Trending up:
Continuous Facebook changes:
Facebook seems to to roll out new updates and presentations every week. Among the newest features is their plan for displaying a “timeline” that depicts a user’s most memorable moments (even ones that happened pre-Facebook). Also, Facebook has added a rolling news feed in the upper right hand corner that continuously displays posts from friends. Soon after users discovered the changes, pictures of a smiling Xzibit (from the MTV show “Pimp My Ride”) began popping up on newsfeeds with the words “Yo dawg I herd you like Facebook so we put a Facebook in the upper right of yo Facebook so you can Facebook while u Facebook.” Truer words have never been said, Mr. X to the Z. We can only hope even more rapid changes can come about.
Ways to express your fandom:
The U.S. Postal Service is removing a long-standing rule that prohibited the production of stamps displaying persons who were not already deceased. This means the floodgates have opened for stamps depicting living popular people like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga or, heaven forbid, Charlie Sheen. The U.S. Postal Service has encouraged citizens to get on Twitter and Facebook and suggest five people to commemorate. It’s clearly a desperate appeal to members of the younger generation, most of whom probably don’t even know how “snail mail” works or where to place the stamp on an envelope, let alone the current postage rate. Here’s hoping that the five persons immortalized are of actual meaning and true significance. No better way to stamp your generation as dumb than by selecting halfwits. Although, by the time younger generations evaluate us, it will be so far in the future that stamps will serve no greater purpose than scrapbook decorations.
Giving it the college ‘try’:
Although college enrollment rates have been on the rise for the last decade, the amount of students who actually see it all the way through isn’t moving very much. The findings were released by a nonprofit group Complete College America, and The New York Times attributes the low graduation rates to the problem of acquiring more credits than are required for a degree. Things like low-level classes that don’t count toward a major but qualify a student for upper division courses, stand in the way of completion of a degree. But perhaps it’s the rapid influx of unqualified students being accepted by universities in an effort to increase revenue. The article reports that one in five students pursuing a bachelor’s degree are required to take remedial or developmental courses and they rarely see them all the way through.
Trending down:
Free banking:
Bankrate.com released findings that fewer banks are allowing free checking accounts. It now costs an average monthly fee of $4.37 on non-interest checking accounts and you have to pay a massive fee to get out of it. Luckily though, debit card fees are still rare for the most part. It looks as though currency that isn’t plastic is continuing to lose its worth in America. No, not the international value of the American dollar; the worth of using paper for currency. Barely anyone older than16 carries cash on them as is, and if fees for checks continue to become the norm, or continue to increase, expect to see an even heavier dependence on plastic currency. Debit and credit cards are well on their way to completely dissolving physical paper money.
Sense in public education:
To be fair there hasn’t been much sense in public education in the post-“No Child Left Behind” world we find ourselves in. However, in California, Mississippi and Texas, things are falling even more off the deep end. All three states have enacted “parent trigger” laws that allow parents to enact sweeping changes in their children’s public school if the school is consistently failing — 51 percent of the parents must sign a petition and can cause massive changes in personnel. While any parent can argue that they know what’s best for their child, and they’re mostly right, it doesn’t mean they know a thing about evaluating, hiring or firing staff. Pointing the finger is always so very easy to do. But before you point, consider what you’re doing to contribute to the solution of the problem. If your child isn’t proficient and you’re concerned about their progress, perhaps there’s something you’re not doing at home. Of course students go to school to learn but before they go to school and after they come home, it’s important that their home life be stable and conducive to a healthy learning environment.
A prisoner’s reading options:
An Alabama prisoner, Mark Melvin, was prevented from reading a book that details the imprisonment of African Americans in the South following the conclusion of the Civil War, up until World War II. Melvin was prevented from reading the book, which was sent to him by his attorney, because the prison feared it would incite violence. Melvin, a white man, filed suit against the prison officials and the state commissioner of corrections. Wait a minute, a Southern state is preventing someone from reading a book? No way. It’s not like the Southern states have had some sort of muddled past of preventing people from educating themselves, right? It’s so very odd that a Southern state would stand in the way of someone trying to read a book, not to mention a book about the treatment of black people after they were freed from slavery.
—Daily Wildcat
