Patents and Poverty
Finished the Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks For Dummies index the other day. Found out that my business name is not ideal (too descriptive and not unique enough) and that it's already registered to a neat little cafe in DC and a bookstore, I think. Oh, well. After reading this humorous tome (you will not be bored), though, I don't think I'd ever try to patent an invention. The cost alone would send me home, but I guess if you had some deep-pocket venture capitalist at your side....
It was a good read, though, believe it or not. Those Dummies folks over at Wiley Publishing are pretty good at picking writers.
Finally got back to The Colors of Poverty, a social science book on why poverty tends to concentrate itself in certain ethnic groups. Mostly, the Russell Sage Foundation researchers find so many complex factors involved in anything they research (humans are so fascinating that way!) that their conclusions tend to be very tentative; they just don't get the statistical results that would floor anybody. This book is different, especially the last chapter on the relationship among race, class, welfare policy, and incarceration in this country. The poor are being thoroughly marginalized, particularly when African American, by a combination of welfare-to-work and massive incarceration and post-imprisonment monitoring by government. It's a bit scary, frankly. The authors call this new thing neoliberal paternalism (despite the name, a philosophy of political conservatism). Doesn't seem to make for opportunities for poor people to get out of poverty, though. And this policy is not in the federal laws that regulate welfare per se, it's embedded in the decentralized implementation of the law at state and local levels.
Lots of factors go into social inequality, and the white folks in power are not responsible for all of them, but this neoliberal paternalism is a blow to individual freedom in favor of social control.
Ok, ok, end of rant. I'm just the indexer, you know. Next up is Adobe Flex For Dummies. I'm pretty software savvy, but I don't even know what this is yet. I'll keep you posted.
It was a good read, though, believe it or not. Those Dummies folks over at Wiley Publishing are pretty good at picking writers.
Finally got back to The Colors of Poverty, a social science book on why poverty tends to concentrate itself in certain ethnic groups. Mostly, the Russell Sage Foundation researchers find so many complex factors involved in anything they research (humans are so fascinating that way!) that their conclusions tend to be very tentative; they just don't get the statistical results that would floor anybody. This book is different, especially the last chapter on the relationship among race, class, welfare policy, and incarceration in this country. The poor are being thoroughly marginalized, particularly when African American, by a combination of welfare-to-work and massive incarceration and post-imprisonment monitoring by government. It's a bit scary, frankly. The authors call this new thing neoliberal paternalism (despite the name, a philosophy of political conservatism). Doesn't seem to make for opportunities for poor people to get out of poverty, though. And this policy is not in the federal laws that regulate welfare per se, it's embedded in the decentralized implementation of the law at state and local levels.
Lots of factors go into social inequality, and the white folks in power are not responsible for all of them, but this neoliberal paternalism is a blow to individual freedom in favor of social control.
Ok, ok, end of rant. I'm just the indexer, you know. Next up is Adobe Flex For Dummies. I'm pretty software savvy, but I don't even know what this is yet. I'll keep you posted.
posted by Joanne | 6:29 PM
1 Comments:
Hey its a really nice article.
By the way here's the link for the community united for the same cause
http://www.orkut.co.in/Community.aspx?cmm=47234928
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