Homeless Student Is Intel Talent Search Semifinalist 464
An anonymous reader writes "Samantha Garvey, a senior at Brentwood High School, has managed to become one of the remaining 300 semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search this year. Her research focused on mussels and on her discovery that they change the thickness of their shells if a predator such as crabs are introduced. Why is Garvey's achievement so impressive? Because she and her entire family are homeless, and rely on a local homeless shelter. Such a situation would stop many students from being able to focus on studying, let alone a research project, but Garvey has instead used her situation as motivation."
I really hate this article (Score:5, Funny)
This is the first time in my life that a homeless person made me feel like a loser.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why, this story is perfectly cromulent.
Remember, a noble spirit embiggens the smallest of men. Or young women, as is the case.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
You're modded funny, but it's a serious matter. Remember this next time you decide that the poor and homeless are just bums who got where they are because of their own failings. The fact is any one of us could be there and might one day end up there through no fault of our own. It is by far more likely than it is for us to join the rich crowd.
I hope this helps lift her and her family out of their situation.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
I have mixed feelings about stories like this. While I hope that she is able to do something special and help her family, if she does, that only sends the message that any poor person can do so, and that they don't means they are lazy. You find one example of a person who clawed their way out of poverty and all of a sudden the countless others unable to do so are simply lazy.
Like those you can already see in this thread...
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, it really is amazing the way some people claim that one person hitting a millions to one shot means that everyone else should be able to do the same. I guess they're fairly bad at statistics.
Many that follow that rhetoric are probably rather justifying their greed or lack of empathy, rather than developing a new disregard for their less-fortunate humans.
That we can afford the TSA and supply welfare to provocative/oppressive regimes, but HUD can't get these guys and rest of them into apartments is depressing and embarrassing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your logic is flawed, too. By no means is "becoming rich" guaranteed by "striving".
I think sjames' post takes this concept to it's logical conclusion, which is even if you work very, very hard, you are still more likely to end up homeless than one of the super rich elite these days (although he also implies that both of these results are unlikely, just one more so than the other).
And by the way, I'm now fuckin depressed by you both.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, figures demonstrate that income isn't keeping up with productivity for the vast majority of the population, but for the super rich, income is skyrocketing. That means that MOST people aren't getting out what they're putting in. That isn't some lame excuse like 'the way it is', 'reality', 'probability', or 'evil polka-dotted leprechauns', it is a systematic inequity in our society that needs to be addressed. Many people strive, don't suck, and things don't work out anyway.
Though none are perfect, the vast majority of 1st world countries make a better effort than the U.S. to address this.
Nobody has worked out how to stop bad things from happening but most civilized countries have figured out how to reduce the impact of those things or at least maximize the odds of recovering from them.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Informative)
Generally speaking, though, you get out what you put in. That's not a flaw of the system just because you've decided you want the high life for middling input.
Not in the USA, where social mobility is essentially dead:
Several studies have been made comparing social mobility between developed countries. One such study (âoeDo Poor Children Become Poor Adults?")[10][11][12] found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The four countries with the lowest "intergenerational income elasticity", i.e. the highest social mobility, were Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Canada with less than 20% of advantages of having a high income parent passed on to their children. (see graph)
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting, I thought the UK was slightly ahead. Then again, I think the article I originally read dated from before the election.
No doubt someone will be along to state that the Danes, Finns and the rest are godless commies.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
He could just be an upper-middle class young adult who still believes that if he works hard enough, he'll one day get to join the 1%. Just wait until he or someone he cares about gets sick and loses their home, or until Bain Capital or similar buys out his business and decides his job could be better done by a coworker working unpaid overtime, or until his life savings get wiped out by some Wall Streeters run amok and leave him with nothing to retire on.
Sadly, for some people it takes experiencing bad luck themselves to realize that the poor aren't poor out of laziness.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
So we must allow the 1% to continue robbing us until we are literally starving to death. Only then can we raise a (feeble, emaciated) fist against them.
Has it occurred to you that the longer we wait to solve the erosion of the middle class, the harder it will be?
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's turn your question around.
What meritous work do the 1% do to deserve the rapidly increasing and disproportionate chunk of the wealth that they get?
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Interesting)
I might add especially the 1%ers who inherited their wealth.
If everybody started from a level playing field the wealth disparity would be much easier to tolerate.
The way it is, the US turns into a neo-feudal society.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall being told the exact same thing about real estate in 2006.
FYI, I'm in the upper class myself. Around the 94th percentile if Wikipedia's stats are accurate. And I've done quite well for myself by investing in gold, Amazon, Netflix, Sirius radio, and a whole lot of companies you've never heard of. Graham Corp was my favorite.... see that peak on its chart in '08? That's when Cramer was screaming on Mad Money for people to buy it. A sure sell signal if ever I saw one, and I bailed out immediately.
But unlike a lot of upper class people, I wasn't born into it, and I'm nowhere near wealthy enough to support friends and family. So I get to see childhood friends lose their jobs and homes. And I get to see my siblings and cousins struggle to make ends meet. And I get to reminisce about waking up one morning and finding my dad literally weeping because he had been laid off and we were going to lose our home, back when I was too young to understand any of that. And I'm literate enough to look at statistics and see that the bottom 80% has been in decline for over thirty years, while the top 1% has seen their incomes quadruple over the same period. And I'm good enough at arithmetic to figure out that if this nation's "rising tide" had indeed "lifted all ships", then the average individual would be making an additional $8k a year, which would mean a hell of a lot to people, considering that the median income is $24k. But instead, all of that money ($8k per person times 155 million workers = $1.24 TRILLION per year) went to the top 1%, who use it to bribe politicians into giving them even more advantages.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
You're middle class? Your writing looks like it comes from the remedial class.
Re: (Score:3)
Since nobody WANTS to be lower class and everyone wants to be a millionaire, I can only conclude based on actual demographics that it's harder than you think.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:4, Informative)
I sincerely doubt she (or practically ANY of the others) are living in someone's 1.2M mansion. Especially since TFA specifically said she and her family rely on a homeless shelter. Did you think they were just slumming?
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Funny)
Well homeless shelters are big buildings usually. Wouldn't surprise me if it had a 1.2M price tag.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:4, Insightful)
There are still too many scamming the system
Who cares? I'd rather ignore the occasional bit of fraud (even if it were as high as 10%) than to inadvertently prevent someone or some family from getting desperately needed help.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, occasionally you'll find a sad story wherever you look, but a vast majority of homeless people are homeless people because they fucked up their shit.
What about their kids?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What about their kids?
It's their own fault for being born into poverty. They could start getting bootstrappy now if it weren't for those damn liberal child-labor laws.
(This would be funny if there weren't people like Newt Gingrich who actually believe [huffingtonpost.com] this!)
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
What about them? I think that homeless shelters are a Good Thing, and certainly so in the case of helping kids who had no choice about the situation they were born into. But let's be real--the kids have the same genetics as their parents. If the parents were losers then odds are the kids are too.
Translation: "Are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses?"
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps you should start thinking why you have masses of "stupid lazy people" in the first place.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ [theatlantic.com]
Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.
Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.
Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.
In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:5, Insightful)
So much for "There but for the grace of God go I" (or whatever method of expressing empathy you care for).
Nope - these days, it's all about lazy, entitlement seeking, dirty, smelly, socialist, thieving, parasitic trash sucking the life out of the economy.
At least - right up to the point at which BigCorp your work for outsources your job and you can't even pay the mortgage on your rather modest home or feed the kids... suddenly, maybe, it occurs then that perhaps some of these folks just maybe weren't just lazy scum.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:4, Interesting)
How did people know they could not actually afford their home when everybody had one and banks were all too eager to tell them otherwise?
You must think people are all some kind of OCD mathematicians that spend their lives meticulously calculating their best course of action. Studies have shown that 80% of people blindly trust recommendations instead of comparing prices or informing themselves about technical specifications with the local computer wizard. And economists, unlike hackers, are not really abundant.
You should read a book called Descartes' error, where a prominent psychiatrist reports the case of a brain damaged man, formerly an intelligent, successful professional, who could not feel emotion anymore, but was perfectly capable of purely rational thought. He could not decide on anything - enter the concept of emotional intelligence, and the fact that people actually decide based on their feelings, and can not decide on anything otherwise. After all, what seems "logic" to you, may not be another man's "logic".
You can argue that being unwise is undesirable, but if you think the fundamental nature of Man can be changed, I'd like to know where I can get some of that delicious kool-aid you've been drinking. If you're a financial wizard, know that the rest of the world is not YOU. Most people have had no contact with math of any kind since high-school, they don't need it and they should not be bothered with it.
If people could somehow become immune to marketing and aggressive salesmen, the whole economy would grind to a halt. The world moves on the backs of stupid people spending lots of money. Two main components of what goes into calculating GDP are domestic consumption and exports.
Re: (Score:3)
Some may be exactly that. Some may actually belong in a mental health facility (think about it, would a sane person live that way?). In fact, many WERE until funding was cut and they got thrown to the wolves.
Re: (Score:3)
There is something to that for many. If you're rich enough, it doesn't matter how badly you fail, you'll be propped up and given every opportunity to fix things.
Just imagine if you worked on an assembly line and your 'penalty' for a screw up that wrecked the entire factory would be a severance check big enough to retire on! That's the 'hard reality' of being the CEO of a large corporation.
Re:I really hate this article (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're rich enough, it doesn't matter how badly you fail, you'll be propped up and given every opportunity to fix things.
What do they call a rich family that fails badly enough a few times?
Poor
Re: (Score:3)
There is something to that for many. If you're rich enough, it doesn't matter how badly you fail, you'll be propped up and given every opportunity to fix things.
See: Donald Trump. If he was a middle class guy and lost similar amounts of money (proportionate to his middle-class income), he'd be lucky if the repo men left the clothes on his back.
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely because they can't afford a TV and she has to read for entertainment.
Someone ask her who Kim Kardasean is.
Re:The truth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really?
The homeless rate amoungst school kids is about 2.2%:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/1213/Homeless-children-at-record-high-in-US.-Can-the-trend-be-reversed [csmonitor.com]
There were 300 semifinalists. This means that all other things considered equal, there should be 7 homeless semifinalists.
Of course, given the situations that homeless kids are in, I wouldn't at all expect that other things should be considered equal, and that it would be extremely surprising to find the same distribution for such achievers between homeless and non-homeless kids.
With that said, though, one semifinalist is not at all surprising.
Especially with what's being done to the middle and working classes in this nation.
Great! (Score:3)
You guys over there need more homeless people.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Succeeding in a public school, yet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well done of her to rise up and be counted. Amazingly, despite everything thrown at her by people who would go so far as to condemn her for the social and financial position of her family, she's using it as self-motivation. Has to be cruel to be homeless and one of the National School Lunch Program kids in a world where many children go out of their way (starving effectively) to hide the shame of their family's misfortune.
Any candidates for public office feel like giving her parents some employment or shall we go the usual route, use her as an example the American Dream isn't dead, yet, and then abandon them for the next popular thing on the campaign trail?
I don't get it (Score:2)
The summary says her research is based on her family living arrangements. Is she planning on growing a shell or something?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
The summary says her research is based on her family living arrangements. Is she planning on growing a shell or something?
Perhaps. I would imagine crabs being introduced into a homeless shelter is not that uncommon.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe one of her siblings is a geek that uses C shell.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The summary does not say this.
Exception or the rule? (Score:2)
So are all homeless people geniuses or have they just stumbled across one homeless person who happens to have a brilliant mind and extrapolated that finding to all homeless people?
Re: (Score:2)
It's the long tail and unfortunately this kind of thing tends to be used as justification for cutting benefits for people in poverty. Because clearly if the other homeless weren't so lazy they wouldn't be homeless.
Re:Exception or the rule? (Score:5, Informative)
In all probability, homeless people will follow the same distribution curve as everyone else. That would imply that 2% of all homeless people have an IQ of 148 or above (UK's IQ scale, use your local Mensa entry requirement to figure out what's equal to that) and that 30.9% [conferenceboard.ca] would be able to complete a degree program if given the opportunity.
The Great Source of Wisdom [wikipedia.org] says that there's up to 2 million people in the US who are homeless at any given time, some on a more permanent basis than others. It's a fair bet that even the transients aren't really able to get into a university though.
That would give you 40,000 people of Mensa-level intelligence and around 618,000 people who would be able to complete further education. Finding one person of either level of ability shouldn't be that hard or even unusual - 40,000 people can't be easy to miss and well over half a million should be blatantly obvious.
Now, the median income of people with a bachelor's degree [ed.gov] was 40K in 2009. That's the 25% tax bracket. So, the government is losing 10K per year per person who could have a degree but doesn't, which works out to $6.18 billion just from lost income tax revenue. That's ignoring anything such people might invent or contribute to society (and it's clear from even the one example that these are people who are just as able to contribute as anyone) along with all the money the government could collect from businesses as a result of such contributions. That's a hell of a lot of money to be throwing away. I like pragmatic socialism (note the "pragmatic" part) and social justice, so naturally I want fewer homeless people for those reasons. Particularly because I'm pragmatic - that's over half a million potential innovations that won't happen, over half a million potential entrepreneurs that won't get to start anything... Yes, there will always be homeless and the country can't afford to take care of everyone, we all know that, but this goes well beyond what is sane or rational. The desire to be seen as anti-socialist has become moronic and self-destructive.
Nobody can help everybody, but $6bln aught to be more than enough to cover the costs of helping far, far more than we are.
Re:Exception or the rule? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but I seriously doubt that. A very large percentage of the homeless population are there because they have mental disorders. I'm pretty sure that there's a much larger proportion of people with an IQ of 80 than those who have an IQ of 120
Re:Exception or the rule? (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct about the mental disorders, but bipolar people are famous for unusually high IQs as are people with HFA and LFA, and all of these have mental disorders that cause considerable problems with social interactions of any kind (including keeping a roof over their heads).
Mental disorder rates by State [ca.gov]
90% of homeless in UK excluded from education [bbc.co.uk]
IQ study in US [nih.gov] shows "WAIS-R scores were comparable to population means".
How is this even... (Score:5, Insightful)
America (I'm addressing you as a whole).
How is it that you allow young people, let alone whole families, to be homeless, to live in "shelters".
WTF is wrong with you people?!
You are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth, the wealthiest, the nation that is spoken to exude opportunity and success from every pore.
And you have whole families, school children, living in homeless shelters.
I don't care how they came to be in the situation, it doesn't matter how that happened, what matters is resolving it, providing the social, housing, and financial support to ensure that every body can call somewhere home.
For every one remarkable individual like this who manages to overcome the adversity, I hate to think how many are dragged down by the circumstance.
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Insightful)
Income inequality is just envy. - Mitt Romney
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Informative)
How is it that you allow young people, let alone whole families, to be homeless, to live in "shelters".
Name the country that does not have homeless people. Not saying the US does not have problems (oh hells yes we do!), but there are homeless everywhere.
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, that's telling 'em. America, the great and power, is just as powerless as everyone else to resolve a social problem that may be unsolvable. Of course, America isn't really interested in solving that social problem. I don't mean this as a slander or an insult. It's precisely the belief in a sort of Social Darwinism that has made the US such a great power (it also helps that it has a lot of natural resources and a climate that readily allows for most of their extraction, a relatively large amount of space which keeps down the cost of living in most the country, and an effective imperialist agenda not unlike many other empires of the past which might have more to do with it) that keeps a lot of social reform discussion from even coming up; I mean, why fight against a gifted horse just to help a few people? Then there is...
Hunger is everywhere. Vaccinatable childhood diseases are everywhere. A need for high-speed travel for the movement of both goods and people exists everywhere. The desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness exists everywhere. I guess we can't actually do anything about any of the above then, though. I mean, the US has problems...like homelessness..so we can't actually discuss working to fix homelessness. That's some master deflection; how about at least trying in the slightest to offer a few valid ideas on why homelessness can't be eradication entirely? That'd probably be an actually valid argument. Of course, that still leaves the potential of homeless almost being entirely eradicated (ie, that the few special cases that show homelessness is inherently inevitable doesn't explain not dealing with homelessness for the vast majority of the homeless).
Ok then let's hear it (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's hear your great idea on how to fix homelessness. The GP made a very valid point: It is everywhere, including countries that are far more socialist than the US. It seems that humans haven't figured out a way to fix it. So maybe we shouldn't whine so much about needing to fix it because maybe we can't. That doesn't mean we should ignore it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have safety nets (like, say, shelters) but this crap of "Oh how come America hasn't fixed homelessness?" is stupid.
If you've got some magic fix for it, then let's hear it. If not then quit with the "America should be able to fix it!"
It is one of those things that you can work on, we should work on, and we do work on. It isn't something you can solve. So bitching that it hasn't been is stupid.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fix is socialism... But it is a tabu among most US citizens who are brainwashed to believe socialism is here to take your wealthy and forces you under government control where you can not choose who is your doctor or where your kid goes school....
In social society, people take care of each other. They give what they can not use or dont need, to those who have needs. They do what they can with their powers to help others. It is not just you give money or you say "here is your apartment, live there". But
Re:Ok then let's hear it (Score:4, Insightful)
All this tells me is you've never been outside the US or done any real research. Why? Because there's homeless everywhere. Norway has homeless people. Not speaking in abstract here, I've been there (I have family there).
So, care to try again?
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most western nations will provide at least a flat to their poor. The only homeless they have are people whose psychiatric problems cause them to refuse the help. The U.S. really is dead last amongst the 1st world.
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But that still makes up top of the third world!
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I remember walking through Osaka and stumbling upon the mostly hidden homeless camp chock full of people. Most of the time you do not see anyone who looks even poor much less homeless. I wasn't sure if these people just hid away from embarrassment of being jobless or if there was an active "western nation" style of trying to explicitly hid them away from view.
And yes, most western nations have homeless people, even those who are proud of pointing out how socially forward they are. The homeless are just b
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Informative)
America (I'm addressing you as a whole).
How is it that you allow young people, let alone whole families, to be homeless, to live in "shelters".
WTF is wrong with you people?!
You are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth, the wealthiest, the nation that is spoken to exude opportunity and success from every pore.
And you have whole families, school children, living in homeless shelters.
I don't care how they came to be in the situation, it doesn't matter how that happened, what matters is resolving it, providing the social, housing, and financial support to ensure that every body can call somewhere home.
For every one remarkable individual like this who manages to overcome the adversity, I hate to think how many are dragged down by the circumstance.
There are those who are homeless in America by choice (live in one of the larger cities in California and you'll know what I mean), many of them prefer the freedom to ru(i)n their own lives for substances or alcohol. I'll give them food, but no money.
There are those who are homeless due to misfortune - lost of job, breadwinner in family, foreclosure of house loan, etc. These people are not at the bottom of the barrel, but without some form of assistance they could be there. There are shelters and federal and state programs to help them - often those still living in their cars are due to some failure to abide rules or restrictions of shelters. Where I work we track about 1,000 of these families. It's not a small issue, but those people, like this student have a good chance of getting back into a place they can call their own when the economy bounces back.
Re: (Score:3)
I had a coworker briefly that was doing that. On what we were making I couldn't blame him for that, I'm sure he was a lot more comfortable that way than worrying about having money for rent, and with a job he had the option of staying in a motel during cold snaps.
The bigger question though is why in a country that's so wealthy we tolerate people living on the streets out of necessity. We have the money to ensure that those folks have at least rudimentary shelter and yet we choose to provide very little.
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Informative)
You have around 3.5 million homeless people in the US. In a population of ~300 million, that's about 1.7%.
Europe has around 3 million homeless people. In a combined European population of ~730 million, that's about 0.4%. That includes Eastern Europe and formerly Soviet bloc countries, most of which are still struggling with massive corruption. In Scandinavia and Northern Europe in general, the number is around 0.15%.
You have more than four times as many homeless people compared to your population as the average European/Scandinavian social democracy-based "socialist hellhole" and the countries who were mercifully untouched by the "fascism with a communist face" of the Eastern bloc have less than a tenth the amount of homeless people that you do.
Social democracy (or "socialism" as you yanks erroneously call it) works.
I'll be watching when your so-called "greatest nation on Earth" implodes on itself. Hopefully, you'll build something sensible out of the ashes.
Re: (Score:3)
There's no need to get personal, but let's have a look at what you're saying, disregarding the insults.
First off, I'm from Denmark. We've been able to weather the crisis relatively well due to our fundamentally well-oiled system of social democracy. We are pulling ourselves out of the depression again in cooperation with our Scandinavian and Northern European neighbors. Our economy is stable, thanks to this.
Of course your demographics are different, you have a small problem with illegal immigration and the
Re:How is this even... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean, psychiatric patients for which there is inadequate support? Yes. I've seen a lot of those on the streets in America.
Or individuals who have suffered abuse in the poorly regulated and underfunded state welfare system? Yes, lots of those too.
But you're right... they prefer it like that. I assume you've spoken to them too?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, puh-f'in-leeze. As if there aren't homeless on the streets, probably more, in every other OECD country.
Not according to the OECD (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for reinforcing the stereotype that Americans don't think about facts before they start screaming "We're #1!"
In this case, we are 33rd out of 36.
How about absolute poverty? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/absolute-poverty/ [nytimes.com]
In terms of absolute poverty, we're one of the highest in the West, and all of the other nations on the list provide universal health care.
In either case, it's safe to stay that Americans have some of the worst income inequality out of any country, and among similar Western nations, are in the bottom 10% when it comes to relative poverty rates, absolute poverty rates, child poverty rates, health care, and education. If you'd like to be proud of that, you're welcome to, but I'm certainly not.
Patriotism is doing meaningful things to improve the lives of your fellow citizens, not pretending a problem doesn't exist to make yourself feel better about your country.
Re: (Score:3)
In Denmark, the definition goes roughly like this:
A homeless person is a person who lives in a deficient housing situation, for example in an illegal encampment, a condemned building or a severely overcrowded building (mostly illegally).
It also includes people living in unsafe conditions, for instance living under threat of eviction or under a bankrupt landlord, or in a violent home.
Furthermore, it includes people without a home, ie. currently sleeping under temporary conditions in an institution, a shelter
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Informative)
My mother works at one. These families do get everything they need to get back on their feet, they really do. No one wants to see women and children on the street and there really isn't any excuse for it. Unfortunately, not every mother is worth anything. I wish we could take more children away from some of these women sometimes. Some of them are great mothers and manage to make it into government subsidized homes, but some are on the run from CPS and run from shelter to shelter to shelter. The shelter gives every child a free breakfast before class and the mothers are required to take them to it, but some just don't seem to give a damn about their own kids and send them to class late and hungry. It's a tough situation indeed. Very depressing.
It's good to see a homeless kid trying her best. So many of them just give up on school completely and barely learn to read with no support from any parent. Hopefully her parents are pushing her.
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately nobody cares about men on the street. Maybe that's why over 3/4 of homeless are men.
Re: (Score:2)
>> You are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth, the wealthiest, the nation that is spoken to exude opportunity and success from every pore.
1995 called. Supper is on an you have to go home now.
Re:How is this even... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Good point! If a systemically poor and inefficient country can't solve a problem like homelessness what hope does the United States of America have?
[ That reads like sarcasm, but I assure you it's not ]
Re:How is this even... (Score:4, Insightful)
what matters is resolving it, providing the social, housing, and financial support to ensure that every body can call somewhere home.
What do you think homeless shelters are for?
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"Are there no workhouses?" and all that, right?
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Insightful)
Long and the short of it is that we've allowed a new, hereditary aristocracy to persuade us that our best interests are aligned with theirs.
Oh, they're smarter in many ways than the nobility of the past. They know how to blend in just a bit better, while still flaunting their wealth. They've bent the principles of equality and the perception thereof, and corrupted the American Dream, locking everyone else out, but allowing them to still dream the dream.
This new aristocracy has their fiefdoms in the corporations; they own our government lock, stock and barrel; they keep us at war.
They own the majority of the media and the mediums, and what they don't have yet, they're working diligently to take. And what information and knowledge there is, they ensure not only control of, but fight to make you pay for.
And they've persuaded too many people of this nation that caring for the sick and the elderly is somehow evil; that educating the next generation is a waste of money; that governments are not, in fact, created by men to secure the fundamental rights as described by Jefferson. In fact, they've gone so far as to persuade many of the citizenry that any sort of organization that builds out the infrastructure, education and welfare of the people simply for the sake of doing so is fundamentally evil. They've even gone so far as to pervert Christianity to be a worship of wealth [wikipedia.org].
And at the same time, we're provided with an ample supply of soma [wikipedia.org] in the form of so-called reality television, video games, professional sports circuses and other thought destroying noise.
That's what's happened to us, and that is why we allow this.
And those who have made issue of it are called dirty, unwashed lazy hippies, or seekers of entitlement - an incredibly ironic term, given that it comes from the rights of the nobility - those with title. They've lumped the terms "fascism", "communism", and "socialism" all into one inclusive bucket, not realizing the extremely significant differences between them, nor that our nation has become ruled by the corporations, nor that a certain amount of socialism is required for a society of the size and with the population density that ours has.
That's what's wrong with my people.
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How is it that you allow young people, let alone whole families, to be homeless, to live in "shelters".
Wait, you're complaining because we gave homeless people a place to live? What do you want, for them to live in Trump Tower and be fed caviar? Come on, what people need is enough to get back on their own two feet when life knocks them down. They don't need to have the world given to them.
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And you have whole families, school children, living in homeless shelters.
The ones in shelters are lucky. I don't know numbers, but a great deal of our homeless don't even have that because their local governments either don't see it as a priority or don't have the means to provide homeless shelters. That is why tent cities have sprung up in many parts of the country.
http://www.businessinsider.com/lakewood-new-jersey-homeless-tent-city-2011-9?op=1 [businessinsider.com]
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Yeah, but maybe if we stopped the "stupid bullshit" like having military bases in a ridiculous fucking number of countries, making war all the time, putting up monuments and public buildings that look like Roman Imperial architecture, blowing public funds on stadia and "art", running huge government agencies that really do very little except retard progress... maybe we could do better on the social safety net front.
Nah, fuck it, let's just elect the same old people and get the same old results.
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Squabbling over the arts when we outspend the rest of the world combined on the military really is somewhat ridiculous, at best.
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong.
Garvey and her family have lived in shelters and hotels since she was a little girl. Seven years ago, they were able to move into a house, but in February 2010, her parents were involved in a car accident. They were forced to leave.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/01/homeless-teen-could-win-100000-science-prize-and-new-future-for-family/ [go.com]
Re:How is this even... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, yet another medical bankruptcy & destitution, which is almost uniquely American in developed nations.
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Garvey and her family have lived in shelters and hotels since she was a little girl
Don't believe everything you see on TV. The family hasn't had it easy, but to say she's "lived in shelters and hotel since she was a little girl" is false.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jyIz1qpm12mq4KEy3-CS4Z0HVcgg?docId=13c4979840884373a3c0e477d2aea9aa [google.com]
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That is the biggest I have ever seen. You say 'statistically' so I assume you have some numbers? 'In their genes?' 'Mutants?!' ...you're really not a biologist are you.
So if we've decided to instead build rambling arguments on vague assumptions here are a couple of my own...
1) people born from rich families have less incentive to work harder
2) people from poor families have less opportunit
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This is repeated ad nauseum as an excuse for the excesses of capitalism at the expense of everything else. The suggestion is of the 'survival of fittest' (not a phrase Darwin ever used) and a fight to the death with every one for themselves. Sure. Capitalism can mimic that, but it's not an 'ideal' by any stretch of the imagination. Darwinism is associated with explosions, crashes and ex
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"But, I digress. Until we make the housing business more like the PC business (cheaper and better every year and yet the companies still prosper) we will continue to have this problem."
When you put it that way, the problem's simple. We need only shrink people in half every 18 months. Obviously it's only government intervention, like Fannie & Freddie, which is stopping our housing productivity from being as high as the deregulated semiconductor industry.
Cutest smile ever. (Score:2)
She seriously does have the cutest smile. The grin she was wearing in the photo with the article about this at KSL was the highlight of my day. Smart and photogenic is a good combo. She will go far.
I hope Intel avoids the obvious feel-good choice (Score:2)
She's a semifinalist. I hope Intel's judgement of her research isn't affect by the press coverage. It would suck for someone else's superior research to get shafted because he wasn't lucky enough to be appealing as a human-interest story.
Expected.. (Score:2)
Rely on a homeless shelter? (Score:4, Informative)
The linked article kind of doesn't mention that her family was in the shelter for all of a week earlier this month. Still a nice accomplishment, but none of the work she did was done while she was in the shelter.
A triumph for her... (Score:2, Insightful)
... and an abysmal failure by our society.
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Pretty much working exactly as it should.
Homelessness Doesn't Break the American Dream. (Score:2)
Samantha deserves to get the credit for not letting distractions others have created around her from stopping her desire to forge ahead.
That is the American spirit alive and well in the U.S. It is the spirit that entrepreneurs must have to try and try again, as not all efforts succeed.
Being homeless is so easy to have happen if one or two key earning parents get laid off and can't downsize quickly enough in a major downturn. It is not possible for everyone to come out whole. It is just the enforced posit
Re:Homelessness Doesn't Break the American Dream. (Score:5, Interesting)
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You are living in some sort of La-La cloud.
Homelessness is a real and growing problem in Canada. Children and young people are the fastest growing subgroup of the Canadian homeless population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Canada [wikipedia.org]
I doubt it (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that crabs change the thickness of their shells in the presence of predators. Rather, I bet the predators change the kind of shell that is dominant in the population of crabs.
It is likely the case that the predators are more easily able to eat the crabs with thinner shells, thereby increasing the percentage of crabs with thicker shells in the remaining population, and those remaining crabs with thicker shells produce offspring that also have the same kind of shells (or perhaps even thicker shells in a few cases).
Evolution, folks. Variation. Selection.
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However, we have a new hypothesis to explore:
does homelessness impart an unnatural belief in lamarckism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism [wikipedia.org]
Re:I doubt it (Score:4, Insightful)
I highly doubt that she would have gotten to the semifinals with research that essentially states "thinner shells are easier to crack."
Unfortunately, I'm not finding any of the original data, so I cannot verify this.
Re:I doubt it (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll take her research over your gut feeling any day. If she's a finalist, then I certainly hope that she already controlled for such an effect.
Not anymore (Score:3)
god .... (Score:3)
tells a lot about why that country is in that knee deep shit as it is.
there is a hole in the roof of the house, half of household is getting wet, but the other half is making excuses and rationalizations about how hole will be magically self-fixed, or how there are holes in other roofs too, or how getting wet incentivizes people to 'work', or how the people getting wet in a fucking house with a hole in its roof are 'lazy'. its your fucking house.
let me tell you : this is stupid. escapist. lazy. self-centered. and will eventually bite YOU in your ass, which deserves it soo much.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
My first thought as well. Women's best path if they look at least as good as her is to learn the ways of being sweet to and pleasuring male clients, and exploiting their best years (starting at her age) as escorts. Marry a sucker around 30, maybe sooner if she's hooked a good prospect, all the while saving for her future. Have a kid, divorce the guy, collect alimony.
This "talent contest" is cute, and a nice way to get PR for Intel. It, of course, works for those who win the contest, but it suffers from a ma
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