Are People Really That Stupid?

I’m trying to figure out if this has something to do with too many lawyers with too little to do, or just stupidity in general.

I’m baking a frozen pizza right now. It came inside a cardboard box. Once I took it out of the box, it was sealed inside a heavy plastic wrapper. So far, so good. The cooking instructions were easy to find, and very easy to understand.

But here’s the part I referred to at the beginning: is it truly necessary to put a WARNING LABEL, in big, red letters, telling you to take the plastic wrapper off and throw it away before you bake the pizza?

Are people truly that stupid?

I also bought a pecan roll at the store this weekend. It had a Food Allergy Warning printed on it: This Product May Contain Nuts.

Well, I hope to shout! It’s a pecan roll! It’s supposed to have nuts! Isn’t that why people buy them in the first place? Because they have nuts? If I bought a pecan roll that didn’t have nuts, I think I’d have a the makings of a pretty good truth-in-labeling lawsuit, no?

Please don’t misunderstand me: I realize that a lot of people have food allergies, and I sympathize with them. I have a friend who is allergic to corn. Do you know how hard it is to find a food product today that doesn’t contain corn? Usually in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup? So I understand food allergies.

And I can even understand a warning label—which I’ve seen before—saying "FOOD ALLERGY WARNING: This food is processed on equipment that is also used to process peanuts." Hey, that’s a good warning! There are lots of people who have no problem at all with pecans, walnuts, or any other tree nut, but give them a peanut and they’ll be dead in 5 minutes. So as I said, good warning!

And I’m even willing to stretch a point and admit that, hey, maybe there are people who are allergic to tree nuts but don’t know that a pecan is a tree nut. Now maybe I’m just strange, but if were allergic to nuts, I think I would go out of my way to learn how many nuts there were, just so I could avoid them. I would become a veritable encyclopedia of nuts.

But let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that there are one or two people who (1) are allergic to nuts, and (2) don’t know that a pecan is a nut. It’s possible, I imagine. So let’s say that those people justify a food allergy warning. Then why make the warning say, "This Product May Contain Nuts"? Why not come right out and say, "If you’re allergic to nuts, don’t eat this product. In fact, don’t even buy it in the first place, because—in case you hadn’t noticed—THE WHOLE DAMN THING IS COVERED WITH NUTS!"

Now that’s a warning label that means something, and is pretty easy to understand.

Or am I way off base, and missing something terribly obvious?

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Blogs vs. Web Pages

One of the advantages to a blog over a "regular" web page is the lack of format. Most web sites have a theme that holds them together; while a lot of blogs also tend to follow a central theme, there’s nothing that says they have to. Besides, blogs are so much easier to create and maintain.

Take, for example, this post. I’m using it to complain about the completely fruitless time I spent yesterday afternoon, last evening, and this morning trying to watch a movie on DVD. Were I to chronicle my adventures (or rather, misadventures) on a web page, I’d have to fire up my HTML editor, writer the article ad then add the HTML. But with my blog entry, I just launch Qumana, write what I want, and then post it. Simple. Done.

Would that watching a movie were so simple! I have a small television and combination DVD/VHS player in my bedroom, neither of which I’ve used in about 3 years. In the first place, I don’t have cable or satellite. In the second place, I don’t watch that many movies. And in the third place, on those rare occasions that I do watch a movie, I usually watch it on one of my laptops. And therein lies the problem.

One of my laptops runs Linux, and one runs Windows XP. At one time, the Linux distribution was Ubuntu. But I replaced it a couple of months ago with PCLinuxOS (PCLOS). I haven’t had occasion since then to watch a movie on that system. With Ubuntu, everything worked fine. But I bought a new DVD the other day, and decided to watch it this weekend. When I fired up my Linux system and loaded the DVD, it played the FBI warning screen, the Interpol warning screen, and then the MPAA rating screen. That’s as far as it got.

Okay, I had recently upgraded PCLOS to a beta version, so maybe that was the problem. So I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled the previous version. No go. Same problem. Well, I knew that Ubuntu worked, so I reinstalled it and started to watch the movie. No problem!

Until it got past the intro and into the movie itself, at which point the bottom 1/8th of the screen was jumpy. So I gave up on watching the movie under Linux and switched to my Windows box.

Nero Showtime works well on my system, except that for some reason, whenever the movie gets to a point where the sound track is really loud, the sound skips and drops out momentarily. Thinking it was a Nero issue, I downloaded and reinstalled the original DVD movie player that came with the computer. When I loaded the movie, the player told me I needed to change my screen resolution, something I had never had to do before. At that point, I called it a day and went to bed.

This morning, I’ve been working since 9:30 reloading PCLOS in an unsuccessful attempt to watch my movie. I also re-downloaded and reinstalled the Intervideo DVD player software, again without success. It is now 1:30 in the afternoon. I have a batch of orange-cranberry muffins in the toaster oven. They have another 5 minutes or so to bake, at which point I will take them out of the oven and let them cool.

While they are cooling, I shall brew a fresh pot of tea and then, having drowned my sorrows in tea and a muffin, I shall retire to my boudoir to watch my movie on the television with my DVD player.

Assuming, of course, I can find the remote, which I haven’t seen for several months.

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Back To Work!

Wednesday Morning:

Well, it’s been a fun three weeks, but my vacation is at an end. I found a new job!

I was supposed to start this morning, but yesterday I came down with a horrid cold—cough, sneezing, sore throat, the whole nine yards—so I went in early this morning to let them know what’s happening and give them the option of having me start today and possibly pass my cold on to everybody else, or wait until I’m better. The result of which is I start Monday.

And just in time for the rain to arrive. It’s been an exceptionally dry winter here in Sacramento, but it was raining when I woke up this morning, and the extended forecast is calling for more rain from today until next Wednesday. So it’s just as well I’ve got the extra time to heal.

But it also mean less time for blogging and web pages, and I’ve got a few sites I need to get caught up on. So that’s pretty much all I’ll be doing for the whole weekend.

Thursday Morning:

This is turning out to be a bit more than a “horrid cold.” I don’t think colds normally come with dizzy spells and weakness, do they? I went to the store this morning and when I got home I had to lie down before I was able to bring the groceries in from the car. It’s a great time to be without health insurance!

I guess I’ll go take a nap and see if that helps any. I really need to recover my energy. At least enough to bake the cranberry-orange muffins I’d planned for munching later today!

Tired. Sore. Achy. Exhausted. But happy.

A bunch of us from the Sacramento Hiking Meetup Group hiked the American Canyon Trail yesterday morning, from the trail-head down to the Middle Fork American River at Poverty Bar. No, not that kind of bar! But we would have been happy for bar stools to sit on, if nothing else.

Here’s how the trail is described:

This steep trail has everything needed for a  great day of exploration: rugged mountain canyons, a beautiful stream with waterfalls, a wide variety of plant and animal life, gold rush era history, and panoramic views of the Middle  American River. This is an excellent hike for bird lovers and picture takers – even artists  with drawing pads and paint boxes. Remember  binoculars, camera, sunscreen, water and a lunch to enjoy while you savor the scenery.

Sounds inviting, doesn’t it? But wait! There’s more!

There’s a 1200-foot change in elevation, which isn’t too bad for a 2-1/2 mile hike. But 600 of those feet happen in a 3/4-mile stretch, so it does get steep in a few places.

The obligatory shot of the sign at the trail-head. We decided that the mileage signs leave something to be desired, since on the way back, almost every sign we saw said "Third Gate: 0.9 miles." Finally, the last one said "Third Gate: 0.8 miles." Very discouraging.

But eventually we all made it back safely, even if I was the last one!

And boy, am I ever paying for it this morning! Sore legs like you wouldn’t believe. So it looks like I’ll be heading out later this morning for a walk to loosen up my leg muscles.

But it was worth it, if for no other reason than it let some of us know just how out-of-shape we’ve become since the summer. I was in much better shape when I hiked up to Mirror Lake in Yosemite, and that was only 7 months ago….

 

A very nice place to eat.
We stopped here at Poverty Bar
for lunch, and then headed back afterwards.