Hecho en China
People are irrational. You can see this in the way people judge the terrorist threat level: 9-11 created fear in hearts of men, and we've responded by misgauging relative safety. 3,000 people died in 9-11, but 40,000 people have died in automobile accidents in the United States every year since. Commonplace death just isn't scary.
Recently, the makers of Thomas the Train toys issued a high-profile recall due to the discovery of lead in the paint on very specific models. At the toy store where I work, many customers have come in looking for toys that were not made in China. Some have even wanted toys only made in America. Tough luck for them, because some 90% of American toys are produced in China!
Their irrationality presents itself when they ask for our opinion: should they throw out all of their China-made toys? Their kids' safety is at stake! The answer is of course "no", but we have to do a little song and dance for every customer, noting that many of our manufacturers have issued press releases that their toys are safe, nodding sympathetically to their unfounded concerns, and making non-legally-binding suggestions that the customer probably likely has almost nothing to fear from other toys made in China and of course I'll show you the press releases that we've printed off.
So please, keep things in perspective.
2 comments:
I would comment about terrorism and why we react so, but it'd be too long. Instead, I'll use a reference from "Dante's Peak" If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, then it will jump out immediately. However if you put the frog in at room temperature and slowly heat the water up, the frog will not jump out and will be boiled to death. It's a gradual thing. "So you're saying..." "yeah, we're about to die like frogs.." *pats self on back for good reference.*
You know, I was thinking about that... And for some reason I started thinking about deja vu, and how one time some guy said that deja vu might occur because one eye is transmitting information to your brain slightly faster than the other eye. This information would be processed and stored in short term memory, then when the second eye sends the information it seems like you have seen it before, even though you are seeing it for the first time. (This happens almost instantly, as the delay would not have to be vast for deja vu to occur)
Anyway, so I thought that what if someones left eye literally WAS sending information a split second after the right eye, and the brain automatically makes up for it by slowing down the information received by the right eye. The end result would be the person could and would have "deja vu" very often.
And now one more step. What if the persons left eye was /constantly/ slowing down the information, so much so that it had a noticeable difference from the outside, would the person realize it? Or would their brain automatically adjust the right eye to do the same, and everyone else would think they were just mentally handicapped?
Something to think about(ellipse)
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