Something to think about during this season:
I like 'em both.
Too true.
I can’t do the stuff acquisition thing so much anymore, and I hope that the tide will–though ever so slowly–turn.
When you live on a boat you don’t have room for stuff.It’s great 
Yes, I’m envious since mostly the stuff I have to contend with was brought in by one of the other 5 people who live here.
Captain blood! I’m sure I met him last week, me heartys 
A quick related story to relay: I bought my son an Elmo toy phone that spoke, sang, played music etc. When I was in the shop there was a woman there bringing the same toy back saying that when she tried it in the shop it sounded fine but when she took it out of the pack it went quiet.
Anyway I tried the phone (one of these push-to-try feature products) and bought it. I got it home, took it out of the pack and lo-and-behold it the volume went down to a barely audible level. I did some investigating and discovered that the phone had a small slot in the back wich matched up with a plastic tab glued into the carton. Within the slot was an electrical contact that was ‘made’ when the plastic was removed (as the toy was taken out of the box). I got the toy to work at full volume by sticking a bit of plastic back in the slot and ‘opening’ the contact.
I knew that consumer goods were designed with a limited life-span but I never guessed that someting would be deliberately designed to fail when you unpacked it. It all goes to what she was saying about stuff being designed to be thrown out as quickly as possible. 
Great presentation. Everyone in the world and especially in the developed world needs to see this. Thanks for posting sbfluter.
You live on a boat?
So far I’ve only listened to the first 5 minutes of this, and the slant is so leftward, I’m falling off my chair.
Not that we shouldn’t be concerned about the environment, but fear-based pseudo-information presentation is not the way to go about creating change.
I stopped it after the “Toxics in – toxics out” shpiel (sp?).
Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that’s not true.
I can take two toxic chemicals and combine them into something completely harmless: Sodium and Chlorine.
Oversimplification leads to misinformation. Not to mention the lack of sources along the way.
(Is this headed for the rubber room?)
The entire presentation is annotated with footnotes.
If you don’t believe our culture is designed for maximum movement of materials through a system – from fell to flush as I’ve heard it described – then please take a look at all the junk at the store and try to guess how much of it will show up in a fine antique store some day in the future. My guess is none.
Warning: It is a PDF.
Oh, and alurker, there may be a chance that the volume is reduced to protect the child’s hearing, but allow parents to hear it while still packaged. You may want to check the packaging for details. Amazon’s comment section has some comments on what you have found with the phone.
Opps!
Buddha wrote
You live on a boat?
We do, its a narrowboat, so stress free you can’t imagine.
A differant view out the kitchen window every morning
If you call this an annotation, or footnote, then I stand corrected:
I don’t disagree. What I find fault with is the dumbing down of information in such a way as to inform by way of fear-mongering. Sadly, the same tactics (note my word choice is intentional - not ‘techniques’) are being used in Global Warming arguments. Not to change the topic of course …
Read those comments thanks I.D.10-t. Mostly comments seem to say that the phone is useless with the volume reduced. The hearing protection is a ruse IMO. It is much quieter than other sound toys even with the tab in. Certainly parents buy it on the basis of the volume in the store. At best it is false advertising. I prefer my ‘designed to fail’ theory. 