8 ms·

OK, that explains produce. Why the War on Kinder Surprise? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise

davidw 12y ago
My Italian friends think it's a bit odd that you can't buy one of those in the US, because they're dangerous for children, but you can let 9 year olds loose with fully automatic weapons, and of course buy all kinds of guns. I can't do much more than shrug: every place has its contradictions. Additionally: I personally hate the damn things. My kids love to get them because of the stupid surprise. Sometimes my daughter just ignores the chocolate completely. It's a bit of marketing akin to the McDonalds Happy Meal with the cheap plastic toy. A far greater injustice in the world is not being able to import prosciuttos and similar cured meats.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  >> but you can let 9 year olds loose with fully automatic weapons, and of course buy all kinds of guns. You really don't know how the US or guns work, do you?
  - davidw 12y ago
    Perhaps "loose" could be debated, but something like this would likely not happen in most European countries: http://www.snopes.com/info/news/uzi.asp http://www.snopes.com/info/news/uzi.asp And this kind of thing is much rarer: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/20/us/fsu-incident/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/20/us/fsu-incident/index.html... I'm from the US and know quite well how things work. I'll also add this link, as I think it's an excellent, and nuanced view that a lot of people elsewhere don't know about or see: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/guns.html http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/gun...
    - moron4hire 12y ago
      It's not likely to happen in the US either, but sometimes unlikely things happen. That shooting instructor died because he was stupid. If he were smarter, he would have known not to give a kid a gun that even adults have difficulty shooting. And a single article of someone doing something stupid does not a picture of an entire culture paint. And US does not have a monopoly on stupidity, or shootings.
      - davidw 12y ago
        Statistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re... > And US does not have a monopoly on stupidity No, it doesn't. That's a universal thing.
        phaemon 12y ago
        That's a very odd table. Did you notice that if you sort by Homicide, nearly all the top 20 are in the Americas?
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        Its only 75 "countries and dependencies" in a world of something like 190 countries (not counting dependencies). I suspect that the weighting toward the Americas isn't that the Americas are more violent, but that the Americas happened to host the countries in the intersection of higher gun homicide rates and sufficient stability to collect and report meaningful statistics.
        moron4hire 12y ago
        Yep, those are all 9 year olds accidentally killing shooting instructors. The neighborhood gun range is the head of a river of blood flowing through our streets. It's an extremely narrow, decontextualized view of the situation. It's far more important to ask why people are violent than with what tool they perpetrate that violence. I would say our issue is not guns, it's our "War on Drugs" and our relative proximity to all of those nearly-failed-states in Central- and South America that rank higher than us in those categories that are the center for production of those drugs, and the cartels that control them.
- gambiting 12y ago
  There are things like this absolutely everywhere. My favourite is that where I come from you can't fill your own LPG gas tank in the car, it has to be done by a "qualified" person(because it's too dangerous to do it yourself!), which means you have to ask someone at the station to do it for you, but when filling any other fuel we have those little locks on the pistol which let you put it in and leave it until the tank is full. In the UK on the other hand it is the exact opposite. You can fill your own LPG tank no problem, but I have not seen any pistols with the locks on them, because "it would be dangerous, what if you leave it in and forget about it??". It's just a matter of interpretation, a thing that is seen as dangerous in one country is completely fine in another.
  - davidw 12y ago
    Yep - the state I'm from in the US, Oregon, has a law that says you can't pump your own gasoline.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Wasn't that law implemented to create more jobs, rather than for safety?
      - jdhzzz 12y ago
        Same for New Jersey. I was informed somewhere along the line that it was originally for safety and never got repealed. Now it seems to have morphed into a jobs "plan".
      - wnevets 12y ago
        IIRC correctly its actually has to do with insurance premiums rather than blanket "safety" reasons.
  - bollix 12y ago
    See also: UK: It's illegal to sell washed eggs US: It's illegal to sell unwashed Eggs Spoiler: In the UK, we keep eggs outside the fridge, and with the natural protection on the eggs (Removed when washed), they tend to keep for weeks. In the US, they tend to keep eggs in the fridge. Also a lot to do with how the chickens are kept. If you're not allowed to wash eggs (UK), it's more likely the chickens will be kept in sanitary, good conditions. OTOH, It's cheaper for the producer to keep chickens in worse conditions, wash the eggs removing the protection and make consumers keep eggs in the fridge!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
raldi 12y ago
Crappy chocolate, crappy toy. Yet somehow, put them together and kids find them irresistible.
lazyant 12y ago
fwii you couldn't take them from Canada into the US until very recently, I read something or the other about now being allowed, don't quote me at the border.

davidw 12y ago

My Italian friends think it's a bit odd that you can't buy one of those in the US, because they're dangerous for children, but you can let 9 year olds loose with fully automatic weapons, and of course buy all kinds of guns. I can't do much more than shrug: every place has its contradictions. Additionally: I personally hate the damn things. My kids love to get them because of the stupid surprise. Sometimes my daughter just ignores the chocolate completely. It's a bit of marketing akin to the McDonalds Happy Meal with the cheap plastic toy. A far greater injustice in the world is not being able to import prosciuttos and similar cured meats.

moron4hire 12y ago
>> but you can let 9 year olds loose with fully automatic weapons, and of course buy all kinds of guns. You really don't know how the US or guns work, do you?
- davidw 12y ago
  Perhaps "loose" could be debated, but something like this would likely not happen in most European countries: http://www.snopes.com/info/news/uzi.asp http://www.snopes.com/info/news/uzi.asp And this kind of thing is much rarer: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/20/us/fsu-incident/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/20/us/fsu-incident/index.html... I'm from the US and know quite well how things work. I'll also add this link, as I think it's an excellent, and nuanced view that a lot of people elsewhere don't know about or see: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/guns.html http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/gun...
  - moron4hire 12y ago
    It's not likely to happen in the US either, but sometimes unlikely things happen. That shooting instructor died because he was stupid. If he were smarter, he would have known not to give a kid a gun that even adults have difficulty shooting. And a single article of someone doing something stupid does not a picture of an entire culture paint. And US does not have a monopoly on stupidity, or shootings.
    - davidw 12y ago
      Statistics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re... > And US does not have a monopoly on stupidity No, it doesn't. That's a universal thing.
      - phaemon 12y ago
        That's a very odd table. Did you notice that if you sort by Homicide, nearly all the top 20 are in the Americas?
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        dragonwriter 12y ago
        Its only 75 "countries and dependencies" in a world of something like 190 countries (not counting dependencies). I suspect that the weighting toward the Americas isn't that the Americas are more violent, but that the Americas happened to host the countries in the intersection of higher gun homicide rates and sufficient stability to collect and report meaningful statistics.
      - moron4hire 12y ago
        Yep, those are all 9 year olds accidentally killing shooting instructors. The neighborhood gun range is the head of a river of blood flowing through our streets. It's an extremely narrow, decontextualized view of the situation. It's far more important to ask why people are violent than with what tool they perpetrate that violence. I would say our issue is not guns, it's our "War on Drugs" and our relative proximity to all of those nearly-failed-states in Central- and South America that rank higher than us in those categories that are the center for production of those drugs, and the cartels that control them.
gambiting 12y ago
There are things like this absolutely everywhere. My favourite is that where I come from you can't fill your own LPG gas tank in the car, it has to be done by a "qualified" person(because it's too dangerous to do it yourself!), which means you have to ask someone at the station to do it for you, but when filling any other fuel we have those little locks on the pistol which let you put it in and leave it until the tank is full. In the UK on the other hand it is the exact opposite. You can fill your own LPG tank no problem, but I have not seen any pistols with the locks on them, because "it would be dangerous, what if you leave it in and forget about it??". It's just a matter of interpretation, a thing that is seen as dangerous in one country is completely fine in another.
- davidw 12y ago
  Yep - the state I'm from in the US, Oregon, has a law that says you can't pump your own gasoline.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Wasn't that law implemented to create more jobs, rather than for safety?
    - jdhzzz 12y ago
      Same for New Jersey. I was informed somewhere along the line that it was originally for safety and never got repealed. Now it seems to have morphed into a jobs "plan".
    - wnevets 12y ago
      IIRC correctly its actually has to do with insurance premiums rather than blanket "safety" reasons.
- bollix 12y ago
  See also: UK: It's illegal to sell washed eggs US: It's illegal to sell unwashed Eggs Spoiler: In the UK, we keep eggs outside the fridge, and with the natural protection on the eggs (Removed when washed), they tend to keep for weeks. In the US, they tend to keep eggs in the fridge. Also a lot to do with how the chickens are kept. If you're not allowed to wash eggs (UK), it's more likely the chickens will be kept in sanitary, good conditions. OTOH, It's cheaper for the producer to keep chickens in worse conditions, wash the eggs removing the protection and make consumers keep eggs in the fridge!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

raldi 12y ago

Crappy chocolate, crappy toy. Yet somehow, put them together and kids find them irresistible.

lazyant 12y ago

fwii you couldn't take them from Canada into the US until very recently, I read something or the other about now being allowed, don't quote me at the border.