AIR Vents (39-3)
Exhalations from our readers
Crossing the T
Sir:
I must protest your decision to publish Sean Dowling’s article (“How to Make the Perfect Cup of Tea”) which claims that the proper way to make a perfect cup of tea is to “invite it to a movie.” I found Dowling’s article to be incomprehensible.
Cooking the Books
To the editors:
I have multiple chemical sensitivities. I am particularly sensitive to pesticides and printed (laser photocopied or printed, magazines, newspapers, some books) items. For many years I had to literally bake books before I could read them. I don't seem to have a problem with standard paperbacks, but larger softcover books, cookbooks for example, sometimes give me a rash.
Does you have detailed information on how to bake a book? The heating process speeds up and promotes outgassing. I tried it with a romance novel today for about 1/2 hour at about 250 degrees, but I was only guessing. I'd rather have more explicit instructions before I set your magazine on fire.
Safety in Statistics
Is there any statistical evidence that bullets kill? I think not. If you look at the numbers, a large percentage of the people struck by bullets do not die, and in any control group of people who are not struck by bullets, many of them die any way.
Light Indigestion
Angelo Badamente is wrong (“Ultraviolet and My Wife”). Anyone who is worried about UV from halogen lights should be deathly afraid of ordinary fluorescent lights. They work by producing UV light which causes a coating to fluoresce. I mentioned this fact to a co-worker, who said that her nephew had swallowed a halogen lamp once. This is another health risk, I suppose.
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