#essay bits

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the small animal on the roadside opens its mouth wide, saying anything, anything, ANYTHING FOR YOU,

flung across the asphalt.

this is a body made of yes. he bends down, not to save, but to

eat.

he is here, a zombie feasting on flesh. the teeth come.

he eats and eats

and is never satisfied.

the way the animal loses blood, permits it all, still insisting we are in love, warming [it]self on the idea of being chosen with [its] whole body.

[i] am real and alive.

it is always one mouth and one being eaten

ugly in the body and uglier in the knowing.

: does it feel ugly or do you feel ugly?

[i don't] know, [i don't] know.

[i am] waiting for [my] body to feel

true,

to feel like [my] own once more.

– G = 1

-

The Gini coefficient, also known as the coefficient of inequality, measures income inequality by quantifying how actual income distribution deviates from perfect income equality. It is calculated by finding twice the integral from 0 to 1 of the line y = x, which would be the income distribution if there was total income equality, subtracted by the Lorenz curve y = L(x), which plots population percentage versus how much of the total income that percentage makes.

For a perfectly egalitarian society, G [the index] should be equal to zero, because the lines y = x and y = L(x) would overlap. This is because everyone has the same income. For example, 40% of the population would make 40% of the total income.

On the other hand, in a totalitarian society, L(x) = 0 for all x values less than 1. G is ultimately equal to 1, as only one person holds all income, creating perfect inequality.

In reference to Asterius: Dante's Inferno

And at the edge, along the shattered chasm,

there lay stretched out the infamy of Crete:

the son conceived in the pretended cow.

When he saw us he bit into his flesh,

gone crazy with the fever of his rage (Alighieri 177).

During Dante and Virgil's encounter with him [the minotaur], he is outsmarted by Virgil's wits and blinded by rage, allowing them both to pass through. Although it is never explicitly stated that the minotaur is intellectually challenged, his status as a "monster" causes Dante to portray him as though he is brainless.

"Pity extends only so far, and isolation and alienation would have been the condition of all those in the Greek world whose ailment was repellent to the whole-bodied" (Garland 156).

Garland, Robert. Disability in Antiquity, edited by Christian Laes, Routledge, 2016, pp. 154-66.