Month: February 2013

The Right And Marriage Equality: It Gets Better

Before it was taken over by religious, constitutional and fiscal fundamentalists, the GOP was once the pragmatic party of business. It still is, of course, fitfully – even though its brinksmanship and rank partisanship and fiscal recklessness have hurt businesses hard these last few years. (Imagine where the auto industry would be now if Mitt Romney had had his way). But its insistence on opposing any civil rights for gay couples is beginning to make the business world uncomfortable. This strikes me as an under-noted story among the many Amicus briefs being filed with the Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality. Just as local Virginia businessmen took on the extremist Republican Ken Cuccinelli recently, so too is big business weighing in against discrimination against gays in marriage:

The publicly traded companies backing gay marriage include Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF), Alcoa Inc. (AA), American International Group Inc. (AIG), Becton Dickinson & Co., EBay Inc. (EBAY), Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC), NCR Corp. (NCR), Nike Inc. (NKE), Oracle Corp. (ORCL), Office Depot Inc. (ODP), Panasonic Corp. (6752), Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), Sun Life Financial Inc., Xerox Corp. (XRX), Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), Barnes & Noble Inc. and Caesars Entertainment Corp.

A larger group of companies — more than 200, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) — is also poised to side with gay- rights advocates in a second Supreme Court case, involving a federal law that defines marriage as a heterosexual union. Under that law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, legally married gay couples can’t claim the federal tax breaks and other benefits available to opposite-sex spouses.

The companies in that case are part of a collection of more than 250 employers, including cities, counties and law firms.

These businesses want to attract the best workforces they can. And if they are in states that treat gay couples as second class citizens, they may lose them. The US has already lost major talent because gay spouses of a non-American are forced to live in Western Europe or other parts of the civilized world because of the United States’ refusal to allow any process for gay married citizens to keep their spouse in the country. In the end, the free market matters. And in the end, it wants gay equality.

No Moderates Allowed

CPAC snubbed Chris Christie. Bouie argues that,  if “conservatives want a national party, they should allow ideological flexibility,” and points out that Christie is hugely popular in New Jersey:

Christie is the most popular Republican governor in the country. His overall approval rating is 73 percent, his approval among conservatives is 80 percent, and his approval among Republicans is a whopping 90 percent. He also holds a 62 percent approval rating among Democrats, and a 75 percent approval rating among moderates and independents. Simply put, there are few people better positioned to sell the Republican message.

Barro identifies why many national Republicans loathe Christie:

What so bothers conservatives about Christie is that he has figured out which parts of conservatism are working and been willing to ditch the ones that aren’t. His Ronald Reagan Presidential Library speech in 2011, full of explicit criticism of Obama, also contained an implicit critique of congressional Republicans’ scorched-earth opposition to the president. Christie has often intimated that as president, as in his governorship, he would treat compromise with the other party as an important strategy rather than a dirty word.

Yglesias Award Nominee

“Something people who complain about GOP-leaning wonks don’t seem to understand: there is a selection effect at work. Many people who might be GOP-leaning wonks in another universe are now either unaffiliated or, in some cases, D-leaning. So the current universe of GOP-leaning wonks are people who have some reason to attach themselves to the GOP coalition, e.g.: social conservatism, hawkishness, regional identity, etc. Or the GOP-leaning wonk could be unusually patient, i.e., she/he could believe that change takes decades rather than months or even years. People who don’t buy this thesis exit,” – Reihan Salam, telling the truth about the collapse of the conservative intelligentsia and its eclipse by the young left.

(The quote is composed of multiple consecutive tweets, like Reihan’s immense brain. The link is to the first tweet.)

Why Are Rom-Coms In Decline?

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One of Christopher Orr’s theories:

Among the most fundamental obligations of romantic comedy is that there must be an obstacle to nuptial bliss for the budding couple to overcome. And, put simply, such obstacles are getting harder and harder to come by. They used to lie thick on the ground: parental disapproval, difference in social class, a promise made to another. But society has spent decades busily uprooting any impediment to the marriage of true minds. Love is increasingly presumed—perhaps in Hollywood most of all—to transcend class, profession, faith, age, race, gender, and (on occasion) marital status.

Alyssa thinks he misses the point that “the genuinely strong romantic comedies of the last decade or so have ventured inward for obstacles, rather than inventing ludicrous external ones”:

Part of what made Bridesmaids so wonderful was that Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) wasn’t an essentially perfect woman barred by class or reputation from pursuing true love. She was a self-loathing mess grieving the loss of a relationship and her professional dream who had to fix herself before she was capable of loving someone, rather than overcoming external obstacles to be with someone she already loved. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Andy (Steve Carell) had to overcome his deep-seated terror of sex, and of growing up, to be able to form an adult emotional relationship. If romantic comedies have gotten harder to do well, maybe it’s actually not because so many barriers to finding love have fallen, but rather because modern love’s gotten more difficult, and more difficult to capture.

The Death Of Big Power

David Roberts sees decentralization as the major “metatrend” affecting the energy sector:

[U]tilities used to be in the business of generating power at big power plants and then sending it to consumers over one-way lines for a set price. That basic “hub and spoke” model is rapidly becoming obsolete. There are more and more small-scale power generators and power storage nodes on the network, sending power back and forth in massively parallel fashion. Utilities cannot hope to centrally manage all those transactions. They will be forced, whether they like it or not, to move to what’s known among nerds as a more “transactive” model, in which their main job is to manage power markets, to dynamically price (value) power so that the market can react accordingly.

Chart Of The Day

policy mood

John Cluverius describes the Policy Mood (seen above), which “is calculated by aggregating hundreds of survey questions” and “captures shifts in the the popularity of increased government action over time”:

One of the key aspects of policy mood is that tends to react against prevailing government policies. Christopher Wlezien described this response as a “thermostat”: after the government does more and spends more, policy mood becomes less liberal; after the government does less and spends less, it becomes more liberal.  This effect has been discussed in greater detail previously on this blog and others. In particular, the public’s policy mood responds to changes in party control of the White House.  The public becomes more liberal during the administration of Republican presidents, and more conservative under the administration of Democratic presidents.

When Computers Outsmart Us

Samuel Arbesman considers the possiblity of computers outpacing the human brain’s capacity to comprehend their calculations:

We’ve already come close. A computer program known as Eureqa that was designed to find patterns and meaning in large datasets not only has recapitulated fundamental laws of physics but has also found explanatory equations that no one really understands. And certain mathematical theorems have been proven by computers, and no one person actually understands the complete proofs, though we know that they are correct. As the mathematician Steven Strogatz has argued, these could be harbingers of an “end of insight.” We had a wonderful several-hundred-year run of explanatory insight, beginning with the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, but maybe that period is drawing to a close.

Re-Engineering Nature

Zandmotor vlucht-11, foto: Rijkswaterstaat/Joop van Houdt

With 20% of the country below sea level, the Dutch are more vulnerable to rising sea levels than most. Cheryl Katz describes the latest innovation in flood management, a “28 million-cubic-yard heap of dredged sediment spreading along the shore”:

The Sand Engine is the signature project of Building with Nature, a consortium of Dutch industries, universities, research institutes, and public water agencies looking to harness natural systems for next-generation hydraulic engineering. Completed in late 2011 at a cost of 50 million euros ($67 million), the Sand Engine’s goal is to provide long-term fortification for eroding beaches as ocean currents gradually redistribute its dredged material. Until now, this coastline needed sand replenishment every five years, requiring expensive dredging that damaged marine ecosystems.

The Sand Engine will feed beaches for about 20 years at half the price, said Marcel Stive, chair of coastal engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and principal creator of the technology. “At this moment, this is the safest coast we have,” Stive said. When the sand is fully spread out, it will protect 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) of shoreline from the current rate of sea-level rise, he said. If the amount of water increases, “we’ll just add more.”

Previous Dish on Dutch flood engineering here and here.

(Photo: Dutch Sand Engine Flight 11 under construction on the coast between Ter Heijde and Kijkduin in September 2011, courtesy of Rijkswaterstaat. By Joop van Houdt)

The Geography Of The Grocery Store, Ctd

A reader writes:

Most of the items McNamee lists – milk, eggs, fresh vegetables, cheese and meat – require refrigeration, watering, frequent restocking or other special handling.  All of that is more efficient if the items are located at the rear of the store, so they’re closer to the storeroom, loading docks, and mechanical infrastructure.  Sometimes the design of a store is a nod to plain old engineering, not the sinister social kind.

Another offers a very different take:

In Texas, there is a particularly despicable phenomenon known as “Central Market”, a division of the giant H.E.B. chain here. Central Market stores cater to an clientele that doesn’t mind paying higher prices for the gratifying illusion that doing so makes them upscale.  These stores are laid out with one long maze-like aisle that snakes around all the way from entrance to the check-out counter.  In other words, you have to navigate the entire store even just to buy a can of Pledge.  In normal grocery stores, a knowledgeable disciplined shopper can march down one aisle and back if all they want is a gallon of milk and avoid lots of distracting impulse buys.  But in CM you can’t.

I’ve pointed all this out to several loyal customers who refuse to shop elsewhere, even at conventional HEBs, to no avail.  You get a definite sense that they think the other stores are strictly for the hoi polloi.

Update from several readers who rush to defend Central Market:

Your second reader doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Central Market does indeed have a long snake-like aisle. But it also has several cut-throughs that make it easy to bypass the sections you don’t want to visit, unlike a regular grocery store.  It also has much less space devoted to processed foods and a great beer/wine selection which I view as big positives. Only issue I have with them is that the stores close have massive parking issues, but wanted to set the record straight.

Another defender:

Your reader who hates Central Market is wrong. Central Market offers a fantastic experience, with the shopping areas broken up to resemble traditional markets, not to create a maze. There is a flow to the overall store, but there are plenty of cut-throughs that are marked and that easily enable knowledgeable shoppers to take short cuts. The example of a can of Pledge, for example – a knowledgeable shopper will know that there is a very easy way to get to the nonperishable aisles and right back out.

Central Market is booming, growing from one Austin location to ten throughout Texas by later this year. For products that are offered both at Central Market and the chain’s mass-market stores (H-E-B), they commit to matching the H-E-B price at Central Market, and then adding a ton of fresh, organic, and other options at prices that easily beat Whole Foods. They work hard to feature local produce and products. When I lived away from Austin, missing H-E-B and Central Market was one of the worst aspects. See this for more.

One more:

Unlike that other high end Texas-based grocery chain that preaches an organic gospel no matter the actual health benefits, Central Market focuses on freshness, variety, and quality while eschewing the hippy pseudoscience that pervades its competitor. Far from being some evil exercise in consumer manipulation, I’ve found that Central Market’s layout mirrors how I actually shop and in fact encourages me to eat healthier by placing the fresh foods up front. You enter into a produce section that is larger than most East Coast grocers and teeming with amazing, exotic fruits and vegetables that I’ve never seen anywhere else. From there, it’s on to the fish counter and butcher shop, twin 100-foot cold cases with an incredible variety of fresh cut meats, fish, and in-house prepared sausages. Only then do you find yourself in a more traditionally laid out store, albeit one with an epic selection of affordable wines and loads of local craft beer. Some of the other offerings are pricier than at a “normal” grocery store, but in my experience the basics compare favorably.

I shop there because I like the quality and the variety, not out of some dickish sense of superiority. There’s a reason that the owners of NYC’s Eataly are rumored to have looked to Central Market when embarking on their venture. And the lack of a Central Market is a small reason that, when recently faced with an opportunity to move to New York, my spouse and I stayed in Texas.