According to the media, as reflected by Google News this week, they’re phenomenal.  So phenomenal that hot dogs must be banned, redesigned (which would make them hot dogs no longer, but rather mushy cubes of meat), or should carry warning labels similar to those found on packs of cigarettes:

Now if one simply scans Google News for information of this sort, one might assume that hot dogs kill as many children annually as lead paint on Chinese-manufactured toys.  In fact, one would be wrong.  Hot dogs kill a substantially greater number of children than Chinese lead-based paint. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 77 children each year choke to death in a vain, futile effort to consume hot dogs:

[T]he academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs “redesigned” so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster’s throat. More than 10,000 children under 14 go to the emergency room each year after choking on food, and up to 77 die, says the new policy statement, published online today in Pediatrics. About 17% of food-related asphyxiations are caused by hot dogs.

“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”

Yet it would appear, according to your own academy’s data Dr. Smith, that it’s ridiculously simple to dislodge a hot dog from a child’s windpipe.  If only 77 out of 10,000 children admitted annually die of hot dog inhalation, that’s far better than the rate for the most basic and treatable cancers, or indeed staphylococcus infections.

And yet there are far more than 10,000 children born each year.  According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States has an estimated population of 307,212,123, and a birth rate of 13.83 per 1,000 people.  That means, roughly, that 4,248,744 children are born each year. Out of those children, as well as those born earlier, “up to” 77 will choke to death on a hot dog.

The actual odds that your child will choke to death on a hot dog are therefore, roughly, one in 181,230.

Admittedly I’m not attempting to calculate the odds that the child will grow to adulthood only to die of hot dog inhalation.  Those odds, presumably, would increase overall hot dog morbidity.

Yet by comparison, according to Political Calculations, the odds are better that an American will die in a fatal lightning strike, but somewhat poorer (though still close) that he or she will die at the fangs of a household dog, or a snake.

So, what’s at work here?  Has there been a sudden onslaught of children killed by hot dogs?  That’s doubtful. Hot dogs are pretty much the same today as they were when you and I were growing up. Is there a real need for legislation, or regulation, or redesign, of hot dogs?

Or is there a need for better education on the part of American pediatricians, journalists, legislators, and the public at large, in statistics and actuarial math?

Update: A commenter points out a reading error on my part.  While up to 77 children die annually of food asphyxiation, only 17% of food asphyxiation hospital admissions are caused by hot dogs.  According to our commenter, that means only 13 or so children are killed by hot dogs each year, if the percentages of deaths and admissions hold true.

I’m not willing to make that assumption.  To be fair to the American Academy of Pediatrics, I’ll assume that all children killed by food-related asphyxiation in the United States are killed by hot dogs, and that other foods never kill.

The scene: as with so many such discussions, my car. Katrina is away at a party with the youngest. Tasked to take Evan (8) and Abby (6) to dinner, I have employed promises of shrimp and crab to persuade them to have their first Japanese meal.

Me: Okay. So Daddy will have some octopus. You guys can have shrimp tempura. And maybe some sushi. Maybe with some crab.

Abby: Daddy?

Me: Yes?

Abby: How do they kill the crab?

Me: Hand-to-hand combat.

Abby: Huh?

Evan. No. That’s not how you kill a crab.

Me: OK. How do you?

Evan. You grab it by the leg. And then you smack it against the wall again and again. BANG BANG BANG.

Me: ….

Evan: Or you could go into a small, small room. Then you could hit the crab on one wall — BANG! — and then on the other wall — BANG! until it was dead.

Me: Okay. You have now officially creeped me the heck out.

Evan: [thrusting arms above his head] WOOOOOOO VICTORY!

Me: …

Abby: Daddy? Do you know how they kill an octopus?

Me: . . . . . no?

Abby: WITH A BAZOOKA! KAPOOOOOOSSHHSSHSHS!

Me: Okay, no more cartoons.

Ingmar Bergman’s thoroughly enjoyable 1975 movie version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute is in Swedish and necessary takes liberties with the German libretto. Further liberties are taken with the English subtitles. In the first act, when the Three Ladies cut Papageno some slack and unlock his lying mouth, the subtitles have them singing this:

The strong are different than the weak, in that they think before they speak.

Quite true. Look, everyone has Microsoft moments when their brain experiences the blue screen/red ring of death and shuts down. The difference between people who avoid (on the petty scale) embarrassing themselves or (on the large scale) getting themselves into bad trouble is that sensible people shut up until their brain reboots. This is part of the sensibility informing my favorite advice to clients, which is: when in doubt or confusion or stress or trouble, shut up.

Amusing case in point: yesterday Katrina was at a book fair with the kids. A mother meets her, and asks which kids are hers. Katrina points out Abby, who is obviously Asian. Other Mother looks perplexed; you can see the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death reflected in her eyes. Is she Korean, she asks? Yes, says Katrina. Is your husband Asian, she inquires? No, says Katrina, thus ignoring my standing offer (diamond tennis bracelet if she answers that question “I don’t know, it was dark”). Further confusion on expression of Other Mother, who then ignores my advice and keeps talking through the brain freeze — looking at my very white, very Northern-European-origin wife, she asks “are YOU Korean?”

Katrina was very polite to her and explained at this point that Abby was adopted. The brain rebooted. Katrina scrupulously avoided eye-rolling or laughter, displaying merely one of the traits that makes her a better person than I.

So: shutting up, it’s not just for clients any more.

[Note that I am fully aware I routinely fail to follow my own advice.]

The scene: my car, taking Elaina (2 1/2) to preschool.

Me: [observing a driver ahead of me execute a boneheaded move]: Whiskey. Tango. FOXTROT.

Elaina: WHISKEY!

Me: . . . .

Elaina: WHISKEY!

Me: Uh . . .

Elaina: Daddy, why you say WHISKEY?

Me: Uh . . . let’s sing. “I love you, you love me . . .”

[five minutes later, we walk into her preschool class]

Me: Okay, sweetie. Have a good day.

Teacher: Good morning, Elaina! Do you want something to eat?

Elaina: WHISKEY!

Teacher: . . .

Elaina: WHISKEY!

Teacher: Uh . . . .

Me: RISKY. She’s trying to say risky. She’s concerned that it’s risky being so close to the fires.

Teacher: [melting] Oh, poor Elaina! Don’t worry! You’ll be okay! You don’t have to worry!

Elaina: [Ever a drama queen, very adept at picking up tone, begins to pout her lip and quiver her chin]: Whiiisssskey. ::sniff::

Teacher: [heartbroken] Oh, sweetie! You’re fine! You’re fine!

Me: So, OK. I gotta go.

I’ve mentioned before that I have an unstable relationship with the shows my kids enjoy watching. As they have gotten older, I am forced to admit that some amuse me and are not entirely intolerable. Phineas and Ferb is clever and has big chunks of dialogue and visual gags aimed over the kids’ heads. Plus I laugh at the imbecilic expression on Percy the Platypus’ face whenever he is posing as a normal non-secret-agent pet. And whoever voices the evil Prof. Doofenshmirtz is brilliant. In a similar vein, the Jimmy Neutron cartoon has a lot of quite funny gags aimed at adults.

The rest remains execrable. I do not hit children. However, should I ever be digitized or otherwise consigned to the world of cartoons, I shall promptly seek out Caillou and slap him so hard that my handprint will show up on his driver’s license photo. And the mewling treacle-peddlers that surround Miss Spider make me reach for a big magnifying glass. Plus, any time there’s a commercial for any live-action tween shows on the Disney Channel, I long for the days of reform schools.

I’m wondering because iconoclasm and heresy abound in my SUV, and my efforts to steer it back towards orthodoxy only make things worse, as I’ve demonstrated before. The thing is, I’m not even sure if my church excommunicates. I suppose as a deacon I ought to know that, but I don’t, which is really further evidence of the problem when you think about it. I’m at least relatively certain that I can’t personally excommunicate anyone, and my desultory research into whether I am empowered to exorcise has been flat, stale, and unprofitable. But to get back to my original point, I think my SUV is some sort of cursed locus of heresy, because every now and then when I am driving the kids places they nail ninety-five theses of hot-place-bound blasphemy to my forehead. Like this Sunday:

Evan (8 years old): Daddy, I think Jesus was born 2009 years ago.

Abby (6 years old): Nuh-UH! You’re making that up!

Me: Well, more or less. A little bit more, actually. More like — uh — 2014 years.

Evan: Wait, what? It’s 2014? Oh NO!

Elaina (2 years old): ‘ESUS!

Me: No. You’re on the right track. We count the years from when Jesus was born. But the count is sort of off, because some monk fu . . . because some monk made a math mistake.

Abby: Like a chipmunk?

Evan: (offended) CHIPMUNKS. CAN’T. DO. MATH.

Elaina: HIPMUNK HIPMUNK HIPMUNK HIPMUNK. Where?

Me: No. Not a chipmunk. A monk, m-o-n-k. Someone who . . . uh . . . writes stuff down. He mixed up the dates.

Evan: Why didn’t Jesus tell the monk that he got His birthday wrong?

Me: . . . I’m guessing . . . he didn’t want to make him feel bad?

Evan: That’s nice.

Me: Anyway, so Jesus was probably actually born in . . .

Evan: WAIT. Isn’t Jesus God?

Me: Yeessss . . . .

Evan: But I thought God was God. If Jesus is God, who is God?

Me: Okay, see, that’s complicated. Jesus is God’s son, but Jesus is also . . .

Evan: . . . an’ if Jesus was born 14 years ago, when was God born!

Abby: GOD wasn’t BORNED! (rolling eyes)

Me: Right, God wasn’t born, God was always . . .

Evan: But was Jesus born? Because Christmas is Jesus being born, right?

Me: (seeing the trap, unable to escape it) Right . . . .

Evan: So if Jesus is God . . . and Jesus was born . . .

Me: Okay, okay, okay, okay, I see where you’re going with that. But Jesus is . . . uh . . . just one aspect of God.

[silence]

Abby: I thought that was a bad word.

Evan: Like BUTT!

Elaina: BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT

Me: [panicking]: WOW! LOOK! A doggy! Everyone LOOK AT THE DOGGY! HI, DOGGY! [waiving manically at woman walking dog down street, who looks alarmed]

Today I spent the morning at Downtown Disney. I went in as a small-l libertarian capitalist. Now I think I’m a Marxist. I’m pretty sure I need a new wardrobe; this button-down stuff won’t work at all. Downtown Disney is a hub of ravenous naked commerce that would make Adam Smith shit himself.

Today was Abby’s sixth birthday, so much of the morning was taken up with her visiting the Bippity Boppity Boutique at the Disney store for a princess makeover. Now, though I support full formal and legal equality for women, I am not generally seen as a feminist, nor have I ever been, with the exception of a period in college where I pretended to be one for distinctly un-feminist reasons. But the whole Disney Princess thing rubs me the wrong way. First, it’s a way to re-brand and re-sell Disney’s old properties to kids. Second, I’m not sure I like the message it sends to my daughters. Even if Disney movies — at least the modern ones — have fairly brave female leads showing initiative and purpose, the Disney Princess branding is mostly about being decorative and well-behaved. Screw that. I want my daughters to kick ass and take names on whatever playing field in life they choose, and only be decorative and decorous to the extent it amuses them.

Abby emerged from the Boutique made up like Princess Jasmine, with poufed-up hair, makeup, and lots of glitter. She looked extremely cute and was very happy. I told her she was beautiful and didn’t act like a grump. But inside, I was thinking that no one with glitter in her hair ever made a crucial cross-examination or convinced the Board of Directors to move forward with the IPO or transplanted the kidney successfully. Honestly, I didn’t used to dwell on that sort of thing much. That’s what having daughters will do to you.

The scene: a park, where I am watching Evan (now 8 ) play his first T-ball game of the season (one home run, two doubles, seven outs as first baseman) while Abby (now 5) and Elaina (now 2) play in the grass next to a wash.

Then suddenly:

ELAINA: FUCKS!

ME: . . .

ELAINA: FUCKS FUCKS!

ME: I beg your pardon.

ELAINA: FUCKS!

ME: Surely this is your mother’s influence.

ABBY: She means ducks. We see ducks.

ME: Really?

ELAINA: DUCKS!

So we go see the ducks. The ducks, I note, quickly waddle away in the trickle of water across the wash when the girls approach the fence.

ME: (suspiciously) Were you being nice to the ducks?

ABBY: (indignant) Yes!

ELAINA: Yes!

ME: Really? You were being nice?

ABBY: Yes! We threw sticks at them!

This is justly all over the web, but it would be a shame if you, personally, did not witness the breakup of New York University’s student revolution in all its embarrassing glory.

For those unaware, student demonstrators and “outside agitators” recently took over a cafeteria at NYU, barricading themselves into the place until their demands for social justice, workers’ rights, and the reconstruction of Gaza were met.  The affair ended in farce, as polite administrators and school security casually, and gently, removed the barricades over the objections of the screaming, utterly ineffectual, and comically inept demonstrators.  The only similarity between NYU and Port Huron is that Jeff Lebowski was probably present at both events.

Highlights include the NYU cameraman shouting, “You may not use brutality, you are on camera!” to security personnel as they are walking away from him (and later turn a camera on him), his patronizing question, “We are engaged in a process of democratic consensus. Do you understand what that means?”, references to non-existent TASERs as “Devices of force! Devices of force!” and his explanation that his oppressors probably drink “corporate water.”

I also quited enjoyed his calling every piece of technology in sight a “MacBook” as though it never occurred to him that some electronic devices aren’t made by Apple.

This video is truly pathetic, and deserving of the viral status that it is already beginning to enjoy.

Just how bad is the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which Patrick has diligently covered here? Well, Walter Olson demonstrates that it has led the Consumer Products Safety Commission to advise thrift shops, secondhand stores, and others to throw out books if they were made before 1985, and if the shops cannot pay for ruinously expensive and impractical testing:

To take just one example, that of resale, thrift and consignment stores, the CPSC guidance advises that such stores discard, or refuse to accept donations of, a very wide range of children’s items unless they are willing to test the items for lead or call their original manufacturer — neither of which steps is consistent with the economics of an ordinary small thrift store. Included in the suspect list are most children’s clothing (because most of it has snaps, buttons, zippers, grommets or other closures with unknown/unproved metal or plastic content), most books that were printed before 1985 or that (even if more recent) include metal or plastic elements such as staples* or spiral binders; most playthings (dolls, balls, trains, toy cars, etc.), most shoes and hair ornaments, most sporting goods, outdoor play items and wagons, board games when including any plastic spinners, tokens or other items, all bicycles and tricycles in kids’ sizes, most decorations for kids’ rooms, nearly everything with metal or synthetic applique, most school, art and science supplies, and on and on.

Over at Defending People, Mark Bennett has some apt commentary. What are the chances of Congress doing anything competent in the wake of this example of its own incompetence? Slim and none.

Hypocrisy watch:  The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the groups most actively promoting the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, the law that mandates expensive, in fact ruinous, testing of any consumer product intended primarily for children under 12.  Just yesterday, the Council, working with Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, obtained a ruling from a court in New York that makes the law’s effects retroactive.  While, technically, the ruling only effects non-compliant products (those containing lead or phthalates), in practice, this means that stores must throw out any untested merchandise already in their inventory, if they wish to avoid tort liability.

Here’s the hypocrisy.  The NRDC (what do diapers, toys, and lunchboxes have to do with natural resources, anyway?) is one of the worst offenders.  You can, as of this writing, buy non-compliant onesies from the NRDC.  Onesies that may contain deadly lead and phthalates. Deadly to children!!! We can’t know, because the onesies haven’t been tested.

Even better:  The NRDC, on Twitter, stated that the onesies are in compliance, because:

The NRDC attorney who worjed[sic] on our suit about #CPSIA tells me the testing requirements only apply to manufacturers.

But there’s still more, as the commercials say.  According to the NRDC’s own press release, on yesterday’s victory:

NRDC and Public Citizen filed the lawsuit in December, following a CPSC attempt to create a loophole in the congressionally mandated ban, which goes into effect February 10, 2009. The loophole would have allowed retailers to stockpile and continue selling dangerous products as long as they were manufactured before the ban date.

So which is it?  Retailers, or manufacturers?  Who’s actually in touch with the NRDC’s lawyers?  Their press release department, or their twitter feed?  Or is this just yet another example showing this law to be so confusing that even the groups who want to sue under it don’t have a clue what it means?

Update:  I see that the NRDC has changed its tune.  They’re now giving away these potentially deadly, untested onesies, as a free gift (in return for a minimum $25 donation).  Sorry NRDC, that sham won’t help in court, any more than it helps a ticket scalper who throws in a free pair of tickets, for customers who buy a ballpoint pen for $500.

The toxic onesies must go!

Hat tip: Walter Olson

I had intended to return to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, a law I find to be of interest as illustrating the perils of hasty legislation in response to media-generated threats, a little later, but as today is CPSIA blogging day, I’ll get to it now.

Short version: This is a law that may wreck thousands of small businesses over a scare in which no one was hurt.  Long version, and how I determine that no one was hurt, follows:

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On February 10, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 goes into effect.   Written in reaction to a 2007 scare about lead paint in Chinese manufactured toys, such as Thomas the Tank Engine, the law is designed to protect American children from further scares involving lead paint and dangerous chemicals.  Unfortunately, like the toy that inspired it, the law is a trainwreck, a case study in good intentions doing harm through short-sighted legislation.

If this law is not amended, or better still repealed, you won’t be able to buy handmade toys for children, backpacks, books aimed at the kid’s market, or cotton diapers.  The people who make wooden tops, print books like “The Great Brain” or “A Wrinkle In Time” or make cotton diapers, you see, simply cannot afford third party lab testing (estimated at $4000 a lot, often higher) to prove  that their products do not contain lead.  So they’ll go out of business.

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