Surely it's horses for courses. I have done a lot of work on static sensitive devices, but I never use an anti static wrist strap. They may become disconected, without you noticing, causing potential damage to equipment. There is also the potential for them to become more conductive, (due to sweat or other adulteration), causing danger to the wearer. I much prefer the manual method of discharging through the earthed copper pipe along the front of my workbench, as a positive method of anti-static working practice.
Sometimes I need the scope to check out electrical signals, other times a simple multimeter is up to the job. But if I'm faced with three calbes hangning out of a ceiling, where the rose should be, I'm quite happy to use a neon indicator to suss out which are the ring, and which is the switch pair.
Standing on a kitchen stool with a meter is a lot more prone to errors than a simple neon driver. You could end up with a lead comming out of a socket at the meter, your probe could slip off the cable as you look down at the meter, a probe lead may have a fracture. ALL of these faults lead to a false "safe" reading (potentially very dangerous).
If I use a neon, under the same circumstances, assuming that the driver is working at all, if it lights, it indicates a potential difference between my body and the point in question. Any spurious glowing caused by capacitance or whatever, would actually be a false "danger" signal. Therefore, the neon tester errs on the side of safety, whereas the multimeter errs towards being dangerous.
At the end of the day, even if I do happen to get the wrong leads from my rough test (very unlikely), what's the worst that's going to happen. I'll wire it all up, switch on the light, and a fuse will blow or an MCB will flip. Hardly life threatening. All that would be required would be a double check, with a meter, to find out what went wrong.
If anyone is going to be daft enough to connect an earth lead to the live (or make any other live threatening mistake), I can't see how the use of a multimeter would stop them.
The use of a finger on the wrist, neck or temple artery is usefull to tell if an unconcious accident victim is still alive, it will also give an indication if the patient is under stress. A stethescope is usefull go give a bit more information about how the heart is functioning, but an ECG is a far better indicator. You wouldn't expect a paramedic to connect up a full blown ECG machine to an accident victim, just to find out if he is alive.
Looking at which side of a tree trunk has the moss growing can be used to guestimate North. A fist at arms length will cover an area of about 10 degrees, (a thumb thickness about two degrees). Submarines, more usually, use a gyro compass.
