Monthly Archives: March 2011

Tying together being green, McMansions, and promoting urban development in Asia

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As the world discusses how to reduce carbon emissions, Edward Glaeser (see a review of his latest book here) suggests that America is an odd position: we want to promote urban development in fast-growing Asian countries and yet we subsidize sprawl within our own borders.

America’s interest in promoting a hyper-urban Asia, so different from our sprawling nation, puts us in a slightly awkward position. How can a country of McMansions and Ford Expeditions preach the virtues of low-carbon urban living?

Freedom is America’s greatest treasure. This includes the freedom to choose where we live — city or suburb. But we should eliminate the mistaken policies that artificially subsidize sprawl. The federal government subsidizes transportation significantly more in low-density areas than in high-density areas, and that pulls people away from cities. Economist Nathaniel Baum-Snow found in 2007 that each new postwar highway that cut into a city reduced that city’s population by 18%. The home mortgage interest deduction induces people to leave urban apartments, which are overwhelmingly rented, and move to suburban homes. Because the deduction scales up with the size of the mortgage, it essentially pays people to buy bigger, more energy-intensive homes.

Reducing such policies, which push Americans away from our green cities, will enable us to make a stronger case for higher-density dwelling in India and China.

The key to Glaeser’s argument here is that the US government “artificially” makes suburban living look like the best choice. Without these subsidies, highway construction, mortgage benefits, etc., the suburbs might not look like the good option that they appear to be. Glaeser may be right – but I wonder if there still might be Americans who would want to pursue a suburban lifestyle. Perhaps this alternate version of American suburbs would be more restricted to the wealthy who could subsidize their own extra costs.

But Glaeser is also suggesting that there is the matter of looking like hypocrites: how can we as a country ask other countries to live in certain ways when we promote relatively ungreen suburbs? More broadly, should the many residents of China and India who have joined the middle class in recent decades get a shot at living in suburbs or should they have to live in more urban developments to help offset American patterns?

And I would also note the common citing of McMansions and SUVs as emblematic of the entire United States and its behaviors.

There’s IP in Olympics

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There’s two interesting intellectual property tidbits that arise from Russia’s recent announcement of its three official mascots for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

First:  Don’t Privatize Santa

Ded Morez, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus, had led in early polling [to decide the mascot] but was pulled from the ballot at the last second when Russian organizers feared that their country’s folk hero would become official property of the IOC [International Olympic Committee].

Analysis:  I don’t know the intricacies of Russian IP law, but, here in the U.S., a public domain figure like Santa wouldn’t become re-protected just because a corporate entity used it (at least in theory, though some would argue that such behavior constitutes a large portion of Disney’s business model).  On the other hand, it’s probably best to never turn IP over to the IOC that you ever want to use again.  Under U.S. law, the IOC doesn’t bother with protecting its Olympic-related IP via general copyright and trademark laws (like everyone else).  Rather, they are personally, directly, explicitly written into the federal statute.  See 36 U.S.C. § 220506.

Second:  Plagiarizing the Past?

[T]he creator of Russia’s last Olympic mascot [Summer 1980] says [one of the new mascots constitutes] plagiarism….”This polar bear, everything is taken from mine, the eyes, nose, mouth, smile,” he told a Moscow radio station. “I don’t like being robbed.”

Analysis:  I’m going to let Chris Chase from the original Yahoo! article take this one:

Yes, both bears have eyes, noses, mouths and smiles, as do all cartoon bears. There’s only so many ways to draw an anthropomorphic cartoon bear. You don’t see Winnie the Pooh with snarling fangs, you know?

One is white and has a scarf. The other is brown and wearing an Olympic ring belt buckle. Other than the fact that they’re both from the ursus genus, there aren’t many similarities. The Sochi mascot may be unoriginal, uninspired and bland, but it’s not a copy.

Sounds like a great, practical description the merger doctrine to me.

The NFL: where having a really smart QB may be a bad thing

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Part of the NFL scouting combine circus is the Wonderlic test. Alabama’s Greg McElroy, scored 48 out of 50, quite a high score. There is one commentator who suggests this may be a bad thing:

McElroy’s brainpower still has the potential be taken as a negative around the league, as explained by Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio:

That said, scoring too high can be as much of a problem as scoring too low.  Football coaches want to command the locker room. Being smarter than the individual players makes that easier. Having a guy in the locker room who may be smarter than every member of the coaching staff can be viewed as a problem — or at a minimum as a threat to the egos of the men who hope to be able when necessary to outsmart the players, especially when trying in some way to manipulate them.

So while McElroy, who was unable to work out due to injury, may be really smart, he perhaps would have been wise to tank a few of the answers.

Wikipedia’s entry on this has a listing of average Wonderlic scores by NFL position according to a longtime NFL scribe. The average score for a quarterback is 24. It appears that McElroy’s score ranks amongst the highest known scores.

Football is known as having players who are warriors or gladiators. Even so, having a smart quarterback seems to me to be a good thing, rather than a negative because it might challenge the supremacy of the coach. With the complexity of offensive systems these days, particularly with the check-downs and need to read defensive coverages, a smart quarterback might help. This seems like a weird issue of masculinity: in a relatively violent sport, who gets to be smartest in the locker room?

There would be a way to possibly figure out whether this issue with the coach is real (granted that enough Wonderlic data is out there): how do Wonderlic scores compare with the number of coaches a quarterback has (and controlling for a bunch of other factors)? And more broadly, do higher Wonderlic scores translate into more victories?