Things that annoy me #10736
I have an electric shower. And its fine except...
The temperature dial goes round 360 degrees and is numbered from 1 - 10. So why the hell is it that the only part of the dial that actually works is a 1mm stretch around five & three quarters where the slightest adjustment takes you from freezing cold to boiling hot?
The temperature dial goes round 360 degrees and is numbered from 1 - 10. So why the hell is it that the only part of the dial that actually works is a 1mm stretch around five & three quarters where the slightest adjustment takes you from freezing cold to boiling hot?
posted by Old Man Rich at 3:42 PM
5 Comments:
Dials, by their vert essence, lie to you.
Do not trust the twisty turny things, for they are decievers!
Stick to buttons.
I'm off on The Big Adventure!
See you on the other side!
If they use some variation of the standard potentiometer, they usually come in two varieties. linear and logarithmic.
Linear, means straight, obvioulsy. But a linear potentiometer will be 0 all the way left, 50 in the middle, and 100 all the way right. Logarithmic potentiometers are different, in that they respond to the way humans perceive sound in Db.
A logarithmic potentiometer will be 0 all the way left, but maybe only 35 in the middle. Then all the rest of what happens, happens in the last 3/4's of the turn.
what this has to do with your shower I have no idea.
Rich do you remember the in the good old days when you only went to Grammar School if you passed the exam; the 11+. If you passed, you went to a Grammar School, and you received a good education.
If you failed, you went to a secondary school and your education was not as good.
In many ways, the 11+ was fair and democratic, measuring you only on your native intelligence. The 11+ gave the chance to a bright student from any background to go to a Grammar School and receive a good education.
It mattered not what creed, colour or class you were.
Except, of course, that it did.
While middle class students were trained and prepped for the 11+ for months beforehand, some inner city schools didn’t even both entering their 11 year olds. And girls, whose pass rate was twice that of the boys, were massively discriminated against to ensure that the male/female ratio at Grammar Schools was roughly 50:50.
Middle class voters recognised instinctively that the problem with the 11+ was not that it discriminated, but that it used the wrong criteria to discriminate. Instead of choosing the ‘nice’ kids, like theirs, it chose the smart ones.
These middle class parents could not accept a system whereby working class kids, even smart ones, might receive a better education than their own. The idea that middle class kids were not naturally more gifted and intelligent than working class kids was anathema.
So the Conservative Government, under pressure from these voters, and with collusion from the Labour party, who had their own reasons for hating the 11+, brought in the Comprehensive School system, whereby all students went to the same school (which would then give them a ‘comprehensive’ education).
But, 40 years later, Grammar Schools are still with us. What has happened, to the great relief of the middle class, is that social selection has taken over from academic. Via postcode and interview, Grammar Schools get the middle class kids they always wanted. No more diamonds in the rough, no more council-flat single parents with gifted children. No accent-awkwardness or social embarrassment.
Just pliant mums ‘n dads with 2.4 children, a Labrador and a mortgage.
And the bright working class no longer dream of being scientists; instead they work in call centres. And they don’t become politicians or cultural leaders because they don’t go to Cambridge.
The simple fact is, a bright eighteen year old from one of the local council estates has less chance of going to Oxford or Cambridge than did their grandparents.
But a middle class student has more.
So while there were good reasons for getting rid of grammar schools; the sexism, the stigma of failure, elitism, what we have now is worse. For the majority of young people, ‘little chance’ of a quality education has been replaced with ‘no chance’.
Merit has been replaced with money.
And we’ve been lumbered with a Comprehensive system in which no one fails and no one really succeeds.
Which sucks.
the maker of "dust pans"
yo dustpan man. I have absolutely no idea what that rant had to do with shower dials. But I pretty much believe schools should not be selective. I failed my 11 plus & went to a comp. And got an ok education and had girls in PE knickers, which wouldn't happen at a grammar, and was great. I also think that people achieve a level. Taking the bright kids out of schools lowers the standard for everyone else. If private/selective education was outlawed some bright kids would not do as well. But many of the others would do better. I also strongly believe that the opt out lets the movers & shakers avoid taking any responsibility. If you can pay for a top rate education for your child then you do, and cease to worry. But if your forced to send your child to the local comp then you make sure that the local comp works. Postcodes are a bad way of picking pupils. But no worse than ability.
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