Europe Has an Economics Lesson for Obama
But the Europe Mr. Obama will visit is quite different from the one Americans often hear about. Over the last decade, much of Europe has very quietly embraced market-based reforms that either draw inspiration from American successes or -- on issues like retirement security -- are even more market-oriented than many U.S. Republicans support. What's more, these changes have been adopted and implemented by parties left and right. This Europe is a shining example of exactly the sort of postpartisan government action that the Obama campaign says it is about. The cutting of corporate income- tax rates is an excellent example of European market-friendly bipartisanship. Germany's right-left coalition of Christian and Social Democrats implemented a large rate cut earlier this year, reducing the top marginal corporate rate to about 30% from 39%. Spain's Socialist and Britain's Labor governments have followed suit, reducing their countries' top corporate rates. These traditionally left-of-center parties understand that in a globalized economy, wealth and investment are mobile, flowing to those countries that provide hospitable investment climates. As part of a European Union where center-right governments in Greece, Denmark, Ireland and Eastern Europe have dramatically reduced corporate tax rates, they understand that they cannot help workers if they drive away the capital that employs and pays them.
Henry Olsen, The Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2008 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121642093483266551.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Mixing tax hikes and trade protectionism could send the economy into a tailspin
History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy,
the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression.
Despite the rhetoric, that's not just on "rich" individuals. It's also on a lot of small businesses and two-earner middle-aged middle-class couples in their peak earnings years in high cost-of-living areas. (Obama's large increase in energy taxes, not documented here, would disproportionately harm low-income Americans. And, while he says he will not raise taxes on the middle class, he'll need many more tax hikes to pay for his big increase in spending.) . . . Now trade. In the primaries, Sen. Obama was famously protectionist, claiming he would rip up and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Since its passage (for which former President Bill Clinton ran a brave anchor leg, given opposition to trade liberalization in his party), Nafta has risen to almost mythological proportions as a metaphor for the alleged harm done by trade, globalization and the pace of technological change. Yet since Nafta was passed (relative to the comparable period before passage), U.S. manufacturing output grew more rapidly and reached an all-time high last year; the average unemployment rate declined as employment grew 24%; real hourly compensation in the business sector grew twice as fast as before; agricultural exports destined for Canada and Mexico have grown substantially and trade among the three nations has tripled; Mexican wages have risen each year since the peso crisis of 1994; and the two binational Nafta environmental institutions have provided nearly $1 billion for 135 environmental infrastructure projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy, the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression. While such a policy mix would be a real change, as philosophers remind us, change is not always progress.
Michael J. Boskin (Stanford University Economics Professor)," Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession," The Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121728762442091427.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

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

Amazing New Facts About the Internet

I watched the history of computing in the 1990s on the History Channel on July 21, 2008 --- http://www.history.com/

Some facts mentioned concerning today in 2008 amazed me. I did not dig out independent verification of these facts.

• The amount of information on Internet servers now doubles every 12 hours.
  Jensen Comment
  For example we might soon have more barrels of information about oil on the Internet than barrels of oil underground. With stored information doubling every 12 hours this makes Google's ranking of "hits" in information searches all-powerful in guiding us to what we learn. I sure hope Google lives up to it's motto:   "Do no evil!" But even if it does no evil intentionally, any ranking of gazillions of documents provides different learning than other rankings of the same gazillions of documents. And the rankings of documents on a topic in English are bound to vary from rankings of documents on the same topics in Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, French, etc.
   
• There are over one billion users of the Internet worldwide. Although 70% of the people in the United States now use the Internet, the U.S. usage only ranks third among nations of the world at the present time.
   
• Google will not disclose the number of Internet servers currently in use for Google searches, but techies estimate that it's moving close to 500,000 high capacity servers. I don't know if this includes the amazing YouTube servers owned by Google, but I doubt it. I can't imagine the number of servers needed to serve up over a billion videos on YouTube. It takes about one gigabyte of storage just to store ten minutes of video compressed into a mpg format. The storage needed to serve up over a billion YouTube videos boggles my mind --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm
   
• Japanese robotic toys became popular in the 1990s and often sold between $35 and $100 per toy. What amazed me is that they sold over 80 million of just one type of robot about the size of a teddy bear and just as fluffy. This particular toy had a built in dictionary of over 100 English words and gave the impression that it was learning English over time as a child spoke to the robotic toy. Our National Intelligence Agency, however, was so stupid that taking this toy into their DC building was banned for employees because the NIA thought the toy robot might overhear secrets. I suppose one could be customized to record conversations, so maybe the NIA was not so stupid, although as of late the Agency has not demonstrated that in knows enough to worry about.

Bob Jensen's threads on how to find Internet statistics are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm
(Just scroll down a short bit)

We hear a lot about carbon footprints polluting the earth. We also have Internet servers polluting the earth.
Egads! I'm a big time polluter at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

"China says its population of Internet users rises to world No. 1 at 253 million," MIT's Technology Review, July 25, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/21132/?nlid=1233&a=f

China's booming Internet population has surpassed the United States to become the world's biggest, with 253 million people online despite government controls on Web use, according to government data reported Friday.

The latest figure on Web use at the end of June is a 56 percent increase from a year ago, the China Internet Network Information Center said. It said the share of the Chinese public using the Internet is still just 19.1 percent, leaving more room for rapid growth.

The United States had an estimated 223.1 million Internet users in June, according to Nielsen Online, a research firm. The Pew Internet and American Life Project puts U.S. online penetration at 71 percent.

"This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's No. 1," a CNNIC statement said.

The communist government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to Web sites deemed pornographic or subversive. Web surfers have been jailed for posting or e-mailing material that criticizes communist rule or is deemed a violation of vague national security laws.

Beijing blocks access to Web sites run by dissidents, human rights groups and some foreign news media. Web surfers were blocked from seeing Google Inc.'s YouTube and other foreign sites with video footage of anti-government protests in Tibet in March.

That same month, the government said it would shut down 25 Chinese video sites and punish 32 others for violating new rules against carrying content that is deemed pornographic, violent or a threat to national security.

In financial terms, China's market lags those of the United States, South Korea and other economies. But online commerce, video sharing and other businesses are growing rapidly and have raised millions of dollars from investors.

The commercial boom has produced success stories such as games site Tencent.com and search engine Baidu.com, which are competing with foreign rivals for local market share. Baidu said Thursday its profits in the latest quarter soared 87 percent over the year-earlier period to 265 million yuan ($38.6 million).

Total revenues for China's Internet companies soared to 40.5 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) in 2007, up 48.6 percent from the previous year, the research firm Analysys International reported this week. It said revenues should keep growing at an annual rate of at least 30 percent in coming years, reaching 137.5 billion yuan by 2010.

By contrast, U.S. online advertising revenues alone in 2007 were $21.2 billion (145.2 billion yuan), according to a report by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The research firm BDA China Ltd. says China's online population should keep growing by 18 percent annually, reaching 490 million by 2012 -- a number larger than the entire U.S. population.

Internet companies are looking forward to a new growth spurt once Chinese mobile phone carriers roll out third-generation, or 3G, technology that can support Web-surfing and other services. No date has been announced, but with more than 500 million mobile accounts, China has a vast pool of potential wireless Internet users.

China's Internet boom has gotten a boost from a sharp slowdown in demand for fixed-line phones as more customers opt for mobile service. Fixed-line carriers have responded by expanding into broadband Internet, Web-based cable television and other services. The CNNIC report Friday said that as a result, 214 million Chinese now have high-speed access.

Free Feature Length Documentary Films --- http://www.snagfilms.com/

"SnagFilms Finds Virtual Theaters For Documentaries," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2008; Page D1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121625545312460425.html

Thousands of feature-length documentary films are produced every year, but almost nobody gets a chance to see them. A few dozen are shown to small audiences at major film festivals, and a handful make it into theaters. For every blockbuster like "An Inconvenient Truth," there are hundreds of documentaries that never find an audience.

Starting Thursday, however, there will be a new online service that aims to change all that. The service, called SnagFilms, allows anyone with a blog, a Web site, or even a page on a social-networking site, to open a virtual movie theater and show these documentaries, free. The virtual theater is a small widget that contains the film, and that can be embedded easily and quickly in a wide variety of popular social-networking services and blog platforms. No technical knowledge is needed.

Once a site or page owner "snags" a film in this way, visitors to the site can view it in a larger window that pops out from the widget. This window plays the film, displays some ads and provides links to charities or organizations related to the topic of the movie. The films can even be played in full-screen mode. Many also include links for buying a DVD of the film. All that's missing is the popcorn.

These aren't homemade, three-minute YouTube clips. Nearly all are feature-length, professionally produced documentaries, from both small independent filmmakers and well-known sources such as PBS and National Geographic.

The owner of the site or blog gets no direct revenue from posting the films. He or she is, in effect, donating space to support the film or the cause it highlights, a decision SnagFilms calls "filmanthropy." But the filmmaker and SnagFilms do make money -- splitting advertising revenue equally. And the charity or organization can make money, too, if viewers opt to donate. The filmmaker also can make money from DVD sales, paying SnagFilms an 8.5% commission.

I have been testing a prerelease version of the SnagFilms service and have posted SnagFilms widgets with no problems to Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, Netvibes, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces and Vox. Many more Web sites can house these widgets, including the vast number of blogs built on the popular WordPress and TypePad platforms.

Here's how it works. You just go to the SnagFilms Web site at snagfilms.com, select one or more of the 250 or so films available at launch and click the snag button. A menu pops up that lists numerous popular networking services and platforms. Clicking one will automatically post the SnagFilms widget of your choice on your page or site at one of these services. You can also simply view the films at the SnagFilms site.

Each widget includes an "info" button that takes you to a page on the SnagFilms site giving the details and background on the film. You can also leave comments here, rate the film, order the DVD and see recommendations for related films.

The system is viral, so you don't have to start at the SnagFilms site. A Web surfer who sees a SnagFilms movie anywhere on the Web can spread it around just by clicking the snag button on every widget. The snag button allows the viewer to either host the film or to email a link to the film that will bring friends to the SnagFilms site to view or snag it.

SnagFilms is the brainchild of Ted Leonsis, a former top executive at America Online, who in recent years has become a documentary-film producer. He became frustrated with the distribution bottleneck for such films and arranged to take over AOL's documentary site, TrueStories, and turn it into SnagFilms. He also is chairman of the board of a company, Clearspring, which created the film widgets.

At launch, the SnagFilms catalog includes well-known documentaries like "Super Size Me," but also lesser-known films on a wide variety of topics, including college football, AIDS in Africa, politics, profiles of average people and tales of the New York Fire Department. One of my favorites was "Paper Clips," the story of how a school in Tennessee learned about the Holocaust.

Filmmakers can submit movies to the site by sending an email to: submissions@snagfilms.com. SnagFilms says it doesn't censor or edit the films, but won't accept pornography or films deemed to encourage hate. It does have a selection process, so not all films submitted will make it onto the site. The company hopes to add more films soon.

I had only two gripes about SnagFilms. First, the films should be able to play inside the widget itself, with an option inside to play at larger sizes. Having to open a separate browser window is a pain. The company says it's working on this.

Second, the initial catalog is light on documentaries from a conservative or probusiness perspective. But the company says it is "actively seeking to offer differing viewpoints" and will soon add "a number of films that are quite conservative in philosophy."

SnagFilms is a great idea for getting documentary films in front of more people. It's another example of how the Web is changing media distribution for the better.

Questions
What's the main reason colleges have such a difficult time recruiting black males?
Are McCain and Obama close or miles apart on proposed solutions to this problem?

A new analysis shows just how poorly many states are doing at graduating black males from high school. The Schott Foundation for Public Education last week released an “education inequity index,” comparing black male and white male graduation rates for high school — and the figures may be chilling for colleges hoping to boost black male enrollments. Nationally only 47 percent of black male students are graduating from high school with their cohorts, and in 10 states, the gap in black male and white male graduation rates is at least 30 points, led by Wisconsin, where the black male rate is 36 percent and the white male rate is 87 percent. Michigan, Illinois and Nebraska also have gaps of more than 40 percentage points. The states with the narrowest gaps (or none) tend to be states where there are relatively few black students, Vermont and Maine for example.
Inside Higher Ed, July 28, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/28/qt
Jensen Comment
I don't think race per se the major factor driving dropout rates. This outcomes are confounded by poverty and street crime environments. States with relatively high black graduation rates like Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Kentucky do not have the huge urban centers where larger concentrations of inner-city black students who, due to poverty, live in crime/drug infested neighborhoods that increase temptations for black males to drop out of high school. States with the highest drop out rates have large crime-ridden cities where drug street dealing is much more serious. I suspect that blacks anywhere in Maine and Vermont attend better schools than inner-city blacks in NYC, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and LA. Confusing exceptions to this reasoning are the relatively poor graduation rates in states like Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Rhode Island, and Iowa where schools are quite good statewide and there are no huge cities.. Go figure!

The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation's greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain. "Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity," said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. "When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."
"The Greatest Scandal," The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2008; Page A14 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121720068489088381.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Thus Far Cuil (billed as the “World’s Largest Search Engine”) is Not So Cool
Why did it put a loin cloth on my pictures?

"Ex-Googlers launch rival search engine," CNN Money, July 28, 2008 --- http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/28/technology/cuil.ap/index.htm?cnn=yes

Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable - only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers - Russell Power and Louis Monier - searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

Web index: For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Ex-Googlers: Where are they now? Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted on its blog Friday that it regularly scans through 1 trillion unique Web links. But Google said it doesn't index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting didn't quantify the size of Google's index.

A search index's scope is important because information, pictures and content can't be found unless they're stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in several other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.

Content analysis: Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page. And Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns - something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.

Cuil is just the latest in a long line of Google challengers.

Other contenders: The list includes swaggering startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT, Fortune 500) this month.

Even after investing hundreds of millions of dollars on search, both Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO, Fortune 500) have been losing ground to Google (GOOG, Fortune 500). Through May, Google held a 62% share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21% and Microsoft at 8.5%, according to comScore Inc.

Google has become so synonymous with Internet search that it may no longer matter how good Cuil or any other challenger is, said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner.

"Search has become as much about branding as anything else," Weiner said. "I doubt [Cuil] will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night."

Google welcomed Cuil to the fray with its usual mantra about its rivals. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space," Watson said. "It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."

But this will be the first time that Google has battled a general-purpose search engine created by its own alumni. It probably won't be the last time, given that Google now has nearly 20,000 employees.

Patterson joined Google in 2004 after she built and sold Recall, a search index that probed old Web sites for the Internet Archive. She and Power worked on the same team at Google.

Although he also worked for Google for a short time, Monier is best known as the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, which was considered the best search engine before Google came along in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay's (EBAY, Fortune 500) online auction site.

The trio of former Googlers are teaming up with Patterson's husband, Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. He later joined IBM Corp. (IBM, Fortune 500), where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.

Costello's Irish heritage inspired Cuil's odd name. It was derived from a character named Finn McCuill in Celtic folklore.

Patterson enjoyed her time at Google, but became disenchanted with the company's approach to search. "Google has looked pretty much the same for 10 years now," she said, "and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now."

"Two former Google employees have introduced a new search engine that they hope will overtake Google in popularity," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 29, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3200&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

The search engine is called Cuil, (pronounced "cool") and it has been generating so much interest that its home page could not be opened at various points today. Tom Costello, a former Stanford University researcher and one of the founders of the search engine, said Cuil culls through 120 billion Web pages, more pages than Google searches, according to an article today in The New York Times. But Google tells the paper it has the largest collection of documents searchable on the Web, and that it welcomes competition. Cuil displays search results a bit differently from Google. Entries are longer and there are more pictures with the entries. Bill Drew, a librarian at Tompkins Courtland Community College in New York, writes on his blog today that he was impressed with Cuil results after doing a search on his name. "The search retrieved over 160 hits spread over 19 pages of search results," he writes "All appear to be very relevant. I was amazed at the depth of the results as well. It included many book reviews I wrote back in the early 1990s."

The Cuil Search Engine is at http://www.cuil.com/info/

Jensen Comment on July 28, 2008
Thus far the hype seems to be more hyped than the performance on this first day of trials. For example I typed in the following in both Cuil and Google:
"Basis Adjustment" AND "FAS 133"

Google gave me thousands of hits and many of them were quite relevant to my research.
Cuil gave me four hits and most of them were irrelevant to my research. Cuil said it had 1,116,835,248 hits, but I could only find a way to list four of these hits.

Go figure! Thus far the "World's Largest Search Engine" has a ways to go.

Another limitation is that Google has many cached documents where the original link is no longer active. Cuil does not mention a caching service.

First turn your speakers on and read in "Excel Magic Trick #73" in Cuil.
Results:  Nothing!

Next read in ""Excel Magic Trick #73" in Google.
Google's cached version takes you to an interesting video on the significant-digits bound in Excel.

Please let me know when and where Cuil is better than Google.

Also is Cuil like Yahoo in that early listing priority of hits goes to advertisers' sites?

If that's the case, Cuil will be a bummer. It does have Preferences button, but thus far that seems to be inactive.

July 28, 2008 reply from Schatzel, John [JSchatzel@STONEHILL.EDU]

I do a great deal of google searching almost everyday and so this is of great interest. To run a quick test, I went to cuil.com (which is supposed to stand for "cool") and entered "audit simulation." I received nine rather large blocks of information relating to web sites that I found to be mostly irrelevant. I then tried "auditing simulation" and got pretty much the same thing. I also noticed that it was looking for "audit" and "simulation" separately and that there was no option for an advanced search, which on google allows you to combine words into phrases and sentences. I then tried "audit simulation" again, but this time with the quotes. This improved the results slightly, but most of the hits were still not very relevant. The links did have more information attached to them, but the information seemed to take up too much space. When I type "audit simulation" or "auditng simulation" into the basic google search page or toolbar, I get http://realaudit.com as most relevant. This makes more sense to me and when this link does not come up in cuil.com at all, it leaves me thinking that cuil still has a long way to go. Thanks again, for the tip,

John Schatzel

"Google Beats Cuil Hands Down In Size And Relevance, But That Isn't The Whole Story." Michael Arrington, The Washington Post, July 28, 2008 --- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/28/AR2008072800098.html?wpisrc=newsletter

We've been testing the engine for the last hour. Based on our test queries Cuil is an excellent search engine, particularly since it is all of an hour old. But it doesn't appear to have the depth of results that Google has, despite their claims. And the results are not nearly as relevant.

. . .

It seems pretty clear that Google's index of web pages is significantly larger than Cuil's unless we're randomly choosing the wrong queries. Based on the queries above, Google is averaging nearly 10x the number of results of Cuil.

And Cuil's ranking isn't as good as Google's based on the pure results returned from both queries. Where Cuil excels is with the related categories, which return results that are extremely relevant. With Google, we've all gotten used to trying a slightly different search to get the refined results we need. Cuil does a good job of guessing what we'll want next and presents that in the top right widget. That means Cuil saves time for more research based queries.

And I want to reemphasize that Cuil is only an hour old at this point, Google has had a decade to perfect their search engine.

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

Question
What nation has the highest proportion of female lawmakers?

Hint
This nation had the bloodiest civil war in recent history.

Answer
Read what Cindy McCain writes about this issue?

"Rwanda's Women Are Leading the Way," by Cindy McCain, The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2008; Page A13 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121720134007588395.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

I have recently returned from Rwanda. I was last there in 1994, at the height of the genocide that claimed the lives of more than 800,000 Rwandans. The memories of what I saw haunt me still.

I wasn't sure what to expect all these years later, but I found a country that has found in its deep scars the will to move on and rebuild a civil society. And the renaissance is being led by women.

Women are at the forefront of the physical, emotional and spiritual healing that is moving Rwandan society forward. One of them, from eastern Rwanda, told me her story -- a violent, tragic and heartbreaking testimony of courage. She spoke of surviving multiple gang rapes, running at night in fear of losing her life, going days without food or water and witnessing the death of her entire family -- one person at a time, before her eyes.

The injuries she sustained left her unable to bear children. Illness, isolation and an utter lack of hope left her in abject despair.

And yet the day I met her, she wasn't consumed by hatred or resentment. She sat, talking with me and a few others, beside a man who had killed people guilty of nothing more than seeking shelter in a church. She forgave him. She forgave the perpetrators of her tragedy, and she explained her story with hope that such cruelty would never be repeated.

It is a humbling experience to be in the presence of those who have such a capacity for forgiveness and care. It is also instructive. If wealthy nations want their assistance programs to be effective, they should look to the women who form the backbone of every society. With some education, training, basic rights and empowerment, women will transform a society -- and the world.

Women today make up a disproportionate percentage of the Rwandan population. In the aftermath of the genocide, they had to head households bereft of fathers. They had to take over farms, and take jobs previously done by men. But there were opportunities, too: Today, 41% of Rwandan businesses are owned by women.

I saw their impact first hand at a coffee project in the city of Nyandungu. All the washing and coffee-bean selection is done by hand, by women there. Women to Women International, a remarkably active and innovative nongovernmental organization, has already helped over 15,000 Rwandan women through a year-long program of direct aid, job-skills training and education.

The organization is launching a project to train 3,000 women in organic agriculture, and is reaching out to females across the country. The women who instruct their fellow war survivors in economic development are an inspiration to those who cherish the essential benevolence of humanity.

But that is just the beginning. A new constitution ratified in 2003 required that women occupy at least 30% of the seats in parliament. (In our House and Senate only about 17% of the seats are filled by women.) Some wondered at the time whether it was feasible to meet this target. Now, nearly half of parliament and a third of the president's cabinet posts are held by women. Rwanda today has the world's highest percentage of female legislators.

Rwanda has a dark past but a bright future. It has a long way to go -- the country remains one of the world's poorest, and the social reverberations of the genocide are evident everywhere. Yet in the midst of tragedy, the women are building something genuinely new. Perhaps it is fitting that a nation so wracked by death could give birth to a vibrant new age. I know that one thing is clear: Through their bold and courageous actions, these women should inspire not only their fellow Africans, but all individuals -- men and women -- across the globe.

Jensen Comment
Cindy McCain is a wealthy and benevolent woman helping various social causes around the world. The above article is very sincere and probably helps her husband's Presidential campaign. Sadly, if Michele Obama had written the above article it might've hurt her husband's campaign. Such is the cost of the media's injection of race and gender (ala Hillary) into this campaign, especially in the case of Michelle Obama who, until recently, has been highly critical of racism and gender bias in the United States. Now she doesn't dare speak about or write about controversial race/gender issues, especially any issues that are rooted in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's rants. It doesn't help at all that Michelle Obama kept Wright as her pastor when Oprah Winfrey saw the dangers in doing so and dropped out of Trinity Church in 1986.

According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone of Wright's more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her standing as America's favorite daytime talk-show host. "Oprah is a businesswoman, first and foremost," said one longtime friend, who requested anonymity when discussing Winfrey's personal sentiments. "She's always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn't be smart. She's been around black churches all her life, so Reverend Wright's anger-filled message didn't surprise her. But it just wasn't what she was looking for in a church." Oprah's decision to distance herself came as a surprise to Wright, who told Christianity Today in 2002 that when he would "run into her socially … she would say, 'Here's my pastor!' " (Winfrey declined to comment. A Harpo Productions spokesperson would not confirm her reasons for leaving the church.) But Winfrey also had spiritual reasons for the parting. In conversations at the time with a former business associate, who also asked for anonymity, Winfrey cited her fatigue with organized religion and a desire to be involved with a more inclusive ministry. In time, she found one: her own. "There is the Church of Oprah now," said her longtime friend, with a laugh. "She has her own following."
Allison Samuels, "Something Wasn’t Wright Why Oprah Winfrey left Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church," Newsweek, May 12, 2008 --- http://www.newsweek.com/id/135392

Skype vs. Vonage --- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/skype-vonage3.htm

A One-Hour Video on What it Means to Be Predictably Irrational (July 25, 2008) --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/
The video is also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZv--sm9XXU
This is quite interesting!

From the Financial Rounds Blog on January 25, 2008 --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

"Dan Ariely (Duke University) - Predictably Irrational

Here's a video of Dan Ariely (author of "Predictably Irrational") in his recent talk for the Google Authors program. Ariely has written a fascinating book about some of the cognitive and behavioral biases that most of us exhibit. If you listen carefully, you'll find that he even gives a hint about how to increase your student evaluations --- http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

 

Summary of what it means to be "predictably irrational" --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational

New York Times Book Review
"Emonomics," by David Berreby, The New York Times, March 16, 2008 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/books/review/Berreby-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

For years, the ideology of free markets bestrode the world, bending politics as well as economics to its core assumption: market forces produce the best solution to any problem. But these days, even Bill Gates says capitalism’s work is “unsatisfactory” for one-third of humanity, and not even Hillary Clinton supports Bill Clinton’s 1990s trade pacts.

Another sign that times are changing is “Predictably Irrational,” a book that both exemplifies and explains this shift in the cultural winds. Here, Dan Ariely, an economist at M.I.T., tells us that “life with fewer market norms and more social norms would be more satisfying, creative, fulfilling and fun.” By the way, the conference where he had this insight wasn’t sponsored by the Federal Reserve, where he is a researcher. It came to him at Burning Man, the annual anarchist conclave where clothes are optional and money is banned. Ariely calls it “the most accepting, social and caring place I had ever been.”

Obviously, this sly and lucid book is not about your grandfather’s dismal science. Ariely’s trade is behavioral economics, which is the study, by experiments, of what people actually do when they buy, sell, change jobs, marry and make other real-life decisions.

To see how arousal alters sexual attitudes, for example, Ariely and his colleagues asked young men to answer a questionnaire — then asked them to answer it again, only this time while indulging in Internet pornography on a laptop wrapped in Saran Wrap. (In that state, their answers to questions about sexual tastes,, violence and condom use were far less respectable.) To study the power of suggestion, Ariely’s team zapped volunteers with a little painful electricity, then offered fake pain pills costing either 10 cents or $2.50 (all reduced the pain, but the more expensive ones had a far greater effect). To see how social situations affect honesty, they created tests that made it easy to cheat, then looked at what happened if they reminded people right before the test of a moral rule. (It turned out that being reminded of any moral code — the Ten Commandments, the non-existent “M.I.T. honor system” — caused cheating to plummet.)

These sorts of rigorous but goofy-sounding experiments lend themselves to a genial, gee-whiz style, with which Ariely moves comfortably from the lab to broad social questions to his own life (why did he buy that Audi instead of a sensible minivan?). He is good-tempered company — if he mentions you in this book, you are going to be called “brilliant,” “fantastic” or “delightful” — and crystal clear about all he describes. But “Predictably Irrational” is a far more revolutionary book than its unthreatening manner lets on. It’s a concise summary of why today’s social science increasingly treats the markets-know-best model as a fairy tale.

At the heart of the market approach to understanding people is a set of assumptions. First, you are a coherent and unitary self. Second, you can be sure of what this self of yours wants and needs, and can predict what it will do. Third, you get some information about yourself from your body — objective facts about hunger, thirst, pain and pleasure that help guide your decisions. Standard economics, as Ariely writes, assumes that all of us, equipped with this sort of self, “know all the pertinent information about our decisions” and “we can calculate the value of the different options we face.” We are, for important decisions, rational, and that’s what makes markets so effective at finding value and allocating work. To borrow from H. L. Mencken, the market approach presumes that “the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

What the past few decades of work in psychology, sociology and economics has shown, as Ariely describes, is that all three of these assumptions are false. Yes, you have a rational self, but it’s not your only one, nor is it often in charge. A more accurate picture is that there are a bunch of different versions of you, who come to the fore under different conditions. We aren’t cool calculators of self-interest who sometimes go crazy; we’re crazies who are, under special circumstances, sometimes rational.

Ariely is not out to overthrow rationality. Instead, he and his fellow social scientists want to replace the “rational economic man” model with one that more accurately describes the real laws that drive human choices. In a chapter on “relativity,” for example, Ariely writes that evaluating two houses side by side yields different results than evaluating three — A, B and a somewhat less appealing version of A. The subpar A makes it easier to decide that A is better — not only better than the similar one, but better than B. The lesser version of A should have no effect on your rating of the other two buildings, but it does. Similarly, he describes the “zero price effect,” which marketers exploit to convince us to buy something we don’t really want or need in order to collect a “free” gift. “FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is,” Ariely writes. None of this is rational, but it is predictable.

What the reasoning self should do, he says, is set up guardrails to manage things during those many, many moments when reason is not in charge. (Though one might ask why the reasoning self should always be in charge, an assumption Ariely doesn’t examine too closely.)

For example, Ariely writes, we know our irrational self falls easily into wanting stuff we can’t afford and don’t need. So he proposes a credit card that encourages planning and self-control. After $50 is spent on chocolate this month — pfft, declined! He has in fact suggested this to a major bank. Of course, he knew that his idea would cut into the $17 billion a year that American banks make on consumer credit-card interest, but what the heck: money isn’t everything.

 

An Experiment With Toilet Paper and Other Messages --- http://www.predictablyirrational.com/

Other videos on being Predictably Irrational

• How an Injury Led Dan to to Irrationality --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K0m3Bq-L5Y
• Chapter 1 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZv--sm9XXU
• Chapter 2 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaO3aGmuNFc
• Chapter 3 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS1bwMdgmKc
• Chapter 4 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdjlOgGVRVA
• Chapter 5 --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFMDgW0wDeI
• Online Dating --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrk57fuerGw
• Visual Illusions --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oHIfeCB3z8
• Finding Cheating's Comfort Level --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0F2f-O28nU
• On Gas Fuel --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiQQh3KvZV0
• Canoeing as a relationship test --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek4twuyetBo
• Divorce --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpqJvmDTVoY
• Tax Incentives --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpqJvmDTVoY
• The Dan Ariely Show --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ5baAOrxXY

Bob Jensen's threads on the economic theory of accounting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#EconomicTheory 

Great Minds in Management:  The Process of Theory Development --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/GreatMinds.htm

Question
How does Google's new Wikipedia-like online Encyclopedia differ from the real Wikipedia?

Hint
Colleges may one day give scholarly performance credit for authoring a module in Knol. In a sense it's like exposing your scholarship and research in such a way that the entire world may become "referees" of you contribution. Of course most of the modules fall into the realm of scholarship (mastery of existing knowledge) rather than research (contribution to new knowledge). The catch of course, is that the author must approve the reviewer's call. Darn! The rejected reviews may be, in most instances, be published in Wikipedia. In that sense Wikipedia is more academic.

"Google Presents Wikipedia Competitor," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23, 2008 --- Click Here

Google today launched Knol, an online encyclopedia that, in many ways, mimics Wikipedia, the popular encyclopedia that anyone can edit. As in Wikipedia, anyone can create a page in Knol. But changes to the page become active only after they are approved by the page’s author or authors. And unlike Wikipedia, the author’s name is featured prominently on Knol articles.
 

Among the featured articles on the Knol site today are “How to Backpack,” “Lung Cancer,” and “Toilet Clogs.”

Daniel Colman, director and associate dean of Stanford University’s continuing-studies program and author of the blog OpenCulture, predicted in December that Knol would have a hard time attracting experts to write articles.

Bob Jensen's threads on "Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Google Open Encyclopedia, and YouTube as Knowledge Bases" are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#KnowledgeBases

Harvard Study of Political Correctness in Academe
As older faculty retire, academe is becoming less politically correct.

Accounting professors as a group in this study purportedly are a little more liberal than their finance colleagues, but the difference is not likely to be highly significant in this study among 1,471 responses (in all disciplines) deemed to be valid replies. I suspect younger accounting faculty will follow the trend in other disciplines for younger doctoral graduates to be a bit more conservative than their older counterparts (I hesitate to say hippies) from the 1960s --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/08/politics

Then Simmons analyzes disciplines, and finds sharp differences — largely consistent with previous studies about disciplines and political leanings. Humanities and social science fields tend to have higher politically correct rankings, while professional and science disciplines do not. The table that follows is in order of political correctness. Psychology is the only field where a majority of professors are politically correct. Four fields — finance, management information, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering — had no one who was politically correct.
"Defining Political Correctness and Its Non-Impact," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, July 25, 2008 --- http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/07/25/pc

A major new study of the political correctness of faculty members may challenge assumptions all around. For those who deny that there is an identifiable group of PC professors, the study says that there is in fact a group with consistently common perspectives, largely based on their views of discrimination (that it exists and matters).

But for those who say that these tenured radicals have all the power in academe, the study finds that politically correct professors’ views on the role of politics in hiring decisions aren’t very different from the views of other professors. Further, the study finds that a critical mass of politically incorrect professors is doing quite well in securing jobs at the most prestigious universities in the United States, despite claims that such scholars are an endangered species there.

The study is based on data collected for a report released last year, “The Social and Political Views of American Professors,” which found that faculty members are more liberal than the public at large, but appear to be moderating compared to previous generations. That study — which was praised by many experts from varying perspectives for the breadth of its scope and depth of its data — asked professors many questions on social issues, but did not attempt to identify a politically correct cohort within academe.

The new study, which does so, was produced by Solon Simmons, co-author of last year’s report and an assistant professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason. The study appears in The Forum, an online journal that has published numerous key studies on the issue of professors’ politics, including some that have been used to suggest that significant bias is present in the academy — a point of view the new study does not share.

The first thing that Simmons does in the study with the database — which covers a range of disciplines and institution types — is to identify a politically correct cohort, reflecting largely common views on a set of issues that are seen as defining political correctness. He finds a set of issues that produce this cohort.

The views are the belief that gender gaps in math and science fields are largely due to discrimination; support for affirmative action; and belief that discrimination is a key cause of racial inequities in American society. Generally, members of this cohort see race and gender as fundamental — and share that belief much more than beliefs about the curriculum or scholarship, such that the study says that “multiculturalism trumps postmodernism.”

In an interview, Simmons acknowledged that many people use “politically correct” to imply more than just shared political beliefs, but also an intolerance of other views. He said that his definition did not attempt to group people together beyond their shared political beliefs.

Then Simmons analyzes disciplines, and finds sharp differences — largely consistent with previous studies about disciplines and political leanings. Humanities and social science fields tend to have higher politically correct rankings, while professional and science disciplines do not. The table that follows is in order of political correctness. Psychology is the only field where a majority of professors are politically correct. Four fields — finance, management information, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering — had no one who was politically correct.

Political Correctness by Discipline

Discipline	Moderately Correct	Politically Incorrect	Politically Correct	Non-Committal
Psychology	15.2%	21.7%	58.7%	4.3%
Sociology	48.2%	1.8%	44.6%	5.4%
English	30.2%	18.9%	41.5%	9.4%
History	50.0%	16.7%	31.5%	1.9%
Elementary education	40.0%	28.9%	24.4%	6.7%
Communication	35.6%	31.1%	22.2%	11.1%
Nursing	41.8%	25.5%	18.2%	14.5%
Art	46.3%	17.1%	14.6%	22.0%
Business (general)	27.0%	37.8%	13.5%	21.6%
Political science	58.3%	14.6%	10.4%	16.7%
Criminal justice	63.6%	25.5%	9.1%	1.8%
Economics	32.6%	51.2%	4.7%	11.6%
Marketing	31.8%	43.2%	4.5%	20.5%
Accounting	40.0%	40.0%	4.0%	16.0%
Computer science	42.4%	48.5%	3.0%	6.1%
Biology	62.7%	19.6%	2.0%	15.7%
Finance	34.3%	34.3%	0.0%	31.4%
Management information	19.4%	72.2%	0.0%	8.3%
Mechanical engineering	17.6%	50.0%	0.0%	32.4%
Electrical engineering	34.1%	19.5%	0.0%	46.3%

The study then examines the breakdowns by college type. Again, consistent with findings that community college faculty members are less liberal than others, they are also less likely to be politically correct. The finding is important because one reason this database of faculty attitudes has been praised is that it includes community colleges — which have been left out of many other such studies despite their role in educating millions of students.

Notably, in community colleges and four-year colleges generally, the politically incorrect significantly outnumber the politically correct. (The “top 50 category” refers to the rankings of U.S. News & World Report.)

Political Correctness by Sector

Sector	Moderately Correct	Politically Incorrect	Politically Correct	Non-Committal
Community colleges	28.2%	26.5%	15.5%	29.8%
4-year colleges	38.8%	33.1%	17.5%	10.7%
Ph.D.-granting institutions	40.4%	22.4%	20.0%	17.2%
Liberal arts colleges	48.8%	18.8%	28.8%	3.8%
Top 50	32.9%	18.0%	38.9%	10.2%

After having shown that, while there are politically correct professors, there are many who are not, Simmons turns to data to examine what happens to those who are politically incorrect. Here he looks for “stars,” those who publish much more than others or who in other ways demonstrate levels of excellence beyond the norm. Here he finds considerable success by the politically incorrect. Of those at top 50 institutions, 73.3 percent are stars.

He reports that of politically incorrect stars, across institution types, 27.8 percent end up at top 50 institutions, while the other 72.2 percent do not. Of politically correct stars, 91.2 percent end up outside the top 50, suggesting that politically incorrect stars are more likely than their PC counterparts to end up at top institutions. While Simmons said that there are multiple ways to interpret these findings, they suggest at a minimum that some significant number of politically incorrect professors rise to the institutions of greatest prestige.

One of the big questions for the paper is whether political correctness — as defined in this study — matters. The charge made by conservative critics is that politically correct professors use classrooms to indoctrinate and try to prevent the hiring of conservatives. While not finding those trends, this study does find that the politically correct are less likely than other professors to keep their political views to themselves and more likely to be guided by their beliefs in suggesting research topics.

But on these questions, the politically correct are not monolithic, nor are those who are politically incorrect. For example, asked whether professors dealing with controversial topics should keep their views to themselves, 14.6 percent of the politically correct and 26.0 percent of the politically incorrect strongly agree, while 48.8 percent of the politically correct and 27.7 percent of the politically incorrect disagree.

When it comes to hiring and definitions of diversity, there is a strong belief — across levels of political correctness — that political tests should not be used. And while support isn’t quite as strong, there is also broad support across political correctness levels for the idea that the goal of campus diversity should include “fostering the diversity of political views among faculty members.”

Continued in article

The Harvard study itself is reported at http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Engross/lounsbery_9-25.pdf
Also see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/08/politics

Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PoliticalCorrectness

"A Moral Obligation to Retire?" Inside Higher Ed, July 21, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/07/21/leiter

Question
What's behind the trend for professors to stay full time on the job well beyond age 65?
"The Graying of College Faculties," The Becker-Posner Blog, July 6, 2008 --- http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

"Keeping an Eye on Online Students," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 21, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3181&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Technology vendors are eager to sell college officials hardware and software designed to verify the identify of online students—and thereby prevent cheating. A free article in The Chronicle describes some of the technologies that colleges are trying out to make certain that the person taking an online exam is, in fact, the student enrolled in the course. The technologies include Web cameras that watch students taking tests and scanners that capture students’ fingerprints.

A provision in a bill reauthorizing the Higher Education Act is fueling much of the interest in this issue. A paper released in February by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education says the provision—while not onerous to most distance-learning providers—could “drive up the cost of these important education programs.”

And some online institutions fear that the provision would require them to have their students travel to distant locations to take proctored exams on paper. The result? Some states would conclude that the institutions have a “physical presence” in their states, and would subject the institutions to “a whole new set of state regulations,” says John F. Ebersole, president of Excelsior College.

Bob Jensen's threads on http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

In particular note Online Effectiveness and Testing --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
The above link discusses a number of ways to prevent online cheating.

Academic Calendar Issues (It's more than just quarters versus semesters)

"Why the Calendar Matters," by Samantha Stainburn, The New York Times, July 25, 2008 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/education/edlife/27calendar.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Just as the world has become more homogeneous, so has the American academic calendar. The early-start, two-semester year, with finals in December, is now the standard. Only 2 percent of colleges and universities use the late-start semester, and a stubborn 15 percent have stuck with the quarter system. Does it make a difference? In fact, the way the academic year is divided has a lot to do with the way students can go about their education.

TWO SEMESTERS, EARLY START

EXAMPLE University of Pennsylvania

WHAT The year runs just after Labor Day to Christmas and mid-January to mid-May. One reason the semester has won out over quarters is that it’s just cheaper to administrate admit students, collect and record grades, open and shut dorms two times a year instead of three or four.

PROS Studying one subject with the same teacher for 15 to 17 weeks allows in-depth exploration. With finals in December, material isn’t forgotten over break.

CONS Students are less willing than their peers on a quarter system to try a subject they know nothing about because, explains Dennis DeTurck, dean of the college of arts and sciences, “half a year seems like a long time.”

TWO SEMESTERS, LATE START

EXAMPLE Harvard

WHAT Fall semester runs from mid-September to late January, with exams after Christmas break. This schedule is out of favor. In fall 2009, after much hand wringing, Harvard will push its entire year forward. Princeton stands pat.

PROS Leisurely study time over break.

CONS Stressful study time over break. “The undergraduates made a strong case” for change, says Steven E. Hyman,the provost. “They felt they could use Christmas without exams hanging over them.”

EXAMPLE University of California, Davis

WHAT In 1968, to cope with overcrowding, the state established a year-round system with terms corresponding to the seasons. The hope was that attendance would spread across all four quarters. But given a choice, students opted to take summers off. The new Merced campus uses semesters, and Berkeley went back to them in the 1980s.

PROS Students take more courses, usually four a quarter, or 12 a year. (Semester students typically take 10.) Quarters force students to develop time-management skills, says Patricia A. Turner, vice provost of undergraduate studies. “You’re going to have midterms before you know it. You need to start papers as soon as you get the assignment because the quarter flies by quickly.”

CONS Spring quarter runs to mid-June. Students with internships timed to semesters have to broker deals allowing them to turn up late. Graduate students may not get the depth and writing time needed in a 10-week course.

YEAR-ROUND

EXAMPLE Dartmouth (N.H.)

WHAT Newly coed in 1972, the college needed to squeeze more students onto campus. Ground rules: Freshmen and seniors have to take summer quarter off; sophomores choose among fall, winter or spring; juniors can take any term off they want.

PROS Schedules can be tweaked to avoid the New Hampshire winter or to deal with personal issues. And fewer competitors are looking for internships and jobs in fall, winter and spring.

CONS “It can disrupt friendships and relationships, and presidents of student organizations come and go,” says Dan Nelson, senior associate dean. “The flip side is students end up interacting with different circles of friends and other people have a chance to take on leadership because the population is always churning.”

BLOCK SCHEDULING

EXAMPLE Colorado College

WHAT Students take one course at a time, three hours a day for three and half weeks. Other adherents: Cornell College in Iowa and the University of Montana-Western.

PROS Other courses don’t compete for students’ attention. It’s easier to go on field trips, from a day in the Rockies studying geology to an entire course in Greece and Turkey studying Greek drama.

CONS If you miss a Friday class, you miss the equivalent of a week’s worth of work. If you hate a course, you don’t get a break until it’s over.

BLOCK I Sept. 1-24

II Sept 29-Oct. 22

III Oct. 27-Nov. 19

IV Nov. 24-Dec. 19

HALF BLOCK Jan. 5-15

V Jan. 19-Feb. 11

VI Feb. 16-March 11

VII March 23-April 15

VIII April 20-May 13

JANUARY TERM

EXAMPLE St. Olaf College (Minn.)

WHAT At least 75 institutions use downtime in January for J-terms — two to three weeks of full-course intensives, quick trips abroad for credit or quirky electives (say, Zimbabwean marimba music at Williams). Some are optional. St. Olaf requires its J-term. Students can study abroad for credit or take an accelerated semester-long class, two to four hours a day with four hours of homework.

PROS Immersion in math and language especially helps grades in the school year. This isn’t basketweaving. It’s “Topics in Euclidian and Non-Euclidian Geometry.” And an abbreviated experience abroad is a national trend: it’s more affordable than an entire semester, and doesn’t interrupt sports or other extracurriculars.

CONS To fit in the term, semesters run a few weeks short, so instruction time is cut in those courses. January weather isn’t travel-friendly in northern Europe and China.

MAY TERM

EXAMPLE Earlham College (Ind.)

WHAT When the college switched to two semesters in 1997 to align with other campuses, it tacked on May for natural science classes that needed outdoor time. Now, about 300 students choose to stick around for three weeks to take an experimental course or travel for credit.

PROS Classes that are full during the regular year might have room in May.

CONS It cuts into summer employment.

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

ID Theft and Credit Card Advice

Hi Chris,

My rather unorganized advice on ID theft is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ThingsToKnow

The first thing I would do is check with your home owner’s insurance agent and find out what it costs to add ID theft protection to your policy. Mine only costs a few pennies a day and gives me some piece of mind if my ID is stolen.

 The second thing I would do is pay for the FICO credit reports recommended by Consumer Reports (don’t fall for free credit report gimmicks and frauds):
Your FICO credit score is crucial to your credit to your good name.  It can be altered without your knowing it due to fraud and errors.  Getting a free credit report may not give you a FICO scores as well.  The main advantage of the from http://www.myfico.com/ is that it will give you your FICO score from each of the three major credit reporting agencies.  Consumer Reports (August, Page 18) notes that credit scores nearly always differ between the three major credit reporting agencies.  You may miss something if you only get one agency’s score.

The third thing I recommend is that you have a separate credit card (with a low credit line) that you use only for Internet purchases. Up here in the mountains we order things weekly on the Internet, especially from www.amazon.com . It’s easy and we can buy almost anything from groceries to filters for our furnace humidifier to computer gadgets. For Internet purchases I have an Amazon.com Visa Card. Then if my number should happen to be stolen from an Internet vendor, my other credit cards are not contaminated.

We often order gifts for the grandchildren from Amazon and have them shipped directly to the little buggers. We're so cheap that we sometimes send them used things like used books and CDs. Amazon makes it easy to send used things in perfect quality.

Actually I don’t buy many things on the Internet except via Amazon. It’s so simple and safe at Amazon. All I have to do is put things in my shopping cart and place an order. Amazon remembers my credit card information and my mailing address so that I can click shop without having to touch the keyboard.To monitor your FICO score, Consumer Reports (August 2005, Page 17) recommends that you get the $44.85 package from http://www.myfico.com/

Mike Kearl has an interesting document online called "Credit Card Crazy" --- http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/credcard.html

 My credit card advice is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#FICO

 My ID theft advice on ID theft is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ThingsToKnow

YouTube versus Viddler versus Other Online Video Sources

July 19, 2008 message from Richard J. Campbell mailto:campbell@rio.edu

Although youtube has a huge "market share", the quality of videos are degraded by the compression techniques that they use. Below is a link to a demo of another, better-quality site.

http://www.viddler.com/learn-more/ 

Richard J. Campbell
 mailto:campbell@rio.edu

July 20, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard,

Thank you for the Viddler link. I looked into this a bit and discovered that Viddler is more for the short home movies. As you know as well or better than me, video file compression is essential to making online video work well, especially since online video is beginning to clog the Internet. If I were an Internet czar I would ban uncompressed video.

Internet Gridlock Video is clogging the Internet
Video downloads are sucking up bandwidth at an unprecedented rate. A short magazine article might take six minutes to read online. Watching "The Evolution of Dance" also takes six minutes--but it requires you to download 100 times as much data. "The Evolution of Dance" alone has sent the equivalent of 250,000 DVDs' worth of data across the Internet.
"Internet Gridlock Video is clogging the Internet.: How we choose to unclog it will have far-reaching implications," by Larry Hardesty, MIT's Technology Review, July/August 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20919/?nlid=1172&a=f

Uncompressed Viddler videos only run for a max of about a minute. This makes Viddler unsuitable for training and education tutorials and full lectures relative to YouTube where videos in mpg compression can run up to ten minutes each video we upload. YouTube also lets colleges put up entire lectures from universities. For example, one of UC Berkeley's YouTube lectures in physics that runs 1.25 hours is at http://snipurl.com/ucp01  [www_youtube_com] 

It would be absurd to put entire courses or even longer tutorials up in uncompressed video. Compression of a video can save upwards of 90% of the file space required for storage and uploading and downloading --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm#Video

File size is limited on Viddler to 500 Mb in contrast to YouTube’s one Gb limit (usually uploaded in mpg compression) which gives about 10 minutes of viewing at 640 x 480 resolution on YouTube for the general public. UC. Universities like UC Berkeley that put lots of free courses on YouTube must be making special arrangements to have file sizes of 10 GB or more per lesson.

The allowed video time on Viddler is just not good for tutorials. By way of illustration, compare the following tutorials in math and especially compare the image quality versus the running time versus the loading time:

• Viddler    (1.1 minute tutorial) ---  http://www.youtube.com/t/yt_handbook_produce#
• YouTube (5.2 minute tutorial) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRawnUv-gL8
• YouTube (8.3 minute tutorial) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRawnUv-gL8
• YouTube (4.3 minute tutorial) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx5KDyvlG3Q  (humor rip off)

You can view YouTube videos in full screen mode using one button on the bottom left. Viddler videos can also be viewed in full screen by first clicking on the menu button on the bottom left and then choosing the full screen option

Viddler --- http://www.viddler.com/
YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/

Bob Jensen's video helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm#Video

Bob Jensen's guide to free video lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

BigThink:  YouTube for Scholars (where intellectuals may post their lectures on societal issues) --- http://www.bigthink.com/

TED:  Technology, Entertainment, and Design Lectures --- http://www.ted.com/

Open Science Directory --- http://www.opensciencedirectory.net/

Free Feature Length Documentary Films --- http://www.snagfilms.com/ 

The Visual Dictionary --- http://www.infovisual.info/

 

Engine, ChunkIt, Marketed to College Students

A new search engine from TigerLogic Corporation, of Irvine Calif., is being pushed to scholars and researchers, among others. Called, ChunkIt, the search engine refines results from other search engines and databases, and displays chunks of text surrounding the key words. In one of the company's promotional videos, shown below, a stressed-out college student uses ChunkIt to narrow a search on the Russian Revolution via the Lexis/Nexis database. The student sports an Oberlin College sweatshirt and gripes about meeting a deadline for a research paper in two hours. Steven J. Bell, a research librarian at Temple University, picks apart the video on a blog from the Association of College and Research Libraries, noting that it gives short shrift to the skills of librarians. He questions why the student would need ChunkIt to refine his search when Lexis/Nexis already has tools available to narrow search results. His conclusion? ChunkIt is appropriate for use with other search engines like Google, but not with library databases.
Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 15, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3166&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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

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

"Bad Advice for New Graduates," by P.J. O'Rourke, Change Magazine from the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement in Teaching, May-June 2008 --- http://www.changemag.org/May-June 2008/full-bad-advice.html
P.J. O'Rourke is on of my favorite satire writers --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.J._O%27Rourke

Well, here you are at your college graduation. And I know what you’re thinking: “Gimme the sheepskin and get me outta here!” Not so fast. First you have to listen to a commencement speech.

Don’t moan.  I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.”  I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.

We were the moron generation. We were the generation who believed we could stop the war in Vietnam by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything—which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. And the love was free, but we ended up paying a very high price for the sex.

My generation spoiled everything for you.  It has always been the special prerogative of youth to look and act weird and shock the grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the earth’s resources of weird. Weird clothes—we wore them. Weird beards—we grew them. Weird words and phrases—we said them. So, when it came your turn to look and act weird, you had to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues.

Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.

True, my generation did have some good musicians. But those musicians are still out there touring. Therefore the only piece of good advice that I can give you is, don’t start a rock band. You won’t stand a chance against the Rolling Stones.

It’s my job to give you advice. But all the rest of the advice I’m going to give you is bad advice. I figure it this way: You’re finishing 16 years of education, and you’ve had all the good advice you can stand. Let me offer some relief.

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!
Here we are in the most prosperous country in the world, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences, and security that money can provide, yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to American young people, “Go out and make a bunch of money.” They say money can’t buy happiness. But it can rent it.

There’s nothing the matter with honest money-making. Wealth is not a pizza where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.

2. Don’t be an idealist!
Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Go be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. If you make $500,000 a year, no matter how much you try to cheat the IRS, you’ll end up paying $100,000 in taxes—property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes. That’s $100,000 worth of schools and sewers, fire fighters and police.  You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist is saying, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. Oh, I know you care. But you only care as much as you have to. I care and care and care. I care so much I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, it broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person than you are. And because I’m a better person than you are, I have the right to boss you around.”

Get a pair of bolt-cutters and unleash that tree from the idealist.

Who does more to save the redwoods anyway—the person who’s chained to a tree or the person who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a resource more valuable than backyard deck railings, a resource that people will pay hundreds of dollar just to go look at?

So get rich. Don’t be an idealist. And ...

3. Get politically uninvolved!
Politics stink—and not just bad politics. All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my midriff exposed. Imagine deciding what’s for dinner by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be having Fruit Loops and rotten meat.

Think how we use the word politics. Are “office politics” ever a good thing? When somebody “plays politics” to get a promotion, does he or she deserve it? When we call a co-worker “a real politician,” is that a compliment?

But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that the problem is politicians—certain politicians who stink. Impeach George Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation’s problems will be solved.

But the problem isn’t politicians—it’s politics. Politicians are chefs, some good, some bad. The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the food. Or let me restate that: The problem isn’t the cook. The problem is the cookbook. The key ingredient of politics is the belief that all of society’s ills can be cured politically. This is like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake. The pinot noir is rolled in bread crumbs and dunked in the deep-fat fryer. This is no way to cook up public policy.

Politics is greasy. Politics is slippery. Politics can’t tell the truth. But we can’t blame the politicians for that. Because just think what the truth would sound like on the campaign stump, even a little bitty bit of truth:

“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t funding or teachers’ unions or a lack of vouchers or an absence of computer equipment in the classrooms. The problem is your kids!”

4. Forget about fairness!
We all get confused about what role politics should play in life. This is because politics and life send contradictory messages.

Life sends us the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than other people. Some people are rich and others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s so unfair!”

Well, I’m here to speak in favor of unfairness. I’ve got a ten-year-old at home. And she’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says that, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.”

To heck with the income disparity gap. What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger gap.

5. Be a religious extremist!
So don’t get involved with politics if you can help it, but if you can’t help it, read the Bible for political advice—even if you’re a Buddhist or an atheist or whatever. Using politics to create fairness is a sin. The Bible is very clear about this.

“Oh, gosh,” you’re thinking, “this is the worst advice yet. We get federal funding here. And the commencement speaker has just violated Constitutional law about separation of church and state.”

But hear me out. I am not, in fact, one of those people who believes that God is involved in politics. My attitude is: Observe politics in this country. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics down through history. Does it look like God’s involved? No, that would be Other Fellow who’s the political activist.

However, in one sense I do get my politics from the Bible, specifically from the 10th Commandment. The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the 10th: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And right at the end of it is “Don’t envy your buddy’s cow.” How did that make the top ten? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of them jealousy about livestock?

And yet think about how important this Commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Go get your own.

So do get rich. Don’t be an idealist. Stay out of politics. Forget about fairness. And I have another piece of advice:

6. Whenever you’re unsure about what course to take in life, ask yourself, “What would France do?”
You see, France is a treasure to mankind. French ideas, French beliefs, and French actions form a sort of loadstone for humanity. Because a moral compass needle needs a butt end. Whatever direction France is pointing in—toward Nazi collaboration, Communism, existentialism, Jerry Lewis movies, or President Sarkozy’s personal life—you can go the other way with a clear conscience.

One last thing.

7. Don’t listen to your elders!
After all, if the old person standing up here actually knew anything worth telling, he’d be charging you for it.

P. J. O’Rourke is the author of twelve books, most recently On The Wealth of Nations. He is a correspondent for The Weekly Standard and The Atlantic. He attended Miami University and Johns Hopkins and received his diplomas from both schools in the mail.

Jensen Comment
Firstly, nabbing Ted Kennedy on a DUI isn't all that easy, because he'll swim for it before you can get the cuffs on his wrists. Secondly, the French only won one war in history --- the French Revolution. Thirdly, the last line quoted above explains why my Website is free.

Question
Have you checked to see if some student or fraternity has posted your tests online?
Here's one place to look, but it's certainly not the only place to find your tests online.

"Test-Answer Site Removes Professors' Ability to Block Their Tests," by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3169&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A Web site that invites students to post exam answers online for others to view, PostYourTest.com, has eliminated the ability of professors to request that tests from their courses be banned from the site.

Posting answers made some professors worry that students would use them to cheat on exams. Demir A. Oral, the operator of the site, told The Chronicle last week that he allowed professors to place their courses on a “Ban List” that would exclude their materials from the site. He said that 200 professors had made such requests and he had complied.

But a notice on the site now says “the Ban List is suspended.” It says that already-made ban requests will be honored. Professors must now wait for content to be posted before requesting removal, and submit a form stipulating that they own the copyright to the material and that their request meets requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Jensen Comment
One place to start when you want to see if one of your examinations is online is to see if it was "plagiarized?" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm

What questions might classroom teachers ask of their students,
the answers to which would allow a strong inference that the students "understood"?

"The Assessment of “Understanding,” by Lloyd Bond, Carnegie Foundation for Advancement in Teaching --- Click Here

Study to remember and you will forget.
Study to understand and you will remember.
—Anonymous

I once sat on the dissertation committee of a graduate student in mathematics education who had examined whether advanced graduate students in math and science education could explain the logic underlying a popular procedure for extracting square roots by hand. Few could explain why the procedure worked. Intrigued by the results, she decided to investigate whether they could explain the logic underlying long division. To her surprise, most in her sample could not. All of the students were adept at division, but few understood why the procedure worked.

In a series of studies at Johns Hopkins University, researchers found that first year physics students could unerringly solve fairly sophisticated problems in classical physics involving moving bodies, but many did not understand the implications of their answers for the behavior of objects in the real world. For example, many could not draw the proper trajectories of objects cut from a swinging pendulum that their equations implied.

What then does it mean to “understand” something—a concept, a scientific principle, an extended rhetorical argument, a procedure or algorithm? What questions might classroom teachers ask of their students, the answers to which would allow a strong inference that the students “understood”? Every educator from kindergarten through graduate and professional school must grapple almost daily with this fundamental question. Do my students really “get it”? Do they genuinely understand the principle I was trying to get across at a level deeper than mere regurgitation? Rather than confront the problem head on, some teachers, perhaps in frustration, sidestep it. Rather then assign projects or construct examinations that probe students’ deep understanding, they require only that students apply the learned procedures to problems highly similar to those discussed in class. Other teachers with the inclination, time and wherewithal often resort to essay tests that invite their students to probe more deeply, but as often as not their students decline the invitation and stay on the surface.

I have thought about issues surrounding the measurement of understanding on and off for years, but have not systematically followed the literature on the topic. On a lark, I conducted three separate Google searches and obtained the following results:

• “nature of understanding” 41,600 hits

• “measurement of understanding” 66,000 hits

• “assessment of understanding” 34,000 hits

Even with the addition of “classroom” to the search, the number of hits exceeded 9,000 for each search. The listings covered the spectrum—from suggestions to elementary school teachers on how to detect “bugs” in children’s understanding of addition and subtraction, to discussions of laboratory studies of brain activity during problem solving, to abstruse philosophical discussions in hermeneutics and epistemology. Clearly, this approach was taking me everywhere, which is to say, nowhere.

Fully aware that I am ignoring much that has been learned, I decided instead to draw upon personal experience—some 30 years in the classroom—to come up with a list of criteria that classroom teachers might use to assess understanding. The list is undoubtedly incomplete, but it is my hope that it will encourage teachers to not only think more carefully about how understanding might be assessed, but also—and perhaps more importantly—encourage them to think more creatively about the kinds of activities they assign their classes. These activities should stimulate students to study for understanding, rather than for mere regurgitation at test time.

The student who understands a principle, rule, procedure or concept should be able to do the following tasks (these are presented in no particular order and their actual difficulties are an empirical question):

Construct problems that illustrate the concept, principle, rule or procedure in question.
As the two anecdotes above illustrate, students may know how to use a procedure or solve specific textbook problems in a domain, but may still not fully understand the principle involved. A more stringent test of understanding would be that they can construct problems themselves that illustrate the principle. In addition to revealing much to instructors about the nature of students’ understanding, problem construction by students can be a powerful learning experience in its own right, for it requires the student to think carefully about such things as problem constraints and data sufficiency.

Identify and, if possible, correct a flawed application of a principle or procedure.
This is basically a check on conceptual and procedural knowledge. If a student truly understands a concept, principle or procedure, she should be able to recognize when it is faithfully and properly applied and when it is not. In the latter case, she should be able to explain and correct the misapplication.

Distinguish between instances and non-instances of a principle; or stated somewhat differently, recognize and explain “problem isomorphs,” that is, problems that differ in their context or surface features, but are illustrations of the same underlying principle.
In a famous and highly cited study by Michelene Chi and her colleagues at the Learning Research and Development Center, novice physics students and professors of physics were each presented with problems typically found in college physics texts and asked to sort or categorized them into groups that “go together” in some sense. They were then asked to explain the basis for their categorization. The basic finding (since replicated in many different disciplines) was that the novice physics students tended to sort problems on the basis of their surface features (e.g., pulley problems, work problems), whereas the experts tended to sort problems on the basis of their “deep structure,” the underlying physical laws that they illustrated (e.g., Newton’s third law of motion, the second law of thermodynamics). This profoundly revealing finding is usually discussed in the context of expert-novice comparisons and in studies of how proficiency develops, but it is also a powerful illustration of deep understanding.

Explain a principle or concept to a naïve audience.
One of the most difficult questions on an examination I took in graduate school was the following: “How would you explain factor analysis to your mother?” That I remember this question over 30 years later is strong testimony to the effect it had on me. I struggled mightily with it. But the question forced me to think about the underlying meaning of factor analysis in ways that had not occurred to me before.

Mathematics educator and researcher, Liping Ma, in her classic exposition Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999), describes the difficulty some fifth and sixth grade teachers in the United States encounter in explaining fundamental mathematical concepts to their charges. Many of the teachers in her sample, for example, confused division by 1/2 with division by two. The teachers could see on a verbal level that the two were different but they could neither explain the difference nor the numerical implications of that difference. It follows that they could not devise simple story problems and other exercises for fifth and sixth graders that would demonstrate the difference.

To be sure, students may well understand a principle, procedure or concept without being able to do all of the above. But a student who can do none of the above almost certainly does not understand, and students who can perform all of the above tasks flawlessly almost certainly do understand.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This is a huge problem in accounting education, because so many of us teach "how to" procedures, often very complex procedures, without really knowing whether our students truly understand the implications of what they are doing for decision makers who use accounting information, for fraud detection, for fraud prevention, etc. For example, when teaching rules for asset capitalization versus expensing, it might help students better understand if they simultaneously learned about how and why Worldcom understated earnings by over a billion dollars by capitalizing expenditures that should have been expensed --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm#WorldCom

July 18, 2008 reply from Barbara W. Scofield, University of Dallas [scofield@GSM.UDALLAS.EDU]

I have used the following essay question for several years in my online first course in accounting for MBAs.

ABC Company is paying the following for a new delivery vehicle: $24,000 to the car dealer $1,000 in sales taxes to the state $100 in a one-time fee for the title and the license plate $600 for one year of coverage in car insurance $30 per week in gasoline $60 per year in oil changes The total first year cash outflow for this vehicle is $27,320. How are these amounts reflected on the Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows?

Every semester plenty of students tell me that there is a "car expense" on the income statement of 2x,xxx AND a "car" on the balance sheet of 2x,xxx. They miss the point entirely that they need to decide whether each expenditure is an expense or an asset.

My assessement of their learning: None.

Barbara W. Scofield
Associate Professor of Accounting
University of Dallas
scofield@gsm.udallas.edu 

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

Academic Researchers Displaying Their Lack of Scholarship
The prevalence of faulty citations impedes the growth of scientific knowledge. Faulty citations include omissions of relevant papers, incorrect references, and quotation errors that misreport findings. We discuss key studies in these areas. We then examine citations to "Estimating nonresponse bias in mail surveys," one of the most frequently cited papers from the Journal of Marketing Research, to illustrate these issues. This paper is especially useful in testing for quotation errors because it provides specific operational recommendations on adjusting for nonresponse bias; therefore, it allows us to determine whether the citing papers properly used the findings. By any number of measures, those doing survey research fail to cite this paper and, presumably, make inadequate adjustments for nonresponse bias. Furthermore, even when the paper was cited, 49 of the 50 studies that we examined reported its findings improperly. The inappropriate use of statistical-significance testing led researchers to conclude that nonresponse bias was not present in 76 percent of the studies in our sample. Only one of the studies in the sample made any adjustment for it. Judging from the original paper, we estimate that the study researchers should have predicted nonresponse bias and adjusted for 148 variables. In this case, the faulty citations seem to have arisen either because the authors did not read the original paper or because they did not fully understand its implications. To address the problem of omissions, we recommend that journals include a section on their websites to list all relevant papers that have been overlooked and show how the omitted paper relates to the published paper. In general, authors should routinely verify the accuracy of their sources by reading the cited papers. For substantive findings, they should attempt to contact the authors for confirmation or clarification of the results and methods. This would also provide them with the opportunity to enquire about other relevant references. Journal editors should require that authors sign statements that they have read the cited papers and, when appropriate, have attempted to verify the citations.
Malcolm Wright and J. Scott Armstrong, "The Ombudsman: Verification of Citations: Fawlty Towers of Knowledge?" Interfaces, Vol. 38, No. 2, March-April 2008, pp. 125-139 --- http://snipurl.com/citationerrors  [interfaces_journal_informs_org] 

Professors and Colleges Skating on the Edge of Questionable Ethics  --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Ethics

Putting Meat On The Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America --- 
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Industrial_Agriculture/PCIFAP_FINAL.pdf 

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

FORMER HEWLETT PACKARD VICE PRESIDENT PLEADS GUILTY TO THEFT OF IBM TRADE SECRETS
A former vice president of imaging and printing services at the Hewlett Packard Company (HP) pleaded guilty today to stealing trade secrets, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello for the Northern District of California. Atul Malhotra, 42, of Santa Barbara, Calif., was charged on June 27, 2007, in a one count information with theft of trade secrets. According to court documents, from Nov. 17, 1997, to April 28, 2006, Malhotra was employed by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) as director of sales and business development in output...
FBI, July 11, 2008 --- http://sanfrancisco.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/2008/sf071108.htm

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

"Should US Taxes on Gasoline be Higher?" by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, The Becker-Posner Blog, July 21, 2008 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Gasoline prices have increased rapidly during the past several years, pushed up mainly by the sharply rising price of oil. A gallon of gasoline in the US rose from $1.50 in 2002 to $2 in 2004 to $2.50 in 2006 to over $4 at present. Gasoline prices almost trebled during these 6 years compared to very little change in nominal gas prices during the prior fifteen years. The US federal tax on gasoline has remained at 18.4 cents per gallon during this period of rapid growth in gasoline prices, while state excise taxes add another 21.5 cents per gallon. In addition, many local governments levy additional sales and other taxes on gasoline. Gasoline taxes have not risen much as the price of gasoline exploded upward.

The price of gasoline is much lower than in other rich countries mainly because American taxes are far smaller. For example, gasoline taxes in Germany and the United Kingdom amount to about $3 per gallon. Some economists and environmentalists have called for large increases in federal, state, and local taxes to make them more comparable to gasoline taxes in other countries. Others want these taxes to rise by enough so that at least they would have kept pace with the sharply rising pre-tax fuel prices. At the same time two presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, proposed a temporary repeal during this summer of the federal tax in order to give consumers a little relief from the higher gas prices. We discuss the optimal tax on gasoline, and how the sharp increase in gas prices affected its magnitude.

Taxes on gasoline are a way to induce consumers to incorporate the "external" damages to others into their decision of how much to drive and where to drive. These externalities include the effects of driving on local and global pollution, such as the contribution to global warming from the carbon emitted into the atmosphere by burnt gasoline. One other important externality is the contribution of additional driving to road congestion that slows the driving speeds of everyone and increases the time it takes to go a given distance. Others include automobile accidents that injure drivers and pedestrians, and the effect of using additional gasoline on the degree of dependence on imported oil from the Middle East and other not very stable parts of the world.

A careful 2007 study by authors from Resources for the Future evaluates the magnitudes of all these externalities from driving in the US (see Harrington, Parry, and Walls, "Automobile Externalities and Policies", Journal of Economic Literature, 2007, pp 374-400). They estimate the total external costs of driving at 228 cents per gallon of gas used, or at 10.9 cents per mile driven, with the typical car owned by American drivers. Their breakdown of this total among different sources is interesting and a little surprising. They attribute only 6 cents of the total external cost to the effects of gasoline consumption on global warming through the emission of carbon into the atmosphere from the burning of gasoline, and 12 cents from the increased dependency on imported oil. Perhaps their estimate of only 6 cents per gallon is a large underestimate of the harmful effects of gasoline use on global warming. Yet even if we treble their estimate, that only raises total costs of gasoline use due to the effects on global warming by 12 cents per gallon. That still leaves the vast majority of the external costs of driving to other factors.

They figure that local pollution effects amount to 42 cents per gallon, which makes these costs much more important than even the trebled cost of global warming. According to their estimates, still more important costs are those due to congestion and accidents, since these are 105 cents and 63 cents per gallon, respectively. Their figure for the cost of traffic accidents is likely too high –as the authors' recognize- because it includes the cost in damages to property and person of single vehicle accidents, as when a car hits a tree. Presumably, single vehicle accidents are not true externalities because drivers and their passengers would consider their possibility and internalize them into their driving decisions. Moreover, the large effect of drunk driving on the likelihood of accidents should be treated separately from a gasoline tax by directly punishing drunk drivers rather than punishing also sober drivers who are far less likely to get into accidents.

On the surface, these calculations suggest that American taxes on gasoline, totaling across all levels of government to about 45 cents per gallon, are much too low. However, the federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon is almost exactly equal to their figure of 18 cents per gallon as the external costs of global warming and oil dependency. To be sure, a trebled estimate for global warming would bring theirs up to 30 cents per gallon. However, the federal government also taxes driving through its mandated fuel efficiency standards for cars, although this is an inefficient way to tax driving since it taxes the type of car rather than driving. Still, the overall level of federal taxes does not fall much short, if at all, from the adjusted estimate of 30 cents per gallon of damages due to the effects of gasoline use on global warming and oil dependency.

Any shortfall in taxes would be at the state and local levels in combating externalities due to local pollution effects, and to auto accidents and congestion on mainly local roads. Here too, however, the discrepancy between actual and optimal gasoline taxes is far smaller than it may seem, and not only because single vehicle accidents are included in their estimate of the cost of car accidents, and accidents due to drunk driving should be discouraged through punishments to drunk drivers. One important reason is that congestion should be reduced not by general gasoline taxes, but by special congestion taxes- as used in London and a few other cities- that vary in amount with degree of congestion (see our discussion of congestion taxes on February 12, 2006). Congestion taxes are a far more efficient way to reduce congestion than are general taxes on gasoline that apply also when congestion is slight.

In addition and often overlooked, the sharp rise in pre-tax gasoline prices has partly accomplished the local pollution and auto accident goals that would be achieved by higher gas taxes. For higher prices have cut driving, just as taxes would, and will cut driving further in the future as consumers continue to adjust the amount and time of their driving to gasoline that costs more than $4 a gallon. Reduced driving will lower pollution and auto accidents by reducing the number of cars on the road during any time period, especially during heavily traveled times when pollution and accidents are more common.

The effects of high gas prices in reducing congestion, local pollution, and accident externalities could be substantial. These authors estimate the size of local driving externalities, aside from congestion costs, at 105 cents per gallon. Even after the sharp run up in gas prices, this may still exceed the 28 cents per gallon of actual state and local taxes, but the gap probably is small. It surely is a lot smaller than it was before gas prices exploded on the back of the climb in the cost of oil. In effect, by reducing driving, higher gasoline prices have already done much of the work in reducing externalities that bigger gas taxes would have done when prices were lower.

 

"Should US Taxes on Gasoline be Higher?" Richard Posner, The Becker-Posner Blog, July 21, 2008 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

The economic study that Becker discusses treats gasoline taxes as a form of regulatory taxation, that is, taxation aimed at altering behavior rather than at collecting revenue. A gasoline tax is an excise tax, and excise taxes are a common method of raising revenue to pay for government. The best excise tax from a revenue-raising standpoint is one that causes minimum substitution against the taxed good or service, since (in the absence of externalities) such substitution distorts the efficient allocation of resources and reduces the revenues that the tax was supposed to generate. A regulatory tax aims at substitution because of the externalities caused by the taxed good or service, but complete substitution is rarely achieved (and indeed would usually be inefficient), and so a regulatory tax raises revenue as well as altering behavior. My guess is that the very high gasoline taxes in Europe, which are primarily responsible for the fact that the price of gasoline in Europe is on average almost twice the U.S. price, are intended and effective as revenue-raising devices, since those taxes antedate the current concerns with global warming, dependence on oil supplies from hostile or unstable nations, pollution, and acute traffic congestion. Whether from a revenue standpoint a stiff gasoline tax is an efficient tax, I do not know. But my guess is that it is. Since distances are shorter in Europe and public transportation far more extensive, Europeans can substitute against gasoline more easily than Americans can; nevertheless the very high price of gasoline in Europe, though for years it has been higher than U.S. prices are now, has not prevented demand for gasoline from growing, though in part this is due to extensive European construction of new non-toll highways and roads. An excise tax on a single commodity will not generate a great deal of revenue, because of its narrow base, but can be justified as part of a comprehensive system of excise taxes.

It is likely, judging from U.S. consumers' reaction to the recent increase in the price of gasoline, that a steep hike in the gasoline tax (I am treating the state and federal gasoline taxes as a single tax) would cause a further reduction in demand. Consumers would drive less (some of them by moving closer to work--and telecommuting would increase) and would switch at a higher rate to vehicles with better gas mileage. At some point, however, the fall in demand might cause the price of oil to decline. The reason is that the supply curve for oil is upward-sloping, meaning that a reduction in demand and hence in supply will reduce price. I say "might" cause the price of oil to decline because world demand for oil might continue to rise even if U.S. demand fell, in which event the world price would not decline.

I wonder, too, whether the recent decline in U.S. gasoline consumption doesn't represent to some degree an irrational panic reaction. To take a huge loss on the sale of your SUV in a market that is depressed because so many other people are doing the same thing at the same time is unlikely to be justified by the gains from the improved gas mileage of the car you buy with the modest proceeds of the sale. Likewise, driving a substantial distance to save a few cents a gallon on the gas you buy is unlikely to be worthwhile. A recent article suggests that people fixate on the price of gasoline because unlike most regularly purchased items, such as food, gasoline is purchased separately from other items so that its price is not buried in a bill for multiple items.

The economic study that Becker cites finds only modest externalities from gasoline consumption, and this argues for keeping our gasoline taxes low if we think of such taxes as primarily regulatory rather than revenue-raising. But except for its effect in reducing highway accidents by reducing the amount of driving, a gasoline tax is not an efficient regulatory tax. Congestion should be taxed directly, since people who travel on uncongested roads do not contribute to congestion. And the carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels (including gasoline) should be taxed, not gasoline, because a tax on gasoline does not create an incentive to produce lower emissions per gallon. Furthermore, taxing gasoline but not aviation fuel will increase the demand for air transportation, a potent source of both congestion and carbon emissions. Even the conventional pollutants produced by the internal-combustion engine do not argue strongly for a regulatory gasoline tax, because these pollutants, in the form of smog for example, reduce global warming by blocking sunlight. And from the standpoint of reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, the proper tax is one on oil, rather than one on just one oil product.

Hence the case for higher gasoline taxes should rest primarily on the efficiency of such taxes as revenue-raising devices. Even if as I suspect they are efficient revenue-raising taxes, the time to impose this is when gasoline prices fall, not now when consumers are screaming. Once people adjust to a price of $4.50 per gallon of gasoline, any fall in that price can be offset by an increase in gasoline taxes. A complication is that a tax on carbon emissions will, depending on how stiff it is, retard any natural, market-drive reduction in the price of gasoline. A further complication is that the calculation of an optimal carbon-emissions tax is impossible because the costs of global warming and the benefits (in reducing those costs) from a tax on carbon emissions cannot at present be estimated with even minimal confidence.

 

"Insolvency: a licence to print money:  Chapter 11 is not all it's cracked up," by Prim Sikka, "The Guardian," July 17, 2008 --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/17/conservatives

David Cameron wants to reform insolvency procedures. Rather than scrutinising the UK's existing practices, he wants to import the US practices, particularly "Chapter 11" of the US Bankruptcy Code. Chapter 11 has some merits. It gives distressed companies breathing space to reorganise their financial affairs, protect some jobs and forestall bankruptcy, but it also has unexpected outcomes.

WorldCom was one of the biggest US corporate frauds of recent years. The company's reporting of fictitious profits exerted pressure on its competitors and destroyed several of them. The fraud resulted in loss of jobs, savings, investments and pensions. WorldCom also avoided billions of dollars in taxes. In 2002, WorldCom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, secured new finance and in 2004 re-emerged as MCI. The revamping generated millions of dollars in fees for accountants and lawyers. As part of the bankruptcy processes, creditors agreed to forego some of the amounts due to them. With lower interest charges and depreciation on its assets, WorldCom has been able to portray itself as a sound company. The same advantages are not available to those companies who did not indulge in fraudulent activities.

WorldCom's survival is of little consolation to those who tried to compete honestly with the original entity. Those who originally supported the company now find that their financial interests are less well protected than the new backers.

Chapter 11 proceedings have increasingly been used by companies for "strategic bankruptcies" – in other words, they have used the law to avoid leasing agreements, employee rights, tax payments, damages awarded against them by courts and even to defeat unwelcome takeover bids. Airlines have frequently resorted to Chapter 11 processes to reconstruct their affairs and avoid making debt repayments. One book highlights how Continental Airlines used the process to cut labour costs. A company facing asbestos related claims declared itself insolvent to avoid paying compensation to victims.

Cameron's interest in Chapter 11 may well be a publicity stunt. At the height of the last recession, the then Conservative government could have introduced Chapter 11 reforms, but it did not - as shown by parliamentary replies from ministers. The Conservatives also opposed making the fees charged by insolvency practitioners more transparent, and even the idea of a bankruptcy court that might have adjudicated on disputes between insolvency practitioners and stakeholders.

The UK's woeful current insolvency laws allow viable businesses to be placed into liquidation. The process typically begins with the bank, usually a secured creditor, sending accountants to review the financial health of a debtor company. If the accountants conclude that all is well, they stand to receive a one-off fee from the bank. However, if they raise doubts and then persuade the bank to appoint the same accounting firm as receivers or liquidators, they could be collecting fees for years to come. There is an inevitable conflict of interests and many good businesses have been placed into liquidation. Some years ago, Royal Bank of Scotland declared that it would not award receiverships to any accounting firm which had previously acted as reporting accountants for the client in question. It subsequently reported a 60% reduction in the number of business recommended for receivership and liquidations.

Insolvency is a licence to print money. Practitioners are paid before any creditor and can charge more than £600 for an hour's work. They do not owe a "duty of care" to all stakeholders affected by their practices, and that provides plenty of incentives to prolong insolvencies. Both Maxwell Communication Corporation plc (looted by Robert Maxwell) and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) began liquidation proceedings in 1991. Neither has been finalised, but MCC plc has generated £88m in fees for the insolvency practitioners and BCCI's liquidators have collected over £400m. Nor are these cases unusual. Almost 5,000 companies where the administration or liquidation process began between 10 and fifteen years ago , and 12,571 companies where the administration or liquidation process began more than 15 years ago are not finalised.

David Cameron could advance his new-found interest in business insolvencies by commissioning an independent investigation into the insolvency industry. Currently, seven buck-passing and ineffective regulators regulate around 1,600 licensed practitioners. Theses should be replaced by one independent regulator who owes a duty of care to all stakeholders. Reporting accountants should not be allowed to become receivers and liquidators. There should be an independent complaints investigations procedure, and an ombudsman should adjudicate on disputes. These modest reforms could save many businesses from vultures. Is the Tory leader willing to take on big accounting firms and open a new chapter in saving jobs?

Bob Jensen's Rotten to the Core threads are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

The Cultural Significance of Free Software
"It’s All Geek to Me," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, July 16, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/07/16/mclemee

As a nerd, my bias is towards paper-and-ink books, and while I do indeed use information technology, asking a coherent question about how any of it works is evidently beyond me. A geek, by contrast, knows source code....has strong opinions about source code....can talk to other geeks about source code, and at some length. (One imagines them doing so via high-pitched clicking noises.) My wife understands network protocols. I think that Network Protocols would be a pretty good name for a retro-‘90s dance band.

This is more than a matter of temperament. It is a cultural difference that makes a difference. The nerd/geek divide manifested itself at the recent meeting of the Association of American University Presses, for example. Most people in scholarly publishing are nerds. But they feel like people now want them to become geeks, and this is not an expectation likely to yield happiness.

Christopher M. Kelty’s Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, just published in dead-tree format by Duke University Press, might help foster understanding between the tribes. The book itself is available for free online. (The author also contributes to the popular academic group-blog Savage Minds.)

Kelty, an assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University, has done years of fieldwork among geeks, but Two Bits is not really a work of ethnography. Instead of describing geek life at the level of everyday experience or identity-shaping rituals, Kelty digs into the history and broader implications of one core element of geek identity and activity: the question of “open source” or “free” software. Those terms are loaded, and not quite equivalent, even if the nuance tends to be lost on outsiders. At issue, in either case, is not just the availability to users of particular programs, but full access to their inner workings – so that geeks can tinker, experiment, and invent new uses.

The expression “Free Software,” as Kelty capitalizes it, has overtones of a social movement, for which openness and transparency are values that can be embedded in technology itself, and then spread throughout institutions that use it. By contrast, the slightly older usage “open source” tends to be used when the element of openness is seen as a “development methodology” that is pragmatically useful without necessarily having major consequences. Both terms have been around since 1998. The fact that they are identical in reference yet point to a substantial difference of perspective is important. “It was in 1998-99,” writes Kelty, “that geeks came to recognize that they were all doing the same thing and, almost immediately, to argue about it.”

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

July 16, 2008 reply from George Wright [geo@LOYOLA.EDU]

[... quoted text is from Scott McLemee, not Bob]
 The expression "Free Software," as Kelty capitalizes it, has overtones of a social movement, for which openness and transparency are values that can be embedded in technology itself, and then spread throughout institutions that use it.

Some would say the expression has much more than overtones :-)!

The Free Software Foundation ( http://www.fsf.org/ ) claims lineage from 1985. It was founded by Richard M. Stallman
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M_Stallman ) , who left employment at the MIT AI lab to start it.

To get a flavor for the social overtones, see rms' wikipedia page. Then look at the Gnu philosophy http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html ). You'll find the terms "nasty," "draconian," "stool pigeons," "raids," and "prosecution" said to resemble the former Soviet Union. Ironically, rms later complains about name calling and exaggeration :-).

By contrast, the slightly older usage "open source" tends to be used > when the element of openness is seen as a "development methodology" > that is pragmatically useful without necessarily having major > consequences.

I'd say the term "open source" is slightly newer than "free software." In 1998, the Open Source Initiative was founded (http://opensource.org/about). I'd say the OSI founders appreciated the virtues of free software (free in the sense of unrestricted, not in the sense of gratis, as rms will tell you), but didn't want the burden of rms' zealotry and activism to get in the way.

>Both terms have been around since 1998. The fact that they are identical in reference yet point to a substantial difference of perspective is important.

The FSF definition of free software is at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html .

The OSI definition is at http://opensource.org/docs/osd.

Seems to me the key difference is that OSI says open-source software can be distributed with proprietary software and that any open-source license does NOT pertain to proprietary parts.

My take is that OSI is a reaction to the FSF’s manifest dismay about “acceptability to big business.” Wouldn't a business decision maker hesitate to use software from a source determined not to be swayed by considerations of acceptability to business? That's what "social overtones" will do for you :-).

OSI claims to give you what FSF does without the anti-business tub-thumping. As the opensource.org site says, “The winning substance has not changed, the losing attitude and symbolism have.”

I don't mean this as anti-rms. I just recognize that the man is simultaneously both a reason for and an impediment to free software.

Geo

Global Price Trends --- http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2008/speech352.pdf

"Global Finance Leaders Release Comprehensive Proposals to Strengthen the Financial Industry and Financial Markets," Institute for International Finance, July 17, 2008 --- http://www.iif.com/press/press+75.php

The world’s leading financial services firms today released a far-reaching report 1 detailing best practice reforms for the industry. The report represents the global industry’s response to the turmoil in financial markets that was triggered by the U.S. subprime mortgage market crisis in mid-2007. Today’s 200-page report is published by the Institute of International Finance, the association of leading financial services firms with more than 380 members across the world. The report proposes Principles of Conduct together with Best Practice Recommendations on critical issues such as risk management, compensation policies, valuation of assets, liquidity management, underwriting and the rating of structured products as well as boosting transparency and disclosure

"Ways to Unlock The Potential of a BlackBerry," Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2008; Page D1--- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121615180290355595.html

If you're a BlackBerry user, you're probably getting tired of hearing about all the things Apple's iPhone can do. Rumor even has it that a more iPhone-like BlackBerry is in the works. But don't despond: Your current trusty emailing device has a few tricks up its sleeve that you may not know about.

This week, I gathered up some useful shortcuts that come built into most of the BlackBerrys, even older models, made by Research In Motion Ltd. but not many owners actually use or know about them. Ironically, most of these shortcuts are conducted using a BlackBerry feature that the iPhone lacks: its physical keyboard. (The iPhone uses a virtual keyboard that appears on-screen only when needed.)

Some of these shortcuts are seemingly obvious, like number or capitalization locks, but others are more obscure, like codes that can be entered to display the BlackBerry's precise signal strength. Some shortcuts are performed with a single keystroke; others work in conjunction with a trackwheel or trackball, depending on your BlackBerry model, and still others work when two keys are pressed simultaneously. BlackBerrys with condensed keyboards that use auto-correcting SureType may require extra or different keystrokes.

Some useful shortcuts are built into most BlackBerrys, even older models, though not many owners actually use or know about them. Most of these shortcuts are conducted using a BlackBerry feature that the iPhone lacks: its physical keyboard.

Navigation Simplified

A series of keystrokes work in various BlackBerry applications to make navigation much faster. Pressing the Space bar works like Page Down on a computer keyboard, moving down one screen per press. Holding Shift while pressing the Space bar moves in the opposite direction, like the Page Up key. To quickly move to the very top or bottom of a page, press "T" or "B," respectively. Another way to page down or up through lists is to hold the ALT key while scrolling with the trackwheel.

Users can toggle between the BlackBerry's running applications without the extra step of navigating back to the Home screen. To do this, press ALT and the Escape key, then release Escape and use the trackwheel to scroll through a display of icons that represent running programs until you reach the desired program, then release the ALT key to select that program.

Messaging Magic

Shortcuts in BlackBerry messaging can be a real boon when you're trying to get work done quickly. While looking at a list of emails, hit "C" to immediately start composing a new email. When a specific email is highlighted, pressing "R" will reply to that message; "L" will reply to all and "F" will forward it. Hitting "J" while an email is highlighted will jump directly to the oldest message in that email chain.

A list of emails can be more neatly organized from the message screen by holding the ALT key and pressing a letter. "I" will alter the list to show only incoming emails, "O" will show just those emails that were sent. "P" shows a phone log, including dates and times, and "s" displays all SMS messages made or received on the BlackBerry.

In the body of a message, pressing the Space bar twice inserts a period and capitalizes the next word. When the left Shift key and ALT are pressed together, the keyboard's number lock is on; the right Shift key and ALT work as the caps lock. Holding any letter down will capitalize it, saving users from pressing another key to do so. To type a letter with an accent, hold the letter key down while scrolling up or down with the trackwheel until you find the correctly accented letter.

Type Less, Say More

While composing emails, a series of AutoText codes can be typed in the email body to automatically display certain phrases or information. Typing "mynumber" and a space in the text of an email will automatically display your BlackBerry's phone number. Similarly, when "LD" is entered the local date is displayed, and when "LT" is typed the local time appears.

If your email inbox is full and you can't send emails, find out the PIN of your recipient's BlackBerry and use it to message the person directly. (To find your own PIN, type "mypin" and a space into the body of an email. This code can be used to send PIN messages from one device to another without using the device's usual email system.)

Geeky Codes

If you're just dying to know some techie details about your BlackBerry, the "Help Me!" screen will be right up your alley. To view the "Help Me!" screen, press ALT, Shift and "H" simultaneously. This displays data that won't matter much to the average person, such as the device's vendor ID, platform and free file space. But it also shows the exact percentage of remaining battery power on the BlackBerry, which could be helpful if you aren't sure how to interpret the imprecise battery indicator bars at the top of the home screen.

Another way to geek up your BlackBerry is to change its signal strength indicator from bars to numbers that tell how many decibels per milliwatt the device is transmitting. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down the ALT button while typing "NMLL." My BlackBerry displayed a minus 75 when I made this change. Strengths of minus 50 to minus 90 are said to be good, while anything higher, like minus 100, isn't. Though this numerical indicator won't likely be of any practical use, you could use it to turn to a friend and compare reception during an excruciatingly boring meeting.

One way to impress a technophile on a date is by pulling up a BlackBerry's Event Log. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down ALT while typing "LGLG." This retrieves a long list of numerous confusing codes representing the functions that were performed on your device. The Menu screen in the Event Log gives users the option to clear this log, freeing up some BlackBerry memory, while an Options screen lets people set the log up to record only certain kinds of activities.

Finally, to reboot your BlackBerry without removing its plastic back and taking out the battery, press ALT, Right Shift and Delete simultaneously. More codes can be found in the blogosphere or in a special section of RIM's Web site: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/blackberry101/tips/. Adopting just one of these shortcuts can significantly change the way you use your BlackBerry.

Continued in article

 

Free 150-Year Old College for the Poor from Appalachia --- http://www.berea.edu/

"With No Frills or Tuition, a College Draws Notice," by Tamar Lewin, The New York Times, July 21, 2008 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/education/21endowments.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Berea College, founded 150 years ago to educate freed slaves and “poor white mountaineers,” accepts only applicants from low-income families, and it charges no tuition.

“You can literally come to Berea with nothing but what you can carry, and graduate debt free,” said Joseph P. Bagnoli Jr., the associate provost for enrollment management. “We call it the best education money can’t buy.”

Actually, what buys that education is Berea’s $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation’s wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls. Instead, it has a no-frills budget, with food from the college farm, handmade furniture from the college crafts workshops, and 10-hour-a-week campus jobs for every student.

Berea’s approach provides an unusual perspective on the growing debate over whether the wealthiest universities are doing enough for the public good to warrant their tax exemption, or simply hoarding money to serve an elite few. As many elite universities scramble to recruit more low-income students, Berea’s no-tuition model has attracted increasing attention.

“Asking whether that’s where our values lead us is a powerful way to consider what our values are,” said Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College, who considered the possibility of using Amherst’s $1 million-per-student endowment to offer free tuition but concluded that it would make no sense, given Amherst’s more affluent student body and the fact that the college already subsidizes about half the cost of each student’s education.

“We’re not Berea, much as we respect them,” Mr. Marx said, adding there would be no social justification for giving free tuition to students from wealthy families.

Although this year’s market drop is taking its toll, the growth in university endowments in recent years has been spectacular. Harvard’s $35 billion endowment, Yale’s $23 billion, Stanford’s $17 billion and Princeton’s $16 billion put them among the world’s richest institutions.

Such endowments have helped make higher education one of the nation’s crown jewels. As Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, said in her spring commencement speech this year, endowments at Harvard and other research universities help fuel scientific advances as government support is eroding, and help drive economic growth and expansion in a difficult economy.

Although most universities have only modest endowments, the wealth of the richest has made them increasingly vulnerable to criticism from parents upset about rising tuition costs, lawmakers pushing them to spend more of their money and policy experts arguing that they should be helping more needy students.

“How much do you need to save for future generations, and at what point are you gouging today’s generation?” said Lynne Munson, of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington.

In January, the Senate Finance Committee requested detailed endowment and spending data from 136 colleges and universities with endowments of at least $500 million, with a possible eye to forcing them to spend at least 5 percent of their assets each year, as foundations are required to do. Large, tax-free endowments “should mean affordable education for more students, not just a security blanket for colleges,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who is reviewing the data.

The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt section said this spring that he wanted his agency to be more aggressive in ensuring that universities made “appropriate use” of their endowments. And officials in Massachusetts are studying a proposal for a 2.5 percent tax on the part of university endowments greater than $1 billion — a threshold exceeded by nine of the state’s universities.

“The endowments have grown to such an astonishing extent that people are asking, if the wealth and the value of the tax exemption are increasing, is the public benefit increasing, as well?” said Evelyn Brody, a tax professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

This year, Ms. Brody said, the debate has entered new territory. Traditionally, discussion about endowments has focused on the balance between using the money for the current generation versus saving it for the benefit of future generations.

“Endowment spending has usually been a ‘when’ question, about when the money would be used for a charitable purpose,” she said. “But now, it’s also being viewed as a ‘what’ question. What is the money for? And I think that’s new.”

In part, it is simply a question of itchy fingers. When one sector amasses great wealth, other sectors find it irresistible.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Although Berea has no football team, it does have 16 sports teams that compete in the Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Berea has quite a few academic programs for 1,500 on-campus students, including nursing and business administration majors and including accounting courses up to and including auditing and theory.

It's accreditations are discussed at http://www.berea.edu/catalog/distinctivefeatures/accreditation.asp

Berea's Christian commitment is discussed at http://www.berea.edu/catalog/distinctivefeatures/religiouscharacter.asp

Admission preferences go to poor black and white students from Appalachia

Residential life is discussed at http://www.berea.edu/catalog/campuslife/residentialcollege.asp

A Fact Book is available at http://www.berea.edu/ira/documents/factbook0607.pdf

July 22, 2008 reply from Barbara W. Scofield, University of Dallas [scofield@GSM.UDALLAS.EDU]

Berea College has a great hotel that serves authentic fare. I had my first taste of spoon bread there. It is a Kentucky treasure.

Barbara W. Scofield
University of Dallas
scofield@gsm.udallas.edu

 

Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Scroll down to Accounting

Free CPA Review Course --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

July 22, 2008 message from Dan Stone, Univ. of Kentucky [dstone@UKY.EDU]

Regarding the free CPA Review Course --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/ 

1. Should I recommend this site as a CPA prep resource for students? What are the time &/or financial costs to students?

2. What's their business model?

Thanks,

Dan S.

July 22, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Dan,

Answer to Question 2
This appears to be pretty much a public service site run by three old guys interested in helping people study for the CPA exam --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/about.cfm 
My hat is off to them if there is no hidden agenda. If there is a hidden agenda, I can't find it.

It's possible that one or more of them might be engaged privately or by a firm to conduct workshops on CPA Exam Review, but the site does not advertise this nor does it even mention that any of the three old guys are interested in conducting this added custom service for a fee.

Answer to Question 1
The Becker Course is expensive, live (with lots of video onsite), and great for kicking butts of students prone to procrastinating --- who tend to find excuses for delaying studying on their own.

The above free CPA Exam review site seems to be great for students who are organized with their study time and self-motivated (read that driven).

To be honest, the free CPA review site is all that I would've needed because all I did was devote five hours religiously each week for about five months of my senior year in college to studying old CPA exam questions and answers. Back in 1960 in Colorado we could take the exam before we graduated in the undergraduate program.

I passed the exam the first time that way, but I worked with a good friend (call him Don) in the Ernst and Ernst office who had to take the CPA exam four times to pass all the parts. I worked part-time for E&E whereas he worked full time. He also had a wife and two young babies. I was a ski bum on weekends but studied by tail off five days a week for my courses, my CPA Exam review, and my E&E job in the afternoons.

I think Don did not pass the CPA exam because he always found reasons or excuses to procrastinate studying for the exam. No Becker kick-butt course was available in those days!

I went on to Stanford and became a low-paid accounting professor. Don stayed with E&E and eventually became the high paid managing partner of the Denver Office. Go figure. The CPA exam is just one stepping stone to success.

Of course, I've never regretted taking the road less traveled in those days. It was a great life being on the faculty of four universities over 40 years. Spending five years full time getting a PhD was enlightening and agonizing since it was an accounting PhD with no accounting courses. It might've had some accounting courses if I wasn't already a CPA and an MBA when I moved to Palo Alto. I became one of the early accountics research professors at the beginning of the perfect storm --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
In retrospect it was much easier to publish accountics research than accounting research without equations.

Bob Jensen

July 22, 2008 reply from Paul Clikeman [pclikema@RICHMOND.EDU]

Here's a reply from one of the three "old guys."

Hi, my name is Joe Hoyle and I'm one of the founders of www.cpareviewforfree.com . A good friend forwarded to me the discussion between Bob Jensen and Dan Stone about our new website. In fact, my wife is still laughing about my being referred to as an old guy. (Hey, I'm only 60.)

Okay, since you asked, here is the story. I've had a very fortunate career. I am a best selling textbook author. I have owned and operated two very successful CPA Exam Review programs. I was selected the 2007 Virginia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. I feel blessed.

I have two things that I really hope to accomplish before I retire. The first is that I want to write a textbook for Financial Accounting that will change the way textbooks are written. C. J. Skender and I are currently writing chapter 11 of an introductory book for FlatWorldKnowledge that is entirely Socratic-the entire book is written as a logical series of questions and answers. (In fact, we are looking for folks willing to do reviews if any readers are interested in a revolutionary new approach to introducing students to the wonderful world of financial accounting.) If you will be at the AAA meeting in a few weeks, stop by the booth and pick up a free copy of my book: "Tips and Thoughts on Improving the Teaching Process in College."

My second goal is to make the CPA Exam accessible to everyone. Currently, virtually all candidates need a review program to do well and many of them are priced at over $2,000. I do not think that is appropriate for our profession. Between the cost of such programs and the cost of taking the exam, many of our poorer students are giving up on their dreams of becoming CPAs. I personally think that is a barrier to the profession that should concern us all. Many people simply do not have the $3,000 that can be needed to take the CPA Exam, let alone pass it.

Based on my 27 years of experience in CPA Review, I decided to create a site that would offer 2,000 to 3,000 free questions and answers. We currently have about 1,700 on www.cpareviewforfree.com  and I wrote about half of them myself. We will gradually add more over the rest of 2008. Students can use these to review for their courses in college. Candidates can use them to ready themselves to take the CPA Exam. We shoot for the highest quality questions and clear answers. And, yes, they are all free. Luckily, technology allows us to build a website without too much of a cash investment (ah, technology is wonderful).

Okay, I am not Mother Teresa; I am a business professor. At some point, we will try to figure out some way to make revenues out of this idea. However, at the current time, we are having a lot of fun. I cannot remember doing anything that I have enjoyed more. It is wonderful to have young people write in and say "you mean I can actually prepare for the CPA exam without having to sell my car?"

Our marketing budget is zero (or less). I hope professors will review the site and, if there is value there, will tell their students. It is all free. So, you will not be doing anyone any harm. Free information is one of the things that makes the Internet so wonderful and gives it so much potential.

Joe Hoyle
www.cpareviewforfree.com

 

Financial Executives International (FEI) free television --- http://www.financialexecutives.org/eweb/startpage.aspx?site=_fei

U.S. Social Security Retirement Benefit Calculators

Personal Finance Helpers (more than ever, the public is worried about personal investment and savings)
From Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, July 2008

KEEPING IT SIMPLE www.bargaineering.com/articles This Smart Stop’s author puts together a “Blueprint for Financial Prosperity,” working and blogging through the complexities of personal finance. Articles include “Speed Up or Shift Up: Thinking About Your Income Path” and “Do You Have an Opportunity Fund?” Also find tax and investing coverage, plus reviews of financial planning and wealth management books. Every month, the author plays “Devil’s Advocate,” where he examines the other side of “mainstream” or “common sense” personal finance ideas. Recent “Advocate” posts include “Don’t Budget to the Penny” and “Don’t Just Buy Index Funds.” THIS WEEK IN PERSONAL FINANCE www.carnivalofpersonalfinance.com The Carnival of Personal Finance touts itself as “a traveling weekly showcase of the best blog articles on the topic.” The carnival is hosted by a different guest blogger each week. In every edition, you’ll find links to the guest editor’s picks of the week, typically highlighting five to 10 posts from various sources, which feature expert advice on professional sites or regular-Joe experiences on personal sites. You can submit your own post for consideration, view the schedule of upcoming hosts or just browse the wealth of archived articles. The AICPA maintains a financial literacy site at http://www.aicpa.org/financialliteracy/FeedThePig/ Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

The AICPA maintains a helper site for guidance on the replacement of FASB/SEC standards with IASB international standards --- http://www.ifrs.com/
Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#MethodsForSetting
And see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#FASBvsIASB

Education Tutorials

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

The Getty Conservation Institute --- http://www.getty.edu/conservation/

BBC: Health (Multimedia) --- http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science

Social Science and Economics Tutorials

Frontline: Return of the Taliban (video) --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/

Citizen Media Law Project --- http://www.citmedialaw.org/

The Digital South Asia Library --- http://dsal.uchicago.edu/

From the Scout Report on July 25, 2008

As 'white flight' comes to an end, policymakers and community leaders talk about what this means for American cities The End of White Flight http://www.wsj.com/article/SB121642866373567057.html

Racial Balance Shifts as 'White Flight' Subsides [Real Player] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92744947&ft=1&f=1015 

How Willie Kathryn Suggs Changed the Harlem Real-Estate Market http://nymag.com/realestate/features/48328/ 

In Thousands of Images, a Photographer Builds a History in Harlem [Free registration may be required] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/nyregion/21photographer.html 

Older Cities Hold On to More People, Census Shows [pdf] http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/0710_census_frey.aspx

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social

Law and Legal Studies

American Library Association's Slide Rule Helper for Copyright Law--- http://librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/

Citizen Media Law Project --- http://www.citmedialaw.org/

Courting History: The Landmark International Criminal Court's First Years --- http://hrw.org/reports/2008/icc0708/

Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law

Math Tutorials

Video of Mathemajician Arthur Benjamin

I went to middle school in North Mankato, Minnesota. During a one-time visit by a very distant relative, we discovered that he was a mathmagician. I was dumbfounded by the fact that he could look at any six-digit license plate and, in his head, take the square root of the number. With pencil and paper I checked him out a couple of times for accuracy. I don't even remember his name, although my distant cousin Chris Faye in Mankato probably remembers his name. Chris is a magician but not a mathemajician. Update:  Both Chris Faye and Bob Overn inform me that his name was Lloyd Grobel and he was considered a math genius by General Electric where he worked as an engineer. Bob Overn wrote the following reply:

Hi, Bob,

I think that you are referring to my uncle Lloyd Grobel who at the time was visiting my grandfather Martin Jenson in Mankato. Lloyd was a math genius who went through engineering school at the university of Minnesota without the need for a slide rule because he could do all that stuff in his head. (One professor thought he was cheating because he turned in a perfect paper early without using a slide rule.) Chris and I would check him out with the log tables as he would give us the logarithm of a number to the sixth and seventh place. He is the only one I have ever heard of who could figure fifth roots in his head. (I wouldn't even know how to do it on paper.)

Lloyd worked as an engineer for GE when he graduated and as you probably remember, worked his way up through the organization to head up the Turbine Division at General Electric in Schenectady N.Y.

Lloyd married my mother, Maybelle's sister Isabelle, who had a daughter Jean, my cousin, Chris's cousin, and your second cousin. Jean and her daughter Karen live in Schenectady.

Incidentally, Chris is a pretty good whiz on the calculator as well as a magician.

Bob

 

Equally phenomenal is Arthur Benjamin!

TED:  Technology, Entertainment, and Design Lectures --- http://www.ted.com/
TED Video Example
Mathemajician Arthur Benjamin ---
http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html?v=/ted/movies/ARTHURBENJAMIN-2005&cid=/ted/movies

Calculators, computers, and Arthur Benjamin are limited by the number of significant digits that can be stored.

Significant Digits --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_Digits
Scientific notation makes it possible to eliminate some zeros from having to be counted as significant digits.

In school we learned about using logarithms to simplify exponentiation. But when using logarithms, calculators and computers are still limited by the number of significant digits that can be stored.

Excel is limited to 15 significant digits which means that Excel cannot deal with most large and small numbers (turn your speakers on) --- Click Here
If the above link doesn't work read in ""Excel Magic Trick #73" in Google.
Google's cached version takes you to an interesting video on the significant-digits bound in Excel.

Super computers can store a vast number of significant digits and mathematicians develop distributed computing algorithms to extend the number of significant digits that can be computed on super computers.

Prime Number --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Number

The following was a January 5, 2006 tidbit --- http://www.trinity.edu/%7Erjensen/tidbits/2006/tidbits060105.htm

Neither Arthur Benjamin nor Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbit can store that number in his head.

Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

History Tutorials

Frontline: Return of the Taliban (video) --- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/

Courting History: The Landmark International Criminal Court's First Years --- http://hrw.org/reports/2008/icc0708/

All Sewn Up: Millinery, Dressmaking, Clothing, and Costume http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/HumanEcol/subcollections/MillineryBooksAbout.html

The Digital South Asia Library --- http://dsal.uchicago.edu/

Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures (Video) --- http://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/index.html

London Music Trades, 1750-1800 --- http://lmt.rcm.ac.uk/

John H. W. Stuckenberg Map Collection --- http://www.gettysburg.edu/library/gettdigital/maps/stuckenberg_maps.htm