hello all,

Just a quick announcement: I am interviewing for the pre-health program at Penn on Monday. The interview is invitation only, so this means that they think I look good on paper, now they want to see how I appear "in the flesh." I have no anxieties at all about the interview, as that has always been a strong point for me, and am happy to be moving forward with the application process. As far as I know, once the interview is completed it shouldn't take too long to hear about acceptance (or not), so things should definitely be decided by the middle of June. Good thing too - I really want things to be settled.

So that's exciting. Just yesterday, I attended the first meeting of the revived "consciousness discussion group" at Penn. It's run by some neuroscience grad students who are nice guys, but nerdy. looks like a good group. Consciousness studies have become a focus for some of the brightest minds in many different disciplines (ranging from neuroscience to linguistics to psychology), and it is one of my areas of interest. It's also a very sticky topic that not a lot of researchers are usually allowed to talk about, so it's almost like being in secret society. We'll have lecturers, assigned readings, etc. Being interested in the cognitive neuroscience field, consciousness in the brain is a very tricky thing to think about. Looking at people with certain lesions in their brains, and the deficits in functioning that arise from these injuries, many reductionists want to propose one area in the brain that is the area responsible for "consciousness," but it is never that simple. Two people with the same lesions can often have very different levels of functioning, with different impairments. There is always so much inter-individual variability that makes this field so exciting...

C, regarding Darfur. I am for intervention, but that is only my knee-jerk "save the people" reaction. African politics are often corrupt, and to avoid letting many more people die, I would say, intervene. But our method of helping Africa haven't worked in the past, as these sorts of horrible situations are still happening, and this is what we would have done with this kind of situation in the past, so maybe we should try something different. I don't really know. I know plenty of people who are active in the movement here that lobbies congress for funding, etc, and I think their motives are pure. However, the economic and health problems in Africa will never be solved if we keep them suckling on the Western teet. I mean, we need to stop these things from happening permanently,not put a bandaid on a gushing wound. but what we need to do to stop these things from happening permanently? well, obviously the governments need to be run differently (like making sure the African nations who receive healthy oil revenues actually distribute that money to even the poorer citizens), and they need a better infrastructure. But how is this achieved?

I don't know.

This was kind of a rant, but I hope my concerns were made clear.

love to all,
H
- posted by H @ 6/01/2006 03:42:00 PM