Erika will have her 11th spine surgery in
Boston on September 29, 2008. This will be the last edition of Tidbits until we
return home in several weeks and things get back to normal in our lives. I will
provide updates about her at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Erika2007.htm
September 25, 2008 message from Ken and Judy
Hummel (Ken is a retired mathematics professor from Trinity University):
Bob,
Thank you again for a very nice day with you and
Erika. We really enjoyed visiting and the great meal and tour.
When we left we went to Echo Lake and looked around
as well as the (European looking) Alpine Village. Then we went to the Flume
and walked all the trails. It is beautiful as is the Franconia Notch on the
way north again on 93. After we exited 93 and before we got to Jefferson
Highlands we slowed down in the moose crossing areas and we saw a moose
grazing on the side. It was not yet quite dark so we got some (probably
grainy) pictures. But we saw one anyway.
We hope all goes well with Erika's surgeries and
that she regains better pain free ambulation.
Thanks again.
Ken and Judy
Below you will find some of Bob Jensen's fall
foliage pictures taken from our yard and inside our cottage.
















The above picture was zoomed just a
bit from our driveway.

Foliage Network ---
http://www.foliagenetwork.com/default.php
Foliage in New Hampshire's White Mountains ---
http://www.nhliving.com/foliage/index.shtml
Fall Foliage ---
http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/fallfoliage/l/blfoliagecentrl.htm
Foliage Pictures ---
http://photo.net/travel/us/ne/foliage
Some Beautiful
Foliage Pictures (slide show) ---
http://www.biblesociety.ca/free_scriptures/escriptures/ecclesiastes3/ecclesiastes3.html
The National Debt
Clock ---
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
At the above site it appears to be a fixed number.
But now hit your refresh button to see how much it's changed in just a few
seconds.
At 9:34 a.m. on September 23, 2008 it was $9,734,361,140,920.08 trillion
At 9:35 a.m. on September 23, 2008 it was $9,734,365, 595,383.82 trillion
The annual amount of interest per year on the above number at 6% is
$584,061,935,723.03 billion
This translates to well over a million dollars a minute.
There is a greatly increased chance that U.S. debt will receive a lowered credit
rating, which will greatly increase the cost of out national debt each minute.
Peter, Paul, and Barney: My Evolving
(Daily) Essay on 2008
U.S. Government Bailouts of Private Companies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Tidbits on September 25, 2008
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Despite these noteworthy linguistic
strides, the Academy presents Orwell 2008 to a college counselor who advises his
clients to deliberately make mistakes on their applications so they "don’t sound
like robots." After all, "if you fall into the trap of trying to do everything
perfectly," without "typos" and other "creative errors," there's just "no spark
left."
Fifteenth Annual Emperor's Awards,
Guest commentary by Poor Elijah (Peter Berger), The Irascible Professor,
August 19, 2008 ---
http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-08-19-08.htm
Jensen Comment
The same can be said for blogs and newsletters.
On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long
and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was
generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My
wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
Bob Jensen's blogs and various threads on many topics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
(Also scroll down to the table at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ )
Global Incident Map ---
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php
Set up free conference calls at
http://www.freeconference.com/
Also see
http://www.yackpack.com/uc/
U.S. Social Security Retirement
Benefit Calculators ---
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator/
After 2017 what we would really like is a choice between our full social
security benefits or 18 Euros each month ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Free Online Tutorials in Multiple Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Chronicle of Higher Education's 2008-2009
Almanac ---
http://chronicle.com/free/almanac/2008/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on economic and social statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Tips on computer and networking
security ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
If you want to help our badly injured troops, please check out
Valour-IT: Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops ---
http://www.valour-it.blogspot.com/
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Shocking 25 Minute Video
A Rigged Trading System: "The odds are better in Las Vegas than on Wall Street"
This is the same fraud as the one committed by Max in the Broadway show called
The Producers (watch the Bloomberg video of how the fraud works)
Max sold over 100% of the shares in his play.
A fraudulent market manipulation contributed to the Wall Street meltdown
Phantom Shares and Market Manipulation (Bloomberg News
video on naked short selling) ---
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4490541725797746038
Popular New Ride at the Texas State Fair ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=oNGXBiYgETE
From the London School of Economics
LSE Information Systems and Innovation Group Video Archive ---
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/informationSystems//newsAndEvents/videoArchive.htm
Cornell University has some great videos for new students
(e.g., health and safety videos) ---
http://newstudents.cornell.edu/welcome/QuickTour.html
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Research (video) ---
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/research.asp
Dig It! The Secrets of Soil ---
http://forces.si.edu/soils/
Anatomy: The Foundation of Medicine: From Aristotle to Early
Twentieth- Century Wall Charts ---
http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/anatomical/index.html
Ride on a B-27 ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=pEl7oXYqqzo
Also see
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/648443/awesome_b_17_ride_video/
Photos ---
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=31073833
Mickey Mouse Must Die (not a joke from Islamic fundamentalists
bent on taking over the world) ---
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1850.htm
And this is our first line of defense.
Congressional Recess Explained ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEKNdZqrukc
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
It's a Wonderful Life (Part 3 with Jimmy Stewart
and Donna Reed dancing the jitterbug) ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=DbKPLPhvmNU
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (great photos
and Willie) ---
http://www.greatdanepro.com/Western Stars/index.htm
Henry Mancini On Piano Jazz ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94772943
Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Leigh
I Don't Want to Miss a Thing ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=mMk4kV8aYLs
You Can Let Go ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=IbAmiExU8S4
Here's to Us (a Judy Garland number that never
aired) ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=6J3spaSdgjs
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Satellite Photos ---
http://www.greatdanepro.com/Blue Bueaty/index.htm
Magic Lantern Slides Collection from Japan ---
http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/lanternslides/index.php?c=1
Ben Shahn at Harvard ---
http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/shahn/
NASA Images ---
http://www.nasaimages.org/
50th Anniversary of NASA ---
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/50th/
Aviation News ---
http://www.flightglobal.com
Patagonian Expedition Reports, 1896-1899 ---
http://diglib.princeton.edu/xquery?_xq=getCollection&_xsl=collection&_pid=Patagonia
Index of Medieval Medical Images ---
http://digital.library.ucla.edu/immi/
Anatomy: The Foundation of Medicine: From Aristotle to Early
Twentieth- Century Wall Charts ---
http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/anatomical/index.html
Dubious Natural Art in Antarctica Ice ---
http://snipurl.com/iceart
[www_metro_co_uk]
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (great photos
and Willie) ---
http://www.greatdanepro.com/Western Stars/index.htm
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Poetry Foundation: Anne Sexton ---
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6163
Modern American Poetry: Anne Sexton ---
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sexton/sexton.htm
Jews on the Moon (Science Fiction) ---
http://avideditor.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/jews-on-the-moon-a-science-fiction-story/
Peter, Paul, and Barney: An Essay on 2008 U.S. Government
Bailouts of Private Companies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
From the Scout Report on September 19, 2008
Friends and colleagues remember author David Foster
Wallace David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html
Wallace Invented 'New Style, New Comedy'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94629055
Author created 'Jest' in Syracuse ---
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-15/122155534751021.xml&coll=1
In Memoriam: David Foster Wallace ---
http://www.pomona.edu/ADWR/president/dfw1.shtml
Considering David Foster Wallace [iTunes]
http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc080916considering_david_fo
David Foster Wallace: Harper's Magazine ---
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557
David Foster Wallace: Commencement Speech at Kenyon
College ---
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
Teach Philosopy 101 ---
http://www.teachphilosophy101.org/
This site presents strategies and resources for
faculty members and
graduate assistants who are teaching Introduction
to Philosophy courses; it also includes material of interest to college faculty
generally. The
mission of TΦ101 is to provide free, user-friendly
resources to the academic community. All of the materials are provided on an
open
source license. You may also
print as many copies as you wish (please print in
landscape). TΦ101 carries no advertising. I am deeply indebted to
Villanova University for
all of the support that has made this project possible.
John Immerwahr, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Peter, Paul, and Barney: An Essay on 2008 U.S. Government Bailouts
of Private Companies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
History
suggests it was always this way. Even Isaac Newton, of gravity fame
but who also held the position of master of the mint, lost money in
the South Sea Bubble. He got out, thinking it was a bubble, then got
back in when it kept going up. He lost a small fortune in the
process when it finally collapsed. Human greed, coupled with hubris,
hasn't changed in the four centuries for which we have some sense of
economic history.
Lawrence B. Lindsey,
"Loosen Deposit Insurance Rules To Prevent a Bank Run," The Wall
Street Journal, September 17, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122161066927045759.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
You can read about the South Sea Bubble in 1720 at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_bubble
The South Sea Company was selling shares in itself and calling it
income.
Wall Street was also
brought to its knees in the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM)
"Trillion Dollar Bet" in 1993 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm#LTCM
Brooksley
Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ---
suggested that government should at least study whether some
regulation might make sense, a stampede of lobbyists, members of
Congress, and other regulators --- including Alan Greenspan and
Robert Rubin --- ran her over, admonishing her to keep quiet.
Derivatives tightened the connections among various markets,
creating enormous financial benefits and making global transacting
less costly --- no one denied that.
But they also raised the prospect of
a system-wide breakdown. With each crisis, a few more dominos fell,
and regulators and market participants increasingly expressed
concerns about systematic risk --- a term that described a
financial-market epidemic. After Long-Term Capital collapsed, even
Alan Greenspan admitted that the financial markets had been close to
the brink.
Frank Partnoy,
Infectious Greed (Henry Holt and Company, 2004, Page 229) |
Harvard University Press, MIT Press and Yale
University Press are collectively sending 5,700 books to help replenish the
Iraqi National Library. Shipping costs and transportation are being arranged by
the Sabre Foundation and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
Inside Higher Education, September
26, 2008 ---
Jensen Comment
Sounds like a good idea for all of us.
And don't forget to tell them about the following:
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The businessman's lunch.
You buy the restaurant, bankrupt the place, then walk away with a multi-million
dollar golden parachute. That's the businessman's lunch.
Cartoon forwarded by Denny Beresford.
The (Warren Buffet deal with the Men in
Black) deal is structured in two parts, giving
Berkshire a stream of cash and potential ownership of roughly 10% of Goldman.
Berkshire will spend $5 billion on "perpetual" preferred shares of Goldman.
These are not convertible into equity but pay a fat 10% dividend.
"Buffett to Invest $5 Billion in Goldman," The Wall Street
Journal, September 22, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122220798359168765.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments
Jensen Comment
At first I thought that Warren just wanted to spend $5 billion to tap into the
$700 billion bailout gift to bad banks, but now it appears that he just wants a
high fixed rate of return of $500 million a year now that Goldman will have its
losses reimbursed by the Government's bailout.
Get out the trough, it's feeding time. Congress has
decided that an election year with recession written all over it is not the time
to be giving up those job-producing "pork" projects bemoaned by both parties'
presidential candidates. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has quietly shelved the idea
of a one-year moratorium on so-called earmarks, the $18 billion or so in pet
projects that lawmakers sent to their home states this year. Senators in both
parties have voted to kill the idea. The California Democrat earlier had
signaled her support for the idea of including no legislative earmarks in...
"Congress forgets ban on pet projects (Pork-o-Rama Time!),"
Yahoo News, March 31, 2008 ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1994814/posts
Kerry says voters should forgive politicians who change their minds ---
http://www.meadvilletribune.com/election2008/local_story_088132145.html?keyword=secondarystory
The University of Chicago — already
the subject of bashing by those who don’t like
one-time law school faculty member Barack Obama — had its law school thoroughly
trashed this week by another former faculty member, Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia. Speaking at a meeting of the Federalist Society (a conservative
legal group), Scalia said that Chicago’s law school has gone downhill since he
left. The
Chicago Sun-Times quoted him as saying: “I
don’t think the University of Chicago is what it was in my time. I would not
recommend it to students looking for a law school as I would have years ago. It
has changed considerably and intentionally. It has lost the niche it once had as
a rigorous and conservative law school.” Further, in an apparent dig at the
courses Obama taught on race and society, Scalia said that when he was a law
student, “I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes, not ‘Law and Poverty,’ or
other made-up stuff.” A spokeswoman told Inside Higher Ed that the law school
did not plan a response to the coverage of Scalia’s remarks.
Inside Higher Ed, September 18, 2008
---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/18/qt
Jensen Comment
Judge Scalia graduated from Harvard Law School and was on the faculty of such
law schools as those at the University of Virginia, Chicago, Georgetown, and
Stanford ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalia
Although one of the more outspoken Supreme Court justices, he's also considered
to be a top scholar on the bench and one of its best writers. I don't think his
remarks on today's University of Chicago law school are appropriate in the heat
of an election campaign.
Sixty Minutes on CBS had a very upbeat interview with Antonin Scalia on
September 14, 2008.
Part 1 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4448191n
Part 2 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4448193n
On Friday, David Foster Wallace’s wife returned home
to find that he had committed suicide by hanging himself. He was 46. For the
past few years he was professor of creative writing at
Pomona
College. Since 1987 he had published two novels,
two collections of essays and three of short fiction, plus one book on the
concept of infinity and another, much shorter one about John McCain’s 2000
campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He was also the co-author
of a book called Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present, issued
by a small press in 1990, that for some reason is never included in the usual
roundups of DFW titles. . . . It was his extreme sensitivity to how commercial
messages and network-fostered norms of human interaction were shaping the whole
cultural landscape that made Wallace come to seem, over time, like the spokesman
for a younger cohort than my own, even though he was actually a year older. In
part this was because he was often imitated; even some of his imitators found
imitators. Wallace’s incredible capacity to mimic and deconstruct the endlessly
proliferating new varieties of self-hypnotizing American bullshit (the argots of
psychotherapy, public relations, TV production, etc.) became widely dispersed,
watered down beyond all capacity to serve as a tonic.
Scott McLemee, DFW, R.I.P.,
Inside Higher Ed, September 17, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/09/17/mclemee
I think the answer (to the surge in
popularity of the GOP among independent voters) is
pretty clear: The Democratic leadership in Congress took the golden opportunity
it was given in 2006 and pissed it away on petty partisanship -- just like the
Republicans who preceded them did. A Gallup poll out this week is revealing. It
found that only 47 percent of Americans say they have trust in the legislative
branch of the federal government. That's the first time that number has dipped
below 50 percent since Gallup began asking that question in 1972. The same poll
found that only 18 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing vs.
31 percent who approve of the job President Bush is doing. There is good reason
for those low ratings. When voters swept Democrats into power two years ago,
they expected that the party would deliver on its promises. It hasn't. Instead
of leadership and statesmanship, we got gamesmanship. Instead of governing,
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid embarked on a two-year political campaign.
Andrew Cline, "Pelosi and Reid Blew
It," The American Spectator, September 19, 2008 ---
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13913
>> I am under 45 years old,
>> · I love the outdoors,
>> · I hunt,
>> · I am a Republican reformer,
>> · I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,
>> · I have many children,
>> · I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with
>> less than two years in the governor's office.
Teddy Roosevelt ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Roosevelt
Forwarded by Diane
Where do those professional Palin smears on YouTube come from? ---
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194057.php
Under the title "Michelle Obama Has a Rabbi in Her
Family," The Forward
ran a piece
celebrating the supposed Jewish connections of
Michelle, and noted that her "rabbi" cousin "has often urged the larger Jewish
community to be more accepting of Jews who are not White." There is only one
problem - and read my lipstick here - the "rabbi" discovered by The Forward as
the Jewish kin to Michelle Obama is neither a rabbi nor, evidently, a Jew.
Steven Plaut, "Stampeding Jews to
Support Obama," Arutz Sheva, September 15, 2008 ---
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8243
Jensen Comment
But her husband has a militant Muslim cousin named Abongo Obama. Will that
count? ---
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977423808
Was this inevitable? Elvin T. Lim, an assistant
professor of government at Wesleyan University, makes only a few brief
references to campaign speeches in his recent book The Anti-Intellectual
Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to
George W. Bush (Oxford University Press). But his analysis suggests that
long-developing tendencies within the presidency have had the effect of
“hollowing out ... our public discursive sphere.” Lim’s book is not, as one
might reasonably guess, devoted to cataloging the W. malapropisms (a needless
exercise at this late date). The stupeying dynamic of presidential rhetoric is
scrupulously bipartisan. The speeches of Bill
Clinton provide numerous examples of the process that Lim describes, in which
factual explanation and rational deliberation have sunk beneath the tide of
appeals to feeling, rambling personal anecdotes, and applause-generating
punchlines.
Scott McLemee, "The
Anti-Intellectual Presidency," Inside Higher Ed, September 24, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/09/24/mclemee__1
"I come from Arkansas, I get why she's hot out
there," Bill Clinton said. "Why she's doing well." Speaking to reporters before
his Clinton Global Initiative meeting, the former president described Palin's
appeal by adding, "People look at her, and they say, 'All those kids. Something
that happens in everybody's family. I'm glad she loves her daughter and she's
not ashamed of her. Glad that girl's going around with her boyfriend. Glad
they're going to get married.'"
Karen Matthews, "Bill Clinton says
he understands Palin's appeal," The Seattle Times., September 22, 2008
---
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008195867_apbillclintonpalin.html
If he said she had a beautiful body would she hold it against him ---
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=dcqyvkcZNZk
A week after a high-profile send-up of Republican
vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," the NBC comedy
show returned to making fun of the Alaskan governor in a skit where New York
Times reporters sought to probe the possibility Palin's husband was having sex
with the couple's own daughters. "What about the husband?" asked a Times
reporter during a mock assignment meeting for the paper. "You know he's doing
those daughters. I mean, come on. It's Alaska." The assignment editor for the
Times, portrayed by actor James Franco, responded: "He very well could be.
Admittedly, there is no evidence of that, but on the other hand, there is no
convincing evidence to the contrary. And these are just some of the lingering
questions about Governor Palin."
Joe Kovaks, "NBC jokes: Sarah Palin's husband has sex with daughters,"
WorldNetDaily, September 21, 2008 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=75852
Jensen Comment
NBC, the Obama Campaign Network, thought it was funny to suggest that Palin's
husband might be incestuous.
There would be riots on the streets if NBC made comedy about Barack Obama "doing
his daughters." NBC most certainly has two sets
of standards and is probably the most politically biased network. As you might
guess, Al Franken helped SNL design the skit.
From the roof of the Robert C. Byrd Intermodal
Transportation Center on Main Street, one can see the Wheeling Artisan Center to
the east, the Wheeling Stamping Building to the south and Wheeling Heritage Port
to the west — all flourishing, thanks to the financial help of Sen. Robert Byrd.
To say the 90-year-old senator from West Virginia has brought home the bacon
during his half-century in Washington would be akin to saying Congress likes to
spend taxpayers' money. Two of Byrd's Senate colleagues, Republican John McCain
and Democrat Barack Obama, are threatening his ability to spend that money in
places such as Wheeling, Charleston, Huntington and Morgantown. McCain wants to
eliminate all congressional "earmarks" — money set aside by lawmakers for
specific programs or projects back home. Obama favors less spending and more
transparency.
Richard Wolf, "Next president could dam up money flow to W.Va.," USA
Today, September 17, 2008 ---
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-18-50states-westvirginia_N.htm
Along with the claim that Joe Biden had a
"blue-collar" upbringing -- he had a decidedly upper class (though not "rich")
childhood -- Joe Biden has for years claimed that his first wife and his
daughter were killed by a "drunk driver" in 1972. However, closer examination of
the records proves that the man driving the truck that slammed into the Biden
family car was never charged with drunken driving. So, why has the media allowed
this perception that Biden lost his wife to a drunk driver to persist? . . .
Along with the claim that Joe Biden had a "blue-collar" upbringing -- he had a
decidedly upper class (though not "rich") childhood -- Joe Biden has for years
claimed that his first wife and his daughter were killed by a "drunk driver" in
1972. However, closer examination of the records proves that the man driving the
truck that slammed into the Biden family car was never charged with drunken
driving. So, why has the media allowed this perception that Biden lost his wife
to a drunk driver to persist?
Warner Todd Huston, "Why Is Media Allowing Joe Biden to Lie About Drunk
Driver Killing His First Wife?" Newsbusters, September 20, 2008 ---
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/20/why-media-allowing-joe-biden-lie-about-drunk-driver-killing-his-
A president's pension currently is $191,300 per year
and ends when they turn age 80. Assuming the next president lives to age 80.
Sen. McCain would receive ZERO pension as he would reach 80 at the end of two
terms as president. Obama would be retired for 26 years after two terms and
would receive $4,973,800 in pension. Therefore, it would certainly make economic
sense to elect McCain in November.
Anonomous
Jensen Comment
It would be a small token to offset a trillion dollar bailout package.
Joe Biden isn't backing down from his startling
claim last week that raising taxes on the rich is the "patriotic" thing to do.
On Thursday he upped the ante, thundering that he also has
Jesus in his corner.
"Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who
need the help the most," Mr. Biden preached to a group of union supporters on
Thursday.
http://sbk.online.wsj.com/article/SB122204158558561239.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Jensen Comment
Now we know why the McCain should've gone with the Mormon's Mitt Romney for VP.
This "patriotic" taxes thing turned out to be really bad timing for Rep. Charlie
Rangel. Charlie says he will become more patriotic and finally pay his back
taxes.
"Pittsburgh Public Schools officials say they want
to give struggling children a chance, but the district is raising eyebrows with
a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for
assignments, tests and other work," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . . . Of
course, there's an obvious (better) solution
to this: Make the minimum score 100% instead of 50%. That ensures that
Pittsburgh students will have the highest grades in the country (as long as no
other school district learns the secret), and also that there will be no
awkwardness, since no one will know any math.
"Eyebrows raised over city school policy that sets 50% as minimum
score: 1+1=3? In city schools, it's half right," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
September 22, 2008 ---
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08266/914029-298.stm
Jensen Comment
Actually
the Pittsburgh schools learned about the 10% Rule in Texas and decided to one-up
the Lone Star State with a 50% Rule.
This gave
Hank Paulson
an idea. What if a homeowner made no payments on a sub-prime mortgage? Why not
give 50% minimum credit for each non-payment to lower the amount owed.? That way
the bailout recoveries won't look so bad since the government can thereby
receive half of what is owning to it with each bailed out mortgage. This will
appeal to Congress since there is public aversion to receiving zero on bailed
out mortgages. Yikes! I'm beginning to think like an accountant selling tax
shelters.
"Prof tells students: 'Undermine' Palin Metro State class assignment
compares VP candidate to 'fairy tale'," by Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily, September
15, 2008 ---
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75426
Students in an English class at Metropolitan State
College in Denver have been told to assemble criticisms of GOP vice
presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin that "undermine" her, and students
say they are concerned about the apparent bias.
"This so-called 'assignment' represents
indoctrination in its purist form," said Matt Barber, director of Cultural
Affairs with Liberty Counsel, whose sister, Janna, is taking the class from
Andrew Hallam, a new instructor at the school.
The instructor also, according to students, is
harshly critical of President Bush during his classroom English
presentations. He reportedly has allowed students who identify themselves as
"liberal" to deride and ridicule those who identify themselves as
"conservative" or Republican.
"So much for critical thinking. What's happening in
that classroom represents a microcosm for what's happening with the angry
left around the country," Matt Barber told WND. "The visceral and even
abusive reaction Hallam and some of his students are having against Sarah
Palin and Republican students in the class is occurring on a much larger
scale among left-wing elitists throughout the media, academia and the larger
Democratic Party."
Continued in article
Liberal Bias in the Media and Academe ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias
Mickey Mouse Must Die (not a joke from Islamic fundamentalists bent on taking
over the world) ---
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1850.htm
If your parents did not have any
children chances are you won't either.
JoNel Aleccia, MSNBC, September 17, 2008 ---
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26680088/
Jensen Comment
Say that again?
A DeKalb lawyer was suspended for 15 months
Thursday for arranging to have a female client perform nude dances for him in
exchange for credit on her legal fees, a state commission said. Scott Robert
Erwin, a lawyer since 1980, will begin his suspension Oct. 7, according to the
Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, a branch of the
state Supreme Court that conducts investigations into attorney misconduct.Erwin,
with offices at 211 N. 1st St., has not been charged criminally. Erwin
represented the female client and several of her family members on several
different types of cases.
Art Barman, "Stripper's private dancing lands DeKalb lawyer in hot,"
Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2008 ---
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-lap-dance-lawyer-both-19-sep19,0,4893585,print.story
Jensen Comment
She was just trying to wiggle out of paying her lawyer
A tense standoff is underway in northeastern Somalia
between pirates, Somali authorities, and Iran over a suspicious merchant vessel
and its mysterious cargo. Hijacked late last month in the Gulf of Aden, the MV
Iran Deyanat remains moored offshore in Somali waters and inaccessible for
inspection. Its declared cargo consists of minerals and industrial products,
however, Somali and regional officials directly involved in the negotiations
over the ship and who spoke to The Long War Journal are convinced that it was
heading to Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia's
Islamist insurgents. It was business as usual when speedboats surrounded the MV
Iran Deyanat on August 21. The 44468 dead weight tonnage bulk carrier was
pushing towards the Suez and had just entered the Gulf of Aden - dangerous
waters where instability, greed and no-questions-asked ransom payments have led
to a recent surge in piracy. Steaming past the Horn of Africa, 82 nautical miles
southeast of al-Makalla in Yemen, the ship was a prize for the taking. It would
bring hundreds of thousands of dollars - possibly millions - to the
Somalia-based crime syndicate. The captain was defenseless against the 40
pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades blocking his passage. He
had little choice other than to turn his ship over to them. What the pirates
were not banking on, however, was that this was no ordinary ship.
Nick Grace, "Mystery surrounds hijacked Iranian ship" The Long War
Journal, September 22, 2008 ---
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/09/mystery_surrounds_hi.php
On a night to meant to honor the finest in TV,
Hollywood just couldn’t leave politics alone. At last night’s 60th Primetime
Emmy Awards, presenters Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert promised not to talk
politics - then ended up comparing Republican presidential candidate John McCain
to a prune. Munching on the snack, Colbert said, “America needs a prune. It may
not be a young, sexy plum. Granted, it is shriveled and, at times, hard to
swallow, but this dried-up old fruit has the experience we need.”
John Perrigard, "Emmys Hit Low Point," Boston Herald, September
22, 2008 ---
Click Here
Jensen Comment
John Stewart and Stephen Colbert nightly injure the Democratic Party efforts to
not once again lose the national election because of its low "family values"
image.
Liquidity crisis?
What liquidity crisis?
Microsoft to buy back $40 billion of stock ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092200766.html?wpisrc=newsletter
How about just $20 bucks to speed up Vista?
An essay is presented discussing
the decision by the U.S. to go to war with Iraq in 2003. The author believes
that the military action taken by U.S. president George W. Bush had precursors
in the policies of former president Bill Clinton, specifically in regard to the
Iraq Liberation Act. The author argues that the Iraq War was inevitable since
the Clinton administration was already planning for an invasion in 1999.
Arthur
Herman, "Why Iraq Was Inevitable," Commentary, Jul/Aug2008, Vol. 126
Issue 1, p28-36
In this light — that is, in light of what
was actually known at the time about Saddam Hussein's actions and
intentions, and in light of what was added to our knowledge through his
post-capture interrogations by the FBI — the decision to go to war takes on
a very different character. The story that emerges is of a choice not only
carefully weighed and deliberately arrived at but, in the circumstances, the
one moral choice that any American President could make.
Had, moreover, Bush failed to act when he
did, the consequences could have been truly disastrous. The next American
President would surely have faced the need, in decidedly less favorable
circumstances, to pick up the challenge Bush had neglected. And since Bush's
unwillingness to do the necessary thing might rightly have cost him his
second term, that next President would probably have been one of the many
Democrats who, until March 2003, actually saw the same threat George Bush
did.
IT IS TOO often forgotten, not least by
historians, that George W. Bush did not invent the idea of deposing the
Iraqi tyrant. For years before he came on the scene, removing Saddam Hussein
had been a priority embraced by the Democratic administration of Bill
Clinton and by Clinton's most vocal supporters in the Senate:
Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to
threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or
biological weapons…. Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and
ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used
them. Not once, but repeatedly…. I have no doubt today that, left unchecked,
Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again. These were the words
of President Clinton on the night of December 16, 1998 as he announced a
four-day bombing campaign over Iraq. Only six weeks earlier, Clinton had
signed the Iraq Liberation Act authorizing Saddam's overthrow — an
initiative supported unanimously in the Senate and by a margin of 360 to 38
in the House. "Iraqis deserve and desire freedom," Clinton had declared. On
the evening the bombs began to drop, Vice President Al Gore told CNN's Larry
King:
You allow someone like Saddam Hussein to
get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological
weapons. How many people is he going to kill with such weapons? … We are not
going to allow him to succeed, [emphasis added] What these and other such
statements remind us is that, by the time George Bush entered the White
House in January 2001, the United States was already at war with Iraq, and
in fact had been at war for a decade, ever since the first Gulf war in the
early 1990's. (This was literally the case, the end of hostilities in 1991
being merely a cease-fire and not a formal surrender followed by a peace
treaty.) Not only that, but the diplomatic and military framework Bush
inherited for neutralizing the Middle East's most fearsome dictator had been
approved by the United Nations. It consisted of (a) regular UN inspections
to track and dispose of weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) remaining in
Saddam's arsenal since the first Gulf war; (b) UN-monitored sanctions to
prevent Saddam from acquiring the means to make more WMD's; and (c) the
creation of so-called "no-fly zones" over large sections of southern and
northern Iraq to deter Saddam from sending the remnants of his air force
against resisting Kurds and Shiite Muslims.
The problem, as Bill Clinton discovered at
the start of his second term, was that this "containment regime" was
collapsing. By this point Saddam was not just the brutal dictator who had
killed as many as two million of his own people and used chemical weapons in
battle against Iran (and in 1988 against Iraqis themselves). Nor was he just
the regional aggressor who had to be driven out of Kuwait in 1991 by an
international coalition of armed forces in Operation Desert Storm. As
Clinton recognized, Saddam's WMD programs, in combination with his ties to
international terrorists, posed a direct challenge to the United States.
In a February 17, 1998 speech at the
Pentagon, Clinton focused on what in his State of the Union address a few
weeks earlier he had called an "unholy axis" of rogue states and predatory
powers threatening the world's security. "There is no more clear example of
this threat," he asserted, "than Saddam Hussein's Iraq," and he added that
the danger would grow many times worse if Saddam were able to realize his
thoroughly documented ambition, going back decades and at one point close to
accomplishment, of acquiring an arsenal of nuclear as well as chemical and
biological weapons. The United States, Clinton said, "simply cannot allow
this to happen."
BUT HOW to prevent it? An opportunity
arose later the same year. In October 1998, Saddam threw out ten Americans
who were part of a UN inspection team, and on the last day of the month
announced that he would cease all cooperation with UNSCOM, the UN inspection
body. On December 15, UNSCOM's director, Richard Butler, reported that Iraq
was engaged in systematic obstruction and deception of the internationally
mandated inspection regime. Although the UN hesitated to invoke the
technical term "material breach," which would almost certainly have
triggered a demand for a response with force by the world body, Clinton
himself was determined to act. He had already received a letter from a
formidable list of U.S. Senators, including fellow Democrats Carl Levin, Tom
Daschle, and John Kerry, urging him to "respond effectively" — with air
strikes if necessary — to the "threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its WMD
programs." After consulting with Great Britain and other allies, Clinton
ordered Buder to pull out the remaining inspectors. On December 16, he
launched Operation Desert Fox.
For four days, American and British planes
and cruise missiles bombarded Iraqi sites in an effort to degrade Saddam's
programs. The key objective was to knock out communication-and-control
networks — and in this, a Clinton official would assert, Desert Fox
"exceeded expectations." But the attacks did virtually nothing to destroy
facilities suspected of housing weapons, most of which were in unknown
locations. The only way to find out where they might be was by reintroducing
UN inspectors, something Saddam now adamantly refused to permit.
Thus, in the end, Desert Fox proved a
failure, not because of insufficient American firepower but because of
Saddam's defiance — and because of a lack of forceful follow-up. True,
passage of the Iraq Liberation Act meant that the United States now had a
regime-change resolution on the books and was providing a certain amount of
money and aid for covert internal action against Saddam. True, too, Vice
President Al Gore was a particularly strong supporter of these initiatives.
But in the wake of Desert Fox, Saddam had conducted his own violent
crackdown on potential opposition figures, which meant there was no hope for
Iraqis to retake their country without massive outside help. As 1999 dawned,
the choices narrowed. Inspections had failed. So had air strikes and covert
action. So had international trade sanctions, which imposed a new level of
misery on the Iraqi people without putting any pressure on Saddam himself.
The UN's Oil-for-Food Program, created in 1996 in order to allow Iraq to
sell some of its oil in exchange for food and other necessary supplies,
appeared to be still another failure: Iraqis continued to starve, while
Saddam seemed to grow only richer.
AND so, "starting in early 1999," as
Kenneth Pollack, an official in Clinton's National Security Council, would
later recount, "the Clinton administration began to develop options to
overthrow Saddam's regime."
A plan for an actual land invasion of Iraq
had been drawn up a few years earlier under the stewardship of Colin Powell,
then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was updated after Desert
Fox. Although (Pollack writes) "no one thought the U.S. public would support
such an invasion," this was now beginning to seem the only option.
Concurring with this judgment was Scott
Ritter, an American who had served on the UN's weapons-inspection term and
had become notorious for his aggressive approach to his job. In testimony to
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late 1998, Ritter castigated the
Clinton White House for failing to confront Saddam with the threat of
invasion. This hardly endeared him to the President, but it did win him two
warm allies in the Senate. One was the Republican John McCain. The other was
the Democrat John Kerry, who outspokenly declared that since Saddam clearly
intended "to build WMD's no matter what the cost," America "must be prepared
to use force to achieve its goals."
But nothing would happen in 1999. At the
end of the year, the UN passed Resolution 1284 — an effort to get Saddam to
accept a new inspection regime, called UNMOVIC, in exchange for lifting
sanctions on all goods for civilian use. Yet, weak as the resolution was, it
led to a split in the Security Council, with four members — including
France, Russia, and China — abstaining from the vote. That split would
become permanent. By 2000, life at the Security Council would turn into a
constant battle of wills, with the U.S. and Great Britain in one corner and
Russia, France, Germany, and China in another. Although George W Bush would
later come to be blamed for wrecking the coalition that had fought the first
Gulf war, the reality is otherwise: the wreck occurred three years before he
became President.
All the same, as the military historian
John Keegan has pointed out, Resolution 1284 did signal the beginning of the
end of Saddam Hussein. By refusing to re-admit inspectors, even under a
relaxed sanctions regime, Saddam made it unmistakably clear that only a
credible threat of military force would make him budge, and only the
exercise of military force would ever get him out.
Unfortunately, by this time Clinton had
lost whatever limited appetite for armed confrontation he might earlier have
entertained. According to Pollack, the lengthy campaign to dislodge Slobodan
Milosevic in Kosovo had given the White House a taste of might go wrong in
open-ended military operations, and Clinton's advisers "were not looking to
back into a war with Saddam the way they had backed into one with
Milosevic." Besides, the proposed invasion plan called for 400,000-500,000
troops and six months of laborious preparation, which would stretch to the
breaking point an American military that, thanks to Clinton-era cuts, was
now little more than half the size of the one that had fought Desert Storm.
In his final year in office, Clinton
decided that his contribution to Middle East peace would lie not in the
removal of Saddam Hussein but in a grand attempt to resolve the conflict
between the Palestinians and Israel. With this, he missed his last chance to
deal forcefully with the man he was publicly committed to overthrowing.
Worse, by focusing his energies on a futile effort to placate Yasir Arafat,
he diverted American attention not only from Saddam but from the mounting
challenge represented by Osama bin Laden — not to mention the possibility
that these two sinister figures might some day find common ground. As
Clinton's administration ended and George W Bush's began, Iraqi defectors
were claiming that Saddam had set up camps in which terrorists connected
with bin Laden were training to attack the United States.
CONFRONTING THE same threat faced by the
Clinton administration, and the same policy predicament, the incoming Bush
team arrived at the same conclusion — namely, to do nothing. Bush's
advisers, like Clinton's, were split. In the Defense Department, some, like
Paul Wolfowitz, seemed (according to Pollack) "obsessed" with getting rid of
Saddam — though in point of historical fact Wolfowitz's position was not
strikingly dissimilar to Al Gore's. For others, like Secretary of State
Colin Powell, Iraq "simply did not measure up" to China or Russia or Europe
on the scale of international importance.
Most, like Vice President Cheney, were in
the middle. They saw plainly enough that containment was not working, and
they also saw the long-term benefits of regime change. But they recognized
as well that (to quote Pollack again) "toppling Saddam was going to be
difficult, potentially costly, and risky." The net result was that by the
summer of 2001, despite the almost complete collapse of the sanctions
regime, "it had become clear that the administration was not going to pursue
a radically new approach to Iraq."
Then came September 11. A hitherto obscure
terrorist threat emanating from the Arab-Muslim world had reached out to
commit mass murder against Americans on their own soil, and in so doing had
changed everyone's priorities. Hillary Clinton, the new junior Senator from
New York, put it this way in an interview with Dan Rather two days after
9/11, using starkly confrontational language of the sort for which President
Bush would soon be pilloried: "Every nation has to be either for us, or
against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to
pay a price."
As for the administration, it had come to
understand something else — namely, that its responsibility extended beyond
the clear and present danger presented by nations, like Afghanistan, guilty
of harboring terrorists. It had to prepare for future threats as well. In
that regard, Iraq moved quickly to the head of the list.
As Douglas Feith explains in War and
Decision, the recently published memoir of his days as Under Secretary for
Policy in Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department, there were several reasons
why a post-9/11 strategy had to focus on Saddam Hussein. First among them
was Saddam's ties to terrorist groups, of which the Clinton administration
had been well aware and had repeatedly cited. Although no evidence existed
that Saddam had been involved in al Qaeda's attack on New York and
Washington — and no Bush official ever asserted otherwise — the White House
learned after the liberation of Afghanistan that Abu Musab Zarqawi, one of
al Qaeda's key operatives, had found safe haven in Iraq. There was also some
evidence (cited by General Tommy Franks in his own memoir, American
Soldier), that Zarqawi "had been joined there by other al-Qaeda leaders."
Continued in article
"Bush's Lonely Decision,"
The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2008; Page A22 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122143387192234073.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
No less remarkably, the surge continued to
face entrenched Pentagon opposition even after the President had decided on
it. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went
out of his way to prevent General Keane from visiting Iraq in order to limit
his influence with the White House.
The Pentagon also sought to hamstring
General David Petraeus in ways both petty and large, even as it became
increasingly apparent that the surge was working. Following the general's
first report to Congress last September, Mr. Bush dictated a personal
message to assure General Petraeus of his complete support: "I do not want
to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded," Mr. Woodward
reports the President as saying. In this respect, Mr. Bush would have been
better advised to dictate that message directly to Admiral Mullen.
The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq
has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was
to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the
political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles
the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much
of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations
are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better.
Then again, American history offers plenty
of examples of wartime Presidents who faced similar challenges: Ulysses
Grant became Lincoln's general-in-chief in 1864, barely a year before the
surrender at Appomattox. What matters most is that the President had the
fortitude to insist on winning. That's a test President Bush passed --
something history, if not Bob Woodward, will recognize.
John Glenn fires back ---
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/glenn.asp
More importantly read the anonymous quotation near the end about the Iraq war.
"Barney's Rubble," The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122161010874845645.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
Barney Frank didn't like our recent editorial
taking him to task for his longtime defense of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
and the Congressional baron defends himself in his signature style here.
We'd let him have his say without comment except that his "whole story" is,
well, far from the whole truth.
Mr. Frank contends that he favored "very strong
reform" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even before Democrats took over
Congress after the 2006 elections. To adapt a famous phrase, this depends on
what the meaning of "reform" is. Mr. Frank did support a bill that he and
others on Capitol Hill described as reform. But on the threshold reform
issue -- limiting the size of the portfolios of mortgage-backed securities (MBS)
that the two companies could hold -- Mr. Frank was a stalwart opponent.
In fact, Mr. Frank was publicly arguing for an
increase in the size of their combined $1.4 trillion portfolios right up to
the day they were bailed out. Even now, after he's been proven wrong about a
taxpayer guarantee, he opposes Treasury's planned reduction in the size of
the portfolios starting in 2010, according to a quote attributed to him in
this newspaper last week. "Good luck on that," he reportedly said. Mr.
Frank's spokeswoman hung up the phone when we sought confirmation Tuesday.
Fannie Mayhem: A History A compendium of The Wall
Street Journal's recent editorial coverage of Fannie and Freddie. The MBS
portfolios have long been both the chief source of the systemic risk posed
by the two mortgage giants and of the profits that so handsomely enriched
shareholders and officers alike for decades. Without the extreme leverage
inherent in those portfolios -- which the companies borrowed heavily, at
taxpayer-subsidized rates, to accumulate -- their federal takeover might
never have become necessary.
For years, Mr. Frank and other friends of Fan and
Fred opposed not only bills written to limit the size of their portfolios,
but any bill that in their view gave an independent regulator too much
discretion to order a reduction. This was true of the reform that his House
committee passed last year. Only when the White House caved to Mr. Frank and
dropped its earlier insistence that a reform bill rein in the portfolios did
Mr. Frank move his bill.
In his letter, Mr. Frank also repeats his familiar
claim that Fannie and Freddie are vital because they support "affordable
housing." This is political smoke. The awful irony of Fan and Fred is that
they have done very little to assist affordable housing. Most of the
taxpayer subsidy has gone to enrich shareholders and Fannie managers, as a
2003 study by the Federal Reserve shows.
Mr. Frank says he favored the disclosure of Fannie
and Freddie compensation -- which is nice, but beside the point. The source
of the rich pay packages was the Fannie business model that Mr. Frank fought
so hard to protect. Instead of helping the poor, Mr. Frank was enriching Jim
Johnson, Frank Raines, Angelo Mozilo and Wall Street.
If Mr. Frank thinks his "affordable housing" goals
are so popular, he can always ask Congress to appropriate money for any
housing subsidy he desires. But he knows those votes are hard to come by.
It's much easier to have Fannie and Freddie take inordinate risks, even at
taxpayer expense, so they can pay a political dividend called an "affordable
housing trust fund" that politicians will disperse. In opposing genuine
reform of Fan and Fred, Mr. Frank wasn't acting like a principled liberal.
He was protecting corporate giants while hiding their risks from taxpayers
until the middle class got stuck with the bill.
Peter, Paul, and Barney: My Evolving (Daily) Essay on 2008
U.S. Government Bailouts of Private Companies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
The F9 Toggle Key
Somebody who has
been making Camtasia videos for sometime was surprised when I told her about the
F9 (or some equivalent) toggle key that lets you pause while recording a video,
take a break, bring up some new computer screens for the next segment of the
video, concentrate on what you plan to say and do during the next segment, and
then hit the F9-key to commence recording the next segment.
Most of my
videos were recorded this way. I looked brilliant in the way I could record
relatively long videos in one session. In truth, I recorded a succession of
segments that allowed me to rehearse before commencing once again. To my
students there was a continuous flow across all segments.
I’ve never been
good about editing out bad segments unless there is no audio (I almost never
record without audio). Editing the video part is easy, but synching the audio
with it takes a pro --- I’m no pro.
If I really
screwed up a segment of a video, I just rolled my eyes and commenced recording
the entire video from scratch. But the F9-toggle key greatly reduced the
probability that I would screw up a video (except for small screw ups that
sometimes were educational when the students watched me in the video correct
these little mistakes).
You can see some
of my videos at the following two sites:
Excel and MS
Access Helpers ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
FAS 133 ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/
It is important
to compress (“produce”) the recorded avi files into something like mpg, wmv, mov,
or flash files. This reduces over 90% of the file size for storing and
downloading. It would take forever for my students to download the original avi
files.
If your college
will still not give you enough space for all your recorded and compressed
videos, why not put them on YouTube for free and share them with the entire
world. This is the era for open sharing.
You
can read about free (and some fee) videos for accounting courses at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Scroll down to the free accounting textbooks, tutorials, and videos.
"Finding a College That Suits Students With Special Needs," by Susan
Shallenbarger, The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2008 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal
"Case Study," TechSmith Promotion Release, September 2008 ---
http://www.techsmith.com/morae/casestudy/landmarkcollege.asp?NLC=edu57
Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, is one of the
only accredited colleges in the United States designed exclusively for
students with dyslexia, attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD),
and other specific learning disabilities.
In 2001, the college started the Landmark College
Institute for Research and Training (LCIRT). The Institute promotes
understanding and support for the needs of individuals with learning
disabilities at the regional, national, and international level, working
with college and high school systems and educators to help students realize
their academic potential. The Institute develops and disseminates
educational research and theory-based teaching practices that set the
standard for educating students with learning disabilities and attention
deficit disorders.
The Institute also houses several significant
federal grant projects that support the continued development of innovative
practices, publications, and research projects.
Before we had the Universal Design and Usability
Lab, much of our work was anecdotal – now that we have Morae, it’s
undeniable. Morae has enabled us to conduct research and communicate results
in ways we never thought possible, and we are able to have a positive impact
in the way other organizations design learning content and technologies.
You can read (and watch a video) more about Morae at
http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp
What is the Landmark Act?
What is the Landmark College?
"Reaching Students With Learning Disabilities," by David Epstein, Inside
Higher Ed, October 25, 2005 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/25/landmark
According to a report by the
American Council on Education, the
number of full-time college freshmen with learning
disabilities — dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactive
disorder are among the most common — more than doubled in
the decade leading up to 2000, to nearly 27,000.
Betit said the spike is because more
of those students are being identified than in the past, and
that, now that colleges are recognizing their own students
with learning disabilities, it is time to learn more about
educating them. A large part of Landmark’s intent is to use
the grant to make information about teaching techniques
available online, so teachers at colleges that do not cater
only to students with learning disabilities can easily
access information. If it works at the five partner
colleges, Landmark hopes to share its wisdom more widely.
“We’ll never be a big college,” Betit said. “But we want to
share what we know.”
Many of the shared techniques will
focus on expanding the available types of sensory input a
student can use for learning. “I don’t know how many college
classrooms have boxes of Legos” like Landmark classrooms, he
said, noting that some students “are more tactile, and need
to grasp an idea literally, rather than intellectually.”
But Betit said other colleges don’t
necessarily need to go to Legos to better accommodate
students with learning disabilities. He said sometimes easy
adjustments, such as using more graphics, can help students
who are visual learners. And other strategies that focus on
basic skills that students with learning disabilities often
have not developed — such as time management, and study
skills — can benefit all of the students in a conventional
college classroom.
One of the systems that Landmark
uses, “master notebooks,” gives students a separate notebook
for each course that is divided into sections like “ideas,”
and “curriculum.” In the “notes” section, students use a
two-column note-taking system that uses paper with a large
left-hand margin, for students to organize major ideas of a
course, and then they can fill in details pertaining to each
idea on the right.
Betit encourages techniques as
simple as a daily checklist to help teach time management.
“Better time management is something all students can use,”
he said, so it shouldn’t be difficult to incorporate into a
conventional college classroom.
It isn’t clear yet exactly which
new teaching methods will be carried out in classrooms
beyond Landmark, but the partner colleges will start by
educating their own employees. Charles Blocksidge, vice
president of organizational development and the Frieda G.
Shapira Center for Learning, which works with students with
learning disabilities at Allegheny County, wants to adapt
some of the training techniques of Landmark personnel to
develop a training program for “our support services
personnel,” he said, but also for faculty members.
Susan Trist, disabilities support
coordinator at Western Nevada, said she works with around
100 students with learning disabilities, and hopes that,
through contact with Landmark, she can be kept up to date on
prevailing thought about teaching methods, “and especially
on assistive technology,” she said. The students Trist works
with are mixed in with other college students, and she will
sometimes “have the exam read to them if they have a visual
processing disorder, or get them textbooks on CD,” she said.
Trist said she “is anxious to hear about” the techniques
Landmark faculty use to accommodate students. “We need to
start a community of people to share best practices,” she
said.
The Landmark Disabilities Act is celebrated at
http://www.eeoc.gov/press/7-27-99.html
The Landmark College site is at
http://www.landmarkcollege.org/
I might add the following from accounting education:
Sherry Mills and Cathleen Burns won the American Accounting Associations
Innovation in Accounting Education Award by using a
Lego project to teach cost accounting ---
http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on technology to aid special need students at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Question
Once you make the admission tests optional (SAT and ACT), what do you put in its
place to filter out acceptances versus rejections from all the applicants with
virtually straight-A high school records (when
you do not have the capacity to admit every applicant to campus)?
"After You Go SAT-Optional," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
September 25, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/25/wake
Jensen Comment
There may be a clever strategy for dealing SAT/ACT optional admissions after the
$700 million bailout is in place. Admit every applicant on probation for one
semester. Then at the end of the semester sell all the flunk outs
under achievers to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. If the government waits
long enough and spends billions more for remedial education, taxpayers might
eventually make a profit like President Bush promises that taxpayers will profit
from buying up all the banks' bad debts. We've got to build up momentum behind
this bailout idea --- it can work for more than just challenged (submerged)
mortgage investments.
Students Overwhelmingly Prefer
Interactive Online Lectures to Onsite Classroom Lectures
"I’ll Take My Lecture to Go,
Please," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2008 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/23/capture
It looks like students can be open-minded after
all: When provided with the option to view lectures online, rather than just
in person, a full 82 percent of undergraduates kindly offered that they’d be
willing to entertain an alternative to showing up to class and paying
attention in real time.
A new study released today suggests not only a
willingness but a “clear preference” among undergraduates for “lecture
capture,” the technology that records, streams and stores what happens in
the classroom for concurrent or later viewing.
The study, sponsored by the University of
Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Institute, tackles the much-discussed
question of students’ preferences for traditional versus online learning
with unusual rigor. Based on a survey of more than 29,000 undergraduate and
graduate students at the university, the study had a response rate of over
25 percent. Almost half of the undergraduates — 47 percent — had taken a
class with lectures available for online viewing.
The responses potentially address two of the
biggest obstacles some observers see to more widespread adoption of lecture
capture technology and other elements of distance education: a willingness
to learn remotely, and the cost barrier.
Students who responded to the survey clearly
understood the benefits of lectures that are available as Webcasts, such as
making up for missed classes — which, at 93 percent, ranked as the top
advantage — and “watching lectures on demand for convenience” (79 percent)
or other reasons, such as reviewing lectures before class.
Over half, moreover, said they saw value in having
access to course materials (such as lectures, potentially) even after the
semester was over, much in the same way that some students keep their old
textbooks for future reference.
At the same time, the survey addresses potential
cost concerns, which have given pause to administrators who worry about the
financial strains of scaling up their educational efforts as well as to
students who would bristle at added technology fees for all of their
classes. Over 60 percent of respondents said they would pay for lecture
capture capabilities, and of those, 69 percent said they would be willing to
pay on a “course-by-course” basis rather than bundled fees.
“I think one of the things that surprised us a bit
was the undergraduate preference,” said Sandra Bradley, practice director at
the university’s E-Business Consortium and co-author of the study. “I think
we were maybe anticipating that we would see it a bit higher with graduate
students,” whose preference was only slightly lower, at 79 percent.
Sean Brown, vice president of higher education for
Sonic Foundry, which specializes in rich media and lecture capture
applications for higher education, said the study was a validation of his
company’s internal research. He will be featuring the study’s results in a
live Webcast to higher education professionals today. As a member of the
E-Business Consortium based at the university, he added, the company’s
marketing department initially supported some of the study’s administrative
costs, but those did not in any way influence the outcome.
“There’s a lot of positive feelings ... but to have
empirical evidence that it’s having an impact and about how students feel
about” lecture capture, he said, was valuable feedback.
Continued in article
Jensen Question
What are the advantages of onsite lectures?
Coed watching?
Opportunity to daydream?
Chit chats face-to-face after class?
Cannot procrastinate watching a live lecture as opposed to a video lecture?
Can feel the instructor's enjoyment of being in front of a face-to-face class?
Instructor is more likely to notice my confusion, pain, happiness, boredom, etc.
Jensen Comment
Outcomes may vary a great deal with class size (e.g., 20 students vs. 600
students in the class)"
The response rate seems rather low for a student survey and outcomes could be
biased
Note the more scientific SCALE experiments summarized at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois
In one century we went from
teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering
remedial English in college.
Joseph Sobran
as quoted by Mark Shapiro at
http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-11-27-07.htm
Most
Students in Remedial Classes in College Had Solid Grades in High School Nearly
four out of five students who undergo remediation in college graduated from high
school with grade-point averages of 3.0 or higher, according to a report issued
today by Strong American Schools, a group that advocates making public-school
education more rigorous.
Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher
Education, September 15, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/news/article/5145/most-students-in-remedial-classes-in-college-had-solid-grades-in-high-school-survey-finds
College Admissions Officers Urge Dumbing Down of College
Admissions Tests (e.g., the SAT and ACT tests)
"Admissions Group Urges Colleges to 'Assume Control' of Debate on Testing,"
by Eric Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/09/4685n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Also see
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/22/testing
With just a few words, William R. Fitzsimmons could
start a revolution. He is, after all, dean of admissions and financial aid
at Harvard University.
Imagine if he announces one day that his office no
longer requires applicants to submit standardized-test scores. Within weeks
Harvard's competitors go test-optional, too. Soon less-selective
institutions do the same. College admissions is transformed, and high-school
students everywhere rejoice.
At least that's what happens in the daydream shared
by some testing critics. Reality, however, looks a lot different. ACT and
SAT exams support a complex ecosystem in which colleges' needs vary
according to size, mission, and selectivity. Even Harvard cannot change
that.
Still, people listen to what Mr. Fitzsimmons says.
And this week, he plans to say a lot about tests.
Last year the National Association for College
Admission Counseling, or Nacac, asked Mr. Fitzsimmons to lead a panel that
would examine testing issues and recommend how colleges might better use
entrance exams. The dean and his fellow panelists are to present their
findings on Friday at the association's annual conference, in Seattle.
Nacac gave The Chronicle an early look at the
long-awaited "Report of the Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in
Undergraduate Admission," which stops well short of condemning admissions
tests. Nonetheless, it delivers the association's strongest statement to
date on one of higher education's most controversial issues. It affirms that
colleges and other interested parties have overinflated both the real and
the perceived importance of the exams—and proposes how to let some of that
air out.
The report urges colleges to regularly scrutinize
their testing requirements, to stop using minimum scores for scholarships,
and to ensure that admissions policies account for inequities among
applicants, including access to test preparation. Moreover, it anticipates a
future when admissions tests better reflect what students learn in high
school.
"We want to get the word out more clearly than
before that tests should not be used in a rigid way," Mr. Fitzsimmons says.
"A couple decades ago, people associated testing results with so-called
ability. We have come to a clearer understanding that those scores have more
to do with opportunities."
'Center of Gravity'
Creating the 58-page report was a test itself. The
21-member panel included admissions deans from an array of institutions,
such as Central Lakes College, in Minnesota; Georgetown University; and the
University of Connecticut.
"The challenge was to find a center of gravity,"
says David A. Hawkins, Nacac's director of public policy and research. "We
were looking to the collective wisdom of colleges, which have their own
proprietary interests and are not always consistent."
High-school counselors, independent consultants,
and education-policy experts rounded out the panel, which met four times and
communicated frequently via e-mail. Mr. Hawkins had the unenviable task of
synthesizing more than 20 hours of notes with the panelists' written
contributions.
The commission crafted recommendations that echoed
the association's big-tent spirit. "We were realistic," says Mr. Hawkins.
"We weren't going to tell people to abolish tests or that they were the
greatest thing since sliced bread."
The report does encourage more colleges to consider
dropping their test requirement if they find that they can make appropriate
admissions decisions without the ACT and SAT.
Each college, the report says, should use its own
validity studies to judge whether the tests have enough predictive value to
justify their use. Admissions offices should not rely only on national data
compiled by testing companies—or on tradition.
The panel encourages Nacac to become an
"unaffiliated clearinghouse" of testing information. It recommends that the
association create a program to train admissions officials in the ethics and
standards of testing. It also asks Nacac to create a way for colleges to
share testing research, and to annually publish sample validity studies of
the ACT and SAT.
Judgments of the value of such statistics, however,
often divided the committee. All members agreed that test scores reliably
predict freshman-year grades, but some said that did not justify requiring
the tests.
Steven T. Syverson urged his fellow panelists to
reach a broader definition of success in college. "We need to start paying
better attention to our language," says Mr. Syverson, vice president for
enrollment at Lawrence University, in Wisconsin, which does not require
standardized-test scores. "Success isn't a grade-point average. I've got
lots of students who get C's but who have a fabulous college experience.
They develop social skills and leadership skills. Being a good citizen is a
successful outcome."
Randall C. Deike agrees. Even so, he brought a more
practical view of tests to the discussion.
Vice president for enrollment at Case Western
Reserve University, Mr. Deike holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology. He
believes that the ACT and SAT are solid tests that help admissions officials
do their jobs, especially at large universities with waves of applicants. He
repeatedly told the commission not to discount the statistical significance
of the exams.
"Why," he recalls asking, "would you throw away
good information?"
Mr. Fitzsimmons, the chairman, dubbed Mr. Deike
"the canary in the coal mine." When panelists proposed language that struck
him as too critical of tests, he would speak up and try to steer them to
more-inclusive recommendations.
In the spirit of collaboration, Mr. Deike ended up
writing a key passage in the report that encourages more colleges to at
least explore the possibility of going test-optional. But he remains
unconvinced that such a move is advisable for many. "Too often standardized
testing is condemned," he says, "when it's really test misuse that's at
issue."
Beyond Numbers
The report takes gentle swipes at several third
parties for "possible misuses" of test scores. It urges the National Merit
Scholarship Corporation to stop using minimum PSAT scores as a requirement
for its awards. It questions why the College Board "appears to condone" that
practice. The report also criticizes the use of test scores in U.S. News &
World Report's college rankings, as well as in college-bond ratings.
The booming test-preparation industry prompted a
vigorous debate among panelists. Some participants say they had hoped that
the report would dismiss test prep's value to students. Others, however,
argued that the issue looms too large in students' lives to reduce to a
short statement. They wanted the report to confront the complexity of what
they see: that test prep benefits some applicants but not all.
"I'm not against preparing for tests, but there's
now an obsessive compulsion to get the best scores you can," says Marybeth
Kravets, a counselor at Deerfield High School, a public school in Illinois.
"Therein lies the inequity—those who can afford it can better prepare
themselves."
The commission concluded that while test prep is
inevitable, its effects remain too mysterious. Could it add 30 points to a
student's SAT score, or 100? What distinguishes good prep from bad?
Continued in article
Even without dumbing down the admissions tests, too many admitted students
need remedial tutoring---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#RemedialNeeds
Our underachieving colleges ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Bok
Stanford University is
offering 10 online computer-science and
electrical-engineering courses for free. The
content
will be offered through a variety of media and formats, including video on
YouTube and podcasts on iTunes, and will present an introduction to computer
science, artificial intelligence and robotics, and linear systems and
optimization.
Stanford University is offering 10 online
computer-science and electrical-engineering courses for free. The content
will be offered through a variety of media and formats, including video on
YouTube and podcasts on iTunes, and will present an introduction to computer
science, artificial intelligence and robotics, and linear systems and
optimization.
The courses will be covered under a Creative
Commons license, which means that professors and students can download and
use the courses for noncommercial purposes, as long as they give Stanford
credit.
Stanford officials said the program could be
expanded to include more courses if it proves popular and successful.
So, if you’re Stanford, why do this? To test a
potentially lucrative market? To extend the brand? David Orenstein, a
spokesman for Stanford, says that the college already offers online courses
for tuition, so money is not a motivation here. Spreading Stanford’s brand
name might be a benefit, he says. “At this point, there is not a grand
motive,” he says, noting that similar projects have been offered by Yale
University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing of courses are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Minority Hiring Success Varies Greatly by Discipline:
Law, Business, and Sciences Have the Worst Records
The major cause lies in the supply chain of PhD
graduates
One of the reasons for
the shortage of minority undergraduate students in accounting has been the lack
of role models teaching accounting courses in college.
"Whatever Happened to All Those Plans to Hire More Minority Professors?" by
Ben Gose, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 26, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i05/05b00101.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Duke U.: Success rates vary by discipline
The black faculty Strategic Initiative began in
1993, on the heels of the failed effort to add at least one black professor
to every department.
As of the fall of 2007, Duke had 62 tenured or
tenure-track black professors, accounting for 4.5 percent of the faculty.
But while the raw number is double that of 20 years ago, it masks tremendous
variation within the university. Black
professors remain rare in the law school, which has one black professor, the
business school, with two, and the natural sciences, with three.
Karla FC Holloway, an English professor who served
as dean of humanities and social sciences from 1999 to 2005, says each unit
of the university should be held accountable for its record on diversity.
"There has been growth in arts and social sciences, and medicine, but in
some ways that growth has arguably allowed other schools or divisions not to
work as aggressively with this effort," she says.
Mr. Lange, the provost, concedes that some parts of
the university have fallen short. He says he is working closely on the issue
with the law school's dean, David F. Levi, and other officials. "They have
made offers and have not been successful at times," Mr. Lange says. "They're
putting in a lot of effort to do better."
Duke makes sure that when black job applicants
visit the campus, they meet other black faculty members — and not just
potential colleagues in the department to which they're applying. The
university also is taking small steps to widen the pipeline. Duke has
financed two postdoctoral positions for minority candidates each year, with
the hope that it will eventually hire some of them for tenure-track faculty
positions.
In 2003, Duke started yet another faculty
initiative related to diversity — but this time the scope was expanded to
include women and all underrepresented minority groups. "We needed to
recognize that diversity had come to include a substantially broader set of
concerns," Mr. Lange says.
Ms. Holloway worries that the broader focus may
give deans and department chairs an out: "People can say, 'I've hired enough
women, and that makes up for the lack of minorities.'"
Harvard U.: Uneven progress on racial diversity
Harvard created an office of faculty development
and diversity, to be headed by a senior vice provost, in 2005, shortly after
announcing that it would spend $50-million to help diversify the faculty.
In the more than three years since that commitment,
the university has made modest progress in diversifying its faculty, and
some professors believe that the new office deserves some of the credit. Kay
Kaufman Shelemay, a professor of music and of African and African-American
studies, says the office has done a good job compiling statistics related to
diversity and working with deans and department chairs to ensure that they
cast a wider net in their searches. "There is no doubt that the office
established by former President Summers both invigorated and centralized our
institutional efforts," Ms. Shelemay says.
Women now make up 16 percent of tenured and
tenure-track faculty members in the natural sciences, up from 12 percent in
2004-5. In the humanities, 32 percent of the professors are women, up from
30 percent, and in the social sciences, 31 percent are women, up from 28
percent.
The changes for the professional schools over that
period varied — law, engineering, and government all saw significant gains
for women, while the proportion of female faculty members actually dropped
in the schools of divinity, dentistry, and education.
The university's progress on racial diversity,
meanwhile, has been uneven. More than 6 percent of the tenured and
tenure-track faculty members in the social sciences are black, but black
professors make up 1 percent or less of faculty members in the natural
sciences and the humanities. Hispanic professors make up no more than 2
percent of faculty members in each of those three areas.
In 2006, Harvard committed $7.5-million to improve
child care on the campus — a primary concern of female faculty members. The
university also just completed its third year of a summer program aimed in
part at improving the pipeline for female and minority professors. The
program allows undergraduates to spend 10 weeks in the research laboratories
of science and engineering faculty members. More than half of the 400
participants have been women, and more than 60 percent have been minority
students.
Judith D. Singer, a professor of education who
became senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity in June,
says she was willing to take on the job because the climate "feels
different" under Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's first female president. But
Ms. Singer acknowled