Tidbits on October 8, 2006
Bob Jensen

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

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   
 

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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

Interactive Dig Black Sea: The Pisa Wreck --- http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/blacksea/index.html

Bravo America --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/BravoAmerica.asf

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

Asleep at the Wheel: Driving Western Swing --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6167532

Unearthing an Unexpected Musical Treasure --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6105697

From the Discovered Tapes
* 'Roll on Waters' - Woody Guthrie * 'This Land Is Your Land' - Woody Guthrie

'Rogue's Gallery:' Songs of the Sea --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6105152

For Chico Hamilton, the Beat Goes On --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6112226

New Island Sounds from Cuba's Young Guard --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6126331

Audra McDonald: A 'Theater Geek' Turns to Pop --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6099887

Teoria (interactive music learning tutorials) ---  http://www.teoria.com/

New York Fetes Composer Steve Reich at 70 --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6155645

Photographs and Art

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

From the University of South Carolina
Celebrating the Works of F. Scott Ftzgerald --- http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/

CELT Corpus of Electronic Texts --- http://www.ucc.ie/celt/publishd.html

Travels With A Donkey In The Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) --- Click Here

Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) --- Click Here

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. --- http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/AlcLitt.html

The Adventure Of The Dancing Men by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) --- Click Here

The Paris Review: Interviews --- http://www.theparisreview.com/literature.php 

From the Pew Research Center
Looking Backward and Forward, Americans See Less Progress In Their Lives --- http://pewresearch.org/assets/social/pdf/Ladder.pdf

Homer Simpson's Words of Wisdom --- http://funny2.com/homer.htm

Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!
Karl Marx (1818-1883). Purported to be his last words --- Click Here 

I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967). Purported to be his last words --- Click Here 
Jensen Comment
But only free for a while. The Bolivian Army executed Che without a trial after he was captured by U.S. Special Forces.

Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames!
Saint Joan of Arc (1412-1431). Purported to be his last words --- Click Here 

Dream and you will be free in spirit, fight and you will be free in life.
Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1967) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara

Every word has been, at sometime, a neologism.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges

The people we should thank are the innovators and entrepreneurs, the individuals who see new opportunities and risk exploring them -- the people who find new markets, create new products, think out new ways to handle commodities commercially, organize work in new ways, design new technology or transfer capital to more productive uses. The entrepreneur is an explorer, who ventures into uncharted territory and opens up the new routes along which we will all be traveling soon enough. Simply to look around is to understand that entrepreneurs have filled our lives with everyday miracles.
Johan Norberg, "Humanity's Greatest Achievement," The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2006; Page A11 --- Click Here

The uneven sheds stretch back
Shed behind shed in train
Like cars that have long lain
Dead on a side track
Robert Frost in a newly-discovered World War I poem entitled as quoted by Scott McLeMee in "War Thoughts at Home," Inside Higher Ed, October 4, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/10/04/mclemee

Question
Is the GOP manipulating fuel prices for purposes of winning votes?
Answer from the Liberal Left

"Gas Pump Politics," by Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation, October 3, 2006 --- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/howl

Do the Democrats lose 50,000 votes every time the price of gasoline drops a penny? We'll have the answer to that question in a few weeks, but in the meantime cheaper gasoline raises some interesting questions.

The first of which is whether or not the Republicans have arranged to lower them to prevent what had seemed to be defeat in November. Certainly, the timing of the price drop might cause even the credulous to entertain a suspicion or two.

You may be sure that the Republicans are delighted to see gasoline fade from the list of voter irritations. You may also be sure that the Republicans would have arranged for prices at the pump to swoon if they could, but can they?

Not likely. To make the price of gasoline come down in Ohio, where the GOP is in big trouble, the prices have to drop everywhere. No special walled-off Ohio oil market, or even an American oil market, exists. If the price of oil is going to go down in Cincinnati, it is going to have to go down in Shanghai. Oil, as the economists say, is fungible.

There are times when energy prices are manipulated, California's electricity cost being an example. A few years ago, by closing certain generating plants and refusing to sell electricity from certain other plants, an artificial shortage was created, which drove up the price of electricity and drove ordinary Californians to the poorhouse.

But California is not part of a world electricity market. As opposed to oil prices, those electricity prices could be forced upward without worrying about how would-be suppliers in Canada or elsewhere would react. If California had been part of a world market, when the prices went up outside suppliers of electricity would have rushed in to sell and the prices would have been forced down again.

Because oil must be refined, it is possible to play some games with gasoline prices. Refineries can be pulled off line for no good reason except to drive the price of the products up. The operative word here is "up."

Driving prices down is another matter. Manipulators make money when the price goes up. Manipulators do not make money when the price goes down.

Down is going to cost somebody a lot of money. For practical purposes, the only way to make prices go down is to sell gasoline at a loss because you must sell it under the going price. Not quite the same as giving it away, but it's close.

And you have to sell a lot of it under the going rate. Last winter, for example, we saw President Bush's good friend the devil-defying Hugo Chávez, sell heating oil to poor Americans at lower-than-market prices, and guess what effect that had on the price of heating oil generally? None.

Last winter Chávez, through Citgo, owned by Venezuela, dumped 16 million gallons of heating oil at below-market prices in eight states, and if it pushed down the price of heating, nobody could see it. Imagine how many million barrels of oil it would take to depress the entire gasoline market--and how much it would cost. Rich Republicans, who are desperately clinging to every nickel out of fear the death tax will pauperize their heirs, are not about to make a campaign contribution of this magnitude. If that's the cost--and it would be--of keeping Denny Hastert in the House Speaker's chair, they'll take their chances with Nancy Pelosi.

The Democrats, posing as the champions of the great unwashed as they do, dare not show their apprehension at the slump in gas prices even as they watch votes melt away. Nevertheless, every time gas prices drop, people kid themselves into believing the oil is going to flow forever and that we can go on living as we have forever.

If the past is any kind of a guide, the numbskulls in Detroit will postpone the design and production of truly energy-efficient automobiles, a decision that will ultimately put them out of business. Lower prices will bring research and development on more expensive alternatives to a halt. The thousands of undertakings, great and small, that can increase efficiency will be put off yet longer.

There will be no politicians of note who command national attention (Al Gore aside) to tell us that we are once more frittering away precious lead time between now and when (a) the oil runs out and (b) the environment crashes.

The American religion of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost has made it a point of pride never to plan ahead, never to be ready and never to prepare. So in war after war we are caught with our pants down and in peace each Katrina is worse than the last one.

Whatever danger, no matter how real, how close or how certain, the response is, "Oh, the free market will take care of it" or "Aw, don't worry, technology has our back covered." So instead of throwing ourselves into energy conservation to postpone the day of disaster, we hear speeches about energy independence and ethanol.

As of now all ethanol can do is win the Midwestern farm vote. Yet the Democrats ought not to give up hope. The Republicans seem to have an inexhaustible supply of crooked pederast Congressmen, and there is one deep truth, which is that oil prices, like all prices, fluctuate. Next time the Ds may catch 'em on the down cycle.

From Columbia University
Having wreaked havoc onstage, the students unrolled a banner that read, in both Arabic and English, "No one is ever illegal."

"At Columbia, Students Attack Minuteman Founder," by Eliana Johnson, The New York Sun, October 4, 2006 --- http://www.nysun.com/article/40983

Students stormed the stage at Columbia University's Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.

Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.

Having wreaked havoc onstage, the students unrolled a banner that read, in both Arabic and English, "No one is ever illegal." As security guards closed the curtains and began escorting people from the auditorium, the students jumped from the stage, pumping their fists, chanting victoriously, "Si se pudo, si se pudo," Spanish for "Yes we could!"

The Minuteman Project, an organization of volunteers founded in 2004 by Mr. Gilchrist, aims to keep illegal immigrants out of America by alerting law enforcement officials when they attempt to cross the border. The group uses fiery language and unorthodox tactics to advance its platform. "Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious ‘melting pot,'" the group's Web site warns.

The pandemonium that ensued as the evening's keynote speaker took the stage was merely the climax of protest that brewed all week. A number of campus groups, including the Chicano caucus, the African-American student organization, and the International Socialist organization, began planning their protests early this week when they heard that the Minutemen would be arriving on campus.

The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence's self-evident truth that "All men are created equal," calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.

A student's demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, "Wrap it up, wrap it up!" Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, "No wonder you don't know what you're talking about."

"These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border," Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. "They have no right to be able to speak here."

The student protesters "rush to vindicate themselves with monikers like ‘liberal' and ‘open-minded,' but their actions, their attempt to condemn the Minutemen without even hearing what they have to say, speak otherwise," the president of the Columbia College Republicans, Chris Kulawik, said. On campus, the Republicans' flyers advertising the event were defaced and torn down.

The College Republicans expressed their concern about the lack of free speech for opposing viewpoints on the Columbia campus in the wake of the evening's events. "We've often feared that there's not freedom of speech at Columbia for more right-wing views — and that was proven tonight," the executive director of the Columbia College Republicans, Lauren Steinberg, said.

The Minutemen's arrival at Columbia drew protesters from around the city as well. An hour before Messrs. Stewart and Mr. Gilchrist took the stage, rowdy protests began outside the auditorium on Broadway, where activists chanted, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the Minutemen have got to go!"

Continued in article

In Taking On Fox, Democrats See Reward in the Risk
The attacks represent a new twist on the Democrats’ complicated dance with the cable news channel. Though Fox News maintains that its reporting is down the middle, Democrats have long complained that the news channel operates like a public relations outpost of the Bush White House. But never before has that anger built into a mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-any-more moment, and spilled over in such naked and sustained fashion onto Fox News itself.
Lorne Manly, "In Taking On Fox, Democrats See Reward in the Risk," The New York Times, October 1, 1006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/weekinreview/01manley.html

Jensen Comment
Fox leaves the other networks cold when it comes to economic and financial analysis. At this point I find that Fox excels at bringing on a wide variety of interesting experts and commentators. I also like some of the Fox interviews with international affairs writers. For example, this morning (October 5) Fox interviewed Ian Bremmer, author of The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall. Bremmer is a very, very articulate speaker. His discussion helped me better understand that some of the nutty things expounded by leaders of rogue nations (e.g., "there was no WW II holocaust") are largely played for internal political purposes in spite of how poorly their nutty outbursts play outside their own nations. Bremmer was also interviewed by John Stewart on Comedy Central, but the interviewer degenerated into silliness --- which I guess is to be expected on Comedy Central. Actually John did a better job interviewing Pervez Musharaf.

The following review appears at
http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Understand-Nations-Rise-Fall/dp/customer-reviews/0743274717

Worth the Read,
October 4, 2006 Reviewer: N. J. McCarthy
See all my reviews (REAL NAME) Whether you're an avid reader or professional investor, Ian Bremmer's book is worth your time. Ian's writing is organized, clear and concise. The book is written for the average reader; you do not need to be a policy wonk to understand his points. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Ian Bremmer's book provides an excellent basis for continuing debate regarding U.S. foreign policy.

Ian discusses eleven countries and their position along the J Curve. With each country, he discusses its history, current leadership style, the positives and negatives of U.S. policy towards that country and some suggestions of other approaches that could further openness and stability in that country. As an investor, I came away with a better idea of how to qualitatively measure short term and long term political risk.

The one question I had after reading this book was whether our current global economic and governing organizations were structured or could evolve to address these instabilities. Ian Bremmer did address this issue at a professional investor meeting I attended. He was quite dynamic and covered material beyond his book. I'd recommend attending a book signing if there happens to be one in your city.

For more serious international policy research, go to the following huge sites:
NationMaster --- http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php 
CIA World FactBook --- https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

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

Frightened Into Ignorance
Iraq's school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence. Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected.
"Iraqi education system on brink of collapse." Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, October 4, 2006 --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1887450,00.html

 If the George Bush has this supernatural power, the whole world should be scared
THE followers of Moqtada al-Sadr believe that the US invaded Iraq to prevent the return to Earth of their sect’s messiah-like figure, the Mahdi, or 12th imam. Hojatoleslam al-Sadr claims that his militia is preparing for the day when the Mahdi, the last direct descendent of the revered Shia figure Ali, reappears. Shia believe that the Mahdi, who disappeared in 868, will bring justice to Earth.
"Waiting for the imam's return to Earth," London Times, October 3, 2006 --- Click Here

House Republicans have done a lousy job of policing themselves
The larger problem for House Republicans is that they've amassed a poor record of policing themselves amid a succession of scandals. Even as Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay and Bob Ney tarnished the party's image, no one other than a few "moderates" who don't have much sway in the caucus took the lead in called for drumming any of them out of the ranks. It's also notable that none of these three men survived their respective scandals. Cunningham is serving time in the federal pen after pleading guilty to corruption charges late last year. Mr. Ney abandoned plans to run for re-election a few weeks ago after it became clear a federal investigation was heading straight for him.
Brendan Miniter, "The Problem Isn't Foley:  House Republicans have done a lousy job of policing themselves," The Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2006 --- http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110009031

"Paz to supply gas to Palestinian Authority:  Israeli energy company to refine oil for Authority it in it's recently purchased Oil Refineries in Ashdod. Deal estimates to worth about NIA 1.5 billion (roughly USD 30 million)," by Tani Goldstein, Ynet, October 5, 2006 --- http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3311320,00.html

The Paz energy company began supplying gas to the Palestinian Authority Wednesday, after signing an agreement with the PA to start providing it with petrol in three months.

Sources in the Israeli energy industry and the PA claim that contract went into effect immediately after the Alon Oil Company, the PA's previous supplier, stopped providing the Palestinians with gas on Tuesday.

Paz acquired the Ashdod Oil Refineries from the government this week for a sum of NIS 3.25 billion (roughly USD 764 million).

According to the deal signed between the PA and Paz, the energy company will refine crude oil for the Palestinians, who will purchase the oil directly from the Arab countries. This is set to be the first time since its establishment in 1994 that the PA buys oil independently, and not from Israel.

It is estimated that Paz will sell the petrol to the Palestinians for a lower price than will be charged in Israel.

According to estimates in the energy industry, official purchase of oil in the PA amount to NIS 1.5 billion (roughly USD 30 million) per year.

"Pyongyang Phooey," by Nicholas Eberstadt, The Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2006; Page A20 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116001318634783308.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

North Korea has been called a "rogue state" by some, a "terrorist state" by others, and fair enough -- but while those terms carry opprobrium, they lack real descriptive content. The North is better understood as a "revisionist state" -- bitterly dissatisfied with the international environment it faces, and intent upon overturning that order. Its main grievances with the international system are: (1) the predominance and success of the capitalist world economy, particularly its global trade and financial arrangements, which are fundamentally incompatible with Pyongyang's Stalin-style economy; (2) the Northeast Asian security structure of military alliances built and maintained by its superpower enemy, the U.S.; and (3) the florescence of a prosperous, democratic South Korean state on the landmass that the Kim family claims the right to rule unconditionally.

These grievances are not merely aesthetic. Since each of these features of the international system places the survival of their own system in jeopardy, North Korea is exceedingly unlikely to be reconciled to them through "international dialogue." Making the world safe for Kim Jong Il requires nothing less than upending the contemporary economic, political and military order in Northeast Asia -- preposterous as such an outcome may sound to South Korean, Japanese or American ears.

Nevertheless, North Korean policy is relentlessly focused on achieving just such an upending. The carefully chosen tools for the job are nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. The point of vulnerability -- the focus of these WMD -- is the U.S.-South Korea military alliance. By training missiles on U.S. territory, Pyongyang's goal of breaking the alliance would be promoted most efficiently -- and its objective of unconditional unification with South Korea would be directly advanced. Why? Because placing U.S. territory in North Korea's nuclear crosshairs inescapably undermines the credibility of American security guarantees in a time of crisis on the Korean peninsula. If U.S. policy makers were deemed unwilling to expose Seattle in order to honor commitments to Seoul, the security alliance would be worthless, America's unparalleled military might notwithstanding.

For over half a century, Pyongyang has endured the reality of U.S.-imposed "deterrence." For Kim Jong Il, the geopolitical keys to the kingdom lie in deterring the deterrer -- and North Korea's otherwise puzzling and bellicose behavior should be regarded through the prism of this long-term project.

The seemingly stalled six-party talks, for example, are actually not stalled at all: North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs have apparently been progressing quite nicely during the three-plus years of conferencing. There is an eerie similarity between the "conference diplomacy" involving North Korea today and earlier episodes of "conference diplomacy" in Europe between World Wars I and II. While the particulars are obviously different -- Germany was the strongest state in its region, while North Korea is the weakest -- the dynamics are almost exactly the same: The status quo powers want to talk; the revisionist powers want to arm -- and both parties get their wish.

When North Korea launched its missiles in July, the move was judged in many quarters to be impetuous, even irrational. In fact, it was coolly calculated, displaying the regime's confidence that it could manage subsequent international events while pushing its game up to a potentially much more dangerous level.

Even so, Pyongyang could not have known how much its own project -- inflaming the U.S.-South Korea military alliance -- would be abetted by the hapless Roh Moo Hyun government. In the immediate aftermath of the launches, South Korea's President Roh studiously avoided criticism of North Korea -- and instead harshly scolded the Japanese for (among other things) bringing the matter before the U.N., averring that Tokyo's actions could "lead to a critical situation in the peace over Northeast Asia"! The Roh administration also stated that its multibillion dollar joint-venture scheme within North Korea, the Kaesong Industrial Complex, should be insulated against any political fallout from the missile episode. It continued the subsidies for the project and insisted that North Korean products "made in Kaesong" should receive privileged treatment in the pending U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement.

Most portentously of all, Mr. Roh fixated on switching wartime operational control (Opcon) of the U.S-South Korea combined forces command from U.S. to South Korean hands. It seemed to matter little to him that many military specialists in South Korea itself -- including a large number of retired generals and former ministers of national defense -- went on record to warn that the South's forces were not prepared for such a transition, and that readiness might suffer. The true reasoning behind Mr. Roh's adamant Opcon lobbying may have been revealed by one of his advisers at a public seminar in Seoul last month. He argued that South Korea's control of troops during wartime is critical to maintain security on the peninsula as it prevents the U.S. military from unilaterally conducting military operations in the case of an emergency on the peninsula.

Opcon, in other words, was a proxy for the Roh government's distrust of its U.S. ally -- a feeling evidently so powerful that it could not be restrained even under the pressure of North Korea's missile tests. In the light of such official South Korean reactions, Pyongyang made its own calculations about the risks and benefits in moving its agenda on to nuclear tests. * * *

If the flower children in charge of South Korean national security policy these days have acquitted themselves poorly, the record of the self-proclaimed grownups who took charge of Washington's policies in 2001 does not look that much better. Passive-aggressive in the face of North Korean brinkmanship, irritable and reactive in the face of mounting frictions in the relationship with Seoul, the Bush administration's main achievement to date in "alliance management" seems to have been the drawdown of U.S. forces in South Korea, with more in store. It is not even clear that our statesmen understand the stakes of the game they are embroiled in. All this, of course, will hardly dissuade Pyongyang from pressing the U.S.-South Korea alliance ever harder.

With his latest nuclear gambit, Kim Jong Il has just reset the clock on the U.S.-South Korean military alliance, moving the hands palpably closer to midnight. If we listen closely, we can hear the ticking.

Mr. Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is author of "The North Korean Economy Between Crisis and Catastrophe," forthcoming from Transaction Publishers.

Question
Do professors who expound political beliefs to their students affect political beliefs of their students?

"All in the Family," by Arthur C. Brooks, The Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2006; Page A26 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115984030264280759.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Parents have just sent their kids off to college, full of hope that the knowledge and enlightenment they acquire will prepare them for the rigors of the modern economy. But a worrying possibility is keeping some of these parents -- especially the conservative ones -- up at night: the prospect that their children will be hopelessly corrupted by the faculty.

In one popular book about campus politics, the author writes, "We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. . . . [T]hey spew violent anti-Americanism, preach anti-Semitism, and cheer on the killing of American soldiers and civilians -- all the while collecting tax dollars and tuition fees to indoctrinate our children." If the author is right, then the fears about the minds of our children might seem like a lot more than just right-wing paranoia.

Most studies of the subject have indicated that, indeed, upward of 90% of college professors at many universities hold liberal political views. In some schools and departments, faculties are virtually 100% left-wing. It is one thing to lament this ideological lopsidedness in the academy. But it is quite another to assume that professors actually bend the little minds in their care toward a liberal point of view, or even a radical one. Imagine a student with God-fearing Republican parents exposed to the depredations of an English professor aiming to use his class as a Bolshevik training camp. Will the professor succeed in turning the kid into a Red? The evidence says, probably not: When it comes to politics, people from conservative families follow their parents, not their professors.

The most recent evidence on this subject comes from the mid-1990s, in the University of Michigan's National Election Studies. These survey data uncover two facts. First, people who go to college are more likely to vote Republican than those who don't go to college. Adults 25 and under from Republican homes are, for example, 11 percentage points more likely to vote Republican if they attended college than if they didn't. And young adults from Democratic households are 11 percentage points less likely to vote Democrat if they've gone to college than if not.

Second, nearly everybody grows more likely to vote Republican as they age -- but especially college graduates. It is no shock that the vast majority of people of all educational backgrounds from Republican homes vote Republican by age 40. It may come as more of a surprise that 40-year-olds with Democrat parents are far less likely to vote Democrat if they've gone to college than if they haven't. In fact, while three-quarters of the uneducated group still vote Democrat, the odds are only about 50-50 that the college graduates vote this way. And they've not all become skeptical political independents: Fully a third are registered Republicans.

Obviously, some kids turn left in college -- but this appears to be the exception, not the rule. Does all this mean that our colleges and universities are actually breeding grounds for conservatism? Hardly. What the statistics really show is that higher education by itself doesn't affect political views very much. Rather, in addition to the strong influence of parents, it is higher incomes -- which typically reward a college education in America -- that push people to the right politically. In Republican families, the income effect reinforces parents' influence on their kids. In Democratic families, the two effects work against each other.

To fearful Republican parents, then: Sleep tight. When it comes to politics, your kids are in good hands -- yours.

Professor Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, is the author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," forthcoming in November from Basic Books.

"No Return To IRA Terror," Sky News, October 4, 2006 ---
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13545616,00.html

The IRA no longer considers a return to terrorism "a viable option", according to Northern Ireland's ceasefire watchdog.

The conclusion of the Independent Monitoring Commission comes in its 12th report on the peace process in the province.

It says the IRA has disbanded its military structures and is no longer involved in "terrorism, training, recruiting, targeting, procurement or engineering".

The Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain welcomed the conclusions of the IMC.

"There is now convincing evidence of the IRA's continuing commitment to the political path and ... it is no longer credible to suggest otherwise," he said.

The Irish PM Bertie Ahern called the findings "positive and clear-cut", adding they were "of the utmost importance and significance".

Continued in article

"Blair: Northern Ireland final settlement within reach," by Matt Weaver, The Guardian, October 4, 2006 --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,1887436,00.html

Senate Voting on Two Bills to Fence Off U.S.-Mexico Border

An iron curtain between Mexico and the U.S. may keep out some migrant workers, but it gives me very little feeling of safety from terrorists who will easily enter the U.S. with a bit of imagination and money. The easy passage of this bill is heavily based upon voter sentiment against a rising tide of illegal immigration across the southern border of the U.S.

Senator Chafee is the only Republican voting against the fence on the second bill. Given business lobbying against the fence, it's surprising that all other Republicans did not follow Chafee's lead. Many businesses opposed to fencing want the added, and generally inexpensive, labor supply. The Democratic leadership split markedly on these bills with Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, Tom Harkin, Chuck Schumer, and Ron Wyden voting Yea for both fencing bills versus Senators Durbin and Sarbanes voting Nay both times. A few other leading Democrats joined in the Nay vote on the second bill. Labor union lobbying for the fence probably accounts for much of this split among Democrats. Noted switchers between the first and second fencing bills are highlighted below. Senator Kennedy abstained on the second vote, but his press releases are negative regarding fence building.

Here's How Our U.S. Senators Voted on Both Fencing Bills:  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00126
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00262

The president and co-owner of a Wilmington-based temporary labor service company pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to conspiring to provide work for hundreds of illegal aliens. Maximino Garcia, president of Garcia Labor Co. in Ohio Inc. and Tennessee-based Garcia Labor Co. Inc., entered a plea agreement that requires him to forfeit $12 million and face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Garcia's sister, Dominga McCarroll, who is also the former vice president of both companies and Gina Luciano, Garcia Labor Co. Inc. director of human relations, also pleaded guilty to the same charge and will face the same possible penalties, minus the $12 million forfeiture.
"Business owner pleads guilty in illegal alien case," Business Courier, October 3, 2006 --- http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2006/10/02/daily24.html

Analogous to "clear-cutting the forest to catch a squirrel"

"Bush Seeks Ban on Destructive Fishing," PhysOrg, October 3, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news79102898.html

President Bush called for a halt to all types of destructive fishing on the high seas Tuesday, saying the United States will work to eliminate practices such as bottom trawling that devastate fish populations and the ocean floor.

Bush's memo directs the secretaries of the State and Commerce departments to promote "sustainable" fisheries and to oppose any fishing practices "that destroy the long-term natural productivity of fish stocks or habitats such as seamounts, corals, and sponge fields for short-term gain." Bush also said the United States would work with other nations and international groups to change fishing practices and create new international fishery regulatory groups if needed.

On the high seas, where the vast marine life knows few laws, hundreds of boats drag huge nets along the sea floor scooping up orange roughy, blue ling and other fish - but bulldozing nearly everything else in their path.

"It's like clear-cutting the forest to catch a squirrel," said Joshua Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts' environment program, which has been leading an international coalition of more than 60 conservation groups seeking to halt the practice known as bottom trawling on the high seas.

Continued in article

Question
Who are the 50 hottest professors according to RateMyProfessors.com?

Answer --- http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/hotProfs.html
It helps to teach huge classes!
The top seven have six red peppers
The hottest professor is a Canadian psychology professor.
Four of the top seven teach in Canadian universities.
There are a surprising number of mathematics professors near the top.
There's a scarcity of business professors near the top, although Business Policy professor Laura Allan from Wilfrid Laurier University (in Canada) is hot at Rank 11.
Accounting professors are ice cubes in these rankings of hot professors.

Question
What topic dominates instructor evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com (or RATE for short)?
Answer --- See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation 

Bob Jensen's critical threads on teaching evaluation controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation

October 5, 2006 reply from Dee (Dawn) Davidson [dgd@MARSHALL.USC.EDU]

But there’s also this list on Business Week. Our Merle Hopkins is here.
Click Here

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2006/bs20060918_503106.htm?chan=bschools_undergrad+--+favorite+professors_favorite+professors 

dee davidson
Leventhal School of Accounting
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
 dgd@marshall.usc.edu 

October 5, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Dee's link mentioning the popularity of Professor Hopkins illustrates how misleading the outcomes can be for RateMyProfessor.com. Even though Professor Hopkins has huge classes, only 12 students bothered to send any ratings into the RateMyProfessor.com --- http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=18909

There are definitely small (Epsilon?) sample problems, outlier problems, and a non-random/self-selecting sampling problems at RateMyProfessor.com. Also there is a tendency for disgruntled students to be more self-selecting than satisfied students. This is the case for Merle Hopkins.

Bob Jensen

October 5, 2006 reply from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

Camtasia 4
And another important new feature of Camtasia 4 – you can create Camtasia VIDEOS of your lectures in Ipod format. So the students can now study 24x7, wherever they are!
Richard Campbell, October 3, 2006

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

Women in MBA Programs

September 29, 2006 message from Priscilla Reis [reispris@ISU.EDU]

While these questions have nothing to do with technology, I'm sure someone on the list will have some insight. The gender balance of our undergraduate accounting program tends to fluctuate between 40 and 50% female. However, our population of female MBA applicants, and thus, students (combined accounting students and those concentrating in other areas), has gone down to less than 20%.

Are other schools also suffering from a paucity of female MBA applicants/students? Does anyone know of any recent studies on gender balance in MBA programs? Has anyone developed effective methods for attracting more female students?

Priscilla R. Reis, Ph.D., CMA
Department of Accounting
College of Business
Idaho State University
Box 8020 Pocatello, ID 83209
reispris@isu.edu

September 29, 2006 reply from Ellen Glazerman, Ernst & Young LLP [ellen.glazerman@EY.COM]

Research has been done by the University of Michigan and C200. The percentage of women in MBA programs nationally is 30% (or less). this year has seen a slight increase in these numbers at the most competitive business schools in the US. GMAC has some of this most recent data. There is a Foundation - Forte Foundation: Inspiring Woman Business Leaders - that is a unique partnership between business schools and companies. You should get some good information from their website: fortefoundation.org. I hope it is helpful!

Ellen

September 29, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Women now make up more than 60 percent of all accountants and auditors in the United States, according to the Clarion-Ledger. That is an estimated 843,000 women in the accounting and auditing work force.
AccountingWeb, "Number of Female Accountants Increasing," June 2, 2006 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102218

Since most states require at least 150 credits to sit for the CPA Examination, most of the men and women at the entry level have masters degrees.

It is possible to check on the male/female proportion for selected programs at http://www.aacsb.edu/knowledgeservices/omd2/simple-srch.asp

Member schools have access to all sorts of data on graduate and undergraduate business programs in the AACSB's huge databases --- https://www.aacsb.edu/knowledgeservices/datadirect/dd-intro.asp

Also see the Management Education at Risk report https://www.aacsb.edu/publications/metf/default.asp

October 2, 2006 reply from Tracey Sutherland [tracey@AAAHQ.ORG]

It seems there's some recent evidence that more women managers bring equity to women in their companies (link below). On the other hand, our colleagues in sociology have been tracking for some time effects related to increased numbers of women in professions - one related to lower salaries is illuminated below in a fairly recent report from psychology.  Related to Bob's posting that women now make up about 60% of accountants, it's interesting to consider the possible implications of the trend over time.

Tracey Sutherland
Executive Director
American Accounting Association

From the Journal of Applied Psychology (2003) - Pay of Both Men and Women Managers is Less When Managers’ Subordinates, Peers and Supervisors are Women, Study Finds. Specific findings regarding gender and pay indicate that:

• Managerial pay becomes substantially lower as the percentage of females that the manager supervises increases. For example, on average, a male or female manager whose subordinate group is comprised of 80% female receives approximately $7,000 less in pay than a manager whose subordinate group is 80% male.
• Managerial pay remains relatively constant when the percentage of females that the manager supervises is less than 50%. However, once females become the majority in the workgroup, both male and female managers pay decreases sharply as the percentage of female subordinates in the workgroup increases. For example, a manager who supervises a group comprised of all women receives approximately $9,000 less than one who supervises a group comprised of 50% women.
• On average, managerial pay decreases by approximately $500 for each 10% increase in the percentage of his or her female peers.
• On average, a manager whose supervisor is female receives approximately $2,000 less pay than one whose supervisor is male.

Women breaking the glass ceiling seems to help other women in the company -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200858_pf.html

October 3, 2006 reply from Linda Kidwell, University of Wyoming [lkidwell@UWYO.EDU]

Thanks for the story Tracey.

In reading the news story, there is some confusion as to whether they are discussing snapshots or trends. What I'm getting at is this: Is it that "as women move into management positions" in general, or as women in traditionally male or female fields move into management? If you read the piece through, it sounds like the real story is that women are starting to break the glass ceiling in traditionally male fields. Thus more of their subordinates are men, pay has traditionally been higher, thus pay continues to be higher. Where there are many junior management women, they are looking at traditionally female areas, and pay is lower, as it has always been. They haven't attempted any time series analysis to see what happened within any given industry as women entered management ranks. I don't really see that they've made the case that women at high ranks bring other women into better pay, or that women in lower ranks have a negative trending effect on men who work for them. So I don't really anticipate the influx of women into accounting depressing the pay of men in the profession. They are moving into (taking over? :-) ) a traditionally male field, so their pay should come up to par in accounting rather than bringing down the pay of men in the field.

Perhaps I'm naive, but that's been my experience -- any pay differentials I've experienced have been when I taught at teaching focused smaller colleges (more female domain) relative to research focused universities (male domain), rather than a male/female differential within either type of school. And before I changed careers, I was clearly in traditionally female jobs, being paid peanuts. Working within the financial administration at Harvard at the beginning of the unionization movement among staff and lab workers, I still remember the organizers' slogan: "You can't eat prestige!" Pay at Harvard for staffers, most of them women, was a disgrace. But that's off point, I suppose, or is it?

Linda

October 4, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

An encouraging sign in terms of breaking the glass ceiling in accounting firms has been Deloitte's "Women's Initiative" commenced 12 years ago. Results to date are linked at http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/section_node/0,1042,sid%253D2261,00.html

 

WIN 2005 Annual Report Women’s Initiative teams delivered more than 235 programs in 2005 and were honored with seven national awards. Our number of women partners, principals and directors rose along with our women in leadership positions. Learn about these and more achievements in the 2005 Annual Report.

Blog Excerpts One way the Women's Initiative connects with our people is through the WIN blog on the Deloitte intranet site. The blog covers personal perspectives on topics ranging from work/life balance to gender bias to the power of networking. Read some recent excerpts.

This week Deloitte's program for maintaining training programs and re-entry initiatives for women who take out time to raise a family made the national news in a very positive way.

It also helped that Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers were recognized as two of the best (in the Top 10) companies in the U.S. for working mothers, according to an annual survey by Working Mother magazine.

Progress in terms of working women and women planning career re-entry after raising a family  is probably greater in accountancy than in most industries.

Bob Jensen

"E&Y, PwC Top Employers for Working Mothers," SmartPros, September 27, 2006 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x54886.xml

Bob Jensen's threads on women in accountancy and law professions are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

"Trading in Harrah's Contracts Surges Before LBO Disclosure:  Options, Derivatives Make Exceptionally Large Moves; 'Someone...Was Positioning'," by Dennis K. Berman and Serena Ng, The Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2006; Page C3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB115992145253481882.html

Trading in Harrah's Entertainment Inc. options and derivatives contracts reached a fevered pitch in the days leading up to news of a potential leveraged buyout of the gambling giant, making it the latest in a string of recent deals marked by unusual trading activity.

At one point last week, the volume of "call" options, contracts to buy a specific number of shares by a fixed date at a specified price, increased to almost six times the August average. At about the same time, movements in the credit-default swap market suggested that traders in the sophisticated financial instruments were anticipating a potential buyout.

Harrah's said Monday that it had received a $15.1 billion buyout offer from private-equity firms

Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group. The $81-a-share offer caused Harrah's shares to jump 14% and its bonds to fall 11% as the company's credit ratings were cut to "junk" by Standard & Poor's. Yesterday, the shares fell 1.3%, or 97 cents, to $74.71 as of 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The Las Vegas company is reviewing the buyout proposal and isn't certain a transaction will be sealed.

Last Thursday, two trading days before the offer was announced, options traders exchanged 23,597 call contracts, nearly six times the August volume, according to Options Clearing Corp.

"Clearly, someone out there was positioning for some movement in Harrah's," said Stacey Briere Gilbert, Susquehanna Financial Group's chief options strategist. "I don't know whether they were positioning for an LBO, but for something."

Derivatives tied to Harrah's bonds also moved. The price of a five-year credit-default swap that protects an investor against a default in $10 million of Harrah's bonds climbed 24% last week to $114,000 annually, according to Markit Group.

The price of Harrah's swaps more than doubled to $265,000 after Monday's announcement.

These derivatives, which trade over the counter and are much more active than the bonds to which they are tied, are lightly regulated and traded mostly by big banks and hedge funds. Some investors use them to hedge against a debt default, while others use them to speculate on whether a company's default risk is rising or falling.

As the options and derivatives markets experienced abnormal swings, Harrah's publicly traded shares were relatively flat last week. "The stock market is by far the slowest to respond," Ms. Briere Gilbert said.

In a leveraged buyout, the company being acquired often ends up taking on additional debt, increasing its risk of default and causing the price of the swaps to rise. The firm's existing bonds also tend to fall in value on such news, pushing their yields higher as investors demand greater returns to compensate for the additional risk.

In a market awash in rumor, speculation, and sometimes dumb luck, it can be hard to pinpoint who was trading and why such trading began. Often, an options trade unrelated to a deal can set off "piggyback" buying from traders hoping to catch a lucky break. Many such rumors -- as with a recent round of talk about Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. -- create a trading stir that ends in a whimper. No deal ever materialized for Starwood.

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

October 5, 2006 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

NEW TAKE ON PEER REVIEW OF SCHOLARLY PAPERS

The Public Library of Science will launch its first open peer-reviewed journal called PLoS ONE which will focus on papers in science and medicine. Papers in PLoS ONE will not undergo rigorous peer review before publication. Any manuscripts that is deemed to be a "valuable contribution to the scientific literature" can be posted online, beginning the process of community review. Authors are charged a fee for publication; however, fees may be waived in some instances. For more information see http://www.plosone.org/.

For an article on this venture, see: "Web Journals Threaten Peer-Review System" By Alicia Chang, Yahoo! News, October 1, 2006 --- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061001/ap_on_sc/peer_review_science

Bob Jensen's threads on peer review are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#PeerReview

The Global Technology Revolution 2020 ---
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2006/RAND_TR303.pdf

Question
Is Harvard's curriculum tantamount to no curriculum?
What does it take at a minimum to have an undergraduate education?

"As Goes Harvard. . . ," by Donald Kagan
See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#CustomizedCurricula

Harvard University is Making Another Stab at Defining a Core Curriculum Requirement

"Direction and Choice," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, October 5, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/05/harvard

On Wednesday, the university released a new plan for undergraduate education that would designate certain subjects as ones that must be studied. As a result, every Harvard undergraduate would have to take a course on the United States and a course dealing with religion, among others. Few top colleges and universities have such requirements. But students would be able to pick within those broad topics, with the idea that many courses would meet the requirements.

. . .

The report goes on to say that general education “prepares students to be citizens of a democracy within a global society” and also teaches students to “understand themselves as product of — and participants in — traditions of art, ideas and values.” General education should also encourage students to “adapt to change” and to have a sense of ethics, the report says.

The general education proposed by the faculty panel would have students take three one-semester courses in “critical skills” in written and oral communication, foreign languages, and analytical reasoning.

Then students would have to take seven courses in the following categories:

• Cultural traditions and cultural change.
• The ethical life.
• The United States and the world (one each in the U.S. and the world).
• Reason and faith.
• Science and technology (one in a life science and one in a physical science).

Within these categories, there would be a broad range of courses that could fulfill the requirements. Each would have to meet certain general education requirements, such as providing a broad scope of knowledge and encouraging student-faculty contact. But the subject matter within categories could vary significantly.

For instance, courses suggested as possibilities for the cultural traditions requirement include “The Emergence of World Literature,” “Art and Censorship,” and “Representations of the Other.” Courses for study of the United States could include “Health Care in the United States: A Comparative Perspective” and “Pluralist Societies: The United States in Comparative Context.” The reason and faith requirement, which would involve all students studying religion in some form, might have courses such as “Religion and Closed Societies” and “Religion and Democracy.”

In explaining the rationale for a faith and reason requirement, the Harvard professors noted that most college undergraduates care about religion and discuss it, but “often struggle — sometimes for the first time in their lives — to sort out the relationship between their own beliefs and practices, the different beliefs and practices of fellow students, and the profoundly secular and intellectual world of the academy itself.”

The report also noted the many tensions around religion in modern society — including fights over school prayer, same-sex marriage, and stem cell research. “Harvard is no longer an institution with a religious mission, but religion is a fact that Harvard’s graduates will confront in their lives both in and after college,” the report said, explaining why a religion requirement is important. At the same time, it added: “Let us be clear. Courses in reason and faith are not religious apologetics. They are courses that examine the interplay between religion and various aspects of national and/or international culture and society.” In the ethics requirement, students will consider how to make ethical choices, but in religion, students “will appreciate the role of religion in contemporary, historical or future events — personal, cultural, national or international.”

‘Activity Based Learning’

Beyond the various course requirements, the Harvard panel called for the university to consider new ways to link students’ in-class and out-of-class experiences.

“The big thing for many Harvard undergrads tends to be their extracurricular activities. It’s almost a cliché that they spend more time out of the yard than in the yard,” said Menand. “We don’t want to bureaucratize that, but we think there is a natural connection between the classroom and what takes place out of the classroom.”

This part of the report is more vague and less prescriptive, and in fact the panel calls for another panel to consider how to carry out the idea of promoting “activity based learning.” Generally, the report said, the pedagogical idea it wants Harvard to embrace is that “the ability to apply abstract knowledge to concrete cases — and vice versa.” Examples given to show the value of this kind of learning include the statements that “studying the philosophy of the 17th century might inform the production of a classic play by Molière” and “working on a political campaign can bring to life material in a course on democracy.”

In a course, this link might be made through optional papers that students could write on how an outside activity helped the student understand course material or how course material influenced a planned activity. If several students participate in the same out-of-class activity, team work might be involved in and outside of class. And in either case, the report said, closer faculty-student contact would be encouraged.

What It Means in Cambridge and Beyond

At Harvard, a series of meeting are now being scheduled for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to review the report and — eventually — to vote on it. Menand said that while the review would take months at least, it need not wait for Harvard to have a new permanent president.

Schneider of the Association of American Colleges and Universities said she thought the report might have a positive impact. “I think that what this is doing is restoring the purpose of general education requirements, which is to connect learning with real world citizenship.”

She said it made a lot of sense for Harvard to say that students need to study the United States, and the world, and science, and religion, etc., rather than using broad distribution requirements. “Let’s think about what’s going on in American high schools. Students have one year of American history or maybe two, but they may never study the United States again,” she said. Harvard’s proposal would mean that they would study the United States again, and at a deeper level than they could in high school.

Continued in the article

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

An Agenda for Harnessing Globalization ---
http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/fellows/ghani20060901.pdf

"PC World's 100 Fearless Forecasts," by Richard Baguley and Eric Dahl, PC World via The Washington Post, September 29, 2006 ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900005.html?referrer=email

From inexpensive 20-megapixel cameras to 50-terabyte DVDs, here's our definitive list of technologies we're looking forward to seeing.
PC World, September 29, 2006 --- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127152/article.html

"New Nikon Can Send Its Photos Via Wi-Fi So It's More Useful," by Katherine Boehret, The Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2006; Page B1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/personal_technology.html

For the past few weeks, I've been testing Nikon's $350 Coolpix S7c, a camera with built-in Wi-Fi wireless technology. The S7c captures photos, logs into your nearest Wi-Fi network and sends the photos in an email that contains thumbnail images and a link to Nikon's Coolpix Connect Web site. Recipients can download the photos or view them in a slide-show format on the site.

I found that emailing images with the Coolpix S7c was fast, simple and efficient. It took only a few minutes to set up, and I was comfortable using the camera's other basic features after taking just a few photos. Though the S7c's Wi-Fi receiver wasn't as strong as the one in my laptop, it worked well.

Wi-Fi technology isn't as widely available as cellphone networks are, but it's not unusual to find bookstores, coffee shops and schools with Wi-Fi. To help you along, Nikon includes a free year of T-Mobile HotSpot Wi-Fi service with its camera. This works in Starbucks, airports, Borders bookstores and many other places.

Other digital cameras with integrated Wi-Fi have been introduced within the past year by Eastman Kodak and Nikon. But Kodak's EasyShare-one digital camera didn't link up to the network consistently, and Nikon's Coolpix S6 -- astonishingly -- would send images only to the photographer's computer.

The Coolpix S7c (the "c" stands for connect) boasts an edgy gun-metal gray casing, a generous three-inch viewing screen and a smart rotary dial that eases navigation and photo scrolling. Its beauty is backed up with brains, including a maximum resolution of 7.1 megapixels -- more than enough for normal users -- and a 3x optical zoom lens.

MojoPac Versus GoToMyPC

With MojoPac, you can go to any Windows XP computer in the world, plug in your MojoPac device, and bring up your MojoPac PC. The experience is exactly as if you are logging into your Personal Computer, complete with your desktop, shortcuts, applications and preferences --- http://www.mojopac.com/portal/content/hellomojo.jsp

If you are online, it is a bit easier to do this with GoToMyPC where you personal computer is back in the office and you are any online computer in the world (unlike MojoPac, nothing needs to be installed on the remote access computer) --- https://www.gotomypc.com

With GoToMyPC you are actually operating your office computer from a remote site. There is a fee for GoToMyPC, but the fee is quite reasonable for the service rendered.

Full Disclosure to Consumers of Higher Education?

"Regulating the New Consumerism," by John V. Lombardi, Inside Higher Ed, September 27, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/09/28/lombardi

One of the themes in the much commented on report of the Spellings Commission highlights the need to fully inform higher education consumers about everything. For some, accountability not only means being responsible about teaching and research, but also delivering some form of full disclosure. This trend reflects the continued move of higher education from a specialized product sold to well-informed customers to a generic product sold in widely varying formats to large numbers of often unsophisticated consumers.

As is usually the case with high profile commissions, this one responds to a mature trend, not something new and different. The proliferation of rankings and ratings of every conceivable type is the clearer example of the commodity college degree, but the commission, because it speaks for at least one part of the government, has a coercive capacity where the ratings have only a demonstrative capacity.

What, then, is the full consumer information we need? Much current university and college published data is actually not very helpful. As a normal practice, we produce measures of central tendency — averages or means — or we provide ratios of one kind or another. So we talk about average class size or average student/faculty ratios; average discount rate on tuition and fees; and the average financial aid package or the average debt on graduation. Universities and colleges provide information on the average endowment or average state investment per student.

All of these, and many others, provide an average representation of the reality of campus life. If universities and colleges managed, as do other high tech, high quality enterprises, by reducing the variation around the mean to produce a homogeneous product, these average numbers might have some usefulness. That’s not how higher education works.

Instead, colleges and especially large public universities manage in ways that appear to maximize the variation they can sustain in the quality and diversity of their students. They admit students with SAT scores ranging from 900 to 1600 perhaps, students whose parents have no taxable income and those whose income reaches above six or seven figures. They admit students who are the fourth generation of college attendees and the children of migrant workers whose home experience includes no prior engagement with higher education. Universities pride themselves on the wide diversity in the ethnicity and economic capability of their students and they speak eloquently of the wide range of socioeconomic circumstance from which their students come.

This is all to the good, but it illustrates why the average numbers we often discuss as the tokens of accountability disguise more often than they inform. Instead of average class size, we might display the percentage of students in classes under 25, 26 to 50, 51 to 100, and over 100. Even that is not as helpful, for example, as providing a transcript analysis of the graduating class. The aggregate measures that tell us how many classes are under 50 students tells us how the faculty teach, but not what individual students take. Students in engineering may have mostly classes smaller than 50 while students in humanities or social sciences may have mostly classes larger than 100. We may find that 30 percent of our graduating students never took a class under 50 even though such classes were available. Knowing what kinds of class contexts are available is a helpful overall indicator, but it does not tell the interested consumer what students actually choose to do or are advised to do.

We call for better information on the cost of college. By this, we mean both the “costs” of what colleges spend on providing an education and the “price” that students pay for that education. The latter is a very slippery number. Everyone knows that there is a sticker price and a discounted price. Everyone knows that students receive discounts for various reasons.

What we do not provide very often are data that describe the characteristics of students who receive discounts and reveal the relationship between particular characteristics and the discounts the institution provides. For example, we do not know the relationship between the marker for merit (SAT, GPA) and the amount of merit aid provided (for those institutions that provide merit aid). If we did, we might find that not all students with a 1350 SAT will get the same merit aid package.

Almost all institutions provide a wide range of need based aid, some from federal or state sources that are regulated and some from institutional sources that are not. Institutions create need based packages to achieve enrollment goals, and sometimes following a formula based on the federal guidelines and sometimes using ad hoc packaging to achieve balance in our student populations. This is especially so when institutions are under clear directions from their boards to change the composition of the student body in some way, for example to prefer legacies or first generation students, or to increase the percentage of men or women.

Student debt is a mystery number because the data on average debt deal with only a fraction of the student population. Average debt refers to the average institutionally managed debt of those graduating seniors who have debt. So it does not tell us about the debt of those students who in addition to institutionally managed debt have private debt from a local bank, from credit cards, or from other sources. It also does not tell us about those students who do not qualify for any institutionally managed loans but nonetheless borrow money from local banks, credit cards, and other sources. Nor does it tell us how much of the debt students contract is required by the formal cost of attendance and how much responds to lifestyle issues related to housing, transportation, illness, family obligations, and entertainment among other issues.

In the real world of higher education — rather than the idealized world of commissions and homogenizing government regulations — higher education institutions, while they produce a standardized product, do so for widely varying market niches made up of customers with widely varying characteristics.

Many of the proposed measures that we see coming from commissions and regulators speak to some mythical average student experience, usually reflecting the idealized type of the elite private four-year college. As such they may satisfy some, but will surely fail to provide more accurate information to individual consumers. How, we might ask, am I to know whether my child is average and therefore likely to have the average experience the data highlight? How many of the graduates actually participated in the average experience, or did most of them pass through the institution at the upper or lower edges of the experience represented by the calculated average?

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Learning Accountability
The Spelling Plans for carrying the recommendations of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans a many faceted campaign to carry out the recommendations of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education, including providing matching funds to colleges and states that collect and publicly report how well their students learn, building a “privacy protected” database of college students’ academic records, and streamlining the process of applying for federal student aid.
Doug Lederman, "The Spellings Plan," Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/26/spellings

It may not have seemed that way at times, but Charles Miller, the chairman of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, apparently felt constrained in what he could say during his time at the helm of the panel. In a letter containing “personal observations” about higher education, which he shared with Secretary Margaret Spellings when he formally gave her the panel’s final report this month and shared in public at a forum at the Cato Institute Wednesday, Miller makes many of the same points about higher education’s problems that he did when he spoke up during the commission’s deliberations. But he adopts tougher language in some cases, referring repeatedly to the “dysfunctional” nature of higher education finances and describing higher education as being “replete with opaque, complex information systems which are not informative for governing boards, policymakers and the public.” And while Miller continues to criticize private colleges for their “special resistance to accountability,” a theme he hit repeatedly during the commission’s life, he takes special aim at the nation’s elite research universities, which largely escaped his wrath over the last year. Because their “research expenditures are a major ‘cost driver’ in higher education,” he wrote in his letter to the secretary, those institutions “need the same intense examination and skeptical analysis other financial issues require, especially since most of these are public funds.” He added: “I think there is ample evidence that our great universities have much to account for—-and have great intellectual and financial resources to contribute—-yet often come to the public arena without taking full responsibility for their own imperfections while at the same time demanding more of the scarce public resources.”
Inside Higher Ed, September 29, 2006

Spellings Announces Plan to Improve Higher Ed --- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6146394

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

Congressional Crooks are Democrats and Republicans
"Politicians preying on the public," by Mychal Massie, WorldNetDaily, October 3, 2006 --- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52241

"Lender Overcharged U.S. $1 Billion, Audit Finds," by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/02/nelnet

For many months, student loan watchdogs have been charging that lenders have taken advantage of a loophole in federal law to reap billions of dollars in profits to which they were not entitled. Late Friday, the U.S. Education Department’s inspector general strongly backed their view, releasing an audit that accused the National Education Loan Network (Nelnet) of having received $278 million in federal subsidy payments for which it was not eligible and of inappropriately charging the government for as much as $882 million more.

The inspector general’s office urged Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to order Nelnet to return the improper payments it has already received and to instruct the company to revise its estimates for future payments to exclude funds for the contested loans. Meanwhile, officials at Nelnet, a Nebraska-based company, disputed the audit’s findings but said they would work with the department to resolve them.

At issue in the case is Nelnet’s use of an exemption in federal law that allowed lenders that financed the student loans they issued using tax-exempt bonds issued before 1993 to earn a government subsidized interest rate of 9.5 percent. Congress engaged in several aborted attempts to fully close the loophole throughout the 1990s and the early part of this decade, but some lenders continued to find ways to take advantage of it by recycling the pre-1993 loan funds, before Congress, as part of the Higher Education Reconciliation Act, finally closed it permanently this year.

In the audit, the inspector general describes a process by which Nelnet seemed quite purposefully to try to expand its pool of loans that would qualify for the 9.5 percent “special allowance” payments from the federal government. “Through Project 950,” as the company’s effort was called, “Nelnet used a series of transactions to increase the amount of loans ostensibly funded by tax-exempt obligations from approximately $551 million” in March 2003 to $3.66 billion in June 2004, according to the audit.
The company, the inspector general found, moved loans into and then — “as little as one day later” — out of a non-taxable trust estate with the goal of making those loans qualify for the 9.5 percent rate.

The audit recounts exchanges in 2003 and 2004 in which Nelnet sought and believed it had gained Education Department approval for its practices regarding the 9.5 percent loans. But the inspector general says that Nelnet’s inquiries did “not appear to reflect a comprehensive disclosure by Nelnet of the nature or effect” of its effort to increase its volume of loans eligible for the higher rate.

A 1993 letter outlining the practice, the audit says, “did not identify the eligible source of funds that would be used to purchase and qualify loans for the 9.5 percent floor, did not state directly that the process would be repeated many times, and did not state that the process would result in a substantial increase in the amount of loans billed under the 9.5 percent floor.”

The audit incorporates a response that Nelnet officials submitted to an earlier draft of the audit this summer, which the inspector general notes “strongly disagrees with our finding and recommendations and requested that our draft report be withdrawn.”

In a prepared statement, Nelnet said company officials believe the inspector general’s report is “incorrect” because it is “inconsistent with the Higher Education Act, applicable laws, policy, department regulations, and the guidance to student loan companies previously issued by the Department.”

Nelnet will “seek a resolution of this matter with the Department and will also examine all other available remedies that prove the merits of our position,” said Mike Dunlap, the company’s chairman and co-chief executive officer.

Critics of the lenders’ continued use of the 9.5 percent loophole heralded the inspector general’s audit. “The depth and breadth of Nelnet’s failure to comply with the law is breathtaking, and the cost to taxpayers is staggering,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce. “In an era of high budget deficits, we must be vigilant about ensuring that available tax dollars are used to provide affordable college loans to families, not to provide excessive subsidies to banks.”

Miller and others, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who pushed the Education Department to look into the Nelnet matter, and watchdog groups like the Project on Student Debt, urged Spellings to back the inspector general. “The secretary of education should make sure that Nelnet pays back every penny they’ve wrongly claimed and should use the near $1.2 billion saved to help students and families pay for college,” said Michael Dannenberg of the New America Foundation, who has aggressively criticized the 9.5 percent rate practice.

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

The National Centers for Career and Technical Education --- http://www.nccte.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on alternatives for online education and training --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Abolishing the Core Computer Science Curriculum in an Effort to Attract Majors
The Georgia Institute of Technology is today unveiling what some experts believe is a much broader approach to the problem. The institute has abolished the core curriculum for computer science undergraduates — a series of courses in hardware and software design, electrical engineering and mathematics. These courses, in various forms, have been the backbone of the computer science curriculum not just at Georgia Tech but at most institutions.
Scott Jaschik, "New ‘Threads’ for Computer Science," Inside Higher Ed, September 26, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/26/gatech

The other, perhaps more costly alternative, is to maintain a core of required courses that are no longer silos in terms of specialized content --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Silos

Students may take the easiest way out in customizable curricula ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#CustomizedCurricula
 

Electronic Book Readers Update

"Review: Sony's Reader a step forward," PhysOrg, September 27, 2006 --- http://physorg.com/news78593741.html

Sure, there are electronic books available for download at Amazon and elsewhere, but they haven't really caught on. Sony Corp. is now tackling part of the problem with the U.S. launch of the first e-book reader that imitates the look of paper by using an innovative screen technology.

Is this the iPod for books? Not quite. But it is a step forward.

The Sony Reader is a handsome affair the size of a paperback book, but only a third of an inch thick. It goes on sale for $350 on Sony's Web site Wednesday, and in Borders stores in October.

The 6-inch screen can be taken for a monochrome liquid-crystal display at first glance, but on closer inspection looks like no other electronic display. It's behind a thin pane of glass, but unlike an LCD it shows no "depth" - it pretty much looks like a light gray piece of paper with dark gray text.

The display, based on technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff E Ink Corp., is composed of tiny capsules with electrically charged particles of white and black ink. When a static electric charge is applied on the side of the capsule that faces the reader, it attracts the white particles to the face of the display, making that pixel show light gray. Reversing the charge brings the black pigments floating through the capsule to replace the white pigments, and the pixel shows as dark gray.

Like paper, the display is readable from any angle, but it doesn't look as good as the real thing, chiefly because the contrast doesn't compare well. The background isn't white and the letters aren't black. The letters show some jaggedness, even though the resolution is a very respectable 800 by 600 pixels. It will display photos, though they look a bit like black-and-white photocopies.

But it's still a more comfortable reading medium than any other electronic display. The text is easy on the eyes in almost any light you could read a book by.

The other major advantage of the display is that it's a real power sipper. Sony says a Reader with a full charge in its lithium battery can show up to 7,500 pages, an amazing figure that I unfortunately didn't have the time to test.

The reason behind this trilogy-busting stamina is that the display only consumes power when it flips to a new page. Displaying the same page continuously consumes no power, though the electronics of the device itself do use a little bit.

The Reader's internal memory holds up to 100 books, depending on their size. The memory can be expanded with inexpensive SD cards or Memory Sticks.

To load books, connect the Reader with a supplied cable to a Windows PC running the accompanying software. You can transfer Word documents or Portable Document Format files to the Reader, download blog feeds, or buy e-books at Sony's online store. It will also play MP3 music or audiobook files.
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