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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So What’s It All About, Anyway?

I used to post my Linux Journal here. I kept it up for a while, then completely forgot about it. Then I got a new toy for Christmas—a Microsoft LifeCam. It’s a nifty gadget, but it doesn’t work under Linux.

I played with the camera for a while, then went online to see what information I might be able to find about it. I found quite a lot, actually. And one of the links Google turned up was Windows Live Writer.

Live Writer is Microsoft’s contribution to offline blogging. Using it, I can create & edit my blog entries to my heart’s content, then upload them to my blog.

Adding pictures is easy. And unlike some other similar tools, LiveWriter uploads the pictures automatically.

Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and many others.

Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API.

In fact, I used LiveWriter to create this entry.

But let’s get back to the camera for a bit. The reason my dad sent it to me is that he lives in Pennsylvania and I live in California. Before we got together in Seattle last September for my daughter’s wedding, we hadn’t seen each other for almost 3 years. That’s too long. So now we can have video chats whenever we like, thanks to its built-in microphone.

 

The LifeCam is, first and foremost, a web cam, designed to work with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger, which is the replacement for Microsoft Instant Messenger. But the camera will also take snapshots, record audio clips, and record video clips (although at 1.3 megapixels, it won’t be replacing my 8-megapixel Canon). Once you’ve snapped a picture, the camera software can upload it to your blog on Windows Live Spaces, or launch your email program in compose mode and attach the picture to the message. All you have to do is address it and send it.

So I’ve got several blogs I’m using to test LiveWriter. There’s this one, obviously, but there’s also the one I have at Windows Live Spaces. I’m also going to play with it on the blog on my web site. That blog is still Not Ready For Prime Time, but I’ll post a link here when it is.

STILL TO COME: How I’ve made peace between Windows and Linux.