ABS and Shocks/Springs?

[Benjamin Weste Pearre]

Two questions:

My "Turn Off the ABS" switch is unhappy.  Is there a relay or fuse I
can pull to permanently disable ABS?  I can look this up if I unbury
my manuals, but they're in boxes right now, and it's snowing, and I'm
going skiing tomorrow morning.

My car's suspension is pretty soft - it definitely rolls in turns and
dips when I brake, and when I load up the back with camping gear, it
squats.  I've had people say that replacing the shocks will help with
this, but I don't understand: shocks will affect the _rate_ at which
the car will settle, but how can they have any effect at all on how
_far_ the car will settle?  That should be controlled by the springs,
shouldn't it?  Do springs go bad after 178k miles?  Why do people keep
telling me to upgrade my shocks?

Cheers!
-Ben

--
Ben Pearre          1990 200TQA          http://hebb.mit.edu/~ben