I apologize for the nearly-spammish nature of this post but, I wanted to
let Too Many Tools know that he/she/it has, in fact, been able to change
the world with his/her/its initial rant on this topic.

I got to thinking about recalls. How so many of them involve China, and
how so many of them involve lead paint, and how many of them involve
companies which just don't care about the customers, and who apparently
see recalls and fines as just another cost of doing business. So I set
up a website last week, in an evening:

http://www.productrecallwatch.com/

It downloads RSS feeds from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the
FDA, the NTSB, and a half dozen other mostly government sources, and
links to the refrenced recalls. Nothing fancy but, what started out as a
"I can't find this info in one place" exercise seems to have turned into
a useful resource. Yeah, there's google ads, but I don't expect to get
rich on it any time soon, and there's no charge to use the site.

I'm going to write a "sign up for notifications for (category) or
(keywords)" as soon as I get time but it's already looking like it could
turn into a good reference.

Just for TMT, I'm going to write a "hall of shame" module which lists
the top 20 or so terms, be it "Mattell", "lead paint", "china", or some
other entity that we're apparently supposed to apologize to because
they're trying to poison our kids.

So thanks, TMT, for the inspiration. I hope it warms your heart to know
that you have, in fact, finally made a difference in the world. And to
anyone else, take a look if you want, and all comments are welcome.
And to the OT topic of the thread, if someone draws conclusions from the
hard data that I'm gathering and presenting, which changes their
purchasing patters away from people who don't care about our safety,
then I think everyone is better off. Except for the companies whose
demise only a few will regret.