NewsScan Daily, 27 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 27 October 2003 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
       Extending the Music Library
       Cybercrime: The Brazilian Connection
       Security Project at Iowa State
       Pre-Paid Music Cards From Napster
       Checking-In on the Microsoft Settlement

FEATURES
       Flash Card
       Honorary Subscriber: Sydney Hook
       Modern Life With Dr. Mike

EXTENDING THE MUSIC LIBRARY
Two students at MIT have developed an electronic music library that allows
anyone on campus to access 3,500 CDs. Called the Library Access to Music
Project (LAMP), the system lets a student go to its Web site to select a CD
and have it delivered through the campus closed-circuit cable TV to the
student's dorm room or other campus site. One of the students who conceived
of LAMP explains: "We had a library in school that closed at 7 p.m. The
school had this great music in the library, but you couldn't get there. I
was thinking, how could we get students better access to this library?" In
2001, the two creators of LAMP received a grant from iCampus, a
Microsoft-backed alliance with MIT. (San Jose Mercury News 27 Oct 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7113917.htm

CYBERCRIME: THE BRAZILIAN CONNECTION
Brazil has become a laboratory for cybercrimes such as identity theft,
credit card fraud, and online vandalism. Hacker Assunção Marcos Flávio says:
"If things go on like this, there'll be no more bank holdups with guns. All
robberies will be done over the Net." Already, police in cities such as São
Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília are finding it difficult to keep pace
with hacker syndicates. Ronaldo Tossunian of the electronic crime division
of the São Paulo police department points a finger at Brazilian law-makers:
"We don't have the specific legislation for these crimes like they do in
America and Europe. Just breaking in isn't enough to make an arrest, which
means there's no deterrent." Brazil's hackers are as strong and resourceful
as they are because they have little to fear legally. (New York Times 27 Oct
2003) http://partners.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/technology/27hack.html

SECURITY PROJECT AT IOWA STATE
Iowa State University researchers are creating a laboratory to fight
computer hackers. The project, which is being funded by a $500,000 grant
from the U.S. Justice Department, will allow ISU to develop what it calls
Internet-Scale Event and Attack Generation Environment (or ISEAGE,
pronounced ice age), which is designed to allow realistic tests of security
defenses. Computer scientist Doug Jacobson explains: "Since we can't take
over the real Internet, we've decided to recreate our own Internet
laboratory. We will be able to carry out computer attacks exactly as they
happen in the real world." (AP/USA Today 24 Oct 2003)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2003-10-24-isu-hack-resea
rch_x.htm

PRE-PAID MUSIC CARDS FROM NAPSTER
The reincarnation of Napster is allowing customers to use prepaid cards to
pay for music from the Napster online store. The cards will soon will be on
sale at 14,000 electronics retailers and other stores around the U.S. Mike
Bebel, head of Roxio's Napster division, says: "We're positive that the
effect here is to substantially increase the opportunity for people to
engage in online music legitimately. To reach all of the consumers that have
in some cases not been reachable through typical channels, we felt that this
made sense." Will it be necessary to educate customers in how to use the
cards? No, says Bebel: "I'd say the average consumer has a pretty good
understanding of what these cards are and what they represent. They wouldn't
mistake it for an air freshener." (Los Angeles Times 27 Oct 2003)
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-napster27oct27221419,1,179336.story?
coll=la-headlines-technology

CHECKING IN ON THE MICROSOFT SETTLEMENT
The U.S. Department of Justice has told a federal judge it is generally
satisfied with Microsoft's compliance with the terms of the 2001 settlement
of the anti-trust suit that had been lodged against the company. However,
government lawyers are still trying to determine why just a few companies
have licensed computer code from Microsoft Corp. that would allow competing
software to work with that company's network servers. (Washington Post 25
Oct 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14205-2003Oct24.html

*****

FLASH CARD
     "Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing
how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier." (John
Dewey)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: SIDNEY HOOK
     Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American educator and
socio-political philosopher Sidney Hook (1902-1989), who came to prominence
in the late 1920s as both the star pupil of John Dewey and an eminent Marx
scholar.
     Born and educated in Brooklyn, New York, Hook studied at City College
and Columbia University. He was among the first U.S. scholars to analyze
Marxism and was firmly opposed to all forms of totalitarianism, holding
liberal democracy as the most viable political structure for social and
scientific advancement. After receiving a doctorate from Columbia University
in 1927, Hook taught at New York University (1927-69) until he retired to
become senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution,
and Peace at Stanford University (1973-89). An exponent of pragmatism,
secularism, and rationalism, he advocated a general philosophy of personal
development. He wrote and edited more than 35 books including "Towards the
Understanding of Karl Marx: A Revolutionary Interpretation" (1933), "The
Hero in History" (1943), "Education for Modern Man" (1946, "In Defense of
Academic Freedom" (1971), and "Revolution, Reform, and Social Justice"
(1975). His autobiography, "Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th
Century," was published in 1987.
     Hook moved from an early ideological commitment to Marxism to active
support of anti-communist causes. He was certainly a most controversial
figure in American philosophy, and currently seems a forsaken figure in the
philosophical community at large. Early in his career he was active in
political activities that clearly marked him as a Communist Party fellow
traveler, but just prior to World War II his political stance began to shift
towards the Right. Hook was an outspoken participant in many of the
principal political debates of the last century, and should be remembered
for his vigorous defense of political and academic freedom and his stand
against totalitarianism in all forms.
     In his writings he distinguished the moral and intellectual gulf
between the humanistic ideals he saw in Marx and the communist orthodoxy in
the Soviet Union. During World War II he argued that the Soviet Union should
be regarded as a cobelligerent rather than an ally, and after the war he
opposed Soviet influence but never indulged in the excesses of McCarthyism.
As a professor during the sixties, he deplored the student radicals who
denied freedom of speech to those who disagreed with their views. A prolific
writer of books as well as book reviews and articles (he had more than one
thousand publications to his name), Hook became well known for his strong
opinions and keen logic, not only to intellectuals, but also to the public
at large. 

See 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0231096658/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for Sydney Hook's "From Hegel to Marx" -- or look for it in your favorite
library. (We donate all revenue from our book recommendations to adult
literacy programs.)

MODERN LIFE WITH DR. MIKE
     [Dr. Mike Litrel is in practice at Cherokee Women¹s OB/GYN in Woodstock
and Canton, GA., and is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Emory University
School of Medicine. Today he writes about "audible bleeding."]
                        ***
     It was July 1, the first day of my Internship.
     I had looked forward to this day ever since my third year in medical
school. During that year I had spent a month in Labor and Delivery at the
hospital, delivering a dozen babies. And I had discovered my calling. The
moment I held that first baby in my hands, I knew I¹d found what I wanted to
do for the rest of my life: I wanted to be an obstetrician.
     So July 1 found me embarking on a four-year residency in OB/GYN at
Atlanta¹s Grady Hospital. Bearing the light green badge which declared me
officially a resident -- no longer a medical student -- I presented myself
to Labor and Delivery. I was a jumble of emotions -- confidence, eagerness,
a little fear.
     I found out later I was on the right track with the fear part. Terror
might have been more accurate.
     The Labor and Delivery team consisted of four residents -- a second
year resident, a third year, a fourth year (called the Chief in the final
year of training), and me --  the lowly Intern. My job was to evaluate
people in the triage room and decide if they needed to be admitted. If they
did, I signed them out to an upper level resident, who would oversee their
care and make sure no mistakes were made. I also got to do routine vaginal
deliveries and C-sections, under the guidance of the Chief.
     By lunchtime that first day, I had evaluated a dozen patients and
delivered a baby under supervision. As I ran from patient to patient making
assessments, my confidence grew. I really was a doctor. This was going to be
great.
     Less than six hours later I encountered a clue that my next four years
might not be all I had dreamed of. One of my patients in triage was
unusually agitated, and as I took her history I found out why.
     She had just killed someone. "Yup  -- I sliced his throat from ear ta
ear," she said. I looked with no success for a trace of remorse. That's when
I realized that the blood covering her clothes and obviously pregnant belly
belonged to someone else. And that she was handcuffed to the exam table. It
seemed that the two large guards stationed outside the door were not
standard fixtures.
     Valerie, the third year resident, suppressed a yawn when I told her
what was going on in the triage room. "Murder is not clinically relevant --
how dilated is her cervix?"
     She sent me to the operating room for another delivery. I noticed she
made no signs of following me to supervise. I asked her if I was to do only
my second delivery of Internship alone. "What? You still need my help?" she
asked incredulously.
     Apparently not. "No, I¹ll be alright."
     The baby delivered without difficulty. But the placenta -- the organ
connecting the baby and mother -- didn't follow. I began to worry. The
patient began to bleed heavily. I asked the nurse to call an upper-level
resident. The patient continued to bleed. I called for help again. No one
came.
     I was surprised. There must be some kind of serious emergency going on
for no one to arrive to help. Maybe a couple of quadruplet deliveries, or a
multiple-car accident involving a half dozen pregnant women.
     It was up to me to handle the emergency. My heart was beating like a
drum. I took a deep breath and told myself to relax and be professional. I
decided I would manually extract the placenta. I knew that much -- it had to
come out, for the bleeding to stop. The patient did not have an epidural.
When I reached in to extract the placenta, she screamed.
     Then the bleeding really got started.
     As I waited in growing anxiety for someone to respond to my pages for
help, I desperately pressed down on the patient's uterus in an attempt to
slow the bleeding. You could actually hear the blood pouring off the
operating room table, into a bucket on the floor. There had been a macabre
joke that had gone around during medical school -- something like, "Audible
bleeding is a bad sign."
     It suddenly came to me that it had not been a joke.
     Now the nurse was getting agitated, too. When a Grady nurse, impervious
to emergencies and utterly jaded after a lifetime on Grady's halls, begins
to get nervous, it's a bad sign. She, too, began to call on the intercom for
an upper-level resident. The patient's husband could tell that things
weren't going well. Aside from all the blood, there was the color of my
face, which I think turned green after my heart rose up in my throat ten
minutes before.
     I began to see that the idea of becoming a doctor had perhaps not been
my smartest career move. At that moment I could have been sitting somewhere
shuffling papers on a nice desk in a freshly pressed shirt and tie -- not
standing in a cold room, clothes and shoes covered with blood, responsible
for a women who was rapidly slipping into shock.
     There had to be a better way to earn a living.
     Finally I heard voices in the hall. Help had arrived! I could hear Tom,
my Chief Resident, and Dr. Randall, the Residency Program Director, speaking
together just outside the door. I assumed they were wrapping up the
emergency matters that had been occupying their attention the past half
hour, but gradually it became evident that the tone of the conversation was
decidedly casual -- a few snippets about call schedules and so on ...
     I couldn¹t take it any longer. I opened the door. In the most
professional voice I could muster I said, "I could use some assistance
here."
     Dr. Randall took one look at me in my surgical gown, literally drenched
in blood, and exclaimed, "Good Lord!"
     His next motions, I knew, would be to throw off his jacket, don his
scrubs and rush in to save the patient.
     But I was wrong. He gestured to my Chief. "Tom, take care of this." And
turned away without so much as a glance backward.
     It took some time before Tom could bring the bleeding under control.
"Gosh, Mike, this just isn't normal," he kept saying. He called for surgical
instruments I had never heard of, and performed a procedure I had never
studied. Eventually, he stabilized the patient and the bleeding stopped. She
would be fine, but would require a blood transfusion and a prolonged
hospital stay.
     When I asked Tom how the other emergencies had gone, he was confused.
He had been off the floor with administrative duties, and Valerie had been
in charge.
     I found Valerie eating strawberries in the doctors' lounge, watching
her soap opera. Did I want a strawberry, she asked me. No, I said, pointing
to my blood-soaked garments. I was going to change. She shrugged her
shoulders and resumed watching her soap.
     As I changed my scrubs in the locker room, I struggled to make sense of
what had just happened. It took a few moments to piece it together, and then
a wave of anger flooded over me. I had been initiated into Residency -- the
Grady way. Without even checking on the patient, the third-year resident had
assumed that the Intern was just panicking, and would eventually figure it
all out. 
     At 8 PM I ended my first day as a doctor. I crawled slowly into my car
-- like a beating victim in a street crime -- and as I drove home, I
realized there was no prettier sight than Grady Hospital, seen through a
rear-view mirror.
     I wasn¹t in Kansas anymore.

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