Slashdot Mirror
How American Homeless Stay Wired
theodp writes "San Franciscan Charles Pitts has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs a Yahoo forum, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. Nothing unusual, right? Except Pitts has been homeless for two years and manages this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge. Thanks to cheap computers, free Internet access and sheer determination, the WSJ reports that being homeless isn't stopping some from staying wired. 'You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper,' says Pitts. 'But you need the Internet.'"
If you can reach friends and family, can't you ask for help? Maybe I grew up in an environment where homelessness was not an option because I'm sure that I could chill on someone's couch until I worked my way back into an apartment. If you can't reach anybody on the internet who is willing or able to help you out while you're living under a bridge, perhaps you should re-evaluate your ongoing communications with those people. I realize that not everybody will be able to work up a western-union order for bus fair in a week or a cross-country plane ticket in a month to help their friend, you'd have to be pretty low on my list of acquaintances for me to not help you out, and I make sure I hang out with people that would do the same for me. This is really sad, while yes, its good that they can stay in contact, this is a case of communication without value.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
It's easy to shower without friends or crash-pads. Go to the local university or junior college because you get get into the locker room and shower without hassle. The phenomenon described in this discussion is actually widespread, in fact, the JC I was showering at(a popular one in Los Angeles) was known for people sleeping in its locker rooms and even classrooms after lights-out. This was back around 2005 when the economy was decent.
Before I thought of that, I would rub my body down with body wash (while wearing boardshorts) and find an apartment complex with a pool or jacuzzi, then I'd get in and bathe in them! Scrubbing with fingernails exfoliates skin and the bromine keeps you clean while the body wash keeps you fresh, though just the bromine will suffice if you scrub with your fingernails.
Just make sure you have more than one towl and do a drying rotation. In locker rooms I've seen bums showering who didn't even have a towel, and they used half a roll of paper towels from the dispenser to dry their body off! xD
In Japan, they move into internet cafes
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
3,304 pounds of food per second. 263,013,699 pounds of food every day. 1.5 tons of food per year for every person in America.
A couple of decades ago, Harry Chapin said something like "In a country where we produce enough food to feed the entire planet 6 times over, it's unthinkable that anybody shouldn't have enough to eat". Not much has changed in the interim.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Doing the math on those numbers, they don't even agree with each other.
1) 365days * 24hours * 60minutes * 60seconds = 31,536,000 seconds. Multiply by 3304 pounds per second = 104,194,944,000 pounds per year.
2) 263,013,699 pounds * 365 = 96,000,000,135 pounds per year. (Well, that's close... but wait...)
3) Since you used pounds, I will assume the short ton (the smallest 'ton' available) = 2,000 pounds * 1.5... So, 3000 pounds per person * 306 million persons in America = 918,000,000,000 pounds per year. Oops.
I'll admit that the smallest number equates to about 313 pounds per person per year for each American (less than 1 pound a day), bad numbers like that make me a bit suspicious of their methodology.
One of every four homeless people in the USA is a veteran. However, given what the world knows about what the US military does in places like Abu Ghraib, I'd salute anyone who didn't go back.