Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

Why do so many gas stations have three grades of gas? I've even seen FOUR grade stations. I can understand the mentality behind having a higher grade gas for certain vehicles and situations, but anything between basic and premium seems ludicrous, almost as though it was deliberately supposed to be confusing.

Why are men's and women's bicycles still in different structural styles? I doubt that there are that many women who bike in skirts anymore, and a straight bicycle bar really is stronger structurally, so what's up?

A perpetual scab. Totally unsolvable. Why can't the government just tax the retailers a flat five percent (or whatever) of their total sales, so the retailer can charge flat dollar amounts? Wouldn't it make transactions so much simpler? Even if it has to be tweaked a bit to allow for twenty-five cent intervals to start out with, it'd still save EVERYBODY involved a lot of bother. I've heard two major theorys for the "something bucks and 99 cents" phenomenon. 1. Customers will be fooled that the one cent discount is larger than it really is, perhaps even think that the item really does cost a dollar less. Ludicrous. 2. Having change be required in the operation forces the cashier to open and close the cash drawer for each transaction to get the change, thus removing the option of the cashier simply pocketing the money. Seems a bit odd, as I have a solution to this problem. Scanning the item will generate a receipt. However, if the cash drawer isn't opened and closed within a certain time period, not only will the receipt not print out, a switch could be set up to trigger an alarm. Smart, huh?