Hazards of modern Life

[Ronald R Shiflet]

List,
	Sorry, but I couldn't resist.  This is in no way related to piano
technology but it is very typical of how we think and what we go through conducting experiments to prove or disprove a theory.  Hope you like it.
Ron Shiflet

FWD>>>>> FW: Hazards of modern life, cont.
Thought you might like this one!


>
> Blading Barbie Sparks On Wheels
>
>                             by Dave Barry
>
>     As executive director of the Bureau of Consumer Alarm, I am always
>on the alert for news stories that involve two key elements:
>
>  1.  Fire
>  2.  Barbie
>
>
>     So I was very interested when alert reader Michael Robinson sent me
>a column titled "Ask Jack Sunn" from the Dec. 13, 1993, issue of the
>Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger. Here's an excerpt from a consumer's
>letter to this column, which I am not making up:
>
>     "Last year, my two daughters received presents of two Rollerblade
>Barbie dolls by Mattel. On March 8, my 8-year-old daughter was playing
>beauty shop with her 4-year-old brother. After spraying him with hair
>spray, the children began to play with the boot to Rollerblade Barbie.
>My little girl innocently ran the skate across her brother's bottom,
>which immediately ignited his clothes."
>
>     The letter adds that "There are no warnings concerning fire on
>these toys ...I feel the need to warn potential buyers of their danger."
>
>     In his response, Jack Sunn says, cryptically, that "Mattel does
>not manufacture Rollerblade Barbie any more." He does not address the
>critical question that the consumer's letter raised in my mind, as I'm
>sure it did yours, namely: Huh?
>
>     I realized that the only way to answer this question was to conduct
>a scientific experiment. As you may recall, last year, in response to a
>news item concerning a kitchen fire in Ohio, I did an experiment proving

>that if you put a Kellogg's strawberry Pop-Tart in a toaster and hold
>the toaster lever down for five minutes and 50 seconds, the Pop-Tart
>will turn into a snack-pastry blowtorch, shooting flames up to 30 inches

>high. Also your toaster will be ruined.
>
>     The problem was that I did not have a Rollerblade Barbie. My son
>happens to be a boy, and we never went through the Barbie phase. We went

>through the Masters of the Universe phase. For two years our household
>was the scene of a fierce, unceasing battle between armies of good and
>evil action figures. They were everywhere. You'd open up the salad
>crisper, and there would be He-Man and Skeletor, striking each other
>with carrots.
>
>     So at the end of a recent column, I printed a note appealing for a
>Rollerblade Barbie. I got two immediately; one from Renee Simmons of
>Clinton, Iowa, and one from Randy Langhenry of Gainesville, Ga., who
>said it belonged to his 6-year-old daughter, Greta. ("It would help me
>if you could get Barbie back to north Georgia before Greta notices she's

>gone," Randy wrote.)
>
>     Rollerblade Barbie is basically a standard Barbie, which is to say,
>she represents the feminine beauty ideal, if your concept of a beautiful

>female is one who is six feet, nine inches tall and weighs 52 pounds (37

>of which are in the bust area) and has a rigidly perky smile and
>eyeballs the size of beer coasters and a one-molecule nose and enough
>hair to clog the Lincoln Tunnel.
>
>     But what makes this Barbie special is that she's wearing two little
>yellow Rollerblade booties, each of which has a wheel similar to the
>kind found in cigarette lighters, so that when you roll Barbie along,
>her booties shoot out sparks. This seems like an alarming thing for
>Rollerblades to do, but Barbie, staring perkily ahead, does not seem to
>notice.
>
>     To ensure high standards of scientific accuracy, I conducted the
>experiment in my driveway. Aside from Rollerblade Barbie, my materials
>consisted of several brands of hair spray and -- this was a painful
>sacrifice -- a set of my veteran underwear (estimated year of purchase:
>1968). I spread the underwear on the driveway, then sprayed it with hair

>spray, then made Rollerblade Barbie skate across it, sparking her
>booties. I found that if you use the right brand of hair spray -- I got
>excellent results with Rave -- Rollerblade Barbie does indeed cause the
>underwear to burst dramatically into flame.
>
>     (While I was doing this, a neighbor walked up, and I just want to
>say that if you think it's easy to explain why you're squatting in your
>driveway, in front of a set of burning underwear, surrounded by hair
>spray bottles, holding a Barbie doll in your hand, then you are
>mistaken.)
>
>     At this point, the only remaining scientific question -- I'm sure
>this has occurred to you -- was: Could Rollerblade Barbie set fire to a
>Kellog's strawberry Pop-Tart? The answer turns out to be yes, but you
>have to be in the act of hair-spraying the Pop-Tart when Barbie
>Rollerblades over it, so you get a blowtorch effect that could very
>easily set fire to Barbie's hair, no to mention your own personal self.
>Plus you get tart filling in the booties.
>
>     So we can see why Mattel ceased manufacturing Rollerblade Barbie.
>I imagine that whichever toy designer dreamed up this exciting concept
>has been transferred to Mattel's coveted Bosnia plant. But what should
>be done about all the Rollerblade Barbies that are already in
>circulation? I believe that the only solution is for all concerned
>consumers to demand that our congress-humans pass a federal law
>requiring that all underwear, snack pastries and other household objects

>carry a prominent label stating:
>
>           "WARNING! DO NOT SPRAY HAIR SPRAY ON THIS OBJECT
>                AND SKATE ROLLERBLADE BARBIE OVER IT!"
>
>     But that is not enough. We also need to appropriate millions of
>dollars for a massive federal effort to undo the damage that has been
>done so far. I'm talking about scraping this crud off my driveway.
>     Also, the taxpayers owe Greta a new Barbie.





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