Problems displaying a static post on front page in 2.1

I’ve been able to get a page to be static on the front but not a particular post. I tried this on my site ans well as going to the extreme to install WP on an entirelly different server, database etc.

Even with the default 2.1 install, I can’t get the “Hello World” post to be a pull-down in the posts page.

Does this only work with pages and not posts?