According to NIST, your Christmas tree will soon kill you

First spotted on Boing Boing, this cheery holiday film is brought to us, for some reason, by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the government agency that's based in part in Boulder. (Hopefully this video involved the incineration of one of those crappy student bungalows on the Hill.) The...

By Joel Warner

December 29, 2008

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First spotted on Boing Boing, this cheery holiday film is brought to us, for some reason, by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the government agency that's based in part in Boulder. (Hopefully this video involved the incineration of one of those crappy student bungalows on the Hill.) The message is pretty clear: Any second now, your innocent-looking Christmas tree will spontaneously ignite and melt your face off. Apparently, there's not much you can do to avoid said catastrophe, since if your tree is combustible enough to randomly burst into flames, it will surely blow up if you try to, say, pick it up and toss it out the door. Oh, well. Happy Holidays from the federal government! - Joel Warner

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Joel Warner is a former staff writer for Westword and International Business Times. He's also written for WIRED, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, Slate, Grantland and many other publications. He's co-author of the 2014 book The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes Things Funny, published by Simon & Schuster.

Contact: Joel Warner