ARABIC IDOL
Tom Friedman channels Chuck Freund on pop culture in the Arab world. Of course, Chuck did it first and better.
Dynamist Blog
TENNESSEE IS BIG
InstaPundit pleads "I live in Knoxville" to explain his failure to cover the Memphis blackout. He says Tennessee is a big state. Most Texans would probably disagree. But since we used to drive every summer from South Carolina to my grandmother's house in Little Rock--a trip that is about 90% Tennessee--I have to concur that, to put it precisely, Tennessee is a very long state. If you eat breakfast in Knoxville, you won't get to Memphis until dark. I can also say from personal experience that it is very, very hot in Memphis in July--and it's not a dry heat.
WASHINGTON, DC, SPEECH
I start the non-Dallas portion of my book tour this weekend, with a trip to Washington, DC. I'll be speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, September 8, at 5:00 p.m. The talk is open to the public, and details are here.
For more on where I'll be over the next few months, check the book tour page.
FOX NEWS, ON SUNDAY
I will be on Fox News Channel on Sunday, and Tony Snow will hosting. But, contrary to the item below, the show is not Fox News Sunday but Fox News Live Weekend on Sunday. All very confusing to those of us who don't watch Sunday shows, and Fox's website doesn't make it any easier to figure out. The time below, however, is correct: 1:20-1:30 p.m. Eastern.
OPERATION GENERATOR?
Reader Bob Reynolds writes with a response to the Iraqi Infrastructure item below:
I read the article on Iraqi infrastructure and it occurs to me that you could lend your considerable presence to an effort to get donated electrical generators to the right people and solve the problem mentioned in the report. Perhaps we could work this the way they're doing Operation A/C.
Bob volunteers to contact a friend at Honda. Any interest from other readers? (Do check out Operation A/C.)
BLACKOUT BLACKOUT
This op-ed from Saturday's NYT surprised me. Why didn't I know about this blackout? Was the op-ed a hoax? I actually got around to doing a Nexis search today, and the story is true. Parts of Memphis really did lose power for two weeks in the middle of the summer and not only did they not have French-style fatalities but they barely made the news.
As we had no lights for days, we had ordinary citizens directing traffic. Sound familiar? This was un-air-conditioned Memphis in July. No Memphian perished from the heat. It's what you're used to, I guess. It's what I grew up with.
There was hardship. There were frantic runs on generators, food, water, ice. If you could find ice, you were rationed to two five-pound bags. All over Memphis, a barbecue mecca, you smelled meat on charcoal grills. People were emptying their freezers, trying desperately to stay ahead of spoilage, offering you ribeyes and hams and chickens, but everyone had their own, and could not possibly consume more.
My mother, who cans, preserves and freezes homegrown vegetables and fruit, lost a ton but did not cry. More important, to save my father, who has emphysema, we managed to run an extension cord to the gas-driven generator in the backyard of the neighbor next door. Did I say that my parents were without power for two weeks?
In the darkened supermarkets that valiantly opened their doors, where the frozen foods sections were off limits behind yellow police tape (to keep the customers from risking illness), very old cashiers made change out of cigar boxes. Without an electronic cash register, which does all the work, the young employees were not up to the task.
We kept waiting for the national press to take notice. After all, these stories were rich. And pictures? Power lines down and streets so scattered and blocked with trees and poles that it looked like the wreck of wooden train. But no correspondents found us. We missed the news cycle. Mayor Willie Herenton kept ringing the bell, but no one outside the city limits heard.
After dealing with insurance agents and contractors for several weeks, I left my demolished river home and returned to New York City, where I also have a house. Two days later: blackout. Everyone everywhere knows about that. On the phone, a sarcastic friend in Memphis said: "Poor souls. Out of power for a whole day." Then my Depression-baby mother called. "I've been glued to CNN for 24 hours," she said. "My heart goes out to y'all."
As far as I can tell, even Tennessee-based InstaPundit mentioned the Memphis blackout only during the New York blackout, and then only after a Corner reader griped about the New Yorkers getting all the attention.
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
For some reason, Condoleezza Rice and Carl Levin are getting all the FoxNews.com preview attention. But I, too, will be a guest on FOX News Sunday with Tony Snow this weekend, talking about The Substance of Style (a topic Dr. Rice understands well, judging from the positive coverage she gets in the fashion press). My segment will run from about 1:20-1:30 p.m. Eastern.
MARKETING MESSAGE
You can't fault Arnold for trying to hide what he's doing: It's all about marketing. I heard this quote on Fox News last night and just found the story online:
"I will be traveling up and down the state, and this is what I'm going to do," he said. "This is my plan to reach out. It has been successful in the past. You know me well enough by now to know that I'm good in marketing, I'm good in promoting. I've always done this well and I will do it well with this campaign."
ARNOLD'S STRATEGIC SENSE
Robert Tagorda of Priorities & Frivolities argues that Arnold knows exactly what he's doing:
To be sure, Schwarzenegger has an unrelenting drive to succeed. But his ambition is precisely the reason why he skipped the debate.
Schwarzenegger believes that it's foolish to devote time and resources to every single event, because doing so can make him lose sight of the big prize. It's important to prioritize, as he writes in The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding:
You need to choose the right time and place to do battle. . . . You need to be confident of your battle tactics, know when to attack, when to withdraw, and how to conserve ammunition.
It's a smart post, with many good links, so read the whole thing. But Arnold still has to find the right time to talk specifics--and the right time isn't after the election.
IRAQI INFRASTRUCTURE
For just-the-facts, nitty-gritty reports on the struggle to restore Iraq's infrastructure, nothing beats Engineering News Record, which doesn't seem to be grinding any axe other than affirming the importance of engineering projects. A bit of the latest:
Four months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, basic services still are lacking across the country. Ad-Dujayl, a small town near Balad off Highway One stretching north from Baghdad to Kirkuk, is typical.
"The lack of electricity affects the water supplies," says Lt. Col. Laura Loftus of the U.S. Army 4th Engineer Battalion, home-based in Fort Carson, Colo. "Basically, they don't have electricity to run water pumps, which has a major impact on the local community." Because of the water distribution rotation, each third of the city receives water about one day out of three.
The town gets an hour or two of power daily, six on a good day, says Maj. Rise Davis, of the U.S. Army 418th Civil Affairs Battalion. The Army is working with the town council to set up community and infrastructure projects. Ad-Dujayl is a small backwater town, with gravel streets, open sewage flows and poor trash collection. Per capita income is estimated at $60 per month.
But electricity shortages and security problems make long-term projects such as water purification and distribution difficult. Ad-Dujayl's water demand is 600 cu m per hour, but the water treatment plant can process only 200 cu m per hour. Corroded water tanks and a small back-up generator, supported by concrete blocks, underscore that the facility was built in 1958 and not refurbished since.
Water drawn from the Tigris River doesn't sit in sedimentation tanks long enough for purification. "The water in collection is still green. This is why we don't drink the local water," Davis says.
"The facility was built in 1958 and not refurbished since." Got that?