Re: Stories that made you cry


"David M. Palmer" <dmpalmer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:071220050050065943%dmpalmer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article <1133859250.163437.170480@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Ray
> Cunningham <raycun@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> David M. Palmer wrote:
>> > The argument about whether the numbers in The Cold Equations make sense
>> > comes up often enough that I wrote up an analysis a decade ago, and now
>> > just point to it.
>> >
>> > http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/dcd039d205204b85
>> >
>> > As for the question of why there is only a 'keep out' sign on the
>> > shuttlecraft door, rather than 'trespassers will be spaced', consider a
>> > real world analogy. I have two bottles of over-the-counter pain
>> > relievers, each of which has an FDA-mandated warning label on it*.
>>
>> I'm guessing they have child-proof caps too, not just screw-tops.
>
> They do (although they would not have had them at the time TCE was
> written). A child-proof cap makes it hard for a toddler to eat the
> brightly colored candy. It provides a 12 year old something helpful to
> do for their parent who is having trouble getting their medicine bottle
> open because it's hard to line up arrows you can hardly see under the
> best conditions when the migraine is making your vision swim. It does
> very little to prevent a hung-over boozehound from opening the bottle
> for something to relieve his pounding head and then washing it down
> with hair-of-the-dog.
>
>
>> I'm sure the drug company in question lobbied hard against a warning
>> label that said "POISON" or "This drug will kill you if taken with
>> alcohol". They don't want to scare away customers.
>> There's no reason for the space liner to avoid such scary warning
>> signs, or to put locks on the doors. Or rather, the only reason is
>> authorial - it's necessary for the story that the stowaway not be aware
>> that her actions are extremely serious.
>
> Classic cartoon: Two astronauts standing outside a lunar module. "I
> thought you had the keys". There's a reason why you don't lock away
> emergency equipment.
>
> What's a scary sign? How many scary signs can you put in a ship before
> people stop noticing, especially since 99.9% of the time (i.e. when
> they are not actively preparing an emergency vessel for a rescue
> mission) the worst that happens is a purser sees the miscreant and says
> 'hey kids, get out of here, authorized personel only, you could get
> hurt playing around here.' Scary signs should be used for things like
> 'DANGER, 5 ZILLION VOLT POWER GRID, DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT LEVEL 18
> PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT'.

Electrical power warnings tend to be more direct than that. The warnings on
the power lines for the local train system basically say, 'CONTACT WITH
THESE POWER LINES WILL KILL YOU'.
They don't *** foot around with technical details.


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