Read that again?

[Trebuchet]

That was odd. I clicked on the link, and it told me that it looked like I was from outside the US, and would I like to make international my default edition?

Typically, they'd be looking at your IP address. Apparently Olympia is a whole 'nother country!

[Gillianren]

And I'm not even at Evergreen anymore.

[Trebuchet]

And I'm not even at Evergreen anymore.

That's probably a whole 'nother universe!

Note to self: See when the Ren Faire is happening this year!

ETA: August 4-5, 11-12, 18-29! It'll have to be the first weekend, I'll be travelling the other two.

[Gillianren]

With luck, it will not be so brutally hot this year.

[Donnie B.]

18-29? That's one long weekend.

[Trebuchet]

18-29? That's one long weekend.

By having 11 day weekends, we stand a chance of one dry day! And it might even give me a chance to learn to type.

[Noclevername]

They say it's down into the frosty 90s next week.

[Extravoice]

Newsweek magazine is chock full of college advertising this week.

An ad for Berkeley (University of California) contained this statement:

While the average GPA of our freshmen is far above 4.0, it's their world view that is head and shoulders above the rest.

Far above 4.0? Perhaps grade inflation is worse than I thought.

[swampyankee]

Newsweek magazine is chock full of college advertising this week.

An ad for Berkeley (University of California) contained this statement:



Far above 4.0? Perhaps grade inflation is worse than I thought.

A lot of high schools post their GPAs on a scale of 0 to 100, so you would expect most to be well over 4.0

[Extravoice]

After a little research, I've found that some schools award 5.0 or even 6.0 for an "A" in an Advanced Placement class.
This doesn't seem consistent, though.

Now, where is that "Back when I went to school" thread?

[DonM435]

Back when I went to school ...

Grad school, actually. I helped process college applications, and learned that at most schools, "A" was 4.0, but at quite a few, the scale was A=5.0, B=4.0, etc. So, this school's 3.25 was good but that school's 3.25 was mediocre. I wrote some software to put these on a common scale and to convert quarter-hours to semester-hours and weight them by subject matter according to the admission's officers' preferences.

(Grade inflation: Once I was reading movie reviews in a fan-published magazine, and noted that a lot of undeniably bad films were getting **** and *** ratings. But I checked the legend box and learned that eight stars was the top rating here. I suspect that the publisher had been rating films since he was 10 years old, and had to create a new top rating every time that something better came along.)

[Fazor]

(Grade inflation: Once I was reading movie reviews in a fan-published magazine, and noted that a lot of undeniably bad films were getting **** and *** ratings. But I checked the legend box and learned that eight stars was the top rating here. I suspect that the publisher had been rating films since he was 10 years old, and had to create a new top rating every time that something better came along.)

Ha! We deal with ratings when we review games (obviously.) For the first 6 months, we flopped between a 1-100 scale, no "score" at all (ie: Just read what we said about it, dangit!), etc. I preferred no score at all, but we eventually settled on a 0-10 by .5 interval scale (for various reasons, including inclusion in review aggregation sites.)

Review "scores" are both extremely difficult, and extremely arbitrary. At least with GPAs there's some rhyme/reason. But yeah, my HS started to get into the "AP earns up to 5.0" thing when I was in school. I'm not sure if Ohio University did (there were no AP classes in my major.)

[Gillianren]

AP is college prep. The goal is to take the AP exam and skip some college classes entirely. (I, to the surprise of probably someone, got a five [the highest possible score] on the AP English exam. I then ended up at a community college, where my advisor had never even heard of AP exams.) However, my high school definitely did the 4.0 scale for everyone; the class ahead of mine, a girl in "normal" classes was our valedictorian.

Rotten Tomatoes ranks out of ten, which I think is just enough. There are people there who write scores out of a hundred in their reviews, and I really want to know how they tell a 76 from a 77.

[DonM435]

If you look at "High School Basketball" or similar stuff in the back of the sports section, you'll see "Class A Final," and assume that these are the best teams competing, right? Nope. there's a Class AA final, a Class AAA final, Class AAAA, and so on up the ladder.

[Jeff Root]

Completely off-topic (what else is new?) ...

Has advanced placement (AP) replaced skipping to a
higher grade, or are those separate things? Is skipping
a grade (or possibly more??) still done?


Maybe not off-topic:

I just noticed that if the tops of the letters are hidden,
as by scrolling to the top of this text input box, the word
"off" looks the same as the word "on".

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[SeanF]

If you look at "High School Basketball" or similar stuff in the back of the sports section, you'll see "Class A Final," and assume that these are the best teams competing, right? Nope. there's a Class AA final, a Class AAA final, Class AAAA, and so on up the ladder.

That's what happens as communities/schools get bigger. You don't want to take the A schools that are still the same size and tell them they have now become B schools, so you take the A schools that got bigger and make them AA schools. Rinse and repeat. ::smile::

[Gillianren]

Has advanced placement (AP) replaced skipping to a higher grade, or are those separate things? Is skipping a grade (or possibly more??) still done?

The two are separate things. Autum Perry (yes, that was how she spelled her first name; yes, it bothered me) in my AP English class was also skipping a grade. My mother wouldn't let me, because she thought I would be poorly socialized.

[DonM435]

That's what happens as communities/schools get bigger. You don't want to take the A schools that are still the same size and tell them they have now become B schools, so you take the A schools that got bigger and make them AA schools. Rinse and repeat. ::smile::

Organized Baseball used to classify the various minor leagues as class A, B, C and D. However, the Chamber of Commerce in East Smudgewick or somewhere objected to calling their town a Class D city, so a change was made some time in the 1950s. The really high levels (Pacific Coast League , etc.) became "Triple-A," the old "A" became "Double-A," and the B, C and D leagues all became "A," which now covered a wide range of skill levels. It sounded better, but you could get cut by a nominally Class A team and end up with the Indianapolis Clowns or selling insurance.

[Fazor]

selling insurance.

What's wrong with selling insurance? (I ask as if I like my job.)

[DonM435]

What's wrong with selling insurance? (I ask as if I like my job.)

Well, it's not like playing for the Yankees, eh?

Maybe the Indians . . . .

[Fazor]

Well, it's not like playing for the Yankees, eh?

Well, except for if you do a good job, everybody just expects it. If you mess up, you're the worst person to ever live.

. . . Oh, and it's common for people to insert the word "Damn" before both job titles. Though I don't think they're referring to a play when they do it to me . . .

[Jim]

... a lot of undeniably bad films were getting **** and *** ratings. ...

Don, Don, Don. You've been a Member long enough to know that masking a "bad word" with asterisks is not ... Wait ... Oh, I see.

Never mind.

(Somehow this seems on topic, considering the thread title.)

[DonM435]

Don, Don, Don. You've been a Member long enough to know that masking a "bad word" with asterisks is not ... Wait ... Oh, I see.

Never mind.

(Somehow this seems on topic, considering the thread title.)

Whoops! Had I realized that, I'd have probably spelt out "four stars" instead ... or used ***1/2 as the maximum.

[DonM435]

Also, if I should ever write "In my opinion, the moderating staff is [asterisk][asterisk][asterisk][asterisk] ... "

...Please put the better interpretation upon it!

[NEOWatcher]

Plane catches on fire before takeoff at Sea-Tac Airport
It had this...

The fire broke out at the auxiliary power unit in the tail end of the plane, which is the back end of the jet engine.

There are only a few airliners where there's an engine at the tail end of the plane (ala 727) and even if it did, it's not "the" engine.
And; even if you ignore that, how do you put an APU in the exhaust of a jet engine?

I have a feeling the reporter (naturally being clueless) mixed up the statement about the fire being in the exhaust of the APU.

[Jens]

I have a feeling the reporter (naturally being clueless) mixed up the statement about the fire being in the exhaust of the APU.

I think it's actually a worse sentence than you suggested, because technically the "which" clause should refer to the noun immediately before the "which," which in this case would be "plane." So I would interpret the sentence as saying that "the plane is the back end of the jet engine."

[Jeff Root]

I'd interpret it as "the tail end of the plane is the back end of
the jet engine."

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[Noclevername]

I think it's actually a worse sentence than you suggested, because technically the "which" clause should refer to the noun immediately before the "which," which in this case would be "plane." So I would interpret the sentence as saying that "the plane is the back end of the jet engine."

"Of the plane" is a descriptive phrase, you could basically treat it as an adjective describing "tail (end)".

[Jens]

There's a problem in the auxiliary power unit? What is it?

It's the back end of the jet engine. But that's not important right now!

[Noclevername]

There's a problem in the auxiliary power unit? What is it?

It's the back end of the jet engine. But that's not important right now!

And don't call me Shirley!