In article , clifto wrote:
Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
"clifto" wrote...
Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
"Shaun Eli" wrote in message
The first time the clerk told me, when I was buying
lamp cord, which color was for positive and which for negative... it
took me ten minutes to explain alternating current to him.

Uh, take a good look at some of your cords; note the subtle difference.
Take a look at the plugs for polarity. If you don't see the
differences,
go to a good hardware store and ask the guy about it.

So tell us, which color of lamp cord is positive and which is negative?

Take a look at the typical lamp cord. One side will have some grooves in
the extruded side of the rubber and that is on the positive side of the
polarized plug.

I know about the grooves. I don't know anything about a positive side of
the AC line or of the plug that connects to the AC line. I also never
found any standard for the grooved wire's use.

I have heard of one - grooves on the neutral side. I have tested for
that a few times from about 1980 to a few minutes ago and found that to be
always true with exception only by homebrewers unaware of this.

On a polarized 110V 15A plug, the smaller prong is hot and the larger is
neutral. Where there is a third wire for ground, as the contacts are
facing away from the holder and toward an outlet, the smaller hot contact
is on the right when the ground is down.

--
"Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad
was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide
is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home."

Back in the pre-911 days, I saw most liberal complaints in that area not
asking for sending troops but for merely stopping support of undemocratic
regimes and repudiating past support thereof (such as the ones of
Pinochet and Samoza).

As for Iraq, I think best-to-have-done was to not get into that sideshow
detracting from the war on terrorism. Second-best was to go in with the
troop strength advised by the less-Bush-favored higher generals advising
higher troop strength, as in having in place double-triple what we had
once Saddam lost power as opposed to ignoring history to be optimistic
that mid-easterners will be optimistic and mostly quick to work hard to
build a democracy out of a nation liberated from a dictator. That
high side troop strength would have prevented the Sunni insurgents
from discrediting USA via taking advantage of inability to maintain
adequate security.

-- Jonah Goldberg

- Don Klipstein )