(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Utah school boards unanimously reject "Intelligent design"

That's right, UTAH are less ignorant religious lunatics than KANSAS.

John Scalzi explains what it is to be poor. READ IT. Skip down below the trackbacks and read the comments, too.

And yes, for those of you reading this who aren't from the USA, in the US, being poor means you don't get health care or good schools. See why I call them a third-world country?

Comments

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

*blinks*

Utah? Huh. Wow. I would never have seen that one coming.

[ceara.livejournal.com]

*bows* On behalf of my state, I accept this award for Stupidist Fucking Morons In The Entire Damn Country, And That's Saying Something.

(I maintain that we aren't all dumb, though. Just the ones in charge. And most of the others, I guess. Sigh.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Last I checked, it was 3/4 people on the school board. That's a good 25% of people running your schools who are apparently literate.

[ceara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's pretty crappy. My mother is a curriculum director for a school district, though, so at least there's one city whose students get good science. (Kansas doesn't forbid it, it just doesn't require it.)

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

In the US, we have a whole socio-economic class called the "working poor". That means that you work, but you make so little that you still qualify for public assistance in the form of food stamps and various other things, such as Medicaid. Gods fucking help you if you get a slight payraise or work a few more hours; just enough to disqualify you from Medicaid, but not enough to actually make it so you can afford to go to the doctor.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

David Shipler's The Working Poor: Invisible in America is an excellent study of a socioeconomic class most of us would rather not think about. The chapter on migrant farm workers is particularly illuminating—particularly the interview with the farm owner who, thanks to market forces (he claims) cannot afford to pay his workers any more.

My favorite part (and by "favorite", I mean "boy, is that fucked up") is the notion that it's almost impossible to consume a fruit or vegetable in this country that hasn't been harvested by a migrant worker who is probably here illegally. All the folks bitching about illegal immigrants should get used to a protein-rich diet...but wait, a lot of slaughterhouse workers are illegals, too...