"We value all of your ideas equally, so all decisions will be made by randomly drawing employees’ proposals out of a hat."

This one actually has high entertainment value!

The original comparison (lost in the threading somewhere above) was about poverty rate comparisons between countries, not the US census definition (which is more based on an absolute), nor the World Bank international absolute definition (which is more like $1.25/day, which no on in the US really fits without really trying hard) so I was using the definition used in the original comparison. See Poverty in France: "were below the poverty line (which, according to INSEE's criteria, is half of the median income)." INSEE is the French equivalent of the US Census for economic statistics. INSEE has recently moved to a 60% of median income measurement.

The original stats I was responding to also don't take into account in-kind benefits (not income), which makes them even worse.

My post in response to the stats previously cited was that "It's really a dumb way to compare poverty across countries.", so don't expect me to be defending the measurements used. They certainly aren't the ones I'd pick to do an actual comparison.

I realize you may be not in the U.S. and so are speaking out of ignorance based on the false impressions given by some news media, but anyone in the U.S. within 133% of the poverty line we've been discussing is eligible for medicaid, which covers their health care costs, even retroactively.

Also, generally speaking, anyone who can't afford college in the U.S. is eligible for grants which will cover virtually 100% of costs at most public universities. It won't cover more expensive universities (some people take out low interest loans to help cover that), but higher education costs in the U.S. are very much needs based. Basically, they take whatever money you have, then cover the rest.

When I was a kid, 250k was considered a "millionaire". These were the Dr. Evil "One...million...dollars" / Six Million Dollar Man days.

My how things have changed. I need to move to a place with rent control, apparently.

They're typically defining "poverty" as less than 1/2 the median income. It's really a dumb way to compare poverty across countries.

The U.S median income for a household is much higher than in France, thus someone below the "poverty rate" in the Unites States can be much wealthier than someone above the "poverty rate" in France.

In France, even with purchasing power parity, the median household income is (depending on if you use Gallup or OECD numbers) 70-77% of what it is in the United States. Using Gallup numbers, the "poverty line" in the US would be $22K/year vs $16K/year in France. Remember, these number take into account purchasing power parity (PPP), so you can literally buy about the same things in each country.

To put that into perspective for variations within the United States, the median income in Maine or Hawaii is 65% of that of Virginia or Utah (adjusted for cost of living).

According to the OECD, the "poverty rate" in Mexico is about $2250, based on a PPP median income of $4500. By their measurement, a barely "poor" person in the U.S. ($22K) would be considered upper middle class in Mexico. I won't bring up the really poor countries in Africa and elsewhere, but the "poverty rate" they're talking about is virtually valueless across countries for comparison purposes.

Put another way, the median income and thus "poverty rate" of Mississippi is higher than that of France, so I know which country I'd rather live in...

Your interpretation is quaint, and incorrect, at least it didn't mean that until 2008, Columbia v. Heller

there is not a single word about an individual right to a gun for self-defense in the notes from the Constitutional Convention

Nor in the Constitution!

The public's understanding of the 2nd Amendment started to be distorted by the NRA early in the last century. The NRA has been filling the minds of gun owners with an interpretation that was never intended by the Founders for some time, so no one can blame you for your incorrect interpretation when a propaganda machine like the NRA has been bombarding you with selective truths and out-right lies.

Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia.

Wow... THAT is OUT THERE. Of course, you are completely mistaken, and this bold statement of yours is wildly, dangerously inaccurate. Gun regulation is legal, and necessary.

I wonder if it can affect stress. There is some evidence gut bacteria feed stress-inducing whatever back up to the brain via this nerve, and that stress promotes abdominal (inside it) belly fat deposition, as opposed to more distributed body fat deposition, which in turn releases chemicals which cause insulin resistance, which is the main cause of Type II diabetes.

And article authors and site editors follow that religiously.

I was at +50 back when they showed karma, then got body slammed to -20. Never did find out why. I just dug back out of it.

"Some"? WTF??? Absolutely *ALL* the gizelle pundits are worried robots will replace actual cheetahs now.

Isn't that just a workaround for "you can't kill people," by letting them kill themselves? I am as romantic as any nerd about space. I even spearheaded a "Get Off the Planet" campaign in college. At the time, I didn't realize the truth of the matter is, the hard cold reality is, there is no place to go, even if it was economically or physically feasable. The only "space" to rationally escape to is Earth's orbit, where its possible to be resupplied.

But the summary premise ignores the fact that there is still plenty of room, i.e. most of the Earth's hard surface is unihabited, and there is even more liquid surface and subsurface uninhabited, quite a bit more. Currently, a lot of those areas may be unihabitable, but terraforming Earth, irrigating deserts, draining swamps, that sort of thing, is going to be so much easier, so much cheaper, so much quicker, so much more successful than trying to terraform Mars or any moons of Jupiter or Saturn, where sunlight, the ultimate source of all our energy, is deficit and more deficit the further you get from the Sun.

Seriously, this is the worst planet ever, except for all the others.

Thanks. Also, it is rational to do a run-around of dictators and their laws.

Next up on Slashdot: Cool new system detects people hiding from police in attics!

You can try tuning middle A to 480Hz, which is a harmonic of 60Hz... but in practice this does not lower the noise floor when multitracking, and sounds like poop.