Breakfast Links: Failing, Gas & Power
Oh, America. Sometimes you’re so stupid. Take, for instance, the fact that our schools are now arguing that any score less than 50 should be raised to 50. (via) It is so awesome that rather than deciding to improve our educational system by, you know, teaching kids better, they’ve decided that perhaps if they just automatically raised all failing grades, well then, boom, kids are doing better! I mean, why stop at 50? If you raised them all to a 70 then our kids would be doing awesome! Oh wait, someone already tried that: “The Dallas Independent School District has a policy not to allow semester grades below a 50. One principal’s decision to disallow grades below a 70 in certain instances drew protests this spring and was rescinded.” Seriously? The principal was the one pushing for that? Ridiculous. Sigh.
Elsewhere in America we find that some small time gas stations with those old school mechanical gas pumps are running into trouble because their machines are physically unable to charge enough for gas! (via) They needed some kind of patch to let them charge up to $3.99 but as gas seems set to move to $4+ there doesn’t seem to be another patch forthcoming! Man, does that suck. It also is kinda funny that back in the day the gas pump makers didn’t even imagine a need for gas higher than $2.99 - they probably had a good laugh thinking that they were setting the max there. Good time not be driving, these days.
And lastly onto that sexy topic of power strips! This first one’s just a concept but a nice one - it’s a cylindrical power strip where each plug can rotate so it can get get those big power bricks out of the way of other plugs. I mostly like it because it stands up keeping all those wires and bricks off the floor and less dusty and what not. If it was magically stable enough, I’d definitely get a few of those. Too bad they don’t exist. On the other hand check out this awesome travel companion, a mini strip that plugs right into the wall offering 3 sockets and 2 powered usb ports to plug all your iPhones and crap into. I hate getting to a hotel that has that one free socket and having 3 things that need charging - this is a really neat solution. Only problem is that those sockets are awful close - my camera charger would definitely cover at least one of those up. They should have turned it into a squid charger.
