Toys, Popcorn, Condoms, Voice Mail and Nukes

Seemingly unrelated, children’s toys, butter-flavor popcorn, condoms, voice mail and nuclear weapons, are all related by the concept of unintended consequences.  Not everything in our world behaves as we expect it to all the time.  This has been ably demonstrated this week.

For instance, we know that lead in paint is a bad thing when the lead is ingested by toddlers who have a tendency to stuff anything in their mouths at any given time.  Kids were found to have elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream from gnawing on window sills and furniture painted with lead paint.  This is why we have laws regarding lead content in toys and why lead paint has been banned in houses for years. 

More correctly we have laws in most of the developed world regarding lead in toys and paint.  In the third, fourth and fifth worlds, the laws may exist, but the kids play with unexploded ordinance, or live on top of a toxic waste dump where inadvertent lead ingestion is the least of their worries.

Mattel is taking their third beating in the last four weeks for selling toys that contain lead, or lead paint, or have small parts that young’uns will eat.  The toys were made offshore, in China where the labour rates are about as cheap as you can get.  Mattel saves a bucket of money having things made in China and this goes straight to their profit. 

The unintended consequences?  Mattel is in a world of pain and will probably have to declare bankruptcy if only to get out from under the class-action lawsuits that are probably lining up right now.  Little Jordan or Alexis is going to be screaming at Mommie and Daddy for the next six weeks for confiscating their favourite toy of the minute.  Psychiatric counseling will increase in 20 to 25 years time as "Mattel Babies" go nuts as adults.

Diacetyl is a naturally occurring chemical that imparts a ‘butter’ flavor but isn’t actually Butter.  For the microwave popcorn fanatics out there, that "Buttery-Flavor" has no butter, but has artificial flavorings that contain diacetyl. 

To make the flavoring, workers are exposed to dusts that contain the chemical.  Some have developed a condition called bronchiolitis obliterans whereby the lungs are clogged with buttery flavoring particles that glom together.  The fix?  A lung transplant is the only route available.  You can eat diacetyl but don’t breathe it.  

This week, ConAgra Foods, the folks behind the Orville Redenbachers and Act II brands said they are phasing out diacetyl in the manufacturing of the "buttery flavor" microwave popcorn over the next year.  Not this week, or by October, but over the next year, as they use up their supply of "buttery flavor" powder.

From the Washington Post, tens of thousands of condoms provided by the District of Columbia to curb HIV/AIDS have been returned to the health department because the condoms are paper-wrapped and would break open if you looked at them sideways.  Therefore they weren’t being used to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS or preventing unwanted pregnancy.  The condoms were bulk ordered from offshore and are apparently not even useful as water bombs. 

According to the DC health department’s fartcatcher, they will hold a "contest for the new versions".  Meanwhile, one would suppose that the Minneapolis Airport Men’s Room would be a better source of condoms that could be used with a reasonable certainty of efficacy.  I don’t want to know what the prize would be from the District of Columbia Health Department Condom Contest.  I can think of about five or six things, but I won’t list them here.

Then there was Sen. Larry Craig leaving a voice mail message on someone’s phone where he says that his ‘intent’ is to resign his seat for pleading guilty to disorderly conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.  It doesn’t mean he’s actually going to resign for trying solicit a knob shine.  The ‘intent’ is Larry’s way of getting around things and he explained it well in his voice mail. 

At least he didn’t say he was checking into rehab for 30 days or was under the influnce of crack that he didn’t buy or share with a male masseuse or House page. 

The unintended consequence is voters becoming so jaundiced and uninvolved that they’ll vote for anyone who isn’t actively gnawing on a severed human leg during a debate.  The further unintended consequence is Ralph Nader could run and might win this time.     

In our final unintended consequences, A B-52 bomber was loaded with older Advanced Cruise Missiles that were to be decommissioned and destroyed.  Not a story, as this happens every day and the aircraft flew from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on August 30th in an uneventful flight.  Except that five real nuclear munitions were loaded in the cruise missile noses that were strapped to the BUFF.

Apparently the ground crew at Barksdale noticed something was amiss when they went to unload the cruise missiles, presumably from the wing pylons.  Fortunately they spotted the warheads before some tech took a cutting torch to them.  Barksdale AFB would be a smoking hole today if they hadn’t. 

Technically, everyone involved in the handling of special munitions has to sign at each stage of movement, storage, transfer, assembly, disassembly, testing, custody and so on.  The weight of paperwork usually matches the weight of the aircraft or the missile.  The whole nuclear munitions system is supposedly set up for Zero Errors, as it should be.

The unintended consequence? There are some folks at Minot who have been and are going to be sleeping face down because a well-shined airforce boot is embedded quite uncomfortably in their rectums.

What do these unintended consequences all have in common?  Stupidity.  Either assuming we’re too stupid to understand, or so stupid to be that gullible or so stupid that we shouldn’t be allowed to breed.

Remember, Stupidity and Hydrogen are two constants in the universe and I’m not sure about Hydrogen