Only in America! Bloody merkins etc. etc. blah blah

came back from the interview and a rollerblade got stuck in his lawnmower. Leaving the thing turned on ... it would only be a waste of gas to turn it off he attempted to remove it.

I ain't clicking on the video link....

It sure as hell wasn't there when sticking a hand in moving machinery, suddenly popped its head up when the man was going to die.

Maybe he should have just let the machine kill him. His brilliance will go on and help future generations shove their hands in moving machinery monsters.

... for those on the other side of the pond, is in the state of South Carolina. There is, in fact, no U.S. state called "Columbia", although there IS a District of Columbia. It's where we try to hide our nation's capitol.

What a muppet

Would it have been that much trouble to stop the piece of heavy machinary by pressing the off button, rather than jamming a stick in it. Nevermind that he was about to stick his hand into it.

Nice work hacking off his own melting arm with a penknife...

I think the jamming the stick in was AFTER his had got stuck - by which time reaching the off switch might have been out of the question.

Of course your point about turning off the bloody (well it was after it ate the hand) machine BEFORE reaching into it in the first place still stands ;-)

Paris angle: Beware of sticking your hand in dodgy places!

I presume that you are referring to the building wherein meets the state legislature, because the city of Washington DC is, of course, your nation's capital, but does however contain the nation's capitol. I really get depressed by Americans who can't tell the difference, as well as by the ones who do Darwin Award-worthy feats but fail to die as a result (as per this article).

... Was this the same bloke who appeared on the Johnathon Ross show a few years back?

Incredibly brave/hard/stupid bloke...

I'm just amazed that he just knuckled down and cut his arm off. I'm surprised his wife didn't give him the elbow or the cold shoulder after what happened . . .

"I had a prayer with God, with the corn picker and with me and just kind of made it easy, and made peace with it. Just thankful to be alive and to be here and do an interview with you."

What...a...moron. Yes, praise god your arm got torn off. Thank Jesus for your severed limb.

The utter stupidity is scary.

He used his "pocket knife" to hack his arm off?? No way, unless his pocket knife is Crocodile Dundee-sized!

Anyway, this incident somehow screams of "DARWIN AWARDS!" had he been unsuccessful in his arm hacking stunt! Remember, safety first!

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to retrieve a piece of wood thats jamming my blender at full speed.

Exactly how is the man supposed to "just turn the machine off" when his arm is caught in the damn thresher? Are you really that ignorant about machines, or just stupid? If your sleeve got caught in the engine block of your car whilst under repair, would we mock you for not "simply" engaging OnStar from the dashboard to summon help? Of course not... you wouldn't be able to reach it. Dumbass... but I guess in a country of grass farmers, I shouldn't expect much in the way of gene knowledge about mechanized agriculture.

Furthermore, the article didn't say "he stuck his hand in moving " machinery. It said,

"The machine's rollers caught his hand"

which is a far cry from just jamming his hand into a thresher. This type of mangling accident is common among machine workers of all trades, and this one is only extraordinary because he sawed his damn arm off with a pen knife while he was on fucking fire.

I'm sure that given a "do-over", he'd play it differently, but jesus give the man some respect for having HUGE balls and being a total badass. Honestly...

sawed. his. FLAMING arm. off.

OSHA (the US occupational health and safety administration) would love his Lockout-Tagout procedures. So much for fully deenergizing the machine before servicing it.

Oh well, back in my screw-machine days (not what you think, look it up *snicker*) we had to reach in running machines all the time to ensure the oil coolant was hitting the cutting tools properly.

No risk = no fun!!

Skin melting off like plastic?

Kinda brings that ending scene from raiders of the lost arc to mind. Which was REALLY creepy a bazillion years ago, but now looks like melting plastic and ping-pong eye-balls falling outta faces?

I repeat EW~~~~!!!!11!1!1

stop stop stop the brain ewwww....

It reminds me of the story "Survivor Type" by Stephen King (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Type). Well, the removal of limbs at least.

Perhaps someone should give the farmer a copy of this book, it might give him some inspiration for his next trick. In this day and age he doesn't need to use an old fashioned pen and paper diary, he could make a video diary, or stream it live to the web.

Did the insurance Co. stump up yet?

Clearly a 'hands-on' approach to problems.

Is his tractor now 'left-hand-drive'?

... or am I just out on a limb here?

This has got to be ROTM stuff.

I mean ripping his arm off before it was cooked.

Even the old contraptions (sleeper cells?).

> Furthermore, the article didn't say "he stuck his hand in moving " machinery. It said,

> "The machine's rollers caught his hand"

Yes, it did. Well done on being able to read. Now let's see if you can comprehend too: please explain how the machine's rollers could have caught his hand - while, let's remember, " trying to free a stuck corn stalk" - if he hadn't "stuck his hand in moving machinery".

1. If the corn stalk was stuck, it must have been in the machine.

2. If the rollers caught his hand, the machinery must have been moving.

The phrase "I went up with my hand and the roller that takes the shucks off the corn had grabbed the glove and pulled my hand into the rollers" basically confirms that he put his hand *up* the machine *while* it was running. But I don't suppose you bothered to read the source material, did you? After all, everyone else is stupid and you are very clever, so there's no need for you to check your facts, is there?

"This type of mangling accident is common among machine workers of all trades"

Well, yes. But so is sticking your arm into a moving machine, and that's how it usually happens.

Almost exactly the same thing happened to a friend of my Dad's (everything except the fire) in the UK.

They poor guy had to cut through his wrist with only a Swiss Army knive, I'm told he had to swap from the blade to the saw halfway through (for obvious reasons)

It begger's the question, why don't bailers/threshers make sure the off button is within arms reach of the mouth :p

DC meaning District of Columbia, and that's what it is...not quite a state, but more than a city (City-state within a nation?). And yes DC does contain the US Capitol, but it is not the capitol itself. The capitol is simply a building, called...the Capitol Building, which is the seat of the federal government.

"I presume that you are referring to the building wherein meets the state legislature, because the city of Washington DC is, of course, your nation's capital, but does however contain the nation's capitol."

The confusion only gets worse when you see that DC has it's own mayor, which is usually a city position, but also it's own DMV, which is usually a state entity. Then we make it even better by having the DC police AND the capitol police (who are charged with protecting congress both in DC and throughout the nation, ie: other land and buildings in use by the federal government), which would suggest different jurisdictions, but this is not actually so.

"I really get depressed by Americans who can't tell the difference,..."

I didn't watch the vid (at work), so I don't know what 'stubby' had to say, but if this comment was in regards to what Mike was saying, you may wish to rethink it. DC is DC, that's it. The capitol is in DC for sure, but is not DC itself... as Mike said, we just hide it there. I would suggest you go over to www.dc.gov before proclaiming supreme knowledge of our capitol.

"as well as by the ones who do Darwin Award-worthy feats but fail to die as a result (as per this article)."

Just Americans? You show signs of having the "America, and the rest of the world" view we are so often vilified for (allegedly) having.

As for Stubby? Somehow, while his hand was being 'threshed' and 'melted', he remained calm enough to reach into his pocket, open his pocket-knife (with one hand), and without dropping the knife, began to butcher his own limb. Mind you that pocket-knives are not quite suitable for butchering meat, not to mention how slippery a knife handle can get when blood is squirted all over it, not to mention the bones had to be vibrating quite a bit from the grinding action going on just a few inches away...I can only imagine how sloppy the job was. All this when most of us would have just passed out and bled out upon seeing our own hand get machine-munched. I think this is one hell of an example of this man's ability to adapt in order to survive...not quite what Darwin was talking about, but pretty much the same idea.

Dammit if I cannot take the mickey out of Merkins on The Register I'll have to take my coat and go to a country where its enshrined in the law that one must take the mickey out of the Merkins. Canada here I come.

Ok so the first video I got after clicking the link was atually a weather forecast (the armless dude was further down) but I didn't notice and carried on watching.

Can someone please tell me why on earth the word "forecast" has been replaced on this, er, forecast, with "futurecast"?

Voiceover: "AND NOW - THE WEATHER F-U-T-U-R-E-C-A-A-A-A-S-T, with lasers and stuff."

Diane: "And, as we crank up the WS10 time dilation field, we can see that it will be mostly raining crispy chunks of charred farm worker's limb."

Todd: "Gee, Diane, don'tcha think if that farmer had access to our WS10 time dilation field he might still have both his arms today?"

Diane: "Yes Todd, that is a thought, although our producers think the viewers would have preferred us to put it to better use by actually having the WS10 roving camera there, on the scene, capturing Real Life, As It Happens"

Todd: "Ha ha yes. You're so clever."

Take a deep breath, count to ten and slowly, very slowly, realise that you are taking this all a bit too seriously. Also you're wrong.

"I presume that you are referring to the building wherein meets the state legislature, because the city of Washington DC is, of course, your nation's capital, but does however contain the nation's capitol. I really get depressed by Americans who can't tell the difference, as well as by the ones who do Darwin Award-worthy feats but fail to die as a result (as per this article)."

Actually, it's the building where the FEDERAL legislature sits, each state and commonwealth in the union having its own capitol within its capital. Since the city of Washington and the District of Columbia are coterminous, one really couldn't say that one is "within" the other. (The idea for doing this was so that no state could claim precedence as the "home" of the nation's capital.)

So, yes - some of us Americans *CAN* tell the difference, thank you.

Because it's biting the hand that feeds IT

*waits for BOOM! BOOOM!

*gets coat

Yes, I'm an American, but not from South Carolina, and am from an area where there are farming accidents reported almost every single day... And as someone who works around very heavy equipment every day, I stand behind my statement as this being a clear example of Natural Selection.

He's just lucky he wasn't killed. But if he's contributed to the gene pool, we, as a civilization, are collectively screwed.

Er, are you an idiot? He said he was thankful to be alive. If at any point you think that's "utter stupidity" then...well...there's not much point trying to reason with you.

... Americans = Stupid, Darwin Awards, yadda yadda yadda.. but;

seriously, he (apparently relatively calmly) cut his own arm off, while the skin on it was "coming off like melted plastic" with a 'pocket knife'. He was fucking stupid, in the way that has cost many a tradesman a finger, hand or even an arm, before but he had the presence of mind and sheer balls to use a knife to amputate his own arm whilst in conflagration that was apparently hot enough to strip skin and muscle.

I'd buy him a beer or few whiskies, that's for sure.

Bruce: I'm not hunched in a corner brooding and I'm not wrong. Wow, i guess it really is as easy as you make it seem to make assertions without argument. Who knew?

Anonymous coward (who probably would have burned to death) wrote :

"please explain how the machine's rollers could have caught his hand"

Hmm... let's see.

Maybe, and this is just speculation, but just maybe corn stalks are longer than a man's arm that guy's state. Doubtless, in the UK the stalks are short and the cob kernels are all crooked, so I'll ive you the benefit of the doubt. And maybe, juuuuust maybe, the thresher, which spins its blades fast enough to generate a significant amount of pull, got *unjammed* as Mr. Farmer tugged on the stalk outside of the threshers' mechanism. It's not a stretch of the imagination to think that an arm could get pulled close enough to the blades to get caught, either by itself or with some help from the sleeve workman's shirt . Again, this is not uncommon for those who work with machines.

But... I'm sorry ...I invoked a concept that might be unfamiliar to anonymous coward: "imagination". It's much easier to call someone an idiot for having been in an accident, than to *imagine* how they might have gotten themselves in such a situation and, oh I don't know, EMPATHIZE.

I'm not saying it happened that way. It probably didn't. Maybe the guy *is*, in fact, an idiot who got off Final Destination style. I have no clue,

but I do know this:

it takes some balls to cut your own damn arm off, while it's on fire and the skin is dripping off, and then have the composure to walk through your farmland and down the road to get help.

That's not a darwin award.

the field of Ergonomics exists to prevent just this kind of thing, but folks do get

somewhat cavalier about well-known machinery after 20, 30, or 40 years of operating

it. And sometimes they can't afford the newest, coolest equipment. And sometimes

people really do work 16-hour days on such machinery.

There was a kid (about 11, I think) on a farm in the northwestern US. Some machinery with an auger for moving grain caught the sleeve of his jacket and pulled his arm in. When trying to free the first arm with the other arm, the second sleeve got caught as well. He managed

to keep the rest of him out of it it, but lost both of his arms.

There's an article addressing the number of deaths and injuries due to farm machinery

here: http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/The_real_cost_of_food.html

It's probably not much good for sarcastic jokes at the expense of someone else but

is worth reading for those who want a perspective on how lovely life is for those not

hauling in 6 figure salaries in front of a keyboard.

Perhaps it's not so much funny as uncomfortable and tragic. We get to sit in front of nice, safe keyboards and pretend that they're injured only because they're stupid: "They'll be doing us all a favour if they snuff themselves out of stupidity."

Nice.

I've also worked with, in, around heavy machinery. If you have, as you said, then you must've

had some sort of safety instruction, or there were signs on the machinery, or you're a quick study,

or stayed far away, or are just lucky.

People make mistakes. I've never seen safety lessons available for old farm machinery.

What's dangerous is sometimes really obvious in hindsight

and not so obvious in foresight.

A lot of students start out thinking they'll wear long-sleeve shirts in a machine

shop when it's cold. A good instructor will correct them, a bad one will let them

lose their arm or hand. The good instruction is clearly based on the painful

mistakes of many people who've gone before -- and whose genes are no doubt

intermingled with your own.

It's easy to be smug from behind the keyboard.

You lot are under the impression that smart equals breeding/survival it doesn't, tough and able to wiggle out of scrapes are just as important as being intelligent. Besides which the guy probably does have kids farmers generally do. Natural selection doesn't work for us anymore so stop nattering on about it as if it mattered.

Disregarding the fact that yes, more than half our population might not see the problem with reaching into the mouth of a giant grinding steel toothed machine, we do have people capable of 'cutting' their losses, hacking their arm off, and carrying on with business. Where else can you find that sort of balls and will?

Pig-headed determination enough to cut ourselves to ribbons, combined with the lack of sense not to do so. Why would anyone be afraid of us?

One of the things I've noticed that no one has brought up is how used to the machine the farmer is. Most of the time, accidents happen because someone has become complacent and has done something dangerous 1 million times in the past and been lucky enough to get away with it. When they keep getting away with it, they forget the danger is there, and they keep doing it. It happens a lot and it kills more old guys here in the oil patch than anything else.

The farmer had probably pulled corn out of the machine the same way many times before without a problem, and thats why he didn't shut it off, de-engerize it, and test it before he worked on it. Proper procedure wasn't followed, and he paid the price for it. Yes, it was stupidity on his part, but sadly its a rather common thing.

check out deaths by wood chipper. Sample:

a 33-year-old California worker died as he was loading pine and eucalyptus into a wood chipper. His coworkers were some distance away when they heard “strange” and “overloaded” noises.

A supervisor approached and realized that the worker had been pulled through the machine. The official cause of death was “total body fragmentation.”

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/05/03/Worldandnation/To_save_his_life__hik.shtml

I think these guys should get together, as then, and only then, will the right arm know what the left arms upto ...

But in all reality ... why didn't he just shoot it with a 12 gauge ... that works with stuck wheel nuts and the occasional texan attorney :)

Josh and Mike Moyle:

You seem to have both managed to utterly misunderstand the original post. "I really get depressed by Americans who can't tell the difference,..."

You: "...if this comment was in regards to what Mike was saying, you may wish to rethink it. DC is DC, that's it. The capitol is in DC for sure, but is not DC itself... as Mike said, we just hide it there. I would suggest you go over to www.dc.gov before proclaiming supreme knowledge of our capitol."

That's what I said. The Capitol is in DC, but the capital *is* DC. Since, as Mike was nice enough to later point out, it's not in fact the nation's Capitol but rather the Federal Capitol, then my assumption of your reference being to the CAPITAL rathat than the CAPITOL was, in fact, correct. I would suggest you go over to www.dc.gov before proclaiming supreme knowledge of your own capitol.

Also: "Just Americans? You show signs of having the "America, and the rest of the world" view we are so often vilified for (allegedly) having."

Again, I think that's perfectly valid in context of an article dealing with - um, how can I phrase this gently enough for you - stupid Americans?

---

Mike:

"Since the city of Washington and the District of Columbia are coterminous, one really couldn't say that one is "within" the other."

Great, you're not actually correcting me, you're correcting yourself. If you look closely, you originally said "...[DC is] where we hide our nation's capitol". You didn't say Federal, you said national.

And since your original post referred to the difference between "capital" (the city) and capitol (a building), then I think it's perfectly accurate to say that yes, the building is located within the city. What is your point? Or do you just enjoy contradicting yourself?

Don't guess Chopper Read's gonna be telling THIS guy to harden the fuck up.

"It begger's the question, why don't bailers/threshers make sure the off button is within arms reach of the mouth"

Maybe that should be "within half an arms reach". And then because of the possible elbow angle also on both sides.

I mean, the bloke's armless...

I don't think even Chuck Norris could have survived this.

Self amputation is one thing, but self amputation with a pocket knife whilst being eaten alive by an ablaze piece of industrial machinery is the stuff of legend.

Reminds me of the bit where Claire Bennett sticks her hand down the mashing plug hole.... it's inevitable that she'd get her hand chopped to pieces and it happens. What do you learn from movie situations like this... switch the whole thing off before stucking your hand in it! (Wayne)

Yea..if you didn't know... IQ is hereditory, but IQ doesn't make you knowledgeable. It makes you intelligent. Intelligence increases abilty to learn, but doesn' tnecessarily mean you'll learn more. So while intelligence is hereditory, how much you actually know isn't.

Secondly, you may think its stupid to stick your hand into the rollers.. But whats to say he actually did? As someone earlier mentioned, maybe the corn he was trying to pull out got reeled in while he was holding it, if it camed unjammed. True, maybe it should have been turned off, but maybe it hadn't needed this before? Maybe his experience said that usually he could get it out without getting his arm dragged in?

And how many of you would have gotten out of that alive? Takes a certain degree of idiocy to go online and talk about how stupid people are when they don't know the whole situation themselves.

I think the point you might be missing is this: The guy stuck his hand in live machinery -- that is a stupid thing to do. The first thing you're supposed to do when cleaning, repairing, or doing anything else that requires you to stick limbs near moving parts is turn the damn machine off.

Granted, farmers will get complacent, and removing a jam probably is much easier when the machine is capable of continuing to run when the jam is removed, but that doesn't mean the guy didn't do a stupid thing and pay the price of his stupidity.

The manufacturer should do a retro upgrade pack including voice operated off (pass/swear word protected) function and a belt -clipped cordless buzz saw and the drive belts could be made of cotton bandages too.

There's nothing to suggest that IQ is hereditary, since there's no clear understanding of what intelligence is, and no way of defining it. Is intelligence the ability to pick things up quickly? Is it common sense? Is it shape recognition? Is it maths? Is it pattern spotting? Etc.

People are not "born stupid", and they definitely do not "inherit stupidity". It's arguments like that which keep the underprivileged right at the bottom of the food chain, and which feeds the class system. Brains are wonderful things, and can be trained to do almost anything.

> Claire Bennett sticks her hand down the mashing plug hole

Damn you, I haven't seen that far into it yet!!! gurrrr

You ARE that farmer! You probably passed out whilst it was happening but Jesus finished the job for you, PRAISE JESUIS!!!

Sorry that was a bit rough, shake on it to make up?

LOL

Would anybody with ANY degree of intelligence put any of their limbs in a machine such as that? I don't even go near my car's engine while it's running, let alone any of the combines I've worked beside this summer for the 1st time! Even a John Deere ride on mower stalls if you jump off without retracting the blade and putting the brake on, who made that death machine the inbred was riding about on?

How about suicide by wood chipper?

Many years ago, at a woodmill (used to make chips for pulping) in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, a fellow left his watch, wallet, and keys on the deck and jumped into a 30" log chipper.

One can only hope he went headfirst....

This is stupid. Either the non-American is a Troll or he is retarded.

Washington DC is the nations capital-- as in capital city--"Nations Capital" It is called Washington DC because the city of Washington is located within, or rather is the same place as the District of Columbia. To repeat what has already been said, this was done to remove the capital city, and the Capitol Building from being a within a particular state.

The Capitol Building is located in this city, this could also be refered to as the nation's capitol as it is the capitol in which the Federal Government meets-- the Federal Government being that which deals with the Nation as opposed to a particular State-- hence "Nation's Capitol".

You can't just assume that the phrase "nation's capitol" was supposed to be "nation's capital" just because you want it to.

You are obviously don't know much about the US-- I would go as far as to bet you've never been here. I on the otherhand have visited England (York and London), Scotland (Edinborough), France (Paris and Dijon), Italy (Milan and Venice), and passed through Switzerland at some point.

I have never seen any evidence that the people of any of these countries was more or less intelligent than my own, so lets leave off the "Merkin" bashing, shall we? Or should I dig around the Foreign News until I find some poor sod making a mistake and then hark on an entire country for it?

It's just stupid.

Every last one of you has done something stupid at one point or another. It's just a matter of odds, if they catch up to you in a big way or only a minor one. Instead of thinking this fellow is stupid, think more about the odds catching up to you and be more careful instead of more insulting.

AC:

"I presume that you are referring to the building wherein meets the state legislature, because the city of Washington DC is, of course, your nation's capital, but does however contain the nation's capitol. I really get depressed by Americans who can't tell the difference (...)"

" 'Since the city of Washington and the District of Columbia are coterminous, one really couldn't say that one is "within" the other.' "

"Great, you're not actually correcting me, you're correcting yourself. If you look closely, you originally said "...[DC is] where we hide our nation's capitol". You didn't say Federal, you said national.

And since your original post referred to the difference between "capital" (the city) and capitol (a building), then I think it's perfectly accurate to say that yes, the building is located within the city. What is your point? Or do you just enjoy contradicting yourself?"

Ah - I see the problem. When I read your original post, I inferred that you were saying that I didn't know the difference, where you were actually sympathizing with my having to live with so many who don't know the difference. My apologies for misunderstanding your post. We're agreed, then that the capitol building is within the nation's capital, the city of Washington, which is coterminous with, but not identical to, the District of Columbia. (*whew*)

OTOH, my response was also to point out, as you note in YOUR response, that US Capitol Building is the national capitol, and not a state capitol. We usually reserve the term "state legislature" (from your first post) for the legislative bodies of one of the component states or commonwealths comprising the United States. We generally do NOT use the term when referring to one of the federal bodies. Calling the U.S. Senate and/or House of Representatives a "state legislature" might be roughly equivalent to calling the British Parliament (in whole or in part) a "district council" While, - in the broadest sense of a "Nation-State" or "district" as a geographic area or political jurisdiction - the terms might be accurate, they are not generally used in those senses.

"You are obviously don't know much about the US-- I would go as far as to bet you've never been here. I on the otherhand have visited England (York and London), Scotland (Edinborough), France (Paris and Dijon), Italy (Milan and Venice), and passed through Switzerland at some point."

Hahaha. I lived for four years in Edinburgh, so at least I know how to spell it. I've also lived in York, and currently I'm living in a major city outside of the UK. Nice of you to make the assumption though.

Where the fuck is that?

Simon

I think that residents of the District of Columbia do not have representation in the United States Senate because of its odd status.