction of being the most photographed church in New England. Indeed it is at the height of its glory, along with the surrounding fields, in our June Lupin Festival. Afterwards we joined another church about a mile down the road that has year-around services.

 

 

The blue jay above is sitting directly over our well head . He's watching and waiting for springtime that will not arrive for a couple of months.

Taps are beginning to appear on the maple trees of Sugar Hill. In the next edition of Tidbits I will talk about sugaring in these hills. It's a sweet time of year even if the snow is still on the ground.

Anything out of the ordinary seems much more ordinary when it happens to a friend or relative. It sometimes broadens perspective and compassion and empathy.

Since moving to New Hampshire, my wife and I feel more a part of the community by joining in with our very small congregation at the Sugar Hill Community Church. On any given Sunday we're doing well if twenty worshippers join in the service. Two of our very active worshippers are Wendy Kern (former wife of Randy Mitton) and Arwen Mitton (former husband of Wendy Kern). The two women still live together when Arwen is not in college in Rhode Island, but both hope to move on in their own ways and loves when Arwen finishes college. In fact Arwen was home on spring break and came to church with Wendy last Sunday. Arwen recently had three pins put in her hip as a result of an accident with her sailing team on the college campus. That is the least of her problems as she moves forward with her life.

Transgendering and Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID) is something that I never anticipated would directly touch upon my life, especially after I retired from teaching, moved to the boondocks, and no longer encountered students from all walks in life. But these conditions have touched upon my life because of two good friends in our church.

On February 10, 2008 Arwen Mitton's story appeared in the Concord Monitor newspaper. Below is a link to this very enlightening article. You will most likely never meet Arwen or Wendy. But the article below will open your eyes to the struggles faced by people with DID who took an enormous step to be transgendered. I cannot really say more that will add value to the tremendous article linked below. I wish I could do more for Arwen and Wendy, but I am and will always be their friend. I might add that Arwen's a very good student, and Wendy's a very good teacher.

Bob Jensen

For a short while you may read about Arwen at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Arwen.htm  

March 18, 2008 reply from one reader

Thanks for sharing this. Fascinating, scary, and heartbreaking. That other world that Arwen describes living in before she appeared in this world is very similar to the worlds that Robert Monroe describes in his books about his out-of-body experiments. Evidently, the mind (and the universe) contain much more than we know about or can understand

March 18, 2008 reply from another reader

Very interesting article, thanks Bob. On a similar topic, there was an article in this past weekend’s New York Times magazine which focused on transgender students feeling more room to experiment with their gender identity within women’s colleges. You might want to have your Judith Butler books handy for this one.

Article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16students-t.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=gender&st=nyt&oref=slogin 

 

 

Tidbits on March 22, 2008
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/

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

On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm

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/ )

Global Incident Map --- http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

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

Free Online Tutorials in Multiple Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials

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

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

Tips on computer and networking security --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm

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

Going Boom in Dubai (Slide Show) --- Click Here

Israeli-Arab conflict --- http://www.terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/

Interactives: The Rock Cycle (as in geology) --- http://www.learner.org/interactives/rockcycle/index.html

The Jewish Americans (includes four lesson plans) ---  http://www.pbs.org/jewishamericans/index.html

Addictive Tic-Tac-Toe (interactive) --- http://www.animaxinteractive.com/banana/Games/tictactoe.html

Dog, Cat, and Rat --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D85yrIgA4Nk

Arthur C. Clarke (renowned science fiction author) died this week --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Clarke

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

SXSW 2008: The Whigs (full rock concert from Austin, TX) --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88163137

Choro Ensemble: Brazil Before Bossa --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88102556
Before bossa nova and samba, Brazilian music was choro. Born in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, choro started when polkas and waltzes mixed with Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Beginning in the early part of this decade, it has been heard weekly in New York — thanks to a group called the Choro Ensemble.

When You're Running Down Our Country Man, You're Walking on the Fighting Side of Me (Merle Haggard) --- http://www.trdaniel.com/Take A Look America/index.htm

Shirley Bassey: New CD for 'Goldfinger' Diva --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88184207

Saxophone Giant Benny Golson --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88237333

Things You Don't Hear Anymore --- http://www.bentbay.dk/donthear_anymore.htm

Negro Spirituals

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

Photographs and Art

World Public Library (over 85,000 photographs) --- http://worldlibrary.net/ePhotos.htm

NASA's Latest Space Shuttle Photographs --- http://www.texasjim.com/NASApix/NASA pix.htm

PingMag (arts and crafts from Japan) ---  http://www.pingmag.jp/

Arts & Genomics --- http://www.artsgenomics.org/

Lauren R. Donaldson Collection (first atomic bomb tests) --- http://content.lib.washington.edu/donaldsonweb/

Antique Spectacles & Other Vision Aids --- http://www.antiquespectacles.com/

National Geographic Photo Gallery: Palau --- http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/places/gallery/palau_aerial.html

 

 

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

LibrarySpot (left column library finder links) --- http://www.libraryspot.com/

Scribd's 100 Top Novels --- http://www.scribd.com/doc/275958/Top-100-Novels-of-All-Time-as-Voted-by-Regular-People

Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal (poetry about society) --- http://fleursdumal.org/ 

The Jewish Americans (includes four lesson plans) ---  http://www.pbs.org/jewishamericans/index.html

Project Gutenberg Update --- http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

Other Free eBook Links:

You Can't Leave Education to A Few Theorists
Paul Volcker, AccountingWeb, March 13, 2008 --- Click Here

Sky-high oil prices are pumping tens of billions of dollars into Iraq's coffers, reaping a windfall for a war-torn nation plagued by unpassable roads, dilapidated hospitals and crumbling schools. Yet most of this desperately needed cash is languishing in the bank. The reason: Iraq's government is so ill-equipped to handle the basics of finance, it is having trouble spending the money. In 2006, the Iraqi central government spent just 22% of its $6 billion capital budget, which is aimed at improving Iraq's infrastructure, while the oil ministry spent less than 3% of its reconstruction money.
Gina Chon, "Baghdad's Strange Dilemma: Flush With Oil Cash, Unable to Spend It," The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2008; Page A14 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120571072119840213.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Question
Can J.P. Morgan wear a mask and ride a white horse for over 100 years? --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2218Btx3wY
Answer
As a matter of fact yes, but sometimes he mistakenly saves the bad guys that buried themselves in kemosabi.

This week we continue our discussion of the Panic of 1907 and the man who, single-handedly, turned things around, J.P. Morgan. As I wrote last week, speculation in the early 1900s was rampant. The lack of a central bank became a worrisome topic for many because the banks were intimately involved in the market, either as underwriters or investors. This included the trust banks, a group separate from commercial and investment banks. Trust banks were administrators of trust funds, money invested on behalf of estates, wills, and the like. They provided a tenuous link to the markets and many of them made loans to market speculators, taking securities as collateral. Thus, if stocks fell, the trust banks as well as other banks would be severely hurt, as would their investors. Without a central bank, no one would loan them money if a depositor's run developed or they needed cash to prop up their positions under duress.
Brian Trumbore, "J.P. Morgan - Savior -- The Panic of 1907," BuyAndHold, March 2008 --- http://www.buyandhold.com/bh/en/education/history/2000/122499.html
Jim Mahar alerted me to this link.

In a dramatic move Friday, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York stepped in with emergency funds to keep beleaguered investment bank Bear Stearns Cos. afloat. The move, during a week of worry about whether Bear could continue to meet its obligations, took the credit crisis to a new, more serious stage and was a reminder of how quickly an erosion of confidence can undermine even leading financial institutions.
Kevin Kingsbury, Andrew Dowell, and Serena Ng, "Bear Stearns to Get Backing From J.P. Morgan, N.Y. Fed," The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120550108028136579.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

Bankers bet with their bank's capital, not their own. If the bet goes right, they get a huge bonus; if it misfires, that's the shareholders' problem.
Sebastian Mallaby. Council on Foreign Relations, as quoted by Avital Louria Hahn, "Missing:  How Poor Risk-Management Techniques Contributed to the Subprime Mess," CFO Magazine, March 2008, Page 53 --- http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/10755469/c_10788146?f=magazine_featured
Now that the Fed is going to bail out these crooks with taxpayer funds makes it all the worse.
Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the Core" threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

That some bankers have ended up in prison is not a matter of scandal, but what is outrageous is the fact that all the others are free.
 Honoré de Balzac

What if anything should governments do to help out in this present financial crisis, mindful of the many kinds of moral hazard that are lurking, but also mindful that the financial structure is delicately balanced? Despite the moral hazard risks, interventionist policies might be justified not because some borrowers or lenders were taken advantage of, but if these interventions would help the economy recover more quickly, and insure that the recession is neither prolonged nor deep. Still it is difficult to see the merits in the Fed's efforts to help the sale of Bears Stearns to JPMorgan Chase by guaranteeing many billions of mortgage and other assets of the company.
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, "The Erosion of Individual Responsibility," The Becker-Posner Blog, March 16, 2008 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Becker makes two principal points in his interesting post: that free enterprise encourages people to take responsibility for their actions and thereby make better decisions; and that there is "a strong trend toward shifting responsibility to others." I would qualify these points as follows. Free enterprise requires individuals to make a variety of decisions, concerning both production and consumption, that in a socialist system is the responsibility of government officials. It does not follow that people in free-enterprise societies "take responsibility," in some psychological sense, for their actions. The tendency to blame others when things go wrong is deeply rooted in human nature and I imagine no less common in America than in any other country. In fact, in a free-market system, competition places significant limitations on the freedom of choice of consumers, investors, and workers . . . As for the people who took out risky mortgages in the expectation that house prices would continue to rise, they should not be bailed out (that is the moral hazard problem) by government even, I think, if they were victims of fraud. But if they were victims of fraud, they should have legal remedies against the people who defrauded them. Of course, if there were no legal remedies against fraud, people would be more careful--but they would be too careful; they would incur high costs of self-protection. It is cheaper to punish fraud, just as it is cheaper to punish burglary than to tell people to fortify their houses.
Richard Posner, "The Erosion of Individual Responsibility," The Becker-Posner Blog, March 16, 2008 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois is a big booster of Mr. Obama, but he declares himself "disappointed" in his Illinois colleague's embrace of the (earmarks pork) moratorium proposed by GOP Senator Jim DeMint. Similarly, New York Senator Chuck Schumer has parted ways with Hillary Clinton over the proposed time-out on earmarks. Mr. Schumer privately expressed disgust when Senator DeMint held a news conference outside the Capitol building that featured a man in a 6-foot-tall pink pig suit ridiculing Congressional excess . . . For his part, Mr. DeMint says his colleagues are acting like addicts who refuse to admit they have a problem. He told Politico.com this week: "We need to go cold turkey." Anything less would be "like telling an alcoholic, 'Don't drink as much.'"
John Fund, Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008

I met Eliot Spitzer during his first semester in law school, my first year teaching criminal law at Harvard. He was smart and ambitious, which certainly didn't set him apart from the rest of his classmates at Harvard. What did, and what brought him to my door, was that he was interested in a career in politics.... Maybe he was absent the day we discussed the Mann Act. But I don't think so.... Eliot Spitzer knew better, but he clearly forgot that the rules apply to everyone. Especially him. Now, the face in the mirror is the one that did him in. Poor Eliot. I do feel sorry for him. But there are some things you can't teach, some things that can only be learned through painful experience. Hubris is what it's called.
Susan Estrich, former campaign manager for Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988, reflecting on her time teaching Eliot Spitzer at Harvard Law School.
Opinion Journal, The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008
Jensen Comment
Hubriz is where brain surgeons first look when they cannot find a man’s brain above his neck.
Sadly it's belatedly coming out that Spitzer's replacement as NY Governor, David Paterson, and Paterson's wife cheated on each other with extra-marital affairs --- http://cbs4.com/national/david.paterson.affair.2.679240.html
But the Kennedy Clan has repeatedly claimed this is all right as long as politician's get it for free.

Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican, grouses that the Senate Democrats' budget documents contain more than $100 billion of spending that is "paid for" only by budget tricks and gimmicks, such as changing the timing of payments so they don't happen inside the budget window. This doesn't save any money, it just camouflages the total spending Congress is doing. An even taller tale concerns some of the Democrats' revenue assumptions. They claim to be keeping the party's pledge of fiscal balance in five years, but that's possible only by assuming that 30 million Americans will pay the Alternative Minimum Tax in 2013. As Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin notes, "There aren't 30 million rich people in America." That means a giant tax increase on the middle class five years from now.
Opinion Journal, The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008

Cambridge Health Alliance, a key part of the Boston area's healthcare network, is facing a potentially "catastrophic" loss this year and is looking to eliminate up to 300 jobs, or about 9 percent of its workforce, in an effort to stabilize finances. The alliance, which includes Cambridge Hospital, Somerville Hospital, and Whidden Hospital in Everett, says it is being hit hard by the state's new healthcare reform law, which has left it responsible for providing free care for those without insurance while reducing the hospitals' compensation for such services. "A significant downturn in our volume and the transition to the new free care pool reimbursement system created a perfect storm for us," said Dennis D. Keefe, chief executive of the alliance.
Jeffry Krasner, "Health provider predicts big loss," Boston Globe, March 17, 2008 --- http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2008/03/17/health_provider_predicts_big_loss/
Jensen Comment
Massachusetts like all other states is just waiting for the Federal government to pay the tab for free health care after November 2008.

Doctor shortage takes a toll in Japan Japan might boast universal health cover and some of the world's best medical technology, but an acute shortage of doctors is leaving some hospitals unable to treat even car crash victims. Gruelling work hours are discouraging people from entering the medical profession in a country where the population is rapidly ageing, foreign doctors are barred and a swelling public debt caps doctors' salaries. The strains are even being felt here at the Hyogo Brain and Heart Centre in the western city of Himeji, one of Japan's best-known neurology and cardiology hospitals. "We toil like workhorses," said Teishi Kajiya, the hospital's vice director and a cardiologist, taking some time for an interview before heading to the operation room. "It's become the norm for doctors to work 36 hours straight, which is emotionally and physically exhausting. We never know when one of us might collapse," he said, looking weary despite his tidy coat.
PhysOrg, March 16, 2008 --- http://physorg.com/news124904935.html 

"Last week, the University of Virginia's student paper, The Cavalier Daily, ran a cartoon depicting a naked man smoking a cigarette in bed. Standing beside the bed, a woman in her underwear buttons up her shirt and asks, 'Come on God, be honest – Did you really get a vasectomy? I can't let Joseph find out about this.' The man replies, 'Well, Mary, you're f----d," the AFA said.
WorldNetDaily, March 17, 2008 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59240
Jensen Comment
This comes on the heels after publishing a cartoon that appeared to make fun of starving people in Africa --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/10/cartoon

The former treasurer of a Republican Congressional fund-raising committee may have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars by submitting elaborately forged audit reports for five years using the letterhead of a legitimate auditing firm, a lawyer for the committee said Thursday. Robert K. Kelner, a lawyer with Covington & Burling, who was brought in by the National Republican Congressional Committee to investigate accounting irregularities, said a new audit showed that the committee had $740,000 less on hand than it believed. Mr. Kelner said it was unclear whether that amount represented money siphoned off by the former treasurer, Christopher J. Ward. Mr. Ward, who is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had the authority to make transfers of committee money on his own, Mr. Kelner said . . . Mr. Kelner lamented the fact that the finances of the Republican committee had been set up to allow Mr. Ward to authorize wire transfers of money unilaterally.
Neal A. Lewis, "Sham Audits May Have Hid Theft by G.O.P. Committee Treasurer, Lawyer Says," The New York Times, March 14, 2008 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14repubs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Jensen Comment
The first line of defense against fraud is internal control. This committee had no such control.

The state Legislature on Friday wrapped up its second special session during the 2-month-old administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal by completing a full sweep of the governor's proposed package of business tax cuts and $1.1 billion in surplus spending priorities. Jindal and his legislative allies won all the initiatives they set out to accomplish during the six-day session, including a controversial bill to grant a partial tax deduction for private school tuition . . . "This group should be proud of batting a thousand," Jindal said. "The country's watching us . . . we know they'll like what they see."
Ed Anderson, "Jindal 'bats a thousand' at session," The Times-Picayune, March 15, 2008 --- Click Here
Jensen Comment
I sure hope Maine, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, California, Taxachusetts, Vermont, and New York are watching. This would be even better for Louisiana if it finds more cash stored in freezers. Seriously, Jindal's move would really attract business to Louisiana if there weren't so much Louisiana political corruption and crime (read that extortion and kickbacks).

Proponents (of a computer services tax in Maryland) say the $200 million in revenue the tax is projected to garner is indispensable when Maryland is already facing a budget shortfall. Senate President Mike Miller insists that "We can't afford to cede to businesses $200 million in revenue without an alternative." Wait until they see what happens to revenue when business begins to leave the state. Many Maryland companies and small businesses say they could be forced to relocate if the tax isn't repealed. And nearby states are courting potential departees: 70 Maryland computer services firms got a letter last month from Delaware economic director Judy McKinney-Cherry to encourage companies to "include Delaware when you are contemplating an expansion." Other states have tried similar tax experiments -- with dismal results. In Pennsylvania, a 6% computer services tax was repealed after it handicapped the state's ability to compete with other states for business. Ditto Connecticut, which enacted a 6% computer consulting tax in the late 1980s, only to walk it back in 1997 as the importance of the computer industry became apparent, and business associations revolted.
"High Tech Tax," The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2008; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120553885222038237.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Ted Kennedy has called Nantucket Sound near his Massachusetts estate “a national treasure” — but that didn’t stop the senator from having oil dumped from his yacht into its waters. A local photographer spotted an oil slick coming from Kennedy’s yacht Mya as Kennedy and his guests left the vessel in a launch following a race that ended in Hyannis, the Cape Cod Today newspaper reported. The lensman was so shocked that he rowed his dinghy out to question the crew member left aboard the yacht. He asked the crewman, “What the hell are you doing?” The crewman said that diesel fuel had gotten into the bilge and he was told to dump it.
"Ted Kennedy Dumps Fuel into Nantucket Sound," Newsmax, March 14, 2008 --- Click Here
That's not the worst thing Ted's secretly dumped into the Atlantic Ocean.

At the tender age of 23 years, Yon Goicoechea is arguably President Hugo Chávez's worst nightmare. Mr. Goicoechea is the retiring secretary general of the university students' movement in Venezuela. Under his leadership, hundreds of thousands of young people have come together to confront the strongman's unchecked power. It is the first time in a decade of Chávez rule that a countervailing force, legitimate in the eyes of society, has successfully managed to challenge the president's authority.
Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "Student Power," The Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2008; Page A16 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120571191315240267.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a founding father of the modern mega-tort class-action industry, pleaded guilty yesterday to trying to bribe a judge. It is notable but perhaps unsurprising in this particular week, when we have already seen one famous figure, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, brought down by his own sense of invulnerability to the law or common sense. In the 1990s, Mr. Scruggs famously got corporate defendants, and whole industries, to make mammoth settlements in lieu of fighting the thousands of plaintiffs the Mississippi tort lawyer had gathered into a class-action lawsuit. Mr. Scruggs was a legal entrepreneur, who figured out that the combined weight of endless plaintiffs and bad publicity would force even the richest corporations to plead for a settlement. It was his further insight that his percentage of the take, aka contingency fees, would make him and his associates rich as Croesus. The trappings of wealth that attended the class-action plaintiffs bar are the stuff of legend.
"Dickie's Plea," The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2008; Page A10 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120553770906338151.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
Dickie and his wife donated $25 million to the University of Mississippi. They now request that their names be removed from the music building, following his pleading guilty to charges of trying to bribe a judge. The couple did not ask for funds to be returned. Musicians will still be required to wear dickies at some symphony performances.

Until recently, Obama's church website outlined a controversial code of ethics written by blacks for blacks called the "Black Value System." It asks members to commit their time, money and talents to the black community, black businesses, black institutions and black political leaders. The program also demands black members disavow "the pursuit of (Bill Cosby's) middleclassness." The 160-word section has since been deleted from the About Us page, replaced by videotaped testimonials from church members extolling the virtues of the church, including a white official from the parent United Church of Christ who said she feels welcome at predominantly black Trinity.
"Obama's preacher sanitizes website," WorldNetDaily, March 16, 2008 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59169

What just got sanitized from Obama's church Website are many of the "Black Value System"  ideas borrowed  from black theologian
James Cone's Black Theology

"The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people."

"All white men are responsible for white oppression. "

"Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'"

"Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement."

"Black suffering is getting worse, not better. . . . White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it."

" Jesus Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants."

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him."

"The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

"What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. "

Some ideas not found at that Website's former "Black Value System" are as follows:

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

. . . the number of Hispanic and Asian high-school students is already growing, and significant increases are expected over the next decade. At the same time, white and black enrollment are each projected to see double-digit-percentage drops, causing an overall decline in the number of graduates.
Elyse Ashburn, "New Data Predict Major Shifts in Student Population, Requiring Colleges to Change Strategies," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/03/2177n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
For black males the numbers of college graduates in the past decades are small. I fear that we're seeing more and more of the shifts in "Black Value System" away from a quest for Bill Cosby's "middleclassedness" in contrast to the Hispanic and Asian minority students. I wonder how much a role hate-mongering Christian and Muslim preachers like Jeremiah Wright, Malcom X, and Louis Farrakhan have had is this phenomenon in the black community.

When Don Imus uttered his infamous slur on the radio last year, Obama cut him no slack. Imus should be fired, he said. "There's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group." When it came to Wright, however, he wasn't nearly so categorical. Oh, he's "like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," Obama indulgently explained to one interviewer. He's just "trying to be provocative ," he told another. "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," he said. Far from severing his ties to Wright, Obama made him a member of his Religious Leadership Committee only four days ago.
Jeff Jacoby, "It's Still a Question of Wright Versus Wrong," The Boston Globe, March 19, 2008 --- http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles

Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people" who will only accept a god who assists their aim of destroying the "white enemy" --As quoted in "Obama pastor's theology: Destroy 'the white enemy':  'If God is not for us and against whites ... we had better kill him'," WorldNetDaily, March 17, 2008 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59230
Jensen Comment
What amazes me is racist hate mongering ministers like Jeremiah Wright and Al Sharpton often imply that power in the U.S. Government is reserved for the white race. They never once mention that the most powerful Congressman controlling the purse strings of the entire United States is a hard-nosed black liberal from Brooklyn --- Charlie Rangel., Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Rangel
They never mention that our Secretary of State is both black and female --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condolezza_Rice
They never mention black executives in the Fortune 500 companies and black billionaires like Oprah.

Bill Cosby became their enemy when he asserted that many blacks, certainly no all, do not want to put in the effort for free education and training in order to live the American dream.
Watch the video --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIVKbHZ8H3A
Another one is here --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm2DdzRq-lI

Bill Cosby was no doubt pained to see what's happening today. Rather than have a role model like him or the character he played on TV, a well-to-do physician, far more black youth today seem to emulate the thugs who pose as music artists. What would have pained him more than this is the apathy shown by black elders and the community as a whole. It doesn't take years of research into society to figure out that something's not right with the state of urban black youth today  . . . . . Bill Cosby's harsh words on the condition of many of today's black youth have evoked many responses. I thought that I should get my two cents' worth on it as well. I wholeheartedly applaud Bill Cosby for saying what he did, and I completely agree with his views. I have felt for a long time the exact things that he expressed in words in front of a group of black leaders a few weeks back.
Vivek Thuppil --- Click Here  

As Kaus notes, Obama's "explanations of white anger seem distant and condescending." The same is often true when white liberals proclaim their "understanding" of black anger--except that black anger is invested with a certain nobility for its having originated in genuine oppression. And Obama's agenda is not exactly bold ... What he seems to be offering "working- and middle-class white Americans" is to label them "resentful" rather than "misguided or even racist," in exchange for which they are expected to support an expansion of left-liberal social programs. Will this bargain appeal to voters any more than it has in the previous 10 elections?
Editors of The Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2008 quoting Mickey Kaus in Slate Magazine, March 17, 2008 --- http://www.slate.com/id/2186845/#obamaracespeech

Yes, I read the transcript of Mr. Obama's much touted "great" speech. His heartfelt cry: " that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper," might tug at the heartstrings of Americans who never heard of Lyndon Baines Johnson's "Great Society." Or "Project Headstart" Well, I was a high school student then, and in the summer I went into a black ghetto in Rockaway and picked up black pre-schoolers every morning to bring them to a Federally-funded pre-school program which it was hoped would enrich their educational experiences. I went to a public college in which Affirmative Action gave preferential treatment for admissions and scholarships to minorities. That is also part of America's "tragic past."
Naomi Regan (an influential and prolific Jewish writer who now lives in Israel). In a flurry of recent messages she's claimed Jews are increasingly questioning the credibility of Obama's promises to Israel.
Jensen Comment
Most working and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. In fact many feel that they've faced unfair competition due to affirmative action hiring, scholarships, and admissions to prestigious colleges and universities. Eventually it will be the silent majority's proud Americans that decide who will be the next President of the United States. The hate-America black preachers and showmen screaming James Cone's "Black Value System" are shooting the Democratic Party in both feet in ways never imagined by Karl Rove.

Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too.
Peggy Noonnan's favorable review of the March 18 Obama speech, "A Thinking Man's Speech," The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2008; Page W16 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120604775960652829.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

"The New Austerity," by Justin Fox,  Time Magazine, March 24, 2008, Page 26 ---
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721656,00.html

Journalists and others with a tendency to see glasses as half empty have a long history of pronouncing the American consumer maxed out. "Time for a New Frugality," this magazine declared in 1973. "Over the Ears in Debt," it chimed in again in 1987. It wasn't just TIME. Historian of credit Lendol Calder has assembled a long list of worried headlines through the decades: "Debt Threatens Democracy" (Harper's, 1940), "Is the Country Swamped with Debt?" (Business Week, 1949), "Never Have So Many Owed So Much" (U.S. News & World Report, 1959). And so on.

Amid all this hand-wringing, Americans have kept piling on more and more debt. The last significant episode of belt-tightening came during the recession of the early 1980s. But that turned out to be just the prelude to a quarter-century of growing profligacy, capped by a final half-decade of mostly mortgage-related fun that will go down as one of the most reckless borrowing-and-lending binges ever.

Now that particular binge has come to a crashing end, and the credit worriers believe their moment may have finally arrived. "I'm not saying we're going back to our parents' level of frugality," says David Rosenberg, North American economist at Merrill Lynch. "But what we have witnessed in the past 20 to 30 years — and especially the parabolic credit growth of the last five years — is going to be bursting in the next decade."

Americans simply don't have enough money to pay back the mortgage and credit-card debt they've run up. That reality is forcing banks to retrench as loans gone bad shrink their capital bases and falling house prices shrink the collateral that homeowners can borrow against. And it will presumably force chastened consumers to change their ways as well. At least that's what Rosenberg is predicting. "It's an entirely new attitude toward debt," he says. "It is the new four-letter word."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
To top off the out-of-control consumer debt is the totally out-of-control national debt of the Federal government itself. The last time I looked on March 20, 2008 it was as follows at http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Watch the Video (CBS Sixty Minute Video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

Mr. Obama's villains, in other words, are the standard-issue populist straw men of Wall Street and the GOP, and his candidacy is a vessel for liberal policy orthodoxy -- raise taxes, "invest" more in social programs, restrict trade, retreat from Iraq. Needless to say, this is not an agenda rooted in bipartisanship or even one that has captured a national Presidential majority in more than 40 years. It would be unfortunate if Mr. Obama's candidacy were toppled by racial neuroses, and his speech yesterday may have prevented that. But it also revealed the extent to which his ideas are neither new nor transcendent.
"Discovering Obama," The Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2008; Page A16 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120588322321046835.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

The Surprise Quotation of the Week from the Liberal Press
It would be dunderheaded to demand of our three presidential candidates that they and their campaigns do what nobody else can. We cannot expect them to offer a (financing) program of action. But it is not asking too much of them to cut down on the blue-sky promises and come on back down to reality. It would reassure some of the voters if they would acknowledge that we are teetering on one helluva big (sinking economy) problem. It's going to be a bumpy night.
Nicholas von Hoffman, "Economic Chaos, Political Consequences," The Nation, March 17, 2008 --- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/howl 
Jensen Comment
If Barack Obama fails this year in his quest to become the first black President of the United States, it should not be because of the racism, anti-Semitics, and "damn America" speeches of his friend and pastor.  I do blame Obama somewhat for his lies to Keith Olbermann about never having heard years of hate sermons. When later confronted with the text of many sermons and his attendance records at church, Senator Obama later confessed that he had listened to these hate America and hate Jews sermons for years. He waited until March 18, 2008 to own up to these embarrassing facts.

My own view is that Senator Obama should not be President because of the Zimbabwe-like inflation and job losses of his economic recklessness to spend up to a trillion dollars on "blue sky" social and environmental programs this faltering nation can ill afford with a faltering economic engine. The disastrous spendthrift ways of President Bush and the war in Iraq pale in light of the unrealistic Great Society visions of Barack Obama. Monumental increases in taxes are counter productive to raising revenue of this magnitude and financing these social and environmental programs in a times of soaring oil prices, a plunging dollar, and a National Debt this nation cannot afford before the November 2008 election.

Liberals often argue that we should take from the military and give to the poor. But they don't understand how the United States burdened future generations with entitlements to pay for past wars. The lion's share of the annual military budget is not discretionary due to entitlements for lifetime pensions, medical care, and medicines for soldiers and staff that retired as early as 40 years of age and have many more years to live. When these entitlements are carved out of the military budget there isn't near enough money reallocate to Obama's Great Society dreams.

Instead the hope of this nation rides on large and small business prosperity and anti-trust enforcement that does prevents big businesses from monopoly abuses. Obama may well become the blue sky Captain of the USS Titanic in a sea of national debt. Thus far Obama's avoided being specific about how to finance his dreams for America. Let's hope he comes to his senses about economics before we sink to a hopeless bottom. The social ills of this nation cannot be solved with an economy in ruins.

Assuming that Hillary Clinton will remain a powerful senator after McCain and Obama begin to slug it out for the presidency, it's high time that both surviving presidential candidates commence to provide specifics on what they plan to do to keep the United States from sinking to the bottom. At the moment all three are promising hot air balloons (read that entitlements)  in the blue sky of false hopes instead of realistic programs to save this nation.

It was a delight and a surprise that the highly liberal Nocholas von Hoffman admitted this (that the presidential candidates are promising unrealistic "blue sky") in the highly liberal news magazine called The Nation. Our former enemies (Russia and China) and fickle allies in the Middle East and South America now have us in frigid and bumpy waters where they want us. Our plunging economy can do what al Qaeda never had a chance to do with terror and bombs. The so-called poor of this nation don't know what it's like to be really, really poor without a shred of hope from a bankrupt government and no charities left to lean on. All is doomed unless we shore up business performance and energy supplies.

Read about our biggest economic worry for future generations --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
We've reached a low point where politicians have to promise to literally give away the farm to become president of the United States.
The problem with Obama's Great Society programs is that once enacted most of them cannot be unwound because he's proposing huge entitlements..

And John McCain may well be just as much of a spendthrift as George Bush. The inability of George W. Bush to say no to lavish spending by Congress over the past eight years has led us into much of the current mess. It's long overdue that the two surviving presidential candidates begin proposing realistic ways to change directions on our economy's descent in a sea of national debt.

Question
What former Andersen partner, who watched the Andersen accounting firm implode alongside its client Enron, has been traveling for years around the United States warning that the United States economy will implode unless we totally come to our senses?
Hints:
David Walker is the top accountant, Controller General, of the United States Government.
He was a featured plenary speaker a few years back at an annual meeting of the American Accounting Association.
See his "State of the Profession of Accountancy" piece in the October 2005 edition of the Journal of Accountancy.
Also see http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/jul2006/walker.htm

Watch the Video of the non-sustainability of the U.S. economy (CBS Sixty Minutes TV Show Video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

Blue Sky Presidential Candidates

An old man, a boy & a donkey were going to town. The boy rode on the donkey & the old man walked.

As they went along they passed some people who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking and the boy was riding.

The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right so they changed positions.

Then, later, they passed some people who remarked, "What a shame, he makes that little boy walk."

So they then decided they'd both walk!

Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent donkey to ride.

So, they both rode the donkey.

Now they passed some people who shamed them by saying how awful to put such a load on a poor donkey.

The boy and man figured they were probably right, so they decide to carry the donkey..

As they crossed the bridge, they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story?
If you try to please everyone, you might as well kiss your ass goodbye!

 


Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books, on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are sent back for grading.

My Answers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Just wondering what the soaring price of gasoline will do for students' choices between commuting campuses and distance education alternatives, often from the same universities and colleges. There may be more open parking places on some campuses.

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education alternatives are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Find home values, reverse phone numbers, animated population growth maps, specialized research sites and more
More likely the reported home values are unrealistically high at the moment
 http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/2960878/999427/103876/2/
The above link was forwarded by Ed Scribner

March 18, 2008 (PC World) If you dig around the Web long enough, you're bound to find things somebody might not want you to know. (Maybe, like me, you hang your laundry out in the backyard.) This week I have a bunch of sites to help you dig up the dirt and do some serious research.

Find the Dirt on Your Neighbor

With two free Web services, I found the address of a neighbor, his first and last name, his phone number and how much his home is worth. If Zillow would only update its images, I could even tell you if he hangs his laundry out in the backyard.

met a neighbor while walking the dogs, and we chatted a while. When I got home, I decided to pop something in the mail. (It was some census tract stuff if you must know.) He lives about two blocks down the road, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember the guy's name or his street address. Okay, sure, I could've just dropped by his house. But what would I have to write about today, eh?

I popped open Zillow and searched on my neighborhood until I found the image of his house, then clicked on it. Zillow told me lots of stuff about the value of his home. What I needed--and got--was his street address.

Now that I had his street address, I went to the Reverse Lookup tab at 411Locate, entered info in the Reverse Address Lookup section, and got lucky. In a second, I had Jess's name. You might not be so fortunate--411Locate doesn't always come up with the right name.

Dig This: Tempted to buy a set of those newfangled color-pencil input devices? Be sure to read the review first--it details advanced features, usability, and, no surprise, bugs.

Trulia's Hindsight: Watch Cities Grow

If you enjoyed Zillow, you might also like Trulia. But there's more to this real-estate site than you might expect. I was poking around the other day and discovered Trulia Hindsight, which shows annual population growth in most parts of the U.S.

Once you're on Trulia Hindsight, click on Plano, Texas. You'll see a city map paint on the screen and a timeline at the bottom of the page will begin to advance. The map begins to populate, showing how the area developed over time.

Use the contrast slider on the bottom right to adjust how much of the background you want to see and the slider on the bottom left to zoom in or out of the map.

Once you get your bearings, grab the timeline slider, move it to the left, then slowly move it to the right. Type a city and state into the search field at the top to find your hometown. Unfortunately, the site doesn't have data for every area. If your town isn't on Trulia's radar, try downtown Los Angeles.

Dig This: You've gotta watch The Front Fell Off. My editor started kvetching that while hilarious, it also looks quite plausible. And she complained that the actors aren't getting credit even though there are lots of clips floating around the Internet. Okay, so here it goes: The guys are Australian comedy team Bruce and Dawe.

Top 5 Little-Known Research Web Sites

AskNow lets you ask a librarian a question. If they ask you where you live, say California. OWL, the Online Writing Lab, lets you look up the whys and wherefores of grammar. The Phrase Finder is a handy thesaurus for phrases. Need a fact checker? Refdesk.com has all the facts--or links to them--you'll ever need. Visiting the LibrarySpot is like walking into the local library and walking into the reference room. The site's part of the StartSpot Network, which includes HomeworkSpot and MuseumSpot.

 

Dig This: Whenever I go to CES in Las Vegas, my first stop is the craps table for some fast action--and maybe a chance to make a couple of bucks. Yet after watching these videos of Texas Hold'em--the game that "takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master"--I may have to find a low-stakes game.

Dig This, Too: Need a change of pace? Try Reel Fishing. You'll need patience and a steady hand.

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Be on Your Guard
IRS 2008 'Dirty Dozen' Phishing Scams --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61121.xml

Bob Jensen's threads on Phishing, Spoofing, Pharming, Slurping, and Pretexting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#Phishing

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

"Survey Reveals Wackiest Job Interview Mistakes," SmartPros, March 13, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61115.xml

This year's Top 10 list includes:
  • Candidate answered cell phone and asked the interviewer to leave her own office because it was a "private" conversation.
  • Candidate told the interviewer he wouldn't be able to stay with the job long because he thought he might get an inheritance if his uncle died -- and his uncle wasn't "looking too good."
  • Candidate asked the interviewer for a ride home after the interview.
  • Candidate smelled his armpits on the way to the interview room.
  • Candidate said she could not provide a writing sample because all of her writing had been for the CIA and it was "classified."
  • Candidate told the interviewer he was fired for beating up his last boss.
  • When applicant was offered food before the interview, he declined saying he didn't want to line his stomach with grease before going out drinking.
  • A candidate for an accounting position said she was a "people person" not a "numbers person."
  • Candidate flushed the toilet while talking to interviewer during phone interview.
  • Candidate took out a hair brush and brushed her hair.

Bob Jensen's career helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

"Research on Accounting Should Learn From the Past," by Michael H. Granof and Stephen A. Zeff, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i28/28a03401.htm?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Starting in the 1960s, academic research on accounting became methodologically supercharged — far more quantitative and analytical than in previous decades. The results, however, have been paradoxical. The new paradigms have greatly increased our understanding of how financial information affects the decisions of investors as well as managers. At the same time, those models have crowded out other forms of investigation. The result is that professors of accounting have contributed little to the establishment of new practices and standards, have failed to perform a needed role as a watchdog of the profession, and have created a disconnect between their teaching and their research.

Before the 1960s, accounting research was primarily descriptive. Researchers described existing standards and practices and suggested ways in which they could be improved. Their findings were taken seriously by standard-setting boards, CPA's, and corporate officers.

A confluence of developments in the 1960s markedly changed the nature of research — and, as a consequence, its impact on practice. First, computers emerged as a means of collecting and analyzing vast amounts of information, especially stock prices and data drawn from corporate financial statements. Second, academic accountants themselves recognized the limitations of their methodologies. Argument, they realized, was no substitute for empirical evidence. Third, owing to criticism that their research was decidedly second rate because it was insufficiently analytical, business faculties sought academic respectability by employing the methods of disciplines like econometrics, psychology, statistics, and mathematics.

In response to those developments, professors of accounting not only established new journals that were restricted to metric-based research, but they limited existing academic publications to that type of inquiry. The most influential of the new journals was the Journal of Accounting Research, first published in 1963 and sponsored by the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Acknowledging the primacy of the journals, business-school chairmen and deans increasingly confined the rewards of publication exclusively to those publications' contributors. That policy was applied initially at the business schools at private colleges that had the strongest M.B.A. programs. Then ambitious business schools at public institutions followed the lead of the private schools, even when the public schools had strong undergraduate and master's programs in accounting with successful traditions of practice-oriented research.

The unintended consequence has been that interesting and researchable questions in accounting are essentially being ignored. By confining the major thrust in research to phenomena that can be mathematically modeled or derived from electronic databases, academic accountants have failed to advance the profession in ways that are expected of them and of which they are capable.

Academic research has unquestionably broadened the views of standards setters as to the role of accounting information and how it affects the decisions of individual investors as well as the capital markets. Nevertheless, it has had scant influence on the standards themselves.

The research is hamstrung by restrictive and sometimes artificial assumptions. For example, researchers may construct mathematical models of optimum compensation contracts between an owner and a manager. But contrary to all that we know about human behavior, the models typically posit each of the parties to the arrangement as a "rational" economic being — one devoid of motivations other than to maximize pecuniary returns.

Moreover, research is limited to the homogenized content of electronic databases, which tell us, for example, the prices at which shares were traded but give no insight into the decision processes of either the buyers or the sellers. The research is thus unable to capture the essence of the human behavior that is of interest to accountants and standard setters.

Further, accounting researchers usually look backward rather than forward. They examine the impact of a standard only after it has been issued. And once a rule-making authority issues a standard, that authority seldom modifies it. Accounting is probably the only profession in which academic journals will publish empirical studies only if they have statistical validity. Medical journals, for example, routinely report on promising new procedures that have not yet withstood rigorous statistical scrutiny.

Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent of The New York Times, titled a 2006 speech to the American Accounting Association "Where Is the Next Abe Briloff?" Abe Briloff is a rare academic accountant. He has devoted his career to examining the financial statements of publicly traded companies and censuring firms that he believes have engaged in abusive accounting practices. Most of his work has been published in Barron's and in several books — almost none in academic journals. An accounting gadfly in the mold of Ralph Nader, he has criticized existing accounting practices in a way that has not only embarrassed the miscreants but has caused the rule-making authorities to issue new and more-rigorous standards. As Norris correctly suggested in his talk, if the academic community had produced more Abe Briloffs, there would have been fewer corporate accounting meltdowns.

The narrow focus of today's research has also resulted in a disconnect between research and teaching. Because of the difficulty of conducting publishable research in certain areas — such as taxation, managerial accounting, government accounting, and auditing — Ph.D. candidates avoid choosing them as specialties. Thus, even though those areas are central to any degree program in accounting, there is a shortage of faculty members sufficiently knowledgeable to teach them.

To be sure, some accounting research, particularly that pertaining to the efficiency of capital markets, has found its way into both the classroom and textbooks — but mainly in select M.B.A. programs and the textbooks used in those courses. There is little evidence that the research has had more than a marginal influence on what is taught in mainstream accounting courses.

What needs to be done? First, and most significantly, journal editors, department chairs, business-school deans, and promotion-and-tenure committees need to rethink the criteria for what constitutes appropriate accounting research. That is not to suggest that they should diminish the importance of the currently accepted modes or that they should lower their standards. But they need to expand the set of research methods to encompass those that, in other disciplines, are respected for their scientific standing. The methods include historical and field studies, policy analysis, surveys, and international comparisons when, as with empirical and analytical research, they otherwise meet the tests of sound scholarship.

Second, chairmen, deans, and promotion and merit-review committees must expand the criteria they use in assessing the research component of faculty performance. They must have the courage to establish criteria for what constitutes meritorious research that are consistent with their own institutions' unique characters and comparative advantages, rather than imitating the norms believed to be used in schools ranked higher in magazine and newspaper polls. In this regard, they must acknowledge that accounting departments, unlike other business disciplines such as finance and marketing, are associated with a well-defined and recognized profession. Accounting faculties, therefore, have a special obligation to conduct research that is of interest and relevance to the profession. The current accounting model was designed mainly for the industrial era, when property, plant, and equipment were companies' major assets. Today, intangibles such as brand values and intellectual capital are of overwhelming importance as assets, yet they are largely absent from company balance sheets. Academics must play a role in reforming the accounting model to fit the new postindustrial environment.

Third, Ph.D. programs must ensure that young accounting researchers are conversant with the fundamental issues that have arisen in the accounting discipline and with a broad range of research methodologies. The accounting literature did not begin in the second half of the 1960s. The books and articles written by accounting scholars from the 1920s through the 1960s can help to frame and put into perspective the questions that researchers are now studying.

For example, W.A. Paton and A.C. Littleton's 1940 monograph, An Introduction to Corporate Accounting Standards, profoundly shaped the debates of the day and greatly influenced how accounting was taught at universities. Today, however, many, if not most, accounting academics are ignorant of that literature. What they know of it is mainly from textbooks, which themselves evince little knowledge of the path-breaking work of earlier years. All of that leads to superficiality in teaching and to research without a connection to the past.

We fervently hope that the research pendulum will soon swing back from the narrow lines of inquiry that dominate today's leading journals to a rediscovery of the richness of what accounting research can be. For that to occur, deans and the current generation of academic accountants must give it a push.

Michael H. Granof is a professor of accounting at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Stephen A. Zeff is a professor of accounting at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University.

March 18, 2008 reply from Paul Williams [Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]


Steve Zeff has been saying this since his stint as editor of The Accounting Review (TAR); nobody has listened. Zeff famously wrote at least two editorials published in TAR over 30 years ago that lamented the colonization of the accounting academy by the intellectually unwashed. He and Bill Cooper wrote a comment on Kinney's tutorial on how to do accounting research and it was rudely rejected by TAR. It gained a new life only when Tony Tinker published it as part of an issue of Critical Perspectives in Accounting devoted to the problem of dogma in accounting research.

It has only been since less subdued voices have been raised (outright rudeness has been the hallmark of those who transformed accounting into the empirical sub-discipline of a sub-discipline for which empirical work is irrelevant) that any movement has occurred. Judy Rayburn's diversity initiative and her invitation for Anthony Hopwood to give the Presidential address at the D.C. AAA meeting came only after many years of persistent unsubdued pointing out of things that were uncomfortable for the comfortable to confront.

Paul Williams
paul_williams@ncsu.edu 
(919)515-4436

Bob Jensen's threads on these matters are at the following links:

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#Replication

“An Analysis of the Evolution of Research Contributions by The Accounting Review: 1926-2005,” by Jean Heck and Robert E. Jensen, Accounting Historians Journal, Volume 34, No. 2, December 2007, pp. 109-142.

This citation was forwarded by Don Ramsey
"Why business ignores the (research of) business schools," by Michael Skapinker, Financial Times, January 7, 2008

Chief executives, on the other hand, pay little attention to what business schools do or say. As long ago as 1993, Donald Hambrick, then president of the US-based Academy of Management, described the business academics' summer conference as "an incestuous closed loop", at which professors "come to talk with each other". Not much has changed. In the current edition of The Academy of Management Journal.

. . .

They have chosen an auspicious occasion on which to beat themselves up: this year is The Academy of Management Journal's 50th anniversary. A scroll through the most recent issues demonstrates why managers may be giving the Journal a miss. "A multi-level investigation of antecedents and consequences of team member boundary spanning behaviour" is the title of one article.

Why do business academics write like this? The academics themselves offer several reasons. First, to win tenure in a US university, you need to publish in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. Accessibility is not the key to academic advancement.

Similar pressures apply elsewhere. In France and Australia, academics receive bonuses for placing articles in the top academic publications. The UK's Research Assessment Exercise, which evaluates university research and ties funding to the outcome, encourages similarly arcane work.

But even without these incentives, many business school faculty prefer to adorn their work with scholarly tables, statistics and jargon because it makes them feel like real academics. Within the university world, business schools suffer from a long-standing inferiority complex.

The professors offer several remedies. Academic business journals should accept fact-based articles, without demanding that they propound a new theory. Professor Hambrick says that academics in other fields "don't feel the need to sprinkle mentions of theory on every page, like so much aromatic incense or holy water".

Others talk of the need for academics to spend more time talking to managers about the kind of research they would find useful.

As well-meaning as these suggestions are, I suspect the business school academics are missing something. Law, medical and engineering schools are subject to the same academic pressures as business schools - to publish in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and to buttress their work with the expected academic vocabulary.

March 17, 2008 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

In response to Don Ramsay's quote from the Skapinker article: "The reason that real-life lawyers, doctors and engineers have no problem with their [respective academics'] research is not because they are smarter than business people, but because their research assists them in what they do" ---

So the problem is that business professors are not publishing studies that are relevant to what the business practitioners need? Our research doesn't assist our practitioners in what they do? Hmmmm.

Question: could the problem (IF it's a problem) be traced back, beyond the business professors, to the "gatekeepers" (read: reviewers and editors) who control the publishing arm of the field? Could it be that professors really are interested in engaging in relevant and applicable research, but this stuff never gets publishined in the "journals that count" because the *criteria* used by reviewers (to judge whether the work is acceptable for publication) is fatally flawed?

This is in the front of my mind because I am revising one more time a paper in which the reviewers say the paper is "interesting", "intriguing", "applicable", "enlightening","revelant to practice", "could materially improve" accounting education, and even "is well-written", ... but they then condemn the paper to rejection or revision saying "it needs more thorough development of theoretical underpinnings", in other words, more Greek letters and diagrams with arrows. The ideas in this paper won a national award in a practitioner journal, but academic reviewers repeatedly reject it, even when it's explained in a way designed to directly assist educators.

My post here isn't the sour grapes it sounds like... I don't mind playing the game now and then (and although I'm at the point where one more pub isn't worth too much effort anymore, I honestly enjoy the exercise). But I figured that perhaps flawed publication criteria might indeed be responsible for the observed effect of business practitioners (and accountants in particular) ignoring academic publishing. Just another thought.

This begs the next question: what SHOULD be the criteria used for academic publishing? (criteria is plural, by the way...)

Another paper tiger from...

David Fordham
James Madison University

White Collar Fraud Site --- http://www.whitecollarfraud.com/
Note the column of links on the left.
 

Experts vs. Amateurs Searching the Web
The credibility war rages on in the world of Web 2.0. Those who say information provided by Internet research tools needs to be vetted have made their case in several ways. Knol, for example, appears to be Google's answer to Wikipedia. And for now, while the project is under development, authors can contribute content by invitation only. The plan is to let users rank the wheat among the chaff; the highest-ranking articles would pop up first in a Google search. A clear example is Mahalo. It's essentially a search engine run by staff members, who hand-pick links for popular search terms. That's a familiar concept for academic libraries. There is resistance to the idea that experts have lost their place in the indiscriminate, user-generated Web 2.0. John Connell, an education-business manager at Cisco Systems, writes in his blog that experts and laymen can coexist on the Web: "We are not dealing with a zero-sum game of any kind -- the rise of one source of information does not (necessarily) cause the dissipation of another. Why then do those who espouse the ‘cult of the expert,’ for want of a better term, feel it necessary not just to have access to the authoritative information (in their terms) that they seek, but to deny those who want access to the ... trivial information they want? "It is elitism, pure and simple." The question is, do users need someone else to filter information for them? We know from past reports that the "Google Generation" has a hard time sorting the relevant from the trivial. But isn't it better to teach them how?
Hurley Goodall, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2818&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on how experts/scholars search the Web are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Scholars

Subject: Accountancy Business and the Public Interest Journal

I am writing to encourage you and your colleagues to submit papers to “Accountancy Business and the Public Interest”. It is a free online peer reviewed journal published by the Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs (http://www.aabaglobal.org. The journal is well established and publishes papers on a variety of topics to stimulate debates and develop alternative public policies.

Details of the editorial policies, how to submit papers and previous editions are available on

http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/aabajournalpage.html

I very much hope that you and your friends will submit papers.

Regards
 
Prem Sikka
Professor of Accounting
University of Essex
Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ
UK
Office Tel:   +44(0)1206 873773
Office Fax:  +44 (01206) 873429
Mobile: 07866 139390
AABA Website: http://www.aabaglobal.org
Tax Justice Network: http://www.taxjustice.net
The Tribune - The Thinking Person's Paper: http://www.tribweb.co.uk

 

On blogs and Web sites, by e-mail and video, the Iraq war is fought on the Internet
U.S. soldiers return from battle to their rooms or tents, boot up their laptops and log on to let their friends and family know they've made it through another day. If their base is large enough, the Internet service provider offers broadband, and they can make a video call home, watch news reports on the war or post their own versions of life in Iraq to their blogs. ''I blog for the same reasons soldiers wrote letters and diaries during previous wars: to communicate with family and friends, (and) to maintain an honest record of our daily existence,'' wrote 1st Lt. Matt Gallagher, in response to an e-mail about his blog http://kaboomwarjournal.blogspot.com . ''Blogging is simply a 21st century tool for a new generation of soldiers to utilize.''
MIT's Technology Review, March 18, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/20427/?nlid=945

Bob Jensen's threads on listservs and blogs are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm

Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace
The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry. Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border. A final decision on salmon fishing in the area is expected next month.
Felicity Barringer, The New York Times, March 16, 2008 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/science/earth/17salmon.html

OECD Statistics Portal --- http://www.oecd.org/statsportal/0,2639,en_2825_293564_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics

From the Unknown Professor's Financial Rounds Blog on March 16, 2008 --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

Rankings of Finance Doctoral (and other finance) Programs

Because I'm one of the few bloggers who regularly write about the life of a finance professor, I get about a dozen questions a month from people considering a PhD in finance (Note: if you're interested, you can read about a finance professor's typical day here and here, and about what's involved in getting a PhD in finance here).

The emails are one of the more surprising and most enjoyable things about writing the blog, and at least a couple of the folks who've sent me questions are currently in PhD programs. I look forward to seeing how their careers progress, knowing I may have played some small part it them.

Some of the most frequent questions I get are along the lines of "How do I find out how well respected University X's finance doctoral program is?" or alternately, "Where can a get a list of rankings of finance doctoral programs?"

I should have done this some time ago, but I'm a bit slow at times. But, since Unknown Daughter and She Who Must Be Obeyed are out to a classmate's birthday party, and Unknown Son is entranced by a Harry Potter movie, this seems like a good time to spent a little time on the Almighty Google. Here are the results:
 
  • Karolyis and Silvestrini have a piece on SSRN titled "Comparing the Research Productivity of Finance PhD Program Graduates" here
  • Jean Heck has a similar piece titled "Establishing a Pecking Order for Finance Academics: Ranking of U.S. Finance Doctoral Programs here. Both it and the Karolyi/Silvestrini piece analyze productivity on the basis of the author's doctoral-granting program, but this one lists a few more doctoral programs than the other piece. So, it might yield some possibilities for those looking for less selective programs.
  • Finally, Arizona State has a ranking of finance departments (which may or may not have doctoral programs) here, while EconPhD has a similar one covering several finance areas here.
Hopefully, these will prove useful. If any of you are aware of any other rankings that are relatively recent (i.e. done in the last 4-5 years or so), let me know and I'll update the list.

Do those dubious college rankings really matter?

"Resigned Over Rankings," by Rob Capriccioso, "Inside Higher Ed, April 19, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/04/19/dean

In 2002, the University of Houston Law Center was ranked 50th in the U.S. News & World Report annual law school rankings.

Today, it’s ranked number 70.

Some faculty members and students at the institution believe that the downward slide may have been the cause of Monday’s resignation of Nancy Rapoport, the center’s dean since 2000. Others say that notion — and the rankings themselves — are phooey.

“After six years as dean, I don’t think this is a really big deal,” says Michael A. Olivas, a law professor at Houston and director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the school. “There is a shelf life for deans, you know. These rankings are definitely not how I measure the success of a dean.”

But, according to students who attended a faculty member meeting last