Heads up UBC,
We’re the ones with the best degree,
We got everything you need,
(We’re)
Arts Arts Arts Arts Arts,
Arts Arts Arts Arts Arts,
Arts Arts Arts Arts Arts,
Arts. Everybody!
Arts Arts Arts Arts Arts,
Arts Arts Arts Arts Arts,
Arts Arts Arts Arts Arts,
Arts. Everybody!

Credits to the UBC Orientations leaders in the video for coming up with this cheer. It’s about time we start using something new. Imagine Day is nearly here. Excited?

The Conference for Learning and Academic Student Success (CLASS) is currently seeking workshop presenters, volunteers, and accepting applications for resource fair booths.

Stay tuned for more information on this year’s conference, which will take place on Saturday, October 23, 2010.

Gathered at this government-subsidised housing complex are children of all ages, ranging from kindergarten to seventh grade. Most of the children are of African descent, many of whom are refugees from war zones. No, I’m not with Médecins Sans Frontières. No, I’m not in a developing country. I am somewhere in the Greater Vancouver Regional District, at an African children’s summer camp.

This camp is no CEDAR or GEERing UP. Situated within a low-income, disadvantaged area and inside the confines of a two-room apartment, which has been modified to suit the needs of the programme, up to 20 children laugh, cry, and play together with the support of two paid staff members.

A large bookshelf sits near the doorway with a wide collection of reading materials tightly placed together. Sitting at the very top of the shelf is a heavy book, one which catches my eye and brings back the nostalgia of high school. I recall using this a-thousand-some page textbook for Biology 11. Waking it from hibernation, I bring the book to two of my friends, who are beginning and nearly finishing their elementary school careers, respectively.

“Let me show you something cool. Do you want to learn about the brain?” I ask.

We flip to the chapter on the nervous system and I begin to tell them, in very simplified terms, about different parts and functions of the brain. They are intrigued by the drawings of neurons and the nervous system and would point at every single figure, followed by asking what it is. I tell them that the human brain is the most amazing, and my favourite, organ, that the back of the brain (occipital lobe) allows us to see, that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body.

“There, now that you have learned all this knowledge, you are truly a scientist!” I tell them. Indeed, moments later, I overhear these budding scientists lecturing their friends on the brain.

There she stood.

She was hardly noticeable in her solitary vigil on the bustling intersection of Broadway and Commercial Drive. Her hair first caught my eye. Being middle-aged, overweight, and of African descent, a bundle of curly hair stood proudly on her forehead. Hair was also present on the back of her head. However, something was amiss. The medial portions of her scalp were hair-free. Strange, I thought.

Just then, the traffic light turned red. Seizing this opportunity, I paused, turned around, and looked just enough at her through my peripheral vision to see that she held a sign, onto which words similar to the following were written in bold, red letters: “MOM… NEED HELP.”

I walked towards her, away from the intersection, and asked, “How are you doing today?”

She replied, “Good, but it’s too hot today. I’m getting blisters.”

As I stood facing her, it became apparent to me that her appearance was deviant. There was nothing on the medial portions of her scalp but dark-coloured, circular markings. I was puzzled.

I responded, “Yes, it’s a very hot day today. Are you getting blisters from the sun? Why don’t you stand in the shade? It might be cooler.”

She said, “Yes, but then no one would see me if I stood there,” as she gestured at the shaded spot on the sidewalk, which was a mere footstep away physically but meant the distance of a football field to her.

As she scratched her sun-exposed scalp with her right arm, I realised that she did not have a left arm. What remained of her left arm, or the stump, was covered with extensive burn scars. I was puzzled no more. Reaching into my bag, I was unsuccessful in finding cash for her, which made me feel quite miserable and helpless on the inside.

The traffic light turned green. It was time to go. Defeated, I looked at her, wished her all the best, and asked her to take care.

I hope my words were of comfort.

Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force, or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the forced feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting.

Then he appeared.

George, let’s call him, caught my attention immediately as he made his way laboriously  across the parking lot towards the store. He was a frail-looking male in his 60s and walked with an awkwardly debilitating limp in his left leg. I watched him directly, out of my peripheral vision, and then finally through my side and rear-view mirrors as he struggled to reach his destination with a cane, onto which he held dearly. Perhaps, I thought to my self, he had suffered a stroke and was possibly weakened further by a cardiopulmonary disease. Were my family not shopping inside Safeway then, I would have offered him a ride home without hesitation.

Some time later, George, as if an apparition, re-emerged from the store carrying two shopping bags, which held a number of items. Slowly, out of my rear-view mirror, he made his way towards my car, with his destination being the main road. The music was still playing inside my car, albeit softly. He spoke to a driver, whose vehicle was stopped next to mine. Because, minutes before, I had closed the windows of my car to block out cigarette smoke on this rather hot evening, I was unable to hear the conversation.

I thought to myself whether George knew the individuals next to me. When George stopped near the front of both mine and my neighbour’s vehicles, although momentarily, and continued speaking, I switched off the radio and listened.

Although George had a visible physical disability, his appearance and behaviour was neither threatening nor dysfunctional. However, because of the manner in which he walked and interacted with my neighbours in the parking lot, had the context been changed from a Safeway in Marpole to a sidewalk in the Downtown Eastside, he would have, sadly, also looked at home.

He kept on walking. By this time, I realised that George did not know the people that he had spoken to and was, possibly, ignored for his request of a ride. He continued his marathon.

And then it happened.

He staggered a few steps forward and stopped. The items which he had just purchased came to a rest on the ground as his upper body began to slouch forward, as if following the shopping bags.

My instincts kicked in. After removing the key while getting out of the car, I reached into my right pocket to ensure the presence of my phone. I was prepared to assess him while envisioning making a 911 call for an ambulance: “There’s a Caucasian male in his 60s who has just collapsed in the parking lot of Safeway on Granville and 70th. He is currently unconscious and may be suffering from a myocardial infarction…”

Fortunately, this was not necessary. He was fine, but was too exhausted to continue walking with two shopping bags and needed a break. I approached him to ask how he was doing and then offered him a ride. The task of sitting into the front passenger seat of my car was already quite challenging for him. Imagine walking home.

Coincidentally, my family arrived as I was assisting George with siting into my car. Together, we helped George temporarily finish his never-end marathon.

Good morning, good morning…

Speaking of Europe, which has a relatively better health care system, here’s another passage or two from Worst Case Bioethics:

As Franklin Roosevelt first noted in 1944, just before D-Day, denying healthcare denies equal opportunity and is an assault on human dignity. Concurrently, the language of social justice should be employed, especially by using stories of real Americans denied needed healthcare, to convince Americans — who probably don’t need much convincing — that it is simply unfair to deny uninsured and underinsured (and even many insured) Americans decent healthcare, as it is unfair to deny decent education to Americans who cannot afford it. Healthcare is a moral issue and denial of healthcare based on inability to pay is immoral.

Since we’re on the topic of morality, let’s talk about torture. Lawyers and physicians working for the United States government and military played essential roles in ensuring the torture of suspected insurgents. Physicians had (and still have) the “licence to torture” from the sanction of lawyers, while lawyers and law-makers made torture legal, despite the result of the Nuremberg trials and Geneva conventions, through the supposed “medical evaluations” of physicians.

Read the following statement from the former White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales:

…the war against terrorism ushers in a new paradigm… Our Nation recognizes that this new paradigm — ushered in not by us, but by terrorists — requires new thinking in the law of war.

And compare it with Hitler’s policy:

The main theme [of Hitler's instructions] was that this was the decisive battle between two ideologies and that this fact made it impossible to use in this war methods as we soldiers knew them and which were considered to be the only correct ones under International Law. The war could not be carried on by these means. In this case completely different standards had to be applied. This was an entirely new kind of war, based on completely different arguments and principles.

At this conference the Fuhrer stated that… since the Russians were not signatories to The Hague Convention the treatment of their prisoners of war does not have to follow the Articles of the Convention.

What I am inspired by, though, is that such critical remarks and analyses can be freely discussed and even published in America and much of the Western world.