Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 395 Editor's Choice: 41
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Batteries?
[Read the article: Aqua Dots, date rape drug-filled toy beads, are recalled]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Aquabeads are coated with a substance containing a GHB precursor. The coating is designed to react to water. Your mouth (or the mouth of a child) is filled with a remarkably water like substance. You can compare this to a AA battery when Duracel starts selling acid filled gel caps.
As someone else has already pointed out, this is all a result of the quest for ever cheaper labor and manufacturing costs leading directly to a country with almost no regulatory oversight to speak of and no internal guidance encouraging them to make sure things are safe before they put them in brightly colored packages and selling them for children. Seems like every toy recalled during this epidemic (as well as pet food and other items that are designed to be eaten) comes from China. This is more than just a pattern.
The small items argument is valid, but there have always been toys like this and they have rarely managed to kill anybody. I had a Lite Brite when I was a kid, got it when I was about 6, lots of small pegs in cool colors. My mother actually told me specifically not to eat them, and after experimenting with licking them when she wasn't watching I decided that they didn't taste very good and I'd be better off having them to play with. Which raises the question - if kids are eating relatively large quantities of these things at fairly advanced ages, did these idiots actually make the things taste good?
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I'm glad the DEA is taking this shit seriously
[Read the article: Smoke this!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pun intended :)
If there is a widely available, zero cost alternative to pot, and Zambian kids say it's even better (though one wonders how a kid who lives on the streets and huffs shit could afford any pot to compare it with), maybe we will finally see legalization of the completely safe cannibus. As well as reams of required documentation in triplicate for Authorization to Defecate that we will have to fill out once a day and have approved by various functionaries, billion dollar programs for the safe removal and secure storage of sewage, federalization of all water closets in the US and a TSA guard at every bathroom door (be sure to remove your shoes before taking a dump), and controls on the sale of Ex-Lax much like we have for Advil Cold and Sinus now.
And I will bet my bottom dollar that if no American kid had ever tried this before, one will by the end of the week now that the story is out there. Kids huff butane, and if anything that smells worse than week old shit.
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It's ugly
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But not that ugly. Not as ugly as I thought the first time I saw it, and as Pininfarina said, designs that are instantly attractive rarely last, but those that grow on you are the ones that stand the test of time. Like the 747.
Weight is a factor in both takeoff and landing, as has been pointed out, and as someone who lived through the debacle that was FAA testing of the runways at the then-new Southwest Florida Regional Airport I can tell you that when a news person says that a plane is "too big" for a runway they almost always mean "too heavy".
Size doesn't matter :) I've been spending a lot of time on regional jets lately. The only Miami-Greensboro direct flights are on American Eagle, with those 60 or 70 passenger Brazilian mini-Boeings that are so popular now. Recently I had to fly back out of Charlotte and was very happy to see that I would get to fly on a "real" airliner, a 737-300. Imagine my dismay on discovering that the bigger plane had less room, was noisier, and was far less comfortable overall than the smaller one. Jamming 614 people onto an airpane, no matter how large that plane might be, is bound to be an extremely unpleasant experience for all concerned.
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It's not science
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not ID, though that isn't science either, but the attempt to label it science itself.
The thing they just keep ignoring, and the courts as well which is dangerous, is this: even if evolution is wrong, that doesn't make ID right. It might be option C. Or D. They don't get that, because they aren't scientists.
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Nick is wondering who Harrison Bergeron is, and why he makes Matt think of him
[Read the article: Facebook drops "is" status updates, poetry dies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Totally right about restrictions and structure being requirements for creativity. Good post.
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And for all you passive voice people -
[Read the article: Facebook drops "is" status updates, poetry dies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's a status update.
While your superior knowledge of sentence construction has perhaps made you better writers than I can ever hope to be, it has also apparently moved you into a realm where you no longer have to let anyone know what you are doing. One of the few requirements of the mundane status report is that it tells someone about the current state of whatever is being reported on.
Good examples: My project is under budget. My project is behind schedule because the idiots in accounting refuse to release the funds we have budgeted. Nick is taking a class to learn how to do status reports.
Bad examples: My project wants new underpants. My project likes begonias and penne pasta. Nick wishes he lived in a simpler time where no one expected anything of him.
In summary, for all your apparent skills with language and prose, you guys would be cranking out some truly shitty status reports in the name of art.