30 Days : Minimum Wage - What I am going to write about/use

Things to consider :

1. Rich vs Poor : Income inequality(Gini's coefficient)

"Income inequality tells us zilch about the only thing that really matters: Are the lives of Americans, rich, poor, and in between, getting better or worse?"-Shikha Dalmia, on his article Liberal Programs Deserve Blame for Income Inequality

http://theswash.com/2011/11/08/liberal-programs-deserve-blame-for-income-inequality/

2. Laborer vs firm : Hemang bus(hope bus) in Korea

"The buses aspire toward a “world without layoffs and temporary workers.”"

site address of the representative cafe: http://cafe.daum.net/happylaborworld

what is Hope Bus?: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/528.php

3. Education and Cycle of Poverty

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2006/jun/wk3/art03.htm

"Individuals with higher levels of education have greater access to higher paying jobs, such as management, professional, and related occupations, than do those with lower education."

"Simple comparisons between children in poor families and children in non-poor families using national datasets indicate that poor children are more likely to do worse on indices of school achievement than non-poor children are."

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2330/Poverty-Education.html

4. Poverty and Health

"Poor health increases poverty by : Reducing a family's work productivity"

http://www.healthpovertyaction.org/policy/the-cycle-of-poverty-and-poor-health/

"The studies overwhelming show that for every health condition, for every disease, for every cause of death, those who have lower incomes have it much worse than those who have fatter paychecks. In other words, if you work where you have to see sick people, such as in emergency departments, you are going to see poorer people for the most part, no matter whether your hospital sits in a wealthy neighborhood, or a poor one."

http://www.zcommunications.org/health-and-poverty-in-the-us-by-stephen-bezruchka

Ode to uTorrent

Dear uTorrent,

   UTorrent, you are usually so useful like urbanized utensils and I satisfy my shrinked stomach solely on your sweet synthetics. Wait a second; was it too offensive to compare you to stupid household tools such as a dishwasher producing disturbing cracking noise or a printer eating up all my A4 papers available? Sorry, I didn't mean it. You neither upset me with drumming sounds nor waste away my physical properties. However, the problem is that you do upset me and you do squander my things.

   One day morning, I woke up painfully with feeling stiff in the shoulders. When I wiped my mouth with my backhand by habit, I found something sticky and stinky at the same time was covering my face very seamlessly. Muttering some swear words to myself, I stood up, picked up my phone, and pushed the unlock button. I looked my cell phone indicating the time with vacant eyes for two seconds, and screamed out crazily for another two seconds realizing that I woke up at 7:50. It was not the reason why I was screaming that I will get a special training soon due to extra three points for being absent for the morning exercise today or that I will get less than half right on the Wordsmart quiz on the first period because I had fallen asleep accidently when I was preparing for Wordsmart quiz yesterday night. I had to print out my journal for British Literature class that counts for more than 10% of my score, and that was the reason why I was screeching for another extra ten minutes while I was waiting for my beat-up laptop to turn on.

   The tardy booting of my computer made me insane. I was staring at the monitor cupping my chin with left hand and making up a I-WILL-STAB-YOU beat with my right hand scratching and tapping on the desk. Finally, the log-in page occurred, and I typed my password like a Korean progamer playing Starcraft with all possible keyboard shortcuts, and my desktop appeared with Tan-din-don-din-dan noise, the most useless noise in the world to me back then, that used to be a pleasant sound for me until then. When I tried to click my word file icon on my desktop, you popped up in a sudden! Then my computer froze. What I could do was to blame you as badly as I could, again staring at you that showed me how many years and months and weeks that I have to wait to get goat_pooped_on_my_face video.

   Don't ask me whether I succeeded to print out my journal before the class, because I know that you devised a scheme with your fellow, the printer. From when have you guys been so close? You guys even don't have any chance to meet each other.

   Whatever, it's fine, even though you made me so mad with your talent to pop up, wasted all of my morning time, and finally screwed up my life. I understand you. You wanted to see me so badly that morning, right UTorrent? That was so sweet of you.

   Well, sorry for blaming you for my faults. It was all my fault. It was me who waked up late in that morning, it was me who didn't print out my journals the night before, and it was me who wanted you to show up on the screen right away; but, I'll say, it was not my fault what happened the other day.

   That day, I was very carefully trying to download a illegal file of the popular film, Sunny. It was my first time to commit a crime, so I was unable to let myself free from guilt. I tried to stop my right hand from clicking the torrent file to make you work with my left hand, but the desire to watch the movie was big enough to give my right hand more strength. I unconsciously gave you a torrent file full of piece of information that included where you should find the peers and seeds to get me a nice one perfect movie, and you did not refuse; you became a partner of mine.

   However, I should not have believed you. You leaked my IP address to the rest of the world, and I was nearly caught by the cyber police. Thankfully, I was not arrested thanks to the enormous bulk of people who actually downloaded the file. I was like one out of million.

   Well, to say the truth, I had to blame you to make myself feel better, sorry. it was me who committed the crime in the first place, it was me who gave you the rare file, and it was me who was aware of the fact that I am infringing the copyright. However, you admitted to be in the crime so easily, and you made a mistake!

   UTorrent, you are such a satisfying, sweet, systematic, special, snug, sincere, and sheer peer; I love you by all my heart even though you do make some mistakes, and I hope you love me back too. Always be my side: at the bottom right side of my laptop.

With love,

Karen

Sin and a Lesson

   Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring is one of the beautiful Korean movie directed by Ki-duk Kim. The spring, the very first part of the film that we dealed with in the class, shows a monk and a little boy who will be raised as a monk. The monk teaches the boy with 'an eye for an eye' method and helps the little boy to grasp the important lesson by himself.
   I was in a peaceful state during watching the movie until the little monk started to tease some animals. He grabs the fish, ties a string on it, which has a stone on another side of the string, and put the fish back into the brook. The fish struggles painfully with the rock which does not let itself to move in a right way. Watching the tortured fish, the little boy chuckles. He chuckles as if he feels the biggest joy by harrassing the animals. My classmates and I, who were really into the movie, felt awkward and uncomfortable. What is he doing? Why does he giggle?
   However, I guess everybody has some kind of experience similar to the boy. When I was in elementary school, I enjoyed to trample on the small ants that moved around pedestrian roads. I stepped on it, leaned on that feet giving all my weight, and scrubbed the feet to the sandpapery ground. At that time, even though I was young and stupid, I knew that killing a living creature is the worst sin. I know these kinds of things happen, and I understand the little boy laughing by torturing animals. Looking back on it now, I think I, as a little girl, wanted to rule over a creature.
   The monk was looking all the process that the boy has been doing at the boy's back. In the middle of the night, the monk ties a big rock on the boy's back to make him be aware of what he had done to the animals. With the heavy rock on his back, the boy goes back to the pond and looks for the animals that he have tortured the night before. He finally cries when he finds the snake fallen to death covered with its red blood all over the skin. He surley figured out his lesson by himself.
   On the other hand, I didn't have any person to teach the lesson. Well, I have been taught that it is bad to kill a living thing, but that was all. I haven't had any real experience, and I didn't have to understand all the pain that the ants had to feel. I didn't have any teachers to help me figure out how the ants will feel like.
   I am very much interested in the method of education, and found an best answer today. From TOEFL topics and SAT writing topics, I have always have been writing that direct experience is the best way to get the real understanding, from science experiments to moral lectures, though I mechanically wrote it with prepared reasons and examples provided by my academies. It is totally true that it is better to see a thing one time than to hear about it hundred times. I only watched the very small part of the film, but I have learned a lot. The background is very peaceful, not provocative, and gives viewers a hand to get the lesson from the clip easily. I am looking forward to watch the rest of the movie.

I add a peaceful music that I really like : Utada Hikaru's First Love(Instrumental)