Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

That was designed to prevent cats from dialing the emergency services. At least the US went for 911.

After you read that, read this:

That style is what is used almost everywhere except in the usa.

Most of the empire doesn't use those sockets.

Probably apocryphal, but in the American civil war, the Confederate farm boys had a piece of straw tied to one foot and hay to the other and were drilled as 'Hayfoot!Strawfoot!' etc.

They did know straw from hay, but not left from right. So the story goes. Probably a lie. Most stories are.

Mmm. some are more left wing than others.

I am not sure if this trumps that.

If this were done, what would the expected health consequences be? I have tried to do risk analyses by assigning probabilities, and I find it difficult to obtain a credible estimate higher than 0.01 eventual deaths. It would be very easy to support numbers hundreds or thousands of times smaller.

However, this management option is not being taken. Instead the DOE has decided to remove the waste from the tank, convert it to glass, and bury it deep underground in accordance with plans for future commercial high-level waste. This program will cost about $1 billion. Spending $1 billion to avert 0.01 deaths corresponds to $100 billion per life saved! This is going on at a time when the same government is turning down projects that would save a life for every $100,000 spent! That is our real waste problem.

One last item deserves mention here — the radiation exposure to workers in executing the plans described above. It turns out that exposure is greater in the billion-dollar plan that was adopted than in the plan for conversion to cement, by an amount that would cause 0.02 deaths (i.e., a

I have met the government officials who chose the billion-dollar plan, and have discussed these questions with them. They are intelligent people trying to do their jobs well. But they don't view saving lives as the relevant question. In their view, their jobs are to respond to public concern and political pressures. A few irrational zealots in the Buffalo area stirred up the public there with the cry "We want that dangerous waste out of our area." Why should any local people oppose them? Their congressional representatives took that message to Washington — what would they have to gain by doing otherwise? The DOE officials responded to that pressure by asking for the billion-dollar program. It wasn't hurting them; in fact, having a new billion-dollar program to administer is a feather in their caps. Congress was told that a billion dollars was needed to discharge the government's responsibility in protecting the public from this dangerous waste — how could it fail to respond?

That is how a few people with little knowledge or understanding of the problem induced the United States Government to pour a billion dollars "down a rathole." I watched every step of the process as it went off as smooth as glass. And the perpetrators of this mess have become local heroes to boot."

I rest your case for you.

AIUI it is not mandatory to fit these to existing installations.

Our house was perfectly legal before we had it re-wired. It had actual wire fuses, and rubber coated wiring running through the thatched roof.

The new wiring has all the modern features.

Andy

It's a trade-off. More shocks with 240V; more fires with the higher currents required at 120V.

Andy

My car (Right hand drive, built in Japan) has the indicator switch on the off side, so I can flick it with my fingers while my other hand is on the gear stick.

My wife's car follows the European convention that the indicators are on the left. Which is correct for the rest of Europe where they are all LHD and drive on the right, but wrong for the UK.

I often turn on the wipers instead of signalling. I never signal the wrong way. It's not up for right, it's clockwise. (Or anticlockwise!) The same way you will turn the wheel when you turn the corner.

Andy

They do if you want them to blow rather than suck.

They aren't likely to confuse them as sky is up and grass is down. No need for colour coding.

Or a dodgy line that periodically disconnects. Unlikely that the periods correspond to the minimum interval between pulses, so 112 should be OK. (112 is supposed to work in the UK as well as 999, unless Brexit stops us from using the EU number.)

I think that one of the last 'normal' cars in the UK to have the indicator stalk (correctly) on the offside was the Toyota Corolla (in the 1990s). I certainly didn't like the change to left side, but (surprisingly) soon got used to it. [You had no choice.]

I certainly used to (especially in an unfamiliar car).

Languages are strange things, and some don't have words for the bleedin' obvious. For example, Latin and in Gaelic seem to have difficulty with the simple concept of 'Yes' and 'No'.

Yes, and then every maker of business phone exchanges also decided to then use "9" to begin the dial sequence of an outside line. Couple that stupid choice with "dial 1 for long distance" and every long distance call begins as "9 1" -- two thirds of the 911 emergency number.

I've known folks who accidentally dialed an additional "1" after the "long distance + outside line" prefix and had to explain that no, they really were not trying to contact emergency services.

I have Kinsey plonked. But blades do of course have a proper direction of rotation, the curve is wrong when spinning backwards, which means they are less efficient one way.

Andy

My car is a 1999 Toyota MR2, and end of the production line.

(Yes, I was having a midlife crisis, and that was over 20 years ago... the PO had bought a sports car when the kids left home, and was selling it so she could take the grandchildren to nursery...)

Andy

The US 411 directory assistance was sometimes confused with 911.

But we use the internet now to find phone numbers.