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U.S. Gov't Still Fighting the Man Behind Buckyballs; Guess Who's Winning?
usacoder writes with news of Craig Zucker, former CEO of the company behind Buckyballs, the popular neodymium magnet toys that were banned by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in July 2012. Zucker ran a brief campaign to drum up opposition to the government's ban, but it didn't turn out to be enough. Unfortunately for Zucker, the story didn't end there. Despite the magnets being labeled as not for kids, the Commission filed a motion to find him personally liable for the costs of a product recall, estimated at around $57 million.
"Given the fact that Buckyballs have now long been off the market, the attempt to go after Mr. Zucker personally raises the question of retaliation for his public campaign against the commission. Mr. Zucker won't speculate about the commission's motives. 'It's very selective and very aggressive,' he says. ... Mr. Zucker says his treatment at the hands of the commission should alarm fellow entrepreneurs: 'This is the beginning. It starts with this case. If you play out what happens to me, then the next thing you'll have is personal-injury lawyers saying "you conducted the actions of the company, you were the company."'"
If you play out what happens to me, then the next thing you'll have is personal-injury lawyers saying "you conducted the actions of the company, you were the company.
So there is a chance companies will no longer get pathetic fines and be pretty much unaccountable for this misdeeds. Individuals who made decisions within the organization will be held responsible.
Good.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I wish I could buy more.
What's the sense in having laws if you can't apply them selectively and perniciously.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
This doesn't make sense. The larger a company is and the more persons in decision-making roles throughout the org, the *less* likely a company is acting with sufficient imperative to justify piercing the corporate veil.
In reality, you seem to just be saying that Big Companies are Evil. Sorry, that doesn't fly. Limited Liability, and Corporate Personhood generally, are both there for reasons.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Just shut up and take it.. Ask for more. How dare you create a product that could be misused if used inappropriately.
Now, joking aside this is really scary that the government is doing this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about the parents who gave their [now dead] children (read: under 13) the thing be charged with manslaughter, unless giving them other things they shouldn't have which results in death [the list is is quiter long, but includes firearms, cutlery, chemicals, etc.] is also okey-dokey.
Corporate personhood is *not* a good thing, no matter what you corporate sycophants think. Elevating a corporation to the same level in the law as an individual is a recipe for abuse, and it's rife in the USA.
Corporations should have a set of *limited* and *enumerated* rights that are secondary to individuals, not personhood.
And, yes, there is a reason corporate personhood exists... it's because robber barons in the 1800s wanted that way. Corporate rights aren't sent to us by God.
As long as were piercing the corporate veil, shouldn't we go after the CEO's that have cost the US taxpayers billions of dollars first? Or are government rules and regulations, and punitive actions only applicable for the little guy?
1. The product was not defective.
2. No harm was done that I have read.
3. No, the banks were not prosecuted, which makes this even more egregious.
4. He didn't make a mistake.
This is the out of control Feds doing what they do best, punish people who are creative and trying to get ahead. It is about control.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The shot-callers at the banks who are causing all this harm are wildly rich. Same with the oil companies. And of course that matters because everyone in government service wants a piece of that pie, and the way they get it is by allowing the harm to continue unabated.
We can pontificate about how government should serve the greater good all we want, and the saying of these words will not have the slightest impact on the actual incentives that governors face, nor on the mechanisms by which selfish bastards rise to power. Musing about how things should be will not make anything become that way.
So, asking the government to do things will never yield the desired result. Force is the only language these sociopaths understand. Unless sufficiently-large numbers of people wise up to how government actually works, we will never be able to mount that force.
In that regard, Snowden has done more good than all slashdot users combined, over slashdot's entire history.
Citizen's United didn't create the concept of corporations as people. That has been a longstanding principle carried over from common law. Note also that companies are not the same as corporations and the former does not have the privileges of personhood.
The company in question is Maxfield & Oberton Holdings LLC. The limited liability aspect should be enough to protect the owners from a rapacious civil servant but clearly some people are more interested in furthering their careers with safety-nazi crusades than properly observing the law.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Do not stick out.
If it was me and I had my life's work taken from me, and now being forced into bankruptcy and poverty, I'd hold the CPSC leaders responsible.
A government without fear of the people is not a republic. Time to put the fear back into them.
Buckyballs were labeled as for adults and not for kids before the commission came after him. However, because they are so similar to a "toy" it was labeled as a concern by the government. In my opinion, this action removes personal responsibility from the parents (the product was clearly labeled), and there should have been no actions against Buckyballs as long as they were properly labeled. There are many other products out there that are far more dangerous which look like toys which do not have these concerns.
Further, it begs the question:
Is it the norm for similar cases where the owner/company simply went out of business (without doing a recall) on an unsafe product, for the owners to be held liable for the cost of a potential recall after the fact?
If he is held personally liable, but a large number of other cases had companies which went out of business and the owners were not held liable - it seems likely there was some type of bias on his case.
One last item:
Protection from personal liability when you are a shareholder/officer of a corporation isn't absolute (you can still be held legally personally liable in certain cases.) Certain people here advise they don't like this fact, as they feel people should be personally liable. However, to be frank - fewer people would take risks if they faced personal ruin due to a lawsuit. A better option would be to revoke a company's incorporation status and in repeat offenses remove the ability for people to be part of another corporation perhaps. This would have the positives, without the negatives.
What conspiracy theory?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Who did his products hurt? According to the article, not one person. And he folded his company like they wanted.
What more should he have done?
ROTFLMA. The servers at www.cpsc.gov are broke:
Server Error in '/' Application. Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine. Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off". Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Corporate personhood, entrepreneurship, big business vs. small, selective enforcement, none of those are the issue here. The issue is that corporations exist specifically to protect the personal assets of the individuals behind them. Otherwise no one would invest in anything, since that would expose all their worldly goods to liabilities incurred by the company, instead of just the amount they invested. (Lloyd’s of London is a notable exception; investors pledge all their personal assets. But that’s a special case.)
Now, criminal wrongdoing is a different matter. Obviously you don’t get to form an LLC to rob banks and then enjoy immunity. But that’s not what’s happening here.
So they find that he sold a defective product (given that the judge and the persecuting agency are one and the same, that's a foregone conclusion), they find him personally liable, they take everything he owns and everything he'll make in the future... maybe he should hold the administrative judge and the particular CPSC bureaucrats involved personally responsible.
Or maybe in this case a little personal responsibility? Like if you're a teen don't put them in your mouth to try and look cool? Decorate a wedding CAKE with them? Why would you put something that had warning labels all over it about ingestion IN or ON a piece of FOOD? I have purchased these, I own a bunch of them - I like magnets. I don't give them to children to play with because I'm not a moron and I've never placed them in my mouth - they aren't food. Lots of things are magnetic and we see them every day, why are these somehow special and in need of a product ban? Lawn darts these aren't and frankly even those were something I and others played with responsibly as CHILDREN without hurting anyone.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
He should have just marketed a real gun for kids. He'd probably still be in business, and some court would probably have ruled that neither he or his company could be sued for damages resulting from the use of his product. Perhaps his next venture should be buckyguns.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Isn't this the reason for LLC (limited liability company) and incorporating? So only the company can be sued and the companies assets are all you can go after; and not the private property of the owner and it's officers & employees?
I could be wrong, but wasn't this a company and not some guy selling these things out of his garage.
Originally the idea of corporations as people was NOT a privilege. It was a liability in that it made corporations subject to legal action.
If they were not people they weren't subject to legal action in court, you could not sue them and you certainly could not regulate them or hold them to a contract.
Now of course it's been taken too far and corporate people have become bestowed with more and more attributes of personhood as time goes on. Citizen's United is the most famous recent aspect of this.
If he wins his case will the individuals at the Consumer Product Safety Commission be personally liable to pay his costs & the Commission's legal bill ? After all: they were the ones who made the decision to engage in reckless litigation!
No: I thought not.
You can't mess with the 2nd amendment but I wonder how long gun manufacturers would last if the CEOs of all companies which sell products in the United States which could possibly injure someone are held liable.
Oh what guns are ok but Buckeyballs are not because a child swallowed one? What if a child swallowed some ammo? That contains lead!
Oh the hypocrisy.
Some day you will curse the world you live in for giving the finger to Darwin and natural selection. Some day you'll realize that parenting skills are somewhat hereditary, and those that let kids eat magnets are to blame, not the magnets. If your ancient ancestors could have legally blame shifted as you do, you'd have gone extinct long ago.
I even read (or heard on the radio) some expert claiming that shareholders did not "own" companies, because companies were persons and laws against slavery prevent people owning other people. Yes, really! His argument was that shareholders only owned an entitlement to some share of future profits. Nothing more.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Corporations are made up of people. Reducing the rights of a corporation reduces the rights of the people who belong to one.
Please explain why the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" shouldn't apply in this case.
2. No harm was done that I have read.
The article mentions that in one case, someone ate a ball that was used for decorating a wedding cake. In another case, a toddler ate one that was stuck to a refrigerator. No one has died from these.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Most infuriating was the commission's argument that a total recall was justified because Buckyballs have "low utility to consumers" and "are not necessary to consumers."
Quite a LOT of stuff is sold that is low utility to consumers, and not necessary. Should something, bought by consenting adults, for adults, be recalled because it might pose a danger, and is "low utility?"
Go figure. http://zenmagnets.com/
I want all of the power and none of the responsibility.
They beat stress-balls over and over when you need a coding break.
All I can say is: only in America can they ban a magnet but argue against even the most basic control over a gun...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
http://www.theneocube.com/
Booooooo :(
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mr. Zucker says his treatment at the hands of the commission should alarm fellow entrepreneurs: 'This is the beginning. It starts with this case. If you play out what happens to me [...]
Without reference to the merits of the case, this sounds like a classic case of narcissistic paranoia.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You do realize that the CPSC is an independent agency of the US government, right?
That's the most retarded thing I've read in my life! Just how how does reducing the rights of a corporation affect the rights of any individual involved?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Despite candy cigarettes resembling / modeling the real thing, we still allow kids to buy them and ingest them.
It shouldn't be anyone's fault but the purchaser / user if a product is properly labeled as to what it is and isn't, and yet it's misused anyway.
So some exceedingly small risk that also required several people to be stupid. No need for any action or any responsibility on the manufacturers side. Injuries from these things basically do not happen, as basically the guy with the cake tripping over his feet and killing himself or the toddler being killed by the fridge tipping over would have been a lot more likely. (Yes, both are so unlikely that they basically never happen. But there have been isolated cases.) Yet are there any calls to ban feet or fridges? No.
The level of stupidity and ignorance with respect to risk-management displayed in this whole affair is staggering.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm sure that this is non-sequitur, but I can't help it: The first thing that came to mind is: What about the banks?
I can't really see why the actions taken by this person's company are illegal or even immoral. At worse, it appears they may have misjudged (but even that assertion is only made with the full benefit of hindsight).
In the case of the banks, they knew what they were doing was against established business practices, was immoral, and was illegal in many respects. Further, they knew this to be clearly the case at the time!
So, I can't help asking again: What about the banks?????
No fine, however large will "hurt" a corporation. Even bankruptcy and dissolution will not hurt the corporation. In the worst case, those affected are most likely to be small stockholders and line workers without the benefit of golden parachutes.
If the CEOs and board members were given fines and jail, THAT would send a message.
Cheers,
Bruce.
Bruce A. Knack
Silicon Surfers
A investigation targeting a person in retaliation to its speech? That looks like what happens in third word countries with corrupted administrations. Although in that situation, bribery is usually the way to settle, and I am not convinced it could help here.
The purpose of the limited-liability corporation is that corporate liabilities stop with the company's assets and do not follow into the pockets of the owners.
Certain insurance companies (Lloyds of London) do not have limited liabilities because the owners back the policies with their huge fortunes, giving you assurance the company has the funds to pay out if necessary. Some spectacular tanker and space shot losses about 10 years ago got them into trouble as some people had to sell their estates to make good.
Unless this guy was involved in some massive fraud, this isn't supposed to happen.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The product was not defective.
Many toys over the years with powerful magnets have been banned because, if swallowed, they can connect with each other in the intestine, cause blockages, tissue death, and ultimately kill the person. This is well-documented and people have died in the past. It's not a fictional or abstract problem. While buckyballs were marketed as an "adults-only toy", the fact is that many of them were in turn given to children, and the recall was voluntary -- based on evidence supporting this statement.
No harm was done that I have read.
So people have to die or be hurt before we take action? That is a morally questionable stance, at best.
No, the banks were not prosecuted, which makes this even more egregious.
It is no more or less ethical or moral that they were, or were not prosecuted. Prosecution is what comes after harm has occurred, not before, and not to prevent. Therefore, it is exactly as egregious as it would be if it were prosecuted, compared to if it were not.
He didn't make a mistake.
When you play chess, you either win, or you lose. If you lose, it's because you made a mistake. This isn't about whether he played the game well or not. This isn't about his own morals or ethics. He lost. Maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe he's in the right and the government is wrong. But he did lose.
Mistakes are not a cause for success or failure. They are not judgements of a person's character. Acknowledging them only means the acknowledgement that the intended result was not achieved. Thomas Edison made hundreds of mistakes before he created the first lightbulb. Failure is instructive. And progress is invariably filled with failure; But if we gave up after the first one, we would never accomplish very much at all.
I'm sorry that you don't understand this; Given the fact that so many cowards marked my post as 'overrated' because they disagreed with this, instead of admitting that my position was solid and defensible it seems a great many people don't. But I can't blame you, anymore than I blame them -- our society puts such pressure on people to succeed that the acknowledgment of a mistake, of a failure, is a cultural taboo.
The question this man needs to ask is... what did he learn? Going up against the government and losing is nothing to be ashamed of. Many of our greatest civil rights leaders have done so. If he's choosing to make a stand on business ethics, he should make it count for something more than simply crying foul that he didn't get the success he feel he's owed. His reaction suggests he has learned nothing from the experience, and thus, is a bad businessman. When he has figured out how to use this experience to make a meaningful contribution to his next business venture, then he will be marketable again. But right now, I wouldn't trust anything he says, or give him any of my money, because he has yet to learn a lesson from his failure.
This is the out of control Feds doing what they do best, punish people who are creative and trying to get ahead. It is about control.
Perhaps. But how many times have we, as hackers, geeks, and engineers, told someone who said something was impossible to get out of the way and let us have a crack at it? The government is simply another system to understand, program, adapt to, and eventually overcome. When you say "the government had it in for me!" -- whether it is true or not, you are letting them win. You are beaten. You have given in to despair and helplessness.
So yes, it is about control... but if you're unwilling to take responsibility for yourself, if you're unwilling to captain your own ship, it's a rather empty thing to say government control is wrong; It is better than what you are doing for yourself.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What he needs to do is counter sue the dumb ass parents that gave the things to their children for loss of $ related to their failure to heed warnings on the package and the government for failing to educate parents to read warnings on the label. After all it's the government that runs the public schools...
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
When you play chess, you either win, or you lose.
You can also draw.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
Like these? http://www.amazon.com/216-Neodymium-5mm-Sphere-Magnets/dp/B00EI846PK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378002899&sr=8-1&keywords=sphere+magnets
You can also draw.
True, but I don't think that makes my conclusion any less valid.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Sounds like there are at least $10 trillion we should be looking at some bankers for.
Why aren't they banned too?
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/Kylie-Rose-Ricards-220881061.html
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Or maybe in this case a little personal responsibility? Like if you're a teen don't put them in your mouth to try and look cool? Decorate a wedding CAKE with them? Why would you put something that had warning labels all over it about ingestion IN or ON a piece of FOOD?
"Well if you put a warning label on it that makes it okay!" logic falls short in some cases. Like if I were to put bleach into colorful containers with pictures of clowns and unicorns on them and then on the bottom print "Warning: Keep out of reach of children." ... Tell me, how many people would say my new brand of Spongebob Bleach With Unicorns and Rainbows packaging isn't asking for trouble?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You can't just make stupid claims without any evidence, sense or logic. Show your work please. How did he harm every US taxpayer 50 cents?
Keep yer training wheels on girlie. You got a long way to go.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
how darwinian of you :)
let's stop stupid people from pissing in the gene pool by giving everyone buckyballs!
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I wonder how many people ate pieces of plastic decorating a wedding cake, and pieces of plastic stuck to the refrigerator.
Did we ban them?
Anyway, I'll make a mental note that if I ever release a physical consumer product, I'll make sure to add a warning against putting it on a wedding cake.
Don't quote me on this.
The major problem with magnets is when you eat two of them, they stick to each other through folds of the intestines. It would be quite hilarious actually, if it weren't so painful.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Corporate personhood is *not* a good thing, no matter what you corporate sycophants think. Elevating a corporation to the same level in the law as an individual is a recipe for abuse, and it's rife in the USA.
Corporations should have a set of *limited* and *enumerated* rights that are secondary to individuals, not personhood.
And, yes, there is a reason corporate personhood exists... it's because robber barons in the 1800s wanted that way. Corporate rights aren't sent to us by God.
I read somewhere that if corporations were not persons, then they could not be sued. IANAL but I think I see the logic. Can the defendant or plaintiff in a lawsuit be anything other than "a person?" Albeit an abstract person.
Be careful before you retort with "sure, why not?" We could end up sinking the courts with infinite suits pitting machines against machines. My PC wants to sue your iPad.
No doubt some Slashdotter will contradict me, but I'll say that all laws apply only to "people." Only "people" can own anything. How could it ever be different?
What is wrong with "you conducted the actions of the company, you were the company."
You have no idea how many corporation CEO's and boot licks I would love to apply that to.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This makes the owners of gun companies libel. About time.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Sounds like McDonalds was doing it right. I guess the woman that burned herself was unfit to experience coffee. Are you?
Abstract:
Hot beverages such as tea, hot chocolate, and coffee are frequently served at temperatures between 160 degrees F (71.1 degrees C) and 185 degrees F (85 degrees C). Brief exposures to liquids in this temperature range can cause significant scald burns. However, hot beverages must be served at a temperature that is high enough to provide a satisfactory sensation to the consumer.
This paper presents an analysis to quantify hot beverage temperatures that balance limiting the potential scald burn hazard and maintaining an acceptable perception of adequate product warmth...
Recent data from the literature defines the consumer preferred drinking temperature of coffee. A metric accommodates the thermal effects of both scald hazard and product taste to identify an optimal recommended serving temperature. The burn model shows the standard exponential dependence of injury level on temperature.
The preferred drinking temperature of coffee is specified in the literature as 140+/-15 degrees F (60+/-8.3 degrees C) for a population of 300 subjects.
A linear (with respect to temperature) figure of merit merged the two effects to identify an optimal drinking temperature of approximately 136 degrees F (57.8 degrees C). The analysis points to a reduction in the presently recommended serving temperature of coffee to achieve the combined result of reducing the scald burn hazard and improving customer satisfaction.
Calculating the optimum temperature for serving hot beverages.
Burns, The Journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries, August 2008
Hmmm....how about fascism?
Wow, here I am being that old guy, but I have to say it: These kids nowadays are a bunch of pussies.
Somehow, as a child, I survived chemistry sets, dissecting kits, a lead melting kit (with cowboy molds and, likely, lead paint), a wood-burning iron, my uncle's cigars and every other adult's cigarettes, all sorts of now illegal fireworks and amateur bomb-making, and a go-cart. Most of those while my age was in the single digits. Not to mention that we somehow managed to cross the street after school without the state forcing traffic to slow to a crawl, (and we did walk to school). When I was in high school, we had "open" lunch, and two smoke breaks. Can you imagine that kind of freedom given to teenagers today? I won't even mention arranged "play dates" - ugh.
And we see what kind of allergy prone, germ- and tobacco-phobic, conservative hipster wanna-be, unrebellious young adults that have resulted, and the conservative era they've bequeathed us all. At this point, you can see why parents would prefer that the state decide for them that their children cannot play with magnets.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
The constitution in no way says what the government can do, since there are ammendments along with something called interstate commerce.
Research.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Everyone in America (except those in Guantanamo) can ultimately have their day in court when accused by the Government. The dirty little secret is that the Government can utterly destroy you without doing so.
This is the US American disease called "sue-itis". Can happen in Europe ( think of the French guy who is being held responsible & put on trial for his company having sold noxious breast implantates to thousands of women ), but rarely.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
How in their right mind could ANYONE say this is good? If this precedent is set, who do you think they;'ll go after next? That's right, the average working stiff collecting a paycheck at some company he has no involvement with policywise. Work at an auito plant? maybe install the car door locks? better get insurance.. if "somebody has an accident and the door opened" it's YOU they'll go after for mega millions, buddy.. No more beer money for you...
Incidentally, I think those buckyballs ARE dangerous, because too many of the people that buy them are careless slobs and leave them around their toddlers..
is comprised of individuals that make bad decisions, and are not always motivated with the public's best interests in mind, sometimes are incompetent, sometimes just plain evil.
With a corporation, at least you get to know THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR DECISIONS.
With the government, people are AOK to just let it go as "the government did it".
Well, we need to know WHO is responsible within the organization that's made the decisions. They need to be under scrutiny, they need to be held accountable, and their names need to be spoken/reported. THOSE people should NOT have a right to relative anonymity. They work for US, not the other way around, which is the problem with government, and why people get pissed off and want to slash and burn it at every opportunity.
Journalism used to be comprised of people who actually did some investigative reporting. Now all we have is regurgitation, and a lot of unanswered questions, and a dumbed-down public.
You apparently didn't see these packaged with their latest warnings - it was pretty clearly labeled. The person who decorated the cake with these was a complete moron. Adding steel balls - magnetic or not - to food is a recipe for disaster.
Heh, a punny!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Maybe this gang is too young to remember Dan Aykroyd and his SNL skits like: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/irwin-mainway/n8641/
If they ban Buckyballs when are they going to ban Walmart/Kmart/etc selling quart containers of copper BB's for bb guns or tiny pellet's for pellet rifles, or paintballs for that batter, all which are small and any mong kid will swallow as well.
this entire situation is just stupid.
BB's have been sold for decades, I remember buying BB's that came in what looked like quart milk container jugs back in the 70's and 80's and having BB gun fights "war" in the backyard shooting each other with daisy bb guns in the ass. And doing capture the flag type runs in '76-82 with bb guns.
hurt like hell and left little bruises if you didn't wear jeans and long sleeve shirt, but even today you don't see government banning bb's
and hell you don't even have to be over 18 to buy BB's, my son buys BB's all the time and he's 14.
only difference between bb's and buckyballs is buckyballs are magnets... so what, they don't want kids to learn about magnets?
cause they can definitely buy bb's at any age.
The first time I saw that label on a blow dryer I almost lost it, Take the damn labels off, If you’re really that stupid you don't belong in the gene pool. At four years of age I had a "Little Golden Book" (remember those?) featuring Donald Duck shoving a knife into a toaster, receptacle, lamp socket with the lightning bolts, glowing skeleton inside a silhouette, ya know, obvious results, Donald frazzled feathers spread out on his back with whiffs of smoke rising. Well I sure figured out that those were not good things to do and you didn't have to know how to read to get the message. I do not want to sound like a Nazi but our gene pool seriously needs a life guard, natural selection is now inoperative, Medical science with all the miracles and rewards, wonderful as it is has been circumventing Darwin for almost a century now, whats happening to our kids? The ever rising incidence of food allergies, ADHD, birth defects, asthma, neuro developmental disorders,autism. Blame it on pollution, chemistry, modern mass growing & food production these all sound like a good place to place the blame what is always left out, our egos and aspirations to preserve what would have been an unviable life. When I was born a infant to some degree had to prove itself of genetic viability through survival. Now when a life in reality is not viable what do we do... get ego's involved get the lawyers out, "Who's fault is this?" they cry! somebody will pay!!!! It's nobody’s "fault" it's nature way to fix the unrepairable, Nothing is always perfect! but no....It can't be the creator's better merciful choice NO It's got to be somebody's fault! enough Dollars will always make it right!!!! So we have infirm genes which should have been repaired through natural selection running amok, diluting our species ability develop successful genetic material for us to evolve, adapt and survive. Just trying to show 1 possible rational observation, I am a man of spirit and conscience, not an aspiring Nazi, sorry if it ruffles some feathers.
"In Every Life The Time Comes To Grab The Bull By The Tail And Face The Situation" W.C.Fields
Do not know this or you will DIE in there again for ever.
While I agree that the product was not defective, and that banning was out of proportion to the scale of the problem, there was a potential for harm if they were given to children (not that they were marketed in that way). There have been a number of incidents in the past with other magnetic toys.
So I guess this is an unintended consequence that companies are people, from a purely political point of view.
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better