Wednesday, August 18, 2010

School Rules

August 18, 2010


According to today’s Idaho Statesman, the State of Idaho will start making students in seventh and eighth grades complete at least 80 percent of their class credits before they are allowed to advance to the next grade.

The rationale is that, if kids know their work counts toward graduation, they won't be as tempted to goof off. (They didn't say this, but if parents knew they'd be stuck with their kids another year, they might be more diligent about seeing that the work gets done as well.)

I didn't realize that, until now, you could flunk courses in middle school and still advance to high school. Yikes!

On the plus side, at least teachers can't be accused of inflating the grades. They give the kids bad grades and the system moves them up anyway.


Suddenly I actually feel a kinship with that guy who writes those hateful “Mallard Fillmore” comics that knock the education system.

And that’s worse than anything.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Seaside Fashion

August 13, 2010

From an actual article on Yahoo today about retiring overseas:

Lara Lennon moved to Belize from Philadelphia in 2006 and developed a luxury swimwear line, Lemon Crush Belize. "Sitting on a friend's porch in San Pedro chatting about this and that in our tropical lives, I realized something: There existed nowhere in Belize a place to shop for dress bathing suits, the kind glamorous enough for a beach wedding or special enough for a honeymoon," Lennon says.

Don't you just love the phrase "dress bathing suits"? I wonder if they have sequins?

Calling Ripley's...

August 16, 2010

Hey, here’s one for the record books (although I don’t know if it’s for Stupidest Excuse or Least Logical Thinking):

Idaho hired some temporary tax auditors to go after delinquent taxes. The state spent about $2 million for them, and the temporary auditors brought in $30 million over and above what the permanent staff did. That’s a 15-1 return on the investment.

This year, however, the government is being cautious about hiring the auditors back because the returns may not be as great. It will re-hire in stages, and the initial auditors will have to bring in at least a 7-1 ratio before the state will hire more.

Math was never my strong suit, but doesn’t bringing in more money mean—well, more money? If they even got a 2-1 return (now, check me here), wouldn’t that be good?

Maybe instead of the Guiness Book of World Records, we should call Ripley's Believe it or Not!

Friday, August 13, 2010

How's that for Acting?

August 13, 2010 Do TV weathermen ever get tired of pretending to be surprised by: A) The January thaw B) The August cooldown C) The warm spell around October 21? They're meteorologists, after all. You'd think they'd notice that these things happen every year. (I also noticed a few years running that the third weekend of April nice, but I haven't tracked it long-term, so I don't know if that's invariable or not.)

Friday, August 6, 2010

At Last--A Funny Commercial!

August 6, 2010

Raise your hand if you think that the new Bud Light commercials are the best things you've heard on the radio in a long, long time.

Mixed Messages

July 31, 2010

Does anybody else think it's weird for a mountain road to have a sign saying, "Speed limit 25--next 14 miles"

And then within a quarter of a mile have a sign for "Slow Vehicle Turnout" ?

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Too Much Info!!!

August 4, 2010

Help! I have a Facebook page, only because I wanted to try to find some people. Now, every time I get on it, I have info from people I've never heard of, commenting on things people I have friended said. I have almost no info on my page that I actually put up. How does this work?

Sign me,

Overwhelmed.