"burn" news and stories

An Indianapolis couple, Michael and Alexis Brennan, is suing Starbucks, claiming that they served their daughter a cup of hot chocolate, which subsequently spilled and left her with serious burns. The daughter, whose age was not given, but was young enough to fit in a car seat, was said to have been riding strapped into that car seat in the back of the car when she spilled the drink. The mother stopped the car and got out to discover that the "skin on [her] leg was falling off of her."

Starbucks is supposed to serve their kids sized drinks at about 20 degrees less than their standard temperature, putting those drinks at about 140F or so, which is hot, but not incredibly so when you consider the size of the cup and the fact that they are often topped with an inch or more of cold whipped cream, as this particular drink was. The baristas can make it at a lower temperature if requested. A high percentage of parents test the temperature of their kids' drinks by taking a sip themselves, but Ms. Brennan only subjected the drink to a visual inspection before handing it to her daughter. A small child holding a drink of any kind in the backseat of a moving car, especially if he or she is small enough to have to be confined to a car seat, sounds like a recipe for disaster, regardless of whether the drink is hot or not. The parents are, of course, seeking (unspecified) damages.

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Earlier this month, we saw "Snakes on a Cake." Now a man in Wellington, Florida, has burned the Snakes on a Plane insignia into a piece of toast, according to the Sun-Sentinel. One can't help but be reminded of the Ft. Lauderdale woman who found the Virgin Mary burned into her grilled cheese sandwich several years ago. Like her, snake toast artist Gregg Prior is going the same route and listing his toast on eBay. So far there have been 31 bids and the current price is $160. "Snakes on a Plane, I thought what better a way to show the world what I can put on toast," Prior told local NewsChannel 5. Indeed, a noble medium for a noble subject.

As you may have heard, Cadbury has recalled more than 1 million chocolate bars for fear of salmonella contamination. Today, the BBC featured a nifty little graphic (right) to help readers wrap their minds around the proportions of 1 million bars of chocolate. As you can see, that's 250 tons, or 55 elephants worth of sweet, possibly harmful goodness that Cadbury now has to dispose of. One option that's been brought up is to remove the wrappers and bury the bars at a landfill. Cadbury responded, rather ominously, to that idea, saying: "We have plans but that is all we are prepared to say." Other possibilities for getting rid of the chocolate include incinerating or composting it, both of which would render the chocolate useful as an energy source or sterilized animal feed. You could also probably also use it to put several rockets in orbit.