Guy said--
"...if you want to play with something go learn it first, ......."
THat, Sir, is absolute BS, backwards, anti-creative, counterproductive and rediculous....in MY opinion. <edited severeal times downward>
To "play" with something is the very essence of learning because there is *interest* in it.
I've been a teacher and I've seen those timid about experimenting and enquiring and instead studied the information gathered by others.....no thanks. All they do is spew the stuff they assume to be right because somebody else 'said' it was.
There was never better teachers than those that said, 'Here's the basics, go do it and holler when you need help'.
I _do_ know what you mean, and I have a lot of sympathy for that viewpoint.
I look back at myself and my memories and can find plenty of instances of "I did _what_!!!" but like you say I got away with it.
Looking back I'd have to say I got away with it because of a lot of things, partially dumb luck, partially I'd absorbed enough smarts along the way to not do anything _too_ stupid (the fertiliser bomb pushed the envelope though - nother story)
Now I'm older, maybe that gives me a different perspective, and it is this.
I've got a 19 year old girl, her job is hotel receptionist, she's studying her degree in management at the same time, (she's not my child BTW so this isn't anything about wanting a son and making a daughter into a tomboy)
Lots of people will say there's lots of things she doesn't need to know, the world has moved on since we grew up.
Last autumn I taught her how to strip, prep, prime, paint and finish a motorcycle, yes it wasn't perfect, but it was her first job and you have to learn from mistakes, point was it was ALL her own hands and work, I just sat there and talked her though each stage.
http://www.surfbaud.co.uk/TR1/here's an example of her metal polishing
and here's an example of her paintwork
not too shabby for a 19 year old girl who'd never done anything like it before.
just last week we were saying I'd teach her to weld, not because she'd ever need to, but she might, you never know.
now here's the point.
she isn't stupid by any means, but she came out of school at sixteen knowing nothing, and I don't mean nothing compared to an adult, but nothing compared to us when we were sixteen, schools and life got all politically correct and health and safety concious, kids don't mix chemicals in a chemistry lab any more, nobody ignites potassium or magnesium, noone makes producer gas and lights it, metal shops and wood shops are a thing of the past, they just have "science" classes.
when the kids get home they don't get out to play in case bands of roaming paedophiles abduct them, or in case they step on an HIV infected needle that bands of roaming addicts have left behind, or in case they get killed by a car, or in case they fall in the river and drown, or in case they fall out of the tree and break their backs.
kids aren't exposed to casual enviornmental dangers, so they don't learn to gauge them and make value judgements.
I walked over a mile to school from the age of seven, that was in the country too and nobody in the country needs to be told farm land is a heap more dangerous than town and parks.
Today kids in their teens are taken to and from school by their parents in vehicles.
There is no corporal punishment in schools.
We are turning out generations of people who have never felt physical pain and never learned the lessons associated with it.
Every week I pass someone changing a car tyre, can't remember the last time I saw someone with the spare sat under the vehicle body in case the jack collapsed.
It might be that nobody on there forums or reading them falls into this category, it might be that everyone here has the ability to make valid risk assessments, if that is the case then these forums are a definite self selected sub-set of society.
If these forums aren't that sub-set of society, then we will have people here who can't make valid risk assessments, and there is a hell of a lot of opportunity for a standard lister to hurt you, never mind a heath robinson one with aftermarked home made add-ons that were never intended to be so.
Speaking as an englishman, there is a shit load of things that I can no longer do, or only do subject to obtaining some expensive licence, most of these restrictions came about as a result of other people who couldn't make valid risk assessments.
In 5 years time I don't want some jobsworth coming around and telling me I can't run my lister without wire cage enclosing all the rotating parts and various inspection certificated because some yahoo couldn't make a valid risk assessment and killed someone.
my 2c