Tired_Old_Man

We can be quite serious at times, but we remain civil. We have discussed topics in this "LBT Rant and Raves" section that at most other forums would wind up with a locked thread in no time flat. There have been problems here and some members have had to be booted, but the moderators do a splendid job of keeping things mellow and yet letting us air things out. At many forums, if a moderator locks out a thread that is very heated, someone will immediately start another thread where that first left off. We take turns agreeing with each other and fighting tooth and nail with each other. One thing I like is that I could be agreeing almost word for word with "member A" in one thread, and arguing with "member A" in another at the same time. No cliques. That is an important thing, a very important thing.

I have to admit that I lie to Tina about our money. She is afraid of going broke, but money in bank accounts barely gets more interest than inflation eats away, and by the time you pay tax on the interest, you break even for the year. I have it set up so that my accounts are joint, and her accounts are hers. I did it that way so that she would feel confident that she had something, no matter how badly I screwed up. She is afraid to make monetary decisions, so I always used to make them by myself and she would get angry, so now I say, "Do you think I should buy 500 shares of Verizon or 600 of GM?" She asks a few questions and then says, "Do what you think is best." We have a successful marriage, because we each found out what we do best and we do it without interference from the other, but we discuss it and there is no topic that is taboo. Oh, my lies: I don't mention to her when the market takes a big dip like it did a few weeks ago or when it has a big day like today. Panic selling and manic buying are the best ways to lose your shirt IMHO.

Is that why my post count keeps dropping?

Does your Husband Drink this kind of Beer?

I always wanted a portable toilet-mobile with a license plate number of 4U2P.

Ouch, I burned my hand.:help: Being smarter than both the label writers and you guys, I inserted the iron in my body cavity handle first so as not to burn my butt. I forgot about taking it out.:faint:

I had the same thing happen to me yesterday and when we almost collided, I said, "In this country, we keep to the right" which was met by, "Show me were it says that". I don't want to agree with him, but every Wal-Mart in my area, every Auto-Zone in my area and about half the other stores have the exit and entrance doors set up so that you have to keep to the left. And before anyone blames it on immigrants, while this area has its share of immigrants, the retail stores are 90% or more US citizens and at least 80% white Americans. I asked the manager of the closect Auto-Zone to my home why the doors are backwards (keep to the left) and he said that is the way thy designed the building.

Cell Phones and Gasoline pumping

The sign is nice to see, but it is not accurate. Smoking while fueling: Definitely a no-no. Cell phones: They can not cause a fire at a pump. Why should you close the car door? I'll tell you later. About 7 years ago, I drove my company truck to the company gas pumps out past where the airplanes park while waiting to be towed to the terminal gates. As a crew chief, I carried a walkie-talkie and I had my personal cell phone. As I was fueling, my cell phone rang and I was speaking to Tina when the guy (who is supposed to fuel the vehicles) yelled from the control house. Stop talking on that cell phone before you blow the pumps up. At that same time, I heard from my walkie-talkie, “Avionics Crew Chief, you have a Radar problem on flight 609", I answered "copy that, I will be out there as soon as I fuel my truck". The guy came flying out of the control house screaming at me about my cell phone. Ok, here are the facts: #1. Even though very other year, an e-mail goes around warning you of cell phone gasoline fueling fires, it is a myth. #2. The walkie-talkie that I was using puts out 10 to 100 times of the power of the cell phone and therefor would be 10 to 100 times more dangerous than a cell phone. But because no one puts out bogus e-mails about walkie-talkie's blowing up gas pumps, no one worries about them. #3. The cell phones of 7 to 10 years ago and some of today's transmit whether you are talking or not in order to knew where the closest cell tower is, so if they could blow up a gasoline pump, they would whether you were talking or not. #4. Today's cell phones put out even less power than the ones from a few years ago. OK. Now for the answer for why you should close the car door. #1. The gas fumes may get into the car. #2. And most important. If it is a dry (low humidity) day and you get into the car while fueling and slide across the seat, when you get out, there may be a static discharge between you and the car. These static discharges can be thousands of volts and they can blow a car up (and have blown cars up) in the presence of gasoline fumes.

Parents have a right to refuse medical treatment for themselves, but not for their children. In some cultures, you can sell children into slavery or prostitution. In some cultures, you can send a child out to do strenuous manual labor before the child is 10 years old. In some cultures, you can kill the first born if it is a female. In this culture we allow parents a lot of latitude raising their children, but they are not allowed to kill them, sell them, or cause them physical harm by neglect or abuse. That is the rules of the game. Maybe if enough religious activists become congressman, children will someday be allowed to be sacrificed for the beliefs of their parents. God help us!!

Some on this thread have made fun of "stupid labels" on some products including where not to stick the curling iron. Someone else made fun of not taking a curling iron or blow dryer into the shower, but why? I bet very few know why it is dangerous to bring a curling iron or hair dryer into the shower. Saying that it is dangerous is not an answer. Why is it dangerous and are there times when it is not dangerous? My point is not to get into a pissing contest (though I will win because of superior equipment), but to make the point that things today are not easily understood. A few days ago, I pulled up to a BJ's Warehouse gasoline pump, where as member, I get about a 10 cent per gallon discount. Scotch taped to each of the 12 pumps was a hand written note saying "Do not use cell phones while in pump area. It is dangerous". Is it dangerous? Does anybody know why? If you open a computer up, there is a sign on the power supply saying "Do not touch with power on. Electrical shock hazard". Is it an Electrical shock hazard? Do you know why? Everyone can say, that this or that is common sense. Sense is neither common, nor universal, nor always what it seems to be. If I hold a dollar bill at one of the short edges between my index finger and thumb allowing the length of the bill to droop down and then I blow across my fingers where they touch the dollar bill, what will happen to the bill? If you are riding a motor cycle at 50 miles per hour and want to change lanes to the left, which way do you move the handlebars? Most people not know physics, so how are they to understand the consequences of their actions? Regrettably, we need the government or some knowledgeable body to warn us of many hazards. If you think the warnings are stupid, thank God, you have a good education.

No matter what the reason is, McDonald's coffee is still too hot. My wife says she can not eat or drink things as hot as I can (as a point of reference), but when I get a cup of McDonald's coffee (decaf), I very often have to put a few pieces of ice (from the cold drink dispenser) into it, plus the "Half'n'Half".

You say of course they would not have sued, but how would they have gotten the millions needed to care for their children? I am not doubting you and I hope that a community support system would be available to everyone, but the community called the United States of America is no longer there for many people who need help through no fault of their own. I said something similar when the news was interviewing a man who's wife just had 7 healthy babies. The newsman asked the father, "How does it feel to be the father of 7 children all at once?" The father started with, "Before I say anything else, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for making this wondrous event possible..." No. God did not want you to have children. That is why he made either you or your wife incapable of having children. It was medical science that made it possible.

I think abortion is a bad idea, but I think that telling women what to do with their bodies is a lot worse. I also think that allowing the government to dictate to doctors what medical care they can provide to their patients is a bad idea. And I am not talking about quackery.

Life is funny. Today, I didn't feel like preparing my own dinner, and since I had to do some shopping at a store right next to a Chinese restaurant, I decided to eat a combination platter, and since I can only eat about half, I will have my Friday night dinner in a "doggy bag". What makes life funny is, after all this debating about law suits and McDonald's hot coffee, I was sitting there eating/drinking my Won Ton soup and the waitress came out with three soaps for the table in front of me. As she was passing the table, the 10 year old boy (of the party of 5) jumped out of his seat (for no apparent reason) hitting the waitresses hand and sending one of the soups flying, landing on the face and chest (low cut Florida type dress) of the mother. I immediately though to myself, "It's a good thing that it wasn't a cup of McDonald's coffee". No matter how stupid or negligent the child was to jump, there was no damage because the soup was not at an uncivilized temperature. No matter how stupid or negligent the woman was to put the coffee between her legs, there would not have been any (or much) damage if the coffee was at a civilized temperature.

Please do not take this personally, because it is a legitimate question and even if you can not answer it, it may serve the purpose of making people think. Would your son and daughter-in-law have sued if the if the babies had come out deformed and needing millions of dollars in medical care for the rest of their lives?

In a zoo in California, a mother tiger gave birth to a rare set of triplet tiger cubs. Unfortunately, due to complications in the pregnancy, the cubs were born prematurely and due to their tiny size, they died shortly after birth. After recovering from the delivery, the mother tiger suddenly started to decline in health, although physically she was fine. The veterinarians felt that the loss of her litter had caused the tigress to fall into a depression. The doctors decided that if the tigress could surrogate another mother's cubs, perhaps she would improve. After checking with many other zoos across the country, the depressing news was that there were no tiger cubs of the right age to introduce to the mourning mother. The veterinarians decided to try something that had never been tried in a zoo environment. Sometimes a mother of one species will take on the care of a different species. The only orphans that could be found quickly were a litter of weanling pigs. The zoo keepers and vets wrapped the piglets in tiger skin and placed the babies around the mother tiger. Would they become cubs or pork chops?? Take a look. You won't believe your eyes!

Even though we have been on opposite sides in the recent lawsuit debate, I agree with most of your post. There has to be something done to make awards more appropriate and to deal with the fact that doctors are not God and in an emergency, they can not be expected to have the advantage of hind-sight. Capping lawsuit judgments is not the answer, since insurance companies have unlimited resources and can appeal until the legal fees eat up the award (if capped). Doctors who treat someone with all the classical symptoms of a heart attack should be immune from large payouts if waiting for extensive testing would have allowed the patient to die before the test results would have said heart attack or not. The doctor in that case would have had no choice but to treat for the heart attack, even if it turns out to be something else. OB/GYN is probably where the most abuse is. No doctor has the ability to know what only a God would know. There has to be leeway between making a prudent decision that was wrong and making decisions that were not prudent. Maybe what needs to be done is for a group representing plaintiff's lawyers and a group representing insurance lawyers to reach agreement on a group of doctors to be used for testimony at trials to tell the judge and jury whether the doctor made prudent decisions taking all possibilities into account. The expert doctors would have to be smart, but not the kind that are professional second guessers and hopefully the two groups could agree on fair doctors to be on the list. As it stands now, lawyers can always find experts to take their side of the argument, no matter how absurd the argument is.

No one, well at least not I, is excusing Sandy Berger for his stupid dealings with secret information, but the BuSh White House is involved with a littany of secrecy and double-dealings which IMHO is orchestrated, not the screwups of one rouge official; Sandy Berger. And Congress should be treated as an equal arm of the government when trying to root out government wrong doing, no matter which party controls congress and no matter which party the president is from.

NO!! But it sounded good.:faint: Well, yes, I am a Liberal, but a very Sarcastic Liberal.

Side Note: When I was an aircraft mechanic, I worked mostly on aviation electronics (Avionics) and that included (at least for a while) working on the electric coffee makers. During one stretch, I was working the hangar and for a few weeks, I fixed coffee makers in the repair shop. These machines have multiple safeguards including max temperature adjustments. One day, two safeties failed at once in flight, and coffee came gushing out at a cabin attendant hitting her right where the thighs meet. She was carried from the plane on a stretcher and was out of work for almost a year. I was glad that I had not been the one to have fixed that coffee-maker prior to installation.

We are setting a very poor example by being so civil about issues that we strongly disagree about. I feel sorry for the person who started this thread to bait the LBT members into a knock-down drag-out fight.

How do you think the safety guards got on the saws? When I was a child, my uncle was a carpenter and a circular saw cost about two week's pay. Today, even a minimum wage earner can buy a circular saw for less than a day's pay. Carpenters didn't cut their fingers off (usually), but inexperienced people doing DIY projects need protection. About the fines that (I claimed) McDonald's had paid out. I read years ago that department of health inspectors in many local municipalities had fined McDonald's restaurants, but since I can not find the proof to back it up (now), I will leave it with 700 previous burns and $500,000 in Mcdonald's previous payouts as proof that they knew what they were doing and were not going to change. The Wall Street Journal wrote (September 1, 1994), "The testimony of Mr. [Christopher] Appleton, the McDonald's executive, didn't help the company, jurors said later. He testified that McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but hadn't consulted burn experts about it. He also testified that McDonald's had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns, even though most people wouldn't think it possible. Finally, he testified that McDonald's didn't intend to change any of its coffee policies or procedures, saying, 'There are more serious dangers in restaurants.' " (Originally) Liebeck sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonald's refused.

It is amazing how soon they forget. But speaking of forgetting, if you have read the George Orwell classic “1984”, you might remember that the book's main character, Winston Smith worked at the "Ministry of Truth" were it was his job to doctor up the old news stories (on tape) so that the government would appear to always have been correct in the past. Well, the BuSh administration is doing something similar. Instead of doctoring old information, they are hiding it. They have been taking documents from 40, 50 or even 60 years ago and reclassifying them as top secret. I read last year, that a researcher was writing a book and went looking for a government paper that she had read earlier, only to find that this paper "no longer existed". Why should decisions that President Harry Truman made in 1947 (for example) be classified top secret? Something to think about and something to be afraid of.

And without these lawsuits we would have products that explode in our faces and electric saws that cut people's feet and fingers off, and pajamas for infants that burn out of control and thousands of other products that would make our lives a lot less safe. People can always quote a case here and there that sounds absurd, but in the majority of cases, our lives are made better by them.