vintage computers and lead poisoning?

Quothe Brian Mahoney, from writings of Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 09:46:47PM -0400: Yet another reason as to why socialized medicine is a bad thing. It's bad enough to have to pay the expensive insurance premiums for an indemnity policy (and if everyone bought these instead of using those damned HMOs, most people would be paying into such policies and then most people would have much better health insurance for a reasonable cost, which existed before the blasted HMOs came into existence, ruined an excellent health-care system, making health insurance extremely inexpensive for young and healthy people while making it vastly more expensive for others as they got older, etc.), but worse yet to have the government pay and have even more control over people's lives. Who in their right mind wants more government control over everything? Next, you won't be allowed to work on electrical circuits because it's dangerous and the government pays for your health insurance... not that such insurance up there in Canada is worth much anyway, considering the number of people who come to the U.S. from Canada, paying their own way to be admitted to U.S. hospitals for surgery, etc. if they can afford to. Government paid health care is usually poor quality health care; surely people in countries such as England, and other parts of the U.K., can attest to that. It's just a bad idea that doesn't work right due to the bureaucracy and cost-cutting measures that don't take the patient's health into consideration (like a huge HMO, only worse since a government runs it). Damned nuisances; got caught twice by cops already for those seat-belt laws which have no right to exist in a free society. Well, helmets can cause injuries as well. I stopped wearing a riding helmet on horseback, since it limits vision to some extent---which negates safety benefits; there's no such thing as a guarantee of safety around horses, so, wearing a helmet just eliminates a very few, out of many, risks. Almost had a helmet caught in a tree branch while blazing a trail through thickish woods, which could have darned near pulled my head off my neck! When I was younger, I did a lot of bicycle riding, and never wore a helmet; wouldn't have enjoyed bicycling at all with one of those blasted annoyances on my head and would have refused to wear one. ...and would bicycle helmets have protected the bicycle riders that my horse could have easily kicked in the face when they came up too fast behind us on a trail, and then shouted loudly as they approached from several feet away? Naturally, she kicked out at them, barely missing them (darn!), and could have thrown me off as a result of their stupidity if I'd lost my balance. Remember this: helmets don't save stupid people from their own stupidity. Taking this topic back to classic computers, consider this: needlessly extreme safety precautions forced upon idiots, such as a government would institute, taken during the troubleshooting of power supplies and other circuits with lethal current levels, wouldn't save idiots stand on government approved rubber mats while working on electrical equipment" or "high-voltage probes not meeting standard X23124Y534Z5 are considered illegal devices, and anyone found possessing one will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law." -- Copyright (C) 2004 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & her other creatures, using dogma to justify such www.rddavis.org 410-744-4900 beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.