Category: Articles

Articles

Two Big Foundations, Two Big Goals

This article is a sidebar to “The Old College Try,” Philanthropy, spring 2010.

After Warren Buffett pledged the lion’s share of his fortune (the gift was valued at $37 billion at the time) to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006, the foundation had an opportunity to expand its portfolio. “After tons of research and meeting with policy experts, practitioners, and other foundations, we came back to what has been the foundation’s domestic focus for the past eight years . . . because the evidence spoke clearly,” said Hilary Pennington, the Gates Foundation’s director of education, post-secondary success, and special initiatives, in 2008. “The highest-leverage investment we can make—education. This time, post-secondary education. And even more specifically, post-secondary success.” Continue reading “Two Big Foundations, Two Big Goals”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

Something Wiki This Way Comes

Web 2.0: It’s a fast-paced, interactive free-for-all. On Web 2.0 platforms, Internet users generate their own content. They create massive virtual communities around shared interests. And it’s growing by leaps and bounds.

Many people have embraced Web 2.0. Many have not. But whatever they think of Web 2.0, donors should be aware of how social media affects their public image. And few things affect public image as much as Wikipedia, the free, online, interactive encyclopedia. Continue reading “Something Wiki This Way Comes”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

Foundations and Wikis

This is a sidebar to this article.

Wikipedia is just one example of a wiki—a collaborative website that allows users to modify its content. First created by programmer Ward Cunningham in 1994, wikis are named after the Hawaiian word for “fast.” Since then, thousands of other wikis have proliferated, far more than just the Wikimedia Foundation’s sites.

One of the most prominent wikis is the Encyclopedia of Life, available online at eol.org. It traces its origins to the 2007 TED conference, where biologist E. O. Wilson articulated the need for a comprehensive record of life on earth. “Human-forced climate change alone—again, if unabated—could eliminate a quarter of surviving species during the next five decades,” he explained. “What will we and all future generations lose if much of the living environment is thus degraded?” Continue reading “Foundations and Wikis”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

Want to Fix New York Air Congestion? Try Competition

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s rescission of a proposal to auction slots at New York City–area airports triggered a heated discussion at the Times’s Freakonomics blog. Stephen Dubner argues, based on a conversation with an airline pilot, that shutting down close-in LaGuardia Airport would improve air traffic flow over New York City and allow more traffic at JFK and Newark airports. Many commenters made the excellent point that it would be difficult for JFK and Newark, which are already near capacity, to handle LaGuardia’s traffic. (If you split up the passenger traffic at LaGuardia between JFK and Newark, that would mean a 24 percent traffic increase at JFK and a 33 percent increase at Newark.) This would inevitably increase the cost of flying to and from (and through) New York. Dubner’s correspondents recommend banning so-called regional jets at New York City airports, a proposal that is well and good but that is much easier done with pricing mechanisms than with arbitrary bans. Continue reading “Want to Fix New York Air Congestion? Try Competition”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

The “Great Commission” or Glorified Sightseeing?

This past summer, from evangelical churches nationwide, more than one million of the faithful departed for the mission field, taking up Jesus’ “Great Commission” to “go and make disciples of all nations.” The churchgoers hoped to convert souls, establish churches and meet other human needs. But they did not intend to serve for years or whole lifetimes, like such pioneers as Jim Elliott, who was killed in Ecuador in 1956 evangelizing to native people; or Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission; or even the awful fictional caricatures of African missionaries in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible. These new missionaries came home after only a week or two.

Short-term mission trips to Africa, South America and Southeast Asia have become very popular in the past few years. They are a keystone strategy of evangelical pastor Rick Warren’s plans to help Rwanda. These trips, like Christian missionary endeavors overall, encompass a wide variety of activities, from evangelization and “church planting” to health care and economic development. The billion-dollar question, however, is whether they’re worth the cost. Are short-term missions the best way to achieve the goals of Christians? Continue reading “The “Great Commission” or Glorified Sightseeing?”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

Why You Hate to Fly

Airline complaint one-upmanship is an old standby of small talk—“You had to wait six hours at the gate? That’s nothing! I was wedged between two linebackers and the in-flight movie was the latest from Larry the Cable Guy.” But is air travel really this bad? Travelers seem to think so. One measure finds that customer satisfaction with airlines is at its lowest point in three years; and the 2008 Airline Quality Rating, an aggregation of consumer complaints to the Department of Transportation, reports that complaints were up 60 percent since 2007.

Airlines seem to give travelers fewer reasons to smile. By mid-2008, many airlines had begun aggressive campaigns to bring in more cash through fees. Several airlines devalued their frequent flier miles, hiked the fees to book a “free” ticket, and started charging for checked baggage. New fees were added so fast that Southwest Airlines began running ads touting the fact that they merely had not added any fees.

And if the fees weren’t enough, fares are rising as airlines follow through on promised capacity cuts, trimming routes and frequencies. With fewer seats, passengers have fewer options and face higher fares to match record jet fuel prices.

But it’s not just the airlines. Continue reading “Why You Hate to Fly”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

Don’t Know Much About Geography

Where in the world has geography gone? Last year, Miss Teen South Carolina became a national laughingstock for her halting and confused answer to a question about why roughly one-fifth of Americans cannot locate their own country on a map—but who are we to mock? Indeed, many Americans don’t recognize important countries on maps. According to a 2006 survey of Americans aged 18 to 24, less than four in ten can identify Iraq on a map of the Middle East; one-third of young Americans cannot calculate time-zone differences; even after Hurricane Katrina, two-thirds cannot find Louisiana on a U.S. map; almost one-third think that the United States has between 1 and 2 billion citizens; and two in ten, amazingly, cannot point to the Pacific Ocean on a world map.

Offering the counterexample to these sad statistics are the 55 talented youngsters competing this week in the 20th annual National Geographic Bee in Washington, D.C. Continue reading “Don’t Know Much About Geography”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

The Dreaded R-Word

Is the U.S. economy in a recession? If it is, how long will it last—and how much will it hurt? Six American Enterprise Institute economists offered differing assessments at a panel discussion last week, ranging from Charles W. Calomiris’s view that “severe recession risk is minimal” to Desmond Lachman’s prediction of “several quarters of negative growth going forward.” Other panelists—including former Federal Reserve monetary affairs director Vincent R. Reinhart—addressed the Fed’s role in credit markets, specifically its March bailout of Bear Stearns.

Meeting for the first time since their December 2007 panel, the AEI scholars took a fresh look at the health of the economy. Continue reading “The Dreaded R-Word”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

My Big Fat Airline Merger

You might be forgiven for mistaking the pending privatization of Alitalia for the plot of a new romantic comedy–say, My Big Fat Italian Wedding. All the elements are there: the clumsy, unattractive bride to be, the parents desperate to marry her off to any suitor who can come up with a suitable dowry, the relatives anxious to make sure the dowry is large enough, the handful of frustrated suitors and the doddering grandfather who won’t let the bride marry a handsome foreigner.

Last week, Alitalia’s unions failed to come to terms with a bid for the airline by Air France–KLM. The $1.17 billion bid had been approved by Alitalia’s board and the Italian government. After weeks of negotiation and many concessions, Air France–KLM gave up and withdrew its bid. Stirring in trouble was former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who decried the notion of “giving our national airline to the French.” Continue reading “My Big Fat Airline Merger”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks
Articles

Congress Fuels Airline Merger Madness

Merger mania has struck the airlines once again. A year after US Airways failed to buy Delta Air Lines in a hostile takeover (then, pundits heralded the long-awaited industry consolidation), the buzz is back.

Not long ago, a hedge fund with stakes in both Delta and United Airlines spun a rumor about a merger, causing the stock price to soar. Now, Delta’s board has decided to examine mergers with other airlines, principally United and Northwest Airlines. Northwest’s CEO announced that merger proposals would be weighed carefully, and United has made no secret of its desire in recent months to merge with another airline. And now may be just the right time to merge, thanks to a provision in the 2007 appropriations act requiring “fair and equitable” handling of labor issues during a merger. Continue reading “Congress Fuels Airline Merger Madness”

Unknown's avatarEvan Sparks