Originally Posted by
Yaatri
...Birds hang from high tension wires, you could too, with bare hands, without being electrocuted, as long as you don't ground yourself.
Totally irrelevant, to the point that it raises questions about how well the poster understands electricity. There is no potential difference between the two points where the bird's feet touch on the same wire.
Originally Posted by
Yaatri
Since you are on FT, I am sure you travel around the world. Do you re-wire all your small appliances, such as dual voltage shavers, hair dryers, cell phone/pda charging units? Think about it. Unless you are talking about really high voltages approaching breakdown voltage of the insulation, higher voltage is of no consequence in these cases.
Every one of those examples is intended to be used at 240v and is designed with that in mind. Lamps are not. Again, this raises questions about the extent to which the poster understand the issues.
We are talking about peak (not RMS) voltages that could exceed the breakdown voltage of the internal insulation of cords used in U.S. lamps. This is not something worth taking a risk on, given the trivial effort and/or cost involved in rewiring a lamp.