Child Poverty in America

In my Sociology class yesterday, we talked about social class, that ended up helping my English paper. During the class we talked about alot of things but one that really stuck with me was that America is considered the richest country in the world. Poor families are considered to have $24,000/yr or less, yet this would be a doctors income in other parts of the world. US consumes about 90% of the resources consumed globally and yet in my book was a chart of the countries with poverty-stricked children and the US was ranked 2nd...2nd right next to Mexico.
Mexico - 21.3%
US - 18.4%
Italy - 14.3%
Japan - 12.9%
Canada - 11.5%
Germany - 10.4%
France - 6.7%
Sweden - 3.2%
Denmark - 2.1%
The next big group is woman, but a good thing my teacher mentioned is that 80-90% of people in poverty are only in poverty for 3 years or less. Usually people that fall under bad times and get out of it. Out of all the usual things we think of for poor people (lack of education, family upbringing, drugs/alcohol, debt trap, etc) are things rich people also face. The only thing was that rich people have social connections and resources to draw on. Weird.

ARDI - Oldest human ever found

I think if I ever posted regularly it would have to be monthly outside of class. There just is not that much that comes out in a week that I have time to track down.

Dunno if anyone else heard but the old bones found in Ethiopia in 1993 were recently confirmed as the oldest humanoid remains ever found, 4.4 million years. The bones are confirming that even predating Lucy, 1 million years younger fossil, that we stood up right and likely were never like chimps in that we scampered on all fours.

It is kinda old news now but it is really interesting. She is being called Ardi which stands for her species, Ardipithecus ramidus.

I might end up doing a extra credit report on her for my History of Religions class. If I do, I will post more.

computer nerd!

Alright, something interesting to blog about for me would be techy stuff. I grew up a techie with my uncle (masters) and grandfather (bachelors) being computer programmers and my dad as a graphic artist that owns his own business. I remember when I was five, I sat with my grandfather and learned to reboot my first computer by putting in the next floppy when the computer said to while grandpa went outside to smoke.
My current computer could be better but it is just one step at a time right now. Next, I plan on updating my case as the stats are not that bad. I just updated the video card and motherboard so now it is on to style ^_^.
It took awhile but I picked out a baby pink case with bright blue LED lights, 2 front usb, audio jacks, and a eSATA. Same dimensions as my last one and it comes from a reliable vendor, newegg. I am soooo excited! With these 2 usbs, I will have a total of 9....^o^ woot!
Lets see...what other techie girl stuff....
I recently found a girl tech girl kit that has two small jeweler's screwdrivers, pliers, etc etc in pink so that is going on my christmas list.
I really have not done much research into the techie world lately. I know there is a new e-reader coming out called the "nook". I really like that idea, but I do not know if I can switch to good old fashion "hold me" books to e-books. I would love to play with it and maybe one day I will wear out my copier by transfering everything into pdf format (probably one day ^^), but not now.
With the "nook" you can download full books to your computer anywhere and the clarity is amazing. With this version, versus Amazon's Kindle, you can borrow and share books. They have not released the details, but it looks fun.