Hope is not a plan

Let's lead with a quote:

Ernst & Young's laptop loss unit continues to be one of the company's more productive divisions. We learn this week that the accounting firm lost a system containing data on 243,000 Hotels.com customers. Hotels.com joins the likes of Sun Microsystems, IBM, Cisco, BP and Nokia, which have all had their employees' data exposed by Ernst & Young...

From The Register, an article on Ernst & Young losing a laptop containing things like credit and debit card information. It's hard to say why you'd need to travel with a laptop full of credit information. More:

Ernst & Young in February lost one laptop that held information on what's believed to be tens of thousands of Sun, IBM, Cisco, BP and Nokia employees. It's not clear if this was the same system in the Hotels.com incident. Ernst & Young has not returned our calls seeking comment and has been reluctant to provide information on these incidents in the past.

Ernst & Young in February also lost four laptops in Miami when its workers decided to leave their systems in a hotel conference room while they went out for lunch.

Mr. President --

In your most recent radio address you spoke about the possibility of defining marriage via constitutional amendment so that "activist judges" couldn't overturn marriage laws. Indeed, you said that "decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people", though I'm convinced that you wouldn't be very happy if "the people" decided they're really for same-sex marriage. That, however, is not the point.

This is -- shame on you.

Shame on you for pretending that a social debate that will take years and won't be resolved by an amendment that isn't going to pass is more important than focusing all your attention on the war that's going on right now. As of this moment, 2,474 American military deaths are confirmed in Iraq -- a little over two per day. That's two more people, every day, who won't be coming back to have any kind of marriage.

Regardless of the wisdom of going into Iraq, now that we have so many of our people there, it is your responsibility as commander in chief to make that your top priority. If it was worth going to war, it's worth your attention. I can't imagine Roosevelt, Wilson, Lincoln or Truman bothering with a secondary social issue that could easily resolve itself at the state level rather than deal with the war.

Every soldier who dies because time was spent making noise on a PR stunt instead of attending to the war is on your head.

I can't imagine wanting to live with those ghosts.

Brown University undergrad Benjamin Bight-Fishbein was temporarily kidnapped by Al-Aqsa gunmen in the West Bank this week. The kidnappers were going to hold him until Israel released all its Palestinian prisoners, until they discovered they'd grabbed an American, and gave him right back.

"In the end, I got the impression that they were in over their heads and they were going crazy talking on the phone. They clearly had no idea what they were doing," Mr Bight-Fishbein told the agency.

Palestinian security sources said an investigation had begun into who carried out the kidnapping.

Putting aside any concerns about the motivations behind unrealistic demands, it's fascinating and informative to see that a tremendous incident was avoided by dint of the kidnapee being an American rather than an Israeli. Instead of a round of Israeli vs Palestinian strikes and reprisals, we have members of the Palestinian security forces promising an investigation.

Sometimes, it's good for everyone if you're an American.

In an earlier post, I cited a push for treatment of a set of thirteen neglected diseases in addition to the big three. Part of this push was the note that it's not just deaths, but years lost to disability, that matter.

In the 12 May, 2006 issue of Science, Emanuel and Wertheimer advance a similar argument for vaccinations in case of a flu pandemic.

The traditional vaccination model is "save the most lives." By this model, medical personnel are vaccinated first, then those who are expected to be most vulnerable -- the sick, elderly and very young. They argue that instead of this approach, the most ethically sound approach is what they call "the life-cycle principle." I'll present it in their words:

We believe that a life-cycle allocation principle based on the idea that each person should have an opportunity to live through all the stages of life is more appropriate for a pandemic. There is great value in being able to pass through each life stage--to be a child, a young adult, and to then develop a career and family, and to grow old--and to enjoy a wide range of the opportunities during each stage.

...and...

Death seems more tragic when a child or young adult dies than an elderly person--not because the lives of older people are less valuable, but because the younger person has not had the opportunity to live and develop through all stages of life. Although the life-cycle principle favors some ages, it is also intrinsically egalitarian. Unlike being productive or contributing to others' well-being, every person will live to be older unless their life is cut short.

They then modify this with an "investment refinement" that says that having invested in life -- developing hopes, dreams and interests -- also adds priority. This yields a final model in which people in the midrange of age, say 20-40, have the highest priority for vaccinations. As a final adjustment, they do agree that medical personnel should be vaccinated first, to maximize the total return on the vaccines.

As Tim correctly pointed out, the concept of seemingly putting babies and old people last won't fly with a lot of people, but as the authors point out, at least part of this model is intuitive. When a twenty-year old dies, it's a tragedy. When a ninety-year old dies, you think they lived a good, long life. Why shouldn't vaccination follow our intuitive, human model?

Koizumi has announced that Japan's contingent of six hundred troops will be leaving Iraq. Their presence in Iraq has been very unpopular in Japan. Koizumi stood firm, however, even through the kidnapping of three Japanese aid workers and the killing of five or six others. The decision to pull out follows on the news that security around their posting in Samawa is about to shift over from British and Australian forces to the Iraqis.

There's definitely something to be inferred from that.

The BBC article
The Al Jazeera article

They're not stopping their work in Iraq entirely:

After the withdrawal of ground troops, Japan's air force is expected to expand its transport activities in Iraq from a base in neighbouring Kuwait.

An unconfirmed posting by an al Qaeda-associated group indicates plans to kill four Russian embassy staffers kidnapped earlier this week.

The message follows on the heels of the group's unreasonable demands that Russia withdraw from Chechnya and release its Muslim prisoners in the space of 48 hours. Once again, even were the Russians entirely gung-ho on this idea, the impossible deadline points toward the validity of the actual demand as anything but a propaganda piece.

However, there's an important footnote in this story:

Chechen fighters on Tuesday demanded the release of the hostages.

Akhmed Zakayev, the exiled foreign minister in the Chechen rebel "government", denied any links to the Mujahidin Shura Council.

Much like Hamas before them, the Chechens, while showing very few qualms about using similar tactics, refuse to be associated with al Qaeda.

The Al Jazeera story

Louie Gohmert, representing the first district in Texas, launched a pointless attack on Representative Murtha of Pennsylvania, suggesting that had Mr. Murtha's attitude prevailed during World War II, we would be under Nazi or Imperial Japanese rule.

Though I congratulate representative Gohmert on his own valiant service as a JAG from 1978 to 1982 (nestled nicely between Vietnam and Grenada), I wonder if perhaps he might like to apply that test to the war Murtha actually served in.

What if the view of pulling American troops out had prevailed early on in the Vietnam conflict? Tens of thousands of Americans would be alive today, millions of Vietnamese would be alive, and America would not be scarred by a pointless war that tore at what it meant to be an American.

It's horrendously disingenuous to suggest that recommending that we pull out of an elective war in a mid-size Middle Eastern nation is equivalent to trying to back out of the late part of a war against a genocidal world conqueror.

Whether you agree with Murtha or not (for the record, I believe that we volunteered our nation to be responsible for the well-being of Iraqis once we invaded, and should not arbitrarily leave), Louie Gohmert has shown that he is weak, rhetorically and morally. It's hard to trust or listen to someone who spends Federal time and money attacking a coworker rather than providing a reasoned argument against them. It suggests that he has no reasoned arguments.

A constitutional amendment preventing desecration of the American flag narrowly (very narrowly) missed passage in the Senate. As it had already been passed through the House, this would have handed it off to the states for potential ratification.

This is a horrendous waste.

When some fool burns a flag, they glorify the freedoms and protections that flag represents.

However, when some fools try to outlaw that, they cut away at those same freedoms and protections that make America great. More so, I have to admit I'm a little annoyed that many who voted for protection for our flag come from places that still fight for their right to fly the flag of a bunch of secessionists who didn't want to be part of America anymore.

You think they'd have picked a side by now.

Perhaps that should be a requirement for voting for a flag-protection amendment.

Full text of the failed amendment in the extended.

The Russian diplomats who were kidnapped last week in Iraq have been killed. Putin doesn't plan on letting the murders slide:

News agencies on Wednesday, quoting the Kremlin press service, said: "The [Russian] president has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals who killed Russian diplomats in Iraq."

Presumably, Russia could pull teams from Chechnya who have already been working on this kind of detail and will be motivated and not terribly sympathetic toward the natives.

The Al Jazeera story

Standard, commercial bleach is a marvelous, widely available antiseptic that will kill most anything, given enough time. In the June, 2006 issue of Microbe, Norman Miner of MicroChem Laboratory explains a simple method to maximize the value of bleach as an antiseptic by lowering its pH.

Commercial bleach is sold as an alkaline solution in the pH 11-12 range (read an explanation of pH here). In this state most of the bleach is present as chlorite ion; however, the hypochlorous acid form of bleach is "80 to 200 times more antimicrobial than the chlorite ion." Fortunately, the conversion from standard bleach to "acid bleach" is straightforward:

To one gallon of tap water, add 2 ounces concentrated bleach and 2 ounces 5% distilled, white cooking vinegar.

The sole downside to this process is that this is not a stable solution, so you'll need to make a fresh one for each day of use. The component parts store easily, however. Also note that you want adequate ventilation whenever you're cleaning with bleach.

Thanks to Dr. Miner for this simple method to maximize antimicrobial power with commonly available items.