hi everybody i am new. greetings from berlin, germany.
maybe my english is not perfect.
i like it here.

to this topic, that douche really said the biggest "fuck you" into everybody homeless guys face.
of course there is NO COMPARISSON AT ALL to a real homeless guys situation.
it is only zynical and thats it.

its very easy, as far as i understood, he will make money out of his experiment, right? isnt he selling a book or something? did not read the whole article...

and finally, thats really pissing me off, he took the supports (shelter/food etc) a real homeless was supposed to be given for 10 or 6 or whatever months, just for his stupid experiment.

I am going to accept an apparent contradiction here:

1. The fella seems to be a cock

2. He also proved that some homeless people could pull themselves out of their predicament.

Why he needed to prove that is beyond me as there are lots of ex-homeless people who managed to get themselves out of their predicaments. Why do we need a chin with legs to tell us that?

And why is everyone flapping about this?

Can all the people complaining that this rich kid did this just for a book now start laying into George Orwell please.
It's not the experiment that bothers you (it seems to me) it's the conclusion (which I imagine leads from the original intent).

Something good could actually come out of this. The fella could go into shelters etc and advise the homeless on how they could get out of their predicament maybe with some other genuinely ex-homeless folk.
Sure I would expect that isn't going to happen but would it be acceptable to those who think this fellas a cock?

Anyway, this would never happen in Blighty. Anyone with a chin like that would talk 'in a rarther distinctive, porsh manna - I say cood I harv more soup dear?'

What do the naysayers suggest the homeless do, by the way, to get out of their predicament?

C'mon Earwicker...your devil's advocate bullshit is getting tired. I mean, are you really a right-wing creep, or just pretending to be one? Which is it? You are fast becoming the board's most willfully disingenuous posters. You're taking about 5 different positions here. If you're just posting to press people's buttons that's pretty irritating.

And...this guy hasn't exactly written Road to Wigan Pier or Down and Out in Paris and London (or anything). He doesn't deserve comparison to Orwell. Principally, because Orwell approached his subject with seriousness.

The irony is that he ends up confirming the opposite of what he falsely believes, but is too stupid to notice.

More than likely, when he is some head-honcho somewhere, he'll irritate people for years to come with his mythical tale of bootstrapping...a kind of self-fulling parable of his own greatness.

by the way, its not that important, but if anybody is interested,
i realized, southpark is dealing with that issue in their typical ironic way.
go to allsp.com, season 11, episode night of the living homeless.

that guy reminds me to marie antoinette, when she was told that the people were rioting because they were starving and had no bread to eat. when she heard that, she answered “let them eat cake”

another interview with that dick on his book:
seems he has learned at least a little from past arguments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejKHTsjzbRk

Another thing: Homelessness is not some neutral state (or even natural state). To be homeless is to be stigmatised from the outset. It carries with it connotations of criminality, substance abuse and mental illness. These connotations are peculiarly emphasised by rhetoric, such as 'all people are created equal', giving birth to the fallacy that by being poor or homeless you are by inference immoral or wicked. This all reinforced by laws against homelessness and vagrancy; even laws against sleeping! If there was anything that underlined the fact that society is not fit for humans, there it is.

This guy is clearly enacting a choice, one that he can exclusively undertake without personal risk, unlike the majority of homeless people. I can't believe that isn't clearer.

tank wrote:another interview with that dick on his book:
seems he has learned at least a little from past arguments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejKHTsjzbRk

Urgh! Tennis and algebra classes for the homeless? Did I just mishear that?

Let them eat cake.

All Adam Shepard proved is that Adam Shepard could make his was up from $25 and an "emergency" debit card in his back pocket.

These kinds of articles/books scare me because it's just the kind of crap that middle America eats up. It's not accurate. It's phony crap that people too dim to look outside use as a means to justify not giving a shit. "If good ole' Adam Shepard can make his way out than you can too!" Next thing you know, we see some dipshits wearing t-shirts that say "Give a Bum a Hug!" or some such garbage.

Cranius wrote:Another thing: Homelessness is not some neutral state (or even natural state). To be homeless is to be stigmatised from the outset. It carries with it connotations of criminality, substance abuse and mental illness. These connotations are peculiarly emphasised by rhetoric, such as 'all people are created equal', giving birth to the fallacy that by being poor or homeless you are by inference immoral or wicked. This all reinforced by laws against homelessness and vagrancy; even laws against sleeping! If there was anything that underlined the fact that society is not fit for humans, there it is.

This guy is clearly enacting a choice, one that he can exclusively undertake without personal risk, unlike the majority of homeless people. I can't believe that isn't clearer.

I think you're right on with this. I can imagine this douche teaching a class on how to pull yourself out of homelessness to the homeless:
"Okay class, here's how you succeed just like I did. 1) Be white. 2) Go to college. I highly recommend a small northeast liberal arts college, but a large state school isn't bad as a second choice. Either way you should totally join the football team. 3) Don't be mentally ill. 4) Don't do drugs. They are bad. 5) Make sure you have middle-class parents- I can't stress this enough. 6) Don't buy rims for your hoopty. Instead, I recommend investing that money in a midcap no load mutual fund, I totally know a dude, or, at the very least a Roth IRA. The tax advantages of a Roth are obvious, but your is money totally tied up until you're 59.5 years old. 7) Keep a credit card in your back pocket. If you have to use it, then call your experiment off and go home. 7) Get crazy in Cancun. Spring break 2008!

This story would make Horatio Alger blush.

Cranius wrote:C'mon Earwicker...your devil's advocate bullshit is getting tired. I mean, are you really a right-wing creep, or just pretending to be one? Which is it? You are fast becoming the board's most willfully disingenuous posters. You're taking about 5 different positions here. If you're just posting to press people's buttons that's pretty irritating.

I shall respond to each point as best I can.

Firstly, I don't necessarily think the words 'right wing' and 'creep' are permanently bonded.
I find myself falling to the left on some subjects and the right on others. God help me if I ever find myself coming to a conclusion based upon what people from a particular political direction might think of me. On saying that I don't see what is right wing in my post.
I can usually see the many different sides of an argument - hence some finding my stance (or lack of) frustrating.
I'm fine with people finding that frustrating. I can find it so.

What specific answer do you want me to give regarding this subject?
Should people give money to beggars?
People can do what they like but I don't want to and won't - generally speaking.

Cranius wrote:And...this guy hasn't exactly written Road to Wigan Pier or Down and Out in Paris and London (or anything). He doesn't deserve comparison to Orwell. Principally, because Orwell approached his subject with seriousness.

I think the thing that bothers you is this fella approached the subject from a rightist position rather than a leftist one. I've not read what he's written but suspect it's very unlikely he's going to be as good or important a writer as Orwell - that doesn't prevent the comparison. The comparison pops it's head up when a bunch of people go -
*scoff*
'he only did it to right his book!'
*tut*

That's what reporters do all the time, that's how they find out stuff. Criticise him - fine - but pick something better than that to attack him with. His chin for example.

That was my point.

I'd still like to hear what people think should be done about homelessness?