Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Economy (Score 1) 247

You've probably been in a prolonged coma. because the budget deficit problem was solved many years ago. Even when it was a problem, it was a problem because only because a combination of laws and court rulings requiring certain amounts of money to be spent on things while simultaneously forbidding (or making impractical by need for 2/3 public vote etc) most ways to collect revenue to pay for it.

Comment Re:sampling bias (Score 1) 405

Note that an 80% literacy rate is not good at all, since literacy is defined generously and has been over 99% for our lifetimes. I'm sure a 5th grade reading level would be considered literate. Rather than a class full of high school students reading at the 5th grade level, though, it's more likely that a lot of the would-be students weren't in class at all. High school attendance rates in the first half of the 20th century were a lot lower.

Comment Re:sampling bias (Score 1) 405

Most areas didn't get electritcy until after WW2.

70% of USA households had electricity by 1930. (source)

Refrigerators didn't exist you had ice boxes maybe if you were wealthy.

I'm pretty sure most people had an icebox. I can't find exact numbers but: "By 1884, one writer noted that refrigerators [meaning ice boxes] were as common as stoves or sewing machines in all but the poorest tenements. The use of ice in the home was growing to keep food longer and to cool drinks." (source)

Slashdot Top Deals

That does not compute.

Working...