Dept. of Things Your Mother Told You:Digital Hygiene

MOST PEOPLE WASH their hands on a regular basis: before eating, after using the restroom, when their hands are soiled, &c. At least one hopes most people do. Handwashing is probably one of the simplest yet most effective measures in safeguarding the public health, something practically everyone can do and something absolutely everyone should.

Case in point: there's an outbreak of a nasty bacterial infection in a Canadian hospital. According to the CDC, the bacteria, clostridium difficile, causes "diarrhea, fever, nausea," and may occasionally lead to sepsis and, rarely, to death. Clostridium can spread easily if those in an environment with the bacteria do not wash their hands regularly and thoroughly, especially after using the bathroom. Perhaps the staff of the hospital in question should review the WHO or CDC guidelines for handwashing. Some key points:

• Time is critical. Washing your hands should take no less than 20 seconds. The WHO estimates the whole process, from turning on the tap to turning it off, should take no more than 60 seconds.
  

• Be thorough. Both guides put emphasis on washing the entirety of both hands. The places most people miss? The back of the hand and in between the fingers. The WHO guide provides step-by-step instructions that cover the entire hand.

• No hot water. You should wash your hands with warm or lukewarm water. This is more of an issue of comfort than anything else. Handwashing with hot water for 20-30 seconds would be rather difficult. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that using hot water is more effective than cold; time and thoroughness in washing are the major factors.

• Use an alcohol-based hand sanitzer instead of washing. Obviously, if your hands are soiled, you should wash them. But if the goal is just to kill germs, alcohol-based hand sanitizer does the trick.

Dept. of Uninformed Politicians: Debate? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Debate

SO JOHN MCCAIN wants a moratorium on the federal gas tax to provide consumers with relief from the current gas prices now averaging around $3.62 per gallon. Hillary Clinton wants to do the same. Barack Obama, apparently the sole voice of reason in this "debate," thinks the whole idea is a political stunt. Indeed, Obama has hit the nail on the head here, preferring sound economics to sound politics. The proposal supported by McCain and Clinton does very little to actually stem the rise of prices. In fact it will do precisely nothing. Why? As has been explained by countless commentators (and as would be understood by anyone who took Microecon 101 in college), eliminating the tax does nothing to prices, as prices, broadly, are set by (wait for it)...SUPPLY and DEMAND. Get rid of the tax and the oil companies will adjust. For oil companies, the price of a gallon of gas is ~$3.15 with the additional ~$0.47 coming from state and federal taxes. Lose the federal taxes, and oil companies will not sit idly by, but will raise their prices to maintain equilibrium. Gas will still cost around $3.62 per gallon, but the ~$0.18 that would have gone to the feds will now go to (surprise!) the oil companies.

Want lower gas prices? Drive less. Lower demand leads to lower prices. Or you could magically increase the supply of oil.

Granted my little screed has oversimplified the oil market. There are other, macroeconomic considerations (e.g., the weak dollar) that contribute to gas prices being so high. My apologies to any economists reading this.

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On a lighter note, I found this during my search for a source on the aforementioned "debate."

Dept. of Transit: Some Notes from Heathrow

Some musings I recorded during a meal of haddock, chips and Guinness at Heathrow:

TRAVEL AT HEATHROW inevitably involves what feels like an inordinate amount of walking and transportation to some other region of the sprawling complex that is London's largest airport. This may very well be the result of the stress of travel as well as the fact that airport diagrams, like subway maps, are not drawn to scale, making very large distances appear to be easily negotiated.

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My waitress has checked on me twice in the past five minutes. Does the proximity of a particular space to another space that is transient in nature make the first space transient by association? Applied to my meal, am I expected to leave this restaurant, which is a rather warm and fairly inviting environment, more quickly and is the service to be more harried than it usually would be, because I am in an airport?

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This next month is going to be painful...this next week, too, though the distracting power of work might save me from the full brunt to the melancholic torrent that will no doubt flood my psyche in the coming days. its deluges recalling the tears shed before my departure; its winds redolent of the cool breeze that rippled through the air as I left Budapest, yet a hundred times stronger. O, the violence of raw memories.

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Can't quite place that woman's accent (the waitress)...cute though...

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The PA system is butchering Don McClean's one, and essentially only, hit song.

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Watching darts is like watching poker or bowling. What makes a sport worthy of popular attention, anyway? Who watches darts (besides those held captive in overpriced airport restaurants)?

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Beveled corners on the vinegar bottle. Hmmm...

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Mar-le-na! I just met a girl named Marlena (presumably: that's the name given on my bill.)

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I'm about to go to a country of loud people. A country where people tote their over-priced tri-band cellphones in hip holsters and who don't mind the fact that answering calls on wireless earpieces makes them look schizophrenic.

Dept. of Departures: Another D-Day

I OFFERED A countdown as I prepared to depart for Budapest in August of last year. Some seven months later, I find myself nearing another date of departure: that when I am scheduled to lug my baggage to Ferihegy, and board a BA flight bound for Heathrow, where, provided that my bags aren't lost in Terminal 5, I will change carriers and fly to Boston via American. I almost wrote that I would be going home via Heathrow, but using the word "home" doesn't sit that well with me at this moment. Budapest has been home for the past seven months and it is not without a sense of melancholy that I leave this home for another. Of course, I'm looking forward to seeing my family for the first time in what has been the longest stretch I have spent without their company. But I'm deeply saddened by having to leave here so many friends, so many to whom I've grown close over the past months, and so many others to whom I wish I could have grown closer.

D-4 H-4 M-2

Dept. of Outspoken Celebrities: From His Cold, Dead Hands

CHARLTON HESTON'S ACTING career made him an icon of Hollywood, with roles ranging from the Biblical, as Moses in "The Ten Commandments," to the modern, as a hard-boiled detective in "Touch of Evil," to the futuristic, as an astronaut in "Planet of the Apes."

Of course, as Tom Lehrer noted, show business and politics often go hand in hand, and, in that tradition, Heston's legacy is not only cinematic, but also political. Heston's allegiances varied over the years as were the causes which he supported: Heston supported Kennedy and Johnson in their Presidential bids, as well as Nixon and Reagan in theirs; he was a staunch supporter of the civil rights movement, though one who disapproved strongly of affirmative action; he opposed McCarthyism and the Vietnam War; he supported gun control legislation after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, but, some 30 years later, assumed the presidency of the NRA.

Heston certainly deserves to be remembered for his mark on Hollywood, as well as his political work for both conservative and progressive causes. But, as a progressive, I find his insistence that the Second Amendment entitles him, as a citizen, to keep his firearms until pried from his "cold, dead hands" detracts greatly from my memory of him. However, it is still with some sorrow that his death finds me. Indeed, the death of an apparently conflicted man makes for conflicted memories.

He was 84.

Dept. of Evenings Lost: A Brief Musing

MARCH 28, 2008
GÖDÖRKLUB, BUDAPEST

BEARING AN UNEATEN piece of cheesecake on a plate, a man wends his way toward the bar, slipping through the crowd of 20-somethings, some swaying to the the live music, others swaying on their own accord. Still others, having only just arrived, stand stolidly, peppered throughout the masses, sipping on their glasses of Dreher and Tokaji, waiting for the alcohol to percolate into their veins.

Dept. of Botched Pronunciation: Whatever

DURING THE DEBATE between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Cleveland on February 26, Tim Russert of NBC asked Clinton about the presumptive president-elect of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. Stumbling over his name, Clinton let Russert do the pronunciation for her, saying after his correction, "whatever." Not exactly the approach I'd take to the name of the next head of state of Russia...

For Clinton and anyone else interested, the correct pronunciation is /mʲɪˈdvʲedʲəf/. (I originally thought the second "d" was more like /ʤ/, but it turns out there's considerably more nuance to the pronunciation, with the palatalized consonant /ʲ/, which I can't find any examples of in English.)

Dept. of Common Knowledge: Survey says...

HARVARD RECENTLY RELEASED the results of a public opinion survey on the term "socialized medicine." Guess what? Respondents who were Democrats said they approved of "socialized medicine" as they understood the term. And Republicans? Republicans thought of "socialized medicine" as a pinko-Commie-freedom-hating scourge. See the self-evident data for yourself. (I jest of course. Critical analysis of the study forthcoming, along with some other interesting public opinion data on health care...)

First Votes in New Hampshire

IN DIXVILLE NOTCH, the small town with the distinction of being the first in New Hampshire to hold primary elections, the 17 registered voters out of the 74 residents cast their votes at midnight Tuesday. Reuters reported the results: Obama took seven of the ten votes cast for Democrats, with Edwards taking two and Richardson one; McCain led the Republicans with four votes, Romney received two, and Giuliani one.

While I don't miss national news coverage in the States,...

...I do miss the sports coverage somewhat. Football (soccer for the non-expats) and cricket highlights don't interest me quite as much as basketball and American football, which do get occasional coverage on CNN International. But I find myself turning to Boston.com more often than not, as the coverage that I'm only really interested in is that of the phenomenal success Boston teams now enjoy. With a 2007 World Series win for the (Red) Sox, a perfect regular season for the Pat(iot)s, and a league-high win-loss record for the C(eltic)s (most recently extended by a 92-85 win over the Pistons, who handed Boston their last loss in mid-December), it's a wonderful time to have even the slightest interest in Boston teams. We'll see in the coming weeks how the the C's fare and if the Pats can pull off an undefeated postseason.

A "Hundred Years' War" (or longer) for the 21st Century

Center for American Progress devoted today's Progress Report to John McCain's comments to MoJo that it would be fine for U.S. troops to spend the next 100, 1,000, or 1,000,000 years in Iraq, suggesting that the problem in the current conflict is not U.S. presence per se, but the number of U.S. casualties. (I'm trying to imagine an Iraqi SOFA for the next 1,000,000 years.)
Such a stance neatly avoids the criticism of plans for withdrawal from Iraq that such a strategy will allow insurgents to wait for the departure of U.S. troops before unleashing more violence in the war-torn country, but it also presumes that the U.S. can eventually effect a reduction in troop casualties. With 901 U.S. troop casualties in 2007, the highest of any calendar year in the occupation so far, I cannot imagine a situational change in Iraq sufficiently dramatic and soon that would reduce troop casualties and sway public opinion, which currently supports the withdrawal of troops from Iraq within the next two years. This is to say nothing of Iraqi civilian casualties: Iraq Body Count (IBC) estimates that 22,586 to 24,159 were killed in the conflict in 2007. Perhaps McCain doesn't value Iraqis quite as much as U.S. troops; maybe he would support a revival of the Three-fifths Rule for body counts. That way, he could report that only 48,704 civilians have died since the beginning of the occupation. (For those of you with out a calculator handy, IBC estimates the actual number to be somewhere between 81,174 and 88,585.)

From Iowa to New Hampshire, Big Mo for Obama

A CNN/WMUR/UNH poll shows Barack Obama with a commanding 10-point lead over Hilary Clinton among New Hampshire voters in the day before the primary in the New England state, a significant development as the two have been locked in a dead heat for the days following the Iowa caucuses.