Apparently, Tansocean — the largest offshore drilling contractor — bans its employees from having knives. This nearly killed some people on the BP rig because they weren’t able to cut the rope to a life boat.
Let’s analyze this like like we’re not morons for a minute. You have employees that you don’t trust around sharp objects because you’re afraid they’ll randomly stab each other, but you do trust them to be in charge of equipment that if damages can cause one of the greatest ecological disasters in human history?
Are there really people out there who think that complete psychopaths can function normally in society as long as we keep dangerous objects out of arm’s reach? Or is it that people just say, “Knives are sharp! Let’s get rid of them!” and then don’t think any beyond that? These are the marks of people too stupid to function in normal society. They should be locked away and kept from dangerous weapons… except they somehow always end up in charge of making policy. These were the people who were unable to sharpen a rock in the caveman days and then got stepped on by large creatures. Unfortunately, we no longer have something to sort the useful people from the idiots like a woolly mammoth anymore.
That’s just stupid. I stepped on a Lego the other day and thought I was going to die. If anything needs to be banned, it’s those instruments of torture.
Let’s ban those eco friendly shopping bags that women carry to the grocery store. They take up too much time for the checker to pack and it makes my blood pressure creep dangerously high which will friggin stroke me out.
The lifeboats aren’t equipped with knifes?
What the hell do they expect you and your fellow survivors to do after being stranded at sea for a couple of weeks – use your hands to kill and eat the weakest?
I weep for Western civilization.
@Cat: Even worse. Once you’ve strangled the weakest, you wouldn’t even be able to cut him up. You’d have to just bite right into him. That’d be harsh.
I wonder if Transocean bans legos?
We place trained men and women at sea upon a huge chemical factory spewing fire out the top, surrounded by dangerous caustic chemicals in a multi-million dollar machine, and are afraid of a sharp pointy tool. D@mn, there’s just got to be democrats involved.
During my navy days, I large buck knife was the only thing that saved a torpedoeman’s lower leg on deck while loading torpedoes. His ankle got caught in a looped line pulled taught during loading. That kind of problem ALONE dictates that all seamen carry razor sharp knives. Oh, I see. Oil rig workers aren’t seamen – they’re suspect, politically correct wimps?
Cilla, you slay me.
Well, the issue of not allowing people who are responsible for life-and-death situations have useful equipment, i.e. knives, guns, etc, is not limited to the oil industry.
In the Army, I have been responsible for over $48 million and over 140 people directly, but they won’t let me have a .45 in my car in case a muslim, sociopathic, major breaks into my building and starts shooting up the place.
U.S. Soldiers carry fully automatic weapons and ammunition for a year or more in theater. They are charged with protecting themselves, their units, and any base they are operating out of. They are put on guard duty (I was in charge of a guard force which alone consisted of over 80 well armed individuals *see statement about not being able to carry on post*) and charged DIRECTLY with making sure that their fellow comrades don’t die. Yet back here in the States, combat hardened veterans are searched for weapons, i.e. guns, knives, or multitools (which most soldiers normally carry), before going into certain venues by civilian private security guards.
@Dave: Thanks for serving.
I have a friend who is a Bosnia vet, and he ran into the same problem here. He figgured out (or learned) a way to carry a 5″ knife that evaded every pat down he went through. I’d post his solution, but some things are better left unsaid, even within the jurisdiction of IMAO.
I have carried a “boxcutter” on my key chain for over 30 years. Used it when I began mainframe computer programming to trim my page of output from the continuous roll of greenbar paper on the system printer. The “boxcutter” is 2 inches long and the exposed blade is less than 1/2 inch. I always leave it home when I fly because TSA would wet their pants. But I’ve had it confiscated at my niece’s HS graduation, and had to go leave it in the car before entering several different government offices. But everyone was safe.
I retired long before 9/11, but I sometimes flew to my Air Force Reserve duty, and I used to have a GI survival knife in my carry-on. No big deal, sort of a Boy Scout jack knife with blade, can opener, screw driver… Nobody ever got excited about that. Sometimes they’d check my mini-maglite to be sure it wasn’t a gun barrel. I’m pleased to report I never went berserk on a flight.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”. (Had to look that up to remember the exact words and who said it.)
That’s another one from Benjamin Franklin. – He must have stayed up late a lot of nights, thinking up all the wise stuff he said. Wonder what he’d say about TSA?
We used to push them to the edge of the herd. Now we push them to Universities.
I work for as a contract surveyor for an oil company here on the north slope. they wont let us use “Sharps” any more but they handed out klever kutters (Google those). They are creating a moron society with all these rules all the time. we need to weed out the really dumb people but they are being protected too much.
This must be an OSHA rule run amok, in making everything “safe” we are working against the process of natural selection.
we are doomed.
An unarmed society is a stupid society. A gun is one of the best tools for teaching discipline; there are few better. There are few better ways of creating weakness than instilling in a person from day one that they aren’t capable of doing something.
Crook, I’m not sure I agree. I know I’m not doomed.
A quick survey indicates at least 7 faint scars on various parts of my body caused by knives (all self-inflicted) over the course of a happy lifetime of knife use.
But by gum, I know how to whittle, peel veggies, and chop meat like a pro, so I guess it was worth it.
If doomsday does arrive then I may take a few of whoever with me.
Imperial Dave,
I’m 100% with you on this one, I’ve done 5 trips to the sandbox on Uncle Sam’s dime and find it amazing that they give us rifles to carry everywhere we go (how many times has anyone else here ever bumped into somebody in line for food and had to say ‘Oops, sorry about hitting you with my rifle..’ ) but won’t let me carry a pistol in my car on base, the only time either my wife or I leave the home unarmed is when we are going to the base, post office, or bank. But even those loons don’t go so far as to say we can’t have knives on base. Granted, I can’t have one at work, but I work on aircraft so there are no ‘personal tools’ of any kind allowed, to include lights, gloves, knives, leathermen, pens, pencils, etc. Everything that could find its way into a moving part on the aircraft is individually marked, tracked by computer and accounted for by a minimum of two people before and after every job. Google FOD tool control some time, but aside from that very specific work environment or others like it, I can’t see an employer setting rules like that. It’s insane.
On a more serious note. I plan to make every bullet count.
This is great. The knife is about the most useful tool the human animal has ever created, so we have to get rid of them. Yeah, doomed is about right.
True that the Gulf Coast platforms are knife free but each rig does have two or three Mexican families squatting on the more run-down sections. These machete wielding intruders are only there hoping to do the jobs that oil workers won’t do. But hey, even a hard drinking rough neck doesn’t want to do anything that involves an oily Aquaman and drilling for sweet crude.
The logic, such as it is, goes like this, for every few hundred minor injuries there is a larger injury, for every few tens of larger injuries there is a fatality. If they can stop you from getting a nick on your finger you will be immune when the company man orders the pusher to flush the marine riser with sea water, losing control of the well and burning the rig down. I bet in the official OSHA report they will present evidence that the 11 fatalities had nicked their finger in the previous 10 years.
Remember all accidents are preventable.
Memphis Fire Dept. bans knives.
So I wanted to know what kind of company would do this. So I checked out there website. There rules of corporate governance are written sideways:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDc5NTJ8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1
Maybe it is handy to have them sideways if your drilling rig turns over. But now my neck aches and I need coffee.
Liberal Democrat owners and operators of Google and Microsoft (via Internet Explorer) are now deliberately interfering with your ability to communicate on certain right-wing websites like Ace Of Spades HQ and others, stripping you of your First Amendment rights, and they’re getting away with it, because the FCC is now controlled by the Obama Administration. We’re already experiencing what the people in Venezuela are experiencing under Communist Dictator, Hugo Chavez, the establishment and consolidation of a Communist Dictatorship in this country, also.
to willy….if you cant read the manual you are not leaning far enough LEFT?
That’s not good. The Boy Scouts used to give the scouts knives (and no one ever got hurt, they just used them to do cool Boy Scout stuff), and now we’ve sunk so low that oil riggers aren’t allowed to have them? Long past time to start fighting back against stupidity.
Jimmy P, I know what you’re saying. I”m an Apache pilot.
Which brings me to another point, I’ve been armed with a 30 mm chain-gun, 2.75 inch rockets with flachets, and hellfire missiles, and have somehow managed to not kill any of my fellow Americans or our allies. I’m *unsure* how that could be possible.
Yes, I’m stationed at Ft. Hood, TX and was here when jackass Hasan killed 14 people, and I am ASHAMED that a bunch of hardened combat veterans had to be protected by a little girl with a gun all because our leadership won’t let us be armed.