Bob Jensen's Tidbits

Reader's Digest:
You sound like the dying Lou Gehrig, when he said farewell to his fans and fellow players in Yankee Stadium and called himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Pausch:
I am the luckiest. It rips my heart that my kids won't have a dad. But it's not the years. It's the mileage. I wouldn't choose to die at 47, but I've had a hell of a life.

From Carnegie-Mellon University --- http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/innovation/2008/spring/randy-pausch.shtml

Last Lecture Becomes Book

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor and alum who has become world-famous for his last lecture "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," has expanded his popular talk into a book.

"The Last Lecture" is published by Hyperion and was co-written with Jeff Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal, who also happens to be a Carnegie Mellon alum.

Pausch, a 47-year-old married father of three who has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, discusses the book in an ABC News Special with Diane Sawyer to air April 9 at 10 p.m.

In the book, Pausch delves deeper into the stories of his life with the hope that his children can apply the lessons he's learned to their own lives when they get older.

Pausch is co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center and regarded as a pioneer in computer science education for leading researchers in the creation of Alice. The video of his last lecture has been viewed on the Internet by millions worldwide, and appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC's Good Morning America and the CBS Evening News have since followed.

Co-author Zaslow will visit Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus next week, presenting a talk about the book. The discussion is scheduled for April 14 at 4:30 p.m. in the Chosky Theater. Beginning at 3 p.m., books will be sold outside the theater.

The University Bookstore is offering a 30 percent discount on pre-orders of the book and a 35 percent discount on the audio version.

April 9, 2008 reply from Linda Marquis [marquis@NKU.EDU]

You can order a DVD of The Last Lecture (not the book) here: https://www.randypauschdvd.com/

I believe they are on backorder, but at $7 it’s a bargain.

Linda

The DVD includes Randy's lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," delivered on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as information about several of his projects and achievements at Carnegie Mellon University. The price of the DVD covers the cost of production, shipping and handling. The DVD, however, is not an audio version of his book.

Questions
Where did Professor Pausch dictate his last and final book?
How did he and his wife have an earlier near-death experience about ten years ago?

Answer
He dictated the book on the seat of a bicycle into a cell phone in his helmet on 53 bike rides.
His earlier near death experience, about ten years ago, was in a rather foolish hot air balloon ride on his honeymoon.

"Many Happy Returns," by Randy Pausch, Reader's Digest, May 2008, pp.197-199 ---
www.rd.com/celebrities/unforgettable-characters/a-fathers-farewell/article55735-2.html

It was our wedding day. Bliss was ours. And then we climbed into a balloon.

Jai and I were married under a 100-year old oak tree on the lawn of a famous Victorian mansion in Pittsburgh. It was a small wedding, but I was a 37-year old bachelor when I first met this beautiful woman in the fall of 1998. She was 31 then and a grad student in comparative literature.

. . .

We did not leave the reception in a car with cans rattling from the rear bumper. We did not climb into a horse-drawn carriage. No, we got into a huge, multicolored hot air balloon that whisked us off into the clouds as our friends and loved ones waved up to us, wishing us bon voyage.

. . .

We had also taken off a little later than scheduled, and the ballooner said that could make things harder. And the winds had shifted. "I can't really control where we go. We're at the mercy of the winds," he said.

. . .

As he started descending fast, I looked down at the field. It appeared to be fairly large, but there was a train track at the edge of it. My eyes followed the track. A train was coming.

. . .

"When this thing hits the ground, run as fast as you can," the ballooner said. These are not the words most brides dream about hearing on their wedding day. In short, Jai was not longer feeling like a Disney princess. And I was already seeing myself as a character in a disaster movie,

. . .

"Boom! We crash landed in the field. The basket took a hard hit, hopped a few times, bouncing us all around, and then tilted almost horizontally. Within seconds, the deflating envelope draped onto the ground, But luckily, it missed the moving train.

Continued in article

"A Father's Farewell," by Jesse Kornbluth, Reader's Digest, May 2008, pp. 188-196 ---
http://www.rd.com/celebrities/unforgettable-characters/a-fathers-farewell/article55735.html

With his life drawing to a close, Randy Pausch reveals in an interview and a book excerpt what matters most. By Jesse Kornbluth.

Dealing with Bad News Many colleges ask beloved professors to give their version of a "last lecture"-what they'd say if they were summing up a lifetime of learning and teaching. But at Carnegie Mellon University on September 18, 2007, Randy Pausch gave a last lecture unlike any other. A year earlier, he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a deadly, fast-moving disease. And just weeks before the lecture, he'd learned that cancer had attacked his liver and spleen. The prognosis: Randy Pausch had less than six months to live.

For most people with three children under six, that death sentence would have killed all optimism. But in his talk, the distinguished professor of computer science, human-computer interaction, and design touched only briefly on his achievements, most notably as founder of the Alice Project, which lets young students tell their stories in three dimensions (it's named for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland). Pausch acknowledged his disease but refused to dwell on it. Instead, he delivered a stunningly upbeat, joke-filled lecture about the importance of achieving your childhood dreams, managing time, and, above all, loving every minute of life.

Millions have watched his lecture on the Web or television. Now Pausch has written a new book, The Last Lecture, which expands on those thoughts (see our excerpt, page 197). In a revealing interview with Reader's Digest in mid-February, while he was still feeling well, Pausch talked about that book, his three kids-Dylan, Logan, and Chloe-and his unflagging spirit.

RD: On August 15, 2007, your doctors told you that you had three to six months to live. Six months later, you're still here. How are you feeling? Pausch: Quite good, thanks. I've lived a year and a half after my original diagnosis. In the world of pancreatic cancer, that makes me a rock star.

RD: What about the ten tumors you have? Pausch: My doctors and I have managed to keep them the same size for six months. That's not unheard-of, but it's lucky.

RD: "Managed" tells me that "lucky" isn't the only explanation. You are, after all, a scientist-a believer in experimentation. Pausch: Right. I started with surgery, then I went to Houston for a brutal protocol of chemotherapy and daily radiation. I was part of a clinical trial at M. D. Anderson that was based on work done at Virginia Mason in Seattle. By the end, I could barely walk.

RD: So what's the revised prognosis? Pausch: About a month ago, the new treatment started to fail. I am, not metaphorically, living on borrowed time. Success is measured in months for me. When my health fails, it will fail quickly. Tumors grow on an exponential curve.

RD: Do you have a "typical day"? Pausch: Not anymore. I have three small children. I play with them as much as I can. Chemo days make me tired, though it's hard to say that's because of the chemo when you have kids who have inherited their dad's usual energy level. Right now, me walking at sea level is like you walking at 5,000 feet. But that's a small price to pay.

RD: What have you told the kids? Pausch: Nothing. The experts have been vehement about this point: Until I'm very ill, not a word. We've been told, "Adults can't handle that you look great and will die soon-how can kids?" But this cancer isn't a pretty way to go. Eventually I'll get jaundiced, and then it will be apparent to my oldest child [Dylan]. My two youngest children [Logan and Chloe] won't understand. But there's no dancing around the fact that Daddy's going. I haven't figured out how I'm going to minimize that.

RD: You've had an amazing career, yet you don't seem to be thinking at all about your work. Pausch: Yes and no. One thing [my wife] Jai and I learned is that the right amount for me to work wasn't zero. An hour a day at work makes the other hours better.

RD: Why would you use that hour to write a book? Pausch: My wife really wanted me to do it. She saw it as something from me to the kids. And it took no time away from them.

RD: How so? Pausch: I had to ride my bike for an hour every day. As I rode, I would talk on my helmet-mounted cell phone to [co-author] Jeffrey Zaslow and tell him stories of my life. Fifty-three bike rides and I was done.

. . .

RD: Any other lessons along the way? Pausch: Make clear that people understand what your circumstances are. And looking for pity-that's a mistake.

RD: How important is humor? Pausch: Everybody makes their own choices. When we got the news that the cancer had metastasized, Jai and I cried and held each other. Then we made a pact: We're going to laugh. And we do laugh. A lot. We joke about the cancer. And everything else.

RD: In your book, it's striking how your friends treat you. "Saint Randy" gets no respect. Pausch: When I went scuba diving with old friends, one of them said, "Don't bother putting sunscreen on Randy." Humor is one of the greatest gifts our species has been given. To lose it would be terrible.

. . .

Reader's Digest:
You sound like the dying Lou Gehrig, when he said farewell to his fans and fellow players in Yankee Stadium and called himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Pausch:
I am the luckiest. It rips my heart that my kids won't have a dad. But it's not the years. It's the mileage. I wouldn't choose to die at 47, but I've had a hell of a life.

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- WOW -- What A Ride!
Author unknown

Tidbits on April 15, 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

Access many library videos as well as books --- http://www.imls.gov/collections/index.htm

Vietnam Veterans Memorial (interactive) --- http://go.footnote.com/thewall

Government Secrets Closely Guarded in Iron Mountain, Pennsylvania --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aou6c2MOmg

Watch Boeing build a 777 --- http://www.nmedia.com/777-200LR_Boeing.wmv

Air Drop Bloopers Video --- http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/04/video-air-drop.html
One looks like a Texas Aggie parachute that opens on impact.

Dumb Blonde Video --- http://www.funnieststuff.net/viewmovie.php?ad_key=KITEYUCVDOTF&tracking_id=932824&id=767

Winning Tax Laugh Video --- http://www.youtube.com/turbotax

Biology Browser: Teaching Resources --- http://www.biologybrowser.org/bb/Subject/Education/Biology_Teaching_Resources/index.shtml

The Missing Link (history and science) --- http://missinglinkpodcast.wordpress.com/

Global Canopy Programme (geology and climate) --- http://www.globalcanopy.org/

The International Monetary Fund and Civil Society --- http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/cs/eng/index.htm

Accountancy standard setting video links forwarded by Jeff Jacobs [jeffjacobs@smartpros.com]

Bob Herz on the complexity of accounting standards http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYmAY5dUS4

Colleen Cunningham on the momentum toward IFRS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFAzrMK1YXY

Link forwarded by Naomi Ragen in Israel in a message to Jews
Comedian Jackie Mason's not-so-funny video on snippets of sermons across 20 years --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ5c6hxqXq4&feature=user
Naomi also sent this LiveLeak "Kill Them to the Last One" video link --- http://www.fitnathemovie.info/videos.php

On April 4, 2008, at a Los Angeles event commemorating the assassination of Martin Luther King, the African-American fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi gave Israeli-American Daphna Ziman its Tom Bradley Award for community service. Then the event's keynote speaker, Reverend Eric Lee, turned to Ms. Ziman and launched an anti-Semitic diatribe. Roger L. Simon interviewed Ms. Ziman.
Watch the Video --- http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/reverend-eric-lees-anti-semitism-a-personal-story-video/

With so many online videos to choose, from here are some cool finance videos that will liven the classroom. I would definitely recommend buying the actual video whenever possible. They are all very good! In the 20th year of the movie Wall Street, it only seems fitting to give a short clip from the movie. Here is "The Greed Speech." Most know of the speech, not everyone knows it is based on an actual commencement address by Ivan Boesky.
You can view these video clips in the April 8. 2008 module in Jim Mahar's blog --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

Charlton Heston --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlton_Heston

Slide Show Tribute (to Garth Brooks Looking Back) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H9YFYLF7Eg
Slide Show Death Announcement --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDodY6FQNFs
Slide Show Tribute --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMUDT1dowhY
Clips from his greatest films --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtC42KkHWEM
Ben Hur --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVMf0zcR-Q
Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nonx0JmrcQ
Michael Moore's Negative Tribute --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5j-l0fnT4Y
Red State Update's Tribute To Charlton Heston --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEYVxKS07Mw

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

Frank Newsome leads the congregation at the Little David Church in Hayside, Va. Old Regular Baptists, they sing the way people sang when they first came to the American colonies: without instruments or notation, and following their leader line by line. It's called lined-out hymnody, and people outside the southern Appalachian Mountains rarely hear it. One of the songs Newsome sings at services is a hymn about longing for heaven, called "Beulah Land." --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89349054

This is Unbelievable: I now believe in reincarnation!
Discovered singing on a Seattle street, Vince Mira, 15, is a somewhat shy kid who looks uncomfortable during a TV interview. But when he steps up to the microphone to sing Johnny Cash's classic "Ring of Fire," the result is downright spooky. He performs the song in this Good Morning America segment ---
Ring of Fire --- http://www.katu.com/home/video/11944831.html?video=pop&t=a

On the Ellen Show --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hHJTZVS-xQ
In Concert --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6mZhez-Qo4
Juany Cash --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNLQeYwsUeI
I Was the Train --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfuPIwjojbY
Ring of Fire --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF5bwderMAo

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

Photographs and Art

Vietnam Veterans Memorial (interactive) --- http://go.footnote.com/thewall

Winslow Homer: Behind the Scenes art history) --- http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/homer

How to Paint the Mona Lisa with MS Paint --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2sPl_Z7ZU

Book Autopsies --- http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/921-brian-dettmers-insanely-creative-book-autopsies

iPhoto Forum --- http://iphotoforum.com/

Top 10 Wired Magazine reader photos --- http://www.wired.com/culture/art/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_top_10_night_photos

"A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s," by Robert Leggat --- http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/

Cool Package Design --- http://www.superficialgallery.com/Emails/Amazing-Pictures/cool-packaging.htm

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

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck: The California Novels --- http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/
The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies --- http://www.steinbeck.sjsu.edu/home/index.jsp

Critical Postmodern Theory --- http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/

HAIKU for PEOPLE (by topical categories) --- http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/

From Rice University
The Wondering Minstrels (Poems) --- http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/

From the University of Toronto
Representative Poetry Online --- http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2909.html

Pride and Prejudice (hypertexted to a fault) by Jane Austen --- http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/pridprej.html

Serendipity Books --- Click Here

The Boox Review --- http://www.thebooxreview.com/

From the University of Oregon
An Online Repository of Works Printed in English Between the Years 1477 and 1799 --- http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/ren.htm

"A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s," by Robert Leggat --- http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/

What do Walt Whitman and Barack Obama have in common? They hold out "the possibility of transformative change," says Michael Robertson, a professor of English at the College of New Jersey and author of Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples.
Jennifer Howard, "A Poet's Spiritual Magnetismm," Chronicle of Higher Education The Chronicle Review, April 11, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i31/31b00801.htm

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
Author unknown

Here's one banker's idea of a journey
From the EDGAR Online Newsletter on April 8, 2007
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase is in the process of acquiring Bear Stearns along with the Fed's help. In 2007, his total compensation included a salary of $1,000,000, a bonus of $14,500,000 and stock and option awards. His other compensation included:
Answers:

A) Personal Use of Aircraft
B) Personal Use of Cars
C) Security Protection
D) Life Insurance Premiums
E) Non-Business Meals
F) All of the Above (this is the correct answer)

Iranian forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week. Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think. Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.
Sarah Baxter and Marie Colvin , "Iran joined militias in battle for Basra," London Times, April 6, 2008 --- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3690010.ece

The top two U.S. officials in Iraq accused Iran, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah Tuesday of fueling recent fighting in Baghdad, saying Tehran and Damascus were pursuing a "Lebanization strategy" in Iraq. "The hand of Iran was very clear in recent weeks," U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus, said at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Iran denies U.S. charges that it is stoking violence in Iraq and instead blames the bloodshed on the presence of 160,000 U.S. troops. But Petraeus told lawmakers that Iran's Qods Force and Hezbollah were funding, training, arming and directing renegade Shi'ite groups he blamed for recent deadly rocket and mortar attacks in the Iraqi capital. "Unchecked, the special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq," said the four-star general.
David Morgan, "US sees Iran, Syria "Lebanon" gambit in Iraq," Reuters, April 8, 2008 --- http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=119464

The success we are now achieving also has consequences far beyond Iraq's borders in the larger, global struggle against Islamist extremism. Thanks to the surge, Iraq today is looking increasingly like Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare: an Arab country, in the heart of the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims – both Sunni and Shiite – are rising up and fighting, shoulder to shoulder with American soldiers, against al Qaeda and its hateful ideology. It is unfortunate that so many opponents of the surge still refuse to acknowledge the gains we have achieved in Iraq. When Gen. Petraeus testifies this week, however, the American people will have a clear choice as we weigh the future of our fight there: between the general who is leading us to victory, and the critics who spent the past year predicting defeat.
Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Lindsey Graham, "Iraq and Its Costs," The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2008; Page A13 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120752308688293493.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Thanks to Our Military (slide show) --- Click Here
No Thanks to Our Military (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs
Also see http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=25942

The United States and Israel seek to pressure North Korea to cease its nuclear cooperation with Iran, which is one of the motives behind their agreement to disclose details on the air-force strike in Syria last September. According to foreign press reports, the strike targeted a nuclear installation built with North Korean assistance. According to information obtained by Washington and Jerusalem, North Korea transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran's secret nuclear arms program.
Barak Avid, "U.S., Israel concerned N. Korean nuclear know-how reached Iran," Haaretz, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/972211.html
Jensen Comment
How will President Obama reconcile his pledge for nuclear disarmament with his pledge to protect Israel from highest-technology weapons of mass destruction now that Iran is able to develop space weapons and has massive amounts of money to finance the research both in Iran and in North Korea? --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl32Y7wDVDs

Although talk of war with Iran has subsided somewhat, a French author has taken the prospect seriously enough to devote a whole book to a chilling, highly detailed look at how it might play out.In French, naturellement. But Forbes provides a good rundown, in English
Dan Dupont, Wired News, April 7, 2008 --- http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/04/war-with-iran-w.html

In one of three densely conceived, though, the author is careful to warn, utterly fictitious scenarios, President Bush launches Operation Boundless Fortitude after Iran's religious leader Ali Khameini announces baldly that his nation has manufactured weapons-grade fissionable material enriched to nearly 100% (in lieu of 5% enrichment for peaceful nuclear reactors).

In an effort to show the world that the U.S. has not been paralyzed by its disastrous adventure in neighboring Iraq, on Aug. 16, 2008, Bush orders a massive aerial bombardment, flights of Tomahawk cruise missiles streaking from submarines and naval warships to strike Iranian command and control centers, ministries, telecommunications facilities and Iranian air defenses, especially Russian-made TOR M-1 missile emplacements, while B-2 stealth bombers destroy all access to the subterranean enrichment facilities at Natanz.

American warplanes and missiles carefully avoid striking research reactors in Teheran and Ispahan as well as the nuclear reactor at Bousher--less than 100 kilometers from Kuwait--as well as the centrifuges themselves at Natanz in an effort to prevent the spread of radioactive material to nearby population centers. However, other missiles producing electromagnetic pulses do knock out virtually all of Iran's electric grid and computer systems.

By Sept. 4, less than three months after the first flight of Tomahawks, Iran is reduced to a state of near paralysis, unable in any sense to retaliate militarily, its entire economic infrastructure in shambles. The president's near-term goal is satisfied to the letter. But if you think that's the end, well then, read on.

Israel will "destroy" Iran if Tehran decided to launch a war against the Jewish state, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said today. The unusually harsh warning from Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, was delivered as the official visited his ministry's war room, which took part today in a massive, nationwide, weeklong drill that is set to include simulated chemical missile attacks on central Israel. "The Iranians won't rush to attack Israel, because they understand the significance such action would have and are well aware of our strength," Ben-Eliezer told reporters. "However, Iran continues to aggravate the situation by supplying arms to Syria and Hezbollah, and we must deal with this." The minister said this week's war drill "is not a meaningless spectacle or a fictional scenario. The future reality is likely to be a number of times harsher than that which we recognize now. We are confronted with a situation where the home front becomes the front line."
"Israel: We'll 'destroy' Iran Harsh warning as region under general war alert," WorldNetDaily, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60965
Jensen Comment
With Hezbollah and Hamas and even Syria at the end of its puppet strings, why would Iran ever attack Israel? Whereas America has no fanatical and suicidal puppets to fight its wars, Iran is ever so smart.

Michael Moore and the Students for a Democratic Society Issue a Call to Shut Down the Republican National Convention
To that end, we are calling on SDS chapters to both endorse and participate in a three-tiered system for disrupting the RNC on its opening day. At a gathering of over 100 anti-authoritarians from around the country in August of 2007 (facilitated by the Twin Cities based RNC Welcoming Committee), the following direct action strategy was adopted to shut down the RNC: "Tier 1: Blockade the Xcel Center - Establish 15-20 blockades utilizing a diversity of tactics, creating inner and outer rings around St. Paul's Xcel Center. Tier 2: Immobilize Delegates' Transportation - Immobilize the delegates' transportation infrastructure, including buses, bus depots, etc. Tier 3: Block Connecting Bridges - Block the five western bridges connecting the cities.
InforShop News, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20080328130926247
Jensen Comment
Yes, this is truly Michael Moore's definition of a democratic society. I found this link at his homepage.

In an open letter circulating the Internet, Mary Beth Brown, the author of "Condi: Life of a Steel Magnolia," writes that the ascension of Rice to her post answers the question of whether America is ready for a black president or a woman president."Interestingly, the Republican Party has already transcended the politics of gender and race by appointing one of the most talented African American women, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, as secretary of state," writes Brown. "As I write this letter to you, Condi Rice, not Hillary Clinton is America’s most powerful and respected woman. Condi has served America with honor and grace. And Condi Rice, not Barack Obama, is America's highest ranking African American official."
WorldNetDaily, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60957
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the meantime says thanks but no thanks and will not be a candidate in 2008 ---
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/07/rice_still_not_running_for_vp.html
Liberal writer John Nichols isn't buying her denial --- http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=307200

That's the meaning of Sunday's sacking of strategist Mark Penn from Hillary Clinton's campaign. In his noncampaign job with a PR firm, Mr. Penn had met with Colombia's ambassador to the U.S. to discuss the free trade agreement that President Bush sent to Congress yesterday. When word of that meeting leaked to a Wall Street Journal reporter last week, big labor went bonkers and Mrs. Clinton gave him the heave-ho despite more than a decade of loyal service. Maybe if Mr. Penn had called General David Petraeus a con man, he'd still have a job. Mr. Penn's dismissal follows the previous humiliation of Barack Obama's economics adviser, Austan Goolsbee, for telling Canadian diplomats that Mr. Obama's anti-Nafta talk was merely campaign jive. Mr. Goolsbee has since all but entered the witness protection program. The grownups in both campaigns realize that free trade is good for the country, yet they must take a vow of public silence.
"The New Liberal Taboo," The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2008; Page A20 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120761241405896581.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

On Friday, Smith had quit his job as an air-and-heating system repairman in preparation for his day in Laurens County court, where he today pleaded guilty to charges that he crashed his car after a night of drinking nearly two years ago at a Lake Greenwood bar and left his passenger, 27-year-old Jennifer Young Norris, pinned beneath the wreckage without calling anyone to help. Today, wearing an open-collared Oxford white dress shirt, the 34-year-old Greenwood man walked into the courtroom through the front doors where free people come and go, and left through a side door, escorted by men with badges, to begin the seven-year sentence Circuit Judge Wyatt Saunders imposed after Smith accepted a plea deal with the Eighth Circuit Solicitor's Office.
Eric Cohhor, "Man who left friend pinned in wreckage gets 7 years in prison," Greenville Online, April 7, 2008 ---
http://greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080407/NEWS01/80407065/1004/NEWS01
Jensen Comment
As the WSJ editors note, Ted Kennedy's sentence was much harsher. Instead of seven years he was punished with 40 years in the U.S. Senate for leaving his pregnant friend underwater at the scene.

Blondes are said to have more fun but it seems brunettes steal the hearts of billionaires.
"Brunettes more likely to bag billionaires," Metro, April 6, 2008 --- Click Here
Jensen Comment
Aren't most of the billionaires from nations that have few if any blondes.?

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Oprah announced on CNN’s “Larry King Live” on May 1, 2007, that she would officially endorse her longtime friend Barack Obama for the presidency (both attended Rev. Wright's Trinity Church in Chicago for years) — the first time she had ever thrown her support behind a political candidate. “I think that my value to him, my support of him, is probably worth more than any check,” Oprah told Larry King. At the time, Oprah did not indicate whether she would campaign for Obama. Almost instantly, Oprah’s popularity in America plummeted. An August 2007 CBS News poll showed only 61 percent of Americans were favorably disposed to her — a considerable drop of 13 percentage points from a similar survey conducted just seven months prior. An October 2007 Gallup/USA Today poll that showed Oprah with a slightly higher 66 percent favorability still reflected a drop. . . . But by the time Fox News/Opinion Dynamics asked Americans about their attitudes toward Oprah in a survey conducted about 10 days later, Dec. 18-19, Oprah’s favorability ratings had dropped even further — to 55 percent — the lowest level of favorability ever registered for Oprah in opinion surveys. Oprah’s negatives also spiked, with one in three respondents (33 percent) reporting unfavorable impressions of her. The results of a March 26, 2008, AOL Television popularity poll of television hosts reveal Americans may now embrace Ellen DeGeneres over Oprah by a wide margin. Forty-six percent of the 1.35 million people who participated in the poll said the daytime talk show host that “made their day” was Ellen, compared with only 19 percent who chose Oprah. Nearly half (47 percent) said they would rather dine with Ellen, compared with 14 percent who preferred Oprah.
Costas Panagopoulos, "Obama supporter Oprah takes a big dive," Politico, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9427_Page2.html

If the U.S. helps facilitate billions of dollars in business for Syria and builds up Damascus as the primary American ally in the Arab world in place of Saudi Arabia, the Syrians would be willing to discuss scaling back alliances with Iran and making peace with Israel, according to a senior Syrian official speaking to WND. The official said Syria recently conveyed this message to numerous visiting foreign dignitaries, including U.S. congressmen and Turkish mediators. He said Syria also demanded as a key condition for considering altering its alliances that the U.S. cease opposing Syrian influence in Lebanon.
Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily, April 6, 2008 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60901
Jensen Comment
America should consult Elliot Spitzer who can vouch for the fact that money alone cannot buy lasting love. Oil-starved Syria's offering an expensive one night stand. I hope President Obama doesn't buy into this expensive sham of diplomatic fun and games when he makes good on his plans to "negotiate" for peace in the Middle East.

It is this insistence on innocence that could turn out to be the most damaging aspect of the affair. While nobody has yet proved corruption, Mr. Ahern has clearly misrepresented the sources of some of the controversial payments, seems to have broken official regulations for receiving such funds and admitted shortcomings in paying taxes on them. It is Mr. Ahern's contradictory statements about his financial affairs that might have harmed him more than any underlying financial misconduct ever will. Had he come clean in September 2006, he might still be in power, with a fine record of achievement. While Mr. Ahern has helped to bring his country's economy into the 21st century, he failed to do the same for Ireland's political culture. The prospects for progress are dim. His chosen successor, Finance Minister Brian Cowen, and the rest of his party, still stand behind Mr. Ahern. They'd need to change more than they have if they want to restore the "benchmarks of honor" to public life.
Bruce Arnold, "Bertie's Fall from Grace." The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2008 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120752105666293425.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

She is trailing in a highly competitive contest against her male rivals, is occasionally covered in a condescending way and faces predictions that she'll be forced out of the race. Katie Couric understands what Hillary Clinton is going through. "I identify with her to a certain extent because we share a gender," the CBS anchor says. "I'm sensitive to coverage that can be very subtly stacked against her, maybe a headline that has a little more snarkiness about her. . . . I understand that kind of coverage because I've experienced it myself." After a rough 19 months since making the leap from "Today" superstardom to Walter Cronkite's old chair, Couric has been keeping a relatively low profile lately. But she has continued to work for the cause of improved treatment of cancer, the disease that claimed her husband, Jay Monahan, a decade ago and her sister Emily, a Virginia state senator who died in 2001.
Howard Kurtz, "For Couric, an Uphill March Third-Place Anchor Adjusts Her Role," The Washington Post, April 7, 2008; Page C01 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/06/AR2008040602314.html
Jensen Comment
I actually like watching Katie report the news, in part because I like to watch how she restrains her personal political biases and hatred for President Bush. Could it be something other than gender bias that hurts her Neilsen ratings. Could it be that liberals avoid CBS News due to anger over how and why Dan Rather was fired? Could it be that liberals prefer NBC's Brian Williams and Keith Olbermann because they do not hide their liberal biases? Could it be that most conservatives remember her outspoken liberal rants before she became the highest paid news anchor in history? Could it be that conservatives and independents who are not watching Fox News prefer ABC's more balanced political newscasting relative to both NBC and CBS? I think Katie is grasping for straws when she blames gender bias for her troubles.

Should wannabe teachers who fail the certification test three times be automatically certified anyway? Wo what if they can't read or write?
Every year, hundreds of would-be classroom teachers fail the MTEL, the Massachusetts Test for Education Licensure. According to Charles Glenn at the Boston University School of Education, independent evaluations of teacher tests like the MTEL put the skills required at the eighth- to 10th-grade level. Unfortunately, this is still too high for about 40 percent of the test takers each year. So last week, the Democrats of the Massachusetts Senate voted unanimously for a waiver program covering wannabe teachers who fail the test at least three times. Many of them would be allowed to teach ninth-grade English, for example, even after demonstrating that they couldn’t actually pass it. By the way, if you’re going to just give them waivers, why make the teachers take the test at all? Why humiliate these “education professionals” by forcing them to take - and fail - the test three times?
Michael Graham, "Three strikes and you’re in! Bad teachers waived around bases," Boston Herald, April 7, 2008 ---
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1085399

"We've already reached the dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," James Hansen, 67, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told AFP here. "But there are ways to solve the problem" of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which Hansen said has reached the "tipping point" of 385 parts per million. In a paper he was submitting to Science magazine on Monday, Hansen calls for phasing out all coal-fired plants by 2030, taxing their emissions until then, and banning the building of new plants unless they are designed to trap and segregate the carbon dioxide they emit. The major obstacle to saving the planet from its inhabitants is not technology, insisted Hansen, named one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2006 by Time magazine.
"Earth in crisis, warns NASA's top climate scientist," PhysOrg, April 7, 2008 --- http://physorg.com/news126761406.html
Jensen Comment
I can't for the life of me figure out why the United States is spending billions on non-solutions (e.g., ethanol) while the rest of the world is building clean and efficient nuclear power plants.

Lewis High was put on probation by Maryland school authorities last year for the high number of violent incidents reported there. Marietta English, the president of the Baltimore teachers’ union, said that the school has taken to not reporting incidents and not disciplining students for fear of being labeled “persistently dangerous,” a designation that would allow students to choose to go to other schools in the city.“They (high school students) know that there are no consequences for their behavior, so they are pretty much running the school,” English told NBC News. Berry agreed with English. “There are no consequences,” she said. “The students do whatever they want because they know nothing’s going to happen to them.”
Mike Celizic, "Teacher ‘petrified’ after being attacked by student," Today Show on MSNBC, April 10, 2008 --- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24047456/
Text and video available for a short time at the above site.

A mile-high tower will rise in a desert port town, and Americans will be helping to finance its £5 billion construction cost. It will rise in the town Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, halfway up the length of the Red Sea. At 5,250 feet, it will be twice the height of another tower being erected in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on the Persian Gulf. A few miles north up the Sea from Jeddah is Rabigh, where about 40,000 workers are constructing the world's largest petrochemical plant as part of King Abdullah Economic City, itself part of a $500 billion plan to turn Saudi Arabia into a "powerhouse" industrial giant. Other massive construction projects are underway in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf countries.
Edward Cline, "The New Pyramid Builders," Family Security Matters, April 8, 2008 --- http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/global.php?id=1387176

Literary hoaxes are almost as old as literature. Some have been inspired by poverty, others are simply pranks. Clifford Irving, who tried to publish a largely fabricated "autobiography" of Howard Hughes in 1971, received a six-figure advance for his book. He was one of the few hoaxers who went to jail for fraud. Last month, a young woman, Margaret Seltzer, who claimed in a new memoir to have been a foster child in the underworld of Los Angeles gangs, was exposed as an affluent, suburban graduate of an Episcopal private high school. To many of their perpetrators, a literary hoax is just a high-class practical joke, a way of bringing the literary world down a peg. "I wrote the book in a few weeks as a joke," said Magdalen King-Hall, author of "The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in the Year 1764-1765," published in 1926. "If I had realized that so many distinguished persons would take it seriously, I would have spent more time and pains on it."
Cynthia Crossen, "This Column Is Real, But Not All Authors Stick to the Truth," The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2008; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120752688255593701.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

A middle school in Portland, Maine is considering a proposal to provide birth control pills and patches to students as young as 11 years old. King Middle School launched a reproductive health program after five of the 135 students who visited the school's health center in 2006 reported being sexually active. The program already provides condoms to students, but the new proposal would expand this to include prescriptions for birth control pills and patches (which would then have to be purchased at a pharmacy). The contraceptives could be dispensed without the knowledge of parents, although written permission would be required for children to receive (unspecified) services from the health center.
David Gutirrez, "Maine Middle School May Drug 11 Year Old Girls with Birth Control Patches," Natural News, April 3, 2008 --- http://www.naturalnews.com/022934.html
Jensen Comment
I personally think it is a good idea but only if parents give permission beforehand for each daughter (not blanket approval). There is potential risk, however, of legal liability of the contraceptives don't work when parents relied upon the school or if students become ill from unknown causes and have activist lawyers.
Teen Births Rose in 2006 --- http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20080407/teen-births-rose-in-2006

Anglia Ruskin University, in Britain, has suspended a graduate student in business because of a critical video she posted on YouTube about her program, The Telegraph reported. University officials said her video was inaccurate and unfair, but she said that the university was violating her rights to free speech and trying to silence criticism
Inside Higher Ed, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/qt

An informal poll of 109 historians by the History News Network has found that 61 percent consider President Bush to be the worst president in American history. In addition, 98 percent of those surveyed rank the Bush presidency as a failure.
Inside Higher Ed, April 7, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/qt
Jensen Comment
I too would rank President Bush to be among the worst presidents in history, but my reasons are most likely completely the opposite of the mostly left-of-left history professors. President Bush has been a disaster for not having the courage to stand up against outrageous budgets passed by Republicans and Democrats in Congress over the past eight years on such items as Medicare drug entitlements and outrageous farm subsidies (e.g., ethanol). Watch the CBS Sixty Minutes television program interview with David Walker on the non-sustainability of the U.S. economy linked below.

Why this large tax increase? The tax code changes enacted in 2001 and 2003 are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. If they do, statutory marginal tax rates will rise across the board; ranging from a 13% increase for the highest income households to a 50% increase in tax rates faced by lower-income households. The marriage penalty will be reimposed and the child credit cut by $500 per child. The long-term capital gains tax rate will rise by one-third (to 20% from 15%) and the top tax rate on dividends will nearly triple (to 39.6% from 15%). The estate tax will roar back from extinction at the same time, with a top rate of 55% and an exempt amount of only $600,000. Finally, the Alternative Minimum Tax will reach far deeper into the middle class, ensnaring 25 million tax filers in its web.
John R. Cogan and R. Glenn Hubbard, "The Coming Tax Bomb," The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2008; Page A21 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120761416279896669.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

"The Siren Song of Populism," by Lee Cary, American Thinker, April 8, 2008 --- http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/the_siren_song_of_populism.html

The day after William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” speech on July 8, 1896 (listen to Bryan recreate a portion of it years later here), the Democrats voted him their presidential nominee. He promised change.

“A man can be born again; the springs of life can be cleansed instantly…If this is true of one, it can be true of any number. Thus, a nation can be born in a day if the ideals of the people can be changed.”

He was a 36-years old former congressman from Nebraska, called “the boy Orator of the Platte,” born in Illinois in 1860. Democrat President Grover Cleveland didn’t favor his candidacy. Bryan favored Free Silver the controversial monetary issue of the day.

Richard Hofstadter, author of The American Political Tradition, wrote that Bryan,

“…emerg[ed] suddenly from obscurity at an hour when the people were in an angry mood, farming his message for a simple constituency nursed in evangelical Protestantism and knowing little literature but the Bible.” p. 183

Bryan was a Populist. Hofstadter wrote,

"Populism was the first modern political movement of practical importance in the United States to insist that the federal government has some responsibility for the common weal; indeed, it was the first movement to attack seriously the problems created by industrialism. The complaints and demands and prophetic denunciations of the Populists stirred the latent liberalism in many Americans and startled many conservatives into a new flexibility...The utopia of the Populists was in the past, not the future.” The Age of Reform, pp. 61-62

The politics of grievance and resentment live on. Instead of debtors agitating for monetary inflation to ease their burdens, identity politics has brought us a toxic blend of anger, resentment, and guilt. This time we’re offered a strong dose of collective, not individual, responsibility. The appeal may be eternal, but Americans have historically been less susceptible than other nations to the blandishments of Populists.

Bryan was also called “The Great Commoner.”

“The Commoner’s heart was filled with simple emotions, but his mind was stocked with equally simple ideas. Presumably he would have lost his political effectiveness if he had learned to look at his supporters with a critical eye, but his capacity for identifying himself with them was costly, for it gave them not so much leadership as expression. He spoke for them so perfectly that he never spoke to them. In his lifelong stream of impassioned rhetoric he communicated only what they already believed.” The American Political Tradition, p.187

In one of his current Pennsylvania campaign ads, Senator Barack Obama, casually dressed, walks through an abandoned, dilapidated factory, summoning the ghosts of a utopia perceived as lost by his followers - some felling victimized, others feeling guilty. And the Siren sings.

Bryan would be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908, in three failed attempts to become president. Wilson appointed him Secretary of State, but Bryan resigned when he felt Wilson was leading America into World War I.

Continued in article

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 was 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

Ernie Hanson (University of Wisconsin) informed me that David Walker resigned as Controller General effective March 12, 2008 and now is president and CEO of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
Here's the rest of the story

"You Can't Take It With You," by Peter Peterson, Newsweek, April 7, 2008, Page 56 --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/129572

The turning point in my life came before I was born. It was the day in 1912 when my Greek immigrant father came to America. He came as a teenager, without a penny or a word of English, and with only a third-grade education.

He took a job as a railroad dishwasher. He worked, ate and slept in a steaming caboose and saved everything he made. With his savings he opened a restaurant, and kept it open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 25 years in my hometown of Kearney, Neb. His hard work and thrift gave me extraordinary opportunities. Had I been born in a different country, at a different time, I would never have had the chances that gave me such good fortune.

I have lived the American Dream—I went to college, worked in the corporate world, served in government and became an investment banker. And that led to a second turning point, on June 21, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. That was the day the Blackstone Group—a private-equity, asset-management and financial-advisory firm that I cofounded—went public. In an hour I became an instant billionaire.

What to do with so much money? I have much more than enough, and there seems little prospect that I can take it with me. So again I turn to my father's example. When he had built a modest net worth, he gave generously to his old home in Greece and to the less fortunate in his beloved new home. Tears would come to his eyes when he sang "God Bless America." He so loved America for its possibilities.

I believe today that those possibilities are shrinking, endangering the American Dream. Personal myopia, political cowardice, fiscal fantasy and journalistic neglect are all at work. So I have chosen to put much of my wealth ($1 billion over the next several years and much of my remaining estate) into a new foundation, one that I hope will explain the undeniable, unsustainable and yet politically untouchable long-term challenges we face. Headed by The Honorable David M. Walker, who served as the comptroller general of the United States from 1998 to 2008, the foundation will propose workable solutions and build up the public will to put them into effect. I cannot think of anything more important than trying in this way to preserve the possibilities of the American Dream for my children's and grandchildren's generations, and generations yet to come.

Let me summarize three such challenges. First, as 78 million baby boomers reach retirement age, the costs of Social Security and Medicare will skyrocket, leaving us with unfunded promises of more than $44 trillion in today's dollars—equal to about three times our entire gross domestic product. Income taxes would have to double to pay for it—an unthinkable burden.

Second, our current-account deficits are unprecedented, fed by record trade deficits. Such dependence on foreign capital is dangerous. America as a country, and Americans as a people, must be persuaded to save more.

Third, our health-care costs are metastasizing. We already spend more than twice as much per capita as other developed nations, with no appreciable differences in health outcomes or longevity. These ballooning costs threaten the very competitiveness of American industry.

These challenges all require sacrifice. That means everyone. We fat cats will have to pay more taxes. The government will have to spend less. Everyone will have to save more. I'm not sure if we remember how to give up something for the long-term general good. Nor do we hear calls for sacrifice from our leaders. Our lawmakers are enablers, either joining us in the state of denial or trying to anesthetize us. But if we can learn to face the future realistically, everyone will benefit from a more robust, sustainable economy.

The "Greatest Generation" that lived through the Depression of the 1930s and World War II confronted, overcame and paid for challenges more sobering than those we face today. We can do it again. I refuse to believe that we have become so selfish and self-absorbed that we don't care about our children's future and America's leadership in the world.

How do we as a country, and Americans as a people, learn to save more and spend less? How do we educate the young about the crisis they will face if things aren't changed, and then move them to do something about it? Or will it take a real and very costly crisis to force us into action?

We need to go where the young people are: new media, bloggers, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, MTV, and networks and Web sites that have not even been invented, and that is what my foundation will try to do. We will sponsor the production of films that educate people about the perils America faces (I have been impressed with what Al Gore accomplished with "An Inconvenient Truth"). We will have youth summits to get young leaders engaged in the process. Maybe someone should develop an AAYP, an American Association of Young People, to counteract the lobbying power of the American Association of Retired Persons. There are, of course, many other groups we must reach. How best do we energize the business community? Tom Friedman of The New York Times called us MIAs, "missing in action" on these daunting challenges. We have a huge stake in tomorrow's economy. How do we convince the media that the future is worth covering?

These challenges have hung over our economy for years. Others have tried to sound the alarm. I know that the odds of success are daunting. Yet given what is at stake and what I owe this remarkable country, I, and we, have no alternative but to try. As we move forward, we need to remind ourselves of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was instrumental in the resistance movement against Nazism. "The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children," he said.

It is time we become moral and worthy ancestors.

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

Distance Education.org or DistanceEducation.Org is a Great Helper Site
Ben Pheiffer in San Antonio forwarded this link to a terrific listing (with pricing estimates) of online training and education degree programs and courses from respectable universities --- http://www.distance-education.org/Courses/

Both graduate and undergraduate degree programs are listed as well as training courses (some free).

I added to my listings of worldwide online training and education programs at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

My mom always told me I was in America and could marry any girl I please. As I grew older, I discovered I couldn't please any of them!
Unknown bachelor
As quoted below by David Fordham. I think Mickey Rooney said the same thing after after seven marriages. To his credit, he's still married to his eighth bride Jan Chamberlain --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Rooney#Marriages

"Just roommates: Colleges' final frontier: mixed-gender housing," by Peter Schworm, Boston Globe, April 2, 2008 --- Click Here

Now, some colleges are crossing the final threshold, allowing men and women to share rooms. At the urging of student activists, more than 30 campuses across the country have adopted what colleges call gender-neutral rooming assignments, almost half of them within the past two years.

Once limited to such socially liberal bastions as Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, and Oberlin College, mixed-gender housing has edged into the mainstream, although only a small fraction of students have taken advantage of the new policies so far. Clark and Dartmouth universities introduced mixed-gender rooms last fall, and Brown and Brandeis announced plans last month to follow suit.

The University of Pennsylvania, Skidmore and Ithaca colleges, and Oregon State University also allow roommates of different genders. Students at New York, Harvard, and Stanford universities, among many others, are calling for gender-blind dormitory rooms.

. . .

Supporters hail the trend as a key advance for homosexual and transgender students that eliminates a gender divide they see as outdated, particularly for a generation that has grown up with many friends of the opposite sex. Traditional rooming policies, they say, infringe upon students' rights and perpetuate gender segregation.

Continued in article

Dating Students May Be Roommates in Dorms

"Date Your Roommate? Oregon Colleges Allow Couples in Dorm Rooms," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, http://chronicle.com/news/article/4216/more-oregon-colleges-are-allowing-roommate-couples-in-dorms

At some Oregon universities, roommates are dating one another.

Actually, they started out dating and then became roommates, thanks to new policies that permit opposite-sex roommates in college dorms, The Oregonian reported.

Lewis and Clark University, Oregon State University, and Portland State University now allow opposite-sex roommates, and Willamette University and Reed College will try out the arrangement this fall, the Portland, Ore., newspaper said.

Colleges across the country, such as Wesleyan University and Haverford College, began experimenting with “gender neutral” dorm rooms several years ago.

Continued in article

April 3, 2008 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

Bob Jensen wrote: "I find it interesting that old men and old women cannot be roommates in nursing homes (unless married) but their great grandchildren have mixed-gender roommates in college. Do you ever think you grew up in the wrong generation?"
(supported with citations about universities adopting the trend) ----

Bob, the Campus Housing Offices which adopt this approach are displaying their naïveté and inexperience, and don't realize the trouble they are courting.

The concept of mixed-gender roommating (emphasis on MATING) overlooks the problems which college students have regarding relationship depth and duration. Living closely with someone, regardless of gender, is generally a new experience for many in today's generation who grew up with their own rooms, in some cases even their own playrooms, own bathrooms, and other personal domains.

Sharing a bedroom, or even a bathroom, with someone, anyone, can be stressful. Add onto this the extra pressure of hormonal influences -- plus the extra dimension of the societal expectations regarding different-gender cohabitation, and I believe you pass the threshold of acceptability in terms of distractions from the educational process. (My wife has in recent months discovered repeated studies which indicate that single-gender educational environments result in superior learning, understanding, comprehension, absorption, and application of knowledge.)

Adding one more distraction within the domain of "personal space" is something my students don't need.

That said, I'm not naive enough to think that hankypanky isn't already there and that major distractions and inter-gender stress aren't occurring. But the issue is one of the "loss of refuge" when the relationship goes sour. The domain of one's dorm room is at least somewhat sacrosanct. Here is a description of the problem which the residence administrator's are overlooking:

Johnnie and Sallie are "a couple" who register for my class together. They hold hands, rub legs together, sit close, and otherwise distract each other (and others, including me) in the classroom. Their relationship goes far beyond what normal roommates of the same gender experience. Okay, fine, such deep relationships are part of college. Fine. The real problem, however, commences when I form the class into groups. Johnnie and Sallie want to be in the same group. I allow self-selection into groups, because I use the actual act of group formation as an educational experience. Johnnie and Sallie end up in a group together. Everything works out great, until Johnnie and Sallie split up. Then all heck breaks loose.

They are in my office screaming (figuratively if not literally) their demand to be put in different groups because they can't work, let alone learn, in an environment containing their now-archnemesis. Because of the closeness of the relationship, the "breakup" is more traumatic than a typical roommmate spat.

Of course, my response is, simply, "no, sorry". The group is formed for the duration of the semester. (Just like in real life if you date someone in your office and break up, one of you is going to have to find other employment if you can't work with each other anymore. Quit. Leave. Or better yet, get over it, and learn to get along with your former partner.)

I spend countless hours every semester counseling former couples of what they can expect in real life.

I believe the residence administrative offices will be handling a significantly-increased load of "requests for roommate changes" compared to the present level. My point is, I don't believe they are eager to spend the time that I do handling the problem, because they don't see their job as whole-person educators the way I see mine. Most of them see their job as "managing housing". I can't imagine they see the increased workload as desirable. I believe they are overlooking something.

(My daughter right now is having trouble with her roommates -- all five of them are girls; just imagine what it would be like of two were girls and three were ex-boyfriends!

Again, I am not against pressure or distractions on my students. The need some of it to prepare them for life. But I am in favor of keeping the level of distraction and pressure to a manageable level. Inter-gender relationships are, in my experience, a HUGE burden which already has many students at the breaking point, and introducing inter-gender roommating (!) will probably be a straw that breaks the camel's back. I think the residence offices will quickly find themselves doing things they don't want to do. I see more broken students unable to cope with the added stress when the relationship goes south and they can't quickly and easily run away to their private space for recuperation.

David Fordham

My mom always told me I was in America and could marry any girl I please. As I grew older, I discovered I couldn't please any of them!
Unknown bachelor

April 4, 2008 reply from Patricia Doherty [pdoherty@BU.EDU]

I think this is another unfortunate consequence of the race for ratings. The schools want to please the students. Immature freshmen come in and "think" they "want" the freedom to have opposite-gender room mates. Some upperclassmen/women would like to room with their chosen partner. Few are really mature enough (I do say few - I'm sure some would handle it well) to deal with the long-range consequences. Haven't they watched any of the results of a messy divorce? Are they really so naive to think "This won't happen to me?" Apparently so. And the school makes another move to keep the ratings high, and buys into a barrel of trouble that I wouldn't want to take on in a million years. The students cannot begin to imagine how nice it is to have a place of your own to escape to, even if it is another room in the house with a door that closes! (And that from someone about to celebrate a 30th anniversary in a couple of weeks :) )

Pat

April 4, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Pat,

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell

Somewhere along the way we lost sight of the common fact that what teenagers and adults with teenage brains want the most is what they can't have and, if perchance they get it, they don't much want it anymore.

When I lived in Florida what my children wanted most were horses. So I bought them each a horse, paid for riding lessons, and kept the horses on the pasture beside our house.

It only took a few weeks until these were dad's horses. Actually I liked having the horses around and did not mind the daily chores that my kids pushed back on me.

Remember how dating was a highlight of our lives in high school and college. Now that they sleep, take showers, and whatever in their dorm rooms what's the incentive to date?

More importantly, does jealousy set in if suite mates decide to play the field a little bit?

Actually David is very perceptive. These young, probably pimply and horny, kids not yet 21 years of age really do not know how confining commitments of living together can become and how colleges just do not want to change room assignments every other week.

One thing for certain: In adult life my kids no longer have any desire for horses.

Bob Jensen

April 4, 2008 reply from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]

Bertrand Russell's views on sex would inform this debate. I was surprised to see he held such views back in the 30s. That man saw human nature very clearly (ah, I'm sure I say that because I agree with the way he saw things).

I really admire Russell.

April 4, 2005 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]

Amy, Bob, Patricia,

My first job after a masters degree was at a pulp & paper mill in a remote part of central India, and I had to work mostly in the forests inhabited by a tribe called Gonds/Murias.

They have a unique system for upbringing of children where they are educated through a system called ghotuls (http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/bastar/ghotul.htm).

Ghotuls are like hostels where adults are not allowed, the older kids are also teachers. Both sexes share the same living quarters (with no adult supervision), and there are no sexual inhibitions in the same way we have them. However, emotional attachments are forbidden.

However, it is a strictly monogamous society, and once they get married, adultery/promiscuity/... are strictly forbidden. Divorces are unknown, adultery extremely rare.

This tribe was studied by the well known Oxford educated anthropologist Verrier Elwin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verrier_Elwin). He was sent to India to convert the tribals into Christianity. The Muria society had such a dramatic impact on him that he immersed himself in the muria society, married a muria woman (later they were divorced, he moved to another part of India (Assam) and married an Assamese woman.

There in the Assam, he worked with the well known German/British anthropologist Christoph von Fuerer-Haimendorf in the study of a tribe named Nagas.

I have watched the ghotuls from outside. It is absolutely fascinating, and we have a lot to learn from them. At least, that is what Verrier Elwin thought; in fact he thought it was a society superior to ours.

Jagdish

--

Jagdish S. Gangolly,
Associate Professor
Department of Accounting & Law, School of Business
PhD Program in Information Science,
Department of Informatics College of Computing & Information
State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222.

Phone: (518) 442-4949

URL: http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly

Question
How close are some of the big time prostitutes to when they can get Medicare and Social Security?
How many degrees do some of them have?
Most importantly is this more lucrative than academe for those with doctoral degrees?
Even more importantly, is a doctoral degree value added in this oldest of professions?

April 10, 2008 message from Professor XXXXX

Bob,
In light of the recent string on this general subject, you may want to look at the story in today's Washington Post: More Former Call Girls Take Stand."

Jensen Comment
I'm sure we can think of some new acronyms for PhD, DBA, DCS, EED, and what have you, but I'm not going to touch those with a ten foot pole.

"More Former Call Girls Take Stand In Prostitution Trial, Witness With PhD Describes Illicit Activities for Upscale Firm," by Paul Dugan, The Washington Post, April 10, 2008, Page B04 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/09/AR2008040903903.html

In attempting to prove that former escort-service entrepreneur Deborah Jeane Palfrey was, in reality, an upscale pimp, prosecutors yesterday summoned seven more admitted ex-prostitutes to the witness stand in federal court in Washington -- not one of them as unlikely a call girl as Rhona Reiss, PhD.

"I got to the hotel," Reiss testified, describing one of "more than 100" sexual encounters she had with clients of Palfrey's firm. "He introduced himself and he sat down and took his pants off" and asked her to perform a sex act. "I did."

"How old are you?" Palfrey's attorney inquired.

"Sixty-three."

And how old was she when she took a job with Palfrey as a $250-an-hour escort, indulging the sexual fantasies of male clients in homes and hotel rooms in the Washington area?

"Fifty-six," Reiss said.

She studied occupational therapy as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, received a master's degree in the field from the University of Florida and a doctorate in higher education from the University of North Texas. She used to be director of education for the American Occupational Therapy Association.

"Her numerous career adventures include clinical and academic positions in Tokyo, Chicago, Sydney, Dallas and Washington, D.C.," the Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions said in a 2006 news release, announcing Reiss's appointment to the faculty as head of a graduate program.

Not listed among her career adventures was the position she accepted in February 2001 after answering a Washington City Paper ad for Palfrey's now-defunct escort business, Pamela Martin & Associates. In her application letter, Reiss, who now lives in Gaithersburg, touched briefly on her academic bona fides and highlighted her more relevant credentials: "fantastic smile, lovely breasts, very shapely legs."

"She said it was adult entertainment," Reiss told the jury, recalling her job interview with Palfrey. "She asked if I had done that sort of work before. I hadn't."

And so went another day of testimony in Palfrey's racketeering and money-laundering trial in U.S. District Court, another parade of erstwhile call girls, reluctant characters in a legal drama at once sad and comically absurd. Most spoke in monotones, some squirmed, a few dabbed at tears.

They are women conservatively attired for court and hardly resembling the glamour photos they mailed to Palfrey when they were looking for work in 1998, or 2003, or 1995.

Continued in article

Question
In some fields, certainly not accounting, there's a doctoral degree glut.
What is higher education's "academic underworld" amidst the Ph.D. glut?

Answer
In the worldwide suckers' market, gamblers are the only people who are slower to learn than young adults with master's degrees. Bright graduate students possess a pair of nonmarketable skills: the ability to write term papers and the ability to take academic exams. They are also economic illiterates and incurably naïve.... Those few Ph.D.'s who receive a full-time position at a university find that they are paid much less than tenured members of the department. They are assigned the lower-division classes, which are large. ... Those untenured faculty members who perform well in megaclasses are kept on until the day of reckoning: the decision to grant them tenure, usually eight years after they go on the payroll. They are usually not rehired unless they have published narrowly focused articles in professional journals. But megaclass professors do not have much time to do the required research. The assistant professor is now 35 years old or older. He has not made the cut. He is now relegated to the academic underworld: the community colleges....
Gary North, "In Academia, Big Brains, Empty Pockets," The New York Times, February 5, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/weekinreview/05read.html

Also see "The Ph.D. Glut Revisited" --- http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north427.html

Malicious Hackers Send Users College's Home Page to Porn Site: Some users who tried to view Blue Mountain
The incident happened while administrators were switching to a new Web address, bluecc.edu Malicious hackers hijacked the old address and set it so that users who had bookmarked the old address, or who found the site through a Google search, got a surprise, according to a report in the East Oregonian.
Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9. 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2886&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
The big question we're panting to have answered is whether applications went up or down in this era of mixed-gender housing!

Question
It frequently happens that you want to send or receive email attachments that are just too large to sent via email.
For example, my Christmas letter was a DOC file that contained so many pictures that I just could not send it via email to Kinkos for printing.
What are some of the free alternatives for doing transferring such files between friends or organizations?
What is this neat new thing called SideDrop?

Answer
You can read about alternatives for sending large files at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#SendingLargeFiles

I love the YouSendIt alternative and cannot explain why this valuable service is free --- http://www.yousendit.com/
It's a bit slower than attaching email, but that's because the files are so large.
For example, I told Jerry Searfoss he could send me the blueprints of his grand new house in Pullman via YouSendIt, and it worked.

YouSendIt just added a service called SideDrop --- http://www.yousendit.com/cms/SitedropTakeatourEmbed&s=13999?cid=sitedrp
You can watch a video at the above site that explains SideDrop. Even if you don't want to bother with SideDrop, YouSendIt is still a great service.

College Instructor Lecture Notes (unauthorized) and "Study Kits" and old exams are For Sale
The Einstein’s Notes (currently limited to Florida universities) homepage is at http://howigotana.com/

"Does Selling Lecture Notes Violate Professors' Copyrights? A University of Florida professor is suing a company that sells students’ lecture notes because he says the service infringes on his intellectual property rights," by Catherine Rampell, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 5, 2008 ---
Click Here

Jensen Comment
What strikes me as ironic if the instructor intentionally submits lecture notes and examinations simply as a device to get students to study. The unfortunate part about this is that this act contributes to the owners of the Eistein Notes fraud, but then again textbook prices in recent years are often viewed as frauds committed by oligopoly publishers.

"Does Selling Lecture Notes Violate Professors' Copyrights?" by Catherine Rampell , Chronicle of Higher Education, April 5, 2008 --- Click Here

A University of Florida professor is suing a company that sells students’ lecture notes because he says the service infringes on his intellectual property rights, Wired reports.

The company, Einstein’s Notes, pays students to take notes and create “Study Kits.” The company then sells the kits through its Web site.

A 1996 Florida lawsuit against another note-selling company was rejected by the courts. In the new case, however, the professor has copyrighted his lectures. Click here to see the full complaint

Comments

Most lecture notes are supplied buy book vendors anyway. These study guides are always within the students reach for free if they would only read the syllabus.

— Dr. Bill Apr 5, 11:35 PM #

Many students will pay for anything that promises them the “opportunity” to stop attending classes, in addition to the tuition they paid for the opportunity to attend classes in the first place. And because most of the note-takers do nothing more than copy the contents of the slides or overheads, such companies perpetrate one of the biggest rip-offs these students ever buy into during their time in college.

— Tom C. Apr 6, 12:34 AM #

If anyone should profit off of the lectures I put together it should be me. If the company wants notes they should ask me to do it and pay me for my intellectual property.

This is very different from notes produced by the textbook company. Besides I can assure you that those textbook companies hold the copyrights to those notes and would sue is someone began selling them (that was not them).

— GG Apr 6, 09:40 AM #

Copyrighting may be a good first step, but profs may also want to consider selling the notes themselves as part of a class package. Setting the price point is critical, so no secondary market competition can cut into one’s market share. Each semester or year there must be sufficient chage to require the most recent edition, as do the textbooks. Use the kitchen sink theory to your advantage! Put it all on a CD with a glitzy label. Give lots of quizzes on the stuff, thus requiring lots of attendance. You are sitting on a gold mine! Eureka already!

OTOH, how could class notes be sufficient to pass a course without attending, engaging and producing evidence of critical thinkng, either in writing or in discussion? To me, this is the far more burning question.

Greetings from the community college trenches…

— Peggy DeStefano Apr 6, 08:35 PM #

Copyright subsists in the form of words used. If the company paraphrases the notes, then would not copyright be averted, but not other IP rights?

— Dave Postles Apr 7, 05:22 AM #

Who is to say the good students do not annotate and supplement the lectures during their note taking, fill in the gaps of logic and reasoning which the professor glossed over in class. The same has occurred with many databases, where annotation was provided later, in many cases funded by either NSF or even NIH. Many professors, not all of course, just read the book and extract large portions from books and research articles. What is worse, any academics do not acknowledge their sources, which in an ethical sense is plagiarism. When I lecture and prepare lecture notes (which I provide free from the course website, they need to pay for the price of printing them out if they feel they are useful), I give reference, just like I do when I write a research prepare. I am sorry to have to admit it, but many academics lift a lot from sources and do not adequately attribute the work and effort (and copyright) to the REAL authors. To copy from a book onto a overhead or type in to a word document, does not make the work yours!!

Again, if the students annotate, add references, and add and fill in details, which I am sure the good students do, then the work is not the professors simple lecture, but a value added product. It is the same as the GUI of linux distributions. Most professors and lecturers are paid to present the information and now they want to be paid a second time, for doing a bad job. I think we all should provide FREE to all of the students registered in our courses, our ANNOTATED lecture notes, with complete references, sources and a complete bibliography of other sources. With the cost of education skyrocketing, so should the quality and performance. The quality and performance of our computers have gotten almost exponentially better, while the quality of a lot of university lectures appears to have gotten exponentially worse. So do our jobs and educate and train our students so that they can complete with the ever increasing number of Chinese, Indian and Europeans in our graduate schools. And by the way, India and China do not recognize our copyright laws. The Indian and Chinese so-called International editions of our texts make the work of our top academics more available to their students than our own!! With record increases in tuition and less and less financial aide, we need to help our student by providing free top quality annotated lecture notes and not add yet another barrier fro them!!

— Karl Apr 7, 05:41 AM #

If I am THAT good (that the company would sell and the students would buy my lecture notes), then maybe the company would be interested in a book. That’s where the money is.

In other words, simply regard the lecture notes as just so much foreplay…

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

Question
What is closet indexing in mutual fund investing? Does this sound like a rip off?

We've used this space to draw attention to an under-appreciated problem in financial services