So often I’ve tried to figure out where a product was made, so I look for a “made in” notation on the label. It’s not always there. Now I know a way to tell–by the first three numbers of the bar code. For example, 690, 691, and 692 mean it was made in China, 471 means Taiwan, 750 Mexico, and anything starting with 0 means United States.
For a full list of numbers and their corresponding countries, go to Barcode Prefixes and Product Country of Origin.
So many people are doing so many kind, generous things for others during this coronavirus danger. But there are always those who want to take advantage. Read the HuffPost article Please Don’t Believe These Coronavirus Scams And Advice and be warned about hand sanitizers, herbal supplements and cures, drinking water, latex gloves, and more.
By the way, they explain why those deliveries you get from China may actually be safe.
My faux fur may be real, from real animals. I’m not sure what the trim on my coat is, despite the label. Much of the supposedly faux fur we wear in good conscience is actually taken from raccoon dogs (see picture below), rabbits, and other animals. Yes, mislabeling fur is against federal law. Yet, the Humane Society of the U.S. and New York Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal discovered this common practice with their undercover probe.
Most of the fur is coming from China, the world’s largest source for fur. Producers there obtain the fur by beating, strangling, or electrocuting many of the animals to kill them. Still others, they simply skin alive.
If you, like me, abhor cruelty to animals, especially to feed the vanity of humans, avoid buying any fur, whether it’s marked “faux” or not. As for me, I’ve removed the strip of questionable fur from my coat and will encourage my friends to do the same.
Here’s proof that there CAN be international cooperation.
Actually, I haven’t seen Angel of Nanjing yet. But I want to. This ordinary, flawed man has dedicated his life to stopping people from committing suicide by jumping from China’s “suicide bridge.” His reward is often being attacked verbally and physically; yet, he persists. Why? Because, he says, “When my life got better, I wanted to help the others find hope.” Not a bad attitude, I’d say.
Do you like shopping at Dollar Stores but feel a little guilty about buying “junk from China”? Drop the guilt and shop. There are many items there that are manufactured in America–manufactured, not “distributed by” (made elsewhere): food, stationary, party items…. Get your list-making materials ready, read the Finance article Dollar Stores Have Plenty of Items Made in America , and go shopping!
You probably recycle those plastic bottles and anything else with the recycle symbol on it. I know I do. It’s a little thing we can do to help our environment. Except that there’s a problem. That is, many U.S. “recylers” haven’t been processing it (or electronic waste) here but shipping it to China, where it’s cheaper to deal with because they toss it into a landfill. China, drowning in our plastic, is wising up and saying NO MORE! They now have a Green Fence Policy, which says that they won’t be importing most of that plastic any longer.
What are our recyclers going to do? And those in Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong? They don’t know yet. And it’s a big problem–China imports 70% of the 500 million tons of electronic waste and 12 million tons of plastic waste each year that the world creates.
This will be costly (labor, technology, environmental safety standards), but it’s past time to actually recycle the waste rather than letting it pile up in landfills in China’s–or our–back yard.
Attention, Walmart shoppers: Those deals you’re getting aren’t such good deals. Set aside for the moment that you can get similar items elsewhere on sale and meet or beat Walmart’s prices. Set aside the fact that you’re budget likes it when you buy items that are cheap every day, even though their manufacturer is subsidized by the Chinese government, with low standards that often produce sub-standard or dangerous products. The fact is, those “cheap” items cost America and our workers dearly.
Reuters reports that Walmart single-handedly caused 15.3% of our counry’s goods trade deficit between 2001 and 2013–that’s $48.1 BILLION that went to China rather than into our economy. 400,000 American jobs were lost to Chinese workers, who, by the way, suffer abuse in their jobs.
Walmart claims they’ll be adding jobs here. Most of their workers, however, are paid low wages and are kept part-time so the corporation doesn’t have to pay benefits. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real jobs are not materializing, and the EPI projects that Walmart will send more manufacturing jobs to China in the next decade than it creates for U.S. workers. All in all, the situation harms our economy.
Keep this in mind this holiday-shopping season. Watch the ads. Use the coupons. Shop wisely. Just not at Walmart. Make it a merrier Christmas for the American economy and our workers.
I don’t understand half of what teenagers say today. On the other hand, each generation has its own language, and this, too, shall pass. Here’s a fun look back of when some of us were young. [Thanks to Jim Knudsen for sending this to me.]
“I hope you are Hunky Dory …,” by Richard Lederer
About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included “Don’t touch that dial,” “Carbon copy,” “You sound like a broken record” and “Hung out to dry.” A bevy of readers have asked me to shine light on more faded words and expressions, and I am happy to oblige:
Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We’d put on our best bib and tucker and straighten up and fly right. Hubba-hubba! We’d cut a rug in some juke joint and then go smooching and spooning and billing and cooing and pitching woo in hot rods and jalopies in some lovers’ lane.
Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! Holy moley! We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley, and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China !
Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers. Oh, my aching back. Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.
Like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, we have become unstuck in time. We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” or “This is a fine kettle of fish!” we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.
Poof, poof, poof go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind. We blink, and they’re gone, evanesced from the landscape and wordscape of our perception, like Mickey Mouse wristwatches, hula hoops, skate keys, candy cigarettes, little wax bottles of colored sugar water and an organ grinder’s monkey.
Where have all those phrases gone? Long time passing. Where have all those phrases gone? Long time ago: Pshaw. The milkman did it. Think about the starving Armenians. Bigger than a bread box. Banned in Boston . The very idea! It’s your nickel. Don’t forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Turn-of-the-century. Iron curtain. Domino theory. Fail safe. Civil defense. Fiddlesticks! You look like the wreck of the Hesperus. Cooties. Going like sixty. I’ll see you in the funny papers. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Heavens to Murgatroyd! And awa-a-ay we go!
Oh, my stars and garters! It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter had liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff, this winking out of the words of our youth, these words that lodge in our heart’s deep core. But just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice. Even as one enters, words are swept downstream into the past, forever making a different river.
We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeful times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory. It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging. We can have archaic and eat it, too.
See ‘ya later, alligator!