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Sana'a

idlewords.com

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Re: Sana'a

#41

Post by Someone »

msandford wrote: post #30
idlewords wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the easiest things there is to believe. You need to work on your believing.

You might be right that the whole thing will fall apart. But if this place is indeed the equivalent to Manhattan I can understand the disbelief. Compared to the trillions tied up in real estate the cost of a pipeline to NYC would be trivial. Yeah it might cost $50b (probably much, much less but lets go crazy) but with at least 10mm people around to receive the water it's $5k per person amortized over a decade it come…

The old town is the equivalent of Manhattan, moved to the Middle Ages (or earlier). I don't know the new part of the city, but it probably is concrete and tents/shanty towns, like all large cities in poorer countries.

http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=Yemen gives a gross income per capita for Yemen of around $1300. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Yemen has a more optimistic $2200. Sana'a may be richer, but I guess the poor will be significantly below that.

I don't find it strange that they will not be able to pay for the infrastructure and the additional costs of desalination and of pumping the water to the city (over 2 km up)

Also, looking at http://files.transparency.org/content/download/700/3007/file..., Yemen is perceived to be extremely corrupt. That means that its population may not trust their government with that amount of money, even if they could afford to pay it.

Re: Sana'a

#42

Post by Tepix »

Great story, excellent pictures. The colours and the dynamic range are sweet - does anyone know what equipment he uses?

Re: Sana'a

#43

Post by jpatokal »

Every rooftop has a low wall around it and has been capped off with a little cone of rubble.

In case anybody was wondering, this is most likely because Yemen has the same daft law as much of the Middle East: you only start paying property tax when your house is complete, so if you leave the "last floor" (roof) notionally incomplete (a row of bricks plus some construction detritus, as if you were still working on it), you never pay tax.

Re: Sana'a

#44

Post by idlewords »

jpatokal wrote: post #43

Every rooftop has a low wall around it and has been capped off with a little cone of rubble. In case anybody was wondering, this is most likely because Yemen has the same daft law as much of the Middle East: you only start paying property tax when your house is complete, so if you leave the "last floor" (roof) notionally incomplete (a row of bricks plus some construction detritus, as if you were still working on it),…

I have heard this with regard to Cairo, but as for Yemen... citation needed. It sounds like reactor-grade bolonium.

Re: Sana'a

#45

Post by idlewords »

rmc wrote: post #38
msandford wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right that the whole thing will fall apart. But if this place is indeed the equivalent to Manhattan I can understand the disbelief. Compared to the trillions tied up in real estate the cost of a pipeline to NYC would be trivial. Yeah it might cost $50b (probably much, much less but lets go crazy) but with at least 10mm people around to receive the water it's $5k per person amortized over a decade it come…

Sure, manual labour is cheap. But if you want to buy computers, electric equipment or high quality machines then you have to buy the same stuff that us rich westerns buy. I. E. You're paying western prices.

Do you people realize you don't need to have this debate from first principles? There's a LOT of interesting (and depressing) cost analysis on providing Sana'a with water vs. trying to relocate.

Not everything has to be a Fermi thought experiment.

Re: Sana'a

#46

Post by idlewords »

colordrops wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #8

Yemen wasn't always so dangerous. My dad used do development work in Yemen in the early 90s. At the time it wasn't an eventful place. He was there when the civil war broke in 1994. He was stuck in Sana'a while it was being shelled. Finally managed to catch a C130 out of town when the US military evacuated a bunch of Americans.

I don't know anything about Yemen, but my impression is that the country has a bad rap even in the middle east, and it has for a while. My father, of Lebanese descent, moved from Lebanon in the 50s. He had stories about Yemen from way back when. One example was that an eye for an eye was still the norm there - a boy smashed out the eye of a cow with a rock in a morbid attempt at fun, and the owner of the cow did the…

You could have ended this comment at word #6

Re: Sana'a

#47

Post by maxerickson »

msandford wrote: post #30
idlewords wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the easiest things there is to believe. You need to work on your believing.

You might be right that the whole thing will fall apart. But if this place is indeed the equivalent to Manhattan I can understand the disbelief. Compared to the trillions tied up in real estate the cost of a pipeline to NYC would be trivial. Yeah it might cost $50b (probably much, much less but lets go crazy) but with at least 10mm people around to receive the water it's $5k per person amortized over a decade it come…

Viewers of Die Hard With a Vengeance have several opportunities for learning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._...

50 years and $6 billion for a tunnel 60 miles long. The city owns lots of land around the source waters, but I think that is their only expense in acquiring the water, and the tunnel flows downhill to the city.

Also, the 21st President of the United States was Chester A. Arthur.

Re: Sana'a

#48

Post by prawn »

idlewords wrote: post #20
3pt14159 wrote: post #19

I studied Civil Engineering in University. There is no way that that city disappears. The economic incentives are too strong to pipe water in. 3km up some mountains is nothing. Humanity has built pipelines a thousand of kilometres long and over or through much taller mountains. The city might be corrupt as hell, but when there is truly a water shortage (right now, if they are using it for crops, there isn't in the ec…

We know what a water crisis in Sana'a will look like because the city already runs low on water every time there is a shortage of fuel: http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/30/yeme... It doesn't matter what technology you use to bring in water. When the cost gets high enough, people are going to leave the city, and the poorest will have to leave first.

I would've thought that the poorest would be in the weakest position to move - no means to pay, fewer opportunities to hear of alternatives, little contact with family who might be elsewhere, etc.

Re: Sana'a

#49

Post by jtheory »

Kiro wrote: post #40
colordrops wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Yemen, but my impression is that the country has a bad rap even in the middle east, and it has for a while. My father, of Lebanese descent, moved from Lebanon in the 50s. He had stories about Yemen from way back when. One example was that an eye for an eye was still the norm there - a boy smashed out the eye of a cow with a rock in a morbid attempt at fun, and the owner of the cow did the…

Sounds like the boy got what he deserved. What kind of psychopath does that to a cow?

Ugh. You don't even know the age of the boy, or if he even intended the cow's eye to be hit (maybe he was just throwing a rock to see it jump?), and you're ready to judge that punishment as well-deserved?

It's all hypothetical, of course -- and no one is removing eyes based on your say-so -- but that's a shitty punishment for anything.

Generally a punishment for a wrong-doing should try to encourage/force the guilty party to be a functional, non-destructive member of society if at all possible (exceptions as needed to protect others).

Punishments that harm the person's ability to earn a living, or have normal interactions with other people, are counterproductive (and can force the person to resort to criminal behavior to survive in the future), so punishments that inflict serious physical and/or psychological damage are stupid. They give a few people their "vengeance", for whatever that's worth, and otherwise they damage the society as a whole.

Re: Sana'a

#50

Post by Kiro »

jtheory wrote: post #49
Kiro wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the boy got what he deserved. What kind of psychopath does that to a cow?

Ugh. You don't even know the age of the boy, or if he even intended the cow's eye to be hit (maybe he was just throwing a rock to see it jump?), and you're ready to judge that punishment as well-deserved? It's all hypothetical, of course -- and no one is removing eyes based on your say-so -- but that's a shitty punishment for anything. Generally a punishment for a wrong-doing should try to encourage/force the guilty…

> in a morbid attempt at fun

That's what I'm basing my comment on and what we're discussing. If the OP is wrong is another discussion but I don't see any room for interpretation here.

> maybe he was just throwing a rock to see it jump?

Are you seriously saying it's OK to throw rocks at cows?

> should

According to who? My grandfather was a prison governor and a pioneer in treating prisoners humane. Before his time the general thought was to "throw them in a cell with only water and bread". So I definitely know this discussion very well and I still believe the punishment itself could be an end goal.

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