We forage for and eat some mushrooms that we know are safe (chanterelles, chicken of the woods, morels, dryads saddle). When my daughter came with us she found a mushroom and asked me if you could eat it. I told her, “yes, but just once”.
The specific California thing is the silly law. But it’s also true that the media want to scare you about everything to up their viewing figures. Even the weather can’t just be factual, it’s all about factoring in windchill and humidity so that temperatures sound more extreme.
Huh, my package of Bic Wite-Out just says
All of which seems reasonable.
Because the warning to use PPE for a common office supply is clearly ludicrous, and so a reasonable person reading that last warning might reasonably (though incorrectly) conclude that therefore all of the other warnings are probably similarly ludicrous.
[minor hijack] I either somehow missed that, despite many years on the Dope, or forgot. In any case, that now ties for first place with my other favorite delightfully pointless fact, which is that Richard Dawkins and Tom Baker (Dr. Who) were friends - Baker was briefly married to Lalla Ward (one of his companions on Dr. Who), who after their divorce married Dawkins. I guess they all got along swimmingly and there were no hard feelings.
The thought of Dawkins and Baker sitting around having a chummy conversation just charms me, somehow - even better, Douglas Adams was part of their coterie. I can’t imagine a group I’d rather sit around having drinks with. [/minor hijack]
I still lean towards the Inklings who actually met regularly at the The Eagle and Child Pub in Oxford. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis & Charles Wilson being the best known.
Ludicrous, unless you have a job that requires regular, borderline continuous, use of the product. In which case, I would be glad to have such a warning.
I don’t dispute that media are generally alarmist as a means of increasing interest and traffic in their stories. However, windchill and humidity are actual useful data that give a better idea to you and me as to how it’s going to feel when we’re outside. If you want weather alarmism, I would point to videos and photos that show the worst 1% to 5% of the area affected by storms or floods or other weather (or earthquakes) as if the entire area looked like that.
I don’t agree. The windchill-adjusted temperature tells you how you are likely to feel if you’re standing on a bare ridgeline fully exposed to the wind, but not if you are in any way sheltered from the full force of the wind. I think the ordinary temperature and the windspeed are a better way to inform you about this. The motivation is not better information, it’s to make the conditions sound more extreme than they really are.
The windspeed is just as misleading as the windchill. Either they tell you the wind you’ll actually experience, in which case the windchill is also accurate, or they’ll tell you the unsheltered wind speed, in which case it’ll be inaccurate if you’re sheltered.
Only in a purely theoretical sense, if we had all the algorithms memorized and could any required math in our heads. In practice, I think we have a good intuitive feel for what a given temperature feels like in calm conditions, and telling you this baseline along with windspeed gives you better information to estimate realistic conditions given your planned route.
I only skimmed the posts so this may have been mentioned. It’s called covering your ass. This is what those that will sue because they lack common sense, or more likely, are looking to get something for nothing, has brought us to.
In some instances there is a requirement to wear rubber gloves at the same time as operating machinery. The problem is that this is simply not always practical. Nothing would be accomplished if operators had to continually put on & remove gloves. Not to mention the fact that wearing gloves while operating equipment is a far greater hazard than the chemical.
The US seems to be the leader in this litigation happy society. Don’t blame the lawyers, they only follow instructions from their clients.
Half the time the greatest danger is while trying to break into the packaging to get at the products, using a variety of razor knives etc.
Direct contact with dihydrogen monoxide kills about 4000 Americans a day. Are you going to pretend that’s OK?
You assume (or else you have direct experience doing that kind of work).
I’m not sure what you mean - I was talking about the information presented in weather forecasts.
This scandalous chemical is not quite that dangerous - I think you mean per year.
How’s this for a cosmic coincidence: I’m reading this thread while listening to Mike’s album Different Drum: The Lost RCA Victor Recordings
Correction fluid smells so bad, I can’t figure out how anyone could whiff it long enough to get high from it. (Ask me how my friends and I figured that out LOL).
We weren’t allowed to have Jarts either, although as kids in the 1970s they looked fun and we wanted them. They were known even then to be very dangerous.
Jarts were great and somehow we survived. Aye we lived dangerously back in the 70s.
The fact that we don’t have all the algorithms memorized is precisely why the windchill is a better piece of information than the temperature and windspeed.
But the problem is that, with the ludicrous warnings added, their asses are now less covered than they would be without them, because it makes people think that the warnings are useless.
In California, something labeled “Proposition” is a ballot measure the voters in this case saw fit to pass, probably due to all the terror-drama in the media (must get those ratings!) about how everything around is horribly dangerous and the entire world is a giant hazard. Media very proudly influences public opinion, which in this case led to the overdramatic overreaction of a law.
Please don’t give the ones who think we should be provided a chemical-free organic sterile personal bubble with air filtration, scientifically controlled diet, etc., all funded by Great God Government, more ideas.