bright light! bright light!

Funny how you see things, but don't really take them in. There's a quote on a blog I like that says, " No man sees his shadow who faces the sun." Now while I don't really get what that means, it does have a 'carpe diem' 'only the bold' feel to it, so I like it in spite of my confusion. But today I looked at it after learning about welder's flash, and the first thought that occurred to me was, "of course he doesn't see his shadow. That man doesn't see anything, because he's blind from the glare".

Incidentally, I've been told previously that you should never wear contact lenses near someone welding, because a stray spark to the eye can weld the contact to your eye. A fact you will not discover (it won't hurt) until you remove the contact...with your cornea attached. At my first aid course, however, a guy in the industry claimed that the same thing can happen to a person who gets welder's flash (that is, is only looking at the light). He said that even with protective eyewear, he would not wear contacts around someone welding. Scary. I'd like to know for sure if that's true, but for now I won't be hanging around construction sites with my contacts in.

Edit: I also won't be hanging around any construction sites with my contacts out. That might be more dangerous.

Edit 2: Well, I said I wanted to know if it's true or not, and Jason provided the answer on Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/te...chno/ cornea.asp. I emailed the info to the woman who taught the first aid course, but haven't heard anything back yet.