You can't make this stuff up!

Dave Siciliano

Dave Siciliano

Final Approach
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Dave Siciliano
Disclaimers!

Has everyone noticed the new Ford Fusion hybrid commercial where the car flies.
Notice, there is a disclaimer below stating cars don't fly (g).
http://autofixx.com/2012/11/14/2013-ford-fusion-plugin-hybrid-flying-commercial-video/

Pawing through today's entertainment guide, my eyes stuck on the review for Skyfall. Bond was big when I was in HS and Dr. No made a huge impression.
Anyway, the disclaimers in the review follow: intense violent sequences throughout, sexuality, language and smoking.

Wow! Smoking--in a movie--I'm shocked.

With this disclaimer trend going in the manner it is, think what would have to be disclosed for military service during time of war! (As opposed to me volunteering for Special Ops where they couldn't tell me what I'd be doing because it was Top Secret.)

Happy holiday.

Dave
 
Thelma and Louise needed a Ford Fusion. :)
 
Dave Siciliano said:
With this disclaimer trend going in the manner it is, think what would have to be disclosed for military service during time of war! (As opposed to me volunteering for Special Ops where they couldn't tell me what I'd be doing because it was Top Secret.)
Click to expand...

Trend? What trend?

Silly disclaimers have been a fact of life for at least several decades, and I see no evidence whatsoever that it's worse now than in 1980.
 
MAKG1 said:
Trend? What trend?

Silly disclaimers have been a fact of life for at least several decades, and I see no evidence whatsoever that it's worse now than in 1980.
Click to expand...

The disclaimers from big pharma lately have me chuckling. It appears that

1) 2/3's of the airtime is taken up for the disclaimer
2) The drug might fix the main problem, but the potential side effects?? Oy Vey!


(at least the kids got it down. The pastor at church does a 5 minute segment with the kids. And when he asked them about the resurrection, on a 6 year old piped up and said that, "if it lasts more than 4 hours, you need to see a doctor.")
 
Fella on another board said his Son's Batman suit had a disclaimer that the suit didn't allow one to fly!

I don't mind reasonable disclaimers; it's these stupid ones that get me. Yes, half a drug commercial is talk about all the possible side effects at auction barker speed. Many of those side effects seem worse than what's being treated.

I purchased a lap top recently. Don't get a printed operating manual any more, but a multi-page disclaimer in several languages. Wonderful things like it's an electrical devise and be careful plugging it in, one might get a shock.

Best,

Dave
 
Think real hard about the overplayed Honda Accord commercial that's on these days. It lists "Safety Features" that all essentially tie back to "You're a dumbass who shouldn't be on the road with anyone else."

This is what people want. No responsibility. No brainpower required. The cars will brake for you. They'll let you know when you're too stupid-tired to be driving. They'll beep like a maniac when you're about to back into something. They'll even parallel park themselves because that's sooooo hard.

People nowadays want to be stupid. They revel in it.
 
For a sleep aid, there is a warning that it may cause drowsiness... well, DUH!
 
My favorite drug commercial lists one of the potential side affects as a "fatal event". I guess their marketing team would not allow them to use "THIS COULD KILL YA!"
The problem with our world now is that if there isn't a disclaimer covering just about everything ("CAUTION: CONTANTS MAY BE HOT!"), some knucklehead will sue, jury will award millions.
I often wonder how I survived to adulthood lighting off firecrackers, M80s in tin cans, bb gun fights, drinking from garden hoses, riding bikes at 40 miles an hour without helmets, and playing with JARTS!
I must have gone through 8 of my 9 "cat" lives for sure.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
Fella on another board said his Son's Batman suit had a disclaimer that the suit didn't allow one to fly!

I don't mind reasonable disclaimers; it's these stupid ones that get me. Yes, half a drug commercial is talk about all the possible side effects at auction barker speed. Many of those side effects seem worse than what's being treated.

I purchased a lap top recently. Don't get a printed operating manual any more, but a multi-page disclaimer in several languages. Wonderful things like it's an electrical devise and be careful plugging it in, one might get a shock.

Best,

Dave
Click to expand...

If the stupid disclaimers are the ones that get you, remember, they got there because someone was stupid enough to get injured or killed over it and sued.
 
This is a direct result of the attitude of the last twenty years, if I do something stupid and hurt myself, or someone else I will find someone else to blame for it and sue them. No one takes responsibility for their own actions anymore. Okay maybe not no one but a large percentage.
 
douglas393 said:
This is a direct result of the attitude of the last twenty years, if I do something stupid and hurt myself, or someone else I will find someone else to blame for it and sue them. No one takes responsibility for their own actions anymore. Okay maybe not no one but a large percentage.
Click to expand...

Sadly most Americans (especially politicians) don't try to fix the problem, they try to fix the blame.
 
ary5aqud.jpg
 
douglas393 said:
This is a direct result of the attitude of the last twenty years, if I do something stupid and hurt myself, or someone else I will find someone else to blame for it and sue them. No one takes responsibility for their own actions anymore. Okay maybe not no one but a large percentage.
Click to expand...

It's the 'Mommy Lobby' and they are at the core of tort problems.
 
Dave Siciliano said:
I don't mind reasonable disclaimers; it's these stupid ones that get me. Yes, half a drug commercial is talk about all the possible side effects at auction barker speed. Many of those side effects seem worse than what's being treated.
Click to expand...

The ones that got me was the anti depression candy man stuff. Take this drug and you'll feel better about life and will be good in the world again...high speed blahblah chatter side effects in some cases include suicidal tendencies, aneurysms, massive heart failure that is often fatal when experienced...I waited so hopefully through those commercials waiting to see the realistic commercial that says "see I'm all happy now, everything is per, uh, perfec ug, feel goo, wonderfugh, aaigaighth gack scraioal" as they grab at their chest and fall over dead.

Then there's that silly sticker cessna started plastering all over the inside of their airplanes a decade or so ago. It was something to the effect of "everything you might possibly do in this airplane, even if you do everything right will likely cause serious injury or death." No wonder GA is dying off. It's not because it's dangerous or expensive or the TSA wanting to shoot us down. It's because new pilot hopefuls get in and realize that even the people who build airplanes know you're about to die from the things so they quit.

Evolution needs to be put back into the system. I'm thinking it would be good for the species if someone were to open a superman cape store at the rim of the grand canyon and a concrete PFD store on the beach. ...Just to see what happens...
 
Disclaimers can hardly be blamed on the people who bring us a product, but on the lawyers, judges, and law schools who have only one purpose for their existence, the harvesting of money from the gullible.

We can lay the blame for all of this nonsense on our own greed by running to these great legal minds over even the smallest provocation in order to gain our chance at winning the legal lottery.

Our entire legal system has an amazingly strange correlation to a carnival's midway, where the con artists suck you in with the promise of winning a huge teddy bear or giant stuffed giraffe, but when you walk away, your holding nothing but a beany baby that you just spent fifty times it's value trying to win.

Every time you read a disclaimer, think of a hungry law firm, and a starry eyed "victim", you will then understand what living in a nation of law actually means. The disclaimer represents that guy you see walking around the carnival grounds carrying a giant stuffed panda. Out of the thousands of people there, he is the only one with such a prize.

-John
 
MAKG1 said:
Trend? What trend?

Silly disclaimers have been a fact of life for at least several decades, and I see no evidence whatsoever that it's worse now than in 1980.
Click to expand...

Untrue. There are disclaimers and warnings on everything now, from the hair dryers we put in our hotel's rooms, to the drill bits you buy. It was never like that in the 80s.

What's so funny is that, as with all stupid touchy-feely laws, the unintended consequence is that everyone ignores ALL of them, even the important ones.

Sent from my Nexus 7
 
Jay Honeck said:
What's so funny is that, as with all stupid touchy-feely laws, the unintended consequence is that everyone ignores ALL of them, even the important ones.
Click to expand...

The labels and warnings are at a point that they are the problem. If you load something full of warning labels, it turns into sensory overload after a while. You start ignoring them because you know they're nonsense useless information. The two or three actually important labels are background noise because they have to be printed small and put in some obscure corner in order to put the dozen nonsense legal disclaimer labels in your face. Then you get one mentally deranged idiot who thinks he is actually superman and suddenly the number of idiot labels double and bury the useful information even further.

Less babble information is better in the real world. "Mixture" is all you need. You don't even need "push rich, pull lean." If you can't figure that out, you deserve to crash.


Are they still doing those dope dealer commercials where they go on for a minute about how their new drug is so good for you and to get your doctor to get you some and during the whole commercial thing they never tell you what it's for? If you can't even figure out what it's for, why would you need it so desperately? The meth dealer down the road will likely give you more information on why you need his drugs than those commercials do.
 
how many people read any of the 100 pages of warnings in the car's manual?
 
Jay Honeck said:
Untrue. There are disclaimers and warnings on everything now, from the hair dryers we put in our hotel's rooms, to the drill bits you buy. It was never like that in the 80s.

What's so funny is that, as with all stupid touchy-feely laws, the unintended consequence is that everyone ignores ALL of them, even the important ones.

Sent from my Nexus 7
Click to expand...


How dare you use logic in reference to the current regulatory climate? Logic and sense have nothing to do with it and never will. If it gets me elected I'll say anything and continue to say it til I get reelected. . .

I remember the 70's and 80's too and don't recall any real strong logical basis in regulation at that time either. They just hadn't gone this far...yet.

Frank
 
Bob Noel said:
how many people read any of the 100 pages of warnings in the car's manual?
Click to expand...

I have to throw the user manual away. It uses up the entire useful load of the vehicle in nonsense babble.
 
Henning said:
If the stupid disclaimers are the ones that get you, remember, they got there because someone was stupid enough to get injured or killed over it and sued.
Click to expand...

That's not entirely true. The other side of it is that if its an FDA regulated product, you get all kinds of awesome requirements as well, even if no person in their right mind would have thought otherwise.

For example, a sleep medicine with the mandatory drug fact "This product may cause drowsiness." Or the warning to not take drugs which have Tylenol in them "with any product containing acetaminophen in it."

Our government does a pretty good job of making us stupid.
 
AggieMike88 said:
The disclaimers from big pharma lately have me chuckling. It appears that

1) 2/3's of the airtime is taken up for the disclaimer
2) The drug might fix the main problem, but the potential side effects?? Oy Vey!


(at least the kids got it down. The pastor at church does a 5 minute segment with the kids. And when he asked them about the resurrection, on a 6 year old piped up and said that, "if it lasts more than 4 hours, you need to see a doctor.")
Click to expand...

That's again, the FDA's fault. They mandate certain language for certain drugs. So, when you're a company trying to get your product known, you are obligated to follow it with the important drug facts.

The problem? You don't take drugs from a commercial, you take them from a bottle. It would be much more efficient for a commercial to say:

"Take Nick-Enol. It will make your herpes sores disappear!"

And then later, when someone wants to buy Nick-Enol, they can see on the label "This product may cause AIDS." There's really no reason to have it on the commercial. It doesn't serve as a warning of imminence if the product is not right in front of you. Blah!

Also - think of what it does to drug costs. What could be a 15-20 second spot now becomes 1 minute long because of the drug facts. Insanity.
 
I agree with the over-saturation theory, most labels could be replaced by a 1-word placard: "THINK".

Every now and then I find one that's worth reading ... Lagunitas beer keg warning label:

WARNING!
This bad boy will rupture if you zone out and pressurize it above 60 p.s.i. Use only tapping equipment and pressure regulators equipped with a pressure relief valve thingy. This is serious. You don't want to accidentally wear this keg!
 
I remember purchasing an OTC med where the box and the bottle were 4" tall and diameter of 1".

The volume inside of the bottle was easily 2/3 cotton stuffing and 1/3 medication.

Looking again, there was so many health warnings, the packaging had to be that size to provide room for all of the fine print.
 
SkyHog said:
That's not entirely true. The other side of it is that if its an FDA regulated product, you get all kinds of awesome requirements as well, even if no person in their right mind would have thought otherwise.

For example, a sleep medicine with the mandatory drug fact "This product may cause drowsiness." Or the warning to not take drugs which have Tylenol in them "with any product containing acetaminophen in it."

Our government does a pretty good job of making us stupid.
Click to expand...

The government does what it is told to do, the Mommy Lobby is more powerful than the Banking Lobby, "Won't someone think about the children?","It has to be safe."
 
Henning said:
The government does what it is told to do, the Mommy Lobby is more powerful than the Banking Lobby, "Won't someone think about the children?","It has to be safe."
Click to expand...
Making things safe for the kiddies is a convenient way for politicians to hamstring some product or service. Who can argue that they want the kiddies to be unsafe? When what the politicians really want is something else. It's not just the Mommy Lobby. That is a convenient ploy.
 
Henning said:
The government does what it is told to do, the Mommy Lobby is more powerful than the Banking Lobby, "Won't someone think about the children?","It has to be safe."
Click to expand...

Then the first thing the commercial says is "...causes heart failure, brain damage, kidney failure, suicidal tendencies" and all is suddenly good in the world even though rat poison is safer to take.
The whole situation is a big crockup.
 
SkyHog said:
The problem? You don't take drugs from a commercial, you take them from a bottle. It would be much more efficient for a commercial to say:

"Take Nick-Enol. It will make your herpes sores disappear!"

And then later, when someone wants to buy Nick-Enol, they can see on the label "This product may cause AIDS." There's really no reason to have it on the commercial.
Click to expand...

Sure there is, Nick. What do you learn from the commercial? "Nick-Enol Good! I need some." Then the Nick-Enol package has to undo that thought as it has become engrained and embedded by the first and every repeat commercials for Nick-enol you have seen. Besides, who reads the package inserts? "Yep, this here is Nick-Enol. Just like I saw on TV!"

Once you buy the decision that the public must be warned ("Oh, the horror!") the disclaimers have to be right there with the first mention of Nick-Enol.

And for the record, I do not buy the fact that the public must be warned in most cases. This is liability prevention more often than it is proactive education.

I also think that prescription drugs should not be advertised except to Doctors. What does JQ Public know about the relative merits of a prescription drug? And why do we trust the big pharma company to tell us the unbiased truth?

Interestingly enough, when big pharma is bringing a drug in development through the pipeline, it is not allowed to market this drug directly to Doctors. Instead, it must use a third party company which must document its unbiased presentations.

But it is mighty fine to market this stuff to the general public. The contemporaneous disclaimer is the only chance JQ Public has...

...and I do appreciate the humor when I visited the Boeing 747 assembly line years ago. Before they hang the engines, the airframe is tail heavy. To prevent a tail strikc, it had big cement blocks chained to the nose with the usual red streamers "Remove before flight". :rofl: Totally unnecessary, but funny! :yesnod:

-Skip
 
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Some interesting news today: Dallas Independent School District has been going through budget cut backs for several years. Today's DMN reveals that hundreds of positions have been eliminated across most salary levels; however, those in the six figure range have grown. There are now 129 folks in that club at DISD. We all remember Casey Anthony in Floria who lost her young daughter. She claims she drown in the family pool and she helped her father bury the body. Now, it seems, investigators overlooked a web query on the home computer for fool-proof suffocation methods. Regarding Europe and the situation in Greece: Over the weekend, Ms. Merkel said she was confident the Trioka, the IMF and the ECB would find a way to fund a tranche without Greece's banks having to write down Greece debt securities. This, when those obligation now trade in the open market for pennies on the dollar. Best, Dave
 
Mr. Strauss-Kahn who was a front runner to be the next President of France save for his own libido, is in a proceeding to determine if he will be charged as a pimp. The charges relate to several parties at a luxury hotel in the northern city of Lille. Mr. Kahn's attorney said he didn't know some of the ladies were prostitutes. One can only wonder what things would have been like if he and Mr. Berlusconi had been leaders at the same time. Wonder if they would have risen to the occasion. http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/1550 ... ing-probe/ Law suit filed in Texas today by parents of a student in a school district that has put GPS locator chips in student IDs which must be worn at all times. Sounds like 1984 (George Orwell's book) where Big Brother can locate you at all times. Of course, administrators say they don't monitor a student's location at all times. Just when needed for attendance or when they need to find someone (g). How helpful. http://www.pddnet.com/news/2012/11/suit ... tudent-ids Best, Dave
 
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