How do you feed 6 million people in Baghdad when it's flooded?

Welcome back to my voice in the wilderness.

The New Yorker offers a longread on the imminent, biblically catastrophic failure of the Mosul dam:

The Iraqi government -- embattled, paralyzed, ineffectual -- seems highly unlikely to carry out meaningful evacuations or large-scale relief efforts in the event of a breach. "The sheer scale of a catastrophic outburst of the dam would overwhelm in-country capacities to respond," the U.N. report said. Adamo, the former official, scoffed at the idea that the government could save anyone. "They have no plan," he said. American officials, emphasizing the practical option of "self-evacuation," have urged the Iraqis to place early-warning sirens along the Tigris. Thus far, two have been installed. "They’re really, really loud," the senior American official told me; they can be heard for miles. Still, as people flee, the sick, disabled, and elderly would likely be left behind. With the Baghdad International Airport flooded, meaningful relief from outside the country might be days away. The U.N. predicted that most of the population affected by the flood would not receive any assistance for at least two weeks, and probably much longer. About four million Iraqis -- an eighth of the country's population -- would be left homeless.

By the time the flood wave rolled past Baghdad and exhausted itself, as many as one and a half million people could be dead. But, some experts told me, the aftermath would prove even more harrowing. "I am not really worried about the dead -- because they're dead," Alwash said. "What worries me is everyone else. How do you feed six million people in Baghdad when it's flooded? How do you give them electricity? Where do they go?"

This will be Iraq's Katrina, no exaggeration. Maybe even two Katrinas. But being in a foreign country, it's not actually our problem. Except that it will be, of course. The President-elect's Twitter responses are left as an exercise for the reader.

Your devices require and result in acres of radioactive clay

Keep upgrading your cell phone and laptop every year:

China’s dominance of the rare earth market is less about geology and far more about the country’s willingness to take an environmental hit that other nations shy away from. And there’s no better place to understand China’s true sacrifice than the shores of Baotou toxic lake.

Years ago I was chatting with someone who was very enthusiastic about hybrid automobiles, which at the time were only newly available in the U.S. An early adopter, enviro-weenie myself, I took my key fob out of my pocket and said something to the effect of, "OK, but look, here in this fob, from the petro-chemical plastic outer casing to the chip and battery inside, there is more environmental destruction than in a single Tin Lizzie. How many miles do I have to drive my Prius to make up in gasoline savings in order to offset the incredible amount of energy and resources that went into the battery pack, the dashboard computer display" -- this was pretty new at the time -- "and all the other technology and materials that went into it?"

Where do the two curves meet, I wonder: the energy and resources that go into a key fob, versus the energy and resources that go into a particular year and model of an American car? It's thoughts like these that keep me wound up and unable to sleep in the wee hours.

"And, damn it all, they might have left me my toothbrush!"

The Odd Couple: The Americanized Huis Clos that found its ultimate expression in Bottom.

Discuss.

San Francisco for visitors from the First World

There's a pile of gems in this piece, but if I had to pick a favorite, as a godless pinko commie I guess I'd have to go with:

The inequality will shock you and continue to shock you. Even if you're used to London. People who have lived in SF for a while become numb to it, often taking the poverty as a point of pride for the city. "At least they won't die out on the streets. Unlike other cities, we're much less heavy handed about using police to clear them out of the city". The californian liberalism is more of a passive agressive "fuck you, got mine".

H/T @sorenrags

Recent reading, online and on paper: AMUSEMENT IS CONTROL

The Dissolve's most recent Movie of the Week was Back to the Future, which dropped like a bomb on me in 1985. I was at an age where I couldn't drive a car but I could be driven crazy by a teenage crush on a Hollywood sitcom star. I wasn't old enough to see an R-rated movie but I was old enough to be let loose in the mall without parental chaperoning. I had no personal experience of the 1950s but my parents sure spent a lot of time there. I identified with the oddball, loner-ish nature of both Marty and his dad; and I've always been a sucker for decently written science fiction, even if it's written as a comedy. The Dissolve's last essay over-thinks the films, in my opinion; but the Forum discussion was an enjoyable back-and-forth between a couple of critics who (I think) are just a little younger than I am.

A recent thrift shop find, Prof. Amos N. Guiora's Fundamentals of Counterterrorism would be better titled "Fundamentals of Justifying Your Pre-emptive Strike to the United Nations." After 130+ pages in that vein, though, the last section does present some strongly worded urgencies about protecting people's civil liberties in the face of known unknowns. While with a publishing date of 2008 it's a little behind the times, it offers an interesting view into the mindset of the people who are at the highest levels of responsibility for anti-terrorism decisionmaking.

Also picked up a copy of Frank Meeink's memoir Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead. Pretty harrowing stuff, and I continue to wonder about the links between childhood abandonment and trauma, and addiction -- whether to substances or hate or whatever.

Finally, a treat came into the house: Don Hertzfeldt's The End of the World. Now, I'm a huge fan of Hertzfeldt's animation; he's arguably America's best living animator, using a technique, refined yet unchanged since 1995, that looks deliberately unsophisticated to deliver sophisticatedly multi-layered messages. (Er, the messages have improved since 1995; see, e.g., It's Such a Beautiful Day, a must-view on Netflix streaming right now.) I remember seeing Billy's Balloon way back in my "film festivals are a full-contact sport for me" days, and I've always been excited to see his new work as it comes out. This book, however . . .  it's got the Hertzfeldt non-sequiturs. It's got his pervasive existential doom (it is literally about the end of the world). It's got the horrific, the sublime, the sudden cut-to-black -- except it hasn't, right? Because it's not a film, it's a book. Really it's a bound storyboard. And I guess it's a fine storyboard; but I think Hertzfeldt's profundity comes in the pacing and repeated juxtapositions of images in his films, not in the images themselves. The images, as I say, have a deliberately unsophisticated design to them. Taking them out of the context of a motion picture -- films being like an artistic mathematics of images over time -- seriously diminishes Hertzfeldt's ability to effectively and fully get across his challenging and scary themes.

There was a joke list in The End of the World of about a dozen of the author's "other works." While I'll never get tired of Hertzfeldt's not-really non-sequiturs, I do wonder if the "other works" are just a list of notes for another storyboard.

All this to say, however -- I'm damned disappointed that I'm not at Sundance right now, body-checking the crowd for a seat at the premiere of World of Tomorrow tonight. Bah!

Solomon Jones has chosen his hill to die on

Philly.com columnist Solomon Jones has chosen his hill to die on, and that hill is named "Those Untrustworthy Sluts Who Dare to Accuse Bill Cosby, a Great Man Who Opened a Door for Me Years Ago, Are Cowardly."

The Bill Cosby I know is a generous man who advised me as I sought to write a book of family humor, introduced me to an editor at a national magazine, and did similar things for many others.

Translation: "He never slipped me a mickey in the rec room! So if he really did drug and rape 'several' women, why haven't they gone to the police? Huh? Huh? Answer me that!"

Every day, there are women who report being victimized by men.

These women -- women who have been hurt, assaulted, damaged and traumatized -- are often looking for nothing more than justice from the system and protection from their tormenters.

And every day, such women take the brave step of reporting what happened to them; not for personal gain, or for media notoriety, but because it is right.

You see, real crime victims, people who have been truly, legitimately, and forcibly raped, get up and dust themselves off and bravely go to the cops right away to see justice done.

I've asked if Jones feels the same way about victims of pedophile priests, but he's tossed the "I gotta go back to work" answer at a couple of other commenters so I imagine I'll get that response eventually myself.

Other writers have written better about why victims of rape and other sexual assaults don't try to press charges or file civil lawsuits, whether immediately or well after the statutes of limitations have run. Victim Barbara Bowman, for example, in asking why it took a male comic's stand-up routine to bring publicity to her accusations -- the title itself of her commentary answers the damn question. Too bad Solomon Jones hasn't read those pieces as part of his work research for this item.

A brief note referencing this blog's namesake

The role of the namesake of this blog in a secret U.S. government project has been referenced in an article about wacky conspiracy theories that turned out, after all, to be true ("Sometimes They're Right" at The Daily Caller). Though I think I'm supposed to say that I can neither confirm nor deny that such an article exists.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!

José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

This week's topic: Doin' the math to see if a CSA share works for me this year. The latest number of Grid magazine (kludgey online version) profiles several choices in southeastern Pennsylvania. Do you subscribe to a CSA? Do you hate it when you get five pounds of kale for a few weeks in a row but only two mealy apples in September? Or do you see it as a way to seriously enrich your diet with seasonal produce while challenging yourself in the kitchen?

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Is anyone surprised that a law professor touts old-school parenting?

You know what strikes me most about Prof. Amy Chua's "Chinese parents are better than 'Western' parents" article in the WSJ? It's the ultimate example of the "I went through it, and look where I am, so you have to go through it, too" argument. How ultimate? Prof. Chua is at Yale. Yale Law. Law school is the last area of the academy that continues to use a 19th-century model of teaching: lecture halls of 50 or 100 students; lessons led by a professor who likely never actually worked a job in the field he's teaching; the so-called Socratic method of badgering a student with questions on increasingly absurd, hypothetical situations until the professor has made a fool of them in front of their peers; and no actual training in the job of lawyering: how to run a law office, file documents in local courts, or even write a simple will. Once law school is done, you're facing the opportunity cost of not having worked for three years; you've got a debt that you could have used to buy a sizeable home instead; and you still have to pay for bar exam training. And there's a non-zero chance you'll fail that exam anyway.

The only thing that's changed in law schools since The Paper Chase days is that students have laptop computers and can play Scrabble or read Maxim during lectures.

And though some law schools trumpet their experiential teaching philosophy and their co-ops or internships, they still use an old, ineffective teaching model in the classroom: your grade in a course is based almost wholly on a single exam at the end of the term. Even for the hypothetical ivory tower nonsense you're learning, it's a pedagogically unsound way to learn and internalize material. But it won't change, because that's what the profs went through, and look where they are, so all the new students have to go through it, too. It's the same philosophy that keeps medical residents -- the doctors at the bottom of the totem pole -- having to endure 16- and 24-hour shifts. Never mind patient safety, or the residents' mental health or ability to retain what they're learning. The doctors before them had to endure their trial by fire, so by gum the youngsters'll have to do it, too. But while the medical profession is recognizing that it's a stupid reason not to change anything, even the law schools that are changing, or which are newcomers and promise a new way of approaching legal education, are doing so at a glacially slow pace.

All this to say, it's really no surprise that Prof. Chua would be a holdout among old-school believers in what she calls Chinese parenting versus "Western" parenting. She's had a double whammy of it: in her personal upbringing and in her professional life. And if her two trials by fire got her where she is, then it's good enough for her girls, too.

"What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?"

Charlie LeDuff of Mother Jones has written an in-depth article about current events in Detroit and how Detroit got to where it is. Read through to the end, and you'll find that he finishes with a couple of paragraphs that explain better than I can why I can't listen to WHYY 90.9 FM any more:

It would be easy to lay the blame on McNeal for the circumstances in which she raised her sons. But is she responsible for police officers with broken computers in their squad cars, firefighters with holes in their boots, ambulances that arrive late, a city that can't keep its lights on and leaves its vacant buildings to the arsonist's match, a state government that allows corpses to stack up in the morgue, multinational corporations that move away and leave poisoned fields behind, judges who let violent criminals walk the streets, school stewards who steal the children's milk money, elected officials who loot the city, automobile executives who couldn't manage a grocery store, or Wall Street grifters who destroyed the economy and left the nation's children with a burden of debt? Can she be blamed for that?

[ ... ]

I left McNeal's porch and started my car. The radio was tuned to NPR and A Prairie Home Companion came warbling out of my speakers. I stared through the windshield at the little boy in the diaper playing amid the ruins, reached over, and switched it off.

Spend your coffee break reading it, and don't get lost following the bouncing links to the articles and websites LeDuff cites to.

10 pages in the San Fernando Valley

What do women performers get out of their jobs in porn?

[Highly successful porn film director] Jim [Powers] isn't the bad guy. He's the good guy. "I sleep at night," he informs me, his voice rising, "because I know, in my heart of hearts, I'm giving people money, that could not hold a job at fucking McDonald's, for the most part. I'm paying people's rent." He waves his hands spastically. "It's a lot more than I can say for a lot of the companies in America, pieces of shit, like Madoff, and Enron, all of these son of a bitches the Bush administration funded that do nothing but take, take, take! Here, I just give, give, give! And this is a fact!" he shouts, wild-eyed. "We are helping these girls! Anybody that comes into this business, for the most part, is a broken toy." He leans towards me, earnestly attempting to make himself understood. "We're giving them a place where they can make money, and get by, so they're not standing on line in a welfare department. Thank God for people like me!" He bangs the desk.

How about the men?

The men were there for many different reasons. They were lonely. They were horny. This was their fantasy. They wanted to be porn stars. They were fresh out of jail. They were social outcasts. They longed to be somebody, if only for a few minutes.

Afterwards, one polite young man in his twenties explained to me why he had taken Powers up on this opportunity to jerk off onto the face of a young woman whom he had never met before: "I'm not involved with anyone right now."

They were desperate men who had congregated on a barren soundstage in North Hollywood, stripped to their underpants with their faces hidden behind bandanas, all in the hopes of a fleeting chance at intimacy with a young, attractive, naked woman who would in the real world -- they knew in all likelihood -- never speak to them, much less allow any of them to come on her face, were she not being paid to be there.

Exceedingly interesting and NSFW 10-page article by Susannah Breslin, "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?"

The Death of the Republican Intellectual

An acquaintance of mine who writes over on Livejournal has written a thoughtful piece about The Death of the Republican Intellectual. Here's a nice excerpt that sums up a lot of what I've been seeing on his blog for the past few years:

First they came for the war protestors, but I thought it was important to support our troops so I said nothing. Then they came for the Muslims, but I saw a scary guy on TV so I said nothing. Then they came for the persistently vegetative medical patients, but I'm still in good health so I said nothing. Then they came for the married homosexuals, but I'm married to a lady so I said nothing. Then they came for the civil libertarians, but I thought "I have nothing to hide" so I said nothing. Then they came for the biologists and climatologists, but I thought that the scientific consensus on evolution and climate change wasn't quite strong enough so I said nothing. Then they came for the elitists, but I've only got a master's degree from a state school so I said nothing. And that's why this year it's just me and a bunch of GED-educated pentecostal luddite homophobes holding "Sarah Palin 2012" signs.

Tongodeon lives and works in the Bay Area. He's been an internet acquaintance of mine for about 15 years and almost always has something interesting and readable to say.