MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-03-22 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
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| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] in the hands of god, we are all...
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Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn-at-panix.com):
> FWIW, mine doesn't have a battery.
That seems very strange. It would silently fail to work during a power
outage, then? (It functions only when AC is flowing?) I don't actually
'get' how that can even qualify as a smoke detector. Maybe you need to
purchase some real ones. Mail order has those, among many other sources.
Home Depot will ship to Brooklyn, even Williamsburg.[1]
> But if the average joe keeps pulling the device off the wall and
> putting it back, 2x a day, it will not work in short order.
So, Don't Do That, Then. (You say that's necessary, but not why.)
You never answered my question about what requires this switching-off
treatment. I can imagine moving to a more-compact house (have done that
in the past) and living in a house with two storeys and a basement (have
done that in the past) instead of my small one-floor ranch. I can
imagine moving to a snowbelt region like the NYC tri-state area (have
done that in the past, attending college in central NJ). Hypothetically
carrying my five smoke detectors and one CO2 detector to that imaginary
new residence somewhere near NYC, I expect I'd mount them on the walls
high but within residents' reach, one in each bedroom, one in an
upper-floor corridor, and one about 8-10' away from the kitchen.
And, regardless of how I picture that turning out, I cannot currently
imagine any scenario that would impel my family to switch off all five
of my household's smoke detectors for any reason. Because then there
would be nothing to wake me up before being asphyxiated by smoke during
any nighttime fire.
If they one near the kitchen goes off when I cook, I'd stride four steps
over, yank it down to a waist-high shelf to shut it up, and put it back
after cooking. If ones in upstairs living space went off when I cook,
I'd have someone upstairs do the foregoing or open a window while
cooking is going on. We're not Jewish, let alone shomer shabbes, but
those remedies suffice and (I'm pretty sure) break no mitzvot even
during Shabbes for observant families.
Yes, I imagine that cooking isn't the sole problem. Two Shabbes candles
during Kabbalat Shabbat and one for Havdalah doubtless sometimes set off
a smoke detector -- but, move it temporarily to a lower shelf, and/or
open a window temporarily. Those are not melakhot, right?
Some of the greatest minds on the planet are Haredim or Modern Orthodox
or Hasids. I'm having a difficult time believing nobody among those
three groups of scholars has figured out a better solution than 'Switch
all the smoke decectors off and leave them that way.'
There are rumours that some yeshiva buchers can even use a screwdriver,
and dexterity with 9V batteries is not out of the question even if Rav
Josef Caro didn't mention them.
Hypothetically if ones upstairs were driving me out of my mind with
continually having to take those measures to shut them up, I might be
driven the reduce the number upstairs, so only one upstairs required
babysitting. But I can't imagine doing without one near the kitchen and
at least one in living space.
You say some large percentage of families get driven to switch all of
theirs off. OK, feel invited to explain that, if you please. Or not,
if you don't wish to address the key point and imagine that emotional
tub-thumping rhetoric is somehow productive.
> They are not designed well...largely because they are more concerned
> with making money on mandates then producing usable goods.
Once again, circular reasoning -- and impugning motives that aren't
actually relevant to the subject.
Maybe instead of continual haranguing and repeating your assertions --
which you might some day realise never sways what people think who don't
already agree with you -- you might address my question about
specifically _why_ families would find it necessary and reasonable.
> You can't reach my ceilings either, which is weird because they are
> actually lower than my old house, but still much taller than my standing
> on a tall bar stool. Are they 13 feet high ??
One session with a ladder and screwdriver, and you can move the thing.
If you're saying it's in an AC socket and has no battery (which
contradicts the essential characteristics of a 'smoke detector', seems
to me), then move it to an extension cord and mount it on the wall
within reach. Or, better yet, buy a real smoke-detector replacement
that runs on a 9V battery, like every single one *I* have ever seen, and
get rid of any that cease to function during a power outage.
[1] Speaking of horrors, even visited the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument
in Fort Greene Park? It's a reminder of how incredibly brutal the
American Revolutionary War was. The British had almost no jails and
accumulated tens of thousands of Patriot soldiers and suspect civilians.
So, they just put them on sixteen infamous decrepit ships in Wallabout
Bay and let them slowly die of disease or starvation -- or, if they were
lucky, summary execution. Far more Patriots died there than in the
war's battles put together: Captured Patriot soldiers didn't qualify for
treatment as enemy soldiers because the USA government wasn't recognised
and was by default treated as a criminal revolt, so its soldiers were by
British law treated the way murderers and traitors would be treated back
home. Also, until the Battle of Saratoga and surrender of Burgoyne's
entire army to the Americans, General Howe and the other British
generals had no fear of retaliation in kind to their own side. FWIW,
General Washington ordered that all captured Loyalists, British
Regulars, and Hessians be treated humanely from the very beginning.
There was no reprisal for the prison ships.
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