Reservoir of goodness

As a poetic companion to Justice Kennedy's majority opinion for marriage equality for SCOTUS today, read Andrew Sullivan's piece on the momentous ruling. A recollection, an appreciation, a victory lap, beautiful throughout.

In fact, we lost and lost and lost again. Much of the gay left was deeply suspicious of this conservative-sounding reform; two thirds of the country were opposed; the religious right saw in the issue a unique opportunity for political leverage – and over time, they put state constitutional amendments against marriage equality on the ballot in countless states, and won every time. Our allies deserted us. The Clintons embraced the Defense of Marriage Act, and their Justice Department declared that DOMA was in no way unconstitutional the morning some of us were testifying against it on Capitol Hill. For his part, president George W. Bush subsequently went even further and embraced the Federal Marriage Amendment to permanently ensure second-class citizenship for gay people in America. Those were dark, dark days.
 

I recall all this now simply to rebut the entire line of being “on the right side of history.” History does not have such straight lines. Movements do not move relentlessly forward; progress comes and, just as swiftly, goes. For many years, it felt like one step forward, two steps back. History is a miasma of contingency, and courage, and conviction, and chance.
 

But some things you know deep in your heart: that all human beings are made in the image of God; that their loves and lives are equally precious; that the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence has no meaning if it does not include the right to marry the person you love; and has no force if it denies that fundamental human freedom to a portion of its citizens.
 

...
 

We are not disordered or sick or defective or evil – at least no more than our fellow humans in this vale of tears. We are born into family; we love; we marry; we take care of our children; we die. No civil institution is related to these deep human experiences more than civil marriage and the exclusion of gay people from this institution was a statement of our core inferiority not just as citizens but as human beings. It took courage to embrace this fact the way the Supreme Court did today.
 

I turned on CNN in my hotel here in Italy after dinner tonight. I've watched maybe 15 minutes of television this entire month I've been traveling, distance and the preoccupations of exploring a foreign country have a way of making all news seem too local, but tonight I happened to catch Obama in the midst of his eulogy in Charleston, live. I will always stop to watch Obama speak in a black church, just to hear the cadence of the call and response, the ebb and flow, the dialogue of a communal consciousness.

In his speech, a remarkable and moving one, he referenced Marilynne Robinson's phrase “reservoir of goodness.” If we could just tap into that reservoir of goodness, he both urged and wondered, if we could just tap into that grace, what might be possible?

On this day of all days, the answer seemed to be: more than even Andrew Sullivan expected in his lifetime.

It is so ordered

Everyone is posting the same final two paragraphs from Justice Kennedy's majority opinion (page 33 in this PDF) affirming marriage equality. I will as well, because sometimes legalese rises beyond the mundane and ascends to the lyrical.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
 

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.
 

It is so ordered. 

The efficient tourism problem

Everywhere I travel, I hear a common lament. Such and such a place is overrun with tourists. Everyone tries to discover the undiscovered gem of a spot.

However, the internet makes information flow so efficient that all travelers have easy access to the list of the top sites, restaurants, and hotels in every destination, just one mouse click away. Today's undiscovered gem of a beach is dotted with hundreds of pale white American bodies tomorrow.

A tourist complaining about other tourists is travel's version of NIMBY-ism, except it's not “my backyard,” it's someone else's. In a perfectly efficient travel market all the best sites will be overrun. Hotel vacancy rates might act as an artificial limiter, but the ability for massive cruise ships to dock in a port at noon and disgorge thousands of tourists each afternoon has long since rendered such ceilings meaningless.

[Everyone will complain about the tourists until virtual reality suddenly depresses tourism, and then everyone will complain that the local GDP has cratered and that no one bothers visiting places in person anymore. Perhaps cities will try to trademark their physical sites so they can collect a vig on any sale of any virtual reality experience based on their location.

And of course, some tourists are obnoxious and boorish. For this piece I'm setting those barbarians aside, no one likes them.]

Even docile, respectful tourists can alter one's experience of a place when they amass in great enough numbers. Yet how can I complain when I'm one of them? This is the traveler's conundrum.

I've learned to have a certain zen about it all. Some sites are great and will always draw a crowd. I revisited Michelangelo's David in Florence a few weeks back, and it is always surrounded by dozens of tourists snapping photos. It's still a fucking masterpiece, and it still stuns me.

If you're lucky enough, the most exploitable inefficiency remains visiting places in the offseason or in off peak hours. It's not just how much free time you have, but when you can call upon it that determines its value.

Why you should buy wine from Costco

Jon Thorsen on why you should buy wine from Costco:

Costco's average margin (per their financial filings) is about 12 percent. Costco has stated that the highest margin they will take on a non-Costco brand is 13 percent and they strive to keep it closer to 10 percent. On private label items (Kirkland Signature) they will go up to 15 percent margin but of course the price is still lower than other brands because they cut out the middleman. It's an amazing business model—their stores average about $160 million each in annual sales. Their total revenue is around $90 billion and they make several billion in net earnings, yet investors complain because they think their margin is too low and they pay their employees too much!
 

So what does this have to do with buying wine? I believe the 10–13 percent margin is similar for alcohol. No wonder Costco is the largest retailer of wine in the United States. I talked to a local store manager recently and commented on how a local upscale restaurant was advertising a wine for $12 per glass and $46 per bottle. At the time my local Costco was selling this wine for $9.99 a bottle. He stated Costco's markup on that item was 12 percent, which would put their margin at just under 11 percent. This means that unless you're dealing with a special buy/closeout type situation, you really are not going to find wine much cheaper than at Costco.
 

The other nice thing about Costco is that in my experience their buyers do a fantastic job picking out high-quality products. If they stock it, you can be fairly sure it's good, unlike some of the other big chain stores. Since Costco is the largest retailer of wine in the United States, products tend to turn over quickly so there is quite a variety over time. The downside of this is that a wine you loved may be gone the next week, so if you like it you better buy a bunch.
 

I wish I could chat with the wine buyer for my local Costco and make some requests. And I'm with the author. We complain about companies like Costco and Amazon.com having margins that are too low, yet perhaps we should more often praise companies that generate so much consumer surplus for the world (as long as they compensate their employees fairly).

It's humorous to see the variation in wine selection from one Costco store to another. I was at a Costco in Novato, up north across the Golden Gate Bridge, helping to pick up supplies for a party, and saw half bottles of 2006 Chateau D'Yquem and a bottle of 2009 Screaming Eagle in their glass-case secured wine display. The Screaming Eagle was selling for $2149.99. You can likely deduce the average income of residents in the area (my local San Francisco Costco doesn't carry such fare, though given real estate prices in the city, perhaps they should).

Another useful tip from the piece:

One other note on Costco is that typically any price that ends in .97 is a markdown. Furthermore, if there is an asterisk on the label that means it is a closeout and is not coming back.

Hiatus, Italian style

Sorry for the light posting here recently. I'm in the midst of a vacation trek through Italy, and it's been surprisingly difficult to get online. The bulk of my trip so far has been an 8 day bike trip through Tuscany, and while many of the hotels we've stayed at claim to offer wifi, that's about as genuine as their offer of air conditioning, which is to say a complete lie. I did want to come here to get off the grid, but perhaps not so literally.

I have not experienced the information withdrawal shakes, though I have been nervous about stumbling upon Game of Thrones spoilers since I can't watch the last two episodes over here (Twitter is the worst offender on the spoiler front, so I've been especially wary of checking it, even though I'm on it all the time at home). The mental serenity of stepping out from under the information waterfall has lowered my stress. Living here feels healthier.

And yet I'm not sure I'd want to go back to a world of such slow or unreliable internet access. I miss the mental stimulation of being plugged in, as wearying as it can be. Being without internet access can feel like being Tony Stark without his Iron Man suit. Having an internet-connected smartphone is a modern superpower, but having one that isn't, one that's just a plain old phone, must feel like being Spiderman in the countryside, without tall buildings to swing from. Maybe he just hops a ride in an Uber or rents a car for those situations.

And I miss writing, if for no other reason than to organize my thinking (I lost my power adaptor the first week in Italy, and I've yet to track down another, so for a couple days my laptop was just dead). I need to find a better way to combine the healthy, active life here with the sedentary but mentally stimulating life back home.

One of my biking buddies loaned me his power adaptor for the rest of my trip here, so I'm back in business, in a way. I was scanning through my blog draft folder and realized I have over 2,000 unpublished, unfinished posts! When I'm not out seeking out gelato or sightseeing under the Italian sun, I'm going to try to clear some of those out.

Ciao!