Re: OT: WD40 depressing experience
|
The abuses of the industrial revolution had to be stopped by law!
Many rules are good, but none have ever been written that some genius won't
circumvent with some duct tape and bailing wire. It comes down to having a
reasonable amount of knowledge, common sense and self-responsibility. One of my
favorite example is the 3-wire grounded power distribution scheme. Seems even
folks who should know much better have trouble grasping that neutral and ground
do not have the same purpose and are not interchangeable. Therefore, "grounded"
plugs can't be trusted as a rule, effectively negating 30% of installed copper!
Oh, and never mind the intended safety improvement - the uncertainty of that
supposed ground can kill you, too - might it?be better to make do with 2
wires and know what you're dealing with...?
?
I could go on; just attended an NTSB presentation on the analysis of the
P51 crash at Reno 2011. The rules were on the books...one idiot megalomaniac who
was above all that killed himself a bunch of spectators and endangered the
sport.
?
Can't fix it by piling on more rules on top of those that get in the way
more than help?- gotta educate, educate, educate! And the rules have to
make sense to be respected, not just feared, disdained and ignored.
Bernd
?
?
In a message dated 2/25/2013 6:02:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
steve.king.2272@... writes:
?
Dennis and All -
Common sense and what I
will term legitimate safety warnings are in fact wise and useful.
Where
we go off the deep end is with such "Required" warnings as not to use your
hair dryer in the shower and/or tub. Do not place your hands/feet under a lawn
more that is running. There are literally hundreds and even thousands of these
sort of warnings, mandated by lawyers because some dim bulb did not have the
common sense NOT to use a hair dryer in the tub.
It doesn't take eight
pages to warn you not to spray WD-40 in your eyes, mouth, nose, or any other
opening in your body, or to not spray it on an open flame, or not to spay it
in a bag and then breath in the fumes, etc.
There comes a point where
the individual needs to be responsible for their own safety and well being and
not sue the manufacturer because they or a departed love one was an idiot when
it comes to common sense.
Steve
On 02/25/2013 17:49, Dennis
Tillman wrote:
?
Some very
intelligent engineers have died as a result of an unexpected encounter with
HV due to no fault of their own. They aren¡¯t here to speak in favor of the 8
pages of warnings that accompanied the can of WD40 that was derided in the
first email of this thread. We have no way of knowing if one of those
engineers might have lived as a result of reading those warnings. I worked
around some nasty chemicals once and if it weren¡¯t for the Material Safety
Data Sheets (is this another example of what one forum member sarcastically
described as ¡°your tax dollars at work¡±?) the management would have been
able to tell us everything was fine and there was nothing to worry
about.
I know of one
brilliant electronics engineer (numerous patents) who drilled through a stud
into a live wire while holding an electric drill in his hand in a crawl
space. He was electrocuted. It shouldn¡¯t have happened. A series of highly
unlikely events had to all be present simultaneously for it to happen. I can
easily see myself in the same circumstances. I have an old very powerful ?¡±
drill from the 1950s that is all metal. The case may or may not be properly
grounded ¨C I never checked. I have drilled into walls while kneeling on the
earth under my house just like the dead electronics engineer.
During a
recent remodel I saw my contractor nailing 1 ?¡± x 3¡± steel plates onto our
wall studs. When I asked what he was doing he explained it was code to put
these plates anywhere someone could possibly drill through the stud into a
wire that was snaked through the stud. That was a building code requirement
that increased the cost of my house and I¡¯m sure there are plenty of
contractors that were against it saying sarcastically: ¡°Your tax dollars at
work¡±. It is easy to take pot shots when you don¡¯t understand the purpose of
the regulations.
That engineer
would probably be alive today if his house had those plates on the studs. He
is not a candidate for a Darwin Award. Just the opposite, he designed a fair
amount of the oscilloscope technology we all love. Some laws were written to
protect us from making a fatal mistake even if we don¡¯t think we need their
protection.
Dennis
. 
__,_._,__0.0.02.-1537678613R:0000aa13 E:15611.16101
|
