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#1
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Quote:
second, I've taken more damage from a computer than I have from books... books don't shock the shit out of you when you try to upgrade your memory
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Be the leaf.
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#2
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Stop kidding around?
Quote:
Sometimes it is useful to do experiments on live electrical circuits, but novices should always first de-energize any gadget on which they work by removing the mains power (or powerful battery cells) and waiting until any electrolytic capacitors are discharged. A talented electronics designer who lectured a short practical electronics course I took as a college freshman told us that people had been killed by electrical circuits using as little as 12 volts. I hope you know that typical US mains supplies are about 120 volts AC. By the way, it is electrical current (analogous to fluid flow rate) and not electrical voltage (analogous to fluid pressure differences) which will determine if you are electrocuted to death or not. When I was a kid, we were extremely aware of the lethal potential of electricity, because it was used to execute criminals, including some terrible people from places like my tough old childhood neighborhood, and shortly before I was born at that. (For fun, watch my "home movie" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Inc/dp/B000UL5YY6#player">here</a> by starting the "Theatrical Trailer" on the right. Mr. Reles had lived less than a third mile from the hospital at which I was born and barely more than that from one of the places I lived for years as a child.) I even remember a time when we were playing "cops and robbers" in front of a rare non-tenement home where a bench stood. Unaware how few people were put to death by the "electric chair," we decided there was an incipient demand to increase productivity via parallelism, and the bench became the world's first (and only?) "electric couch" in our sweet little innocent preadolescent imaginations! Two generations ago, when boys became 8 or so, in rural areas they might well be given their first firearm, and their urban counterparts would receive use of their first adult tools. My father gave me my first soldering iron then, with which I could convert the rare trashed vacuum-tube-based TV set into the only collection of electronic components I could afford for my juvenile experiments. These sets included a transformer for generating well over 15,000 volts, but I almost exclusively confined myself to the "lower" voltage components, in the range of 200 to 400 volts. In all my childhood adventures with electricity, I was only injured once, when a large piece of molten solder landed onto the back of my hand and endowed me with a small enduring "badge of honor" which served the salubrious purpose of reminding me to always anticipate what might happen if a hand slips and there is molten metal around. Goodness knows what terrible fate I was spared by this early "education." In wealthy countries today, it is extremely common for people to baby their minor children and then complain how useless they are. Perhaps the world would be a better place if there was FAR less <a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parents-opting-to-have-childr,17159/">"school-homing"</a>? |
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2010, 3dimesional, alizee, en concert, mexico |
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