Crazy Things Happen

I was just now getting to see some of the photos and video from Nashville, showing the crazy flooding that central Tennessee has been experiencing since Sunday. By one measure, 13 inches of rain fell over the weekend, and areas that aren’t even within walking distance of a river have been affected. Nashville is one of the centers of the music industry, and I imagine I will hear later that some of my friends there had to evacuate, though I am hopeful that none of them have too much damage or inconvenience as a result of the flooding. The flood waters in Nashville apparently started to decline yesterday, and while people at some places got in to assess flood damage today, other facilities may have to wait until Saturday or Monday for their streets to reopen — I know from my own experience that flood waters rise much faster than they fall.

If I didn’t realize how big the Nashville story was until today, it‘s partly because there has been so much other news of the consequences of unexpected and unplanned events: a historic oil spill below the mouth of the Mississippi River, volcanic ash closing some European airspace again, not to mention Greece, Goldman Sachs, and all the other ongoing turmoil that is entirely man-made.

Most of what happens in life, and economics, is capable of being planned, but every day crazy things happen, and then we can set the plans aside and succeed based on how well we respond to events. When you get right down to it, planning is overrated. Being alert and ready to move is just as important.

More Volcanic Ash, Airports Close Again

A return of volcanic ash from the eruption in Iceland forced Ireland’s airports to close for several hours today, and airspace over Scotland was also affected. It is a reminder that the volcanic eruption shows no sign of stopping, and intermittent interruptions in air travel may occur for some time to come.

Tylenol Recalls Give Drugs a Bad Name

The recalls of Tylenol products announced in January are still going on, and three more rounds of recalls have been announced, the latest on Friday. The vagueness of the latest recall announcements is hardly reassuring: McNeil found unknown particles, unidentified or unauthorized ingredients (apparently in powder form), and inaccurate doses in tests of dozens of Tylenol products. There is little reason to imagine that this round of recalls is the end of it, so at this point, sick people take Tylenol and related products at their own risk.

So much has gone wrong with Tylenol, it’s hard to list it all. An FDA panel last summer ruled that the liver toxicity of its active ingredient is a serious problem requiring changes in dosage and labeling. A mold-related chemical found its way into the product, and then the required recall was delayed for months because of confusion at McNeil. Since the recalls have been issued, there have been data errors and web server failures, making it hard for people to tell whether the drugs they were taking have been recalled. And to top it all off, McNeil has made up an unbelievable story about a moldy pallet somehow getting into the product, causing the original problems. The FDA, which doesn’t have much of a track record in identifying manufacturing problems in drugs in the first place, is just now conducting its review of the problem. It could be a comedy of errors if it weren’t such a serious matter. But aside from the stories of customers sickened by bad drugs, the entire story is bad news for McNeil and the drug industry. The problems with Tylenol, even little problems like dead links on the web site, tarnish the commercial image of drugs. To sell drugs, pharmaceutical companies have to present them as problem-solvers. Yet drugs can cause problems just as easily as they can solve them, and McNeil seems to keep reminding us of this. This also affects the image of people who use drugs — for everyone who says, “I’m glad there’s a drug for that,” there is someone else who says, “I’m glad I don’t have to be bothered with that.”

Another Katrina?

Some commentators have suggested that the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be “another Katrina,” a reference to the major hurricane that nearly leveled New Orleans in 2005. For the most part, the comparison is a stretch. No major cities will have to be evacuated for the oil spill, millions of people will not be made homeless, drinking water and cellular telephone service will continue to be available, oil and natural gas production in the area will not have to shut down completely for a couple of weeks.

In some ways, though, a prolonged oil spill could be just as harmful as a major hurricane. One of those ways, possibly, is the effect on the land area of the Mississippi delta. By knocking over the trees that hold the ground in place, Hurricane Katrina took away significant parts of the land area of the Mississippi Delta. Much of this was land that was below sea level, held in place only by grass and trees. After the hurricane washed the plants away, normal coastal erosion washed away the ground, making it impossible for the plants to grow back. Where there used to be land a foot below sea level, now there is sea water five or ten feet deep.

An oil spill could have the same effect. According the the EPA, light crude oil, the kind that would tend to wash ashore, kills grass quickly, and prolonged exposure to oil can damage the roots of any plant, including trees. No one knows a way to clean up oil from a salt marsh, however, so any oil that gets in will tend to linger there, and from everything we know, we would expect it to kill off most of the plants. If oil kills plants, it has the same effect as a hurricane. The tides can then wash the unprotected ground away, potentially taking away most of the land area east of New Orleans.

This would be a serious problem for the city. The lowlands act as a barrier protecting New Orleans from the waves of the gulf. If they are washed away, it wouldn’t take a hurricane to prompt an evacuation of New Orleans. Any little storm would be able to flood half the city.

The only answer is to keep the oil offshore, as much as possible, and hope for the best. Choppy weather yesterday, though, washed the oil slick right over the barriers that were meant to stop it. If the weather improves and the oil spill can be stopped, there is a chance that the oil can be kept out of the Mississippi delta. If not, though, this event could lead to land losses just as significant as you would see in a major hurricane.

Evacuating Port 25

Yesterday morning, I got the automated phone call that millions of other Internet users have been getting. The message told me that my Internet service provider was cutting off access to Internet e-mail in its most standard form. To be specific, after June 1, my ISP will block e-mail sent from any computer in a home or small business using port 25. Going forward, only large corporations and Internet providers will be able to use port 25. Most ISPs have made this move already. It’s a problem, though, because port 25 is traditionally the port designated for sending e-mail.

The reason Internet providers have decided to get everyone out of port 25 is that most e-mail that comes across on port 25 is spam. The same could be said, though, of almost any point or component of the Internet e-mail system. If about 99.9 percent of Internet e-mail is spam, then there aren’t many places where e-mail is sent or received where more than half of the e-mail messages are legitimate.

For ordinary Internet users, there are work-arounds, other ways to send e-mail. We are having to evacuate port 25 and use other ports or other protocols instead. This can be a slight inconvenience, but the broader significance of the move is more troubling. What it means is that Internet providers are losing the e-mail war. Spammers are overwhelming the e-mail system, and Internet providers are in retreat. You don’t have to know what an Internet port is to know that it’s a problem to lose one of them to the outlaws. On the Internet, as on the ocean, the number of ports available is not unlimited, and if we cede one port to the outlaws now, it is just a matter of time, perhaps as little as five years, before they control all of them.

Eventually, the Internet e-mail system will completely break down, and I don’t think it will come as a great shock to the world when it happens. People are already moving away from Internet e-mail. It’s a nice thought that you can exchange messages with anyone in the world, but people prefer to get most messages from people they know, and e-mail sent over social networks now exceeds the volume of legitimate e-mail sent over the Internet.

Some e-mail engineers believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that “port 25 blocking” will save e-mail. Others are mistakenly pinning their hopes on various of the failed ID initiatives of the past decade, including the two that helped make AOL a non-player in the Internet e-mail business. It‘s proof that engineers are capable of nostalgia, but it doesn’t help us arrive at the answer. Ultimately, the current e-mail system is not flexible enough to survive, and we can only hope that network security engineers are consulted when its replacement is designed.