If you want colorful flames, try some metal salts like chromium or potassium.
>> A law against selling non-human face dolls.
>> Another reason to ridicule France
>> How can France claim to be a free society with this silly law
What about the law in Texas which forbids wearing a brown tie with a blue coat? Another reason to ridicule Texas (as if we needed more). How can Texas claim to be a free society with such a silly law? Why didn’t George Bush stay there and spare the world?
Good one! Although I would replace GWB with Tom Delay.
I’d ask where you read this, but I haven’t seen anyone wear a brown tie with a blue coat lately, so it must be true. This will get you a ticket from the fashion police in Houston. Although enforcement is more lax in the rural areas. Not as bad a color scheme as some college footbal teams around this state though.
I think “parking on the dance floor” will get you in trouble down here as well.
Yeah, clearly Road Rash is a high-ranking member of the US government, delivering official policy of the federal Department of Dolls.
Maybe that’s because law enforcement officials wear that particular combination. Wearing that would violate a reasonable law against impersonation a cop.
You see, that’s the thing about those lame-ass silly law sites. They take a resonable law and twist it to make it sound silly.
Haj
I did say the site occasionally backs up its claims.
And yeah, Road Rash, the “after midnight on Sunday is Monday” is why it seems like such a ridiculous law. I haven’t looked it up, so I won’t even try to assert that it’s still on the books (or ever was). Same situation as with the E.T. dolls, really.
I do know that several of the laws listed for Massachusetts and California are factual, if not enforced, but the ones that are easily confirmed tend to be the most reasonable. I don’t see why asking ice cream truck drivers to obtain a licence is a big deal, but there you go.
Even with the question mark, though, that last sentence would still be unnecessarily hostile. So long as we’re in the flame pit… If you want to talk about civil liberties, consider the fact that six states (in '97, at least – including your own Texas) still do not, in theory, allow atheists to hold public office. The laws aren’t really enforced, so far as I know, but the fact that they remain on the books bothers me a lot more than some weird quibble over E.T.
http://archive.aclu.org/news/w053097c.html
Ridicule whom you will, but don’t expect more than an eye-roll from anyone else until you find a reason to do it. Even then, all we’ll be hearing is “Wolf! Wolf!” again.
What a moronic comment. Do you really believe that the bad relations between France and the USA only operates at government level? The bullshit in the OP has already been debunked.
Road Rash, whether your intention was malicious or not, that was a pretty dumb-ass OP.
And I always was bad at flames.
I’m 1/4 French so 3/4 of me is fairly amused but the rest of me is really pissed off! Am I conflicted? You bet!
I’ve been living here for three years and I was still trying to figure out how this worked. ~grins~
The word chosen was “relations.” That usually denotes something formal. In any case, if some person in France thinks that one person’s post on a message board about doll laws means anything about the US in general, then he’s just as dumb as the Americans who think everyone in France burns down McDonald’s while chanting “no blood for oil.”
If you could put aside your francophile histrionics, you would realize that no, it hasn’t been debunked. No one has been able to find a site confirming it or debunking it as of yet.
I haven’t either, but I vaguely remember a similar US law. I can’t find a cite, but there are different import duties for dolls and other toys. Because of this, there has to be a law defining what is or is not a doll. My guess is that the French have something similar (maybe they’re trying to protect local doll makers?) A doll with a non-human head is “illegal” only in the sense that it’s not a “doll”, and it has to be called something else. You could buy an ET doll, but it’s not going to say doll on the box. It will say action figure, figurine, plush toy, or whatever, but not doll.
Good suggestion, A Monkey With a Gun. It prompted me to do some googling.
The first thing I found was actually a Canadian proposal for a law making it an offense to sell a doll (poupée) with the encouragment to have it suffer degrading treatment. The explanation mentions:
This seems to confirm your suspicion.
Then I checked Legifrance, which should contain all French laws. The search function only got me one law, the ‘Arrêté 06 juillet 1995’, listing movie titles, one of which was ‘Maison de poupée’ (Doll house).
Based on this, I do call bullshit, with the proviso that there may be a different regulationt that isn’t law and/or isn’t listed on Legifrance, or that the OP’s source meant a different word (which would however be unlikely given the earlier Canadian quote).
I guess this is the best we can do at the moment, since it is hard to prove something doesn’t exist. Maybe clairobscur, if he drops by, can enlighten us.
I’ve tried as well to find an ET doll on sale in France. Googling is next to impossible since ‘et’ is French for ‘and’. ‘poupée extra-terrestre’ didn’t get me any hits. However, through looking for ‘figurine extra-terrestre’ I got to a French site that sells movie merchandise, including a cute pluche ET doll.
Note that it is not refered to as a doll, figurine or whatever. This page does call an alien ‘doll’ a ‘Figurine Extra terrestre’.
Assuming that this site is operating completely legal, subject to French law, this proves it is not illegal to sell an ET doll in France. It may be illegal to call it a ‘poupée’. But that is not what the OP said. I think we can conclusively call bullshit on this one.
FTR, Googling for “ET doll france” gets lots of web pages, all repeating this inane ‘fact’ without a single reference’. This makes me thankful for the knee-jerk ‘Cite’ reaction here at SDMB
Addendum: the site refers to all ‘action figures’ as ‘figurines’, even when they are human. ‘peluche’ is the word for ‘pluche doll’.
Has anybody figured out why there would be a law against selling “dolls” with non-human faces? I’d assume there would be some kind of purpose behind the law in order for it to have been passed and kept on the books. What would be the point there?
So can we consider this debunked, since Tusculan found us the action figures? Or is it technically still true, since ET “dolls” do not appear to be sold? Sorry, Road Rash, but this isn’t the sort of “fact” I’d come across and use to ridicule, just because it’s so unlikely to be true and not-misleading. . .
Nothing I have posted to this or any thread could possibly be interpreted in that way. If you want histrionics you need look no further than the OP (although to his credit Road Rash has already claimed he didn’t intend it to appear that way).
If you want to search for yourselves, the name of Spielberg’s film is “E.T. l’extra-terrestre” in French. Echoing what Tusculan, has said it does seem that the word for soft toy is peluche rather than poupée.
Having done a little further googling I discovered this site for a soft E.T., this one for a range of toys including human and non-human dolls (listed separately), this one for a range of Babar toys, this list of toys available on e-bay including a French Tin Tin poupée carrying his dog and this one offering various Disney branded characters.
I also found this American Toys’R’Us site for comparison. E.T. is there too of course, but not among the dolls.
If you still feel that a country is not free unless its people use the word “doll” for their cuddly toys then I feel sorry for you. I have no doubt that there are stupid laws gathering dust on the statute books of most countries including France. The Dumb Laws website has some fun with them, but only a fool would approach the claims it makes without a great deal of scepticism.
It’s because of this law that you can no longer get Gerard Depardieu action figures.
I got one of those action figures off of eBay, including his rotating rapid-fire fromage cannon. The detachable nose was gone, though.
It is a dumb ass law for sure, but I don’t think it is a paradox/nonsense law. It means that between 12:00 midnight on Sunday and 12:01 a.m. on Monday it is illegal to sell booze. They have regulated out one minute of the drinking week. The lives they must have saved . . .
American courts have taken up the issue of non-human dolls in the past with some pretty foolish results. They were not, however, trying to restrict the sale - the debate was stirred up by disagreements resulting from the fact that tariff rates are different for “toys” then they are for "dolls:
This resulted in the U.S. Court of International Trade taking up the important legal question “Is Wolverine human?”. They decided that the X-men are not human and therefore are toys instead of dolls. They fucked up. The whole point of the X-men was to send a message of tolerance to kids in regards to differences in other people. Do not fear someone because they are different cause we’re all human. The court has taken a racist position against the X-men and that is some funny shit. Especially since they said Superman is a human doll WHEN HE IS OPENLY KNOWN TO BE AN ALIEN! How stupid can you get? This one has got cites. The Wall Street Journal covered the story, and you can still get the article if you are a member (I’m not or I’d link).
DaLovin’ Dj