The Dish

Donated Cars Are A Bad Deal

Alex Mayyasi finds little reason for charities to be involved with used cars:

An IRS loophole has lead to a quirky situation where charities are in the business of acquiring and selling used cars. Charities can make some money from car donations and often outsource selling donated cars and other aspects of fundraising. By doing so, they can focus on their programming: running after school programs, sending care packages to soldiers overseas, or running awareness and outreach events for terminal illnesses.

But car donation drives, along with other forms of commercial fundraising like telemarketing and canvassing, seem to be an inefficient means of supporting charitable work. Less than half of the proceeds accrue to charities, with private companies retaining the rest, and fees eat up over half of the value of the donations. This not only means that people support charities less than they intend, it also cheats the US government of revenue.

Santa’s Little Geoengineers

A recent study from Scandinavia makes the case for recruiting Rudolph in the fight against climate change:

Turns out where we let reindeer dine [has] a big impact on the energy balance of the planet. That’s because reindeer (aka caribou) prune dark-colored Arctic vegetation, minimizing solar heat absorption. The study was done by Finnish researchers using satellite data to compare tundra in Norway, where reindeer aren’t allowed to graze in summer, with similar tundra in Finland, where they are. As you might expect, vegetation is shorter and sparser on the Finnish side. In contrast, the taller trees and shrubs of the ungrazed Norwegian side absorb more sunlight—which promotes an earlier snowmelt, increases solar absorption, and accelerates warming. …

[C]arefully managed, reindeer could be used to do what they do best: geoengineer the landscape. Selective summer grazing could be used to delay snowmelt, increase the surface albedo, and reduce ground heating. If wetlands and poorly growing forests could be brought back so that the forests were left sparse and the wetlands returned to a natural state, it would significantly cool the atmosphere,” says [study co-author Lauri] Oksanen.

(Photo: Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) eating grass on the Svalbard islands in Norway. By DEA/C.SAPPA/De Agostini/Getty Images)

What’s The Solution To Insider Trading?

Surowiecki recommends giving more information to outsiders:

In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly schedule. Companies sit on vital information until reporting day, at which point the market goes crazy. Because investors are kept in the dark, the value of inside information is artificially inflated.

“Insider trading is, by definition, based on information that is not known to investors,” Baruch Lev, a professor of accounting and finance at N.Y.U. and an expert on corporate disclosure, told me. “If you increase transparency, the gains for insider trading must go down.” Back in 2002, Harvey Pitt, who was then the head of the S.E.C., told Congress that companies should be providing investors with regular updates about their performance, rather than just making quarterly disclosures. More consistent, if not real-time, data about revenue, new orders, and major investments would help investors make more informed decisions and, into the bargain, would diminish the value of insider information. If companies tell us more, insider trading will be worth less.

Felix doubts this will happen:

[T]here are two reasons why most companies would never go down such a road. The first is just that they’re not technically capable of doing so. And the second is that most companies reflexively seek to keep control of their financial information. Reg FD has stopped them from picking and choosing who gets the information, but they can at least control what information they disclose, and when. Most of the time, they err on the side of disclosing less rather than more, since information is power and the company wants to keep power for itself rather than make it public.

Do Mascots Need Modernizing? Ctd

Many more opinions from the in-tray:

I appreciate your Cleveland readers’ comments (I’m an Ms girl myself but I like Cleveland!). Sadly, the attached image was supposed to be the Indians’ commemorative cap for the 4th of July (oh the irony there). It has reportedly been pulled. The Atlanta Braves were going to ressurect another horrendous image onto its hats, but then denied that was the case.

I also appreciate this whole thread. I have family who are Native and part Native (Blackfeet), so it’s personal to me. I recommend The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. It’s written for young adults and is a very engaging, easy read and gives a funny, heartbreaking and real look at life on the rez.

Another takes issue with the reader who invoked the Fighting Irish mascot:

Notre Dame itself is not just a Catholic institution, but very much an Irish Catholic institution. As such, its mascot is an expression of Irish identity by Irish Americans. The Washington Redskins is an institution originated, owned and operated by white dudes in a city where a long series of genocidal policies against Native Americans were planned and directed. So the situations are not analogous in any respect: not in the terms, not in the people, and not in the institutions.

Another pushes back on the second reader here:

To somehow equate the Cleveland Indians name to those of Negro league teams is to be grossly oblivious to the nature of those leagues. The Negro Leagues were segregated teams. The BlackBarons were called “Black” because they were black. By definition, they had to be, because black players were not allowed on white teams.

So this is entirely a different situation. The fact that there was this kind of color line is a shameful part of baseball history. But Negro League teams should be remembered and celebrated because of the great players who were excellent athletes that played hard. They were not ashamed of being black and wanted to show the world that black people could play ball just as well as whites. In this respect, your reader is correct about those names being marks of pride for the players.

This is not the same situation as the Redskins and Indians. The Cleveland Indians are not a team full of Indian players (The Sockalexis myth notwithstanding). When they took the name in 1915, they were a team of white players, in a white league. They are named for a group of people who literally did not have rights at the time. This is an important distinction. Taking a team name that reflects pride in your group is vastly different than taking a name that caricaturizes a group with less power. To think that the name was not conceived from racism is to be ignorant of the world of 1915.

Another reader:

Before Atlanta hosted the Braves, for decades it was home to a white minor league team called the Crackers, and a Negro League team called the Black Crackers – seriously.

Another lightens the mood:

I always thought Penn’s Fighting Quakers were funny, in a stupid kind of way. Go Pacifists! Subdue them with Inner Light!

Another:

Sorry, I just had to respond to this reader’s comments you posted:

If I were living 50 years ago, I would of demand changing the nickname because of [racist Redskins owner George Preston] Marshall’s actions. Now, I think the Redskins reflect its true origin: pride, endearment and character from their football team.

This is just a bunch of happy horseshit.

In what way, precisely, do the Washington Redskins organization do anything to promote pride, endearment, and character among any Native American communities in the greater D.C. area, or nationally? I’m sure that the Redskins players and organization do a lot of charitable activities – all professional sports teams do as a way to engender good feelings among fans and because the players and management recognize how truly fortunate they are and want to give back to their communities. But do the Redskins do anything that is specifically targeted at Native American communities? Are they promoting education about Native American culture and history, working to preserve recordings of Native American languages as the last speakers of these languages grow old and die?

If they do, they’re remarkable for the lack of publicity such actions generate, because as far as I can tell there isn’t any.

Another:

Just wanted to add one more angle to the thread, which started in part with a quote from Doug Mataconis, who asked, “I have to wonder why this is something that Members of Congress need to be getting involved in, or why legislation is necessary to address something that is, in the end, a private business matter.”

Trademark is absolutely not a private business matter. Trademark is a system in which the government grants to people and business a set of rights in the usage of images and names. The underlying policy is both to protect consumers and to prevent unfair competition. Unlike say a contract agreed to by two parties, there is no private business conduct in trademark, the trademark holder gets rights that are granted by current legislation and the trademark office.

It seems the point of the proposed legislation is simply to deny the Redskins use the full force of the US Government to enforce its trademark. Currently, the Redskins can go to court, and in essence conscript the federal government into forcing people not to use their name or image, or pay them penalties for having done so. All the legislation would do is to say the government is not going to help them do that anymore. I understand that there may be reasons why the government shouldn’t pick and choose what symbols get Trademark protection, but that is a different argument than the standard “keep liberal government out of private business” trope that Mataconis puts forth.

More readers join the conversation on our Facebook page.

Business Insider featured Joshua Katz’s research about regional accents in the United States under the headline “22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other,” emphasizing the extraordinary divergences among speakers of American English. Sam Goldman calls this “misleading” and draws a different conclusion:

Far from showing “how Americans speak totally differently from each other”, the maps indicate a remarkable linguistic homogeneity. As far as I can tell, none of the differences that they record poses a serious challenge to understanding speakers from another region. Most regional and even international variations in English are humorous rather than obstacles to communication.

This fundamental consistency is among the strengths of English and the countries that speak it. Although each has a standard version used for official purposes, languages like Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, and even German are really families of dialects so distinct that they are not always mutually intelligible. That has important consequences, namely a much stronger sense of regional and ethnic identity. It may not be coincidental that societies in these language groups have been characterized by counterbalancing tendencies to balkanization and to strong central states that hold the various regions and peoples together by force.

Lifting Nature Up With Us

Gaia Vince suggests that as we enter the Anthropocene – the age that marks humanity’s geological influence – we will increasingly look to greener and more vertical architecture:

Cities will need to incorporate the natural world in new and innovative ways. Parks and green spaces will be multiplied from ground level upwards, attracting birds and wildlife to sky-gardens, tens of floors up. In Singapore, for example, the Marina Bay Sands hotel features a skypark on the 56th floor, with trees, leisure facilities including a pool, and far-reaching views. It’s an example of how specific elements found in the natural world, such as a mountaintop view, a lake and palm trees, have been cherry picked and combined to provide an easy, entirely artificial landscape for the city.

Vertical farms are also being planted in Anthropocene cities, although the energy involved in irrigating and maintaining such farms makes them impractical for food production on a larger scale. However, growing food in the urban environment on regular multi-storey plots is likely to increase as hobby farmers, beekeepers and specialist growers take advantage of cleaner air, water and soils of Anthropocene cities, and vacant sites are used more effectively. In Berlin, rooftop fishfarms have been started, with the waste going to feed agricultural plots in the city. Creative growers are already converting industrial spaces, street corners and rooftops to micro-wildernesses or manicured into formal gardens. A disused raised railway in New York City has become a popular park, self-styled “guerilla gardeners” are planting flowers and trees in plots among the tarmac and traffic of London’s highways, and once-polluted industrial wastelands now chirp with birdsong, rivers swim with fish and populations of animals that have become rare in the countryside are thriving in urban niches.

(Photo: Guests of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore look over the city-state’s financial district from a rooftop swimming pool on May 13, 2013. By Rosland Rahman/AFP/Getty Images)

Solar-Powered Coal

It should be available soon:

The world’s largest coal mining company – Coal India – is looking to innovative solution to reduce its own energy bills: it’s installing solar energy. The company, which is listed but government controlled, and which accounts for more than 80 per cent of coal production in India, is installing a 2MW plant at its Sampalbur coal plant in Odisha. It plans to install solar at its operations across the country, including at its mining research arm, the Central Mine Planning and Design Institut. …

[T]he most striking aspect of the decision is the company’s own recognition that fossil fuels are depleting, and that solar is approaching grid parity. “India has an abundance of sunshine and the trend of depletion of fossil fuels is compelling energy planners to examine the feasibility of using renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, and so on,” Coal India’s bid document said.

The move makes sense to Ryan Koronowski:

This is a remarkable statement from the largest coal company in the world. Coal India produces 90 percent of India’s coal, and not only is it turning to solar as an efficient business practice, it understands India cannot power itself by coal. In fact, a coal-based electricity system is not reliable: solar energy is. And solar may be the only hope for much of rural India to become electrified after decades of failed grid expansion plans. With so much potential solar capacity across the country … there is little wonder that even fossil fuel companies are looking to get in on the game.

The Best Of The Dish Today

This was the day Glenn Greenwald made, but I was somewhat underwhelmed. I got a tutorial on the expression “No Homo” while wondering if we were reaching “peak faggot” on Twitter. I argued that the appointments of Susan Rice and Samantha Power were not an indication of Obama changing his mind on Syria – or interventionism in general. We found a poster boy for the GOP – in a skirt; and I copped to being slow in the past in grasping the need for conservative reform.

The most popular post of the day was Fareed Zakaria’s concise explanation of what’s going on in Turkey; and David Frum’s elegant plea for empiricism and policy innovation among Republicans. It seems a really small world when I remember the fact that the three of us were all regarded as right-wingers when we were at Harvard together; and we were all immigrants. Today, we’re still in basic agreement – but, boy, how the world has changed. Oh, and that’s a Dish reader’s window view in Leuven, Belgium, a country where Dish-readers gave us 1,458 pageviews this past week.

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And see you in the morning.

Attention, Susan And Samantha

The American public doesn’t want to intervene anywhere abroad – apart from Iran getting a nuclear weapon. 61 percent say that Syria is not our problem. 58 percent want the US not to take the lead in solving international conflict. Compare those numbers in the same poll just before the Iraq war: 48 percent thought the US should take the lead then, compared with 35 percent now. Even on the Iran question, currently 59 percent say that the country can be contained for now, and 21 percent believe it’s not a threat at all to the US, leaving a majority of 80 percent against the neocon position (smart smart smart smart smart).

We have a neo-imperial apparatus in Washington and an anti-imperial public. At some point, one of those will have to give.

Sleep And Self-Discipline

New research suggests a connection between the two:

[Y]ou have only so much mental energy during a day. From what [management professor Christopher] Barnes’s research suggests, the amount of sleep you get predicts the discipline your body can produce. Why? Sleep deprivation depletes the glucose level in your pre-frontal cortex, Barnes writes. This has consequences for your decision-making: If you don’t get enough sleep, you leave your self-control engine running on empty. If you do get enough sleep, you restore that fuel base. …

“Organizations need to give sleep more respect,” Barnes writes. “Executives and managers should keep in mind that the more they push employees to work late, come to the office early, and answer emails and calls at all hours, the more they invite unethical behavior [like cheating] to creep in.”