I'm ashamed of you people. So far I've received exactly one response to my embarassing CD poll. The rest of you are either too lazy to email me, too embarassed of your poor musical taste, or under the mistaken assumption that you only listen to good music. The first is deplorable, if you're concerned about the second I'll leave your name off when I post it, and the third is just plain wrong. One of my readers listens to the Backstreet Boys, but to find out who it is you have to give me enough submissions to warrant posting about it!

Not many of you have young children at home, but as more and more of my friends get engaged this post will become more relevant. Toysafety.net has released their latest list of unsafe toys just in time for Christmas shopping season.

In particular I was astounded by the toys with hazardous noise levels (at the bottom of the page). The Growing Smart Lap Top Computer may look friendly and innocuous, but its 100-decibel sound level can cause hearing loss in 1-2 hours. This will never occur, though, because the average child's attention span for any particular toy is approximately 10 seconds. Woe is the child who unwraps a brand new "Typhoon Fazer and Saber" this Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, though. Playing with it for 2 minutes can supposedly cause hearing loss. And I feel even worse for the parents, as the decibel level is comparable with that of a power mower or snowblower.

Interestingly enough, however, is the fact that the sound of a baby crying is about 110 decibels, which is louder than either of the toys. Therefore the most dangerous playthings for small children are their own voice boxes, which should be recalled immediately.