Summer Plans Kick-off.
Got word from A*Star that there are two labs in Cambridge that will be able to take me for summer. I have responded to one of them (I can't join the other because they work on biophysics stuff which I have absolutely no clue what that would be) - and as soon as I get a reply from the PI I will begin sorting out the practicalities for this coming summer.Quite a bit of stuff to do... But hey, that's a small price to pay for a great summer ahead (or at least I hope)!
Reasons why I am expecting a great summer ahead:
1. Because it will be an European summer
2. It's NOT going to be hot (albeit rainy)
3. Fun as long as the UK guys finish exams and are still hanging around
4. More fun if the US guys are also going over
5. Hopefully can get to hike around England a bit
6. Sushi should be coming over some time
7. Don't have to stay up till 4am just to watch EuroCup
8. Cambridge basically transforms into party town as soon as their exams are over
9. I can go to London anytime to watch a musical just like how I go to New York here
10. And I will be doing some good science :D
(There is a strange tendency for a general eastward migration during summer: the US people will move to Europe and the UK people will move home, resulting in a bizzaire shift in demographics. At least for Hopkins, last year it was Grace and Yi Chung who moved, this year it would be me and probably Grace again. No one seems to want to go home for long unless forced to :P)
I hope things will work out smoothly from now onwards - would still have to keep my fingers crossed until the last detail is ironed out :P
Reply to comments!
>Ferret: Like you said, there is no definite cause and effect relationship between belief and knowledge: though the main thing that I don't get is, don't you have to know BEFORE you believe? And when some people 'believe blindly' (or 'having blind faith') - i.e. they don't know what they are believing - what is the relationship between belief and knowledge here then? What is it that they know, what is it that they don't, and what is it that they are believing in?
Being a person who thinks logically I personally rely a lot on knowledge to tell me what to put my faith on and what not to. Even if my heart tells me something I would always take a long time to transform that to belief and action because I need to gather information to support that feeling. But I know some people do not act this way - so for them, do they have to know BEFORE they believe and act?
>coolgoh:
'If what you mean by "belief" is a stronger conviction in one form of scientfic evidence, then we have no diagreement': okay we have no disagreement. But I don't agree with your general definition of belief - let's not go into that. We have talked about that before :P
I think that the discrepency between your point of view regarding health and mine is because of fundamental differences in perspectives. I don't believe in who is ultimately responsible to whose health - simply because there are limitations to what choices you can make based on circumstances. It might be more fair to say that if more options are available to you then you are more responsible, but if less options are available to you then you are less responsible.
And when you talk about universal affordable healthcare, you are talking about minimising inequality in healthcare - and that is my whole point. Anyway, the medical insurance system is both a source and a manifestation of inequality in America right. Inequality is such a multi-faceted thing that it affects and manifests itself in many forms...
When I saw and consciously attempted to note the difference between the Wegmans store in Hunt Valley, the Save-a-lot on 20th and Howard and the corner store in The Corner at Fayette and Monroe, suddenly these issues which previously only existed on paper in our world just came alive. They really exist.
As for racism, I only have one piece of data off hand to support that - and I have used it (the point doesn't originate from me anyway) :P Your way of controlling the analysis could be valid in a sense that it is a direct comparison of the effect of race when socio-economic status is controlled. However, when we are trying to answer the question as to why do we have a higher percentage of African Americans having bad health compared to Americans who are white the answer would not come that easily anymore - and that is precisely the kind of questions public health wants to address. Racism could be one of the factors, but certainly not the only, and how large a role it plays remains to be elucidated.
All these issues come to life in Baltimore and living here exposes us to all these issues that are certainly not unique to this city. The class showed me these large social forces at work creating the health problem while over spring break I went into the city to see for myself how the Christian missions in the city have worked to try to make a difference at the community level. Like I said previously, a multi-faceted approach is needed to address the health problem of the city, because the problems exist in all layers.
I come to realise that we all can play a role to make some changes - it doesn't have to be anything big because whatever small thing we do will be part of the multi-faceted approach, and solving the health problem (or in general the inner city problem) in Baltimore can take a generation (it took a 30 years for Baltimore to deteriorate into what it is now). I told myself to try to commit some time next semester to do something regularly, and I already have some ideas as to what to do :)
Labels: Life, Philosophy and Religion, Policy and Politics
