Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire No Wonder We're Getting Dumbed Down

Darwin is winning out over humanity!
Wifey's niece was showing her goats at the Huntingdon Fair, and we road down yesterday to see her and look around.
Being around mechanics all my life , I got to looking over a lotta the old hit & miss engines, threshers and farm equipment, some from as far back as the turn of the century.
Other than simplicity, what struck me is the glaring omission of all the hand guards and all the rest of the miscellaneous safety features we're surrounded with now. You had to be on your toes and be aware of stuff, or you were likely not to finish!
If I hop off the mower to move something, it shuts off. We're surrounded now by idiot proof machines and labels warning us against every little detail.
Maybe, just maybe, if you're too stupid to work on something without all this stuff, you really got no business being in the gene pool!
7mm

Not to mention medicating people with stuff that causes "suicidal thoughts".....

Welcome to Construction.

Warning labels and safety guards have been interfering with natural selection for decades.

Bruce

A lot of people were hurt before they put all that crap on everything. Companies had to protect themselves from damn lawyers.

In a just world, lawyers would have to protect themselves from everyone else...

Welfare has been very hard on the laws of natural selection .

Lots of video on the net of workers being killed in China from unsafe working conditions

In a just world there would be no lawyers.

In the United States, in 1889, one in every 35 railway workers was injured each year, and in the more dangerous “running trades” that put some of them in close proximity to trains, that rate jumped to one in 12. Fatalities were common, too. One out of every 117 workers died on the job.

Retired machinist. The last cnc's had such complicated door locks you damn near couldn't do a set up. Abd they are married to the computer so you can't override them

Yep.

I sure remember a lot more farmers, machinery operators, and roughnecks that were missing body parts when I was a kid than you see now. You just have to slip once around a live PTO shaft, auger, or other piece of machinery to pull back a bloody stump and wish it had a guard on it. Lots of oilfield trash missing fingers back in the chain throwing days too.

I'm old enough to remember when gas cans didn't require safety latches and automatic shut offs that only help in spilling gas everywhere therefore negating any potential safety factor.

I worked in the timber industry most of my life! From felling trees to millwright work. I don't have any problem with machinery guards! I've seen death and dismemberment, if you've ever been exposed to either on the job, you appreciate machinery guards!

Those gas cans cause cuss words too!

I cured my cans from that.

Some day they'll be sellin' chain saws with idiot proof chain guards.

We need to bring back the belt & pulley Buzz Saws....that ran off of an old 8 N.

Have to test out on it to vote.

Out, Out–
Robert Frost - 1874-1963






The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

This poem is in the public domain.
Robert Frost
One of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, Robert Frost was the author of numerous poetry collections, including including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923). Born in San Francisco in 1874, he lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston in 1963.

I think about stupid stuff like crossbolt safeties on lever action rifles and triggers that you can't set below three pounds.

My father went through life from age 7 missing his right index finger from an incident with some kind of corn grinding machine, this happened in 1906. Probably no guards on the gears or something of the sort. Maybe we should go back to those days and get rid of all the stupid new safety precautions.