Cautious Reminder - Ohio Teen Electrocuted Conducting ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ Experiment

[Richard]

So many things are safetyfied now that people assume all danger has been mitigated and have lost a lot of the ability to look out for themselves. I read of a lawsuit where a person was injured because their seatbelt did not stop them when the seat was fully reclined. It seems pretty obvious (although I have also ridden with my seat reclined) that a seatbelt must be in front of you to stop you from moving forward but people have not been exposed to situations where they need to think about these things and have not developed the ability to assess risk.

[Enzo]

There are also plenty of people these days, who even when they know something is dangerous assume that it will always be someone else's fault. I remember reading of a guy who bought a new car battery, dropped it on his foot while trying to install it, and successfully sued the battery maker.

[Alex R]

Especially when there is someone stood behind you holding a cup of coffee! And then you do that little dance with all the swearing! not just me then...

Oh yes indeed. And to add to this, when receiving a shock I emit a strange loud high pitched girlish squeak.

I think it comes from my mouth...

[Justin Thomas]

Can I sig part of this?

Justin

[km6xz]

When there is a sense of personal responsibility for ones own actions fewer laws are needed and it is a more polite society I have found. After visiting 87 countries you can tell which do and do not have a great deal of regulation of behavior, such as having a lot of police presence tends to lead to more extreme behavior compared to societies where everyone essentially a free agent to do as they please but suffer the consequences. But we have a serious problem with regulation, not because it is too much but because it gives corporations guide posts to shoot for and skirt predefined boundaries. Less and less are corporations believing they owe their community anything because not doing so is permissible because it is not strictly defined in the regulations. A broader general policy of holding companies to a less defined "for the public good" as defined by the community at the time would force them to think of what is acceptable by the community. The rub is that corporations used to be part of a community, but now most are owned by hidden actors with no locale, no community ties, or national ties. No responsibility to be a good citizen is implied now but rather what can be gotten away with is the rule. Almost all the public policy is determine by corporations yet few of them identify with the country let alone the community, they are multinationals as likely owned by oil sheiks as foreign governments. Responsibility just does not enter into it, what can be gotten away with trumps all. And it does. I enjoy living in a place where there is still a sense of personal ties to everyone else and shared culture. It is sort of like US 1955 in a way, but prettier girls;>)

[gbono]

Stan as usual you are making too much sense.......though I must quote you almost out of context but it is so relevant to what's happening now in the US:

Responsibility just does not enter into it, what can be gotten away with trumps all.

[Alex R]

Can I sig part of this?

Justin

if you mean mine, be my guest

[LashaunEwing]

Yes, Education is what you're left with after you have forgotten what you are learned. There are a lot of subjects at school, so, I sure, it is unreal to remember every of them. I like music, so I prefer musician subjects. I like alive concerts and see all concerts of them here. I chose one and come.

[Impt1974]

I wondered why did they have to mention that it's not allowed to put animals into a microwave until one day actually heard about a women trying to dry out her cat's fur by putting it in there. What's interesting, she had won the arument because the producer didn't care to put it in the instruction manual! Now I wonder if there should be instructions for everything.

[mikepukmel]

Oh that is very American. Anything happens that is bad, and as long as we can figure out someone to blame for it, we consider our job done.

Oh yeah, sad part of what goes on around here, blame, blame .. ahh we KNOW what the problem is! When I was a kid 45 years ago, a friends little brother had a buddy from a war torn country west of China. His friend convinced him to get a bunch of bullets that the kids grandfather made and left in their basement, fill a glass jar (glass!) with bolts and bb's and washers, and the gun powder of course, and light the assembly on the kids back porch, of course while standing there looking at the thing go off. They were a lot more lucky than the poor kid screwing around with HV power supplies in the story, ended up with a few chards of glass here and there, no eye or hearing damage.

Idle hands ...

[J M Fahey]

Oh, the glass is the "safe" part of the experiment

We (justly) fear broken glass because it´s very sharp and easily cuts through skin even under feeble thumb pressure and we bleed a lot, which is impressive, while bolts, nuts, etc are blunt; but at explosion speeds glass hardly will make more than superficial damage (too little mass to go beyond skin) while 1000 times as heavy bolts and nuts will puncture deep holes into vital internal organs or sever large blood vessels.

Your friend was very lucky, Iraq/Afghanistan/Israel IEDs are made just like that.

These are the homemade bombs carried by GPS controlled drones which were intended to be dropped on Russia´s Syrian airbase: 2 plastic glasses filled with scrap metal and explosives, gaffer taped together, with a crude percussion fuze at the nose and "something with fins" at the other end so they fall nose first.

[Justin Thomas]

Thanks, Juan!

Rather than Google "how to make an IED," I'll check here first! :P

Juston