Andrew Gilmartin andrewgilmartin

#The Uses of Poverty: The Poor Pay All.

Herbert J. Gans.

Social Policy July/August 1971: pp. 20-24.

Some twenty years ago Robert K. Merton applied the notion of functional analysis to explain the continuing though maligned existence of the urban political machine: if it continued to exist, perhaps it fulfilled latent - unintended or unrecognized - positive functions. Clearly it did. Merton pointed out how the political machine provided central authority to get things done when a decentralized local government could not act, humanized the services of the impersonal bureaucracy for fearful citizens, offered concrete help (rather than abstract law or justice) to the poor, and otherwise performed services needed or demanded by many people but considered unconventional or even illegal by formal public agencies.

Today, poverty is more maligned than the political machine ever was; yet it, too, is a persistent social phenomenon. Consequently, there may be some merit in applying functional analysis to poverty, i

	#!/usr/bin/perl

	print "<table>";
	print "<tr>";
	print "<th></th>";
	for ( $u = 1; $u < 7; $u +=1 ) {
	print "<th>$u</th>";
	}
	print "</tr>";

	#!/bin/bash

	function split() {
	file="$1"
	dir="$2"
	odd="$3"
	even="$4"
	pages=$(/usr/local/bin/pdfinfo "$file" \| perl -ne 'print "$1" if /^Pages:\s+(\d+)/')

	/usr/local/bin/pdfseparate "$file" "$dir/p-%d.pdf"

	#!/usr/bin/perl -w

	use strict;

	my $length_proportion = 5;
	my $width_proportion = 2;
	my $height_proportion = 1;

	for my $volume ( ( 500, 120, 100, 85, 75, 60, 50, 40, 25, 10 ) ) {
	my $n = ( $volume / $length_proportion / $width_proportion / $height_proportion ) ** (1/3);

	javascript:(function(){
	var O = $('<div class="books"/>');
	var S;
	var xs = $("#allHighlightedBooks").children();
	for ( var i = 0; i < xs.length; i++ ) {
	var x = $(xs[i]);
	var c = x.attr("class");
	if ( c.indexOf("bookMain") != -1 ) {
	t = $('.title',x).text();
	a = $('.author',x).text();

	#!/usr/bin/perl -w

	use strict;
	use XML::Writer;
	my $state = 0;

	my $h = new XML::Writer();

	$h->startTag("html");
	$h->startTag("head");

	/**
	* The Observer pattern is used to create a relationship between two objects.
	* The relationship is usually unidirectional with the observer waiting for
	* notices from the observed. The relationships is a loose one as the observed
	* only needs to know of the interest of the observer and the observer only
	* needs to know of the set of and ordering of notice the observed will send. A
	* downside of this looseness is that all notices pass through a single observer
	* method for further dispatching.
	*/
	package com.andrewgilmartin.common.observation;

	<!DOCTYPE html>
	<html>
	<head>
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
	<title>Horizon Chart</title>
	<script type="text/javascript">

	function HorizonChart( canvas, barWidth, barColors ) {
	this.canvas = canvas;
	this.canvasHeight = +canvas.attributes.height.value;

	#!/bin/bash

	# usage: print-text-two-column.sh file1 file2 ...

	for f in "$@"
	do
	o="$(mktemp -q /tmp/$(basename $0).XXXXXX).pdf"
	enscript \
	--header='$n\|\|$%/$=' \
	--word-wrap \


	/**
	* Returns the timestamp parsed from the given ISO 8061 UTC string. Note
	* that all of the following timestamp forms are supported: {@code
	*
	* YYYY := YYYY-01-01T00:00:00.0Z
	* YYYY-MM := YYYY-MM-01T00:00:00.0Z
	* YYYY-MM-DD := YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.0Z
	* YYYY-MM-DD'T'HH := YYYY-MM-DDTHH:00:00.0Z
	* YYYY-MM-DD'T'HH:MM := YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:00.0Z